This is equivalent to saying what I was saying before: according to you, to rationally believe X, one must know X (saying it is a fact is redundant). — Bob Ross

So what is your response to my claim that to rationally believe X, one has to know X?

I don’t think one needs to know X to believe X — Bob Ross

I said to rationally believe X. Do you think one needs to know X to rationally believe X?

"To rationally believe X, I have to know what X means"
This is perfectly compatible with agnostic atheism. An agnostic atheist knows what it means for god(s) not to exist, so they can “rationally” believe that god(s) don’t exist without knowing god(s) don’t exist. — Bob Ross

I was giving you an example of atemporal dependency, not telling you what is sufficient for rational belief. Knowing what X means is required for rational belief in X, but it is obviously not sufficient. It doesn't establish that an agnostic atheist can rationally believe that God doesn’t exist without knowing God doesn’t exist, only that they can't without knowing what it means. The connection between rational belief and knowledge is just the connection between mental representation and informational content. For some kinds of information, there's a temporal dependency, but there are always atemporal dependencies (rationality itself, semantics etc).

Your OP was attacking agnostic atheist in the sense that one needs knowledge of X to believe X — Bob Ross

Under rationality*

To have a belief about presidents, you need to know what "presidents" means.
To have a belief about who will become president in the future, I have to know what "becoming president in the future" means.
These are both examples of "To rationally believe X, I have to know what X means".
Another such relationship: "To rationally believe X, I have to know X is a fact"

I don’t see how any of that is atemporal. In order to know what “becoming president in the future” means to believe Bob is going to be the next president, I need to know the former before the latter. — Bob Ross

As soon as you know what X means, you're mentally representing it, so you believe what it means. There isn't a delay. The atemporality is between the two.

Is believing a ridged state for you? Are you equally sure about all your beliefs? — mentos987

No, I have different degrees of certainty in my beliefs. Some are based on more knowledge than others.

how do I non-temporally acquire knowledge of X and then a belief in X without that inevitably being a temporal process? — Bob Ross

I didn't say this. I gave an example of a kind of belief that can turn out to be irrational or rational on some temporal dependency.

"No, I can have an irrational belief that turns out to be incorrect, based on fallacy or just lack of knoweldge, or I can have a rational belief that turns out to be correct based on knowledge."

That’s not what you implied thought with:

"I have to know what the president of the United States is in order to have a belief about who will become president in the future." — Bob Ross

Why is it necessary for one of those two statements of mine to imply the other?
Of course the former doesn't imply the latter. The latter is a much simpler claim about rational beliefs than what the former says about rational beliefs that have some temporal dependency. They are not in contradiction, either.

This implies that one only needs some knowledge which is not the thing about to be beleived for that belief to be rational — Bob Ross

Because you insisted on talking about beliefs with temporal dependency for rationality.
So I gave you an example of those, and now you're writing as if you're undermining the general depency of rational belief in X on knowledge of X.

To have a belief about presidents, you need to know what "presidents" means.
To have a belief about who will become president in the future, I have to know what "becoming president in the future" means.
Those are both examples of atemporal logical/semantic dependency of rational belief on knowledge that beliefs possessing temporal dependency also have.

Which one seems more relevant to philosophy of religion's terminology? — Lionino

It's you that said one is more relevant than the other, not me. I'd say "relevance" of a definition comes down to popularity and history.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the OP mentions dictionaries and definitions at many points — Lionino

As a way of debunking what the OP is aimed at debunking - the idea that definitions prove what things are.

and some arguments seem to be based on these definitions — Lionino

They aren't.

This whole argument references the sourced definition of atheism you used. — Lionino

The argument doesn't depend on the definition, it mentions it as an example of how atheism should be defined based on the argument.

Let's see what the relevant dictionaries say:

A Dictionary of Atheism Stephen Bullivant and Lois Lee: "A belief in the non-existence of a God or gods, or (more broadly) an absence of belief in their existence".
A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.) Simon Blackburn: "Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none."
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.) Andrew M. Colman: "Rejection of belief in God. atheist n. One who rejects belief in God."
The Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World: "The Greek for atheism is ‘not to recognize the gods’ or ‘deny that the gods exist’ or, later, ‘to remove the gods’." — Lionino

And they aren't even incompatible with the definition I gave or the OP either. So you aren't even proving me wrong by pointing these out.

Let's see what the relevant dictionaries say: — Lionino

How are you deciding "relevant", other than as a way of describing the reference that supports your own view?

I should point out that appealing to dictionaries is going to be completely fruitless for your side of the argument, since dictionaries aren't reason-giving.

Hence, the OP.

This sort of “logical dependency” you described is not atemporal. — Bob Ross

Then I don't know what your criteria for atemporality is or how you're reaching any conclusion about what is temporal and what isn't.

Exactly, so you could believe that the next president will be Bob without knowing it: — Bob Ross

No, I can have an irrational belief that turns out to be incorrect, based on fallacy or just lack of knoweldge, or I can have a rational belief that turns out to be correct based on knowledge.

that’s exactly how agnostic atheism works. — Bob Ross

It doesn't work at all, it pushes together agnosticism, defined as lack of knowledge, together with atheism, a knowledge claim regarding the same thing.

You have now conflated the knowledge used to formulate the belief in X with the need for knowledge of X to formulate the belief in X. — Bob Ross

The "need" is rationality, it's not being conflated with knowledge itself. One arrives at belief from knowledge through rationality.

Every object is a being. — Lionino

By being I meant something with a mind.

'Anti-' means opposition, that is what the dictionary says. You ascribe this "morally" adverb to the word opposition when it is not there. There are countless examples of 'anti-' prefixed words without moral meaning.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-ageing
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-id
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-romantic
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/anti-aircraft
The word anti-matter itself indicates reverse, instead of moral stance or counter-action. — Lionino

You're right. Anti-theist can mean asserting God doesn't exist.

I believe it will snow because I believe someone said so to me earlier. Knowing is not a requirement for believing. — mentos987

You couldn't rationally believe what they said if you had no knowledge it was possible, e.g., if you don't know what snow is or don't know that it can snow.

Experience is not the same as knowing. In my experience, the earth is flat. — mentos987

But you know what the Earth is because you experience standing on it. What you directly experience is what leads to knowledge, and you don't experience the roundness of the Earth, so it's not an appropriate example to prove your point.

No, in this case, the beliefs derived from knowledge does not refer to the same thing. — mentos987

It still refers to knowledge.

Uncertainty and certainty are the scales themselves. Being certain and being uncertain, those are the actual levels of certainty, and they are separate. However, being certain can still contain a degree of uncertainty (0-5%). — mentos987

This just doesn't make sense. They're separate but they overlap?

This doesn’t make sense to me. You seem to be saying that we must have knowledge of X before we can believe X; but then you say it is atemporal: can you give an example? — Bob Ross

By dependency, I mean logical dependency. So believing X requires having knowledge about the concept of X. Our beliefs have a structure, so in order to believe, we have to have knowledge in that structure as well as knowledge of how the thing believed in fits into that structure.

"Beliefs that we formulate without knowledge are usually predictions or estimations"
Isn’t this a temporal dependency? — Bob Ross

Validating a belief as rational (as knowledge) can depend on information we don't currently have access to, yes.

This also seems like you are saying that we just need to have knowledge of Y (as opposed to X) to believe X, which is compatible with the etymological schema. — Bob Ross

I have to know what the president of the United States is in order to have a belief about who will become president in the future.

Not necessarily, I can be unsure about it. — mentos987

You're misrepresenting what I said. I said: "And you believe it because you know something". The thing you are unsure about is the thing you believe, which you believe because of some other fact that you know.

However I probably have some experience that suggests that it will snow. — mentos987

And the experience is what you know.

But yes, I can know some things and use that to form beliefs about something else. The belief is weaker than the knowledge though. — mentos987

So this agrees with my original point, meaning you shouldn't have written "not necessarily". What you're now doing is acknowledging that belief coincides with knowledge, which undermines the continuous scale between the two you were advocating for. Since belief is based on knowledge, I can believe in something in which I know.

I think that what you are doing is using belief as a synonym for uncertainty and knowledge as a synonym for certainty, but incorrectly representing this on a continuum in which certainty and uncertainty get mixed together, but not belief and knowledge, each of which you're representing as an admixture of certainty and uncertainty. It is in fact certainty and uncertainty that do not mix, being binary opposites, and belief and knowledge which can mix, shown by the fact that we base belief on knowledge and lack of belief on lack of knowledge.

My bad, it is supposed to read "Being uncertain indicates that you are not certain". — mentos987

But that means the same thing. What you wrote was that "Being certain is a step on the Certainty scale: 95-100%" so I pointed out that you earlier that this is what knowledge is, not what certainty is. "You said earlier that knowledge is 95 - 100% certainty." Saying that certainty is a step on the certainty scale means you're mixing uncertainty together with certainty, which is a contradiction that I earlier pointed out.

If someone asks me "Do you believe you need oxygen to survive?" then I answer, "No, I know I need oxygen to survive". — mentos987

But this isn't a case of you not believing that oxygen is needed to survive. You believe it because of what you know.

"I believe it will snow". — mentos987

And you believe it because you know something.

Being certain is a step on the Certainty scale: 95-100% — mentos987

You said earlier that knowledge is 95 - 100% certainty.
Your new comment means that you can be both uncertain and certain, in contradiction to your last comment.

Not to me, uncertainty indicates that you are not certain. — mentos987

"I am opposed to the pilot-wave", everybody understands that as thinking that pilot-wave is a bad theory — Lionino

Because you're talking about an object in that case, not a being.

Opposition to the existence of something is clearly denial of existence. — Lionino

The kind of opposition indicated by the "anti-" prefix is moral. See: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-

Opposition shouldn't be read to mean "denial of" — Hallucinogen
Well, you said it yourself:
Antitheism means opposition to the existence of a God — Hallucinogen — Lionino

Yes, so "opposition to something" doesn't mean "to deny". It means moral opposition.

No, to me you either believe it or you know it. Knowing is stronger than believing. — mentos987

This entails that saying you know something means you don't believe it, which is absurd.

Not to me, uncertainty indicates that you are not certain. — mentos987

You said the opposite of this in your previous comment.

There's a binary distinction between certainty and uncertainty — Hallucinogen
Not to me. The term “uncertain” would indicate 5-95% certainty. — mentos987

And what do you call someone who does, other than "atheist"? — Hallucinogen
Antitheist. — Lionino

Antitheism means opposition to the existence of a God. Other definitions even say opposition to religion. Opposition shouldn't be read to mean "denial of". If I deny the existence of unicorns, we don't say I'm opposed to them. Although there are definitions of it the way you mean it. Whichever definition one gives the word, it's defined as such based on what the position purports to know, which underlines that that's how these words should be defined.

. If you see any logical fallacies in the way I use my definitions, feel free to point them out. — mentos987

Not to me. — mentos987

Certainty in X cannot coincide with uncertainty in X, so suggesting that they're not disjoint is a fallacy.

But not between belief and knowledge (they can coincide, — Hallucinogen
Not to me, knowledge is a step above believing. — mentos987

Belief and knowledge don't coincide to you? One cannot believe in something and have knowledge of it?

I think that knowledge can contain a small degree of uncertainty. — mentos987

I explained in my previous comment that it couldn't.

Likewise, if we only have uncertainty at our disposal, then we don't have belief in it. We would just have lack of belief. — Hallucinogen
I don't follow. — mentos987

If you only have uncertainty in something, then you don't have belief to any degree in it, only lack of belief.

Lack of belief can come from contradictions, no? — mentos987

Understanding that there's a contradiction in something is a form of knowledge.

5-50% certainty would indicate disbelief.
0-5% certainty would indicate knowing that something is not true.
The term “uncertain” would indicate 5-95% certainty. — mentos987

Already debunked all of this.

you have the relation backwards between beliefs and knowledge. Knowledge, traditionally, is a true, justified, belief. A belief is not determined after one recognizes they have knowledge — Bob Ross

The relationship is not temporal but one of dependency. If we're rational, belief depends on knowledge.

The etymological schema is going to say that we formulate beliefs, which are not yet knowledge — Bob Ross

But those are irrational beliefs. Beliefs that we formulate without knowledge are usually predictions or estimations. The knowledge involved is what the predicted entity is, what it means, as well as all the wheres and whats involved. The knowledge that might be missing could be the hows. If this is missing, the belief would still be irrational, i.e., not based on knowledge. It's based on knowledge of some details, but the knowledge detailing the hows, and therefore the full proposition in which one believes, is still lacking. That's what makes it irrational.

e.g., I believe that the tree I walked passed 3 days ago is still there even though I have little justificatory support for it, etc — Bob Ross

Your justificatory support is the knowledge that there's a tree there, and the knowledge that trees don't typically disappear over a period of 3 days.

then there is a meaningful difference between those who claim to only believe something and those who believe it and know. — Bob Ross

It's rationality.

Knowing something indicates a certainty of 95-100%

Believing something indicates a certainty of 50-95% — mentos987

There's a binary distinction between certainty and uncertainty. But not between belief and knowledge (they can coincide, and they do if we're rational). If you try to impose a boundary between belief and knowledge at 95% certainty, not only do you disrupt the fact that they often coincide, but you also create a category (in knowledge) where certainty and uncertainty are paradoxically included. This contradicts the fact that they're disjoint from each other. Knowledge about something only comes from certainty about some detail, not uncertainty. Likewise, if we only have uncertainty at our disposal, then we don't have belief in it. We would just have lack of belief. We can have degrees of belief about something if we know (and therefore have certainty) about some of the details, but not all of them.

The same fallacy arises on the other side of the spectrum. Lack of belief can't mean less than 50% certainty, because lack of belief only (rationally) comes from lack of certainty/knowledge. If you have 0% certainty about something, then you don't have any knowledge regarding it. If you then become 1% certain in it, it means you now know some detail about it. But that means you believe something about it. So trying to push 0% certainty and 1 - 49% certainty into the same category is going to be paradoxical.

This is based on my previous comment that it's rational to believe in something that you know and to not believe in something you lack knowledge of. The same applies to any model of belief and knowledge in terms of certainty and uncertainty that we try to create.

Having faith in something is when you simply choose to add a percentage of certainty. E.g. 55% belief + 41% faith = knowing that God exist.

How do you feel about this? — mentos987

I just wouldn't agree that definition of faith.

If I don't believe in the existence of God, any god, because there is no evidence for its existence, what does that makes me? An agnostic, an atheist, an agnostic atheist? — Alkis Piskas

If you're claiming to know that no God exists because to you, lack of evidence is indistinguishable with, or indicates, lack of existence, then you are an atheist.

If you don't know whether God exists, and hence lack belief, you are an agnostic.

But it does seem important to me to note that religious belief may not be entirely rational. — Ludwig V

If it is faith alone then it is believing without knowledge which is irrational.
Belief/faith as a function of knowledge is rational.
We are trying to establish the terms for referring to people's mental states, so in order for those terms to be clear, the connections between definitions need to also be rational. Sacrifice that and we end up mired in the confusing mess that the new atheists have succeeded in creating.

I'm attending the actually, etymologically sound usage of the words. Why would you accept randomly-ascribed meanings that don't fit the etymology. — AmadeusD

You're doing the opposite. Atheism has always meant denial of God's existence and it's only recently that new atheists began to popularise the "lack of belief and nothing else" definition.

That isn't looking at the words - that's taking a definition that fits your point. — AmadeusD

Selecting any definition is selecting one that fits your point. If anything, this reveals that your original basis "Just look at the bloody words lol" was poorly-informed.

The one provided by an institutional atheist organisation has much more authority, imo. — AmadeusD

And you say this right after complaining I'm taking a definition that fits my point. It shows you're not sticking to your original basis, which you claimed was "just looking at words". Now it has to be from a specifically atheist source, all of a sudden.

2. I have identified robust meanings for these words which avoid double-counts, inaccuracies and inconsistencies, on my view. — AmadeusD

It doesn't, because as pointed out in the OP, defining atheism as lack of belief doesn't distinguish it from agnosticism, since agnostics also lack belief in God.

Knowledge and truth are not the same thing. — Philosophim

Knowledge is the mental representation of truth.

Knowledge is the most reasonable conclusion we can make with the information we have at the time. That can change as new information comes about. — Philosophim

Then it's not knowledge, and this definition you're offering means you need a term for information that we're certain about. I call what you're referring to "faith" or "confidence".

We can only assume that what we know is the closest to the truth at the time — Philosophim

This isn't knowledge. Knowledge is what you are correctly certain about.

because at the time rationality and reality are not contradicting our conclusions. — Philosophim

Knowledge isn't just absence of contradiction. You are thinking of belief (or "confidence") - the space of possibilities inferred from what we know.

No. No it wasn’t. — AmadeusD

Then you have a burden to explain why that's the case. Insisting on your own definitions isn't reason-giving.

And the citation has been provided more than once. — AmadeusD

?

Just bloody look at the words lol. — AmadeusD

I did -- I gave the Oxford definition in the OP.

atheism -- The theory or belief that God does not exist. — Oxford Reference

Did you look at that? If so, why didn't you give a reason for rejecting this dictionary definition?

As Tom helpfully provide earlier in the https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/ — AmadeusD

It was the OP that originally provided this, not Tom. All of this is making me think that you didn't read the OP.

They are anti-theists. ... Anti-theism. That there is NOT deities. — AmadeusD

No, anti-theism is moral opposition to God on the basis that belief in God is harmful to people. It's not an ontological claim, but a moral one.

A-theism literally means not theism. It doesn’t contain anything close to a positive claim. — AmadeusD

This reasoning doesn't follow, because if theism is the opposite of belief in God, rather than lack of theism, then it's the positive claim that belief in God is false.

I know there is no matter that can travel faster than light as of today. I believe we might find something in the future. — Philosophim

But the Lorentz transformations, which are what constrains matter to travelling below the speed of light, aren't derived from empirical evidence or subject to data that is variable. They're derived from the postulate that the laws of physics are invariant (necessary for science to be consistent with itself) along with mathematical modeling.

As long as that's accepted, then we can prove that certain forms of matter don't exist, which is tantamount to "proving a negative".

An atheist merely abstains from belief. They do not assert that God does NOT exist.

An agnostic believes/thinks we can’t know if God exists.

They can co-exist in one entity. — AmadeusD

All of this was proven wrong in the OP. What's your reason for thinking atheists do not assert God does not exist? And what do you call someone who does, other than "atheist"?

You cannot prove a negative. Proving something requires what's called, "The burden of proof". Someone must present evidence of what they are claiming exists. To claim things don't exist requires no burden. — Philosophim

Do you think matter that travels faster than the speed of light can exist?

Who's calling themselves an agnostic atheist? — Philosophim

The New Atheists.

That's just misunderstanding the definition of the terms. — Philosophim

Glad somebody realizes it.

'lack of belief in god' and / or 'belief in the nonexistence of god' and is not a statement of knowledge — 180 Proof

If you lack knowledge of something, then it's rational to lack belief in it.
If you know something doesn't exist, then it's rational to believe it doesn't exist.

not a truth-claim) like agnosticism. — 180 Proof

???
Agnostics lack knowledge (the lack of a claim) and therefore lack belief.

it can be "rational" to believe something without knowing whether it is true. — 180 Proof

Any belief that you have is a result of what you know, not lack of knowledge.

So do you think it is "irrational" to know that there is a god and not to believe in that god — 180 Proof

Yes.

ust as a wife can know that her husband exists and does not believe in him — 180 Proof

This seems like equivocation. I'm not talking about "believing in" in the sense of trusting their character.

If so, please explain. — 180 Proof

If you know something, it is rational to believe it. Why would you not believe something that you know?

I think your conflation of knowing (i.e. a proposition) and believing — 180 Proof

I'm not conflating them. I'm saying they're connected by rationality. See 1st sentence of the OP.

No, I don't believe in gods, I consider myself an atheist — Tom Storm

Neither do agnostics, so you need more reason than that to call yourself an atheist.

But the rest of what you're saying -- that we don't invent labels for a host of other lack-of-beliefs -- actually supports my side of this. It supports not defining atheism in terms of what it lacks belief in. Instead, it should be defined in terms of knowledge.

Atheism goes to belief, agnosticism goes to knowledge. — Tom Storm

Belief and knowledge are coupled, if we're being rational. So if by "goes to belief" you mean "is about lacking belief", then you're defining atheism to be the same as agnosticism.

I do not believe there are gods. But I do not know that there are no gods. — Tom Storm

You're an agnostic.

2) to have no rational justification to assert that God does not exist, and 3) to have no disposition to believe that God might exist. This differs from agnosticism vis-à-vis (3). — Leontiskos

And (2) as well.

but I belive that noone is ever 100% sure — mentos987

That isn't a belief that I share.

I also believe that most people that call themselves atheists are really agnostics. Atheism is just a more common term. — mentos987

Agreed.

When I say that I am "absolutely certain" about something what I really mean is that I believe it to be true with an error margin of about 0.01%. — mentos987

Then you aren't certain, you just have a high degree of confidence.

But I think a person can be 85% sure that god does not exist and still call themselves an atheist. — mentos987

As long as you don't know, you are an agnostic, because you lack knowledge. There aren't degrees of knowledge in a thing; it takes only a binary value.

To me it is about the level of certainty. — mentos987

This is about belief, so you're describing how agnostics might differ from one another. But you still can't put lacking belief in x on a continuum with believing x doesn't exist, because they are different propositions that are separated by a binary divide.

"a bit of belief" still means uncertainty and lack of knowledge. Don't cross lacking belief in something with belief in the nonexistence of something. They are not on a continuum.

What does it come from? If you say reasoning about reasoning about the world, that lands it in higher-order reasoning about the world. Now, I challenge you to name what a priori reasoning responds to in total separation from the world. — ucarr

I wouldn't say it "responds", it's not a mechanism. It's intentional content and it's abstract and propositional. You have a mind, so you have it.

Quantum computing has something contrary to say about the last part of your claim. — ucarr

Everything that quantum computing allegedly does is mathematical. If by physical you mean something more generic than existing at a point, then you'd have to mention what it is.

If mind emerges from brain — ucarr

I don't think it does.

Functional mind that has impact upon existentiality, meaning and usefulness is never uncoupled from the physicality of the natural world. — ucarr

An abstract mind could have an impact on the natural world without being identifiable in it, if abstracta are more generic than concreta.

What a priori reason is practiced by brain in a vat never in contact with the world? — ucarr

All of it? A priori reasoning doesn't come from sensory stimuli, by definition.