You have yet to specify when I claimed any sort of conspiracy theory. Still waiting on that. — Book273

That WHO or other public health has a hidden agenda of some sort:

You are clinging to the premise that public health is entirely correct and that they are completely trustworthy. — Book273

I don't buy into the sales pitch. A lot of us that work in healthcare don't, no matter how much that may shock you. At the end of the day I am very glad you don't make the rules I have to live by. — Book273

That you don't recognize what's a conspiracy theory or not is not surprising as it's exactly how those things go.

I have given examples of when public health has had less than scientific approaches; if you want solid examples of this, look them up. — Book273

And I answered you on that, they are irrelevant comparisons to modern public health, read what is written.

At no point have I suggested any conspiracy theory, that is all you. If you disagree with this claim then it should be easy to locate exactly where I claim a conspiracy is underway. Don't paraphrase: quote me. — Book273

I did and your examples I have also countered, you just ignore it, you ignore the simple logic I provided to counter it and you don't care. So stop spamming the same thing over and over.

It is unfortunate that to every example I have given to support my position you counter with some version of "irrelevant." or "prove it". — Book273

Because you need to fucking prove your point dumbass. And you cannot just dismiss the counterarguments you get and just spam the same thing over and over. The reason that they are irrelevant is that they have no internal logic to them, they are just loose connections between historical events and totally different practices of public health today, especially in nations that collaborate with other nations.

You just say things, you claim something and when asked to support it you draw loose connections that are irrelevant. Get educated.

Also, I am not yelling at you, nor swearing, nor seeking the moderator to intervene on my behalf, nor am I questioning your place on this forum. — Book273

Why would you? I've provided tons of logical arguments and links to facts etc. You just say things and you get posts removed by moderators on the basis of your posts being low quality. It's not like I argue about your place on this forum because I can't argue against you, it's that I argue against you and you just don't care to provide any logical follow up to those counterarguments, you spam the same thing again and the low quality of your posts (referring to the specifications in the rules of this forum) implies that you simply don't belong here. Either you step up and increase the quality of your arguments or you leave and join a forum without these kinds of guidelines. If you cannot understand this simple fact then, of course, you don't understand why I question your place here.

I suggest that people make up their own minds and determine their own course of action; as close to informed consent as they can achieve, and not blindly obey (unless they want to). That is all. Why this infuriates you is beyond me. People thinking for themselves should be a good thing, correct? — Book273

People are stupid, most of them have zero ability to logically conclude anything, review facts, or come to conclusions that are sound. I don't agree that people shall "make up their own minds", people should know their limits, they should know when they don't know all the facts to make a conclusion. The problem today is that people learn to value their own opinions in such narcissistic ways that they ignore every kind of method to actually arrive at any kind of truth. So no, they should not "just make up their own minds", especially during a health crisis. They should sit down and shut the fuck up and let the ones who are actual experts run the show. If they didn't care to educate themselves and take the necessary time and effort to become experts themselves, they are in no position to conclude anything if it's not logically reasonable beyond such knowledge. There are too many people thinking their opinions matter or are important, they aren't, most people don't know anything and their conclusions are laughably inaccurate. In a health crisis, that should not be a driving force, facts and science should, expertise and knowledge. "Thinking for themselves" is not equal to understanding the facts and arriving at conclusions that are sound.

People today learn that they are limitless, but the fact is most are so limited, by education or just mental capacity that they are unable to actually be of any help, and when they try to involve themselves they are mostly in the way of people far more suited for the tasks. Not because they offer help, but because their actions are actually in the fucking way of people who need to work with these things.

The amount of time and energy that people in these fields, people like scientists, researchers, medical staff, and so on, need to apply to stupid narcissists standing in their way to fix this pandemic is astonishing. Just as an example, the projected vaccination of the US is not meeting its goal because of anti-vaccine movements being strong in certain states. While all the regular, intelligent, and morally balanced people are getting vaccinated, helping each other, and push for an end to the pandemic, these fucktards and their "thinking for themselves" helps to keep this pandemic alive.

People need to understand their place. The blue-collar worker who isn't educated in medical sciences and acknowledges that they shouldn't conclude anything about that kind of science and instead listen to the consensus answer of experts is an epistemically responsible person that I look up to just as much as the highly educated scientists and researchers working in these fields. I don't like uneducated people who speak like they are the world's experts on things they don't understand even the basics of. And if they go further and acts upon that narcissistic delusion, they need to be shut down, like any other Karen on a plane. The anti-expert mentality of the last few years needs to stop.

You are clinging to the premise that public health is entirely correct and that they are completely trustworthy. Maybe they solidly believe what they are peddling. I completely understand that you believe them. — Book273

Do you have any evidence to support this claim that you cannot trust public health? You have provided nothing of the sort. As long as there's no evidence of them lying and being a propaganda machine, you are just bullshitting because you believe it is so.

However, public health in the 20's and 30's also supported eugenics as a viable heath initiative. This is true for many countries at the time. The most infamous, and the one that resulted in the end of publicly supported eugenics, were the Nazis, master race and all that. It was wrong, but at the time was a supported theory. — Book273

How are the crimes of the Nazi regime or the practice of eugenics in any way or form related to modern public health that's constantly reviewed and is consistent of thousands of individual institutes that work independently but review each other and peer-reviewing publications of others?

This is conspiracy-level bullshit premises that is in no way any evidence for WHO being a propaganda machine or conducting any of the things you speak about around the Nazi regime. Seriously.

Other initiatives also supported by public health include racially separated bathrooms (theory of the time being that non-white people spread disease), removing children from transient peoples (gypsies, etc) as transient people were clearly of lower breeding. — Book273

The same answer applies to this.

Yep there are some epic fails in the history of public health, mostly based on the politics and perspectives of the time, not based in science. — Book273

Exactly, so what politics is there that govern ALL THE DIFFERENT CDC AND WHO EQUIVALENT INSTITUTES AROUND THE WORLD? Is it not that these institutes today actually are run by scientists in global collaboration? So that no single nation governs over scientific practices or has the power to initiate unethical practices without consequences.

Your knowledge of the scientific community and world is astonishingly low.

We should question what is going on. IF the answers hold up, great. If not, following directions might not be the way to go. — Book273

You don't do any of this! You question something without even a single strand of evidence to support that critique, you just mash together Nazi public health with WHO and think that means we need to question what is going on. This is fucking conspiracy rhetoric, it's basically a textbook answer of what that is. If you want to ask the question of if WHO has hidden agendas, then you can't state that as facts or take action based on that belief, you need to gather evidence that logically, as a sum of facts, show that it is indisputably true that WHO has other agendas. If not, then you cannot and should never continue as if that belief was true. It's like basic fucking philosophy here, how to arrive at a logical conclusion.

Why are you even on this forum if this is the level of arguments you put together? It's not even close to having any rational relevence.

I would say it is because what we find intolerable, but nevertheless have to tolerate, — Cuthbert

Not in philosophy. I've been pointing this out in other threads as well. This forum is supposed to be a place that A) Tolerates almost all kinds of topics and at the same time B) Demands higher quality rhetoric and philosophical scrutiny to discuss those topics.

It's why this place doesn't have the name "Reddit" or "Facebook", "4Chan" etc. and instead is called "The Philosophy Forum". It's even in the rules of the forum that people need to have a higher level of discussion here than just normal "internet debate". It's the reason I gravitated to this place and not some other forum because I can expect better quality here. Now, sure, if it's an open forum there's always gonna end up being people joining that aren't up to this task and of course, there has to be some stretching, otherwise, it would be tediously boring... but constantly pushing unsupported conspiracy theories, extreme bias, and fallacy after fallacy should be shut down more than I experience on this forum. There are probably nutcases joining this forum every hour, but I wonder how someone gets to hundreds or thousands of posts before they get banned, get a warning, or similar.

But that's enough of that derail of this thread. Back to topic.

Really hard to prove how bad things "would have been". Everything runs on modeling and assumptions. — Book273

No, they're not. You can easily compare nations who prepared badly or who didn't have effective actions in place. Like in India where they had to burn piles of bodies because they didn't have the right precautions in place.

You are also contradicting yourself with that conclusion. Because if it's hard to prove what "would have been", then how do you know the world "would have been fine" if we didn't have the restrictions and precautions that we have right now? You're not making any sense.

I had considered running magic shop back when I had finished high school, I noticed how stressed out the other students were at exam time and figured I could sell them an amulet to wear when they wrote their exams that would make them do 20% better on the exam than if they had not worn it. At the time I thought that the placebo effect and reduced anxiety based on wearing the amulet would result in at least a 20% increase in their grade. Turns out, had I sold those items, I could have been charged with fraud, as there is no way to prove that wearing the item would have had any positive effect. When I countered with the "but just think how bad they would have done with out it." I was told that businesses that practiced that way are operating illegally and in bad faith. I find it ironic that the governments are not held to the same standard as an 18 year old entrepreneur. Apparently it's illegal for the business man but just good messaging for public health? — Book273

That's a bullshit analogy. You do know there's data and facts behind the restrictions and actions taken? It's just that you are too lazy to actually read up on those things and you compare that to yourself having an idea for fraud.

Just think, without all this...you could have died. — Book273

Yes, I could have, relatives have died of it, or I could have had severe effects, like co-workers who can barely walk 5 meters without having to catch their breath because their lungs are permanently scarred and fucked up.

You cannot conclude like that with bullshit premises.

Of course, with all this...you could still die. — Book273

Yes, but the risk is much lower. What's your point?

Huge difference. — Book273

No, it's not, you are just superbly bad at understanding basic logic.

Actually, I do. Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand. Common mistake, surprising how common it is. — Book273

I don't care about what you think about yourself. You don't prove to us that you are educated on this matter, you don't prove you understand either the logic of what is being said or the facts that actually exist. The fact that you "don't care" already shows the level you're at.

Now, can any moderator please explain what a low-quality post is? Why are we tolerating conspiracy nuts on this forum?

So, what reason do I have for believing that the WHO is not a propaganda machine? — Janus

Maybe because there's no evidence other than conspiracy theories for it? The lack of something on their site is not "evidence" for them being a propaganda machine. You can get national data over what you are looking for if you do some digging.

Maybe you can provide evidence for why WHO is a propaganda machine instead of a global coordinator for health and medical science?

If you think they do then send me a link to the precise thing I am asking for. — Janus

Maybe the data set is too low to be able to conclude anything at this time? If you dig around in the data and reports you'll see that there's data supporting slowing the spread, even though it's not at the level of totally blocking. Then you have national reports from different CDC organizations around the world reporting on statistics of vaccine levels and change in spread rate. But since the data is still being collected, there's not finalized statement on it, just like how science should work.

In about a year...actual herd immunity. And minor population control. — Book273

Scale up the statistics and do a projected death toll and include all "long-covid" health problems that for some are permanent and you'll see that it's not a damn flu season. When people say that Covid-19 isn't that bad because we don't see any major problems in society, they seem to forget that the restrictions and actions taken have already suppressed a lot of what the virus would have caused if nothing were done. And there are further reports that herd immunity for this virus isn't as clear-cut as the uneducated critics might think. Lots of people who got the disease got it again in a short period of time and had even more severe problems the second time. And let's not forget that the Delta variant of the virus is around 70% more effective and can have even more severe effects on someone's health.

People who criticize restrictions, vaccines, and actions taken to battle this virus and its mutations don't know what the fuck they're talking about. If you aren't a researcher yourself, the only course of action is to listen to the scientists and experts in this field and gather enough data to understand the broader perspective and severity of it. You simply don't understand how to interpret data and the reports given.

A new born baby is a non-believer, and ostensibly does not get there through logic. I'm sure it's the same for many adults: they don't get to non-belief by thinking about the evidence or lack thereof - it's just default. — Down The Rabbit Hole

If you don't prime a person into a specific belief, there will not be any of that belief. If the exposure to such belief isn't present until the child is an adult, his reason and logic will at that age help to question that belief in a way that a child could never do.

The problem in this world is indoctrination from a young age. Many grow up and have to actively question everything they've been taught in order to dismiss those irrational beliefs. Since most people are biased and don't fundamentally think with reason and logic, very few wake up from that indoctrination. It is their fundamental worldview, their Plato cave.

Convincing arguments supporting theism are lacking, therefore nothing.

Convincing arguments supporting atheism are lacking, therefore nothing. — Foghorn

Reason, logic, and rationality have always pushed back theism. Whenever a "truth" in theism is debunked, theists and religious people reshape the meaning surrounding that "truth" in order to comply with newly discovered facts. By historical events alone, very much support atheism compared to theism. If we produce an argument for atheism, it's the more rational path, it's the path of reason and logic, compared to a path of pure belief. Since the burden of proof is always on the one making a claim, theists have lacking support in any argument. So atheism already have that as a supporting argument.

It's rather that theists don't accept arguments against theism. It's a common thread that theists just throw the same argument back at atheists. It's the foundation for the theist's fundamental misunderstanding and disregard for burden of proof.

There's no rational or reasonable evidence for theist's claims, therefore atheism has a higher truth value than theism since atheism is what comes out of not being able to prove the existence of God. It's the logical conclusion to the failure of rationally proving the existence of God. Without proof, atheism has the higher ground. It's the logical conclusion of burden of proof. If burden of proof is rational, then atheism, since theists need proof to claim any truth, which they don't have.

But even if they had proof, then atheism still applies, since if atheism is a lack of belief, then with proof there no longer is belief, only facts. So atheism is always higher in truth-value than theism, by the logic of their relation to each other.

Why do we have these un useful and completely meaningless brains that work for nothing the way they do - no other animals have them.
Do not say I should read phycology and stuff - because they ONLY study what is already present and there - not why it came to be... — Iris0

I already explained it in detail, if you want more detail you have to study psychology, I won't write out thousands of pages of psychology research when I've already summed it up.

And psychology doesn't just study what is going on now, it's actually the exact thing you are after. The only way to understand how we function today is to study how our intelligence evolved.

You can't just demand answers and when you get them you just repeat the questions again just because you don't understand the answers. I've summed it up and if you want to dive deeper into the science of evolution and psychology you really have to sit down and read about it.

If you don't do the work and just question the answers you get like that, then it's hopeless to try and explain further. It's all there in psychology research, buy some books!

Does still not make us understand why we have this sort of self-reflection --- what is if for? Giving us depressions? Seems very un-useful to me.
Why have we developed this faculty and this feature? — Iris0

In order to reflect upon decisions. Nothing of this is really a mystery, just study some psychology and evolution and you will have the answers there. If we don't have self-reflection, we wouldn't be able to examine the choices we've made and adjust for the future. But depressions is even more basic, even animals show characteristics of depression.

And not all aspects of either evolutionary animal features or characteristics of our intelligence are useful. You can't take an example of something that doesn't make sense for us to have and conclude that in any pro or against evolution or religious beliefs. Evolution is slow, most of humanity right now still possesses characteristics of psychology that are basically still the things we had on the savanna. A lot of stress and mental disorders today have their roots in our modern lives not being very well suited for hunter/gatherer psychology.

I suggest you study psychology, evolution, history, etc. if you want longer and more thorough answers to these questions.

then atheism is all about repeating what some guru said and no ability to think or find reasons on who or what one in reality is refuting? — Iris0

???

It can be all at once. There can be morality out of our empathy, which could be considered an objective truth of the human condition. Then there can be morality that is subjective, invented differently by different cultures, religions, and so on. And therefore much of morality becomes relative.

The hypothetical true moral system has answers for all three. It makes a synthesis of all.

See you in the gutter, we'll see if then you can still be so smugly satisfied with pointlessness. — baker

No, I'm saying I want to see if the other poster can still be so calm and confident even when he is in the gutter.

People sometimes brag that they can handle the meaniglessness of life and that they don't need crutches like religion. Sure, as long as their health and wealth are still relatively intact, that long it's fun to be a nihilist. But what happens to those people when, for one reason or another, they lose that health and wealth? — baker

This is irrelevant to the point I made, is it not? You are saying that because someone lives in the worst conditions, they will find it hard to feel meaning in anything. This is true and not something I argued against. What I said was that it is possible to accept life, nature, the universe, as it is, no more or less, and any meaning in life or to existence, can be built upon that, rather than delusions that come out of a life crisis.

So, you say that poverty and living in the gutter will make people turn to things like religion easily. This I agree with, but I'm not talking about the psychology of religious people or how people turn to it, but that it is possible to accept the pointless existence of life and the universe and still feel meaning without adding religious delusions. And people who fight against these kinds of very human tendencies (to invent unsupported explanations for things they can't explain), I find have much more strength than others to cope with life's challenges, as religious thoughts often spiral things into the nonsense that rarely pushes people out of misery. It takes a lot of willpower to not fall into delusions as a way to flee from the harsh reality of the universe and of course, that is harder the worse someone's life situation is, that is not the point.

But - if everything is (because we can imagine it to so) without goal and without any sort of meaning, and all is just due to a stochastic variable - why did we not stay apes? They do actually walk on two legs but do still not have (nor do ravens - the smartest bird (animal) alive) the capacity of abstract thought and written language what will enable them to give their knowledge to their offsprings - and they cope and live in reality - MUCH BETTER than we humans do. — Iris0

Because self-reflection and the way human psychology works make us prone to depression in entirely more complex ways than them. That things are without a goal isn't something we imagine, it's what is the most logical observation of our existence, it's a hypothesis that is the most likely because there's no evidence for there being any further meaning. Any kind of applied meaningfulness that isn't an invented meaning by us (like, the pleasure of eating ice cream during a warm day) and rather a meaning that we invent as being cosmic and outside of ourselves, is the imagination, the delusion.

We didn't stay apes because evolution developed a highly adaptable intelligence for us in order for us to survive better and hunt in packs. We developed our advanced intelligence just like a predator develops extremely sharp and clear vision in order to hunt. Our intelligence is just a fluke of evolution, nothing more. What comes after that, i.e that our intelligence starts to invent concepts of reality that can have profound effects on us, good or bad, is just the side effect of this evolutionary trait. Just like the advanced night sight of the owl doesn't work well during the day, so does our intelligence fail to work well when we are pressured into explaining something unexplainable at the time. Like when our ancestors fleed a predator and they tried to explain between them why the animal did the things they did. They could then predict what that animal would do the next time they were being hunted and easily evade it. But when a lightning strike hit and killed one in the tribe, they couldn't explain why, but their intelligence forced them to do so because that's the point of that evolutionary trait, they started forming explanations that were far away from the truth of how lightning and thunder works, because it was too complex of an event to be explained at that time and with the resources they had.

So does intelligence work today as well. People tend to be extremely biased and explain with a lot of fallacies. We have over the course of thousands of years developed methods to bypass our thought process shortcomings, this is essentially what philosophy has been doing, bypassing our tendency for jumping to conclusions. And we've felt it in the world, we can see it all around. The very existence of the technology we have is a result of us being able to figure things out instead of jumping to conclusions. Using tools of thought to help explain something past our biases and fallacies. The very fact that we write on computers right now is because of this, not because we are intelligent and could figure it out. Without any tools of thought, developed through philosophy and science, we would never have come this far as a species.

So then, why should we live life through delusions that have their roots in primal thinking, biases, and fallacies? And not find meaning through ways of bypassing delusions and our intelligence shortcomings? This is what I'm talking about, that delusions are for people who give up on finding meaning in things as they are and instead need to apply fantasy to the universe in order to feel happy. Religion and belief is a drug to block the truth of reality. It takes effort and willpower to see things purely as they are, and even more to find meaning in the pointlessness of everything. But the opposite is just opium for the mind and soul, it can comfort, but is essentially a lie.

The modern definition of 'rationalism' is 'provable by empirical science' or mathematicazation of same. Basically it always comes down to one or another form of positivism. The Greek rationalist tradition started with Parmenides, and was utterly different to what is nowadays known as 'rationalism'. In fact, scientific rationalism is irrational, in that it disposes with any notion of purpose, telos, the why of existence. — Wayfarer

But none of that has to do with what I pointed out.

And if your argument isn't really in opposition to what I said, but rather stating a new argument about the nature of living as I described it and that one cannot live by rationality, reason, and logic as a foundation because you lose the "why" of existence, any sense of telos, then that is simply wrong.

It is entirely possible to find meaning in the things that purely are, the exact nature of everything, without applying any further concepts to it in order to sense a meaning. You can absolutely accept that our existence is basically meaningless, absolutely pointless, but still invent a why your existence is meaningful to you rooted in what already exists, in of itself.

The struggle to find a "why" of existence is futile if that search is trying to externalize the meaning of our existence. To invent a God, or being that can answer us why, and to imagine an answer that will be understandable to all at the end of time. It is basically just a psychological life crisis that takes shape in such a futile attempt to desperately find meaning. There's absolutely nothing in the universe observed so far to suggest or hint at any such cosmic meaning of existence.

The problem is that people are psychologically unable to accept the disappointing truth of existence, so they invent a comfort, a drug, a blanket to hide under so as to not have to deal with such a cosmic horror of pointlessness. But the biggest problem with this isn't that everything is pointless, it's that few attempts are made to be satisfied, ok with this fact, and find meaning in the truth and existential situation that purely is as it is. The world is what it is, existence is no more or less than what you can experience through life. So find meaning in the things that do exist, in the intoxication of fantasy, art, imagination, without deluding such ideas to be true, a world within that is limitless, without having any cosmic meaning in of itself.

I can look up at the night sky, understand that all of it is pointless, that it's just physics and chemistry producing all of what I see, and I can still be in awe, without having to bullshit any of it and apply delusions upon it in order to feel a sense of meaning. For me, it's pointless to muddy the sense of reality more than it already is with our limited senses of perception. If the line between what is true, or likely, and our fantasy, imagination, and art is blurred, we get delusions of existence.

Living with rationality, reason and logic as the foundation, means living with an exact line drawn so as to not be deluded by concepts that are closer to madness (by the definition of the word) than reality.

Let's hope so for all our sakes. — Tom Storm

*sigh*

II was expecting this. — Tom Storm

I am not bashing on Buddhism. In any sense, for me as an atheist, it's the only major religion close to any rationality in the world today.

But it is still a religion, with practices that can come in conflict with pure reason and rationality. Like, reincarnation, how do we combine that with atheism?



I'm trying to get some clarifications on the definitions people have, because I think there's no point in trying to argue about theism and atheism when people have muddy definitions in the first place.

If you want to mock me then go ahead, that would just clarify your level in this discussion.

I suggest you read about secular humanism, this is the worldview you seem to have in mind. — Tom Storm

Yes, I know that. I'm trying to find out how people define atheism when it seems possible to believe in something that is by all definitions a God, but the only thing that is different is that they claim it not to be a God, even though everything about it is.

Buddhism is often described as an atheistic religion. — Tom Storm

Yes, but do you see the apparent contradiction in such a description?

A theist. — Tom Storm

But by the definition that an atheist can hold different belief systems, just that they share the lack of belief in God or Gods, then an atheist with a belief system around that example who just reject the idea that it is a God, can't be an atheist, but theist, right?

How then can we have atheists with different belief systems? Isn't everything collapsing into pure semantics with no clear meaning of any definitions?

American Atheists definition of atheism:
Atheism is one thing: A lack of belief in gods. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods.

The only common thread that ties all atheists together is a lack of belief in gods. Some of the best debates we have ever had have been with fellow atheists. This is because atheists do not have a common belief system — Tom Storm

So a Buddhist atheist can therefore exist? Or someone believing there's a quantum-entity-cat flowing through the Higgs boson field is also an atheist because that's not directly a God?

If I reject any kind of belief that isn't supported, reject belief systems all-together other than a supported belief that can be rationally justified, i.e a hypothesis, what am I?

If I have a belief in an entity that is responsible for creating everything, starting the universe, a guardian of the world and universe, but I absolutely won't call it a "God" and do not accept anyone claiming my belief in such an entity is a belief in God, what am I?

Your definition is more of an ideal atheist: as you see it. — Tom Storm

I'm not only questioning theist's perspective and straw-manning of atheism, I'm also questioning many atheist's perspectives on defining it. If atheism is only about a lack of belief in a God or Gods, then what do you call them who lack belief in any superstition, supernatural, ghosts, fortune-telling or whatever fantasy you can come up with? Atheism is the closest definition of such a person and dividing it into "normal" atheists that can include absolute superstitious fanatics, with "ideal" atheists that are more close to the core of what atheism should be defined as, muddies the water and makes it very unclear as to how the opposing worldviews between atheism and theism work.

If we are talking about defining a concept, there are no real facts other than how society decides to define a concept. There's no "fact" that atheism is defined in a certain way, and possible it is defined differently in a heavily religious nation compared to a secular one. Dictionaries change all the time through cultural movements. When atheism was coined as a term, there was pretty much only the dichotomy of belief in God and a lack of belief in God. Today, if someone puts down tarot cards, starts fortune-telling in coffee stains, and wants to eat dirt to heal her aura, I don't think such a person can be attributed with the definition of atheist, regardless of what not-up-to-date dictionaries outlines.

A no true Scotsman fallacy happens when someone hears a description of the characteristics of X and argues that 'they're are not X' (because the description doesn't suit the person's preferred understanding and argument). — Tom Storm

So how do you define someone who is living by reason, rationality, facts of the world, and logic? As opposed to living with pure unsupported belief? Because if we go by your loose definitions, then you are putting me in the same category as some lunatic fortune-teller. And sure, by self-reflection, I'm doing it to, lumping together believers in God with everyone else who has an unsupported belief.

What's the answer to this? If atheism and theism aren't broad opposing concepts then how do we broadly define what you define as an ideal atheist? I make a clear separation between atheism and theism and any other unsupported belief. It makes the arguments clear.

The reason I don't think the Scotsman fallacy applies is that an atheist who believes in other supernatural things or even gods that are not part of any live religion today is much closer to theism and those belief systems. They use the same kind of arguments, the same kind of justification for their beliefs. And even if we define atheism by the classic "lack of belief in God" then how can we have belief systems within atheism that are just as unsupported as in that classical definition?

An ideal atheist is the norm definition of an atheist.

Imagine that all current religions go out of fashion, they become dead religions, and a thousand years from now we have a new religion with a new "God". If Atheism is only defined in relation to current Gods, then atheism can't exist as a concept in opposition to that new religion.

And what about Buddhism? There are no Gods there, but it's still in opposition with atheism. An atheist Buddhist doesn't exist. So how do you define an atheist in relation to Buddhism?

I'll remind you of what you said: — Tom Storm

I know what I said, and just as a racist saying "I'm not a racist", a person saying "I'm an atheist" and then lays tarot cards and start talking in tongues because they think there's an entity flowing through the quantum realm, is not an atheist. You misuse the Scotsman fallacy. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/no-true-scotsman

I have clearly defined the line where you go from atheism to something else. So I'm not shifting any goalposts (like described in the link), I'm stating that any unsupported belief in entities, gods, supernatural, superstitious, or whatever unsupported belief you can think of, adheres more to theism than atheism. And that dismissing any unsupported belief that can't be justified with reason, rationality, and logic adheres to atheism.

You don't own the definition of atheism. If someone says they are an atheist and they don't believe in god, they are an atheist. Period. They may be an untheorized atheist, but so what? Atheism may have an ideal form (humanism and skepticism) but that's not what we were talking about. — Tom Storm

What does this have to do with "owning" a definition? I criticize a muddy definition that incorporates new agers and other wackos into the same category as atheists. As I said: if someone says "I'm no racist" when they clearly are, they are still a racist. People can say that they are whatever they want, but having a quantum-squid-entity worshipper who lays tarot cards call themselves an atheist becomes absurd.

To say that someone can call themselves whatever they want is not an argument in this discussion, it has nothing to do with the points I'm making. If we are to have a discussion about atheism, it has to be clearly defined. I don't think aunt Clarice with her "cat god of venus" applies to atheism and using her will to claim herself to be an atheist has no relevance.

About 50% of atheists I have met at freethinkers forums/events over 40 years and the like have no or little interest in logical foundations. They may be inchoate but they are still atheists. I was an atheist for 20 years before I ever examined reason and logic. — Tom Storm

It's not about an active or conscious way of using reason and logic as a calculus during the waking hours. The reason, rationality, and logic I talk about are how you approach everyday stuff with skepticism, with a clear opposition towards believing anything at face value. If an atheist didn't live by this, they would start to believe things that are unsupported, including the supernatural. It's not about "interest in logic", it's about the inner workings of an atheist's thought process. It's that if someone claims something, the atheist doesn't just nod and accept it as true, the foundational thought process questions everything until there's evidence or logic behind a claim.

Having a debate about why so many atheists are not philosophically inclined and can't really justify their atheism might be a more rewarding line to follow. — Tom Storm

Justify what? That I deny the truth value of any claim that doesn't have a rational, logical foundation for it? I justify myself as an atheist by not accepting anything as true or likely to be true just because someone say it is.

Sure, you have a point that I might create a concept of the ideal atheist, but there's no clear definition of what a person who lack unsupported belief is. And that kind of person is by definition an atheist anyway. So even if there's something added to include the lack of any kind of unsupported belief, not just in "God", that person is still at the foundation, an atheist. I just don't agree that aunt Clarice and her cat God can call herself an atheist, it's very much far from what defines an atheist.

An appeal to authority from a fundamentalist atheist.
No priestly irony here! — Trinidad

Please continue with the low-quality posts. You add nothing to the discussion and no real counterarguments. I refer you to previously written posts to produce some valid counter arguments before putting in any more time on your discussion.

Words words words. — Trinidad

I thought that was your thing... just words, no substance, logic or meaning.

Why would I want to? — counterpunch

So your counterargument is that you don't want to? The point is that burden of proof is on the one claiming something. You claim the existence of God, then the burden of proof is on you. If you don't even know Russell's teapot I understand why you are confused, but it proves my point even better. In contemporary philosophy, theism is a joke. The scrutiny required for the level of philosophy done today requires much more than theists can manage to provide.

I'm asking how you prove reason is true?
You haven't shown reason is superior to experience. You have just listed some assertions.
Logic rests on non provable axioms. Its just that you feel they are justified. Same as religion. From feelings. — Trinidad

Can we have the moderators check for low-quality posts? I'm not sure how to define it anymore.

Nietzsche was wrong. Nihilism is false. Man in a state of nature was not an amoral, self serving brute - and we can know this because our species survived, generation after generation, raising children - for millions of years. Homo sapiens is a moral creature. — counterpunch

I didn't say he was right, psychology has already proven basic morality can arise without any religion or heavy rationalization about ethics. Why I brought up his fear of nihilism is that theists usually show this fear. It's why they always bring up Lenin and Stalin as (ridiculous) examples of how atheism fails as a foundation. The core is that nihilism out no belief and faith leads to murder. It's the same reason why pseudo-philosophers like Jordan Peterson claim that a true atheist is a murderer because he has no morals.

I used it as an example of the absurdity that theists possess when fearing a world built on atheism.

Faith is required because of the social significance of the concept; not because of its apparent truth or eminent provability. Indeed, religion seems to go out of its way to stretch credulity! Why? Because belief serves a purpose - and arguably, it's an important purpose that's been displaced without being replaced. — counterpunch

It has no or serves any purpose anymore. This is the point. In a large society where there are no clear explanations for anything and moral philosophy isn't a thing, there has to be some kind of agreement between people to follow or for them to explain things that force great sorrows onto them. So it makes sense how religion starts, but that doesn't mean it has any purpose existing when rational reasoning and logic have taken its place. We don't need religion to explain things anymore, so the purpose of religion is gone now. We can use methods from religion, such as meditation, as there are physical effects on our well-being that we get out of it, but the faith and belief are gone. It has no meaning when we have other methods and tools to explain the unexplainable or can be calm in accepting something as unknown until we know more.

The only purpose of belief is the psychological factor, how it can calm certain people. But I can't see how that can't be replaced by meditation and other forms of practice. Most of the time, people who need the relief of faith just have bad mentors who can't articulate support or guidance without the concept of faith intertwined.

It's not that I disagree; per se - but would just point out that humankind is barrelling toward extinction — counterpunch

By what measurement are we doing that? Apart from insane politicians with the hand on the button and capitalist scumbags who rather burn the world for a profit, there's little to support the world getting worse. Quality of life is increasing around the world. To say that humankind is barrelling toward extinction needs some supporting data.

Their way of life is sustainable, while ours isn't. And that unsustainability, I would argue - is the consequence of a mistaken relationship between religion and science, that is in turn the author of your mistaken relationship to God. — counterpunch

Unsupported assumptions. Where's the data that they would survive and we won't? And why would that have anything to do with a relationship between science and religion? Nothing of what you write here has any substance, it's just "end is nigh" speculation without substance.

Given apparent design in nature, God is a credible hypothesis explaining existence; the first cause argument is about as reasonable as, and not exclusive of the big bang. — counterpunch

Oh no, the old first cause argument. It's disproven all the time without theists caring for the lack of logic. First cause doesn't point to any God at all. It points to there being a starting point, something that kickstarted the dominos, but that could be an interdimensional rock of unknown material as well, which is as far from "God" as you can get. And you explain nature as designed and therefor there must be a God and... got damn it, there's no logic here, there's nothing to support any of what you are writing now and you're just proving my point of the illogical fallacy and biased nature of theists. It's not philosophy, it's a mockery of philosophy to just puke words about connections between nature and God and first cause.

I don't have to make an argument anymore you are proving my point yourself.

Epistemically, you'd be agnostic with regard to the validity of the hypothesis - whereas, you positively claim to know there's no God. — counterpunch

There's a teapot between Mercury and Venus and you can't prove me wrong! And if you can't prove me wrong then I am right. Why are we still tolerating this kind of stupidity in philosophy? I don't know. The burden of proof is on you to prove God's existence. I cannot have a burden of proof to disprove something that isn't first proven. I must provide evidence for a teapot between Venus and Mercury before I can claim it to be true, and then you have the burden of proof to prove that wrong. But I can't demand that you need to disprove me if I've provided no proof to you. This is like kindergarten-level philosophy. This is why I can't take theists seriously and why I don't think theism should be considered philosophy, it disregards everything that is a foundation for philosophical praxis, and for some unknown reason, it is tolerated. For me, this is all evangelistic nonsense that has no place in contemporary philosophy. Let the theists play in their bubble called something else than philosophy.

The proof from epistemology that justifies reason as being true. — Trinidad

"Justifies reason as being true"? Why are you changing the meaning of what I write? What truth?

You asked:

Where is the logic and reason to prove that logic and reason are better than experience and belief

Whenever you go into epistemology and ask if belief and experience are superior to logic and reason, how would you create such an argument? If you claim this, then please make an epistemological argument in support of it.

let's go

p1. Unsupported belief leads to more unknown consequences.
p2 Supported belief leads to more known consequences.
p3 Unknown consequences have a higher tendency for suffering.
p4 Known consequences have a higher tendency to suppress suffering.

Conclusion: Unsupported beliefs have a higher tendency to cause suffering. Supported beliefs have a higher tendency to suppress suffering.

We could go on with arguments like this but the point is that if you go through epistemological philosophy, there's little support for belief and experience as being superior sources for any kind of decision. It's like basic philosophy to know this. It flows through epistemology, ethics, metaphysics. It's the most foundational idea in philosophy, the foundation for deduction, induction etc. There's rarely any room for belief and experience in any philosophical arguments because they are essentially biases and fallacies at their core.

Please prove that human reason is qualified to meaningfully address the very largest of questions. Thank you. — Foghorn

Human reason is how we know facts about the world and universe, the very reason you are able to write on a machine right now is because of this. The proof is in the pudding, in the very existence of humanity's achievements. None of this is a result of religion or belief, they're a result of logic, reason, inventions through science.

So if that is true, which we have the world around as proof for, then if we ask what has the highest potential to answer or address the largest of questions we have, is that then religion, belief, and faith? By any logic of this, no. People can find comfort in religion and faith, but not address the questions in any knowledgeable way.

As an example, the nature of life, evolution, physics, and how the universe works are major, huge questions that for many thousands of years were only explained by religion. But with general relativity, Darwin and with modern experiments and tests confirming them over and over, we have essentially answered a lot of questions that were once "large".

So, is human reason, logic etc. qualified to meaningfully address the very largest of questions? If by meaningful you mean to comfort you, no, fantasies and fairy tales can do that if you don't find meaning in truth and facts, but for anyone that finds meaning in truth and facts, yes, it is absolutely superior to any reasoning through religion or faith. It's what much of the world we live in is built upon.

Faith doesn't start my electric car. It doesn't achieve major shifts in the quality of life. The house I live in is a result of many hundred years of innovation based in reasoning and my good quality of life is a result of all of that, not religion. By answering some of the largest questions, we also produce meaningful consequences for our lives.

So, please disprove and then prove that religion does the same. Especially in regard to how institutionalized religion fought back against human innovation and rational thought until the enlightenment era started to give them the middle finger.

So any epistemological proofs for reason? — Trinidad

What proof are you talking about? You asked if there were anything that "examines" reason and logic, if that is the foundation for atheism. And the answer is epistemology. What proof is it you are after?

This was site of Nietzsche's 'inversion of values' - not the strong fooled by the weak, but a translation from morality inherent to the structural relations of the kinship tribe, to objectivised social values, attributed to God. Thus, the natural obligation upon anyone hacking away at the pillars of moral authority is that they have some adequate alternative - and this politically correct secular relativism is neither one thing nor another. — counterpunch

Nietzsche's inversion of values refers to how Christianity reverses the natural into the opposite. It stems from his contempt for Christianity. Stating the moral system is based on "the contempt of man". The fear I'm referring to is the fear that when a structural moral system is dismantled, however faulty it is, will eventually create a great nihilism within the people if they do not actively examine ethics and form new systems in its place. And what have we've been doing throughout the 20th century? It's exactly this. It was even fueled by the examination of moral decay in Nazi Germany. Almost the entire part of post-WWII philosophy around ethics has revolved around figuring that shit out.

I would raise Stalin and Mao as examples of atheist societies butchering their populations on a scale that make Hitler look like an amateur genocidal nutter! Exactly that, and they're actual examples - to compare to your purely hypothetical atheist societies, you claim are always more peaceful. Would you care to name these havens of veritable enlightenment? — counterpunch

Here comes the classic guilt by association that is such a drag to always have to explain. The Stalins and Lenins and communist leaders who conducted murder and terror on their people did so under a kind of religious worship of themselves. They didn't build upon an atheist foundation, they built their society around themselves. These are dictators who don't have much to do with Marxism or atheism. Narcissistic personalities who brainwashed their people into a pseudo-religious politic surrounding themselves as deities. Much like how North Korea and Kim Jong Un act right now. I don't see much atheism going around these people. The only thing is that they don't have any old religions present, but that's not the same as an atheistic foundation for their society. I even touched upon this in this very thread in a previous post that you might have missed.

Would you care to name these havens of veritable enlightenment? — counterpunch

So this becomes the guilt by association. The classic theist argument that because they claimed to be atheists or built upon it, therefor atheistic societies are evil. It's a stupefyingly bad conclusion that is a giant fallacy. Check how heavily secular societies in the world today fare against heavily religious ones, there's your answer and data.

I have the data on my side of this argument.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-secular-life/201410/secular-societies-fare-better-religious-societies

As University of London professor Stephen Law has observed, “if declining levels of religiosity were the main cause of…social ills, we should expect those countries that are now the least religious to have the greatest problems. The reverse is true."

That's some myopic logic, don't you think? I cannot accept that's how this question presents itself to people. I think maybe, that's how you post-rationalise your deeper motives, but I cannot imagine someone becoming familiar with epistemology and logic, before encountering the concept of God, and so concluding "the burden proof is with the theist, and that shall be an end of the matter!" Well, it's not the end of the matter because God is a concept that serves a wider social and political purpose - and logic aside, it's probably not wise to undermine that concept without even understanding its function! — counterpunch

The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. Otherwise I will, in classic terms, claim there's a teapot revolving around the sun between Venus and Mercury. You can't say there's not, you have to prove there's no teapot there! Burden of proof is on the one claiming something, claiming gods existence needs to be proven, the burden of proof is still on theists making claims that they can't prove. This is basic stuff.

I cannot imagine someone becoming familiar with epistemology and logic, before encountering the concept of God — counterpunch

Not in nations that are heavily religious, which I would say even the US is considered to be. In nations like Sweden, many grow up secular, without any concepts of God other than fairy tale concepts of the bible in the same manner as pantheon stories of the Greeks. So what you imagine is irrelevant, we have secular nations in the world where God isn't as common as in religious countries so the concepts in epistemology can definitely come before any concept of God. What you describe is just a projection of your own situation, not the truth.

Well, it's not the end of the matter because God is a concept that serves a wider social and political purpose - and logic aside, it's probably not wise to undermine that concept without even understanding its function! — counterpunch

I understand its function, where it comes from, how religion and belief evolved, but God and religion is still irrelevant to humanity if we have good non-religious ethics system in place (which we have) and live our lives with self-reflection, skepticism, and a sense of logic and rational reasoning.

The concept of it being necessary is only true for those who cannot imagine a society without it. But some people live their life without it, both on the micro and macro level. This is an undeniable fact. I live my life like this, I have friends living their life like this, and Sweden is considered a secular nation with a very high quality of life. Compare that to heavily religious nations in the world. Check the link I provided.

It's not wise to overvalue the importance of religion without knowing how secular and less religious societies fare.

Where is the epistemological justification for rationality? — Trinidad

Epistemology is reasoning and logically examining the nature of knowledge and how to know. It was an answer to this:

Where is the logic and reason to prove that logic and reason are better than experience and belief — Trinidad

In epistemology, that's much of what the main questions are about. It examines how we know things, how we can be certain. In any attempt, within an epistemological discussion, to try and justify experience and belief as being superior to reason and logic, it fails. It's the answer to your question.

Have you not read your plato? The meno? — Trinidad

Have you read any of the philosophers past the enlightenment era?

Epistemology has no foundations,no conclusions. So you just have faith in reason.
In reality you are worshipping the ideological biographies of dead philosophers. — Trinidad

You make no sense now. I question how much you actually know about philosophy.

Epistemology you say? Is there any agreement or conclusions in that field of philosophy?
If not,your whole post is moot.
And to be honest,you sound just as dogmatic and ill informed as a fundamentalist. — Trinidad

I don't see an argument here? Just, "oh, you don't have any answers within epistemology, so you are wrong", and "you are just an ill-informed fundamentalist."

I don't care how I sound or people view me. Make your argument.

You are committing the no true Scotsman fallacy. — Tom Storm

You don't seem to know what the true Scotsman fallacy is. If I define atheism as having a foundation of logic and rational reasoning instead of just a lack of belief in God, that incorporates everyone with a belief that doesn't have a logical foundation for it. Hence, it includes these people. The Scotsman fallacy is if I just say "they aren't true atheists" and don't provide any foundation for that claim, which I have.

Atheism is without theism. It says nothing about any other irrational beliefs the person might hold. — Tom Storm

"It says"? What says? The dictionary? If I question the common definition or layman definition of atheism as being incomplete and include all types of belief and not just God in the equation, then who cares what "it says". I say, I question and I argued for it. What you do is the same kind of "bible says" argument here. But about atheism.

The ideal atheist may well be someone who privileges reason and holds to no superstition but that is a wholly separate matter. — Tom Storm

The ideal atheist is in my argument the normal atheist. People are prone to label themselves however they want. But if someone says they're now an atheist when stopping to worship god but starts to worship dead deities, new age, or fortune-telling, they are not really doing anything but replacing one faith with another. It doesn't work when defining what atheism is.

Most of the critiques of religion arise right out of a moralism which was given to western culture by the Jews. The Christians then became the leading salesmen of such moralism (not to be confused with being morally superior). So many atheists think they can just pull the plug and walk away from these thousands of years of history. It doesn't work that way. — Foghorn

No, they can't, we all live under the weight of history, good or bad. But what does that prove? You basically just say that we are a product of history. Ok, so what? Doesn't mean that moral philosophy isn't better than morality from a religious text. It more or less means that we ditch the books and find out for real what was good or bad in old teachings, or invent new ones where bad and old ones lacked.

But I can't stop thinking like a Catholic, that is, being interested in the kinds of things Catholics are interested in (thus my comments here) because that doesn't arise from my personal choice, but from many centuries of Catholic DNA up my family tree. That's built in. We don't just turn it off with the flip of a switch. — Foghorn

This I absolutely agree with. This is why I think it's good that the bloody history of religion is going out the door so that new generations can grow out without being programmed into this. But it also doesn't mean that we lose history. We can find interest in the old pantheons of the greek and those stories fine, we can find the pantheon of the Edda to be wonderful, without having belief in those things. The same is true about Christianity, Islam etc. Nothing of these religions will be lost, or erased. I think that we might even have more appreciation for the cultural mark on history if we leave the faith behind. I'm neither Christian or Muslim, but when I was in the Anna Sofia mosque in Istanbul, it was a profound experience seeing Christian and Islam design and art in that vast architecture. The experience can be enormous even if faith and belief in God is gone.

Except, if you are an atheist, your life is not based on logic and reason. At least not that part of it.

Atheism is not reason. Atheism is an ideology which competes with religious ideology. — Foghorn

Ok, explain how I cannot live my life like this, this will be interesting. Because I'm very well acquainted with self-reflection. Shoot.

The problem is that "such ideas" are arguably, the foundation of society; and here's where the atheist must falter - short of an alternate higher power in which to invest ultimate authority. — counterpunch

I have not problem living as an atheist in a society that doesn't rely as much upon any religion or God as nations like the US does. Many theists are blinded by the idea that religion and God is a foundation for which a fragile society is built upon. It's the Nietzchian fear of nihilism. But in a society that isn't as heavily relying on God or religion, society works anyway. In Sweden, there's not a lot of Christianity as any kind of foundation. Traditions like Christmas and Easter aren't celebrated with any God "present", but instead celebrated for celebration's sake, no underlying values are forced upon the people, they celebrate as a chance to have a good time with their friends and family. Religion has disappeared from the celebration and it has become something else, only having words linger from the religious roots.

So there's no reason for any religious foundation at all. Moral philosophy can easily replace commandments, and probably do a better job at it since it's always under scrutiny without being called heresy.

The only people who think that a society can't exist without a religious foundation, are the ones within such a religious framework. It's a usual theist argument that society needs religion and faith, but every time we have true atheism as the foundation in society, it's actually a lot more peaceful and rational. The common counterargument from theists then points out Leninist and Stalinist communism as an example of atheistic societies, but this is just false. Not only is it a simplification of Marxism, since Lenin and Stalin corrupted those ideas, but the key factor is that both Stalin and Lenin replaced God as a religious figure.

science doesn't actually rule out the existence of God. — counterpunch

As I've said, atheism is about logical reasoning as a foundation, not proving God's lack of existence. If anything, in philosophy, the burden of proof is on the theist side and has been forever. Agnosticism acknowledges the possible existence of God, without any logical reasoning behind it, that's not atheism. Which is a key point as to why I say that atheism has nothing to do with a lack of belief, it has to do with logic, reason, and being rational as a foundation. Anything supernatural, religious or similar isn't even on the table for atheists because there's no rational reasoning behind it. Being agnostic requires you to entertain a part of faith in God as a possibility, which doesn't exist for an atheist.

Any method which declines to challenge it's own fundamental assumptions is not philosophy, but instead merely ideology. It's not reason and logic to refuse to examine and challenge the qualifications of reason and logic. — Foghorn

That's what epistemology is. The true philosophical antithesis of theism.

In atheism the core (blind faith in reason) is very rarely touched. Most atheists don't even know it's there. There's typically far more doubt honestly expressed in theism than in atheism. — Foghorn

No, because everything is eventually explained by "God" or religion in some way. "Blind faith in reason" also doesn't exist, it's the very foundation of epistemology to question how we reason. To say that atheists have blind faith in reason is straw-manning the concept of atheism.

religion is more realistic than atheism about the human condition, and more compassionate in serving that reality. This not because theists are smarter, but only because they've been doing their thing far longer. — Foghorn

It's only realistic for primal people that try to figure out the world without any way of rationally explain what is happening around them. That theists have been doing it for far longer is also a fallacy and not in any support of any conclusion you make. We can actually say that rational reasoning is older since most current religions are younger than western philosophy. But the people of power in religion throughout history snuffed out anyone challenging that power. This is why the world has moved towards wide atheistic adoption in such a short span of time because the enlightenment era was more powerful than the church and other religious institutions. By 2035 it's expected by metrics that over half the world's population will be atheists. So if religion and theism is more "correct" for the human condition, why have the atheistic worldview exploded in numbers, and will continue exponentially? When lifting the fact that this is happening globally in many different religions and worldviews, it kind of speaks to the opposite of what you are saying about the "human condition".

Maybe it's just that religion is easier to use to control people's knowledge and also is easier to adopt when there's no explanation for an unexplained event. So in a world where these things were more common, religion was more common. In the age of reason we live in today, the old truths start to crumble easily.

Here's the evidence...
To this day, religion continues to thrive in every time and place. It's been doing so for thousands of years. That is, religion is a "creature" very well adapted to it's environment, the human mind. Natural selection is demonstrating the power of religion to anyone willing to listen to the evidence. — Foghorn

This is not evidence at all. As per what wrote above. People are prone to pattern-seeking in their environment, we are easily fooled by what we don't know. That doesn't mean we are "made for religion", it just means we are stupid until we find mental tools to bypass those biases and fallacies when thinking of the world. And we did, it took some thousands of years to fine-tune those tools and we've just begun to use them. The enlightenment era was like inventing the wheel, we invented rational tools that wiped away the necessity for religious views as factual.

In my view you make a common mistake by trying to include a whole world view under the rubric of atheism. It only pertains to theism, nothing more. Over 30 years I've certainly met more than my share of atheists who believe in fortune telling and astrology. The idea that logic or reason is involved is a myth. It pertains to those atheists who are theorised. — Tom Storm

If someone believes in something in the same way as believing in God, then however you define atheism it fails to apply to them. Lack of belief? Nope, they believe in astrology and fortune-telling. Reason and logic as a foundation? No, they don't question the legitimacy of astrology and fortune-telling.

Whatever these people say about themselves, they are not atheists. It's like racists who say "I'm not a racist" when they clearly are. I don't see a reason to muddy the waters of what defines an atheist, because that's a smörgårdsbord for theists to muddy the waters of definitions.

If we are to have a clear definition of atheism it needs to be what I propose. Anyone who believes in something without any logic or rational reasoning for it, is simply not an atheist. Otherwise, what would an atheist be called in contrast with the concept of the spaghetti monster? I can't be an atheist and believe in that. Atheism is a consolidation of all reason and logic against any kind of belief in something that doesn't have that as a foundation, regardless of God or fortune-telling nonsense.

Where is the logic and reason to prove that logic and reason are better than experience and belief — Trinidad

Epistemology is an entire field for that. Try it.

And most atheists do not live their lives purely by logic and reason. That's impossible. — Trinidad

No, it's not. Having a hypothesis is not having belief. If I say I "believe" in something, I do it because I have sufficient data supporting that there's significant reason to do so.

It's only impossible for those who have been taught otherwise. I have no problem living my life based on logic and reason. It doesn't change that I can feel emotions and have experiences that are profound, I just don't apply fantasy concepts to those things. If people grow up with religious concepts I understand that this is a problematic way of thinking, but our upbringing wires our brains and unwiring them is not easy at all. Saying that atheists can't live by logic and reason is like saying people can't live by religious ideas, they can, and so can atheists live by not applying fantasy to the unkown.

And the believers in rationality just assume rationality can explain everything. Whence and why this faith? — Trinidad

No, they don't, they accept that there are things yet to be explained, but they don't produce fantasies to explain things for them before they have any evidence of truth or logic for a deduction. They accept things to be unknown. We don't know what dark matter is, we've seen a presence of something. A theist might conjure up fantasies that dark matter is God for some reason, but an atheist just accepts that we don't know yet what dark matter is. Both can look at the dark matter as mysterious, but one of them doesn't jump to conclusions.

How you describe rationality and reason is the common strawmanning that theists do in order to undermine the legality of atheistic concepts. But there are no problems living with rational thought, reason, and logic. None.

I don't think that's entirely accurate but it is true for some atheists. There are, of course, many different kinds of atheist, with different approaches and views. Some believe in astrology and magic. — Tom Storm

This implies that atheism is only in opposition with the concept of "God" and the belief in one or a pantheon. But I wouldn't call someone who believes in astrology an atheist. It's the same kind of belief system, just not focused on the concept of God.

It's just not philosophy, that's all. — Foghorn

I agree that theism shouldn't be considered philosophy because philosophy should require reason and logic as the foundation. Atheism works in this sense since it's founded on thinking with reason and logic.

In philosophy, it's as if we have five people who are all claiming to be correct about five different topics. Four of them get questioned by a moderator, and they are forced to logically explain why they think they are correct. Every little detail of these four people's arguments is scrutinized to the core, chopping away until the most logical conclusions are made by each of these four people. The fifth person then claims something without any kind of rational logic behind it and the moderator of this event just says "ok". The other four ask why the fifth person didn't get the same kind of rational scrutiny and treatment and the moderator replies, he's a theist.

This is why I don't think irrational belief, religion, and theism have any place in philosophy. It's the very antithesis of what philosophy aims to do. Theism is like a bubble of philosophy, a playground for the special children where the rules are totally different and everyone else just has to accept it, occasionally invite them out of that bubble and accept that irrationality and lack of logic.

Atheism is simply accepting logic and reason over belief and experience. Even an atheist can experience religious-like feelings, awe, mystery and so on, but the key difference is that the atheist doesn't accept anything as true or logical until there are sufficient logical conclusions to be made. There doesn't have to be any evidence, even if it is prefered, that something is true, it basically has to be logical that it might be true and from that derives a hypothesis.

A common argument against atheists is that they need to prove everything beyond any kind of doubt while theists can believe whatever they want. But an atheist that doesn't have a logical foundation for a hypothesis isn't really an atheist anymore, he has belief.

An atheist doesn't have a lack of belief in God, there's nothing lacking, there's just no logical assumption that there is a God, so it's not even on the list. The only reason atheists speak and think about the concept of "God" is because theists have proposed such ideas in society.

In a blank slate of a world where there are none of the religions we have in the world today, but unexplained natural phenomena that previously were sources for many religious events, are explained logically, reasonably, and with science, i.e a world where we developed a scientific method before any religious explanations for events in nature around us: there wouldn't be any religions. The religious ideas today have their foundation in building upon previous generations beliefs all the way back to when someone wanted to understand why something like thunder happens, or why crops die. If there were no such sources and we already logically explained that thunder happens because of differences in temperature and moving air, while crops die because of infestations and stuff, there wouldn't be any supernatural phenomena that caused them and we wouldn't have such belief systems around it.

An atheist looks at the world as it is, disregard any previous "guesses" about anything, don't care for previous generations that can't logically explain anything and focus purely on what logic and reason can explain. It doesn't have to be proven beyond all doubt, it has to make sense.

Like ideas about quantum mechanics or possible string theories. We don't have much evidence of anything for that, but we have a lot of hypotheses that make sense, some are even so logical that we are already inventing technology using the phenomena we have discovered through those hypotheses, even without fully know how they work. But nothing of this is "belief", it's rooted in logic and reason.

So I think that the idea that atheism is "a lack of belief in God", is a bit misleading to the core of what atheism is. Because even if someone isn't believing in God, and starts to believe in ghosts, new age or other superstition/supernatural events, that aren't directly related to "God", they are still theists in the sense of belief. Atheists focus on logic and reason, they are closer to being immune to believing in anything that doesn't have a logical foundation underneath. And a belief system about God is at its core something that does not have a logical foundation and because much of the atheist movement has its modern roots in western society, where Christianity also has its roots, the idea that atheists lack a belief in God has become the norm explanation for atheism, which I don't think is accurate to what drives an atheist.

Please present comparative statistics. — Janus

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/massachusetts-covid-cases.html — Fooloso4

And WHO has extensive information that's constantly updated with new data and research.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/myth-busters

CDC also has a lot of global gathering of data as well as research publications.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/index.html

PNAS also features up to date publications on numerous types of topics related to covid.
https://www.pnas.org/search/Covid-19%20content_type%3Ajournal


Maybe the anti-vaccer side could present their data now? Maybe anything other than "My experience is..." and "I don't believe that..." and "According to my own research..." and "How would you feel if..." etc.
It's remarkable that the low quality of such posts is ok on this forum. If the topic is scientific, which this clearly is, then the scientific and philosophical quality needs to be high. The anecdotal, emotional, biased and fallacious posts should not be allowed. That's what Reddit, Facebook, 4Chan etc. are for.

If you get the serious negative side effects of the vaccine, how will you cope with them? How will that affect your trust in science? Do you really think you will be able to take solace in the fact that the vaccine has helped other people, but not you? — baker

That doesn't matter now, does it? If you get side effects because of that super unlucky lottery, then that is not any empirical evidence that the vaccine is worse than covid. Is this how you treat logic? That if something happens to you, then the statistics are wrong? Seriously?

What about the people who get seriously ill by Covid? People who die or get such damage to their lungs that they can't even walk 5 meters before getting out of breath? You think they take solace in stupid people advocating to not take the vaccine so that it gets harder to fight the spread? Do you think they like people who refuse the vaccine and go out and breaking restrictions without any thought in their tiny brains that they might infect someone else? You think these people don't want to beat anti-vaccers up for pushing back on something that might have been a help to prevent their health problems now?

You totally miss the suffering Covid is causing, thinking there's any statistical relevance to the dangers of the vaccine that in any way could be compared to the severity of Covid. A case of one person getting side effects of the vaccine is insignificant to the statistics here. It's like literally failure at understanding basic statistics and science.

True. There are many people with no brains, so they need laws. — James Riley

This pandemic has made it clear to me that idiots are far more common than I previously thought. And since idiots are actually posing a risk towards other people who might get seriously ill, I'd say there's nothing holding back protecting people at risk. If someone is beating someone up on the street, people stop it and help the victim. But if someone is acting recklessly and don't give a shit about restrictions and laws or the vaccine, goes out and cough in people's direction... I don't see any reason why shutting them down hard is a problem? It's clear that we need harsher laws for situations like a pandemic. Idiots roaming the streets in this way is like having blindfolded drivers driving around and there's no law against it.

Who's advocating that? — baker

Read the thread

Actually, it must be great to feel so confident that luck is on one's side. Getting the vaccine, thinking, "Oh, surely I'm so great and so lucky that I will not get the side effects!" — baker

People pushing the dangers of vaccines often don't know how statistics work or how to interpret them. In comparison to the virus, what dangers are you talking about? Like, we have a virus that is not only high in mortality rate, it also possesses a high risk of damaging tissue (like the people who's got scar tissue on their lungs that may be permanent) while others still haven't gotten their taste and smell back a year after infection. The list is long of all the health problems that relate to covid-19, but some are stuck arguing about side effects of the vaccines... What exactly are the side effects that possess such a high risk that contracting covid is considered preferable?

Because as I see it, the risks of the vaccine are blown out of proportion by people who really don't know how to read publications properly.

as if this were 100% certain. But is it? Calculate the probability. Otherwise, all you have is ideology. — baker

So, you mean to say that all the data from hospitals around the world that are barely managing their limit of ICU patients and the places where it breaks the limit and covid cases start dying in the streets, like we have in India... is not a strain on communities compared to if most of the population was vaccinated.

What do the reports say you mean? Based on them, based on how things are going around the world, do you not think that it's a logical conclusion to say that if people take the vaccine, we will relieve the tension and strain that communities live under when they're not vaccinated and the spread is uncontrolled?

Please explain what you mean by being 100% certain. I'm 100% certain that my logic is sound here, right? You have a society that struggles to contain a virus, people are dying, others are getting seriously ill. Then a vaccine comes along and eases that strain and stress on society. What is not logical about this? Please elaborate.

I'm guessing that the probability of getting a bad case of covid is about the same as getting bad side effects from the covid vaccine, at least in some areas. — baker

What are you basing that conclusion on? You are guessing, based on... what exactly? You are free to read UN and WHOs daily reports, you can look up publications and check statistics about it. The health issues you can get from Covid are documented literally everywhere, and you could probably check with the local hospital about the different cases of long term covid problems. But side effects from the vaccine range in 1 in about 1-2 million for the worst offender of side effects (Astra Zenica had serious side effects for 19 people of 20 million doses in UK), while the other vaccines do not have any reports of such side effects.

So, before you counter-argue with a "guess" or "opinion". Please explain what side effects you are referring to and how you compare the vaccine to the health problems of covid-19.

When I refer to UN, WHO, hospital personnel, epidemiologists and researchers as the source for the premises for my conclusions I'm being called a fearmonger who buy into the "government propaganda". But the most common denominator when it comes to vaccine critics is that they "guess" a lot and have "opinions" that rarely have any logical foundation or sources. Numbers are thrown around, guesses about statistical risks, anecdotal "evidence" that covid isn't serious because "I didn't get it or had it serious" or that it's just "lies by the government" and into absurdum.

Where are your sources for your guesses? I beg for you to provide any kind of legitimate source that support your guess of the probability of side effects from the vaccine being equal to the dangers of Covid, because not only is that wrong, it's a hilarious lack of observational ability when you even take a basic look at the global situation and the effects of the vaccine.

I will be Frank. You are a scaremongerer.
You have swallowed the government and media narratives to a tee. — Trinidad

In what way? People are burning bodies in India, a relative of mine died and the statistics are through the roof about people dying even when we have restrictions in place. What the fuck do you think would happen if we didn't have any restrictions or countermeasures in place? Seriously, you don't know what is going on? Do you think this pandemic is some conspiracy narrative by the government? What proof do you have of that? What kind of reasoning are you doing to conclude it to be so?

Answer me this,in what previous time did we ever social distance or wear masks to prevent colds? — Trinidad

It's not a common cold you stupid fuck. I give up, I don't know why you are on this forum and I don't understand how moderators tolerate this level of low-quality posts.

You are suggesting the unvaccinated to stay home?
Yet drinkers and smokers do go out together and congregate together. People can decide themselves about the alleged risks of certain activities. — Trinidad

Someone smoking in the proximity of others is not at direct risk of getting sick. An unvaccinated person who carries the virus can infect and hurt or kill other people at that very instant.

People can clearly not decide or understand the risks in this pandemic. How else do you think people have gotten sick and died? Do you think it just magically happen?

Unvaccinated people should follow the restrictions and regulations that we have to battle the pandemic. Until they are vaccinated there's no going around this fact. And because some people can't get the vaccine due to things like allergies, if an unvaccinated person just don't give a shit and walk out into the public and infect one of these people, that is a direct consequence of their action to disregard the restrictions set in place to block the spread.

To compare this to drinkers and smokers in how that would affect others is really not the same thing. I don't understand what is so hard to understand about this? If you don't care about the actions set in place to battle the virus and you disregard it all and go out into a crowd, all it takes is a cough or even talking to another person too close. If that person gets complications from the virus, it's either death or damage that could be permanent, like the scar tissue people reportedly some patients have got on their lungs. Do you really mean that smoking and drinking are in any shape or form comparable to this? Seriously?

In fact people drink together in pubs! And cigarettes are only disallowed in confined spaces. — Trinidad

Well, exactly, we are talking in public right? Not specific locations for the purpose. It's still illegal to drink alcohol in many public spaces, nowhere did we mention pubs here. And smoking in public is sometimes prohibited outside certain shops or restaurants.

My point is, there are definitely regulations surrounding smoking and alcohol that are based on how those things affect other people. There are no restrictions on how they affect the user. This is probably how it should be. As long as you don't harm or pose danger to others, it's ok.

So in the case of restrictions and vaccines surrounding the pandemic. If you don't pose a danger to others, it's fine. If you don't get the vaccine, fine. But if you go out, unvaccinated into public spaces, and pose a risk of them getting infected, then that should be restricted.

That people get confused about what moral rights to have when A) affecting yourself, compared to B) affecting others, is pretty mind-blowing. You affect yourself, fine, do whatever - affect others, get in line and follow the law, restrictions, and rules of society. That's what society is. Anyone who thinks they are above society and doesn't need to follow what is collectively agreed on is either fine to move somewhere else, isolate themselves, or face the consequences of breaking against these things.

It's like the most basic form of ethical logic here, and I don't understand how on a philosophy forum this logic is misunderstood or downright not getting through the skull of some.

By the same logic why are people not against alcohol and cigarettes in public? — Trinidad

Smoking has been banned in many public spaces, so the logic applies. And alcohol is also banned in public spaces, while not affecting others as much, any dangerous act upon intoxications is a crime. So the logic holds fine.

Come to my country and you need to have your yellow fever vaccine. Sure, it's your country. — Book273

The country you live in also demands things of you as a citizen. Just because it's your country doesn't mean it's yours. They can demand that you get the vaccine and fine you whatever you want if you don't. Don't like, move to a country that give you some other freedoms or vote for those who will give you that freedom. But bitching about things because you don't like them is not giving you the right to dismiss them in the society you live in. You are not the king, you are an irrelevant speck compared to a whole nation.

Want to buy a cheeseburger, show me your vaccine history: WTF? — Book273

Why not, if you are to sit in-doors with a lot of other people and eat your cheese burger, you are a potential risk to others if you aren't vaccinated. So making sure everyone in-doors are vaccinated is a valid thing to make sure.

You cannot argue around the fact that unvaccinated people pose a risk to others. Even if the transmission is lowered and the spread rate is maybe only 50% lower, it's still enough to warrant vaccines for people that get boxed into a room with others.

Your right to not get the vaccine is not giving you the right to be close to others in public spaces. In public among other people, your rights are based on how you exist in relation to the group, if you pose a risk towards them, then you don't have any rights to do whatever you want. This is basic logic.

life isn't safe eh. We all die. Adjust. — Book273

This means nothing in this context.

A lot of us that work in healthcare don't, no matter how much that may shock you. At the end of the day I am very glad you don't make the rules I have to live by. — Book273

So you work in healthcare and don't get the vaccine. This is seriously getting dangerous in my opinion. If you work in healthcare, you work close to people who might be open to serious harm or death if they get infected. You don't care about restrictions and you don't care about getting vaccinated. This is almost up for us to report you as a danger in society as your opinion, just like my example with the blindfolded driver, has been put into practice (driving blindfolded).

I would urge you not to work with what you do if you don't care about restrictions or getting the vaccine. I'm dead fucking serious here, you are a potential health risk for real.

So far. Give it a few years eh. Let me know then. — Book273

Maybe you should check in on people with long-term covid complications. We know these exist, there's zero evidence of any long-term vaccine side effects. You compare something that will actually exist in the future with something that might exist in the future as long as everything goes according to what you say.

We know in the short term it can cause sickness, hospitalisations, and deaths – at a rate higher than any known side effects from the vaccine. — Michael

It can also create a total loss of smell and taste, distorted smell and taste that could be permanent. It can cause exhaustion that lasts for months, some speculate years. Damage to the lungs can be permanent, meaning they will likely not give you enough oxygen until fully healed, which might never happen due to scarring of the tissue. Damage to the heart that poses a higher risk of heart disease in the future...

I can go on, there's a long list of potential and direct side effects after recovery that are extreme and way worse than anything ever reported about the vaccines.

The mask thing for airlines I am fine with. You want to fly, you play by their rules. Fair enough. — Book273

You live in a society, you play by their rules. If you don't live in society, you can do whatever. Same logic.
You risk people on the plane, you risk people in society. Same logic. Get it?

I like Florida's position: $5000.00 fine for any business requiring vaccination information from customers. Just awesome. — Book273

Why is that awesome? If you are to interact with people and knowing who's vaccinated makes it safer to conduct business, it should be perfectly fine to ask about that information. Why is this a bad thing? They risk other people's health and therefore such information is a good way to make things safer.

Any evidence that contradicts your position you deem irrelevant. Just pathetic. — Book273

It's an anecdotal fallacy you philosophical illiterate. You are on a philosophy forum and you can't even understand basic fallacies. Fucking moron. I even linked to a description of what anecdotal fallacy means and you still react like this.

I'm still wondering what moderators mean by "low-quality" posts. I guess I'll never find out.

Suppose each flight had a bouncer, like in a night club? If one raises a stink about a mask, the pilot sends back this 300 pound NFL linebacker Mr. Muscle Dude to discuss it. — Foghorn

Careful, the Karen might infect Mr Muscle Dude and the surrounding ten passengers. Better to just send in the hazard team and bubble-boy Karen as quarantine (also lowers the volume of her "opinions" about free speech)

Hey thanks for bringing that up! I had forgotten that crap. I work for the same outfit now as I did then. Then it was mandated that I get that vaccine or lose my job. I needed the money as my kids were young, so Daddy stepped up and did as directed. In a nutshell, that sucked royally. Now they aren't mandating this vaccine as they did the H1N1 vaccine. Likely because a full third of the staff would go home, and hospitals can't run on 2/3 of staff for any length of time. They assured us it was safe then, much the same as this vaccine. All full of doom and gloom then too. And a whole lot of not much was the result. — Book273

Anecdotal evidence is irrelevant. mRNA vaccine is not the same as that vaccine, which was my point. The disease is also different. Covid is extremely worse than the swine flu. But you conclude that because of your anecdotal fallacy they are the same disease and the same kind of vaccine. Lack of logic reasoning... again.

There ya go! Restrict all them anti-vaxers! They are evil bastards that won't listen to what we want! Damn all those who will not obey! — Book273

They are a potential risk for others. If they, through their stupidity, risk other people's health or even cause death, I think we need to protect society from their behavior. It's about protecting people from dangerous behaviors and reckless acts. I don't see them as evil, they are just morons who need to be restricted in order to protect others. Freedom of speech for them is not the same as a practical reality. Sitting in a parked car with a blindfold is not the same as driving with a blindfold.

So what's your point?

It is unfortunate that humans appear to be truly unable to accept each other's choices without railing against them. — Book273

Choices that affect yourself or don't risk other people's health or lives are not the problem here. It's when choices and acts risk other people's health or even cause them death. That you are unable to understand this simple difference is mindblowing and a foundation to your lack of logical reasoning.

being vaccinated does not prevent catching Covid, or prevent spreading Covid eh. It reduces the severity of the illness, and may reduce transmission — Book273

In that sentence, you say that it does not prevent spreading Covid, but in the same sentence, you say that it may reduce transmission. In the same fucking sentence. Good job logic brain, you are truly educated!

So the vaccine has unknown long term side effects — Book273

That phrase positions there to be unknown long-term side effects. There are no data to suggest any of that. You cannot deduce such a conclusion. And then there's the fact that Covid has documented long-term side effects, maybe you should add that to your risk assessment.

decreases transmission (lets just go with it) but does not prevent it — Book273

If it lowers the transmission, it lowers the R0 rate, so it helps prevent spread. Even if it doesn't block it, it prevents a lot of it, the more people who get vaccinated. It looks like you don't even understand what you are talking about yourself. Do you know what a black and white fallacy is? Lowering transmission rates lowers the spread rate, it doesn't have to be either blocking spread or not blocking to be effective in creating herd immunity.

Ok, so maybe, maybe, maybe that's a tad extreme. But really, we put up with way too much shit from such people. How about, ban them from all airlines for life? Ok, I guess I can live with that. — Foghorn

I'm with you. The respect for people's opinions goes far, but there's a limit. When we have a clear situation where these idiots' behavior can harm or even kill other people, it's not up for debate anymore. Seriously, why should we respect someone's opinion if the following behavior out of that opinion is a great risk to someone else's life?

Just like my example with driving with a blindfold. If I sit in my parked car and put on a blindfold, that's my "opinion", if I drive with the blindfold that's me applying that opinion to behavior. If my opinion is to support the idea of people driving blindfolded, but my practical appliance of that opinion is to only do it in a parked car, then there's no problem. If I, however, put on the blindfold and start driving down the road, that is not an opinion anymore, it's a practical reality where the risks happen outside of my opinion. That means the consequences are real. Even if I, in my stupidity, don't believe that driving with a blindfold will kill anyone, I will still risk other people's lives and my belief doesn't matter when I eventually hit and kill someone because that is a real risk that everyone except me, agrees upon.
And even so, spreading such ideas so that someone eventually does it can be harmful. This is why there are cases where people are convicted because they incited dangerous behavior in others. It's the entire reason Trump was criticized for the Capitolium attack. He didn't do it, but he incited part of it. So what about anti-vaccers and those pushing ideas of breaking restrictions, if people follow that or if they follow their own ideas, shouldn't that be considered in the same manner as driving blindfold or getting someone else to do it?

I don't think it's fascism to position yourself hard against reckless behavior. If someone starts waving a gun around and there's a risk of it going off and kill someone, you shoot that person down. That's not fascism, it's survival, it's protecting others. How is protecting others from harm or death, fascism? Shut the idiots down, there's nothing to be gained by tip toeing around such reckless behavior.

Those who are vaccinated will, according to your argument, be safe. The only people at risk will be others who have chosen not to have the vaccine. — Janus

Or people who can't get the vaccine because of allergic reactions and such. There are many people who can't get vaccines. But maybe the anti-vaccers think they are collateral damage for "the greater good of human health". Maybe some dihydrogen monoxide will help anti-vaccers think better, maybe not.