questions and comments?

I generally enjoy discussions regarding the existence/non-existence of God. Unfortunately, those who profess to be atheists tend to get rather abusive, especially when compared to the believers.

I'm an atheist. I'm not angry. I'm not really an agnostic.

Empirical claims are not provable period. So that "There is no god" isn't provable is a red herring. "There is no invisible, massless 1976 Corvette in my kitchen" isn't provable, either, but I'm not about to "only" be an agnostic about it. Rather I'd say that I'm certain it's the case.

who said the existence of God is an empirical claim? And besides, are you seriously suggesting that our access abilities are absolute? garbage in, garbage out.

The conventional definition of "empirical" said it.

Are you an agnostic about every empirical claim, such as whether you have an automobile?

There is a distinction between weak/negative and strong/positive atheism:

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

Weak atheism seems to me to be a kind of agnosticism - a lack of believe in any deity rather than the positive belief that no deities exist.

Strong atheism is a positive belief that no deities exist. How anyone can be 100% sure of that, I do not see.

So it could be reasonably argued there are no strong atheists and the weak atheists are actually agnostic as per your OP.

Strong atheism is a positive belief that no deities exist. How anyone can be 100% sure of that, I do not see. — Devans99

So would you say that you're not 100% sure when it comes to denying any arbitrary, absurd/fantastical claim that anyone makes? Are you not 100% sure that there's no Zeus hanging out at Mount Olympus? Are you not 100% sure that Kim Jong-un isn't an alien who created the Earth 15 years ago as a science fair project on his home planet of Floopappy?

I have no problem saying that I'm 100% sure that ridiculous, incoherent shit that people fantasize isn't the case. (I enjoy that sort of stuff as fiction, though . . . well, as long as it isn't so incoherent that it just seems like a string of random nonsense.)

I have no reason to believe that our modes of access to the universe are comprehensive.

Are you an agnostic about every empirical claim, such as whether you have an automobile? — Terrapin Station

I have no reason to believe our modes of access to the universe are comprehensive.

So would you say that you're not 100% sure when it comes to denying any arbitrary, absurd/fantastical claim that anyone makes? — Terrapin Station

I guess to be precise, we have to give God a definition.

I have a deist view of God in mind as a non-interventional entity that create the universe through non-magical means. I do not believe it is possible to rule out such a God with 100% certainty, so by this definition, there are no atheists.

Your definition of God as something outlandish and unbelievable seems would seem to lead to virtually 100% certainty that such a God does not exist. So with that definition, there are atheists.

I guess your usage of the word athiest is closer to common usage of the word. But I feel my usage is the technically correct usage.

I have no reason to believe our modes of access to the universe are comprehensive. — Arne

Are you an agnostic about that, too?

I'm an atheist about there being an entity that created the universe through non-magical means, too, because I'd say the idea of that is incoherent. There can't be something that exists somehow aside from the universe. The universe is everything that exists.

If we want to just name any arbitrary thing "God," then sure, some of those things I'd say I'm not an atheist about, but that's a silly tactic that we could take with all words. In that case, everyone believes and doesn't believe and isn't sure about every single proposition--depending on just how we define the terms involved. We could say, "Oh, you're an atheist. If we define 'atheist' as 'something that is identical to itself.'" And then you could say, "No, I'm not an atheist in that regard if we define 'identical to itself' as the negation of that--'nonidentical to itself.'" And so on. It's silly. Good if we're writing a Monty Python-style sketch, though.

At any rate, if you wanted to propose some limited set of things that first existed (as the universe, I'd say) that somehow had a causal role in creating additional materials, then yeah, I'd be an agnostic on that. We should have good reasons to bother considering it, though.

I am using the term universe to indicate what is called spacetime, which had a start 14 billion years ago, rather than the totality of everything. So it is perfectly possible that spacetime was created by something external to spacetime. This cannot be ruled out with 100% certainty. So there is a non-trivial probability that spacetime was created. That requires a creator. The creator of spacetime is traditionally called God. Hence strong atheism cannot be justified on the basis of probability.

The idea of an existent that's somehow external to "spacetime" is incoherent on my view. I'm 100% certain in ruling that out.

Remember, by the way, that quite a few ideas floated theoretically in the sciences are complete poppycock on my view.

You maybe right about science, so I will drop the usage of spacetime and just argue on the basis of time. I've given this argument before but it is the basis of my belief that there must be something permanent in existence outside of time (in order for there to be anything at all in existence):

1. Can't get something from nothing
2. So something must have permanent existence (because if there ever was a state of nothingness, nothingness would persist to today)
3. Something cannot exist permanently in time ('always' existing in time implies no temporal start which implies it does not exist)
4. So there must exist a permanent timeless something. This is identical to the necessary being that philosophers have argued for down the ages.
5. The permanent timeless something is the cause of the Big Bang.
6. Timeless things are permanent (they just 'are' - no tense). They are beyond causality so do not in themselves need creating.

I believe the above represents the only credible metaphysical explanation for the origin of everything.

I am not aware of any sound metaphysical arguments that support strong atheism. It is the general incredulity over the possibility of a deity that is used as an argument for strong atheism and there is no logic to back that argument.

1. Can't get something from nothing
2. So something must have permanent existence (because if there ever was a state of nothingness, nothingness would persist to today)
3. Something cannot exist permanently in time ('always' existing in time implies no temporal start which implies it does not exist)
4. So there must exist a permanent timeless something. This is identical to the necessary being that philosophers have argued for down the ages.
5. The permanent timeless something is the cause of the Big Bang.
6. Timeless things are permanent (they just 'are' - no tense). They are beyond causality so do not in themselves need creating. — Devans99

I don't agree with any one of those statements. We've talked about most of them in other threads. Probably no need to rehash it here, because we're just going to end up in the same place we both started from.

Adding this to my journal.

IMO There two sorts of atheist. The first, and most usual type are those that simply consider 'God' to be a useless concept for them. The second, sometimes called 'militant' are those that consider religion in general, and some monotheism in particular as 'socially pernicious'. And some theists can move between those positions according to current events.

I don't think It's as simple as stating that "noone can disprove it". For one, argument would be required as to why "disproving" it is the standard to apply here. It certainly is not if we're talking about a physical God, because the standard there is pretty clear: Whatever has no predictive or explanatory value does not exist. This applies to God or gods (given their common definitions), so in that sense it's entirely rational to be atheistic.

If we're talking about a metaphysical concept of "God", things get less clear. But it doesn't follow that basic agnosticism is therefore the only position one can take. For one, there'd need to be a consistent concept of a metaphysical God in the first place that we can talk about. But that runs into thorny problems, from the basic question of how attributes like omniscience and omnipotence are supposed to be conceptualized to the theodicy issue. I think that, in light of these factors, one can reasonably claim to be not just agnostic, but an atheist.

So I think what is coming out is that one has to have a clear definition of God to qualify the term 'atheist'.

Deism is a subset of theism but you could argue that deists are atheistic with regard to a traditional definition of God.

Likewise, because of the more moderate definition of God (no 3Os) employed by deists, you could say atheists are agnostic with respect to a deistic god - in that disproving the existence of such a god is beyond the power of science and reason - so to deny the possibility completely would seem unreasonable.

I'm not sure everyone will agree with this; Dawkins head would explode I'd imagine. But his sort of caustic atheism does the debate no favours IMO.

These may have some relevance to the conversation:

Ignosticism
Theological Noncognitivism

I think the Hitchensian dictum "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" holds true in this case. No faith is required.

I would say agnostics are more faith orientated. They suspend judgement just in case, because they have faith God is not only possible, but also real.

Is the question about the existence of God, or the nature of God?

If you ask, are there things which are Real which I am not able to imagine, the answer would have to be yes. Trivially, the history of science illustrates this (paradigm shifts). So if you base your 'negative affirmation' (God does not exist) on your own inability to conceptualize God, well, that is a personal limitation. I saw a video where Dan Dennet made exactly such an argument.

If, on the other hand, we were asking, what might be the nature of a God that really exists, that is a much more interesting discussion. I would say that atheism is...unnecessary.

If 3 people claim to have seen something supernatural or extra-natural (ofcourse they could be lying)
then i believe for someone to say there are no extra-natural nor supernatural occurences or god like entities, then the notion of gods or a God cannot be dismissed without evidence. Atleast not completely. I believe Agnosticism is acceptable because of the uncertain world we live in and it appears God or the gods are in a constant game of hide and seek.

I think the Hitchensian dictum "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" holds true in this case. No faith is required. — NOS4A2

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It does absolutely depend on how you define god.

If you define a god as an omnipotent, and omniscient conscious being, then one absolutely can be an atheist with regards to it with 100% certainty since this definition of god is a paradox. If god is all knowing, then he knows the future, and if he knows the future and attempts to change it, he would have been wrong about knowing the future and thus not be all knowing. If he can't change the future due to his omniscience needing to be kept in check, hes therefore not all powerful.

A god defined as such cannot therefore exist.

So I think what is coming out is that one has to have a clear definition of God to qualify the term 'atheist'. — Devans99

Yes, specifically we'd need a clear definition of a metaphysical entity "God".

Deism is a subset of theism but you could argue that deists are atheistic with regard to a traditional definition of God.

Likewise, because of the more moderate definition of God (no 3Os) employed by deists, you could say atheists are agnostic with respect to a deistic god - in that disproving the existence of such a god is beyond the power of science and reason - so to deny the possibility completely would seem unreasonable. — Devans99

Disproving the existence of things doesn't usually involve ruling out the possibility of it's existence. Rather, it is sufficient to point out that there is no good reason to posit some existence. This is how empirical science goes about "disproving" and I think the same principle ought more or less to apply to metaphysics. Unless there is a reason to posit some metaphysical entity, we might as well consider it nonexistent.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. — Devans99

Depends on the context. If you run a drug trial and detect no difference compared to the control group, that is evidence of absence (in that case absence of a pharmaceutical effect).

If 3 people claim to have seen something supernatural or extra-natural (ofcourse they could be lying)
then i believe for someone to say there are no extra-natural nor supernatural occurences or god like entities, then the notion of gods or a God cannot be dismissed without evidence. — christian2017

Aside from the conflation of the supernatural and god(-like entities), that's basically an endorsement of argumentum ad populums.

based on previous conversations between me and you specifically: no comment.

in reference to argumentum ad populum:

To completely dismiss the opinions of others at all times is a sign of narcisism. We should all value atleast somebody else's opinion.