Theism being looked upon as a fallacy, and treated with no respect is just egocentric and elitist. — SethRy

Do you appreciate the difference between “Philosophy of Religion” and “Theology”? Don’t pull the wool over your own eyes, this is a philosophy forum so to assume authority of theism here is a no starter, sorry.

Philosophy of Science is the analysis of religion without the presumption of belief in any said ‘god’. Atheism was a term used by the religious to sully someone’s name; funny thing is people started to take it more and more as a compliment :)

It is nothing you said that convinced me of your point, but the fact that you did not reference science once. :up:

I simply have the impression that, in general, atheist belief tends to rely entirely on scientific explanations for anything and everything.

Theism being looked upon as a fallacy, and treated with no respect is just egocentric and elitist. — SethRy

Theism isn't treated as a fallacy, the logic of many arguments by theists are not logical or rational. The inability to see the flaws in reasoning, the cognitive biases, the fallacies when trying to prove the existence of God, the existence of the supernatural etc. is so high within theism compared to atheism that it should be a red flag towards theists to "get in the game" instead of accepting flawed reasoning. Most of the time, basic philosophical methods are abandoned in favor of evangelism. In philosophical terms, that kind of reasoning does not deserve to be respected. Philosophy needs harder scrutiny for the arguments, which seems more acceptable to atheists than theists.

Anything else is a belief, and belief can lead to a corruption of knowledge. — Christoffer

What do those folks do when they learn something about epistemology, where propositional knowledge is--as one of philosophy's most widespread consensuses--characterized as justified true belief?

Just because someone doesn’t believe in a deity it doesn’t mean they understand science or use scientific knowledge to make claims about their sense of reality.

You can meet hunter gatherers that don’t care about any idea of a ‘deity’ they just do what they do. It’s pretty typical of radical systems to impose a term on others for not following their dogmatic beliefs.

I don’t ask for scientific evidence for something that is nonsense. I assume the person means something other than some ‘deity’ and ask what they mean by “god” which is either met with a word salad, some reasonable mysticism, or an approach to the term as an abstract concept.

I simply have the impression that, in general, atheist belief tends to rely entirely on scientificfically demonstrated explanations for anything and everything. — Merkwurdichliebe

For anything to be claimed as "truth" it needs a lot of evidence, explanation, logical reasoning and demonstration. That is true. Accepting something as true, without any of that is a serious flaw if knowledge is the purpose of something. But ideas, hypotheses, and speculation can still be made. The key difference is that atheists never view such speculation as anything other than speculation; something never accepted as any kind of truth or way to live by. To do so, is to abandon reasoning in favor of truths that fit the subjective narrative for the purpose of comfort. It's comforting to rely on something unexplained instead of continuing the search.

There might even be the reason of accepting something, even if it's not true or explained, in order to just live life. I think a key difference is that atheists never settle on anything, truth and what's real shifts according to the most recent understanding of something, instead of just settling on the established initial "truth".

What do those folks do when they learn something about epistemology, where propositional knowledge is--as one of philosophy's most widespread consensuses--characterized as justified true belief? — Terrapin Station

Justified true belief is not in simple consensus due to the Gettier problem. It's not a modern method in epistemology by its original form.

Knowing about epistemology is not the same as actually learning epistemology.

Justified true belief is not in consensus due to the Gettier problem. — Christoffer

This is incorrect. The Gettier problem suggests to many that jtb needs further qualification. It doesn't suggest to anyone that either j, t or b should be discarded.

As I said, JTB is not in simple consensus. Just using the term without people knowing the complexity of everything around it makes the method overused in a simplistic form. Just as you say, it needs further qualifications. But there's a lot to read on the matter: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

That some people--not everyone--thinks it needs further qualification doesn't make any propositional knowledge not belief in widespread consensus. So that's irrelevant to the atheists in question discovering that knowledge is a type of belief.

Oh dear, another believer of truth. Might as well believe in God.

thinks it needs further qualification — Terrapin Station

It either does or doesn't need further qualifications in order to be true. Whatever someone thinks is irrelevant and accepting something because you don't think it needs further qualifications is inadequate.

So that's irrelevant to the atheists in question discovering that knowledge is a type of belief. — Terrapin Station

Knowledge isn't a type of belief. Knowledge is the information you know, it's either corrupt by biases, fallacies or unsupported belief or it's supported by facts, logic and rational reasoning. The latter being the form of knowledge which should be the virtue to have. Justified true belief has many times been corrupted by biased arguments using it to cop-out any scrutiny to the argument. Many use it as a form of "it's true because that's my belief" defense, rather than adhering to the complexity of JTB.

When I speak of atheists, I speak of those who reason rationally, with the philosophical methods at hand. Just as I view theists by their philosophical methods in opposition to atheistic philosophers. But it seems many straw man atheists and theists by comparing them to those who just "believe". What I argue is that theistic philosophers accept reasoning with holes in their logic way too often than atheists. By simply looking at the deduction and induction by both sides.

Oh dear, another believer of truth. Might as well believe in God. — Merkwurdichliebe

Ad hominem like fallacy there. What's your point? I couldn't care less for vague responses like this.

Knowledge isn't a type of belief. Knowledge is the information you know — Christoffer

"Know" is what we're defining. "Knowledge" is a grammatical permutation of "know" (or vice versa)

"Know" is what we're defining. "Knowledge" is a grammatical permutation of "know" (or vice versa) — Terrapin Station

Knowledge is not truth. But the search for "true knowledge" or rather knowledge of truth is a virtue. That journey does not mean someone knows the truth, it means they don't accept "truths" out of comfort.

Atheists generally make the same mistake as the classic empiricist, they are intellectially comitted to the law of contradiction, to the point that they become inured and lost in understanding and reflection. — Merkwurdichliebe

There's nothing wrong with being committed to the law of noncontradiction. It's a fundamental law of logic.

I really don't understand when people use "likely" that way. Likely based on what? It seems like it's just shorthand for "based on my intuitive preconceptions . . . " — Terrapin Station

In cases like that, I'd say that it's a statement of wishful thinking. It's like saying that it's highly likely that a random stranger will come up to me today and give me a free slice of chocolate cheesecake.

No one can do that, next.

It's like saying that it's highly likely that a random stranger will come up to today and give me a free slice of chocolate cheesecake. — S

haha

Why should it matter through? If someone believe in something or not?

Theism isn't treated as a fallacy, the logic of many arguments by theists are not logical or rational. The inability to see the flaws in reasoning, the cognitive biases, the fallacies when trying to prove the existence of God, the existence of the supernatural etc. is so high within theism compared to atheism that it should be a red flag towards theists to "get in the game" instead of accepting flawed reasoning. Most of the time, basic philosophical methods are abandoned in favor of evangelism. In philosophical terms, that kind of reasoning does not deserve to be respected. Philosophy needs harder scrutiny for the arguments, which seems more acceptable to atheists than theists. — Christoffer

Hear, hear.

I said: 'All you have to do to disprove God is show the universe is not a creation'.

Yes I know, thats because is a creation :)

There is a long history of people coming up with proofs that the universe is a creation; I don't see why the inverse is not possible. Some cosmologists are trying to do it; see CCC theory by Penrose for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology

Knowledge is not truth. — Christoffer

What does that have to do with what I wrote, that you quoted just above this, and that this is apparently a response to?

Please explain further then, according to my initial post you answered to.

Your initial post? I thought it was an ongoing conversation. You had defined knowledge as "information that you know." I pointed out that "know" is simply a grammatical permutation of "knowledge" (or vice versa--just depends on which one you want to focus on), so you were defining a term with itself. (And additionally, "information" is often defined as "knowledge"--for example: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/information)

What in "knowledge is information that you know", is unclear? Knowledge is information, just as in the dictionary you linked. I said that "knowledge is information that you know". Perhaps it's rather defined wrongly by adding that "you know", knowledge can be found, meaning you don't know it yet. However, knowledge implies something to know, meaning that it's not just information. Information can be defined as a substance that defines something, like "there is information in DNA". Knowledge, however, is about what we can know, it's information that we can store as memory information about the world. To know about things is to have knowledge.

What in "knowledge is information that you know", is unclear? — Christoffer

Knowledge is jtb. If you're trying to provide an alternate definition, "Knowledge is knowledge (information) that you know" isn't a very good one.

Knowledge is jtb. If you're trying to provide an alternate definition, "Knowledge is knowledge (information) that you know" isn't a very good one. — Terrapin Station

No, I'm not. I'm saying that JTB is often overused as a counter argument every time someone talks about the search for knowledge. The use of JTB in arguments is often using a simplification of it and pointing out the "belief"-part in JTB as a defense against unsupported irrational belief. JTB is not about unsupported belief, which is the kind of belief that has nothing else proving it than the will of the believer for it to be true.

No, I'm not. I'm saying that JTB is often overused as a counter argument every time someone talks about the search for knowledge. The use of JTB in arguments is often using a simplification of it and pointing out the "belief"-part in JTB as a defense against unsupported irrational belief. JTB is not about unsupported belief, which is the kind of belief that has nothing else proving it than the will of the believer for it to be true — Christoffer

It's not an argument, just the standard characterization of knowledge. And yeah, it's not "unsupported" because justification and truth are two of the components. Nevertheless, knowledge isn't different than belief. It's a qualified species of belief. So someone trying to characterize knowledge as not belief will be surprised when they encounter that it's common in epistemology to consider knowledge a type of belief.

Nevertheless, knowledge isn't different than belief. It's a qualified species of belief. — Terrapin Station

This is the part that I, not necessarily object to, but which I mean muddies the waters for those who aren't knowledgable in philosophy. They use "knowledge isn't different than belief" as proof that belief has the same position of truth as claims rooted in rational reasoning, evidence and so on. Maybe a new terminology of knowledge based on supporting information with high scrutiny of skepticism should be named in order not to be confused with "belief", as just by looking at this forum, many get confused by.