Is the following statement true or false: — 3017amen

Doublespeak? Look at the 2nd page of this thread. It's not as if you didn't see it. You responded to it already.

Some sort of short-term memory weirdness? It was only two days ago.

Im not trying to intimidate you, nor was any if that a personal attack. Im trying to help you, because if you keep on doing what your doing people will just start ignoring you. Id rather that people had interesting interactions instead of talking past or ignoring each other.
The reason you seem like you are trolling is because you are ignoring direct points and questions. You responded to that by just doing the exact same thing. Ignoring and restating your question. People are not confused why they are frustrated, you are confused as to why its frustrating.

And I already answered your question, remember? — DingoJones

It sucks that it's almost impossible to actually have a conversation with someone with a different point of view here (and on boards like this in general). Everyone either has act like they have various mental problems. It almost seems like folks believe that's the way to approach "debates" on the Internet--as if it's a requirement to act like you have some mental problem rather than having a straightforward, good-faith conversation. It just becomes a long string of people acting like they don't or can't understand anything the other person says, a la Aspie reading comprehension issues, absurd "playing dumb" approaches, repetitive OCDish behavior (as 3017 seems to be sinking into), and a variety of other trollish crap in the same vein.

My apologies guys. Seems like nobody wants to answer that simple question.

TS said : yes.

Dingo said : I don't know.

Now TS, why did you say yes?

(Dingo doesn't know so I have no questions for him other than one could reasonably inquire as to why he has a belief in atheism. And I use the word belief mainly because TS used the word when we were referring to cognition.)

So TS, why is this your belief ?

Ok, I will answer again but this is your last chance for an actual discussion. From me at least.

God does not exist, true or false?
The answer is I do not know. No, that doesnt mean atheism is untenable because atheism isnt the position that god doesnt exist. Atheism is the position of not believing a god does exist.
Now your turn to answer a question, I think thats fair.
Do you understand the distinction between a position that god doesnt exist and the position of not believing a god exists?

So you already asked in this post earlier in the thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/340427

I already started my answer in this post earlier in the thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/340432

Then you responded with this:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/340437

I responded to that post with this:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/340439

And then you dropped out of that subthread without commenting on the above post.

Ok, I will answer again but this is your last chance for an actual discussion. From me at least.

God does not exist, true or false?
The answer is I do not know. No, that doesnt mean atheism is untenable because atheism isnt the position that god doesnt exist. Atheism is the position of not believing a god does exist.
Now your turn to answer a question, I think thats fair.
Do you understand the distinction between a position that god doesnt exist and the position of not believing a god exists? — DingoJones

But is the following statement true or false:

1. God does not exist.



:grin:

Ya, there certainly seems to be alot of posturing in these forums. The main sources seem to be defensiveness based on assumption of incoming attacks (which I cant blame them fir really, the internet is like that) and arrogance, that they have cracked some philosophical code thats 100% ironclad so disagreement is equal to failure to understand.

Yes, good points.

Ok I think I'm following you. You said: Atheism is the position of not believing a god does exist.

So my question is what is the" belief " based upon?

Its not a belief, it is the lack of belief. This is an important distinction.

Okay please don't get mad but I don't understand.

What is a lack of belief in something? In cognition, what does that really mean?

Or in Philosophy, for example, is that an objective falsehood or a subjective falsehood or something else?

(Or if you prefer it's an epistemic question for you. )

Okay please don't get mad but I don't understand.

What is a lack of belief in something? — 3017amen

For example, you lack a belief that Frank Zappa at a Whopper from Burger King on March 5, 1982.

Does that make sense to you?

No I don't think so, but what does make sense to me is that your , as you said " belief" , is untenable.

Or maybe ask Frank Zappa !!!

No I don't think so, — 3017amen

You don't understand that you don't have that belief?

Hey great question! No I don't know. Can you tell me why I don't?

Hey great question! No I don't know. Can you tell me why I don't? — 3017amen

Can I tell you why you don't understand it? No. It seems weird to me that you'd have difficulty with it, because it seems so simple to understand not having a particular belief.

Why can't you tell me? Don't take this the wrong way but your atheism is supposed to know about consciousness, belief systems, so on and so forth right?

Again please don't take it the wrong way theses very simple Existential questions

your atheism is supposed to know about consciousness, belief systems, so on and so forth right? — 3017amen

That doesn't have anything to do with atheism.

A word from the actual SK:

A king’s existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness. Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists? Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments? No. If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king’s existence by your submission, by the way you live. And so it is with demonstrating God’s existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. Any other way is but a thinker’s pious bungling. — Soren Kierkegaard, from Charles E. Moore compilation.

And so it is with demonstrating God’s existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. — Soren Kierkegaard, from Charles E. Moore compilation.

:up:

incidentally, I found a blog post years ago, long since vanished, which argued that the scholastic 'proofs of God' were in no way intended as rhetorical devices to convert unbelievers. It was taken for granted that faith was required for any such proofs to be meaningful; they were intended for intellectual edification, not as literal proof.

:roll:

1. God does not exist.
True or false or something else? — 3017amen

0. God does exist.
True or false or something else?

In any case, it doesn't seem like atheism has the answers...( to the deep questions of existence). — 3017amen

Atheism is merely (a) consequence of answering ... e.g. "the deep questions of existence".

Does music theory confer biological survival value? — 3017amen

No.

By the way, if your theism makes it so that you can't understand the notion of not having a particular belief, then it doesn't seem very useful.

What is a lack of belief in something? In cognition, what does that really mean? — 3017amen

Well you would lack a belief whenever you are not holding a particular belief. So in this case, I have not heard any arguments or seen evidence that convince me there is a god. Maybe there is, but I lack belief until such a time as those things are provided. Thats atheism. If anyone holds views about religion or god other than that, those views are beyond what atheism entails. (Anti theism for exemple)

You're talking about a feeling, and I can relate to that. But no feeling entails the existence or reality of anything in particular (other than the one having the feeling I guess). — Janus

Liberal secularism is itself a violent regulator of ‘private’ belief. You can believe whatever you like, provided you do not believe that your personal beliefs are actually objectively true, or matter in any public way. You can have whatever personal loyalties you like, provided you give uncompromising public loyalty to the state in which you are born, to the liberal and secular laws it mandates, and . . . accept its total power . . . . in reality, we have a single public cultus, and private cultus pluralism. . . . Because the realm of objectivity is tightly conceptually tied to mere facticity and mere instrumental efficacy, technology has increasingly displaced humanity in the arena of public power. The technologies of public-opinion manipulation that the mass media uses, and that politicians seek to harness, and that large corporations use with their staggeringly large lobbying, advertising, legal and accounting budgets, makes the public square anything but a realm that reflects the religious or moral values, or even the actual workplace and economic interests, of the people that democratic government is meant to represent. So in reality, the cross-over from non-coerced personal beliefs into the public realm of civic debate and legal construction is powerfully shaped by the supposedly merely efficient and merely factual forces of what in fact highly interested and personally invasive political technologies. Our supposedly personal beliefs and values are relentlessly disciplined by advertising so as to promote an atomic self with our desires always directed toward personal satisfaction via must-have goods and services, and the financial means of attaining them. In fact, there are no hard boundaries between the personal and the public, but we are fed relentless solipsistic diet of myths and illusions such that our self is radically de-politicized and beliefs concerning all matters of final significance are radically interiorized and made passive in relation to the world we inhabit.”

From Defragmenting Modernity, Dr Paul Tyson p51ff

Dennett of all people? He's an eliminative materialist. He doesn't even buy that there are minds in the conventional "folk" sense. He's certainly not going to claim that we have subconscious minds and that they cause accidents. — Terrapin Station

I doubt Dennett would be stupid enough to deny there are subconscious mental processes (or brain processes if you prefer). Do you claim to be aware of all your brain processes?

And your point?

And so it is with demonstrating God’s existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. — Soren Kierkegaard, from Charles E. Moore compilation.

This is right. Worship establishes the existence of God for the worshipers. I think that much cannot be argued against.

It sucks that it's almost impossible to actually have a conversation with someone with a different point of view here (and on boards like this in general). Everyone either has act like they have various mental problems. It almost seems like folks believe that's the way to approach "debates" on the Internet--as if it's a requirement to act like you have some mental problem rather than having a straightforward, good-faith conversation. It just becomes a long string of people acting like they don't or can't understand anything the other person says, a la Aspie reading comprehension issues, absurd "playing dumb" approaches, repetitive OCDish behavior (as 3017 seems to be sinking into), and a variety of other trollish crap in the same vein. — Terrapin Station

The irony! :rofl:

The vital perspective that has gone missing is that of degrees of reality. This is related to a worldview grounded in the idea of the chain of being - that reality emanates from or is originated by a transcendent intelligence, and cascades down through various levels of being, of which matter is the lowest level, i.e. most remote from the origin or source. And as our culture sees matter as being the only reality, then obviously understanding or coming to terms with that outlook is quite a difficult matter. — Wayfarer

Here is a nice summation I came across concerning the detrimental effect of the idea of "The Great Chain of Being" and the inevitable belief in human supremacy that goes with it:

Whatever the favorite philosophical, theological, political, or other Rubicon, “the search for [an] elusive attribute” of human uniqueness and superiority “has been one of the favorite pursuits” of Western thinkers.31 What the various distinctive qualities share is the assumption of a definitive polarity between humans and nonhumans.

As one popular eighteenth- century English writer pithily summed this ostensibly clear-cut division, the line between man and the rest of nature is “strongly drawn, well- marked, and unpassable.”32The human distinctions fl owing from “Western Civilization 101,” so to speak, have primarily, and certainly as a distilled conditioning missive, not only exalted Anthropos and his supposed specialness but simultaneously portrayed nonhumans (and for a long time “inferior” humans) as deficient by comparison.

The quest for human distinction also functioned as the cornerstone trope for the elaboration of hierarchical narratives. The most enduring of these—historically threading across very different traditions of thought—has been the Great Chain of Being: this grand narrative ordered Creation as a graded hierarchy from pure spirit to inert matter.33 Within the Great Chain humans were positioned at the apex, just beneath angelic beings and God, while animals, plants, and minerals followed down the line.

This prevailing model in Western history was cognitively appealing for organizing Creation in a tidy order; and it was sociopsychologically appealing for giving humans pride of place. Within the Great Chain of Being, each domain was said to rightfully use the one beneath it; for example, animals were entitled to use plants and plants to use minerals. Since humans occupied the highest earthly rung, they were duly authorized to use all other beings and domains.

Thus the Great Chain has not only functioned as a complete description of Creation (what philosophers call an ontology), it has also worked as a moral order sanctioning the use of everything. The achievement of the Great Chain of Being was to fold the beliefs of human superiority and entitlement into a single cosmological package. It is perhaps not surprising that this ontological- moral order has endured for so long: it is immediately accessible to everyone—from the most educated to the completely illiterate—and it is serviceable in giving license to everyone to have one’s way with nonhuman nature.

From Eileen Crist Abundant Earth page 56 here:

The God you have in mind clearly does not exist. It's infinite nature precludes it from acting in the world, it cannot be the means by which any state is made true over another. Necessity precludes existence.

As for other Gods, those existing being who take action in the world, that comes down entirely what happens in the world. Such a God is a being of the empirical world and is testable in such terms.

In this respect, there are many possible Gods, but it would seem few, if any, of the Gods asserted by a religious text exist, since they appear to make a host of claims falsified by events of the world.