Atheism, theism and agnosticism

[Jan Ardena]

wynn:

You think Jan Ardena was talking about "believing in" as some kind of ultra-devout belief, as opposed to just believing that God exists?

It seems to me that you and lightgigantic are going to great lengths to try to redefine Jan Ardena out of his sillyness. But the only effect you're having is that you're defining yourselves into it. Do you really want to go there with Jan?

James, you simply can't accept what I'm saying because ''God's existence'' or lack of, is the only argument you have that justifies, your position.
Even then, you have nothing to go off, other than to create a straw man god, then proceed to knock him down.

The truth is, you don't know whether or not God exists, and I'm pretty confident you'll never know, so you cannot be atheist because you think
God doesn't exist or to give it a more palatable tone, to hide nonsensical-ness of it all, ''there's no evidence for God''. Not a thinking one anyways.

jan.

 

[Yazata]

Do you believe in, say, Barack Obama?

I guess that my attitude towards Obama is similar to Satan's towards God, in the sense that I believe in the man's existence while damnably failing to uncritically believe, trust and follow.

Surely there are people in your life whom you believe in, and others whom you don't believe in.

If somebody is "in my life", then I'm going to "believe in" them in the ontological sense, without any exceptions. There aren't any fictional characters "in my life".

That doesn't mean that I always "believe" what they tell me, or that I always trust their judgement and motivations.

What I'm doing is making a distinction between "to believe in" and "to have faith in". I'm not treating the two phrases as interchangeable and I'm not confusing them. I "believe in" the reality of Barack Obama's existence, while failing to always "believe" what Barack Obama says or to "have faith in" in the wisdom of everything that he does. I most emphatically don't try to enshrine faith in Barack Obama as the central focus of my life, in the way that religious believers are exhorted to do with God.

I'm not agreeing with and am definitely not following attempts to redefine 'atheism' as 'lack of faith in', as opposed to 'lack of belief in'. Redefining things that way is probably consistent with a pietism that values faith above all else in religion. We see that line of thinking in Martin Luther and perhaps as far back as Paul. But redefining 'atheism' into Christian pietistic terms simply doesn't correspond to how atheists like myself conceive of what we think and are talking about.

 

[wynn]

I will argue that identifying oneself as an "atheist" only makes sense is some relation to established forms of theism.

Would you call yourself a kafir?

If not, then why call yourself an atheist?