Sunday, August 24, 2014

Definition of Atheism and Burden of Proof

I can solve the "atheism only means a lack of belief" debate rather quickly: "Theism" is not an epistemological claim, it's an ontological claim. It's a claim saying "God exists." From this claim, an epistemological position is developed, called a "theist," one who believes theism is true. "Atheism" is not a negation of "theist," nor is "atheist" derived from "theist." Instead, "atheism" is an ontological claim, negating "theism;" the corresponding epistemological claim is "atheist," meaning one who believes in "atheism." I suspect the whole thing is designed to avoid talking about whether or not God exists and to avoid having to back up anything anyone says, but there it is, people.

Now an atheist may retort that he’s undecided on whether there are any gods and which one or ones might exist, but that he thinks Christianity’s God is false. Fine; technically, you’re not an atheist. You win. But now notice the problem: the skeptic has admitted that he espouses a truth claim about Christianity—namely, that it is false. And now he cannot merely assume such a claim is true, but must argue for it.


The only way someone remains both not an atheist and avoid the burden of proof is by stating that he doesn’t know nor take a position on the truth of Christianity, either. But notice even here, claims the skeptic makes within the context of the debate will still need to be defended. So, essentially, the skeptic only gets completely off the hook by not making any claims whatsoever within the debate. That will be nearly impossible to do (since most, if not all, objections to arguments or points involve counterexamples taken as true). Hope this helps everyone!

4 comments:

  1. Would you agree that on the "lack of belief" definition that atheism can be true of an individual and yet God still exists? This, if true, I think highlights that this is by far divorced from our orthodox understanding of the word.

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    1. Yes, that's absolutely right. If atheism is defined as the lack of belief in God, then it could still be true God exists. The idea is, if the atheistic position is true in the traditional sense, then no God exists. If it's true in this sense, it's only a discussion of someone's psychological state/epistemological state. I personally don't mind if someone says they haven't investigated all other religions or even possible deistic conceptions and so don't know if a god exists, but then I want them to focus on Christianity or a Perfect Being Theology. They can almost never help themselves except to make claims, but, psychologically, they often think they don't have any obligation to show those claims are justified. I'm just trying to dispel that notion. :)

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  2. Au contraire my rationalizing blogger friend. Theism = belief in God. Atheism = no belief in gods (not, as you claim, "belief in atheism"), and theism" IS an epistemological claim. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified (based on logic and evidence) belief from mere opinion. Belief is gods is mere opinion as there is no way humans can acquire such "knowledge". As proof, theism is openly acknowledged to be faith-based, not knowledge-based.

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and the original claimant bears the total burden of that evidence. What can be asserted, without evidence, can be dismissed, without evidence. I, AS AN ATHEIST, DON'T HAVE TO DISPROVE WHAT YOU CAN'T PROVE.

    Philosophically speaking, if failure to disprove a god is proof of his existence then ALL gods exists and indeed, by extension, all undisproven claims, however irrational, are justified.

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    1. LOL. I take it this comment is a joke, right? It's mostly a string of cliched atheist one-liners. I'm leaving it up, because I have no rules against funny. :)

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