Do Atheists Exist?

This post is to move a discussion from Sandbox(4) at Entropy’s request.

Over on the Sandbox(4) thread, fifthmonarchyman made two statements that I disagree with:

“I’ve argued repeatedly that humans are hardwired to believe in God.”

“Everyone knows that God exists….”

As my handle indicates, I prefer to lurk.  The novelty of being told that I don’t exist overcame my good sense, so I joined the conversation.

For the record, I am what is called a weak atheist or negative atheist.  The Wikipedia page describes my position reasonably well:

Negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any type of atheism where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.”

I do exist, so fifthmonarchyman’s claims are disproved.  For some reason he doesn’t agree, hence this thread.

Added In Edit by Alan Fox 16.48 CET 11th January, 2018

This thread is designated as an extension of Noyau. This means only basic rules apply. The “good faith” rule, the “accusations of dishonesty” rule do not apply in this thread.

1,409 thoughts on “Do Atheists Exist?

  1. newton: Or I choose to modify my belief based on the pain and smell of burning flesh since all beliefs are provionally held in lieu of new information.

    I don’t think you can choose to modify a belief like that. You don’t sit enthroned over your beliefs judging which are worthy. Instead your beliefs are part of the complex of proclivities and experiences and desires that is you.

    I think that it’s the pain and smell of burning flesh and string desire for self preservation that causes your beliefs to change if in fact it does change.

    We would all like to think that we hold beliefs provisionally but it’s been my experience that folks will often subconsciously interpret new information so that it does not affect their most cherished beliefs

    peace

  2. John Harshman: The problem is that he can reveal anything he wants to you, whether what he reveals is true or false.

    God can’t lie. He is truth. If I receive a revelation that is false God did not do the revealing

    John Harshman: How can you know whether what he reveals to you is true?

    revelation

    John Harshman: Even if he reveals to you that what he reveals to you is true, how do you know that’s true?

    Because by definition God only reveals things that are true.

    John Harshman: You need, in other words, to deal with the fact that revelation is no more self-supporting a foundation for knowedge than anything else.

    Revelation is not self-supporting it’s supported by God…… who is truth

    peace

  3. Entropy: Given your commitment to extreme subjectivism there’s nothing I can do to help you out. Sorry.

    You don’t get it. I’m not committed to subjectivism.
    I am unaware of a way to get beyond subjectivism if God does not exist

    Do you see the difference?
    peace

  4. fifthmonarchyman: If I did not know I was not a brain in a vat I certainly would not act like I do now

    keiths doesn’t act like he doesn’t know the difference either. He acts like he knows that the external world is real and he can trust his senses most of the time.

    peace

    How would you act if you weren’t a robotic presuppositionalist?

    Glen Davidson

  5. fifth:

    God can’t lie. He is truth.

    That’s an unsupported assumption, but let’s grant it arguendo. Even if we do that, you’re still screwed.

    If I receive a revelation that is false God did not do the revealing

    The problem, as we’ve explained dozens of times by now, is that you can’t be sure that something you think is a revelation from God actually is a revelation from God.

    This comment shows how broken your reasoning is, in a way that even you might be able to grasp.

    Read it and struggle.

  6. keiths: Your argument is actually closer to the following.

    Not at all if anything it’s close to this.

    fifth: x is odd.

    critic: How can you know anything about X ? You don’t know its value. All you know is that it’s an integer.

    fifth: The fellow who assigned the value to the variable X can tell me that sort of stuff.

    critic: various curse words and mockery

    fifth: 😉

    peace

  7. keiths: The problem, as we’ve explained dozens of times by now, is that you can’t be sure that something you think is a revelation from God actually is a revelation from God.

    As I have explained dozens of times certainty is not in any way necessary for knowledge!!!!!………here it is again in case you missed it

    certainty is not necessary for knowledge!!!!!!……..Did you get it that time???

    I don’t have to be sure that a revelation is from God in order to know stuff. All that is necessary for me to have knowledge is for God to reveal it so that I can know it

    peace

  8. GlenDavidson: How would you act if you weren’t a robotic presuppositionalist?

    LOL,

    Don’t let it get you down Glen. I’m just a guy on the internet

    If you think my answers sound robotic why not try answering some of the questions I ask.

    I’d much rather hear your justification for knowledge than just repeating mine over and over

    😉

    peace

  9. certainty is not necessary for knowledge!!!!!!……..Did you get it that time???

    Christ, fifth.

    It isn’t about absolute certainty. (Have you forgotten that I started an entire thread on that topic?)

    The problem is that you don’t even know that the revelations in your regress are coming from God, just as your namesake in my analogy doesn’t know that x-2, x-4, x-6, etc., are odd.

    It’s isn’t merely that he isn’t certain of those things. It’s that he doesn’t know them at all.

    Think it through, fifth. But remember, it will take far more effort for you than it would for one of your brighter opponents.

  10. fifth,

    You might also want to ponder the following disturbing point.

    The comment I linked to exposes the vapidity of your reasoning. That’s pretty embarrassing. You’ve been making that mistake for months, if not years. Brighter folks have been rolling their eyes at you, wondering how anyone could mangle the reasoning so badly.

    But it’s even worse than that. This isn’t merely a dumb mistake. Revelation is central to your belief system. It’s the centerpiece of your epistemology, and you’ve botched it, embracing an obvious falsehood instead. That means, by your own reasoning, that God has refused to reveal a crucial and central truth to you. Yet your opponents here grasp it easily.

    So again, by your own reasoning, God is liberally and generously revealing something important to your atheist opponents while refusing to reveal it to you. He has chosen to keep you confused and floundering while your atheist opponents proceed competently and confidently.

    By the lights of your worldview, the facts point toward a startling and disturbing conclusion:

    God has turned his back on you.

    All indications are that he has rejected you. God is showering his revelations on the atheists while letting you dangle.

    You smugly imagine yourself to be one of the “elect”, but it sure doesn’t look that way. No wonder you’re in denial about your error. You’re terrified by the implications.

  11. fifthmonarchyman: LOL,

    Don’t let it get you down Glen. I’m just a guy on the internet

    If you think my answers sound robotic why not try answering some of the questions I ask.

    I’d much rather hear your justification for knowledge than just repeating mine over and over

    peace

    WTF? Are you that desperate that you have to make a jeer at your pedestrian capacity for “thought” as an indication that you’ve brought me down, or some such thing?

    You’re not just a guy on the internet, you’re an especially incapable guy on the internet.

    Glen Davidson

  12. fifth,

    Concentrate on the following two excerpts from my earlier comments:

    Not one of them is solidly grounded in God, because there’s not a single one of them that you actually know is from him. It’s an infinite regress of “I hope this is from God, but I don’t actually know that.”

    And:

    Extending the regress to infinity does not magically transform a string of bad inferences into good ones. It doesn’t work for “x is odd”, and it doesn’t work for “this is a genuine revelation from God”.

    Think hard, fifth. This is not going to be easy for you.

  13. keiths: The problem is that you don’t even know that the revelations in your regress are coming from God

    It’s not a regress and I can know it’s coming from God if God reveals that to me.

    keiths: Brighter folks have been rolling their eyes at you

    There is the mockery that I was talking about…. LoL

    GlenDavidson: You’re not just a guy on the internet, you’re an especially incapable guy on the internet.

    there is some more of if. 😉

    peace

  14. fifthmonarchyman: I’d much rather hear your justification for knowledge than just repeating mine over and over

    Repeating your uncertain source of justification over and over.

  15. newton: Repeating your uncertain source of justification over and over again.

    my source of justification is certain it’s just that my knowledge is often uncertain

    better for knowledge to be justified but uncertain than to not be justified at all.

    It’s possible that I’m mistaken and all knowledge is impossible.
    but if knowledge is possible an omnipotent God can give it.

    and I know that………for certain

    peace

  16. keiths: Not one of them is solidly grounded in God, because there’s not a single one of them that you actually know is from him.

    Actually I know all true revelation is ultimately from him. That is because he is truth.

    Since God is truth the only way that I have not received revelation from God is if truth does not exist.

    ——————-That statement is true 😉

    peace

  17. fifth:

    It’s not a regress…

    It’s obviously a regress, because every purported revelation depends on the validity of the next purported revelation. They’re all purported. None of them are established. Your argument fails miserably.

    …and I can know it’s coming from God if God reveals that to me.

    All the revelations are purported, and none are established. You don’t know that any of them are coming from God, much less all of them. This is basic logic, fifth.

    In your worldview, God is truth. So by fighting this obvious truth, you are fighting against God.

    In what is perhaps the ultimate irony, the honest atheists here are more godly than you are.

    Why? Because they are at least seeking the truth — and the truth happens to be God, in your view — while you are fighting against it. It makes sense that God reveals things to them and not to you. They are the godly ones who are seeking the truth. You are the ungodly one fighting the truth, and so God constantly trips you up.

    Any theist who reads through your failures at TSZ will suspect: God is not with this guy.

    It’s actually good news for you that your worldview is false. If it were true, you’d be in deep shit.

  18. fifthmonarchyman: God can’t lie. He is truth. If I receive a revelation that is false God did not do the revealing

    How do you know god is truth? Revelation? But what if that was a false revelation? How would you even know if a revelation came from god or from someone else? You really can’t define yourself out of this.

    Incidentally, truth isn’t an entity; it’s a condition. You can’t just redefine every word to mean whatever you like and expect anyone to understand you.

  19. fifth,

    You are really eating it in this thread. Why not take some time and think things through instead of dashing off another hasty and ill-considered response?

  20. fifthmonarchyman:
    Keiths acts like there are other people in the world and as if things like logic and reason are valid and binding.

    He has to, it’s like he is compelled to do so for some reason.

    When he does this he is borrowing from my worldview.

    When you borrow something with out acknowledging that it does not belong to you we call it theft.

    That’s simply an acceptance of reality. As such, it has nothing to do with your worldview.

  21. Zachriel: To have a fruitful discussion, you might try to act as if other posters are more than pzombies, that they are as self-aware as you, and that when they express a viewpoint, that you accept that is their viewpoint, at least arguendo.

    fifthmonarchyman refuses to do that, despite his refusal being against the site rules.

  22. fifthmonarchyman:

    newton: Or I choose to modify my belief based on the pain and smell of burning flesh since all beliefs are provionally held in lieu of new information.

    I don’t think you can choose to modify a belief like that.

    You don’t modify your beliefs based on feedback from reality? That explains a great deal.

  23. fifthmonarchyman:

    keiths: Not one of them is solidly grounded in God, because there’s not a single one of them that you actually know is from him.

    Actually I know all true revelation is ultimately from him. That is because he is truth.

    Since God is truth the only way that I have not received revelation from God is if truth does not exist.

    That doesn’t follow logically. You could simply have never received any revelation from your god (if it exists).

  24. By the way, fifthmonarchyman, you have an unsupported claim hanging out there:

    ALurker:

    Like when you assume the law of noncontridiction is valid and that your senses and powers of reasoning are generally reliable. When you have no justification for doing so if God does not exist.

    Please provide evidence and/or rational arguments to support this claim.You said it, you have the obligation to defend it.My views have nothing to do with it. Demonstrate that you really are participating honestly and in good faith.

    What support do you have for your claim that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable?

    Remember, don’t try asking questions to shift the burden of supporting your claim. That wouldn’t be honest. As I understand it, your god isn’t a fan of dishonest people.

  25. ALurker: That doesn’t follow logically. You could simply have never received any revelation from your god (if it exists).

    What makes you think logic exists? Don’t you (mistakenly) believe you an atheist?

  26. keiths: In what is perhaps the ultimate irony, the honest atheists here are more godly than you are.

    Exactly. I’m interested in reality, whatever that is. Even if it ends up with an old man in the sky doing it. That’s fine. As long as that’s the truth. But I’d rather die never knowing then believe the tripe that I see “believers” spew.

  27. keiths: It’s obviously a regress, because every purported revelation depends on the validity of the next purported revelation.

    That is incorrect revelation is self-authenticating.

    http://www.yourdictionary.com/self-authentication

    and

    http://resources.thegospelcoalition.org/library/how-do-we-know-the-bible-is-god-s-word-recovering-the-doctrine-of-a-self-authenticating-scripture

    John Harshman: How do you know god is truth? Revelation? But what if that was a false revelation?

    If the revealer is a liar then it’s not worthy of worship
    I don’t see how any knowledge whatsoever is possible if a lying being has the ultimate say at to what I believe.

    The choice seems to be God or absurdity

    peace

  28. ALurker: That’s simply an acceptance of reality. As such, it has nothing to do with your worldview.

    If you accept that you live in a world where you know things and don’t have justification for doing so you are borrowing from my worldview

    peace

  29. ALurker: You don’t modify your beliefs based on feedback from reality?

    My beliefs change based on feedback from reality, I don’t choose to modify them like some distant bystander ruing a simulation.

    I’m part of the mix that includes my beliefs

    peace

  30. ALurker: What support do you have for your claim that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable?

    It’s not a claim it’s a tentative assumption based on the fact that no one has been able to articulate a way that we can know our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable that does not include God.

    I will withdraw it just as soon as you provide an answer that is not subject to further regress

    peace

  31. OMagain: I’m interested in reality, whatever that is.

    Good, then why not spend some time trying to justify the process you use to discover reality.

    You can’t get to reality if you are using a hopelessly inadequate tool.
    You can’t begin to know what is real if you can’t know anything at all.

    peace

  32. ALurker: What support do you have for your claim that your god must exist in order for the law of “noncontridiction” to be valid and for our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable?

    None. He has none.

    He has replaced the basic assumption that logic obtains, with the assumption that god makes logic obtain. Either way, he too has to assume logic obtains. He’s just added another layer that he calls god, on top.

  33. fifthmonarchyman: Good, then why not spend some time trying to justify the process you use to discover reality.

    This is ironic coming from a guy who thinks typing the word “revelation” into his browser constitutes “justifying the process you use to discover reality”.

    How do you know the revelation you claim is a revelation, actually is a revelation?

  34. Rumraket: This is ironic coming from a guy who thinks typing the word “revelation” into his browser constitutes “justifying the process you use to discover reality”.

    How do you know the revelation you claim is a revelation, actually is a revelation?

    Easy , revelation

  35. newton: Easy, revelation

    Is that the same revelation as the one I’m asking how you know is revelation, or is this a 2nd one?

    If it is the same revelation, you are merely guilty of circular reasoning. If is a 2nd one, you have just pushed the question back a step: How do you know the 2nd one is a true revelation?

    Looks to me like you only have three options. You either believe it by blind faith, or you are guilty of circular reasoning, or you keep going down an infinite regression of claimed revelations you can never truly verify are true (you just keep piling claims of new supporting revelations on top of the previous one).

    Game over. Thank you for playing.

  36. Rumraket: Is that the same revelation as the one I’m asking how you know is revelation, or is this a 2nd one?

    It is turtles revelations all the way down.

    Hmm, when reading fifth’s posts, maybe we should translate “revelation” to “turtle”.

  37. I see there’s still this idea being bandied about that the reliability of the senses (= knowledge of the ‘external’ world) and the authority of logic rationally depend on, and are justified by, theism. What I don’t understand is why this idea doesn’t itself depend a Cartesian picture of what the mind is like.

    On the Cartesian picture, we can envision the mind as a self-contained entity that has access to its own thoughts, feelings, and sensations. But since the mind only has immediate access to its own sensations as intrinsic properties of itself (“modes of sensory consciousness”, one might say), then the question will arise: is it logically possible that there is nothing other the mind?

    Once this possible gulf opens up between mind and world, there has to be some way of crossing it, of getting back to some secure knowledge of the world and of something external to the mind that constrains it.

    What I don’t understand, of course, is why the reliability of the senses and the authority of logic should be in need of any justification at all if one does not assume a Cartesian starting point.

  38. fifthmonarchyman: You don’t get it. I’m not committed to subjectivism.

    Yes, you are. You think that your subjective claim for revelation is enough to “justify” whatever absurdity your going on about. You talk in terms of worldviews being able to change things in reality. Subjectivism all along.

    fifthmonarchyman: I am unaware of a way to get beyond subjectivism if God does not exist

    This shows how your subjectivism handicaps you. It’s the other way around. A god would make it hard to get beyond subjectivism since everything could be modified by the magical being at any moment.

  39. Rumraket: at the same revelation as the one I’m asking how you know is revelation, or is this a 2nd one?

    Always one step above the last.

    If it is the same revelation, you are merely guilty of circular reasoning. If is a 2nd one, you have just pushed the question back a step: How do you know the 2nd one is a true revelation?

    Since we all know God exists is true , it is the good kind of circular logic.

    Looks to me like you only have three options. You either believe it by blind faith, or you are guilty of circular reasoning, or you keep going down an infinite regression of claimed revelations you can never truly verify are true (you just keep piling claims of new supporting revelations on top of the previous one).

    The fourth option is to ask “ how do you know? “ rinse and repeat.

    Game over. Thank you for playing.

    How do you know?

  40. Neil Rickert: It is turtles revelations all the way down.

    Hmm, when reading fifth’s posts, maybe we should translate “revelation” to “turtle”.

    Or making into a drinking game

  41. fifthmonarchyman: It’s not a claim it’s a tentative assumption based on the fact that no one has been able to articulate a way that we can know our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable that does not include God.

    And you haven’t shown that we can know our powers of reasoning to be generally reliable in a way that does include God.

    Mere logical possibility means almost nothing at all.

    And you’re completely closed to any explanation but your own, despite the fact that you have no meaningful explanation.

    Glen Davidson

  42. keiths:

    Not one of them is solidly grounded in God, because there’s not a single one of them that you actually know is from him.

    fifth:

    Actually I know all true revelation is ultimately from him. That is because he is truth.

    That wouldn’t help you, even if it were true. You don’t know that each purported revelation in the sequence is a “true revelation”, just as your namesake in my example doesn’t know that x-2, x-4, x-6, etc., are odd numbers.

    Your argument is a complete failure, fifth.

    Why is God revealing all the good stuff to the atheists, but not to you?

  43. fifth,

    Earlier in the thread, in an attempt to cover your ass, you backed away from your assertion that knowledge is justified true belief.

    If knowledge isn’t justified true belief, then what is it?

  44. Earlier, commenting on fifth’s goofy argument, I wrote:

    Your argument is actually closer to the following. Suppose x is an integer, and that’s all you know about it.

    fifth: x is odd.

    critic: How do you know that? You don’t know its value. All you know is that it’s an integer.

    fifth: For any integer n, if n-2 is odd, then n is odd. I know that x-2 is odd. Therefore x must be odd.

    critic: Wait a minute. How do you know that x-2 is odd?

    fifth: Because x-4 is odd.

    critic: And how do you know that x-4 is odd?

    fifth: Because x-6 is odd.

    …and so on, in infinite stupidity.

    Extending the regress to infinity does not magically transform a string of bad inferences into good ones. It doesn’t work for “x is odd”, and it doesn’t work for “this is a genuine revelation from God”.

    Fifth denied my analogy and substituted something bizarre. Read it for laughs if you’d like.

    But for fifth’s benefit, let me make the parallels even more obvious. It’s the same bad logic in both cases:

    This…

    fifth: Jesus is God.

    critic: How do you know that?

    …uses the same logic as this:

    fifth: x is odd.

    critic: How do you know that?

    And this:

    fifth: I know it because God revealed it to me.

    critic: Wait a minute. How do you know the revelation is genuine?

    …uses the same logic as this:

    fifth: I know it because I know that x-2 is odd.

    critic: Wait a minute. How do you know that x-2 is odd?

    And this:

    fifth: I know it because God revealed it to me.

    critic: But how do you know that revelation is genuine?

    …uses the same logic as this:

    fifth: I know it because I know that x-4 is odd.

    critic: How do you know that x-4 is odd?

    And so on.

    Fifth’s summary:

    It’s revelation all the way down.

    …uses the same bad logic as this:

    It’s odd numbers all the way down.

    How fifth can manage not to see the problem is difficult to explain, other than in rather uncomplimentary terms.

    Or maybe anti-revelation is a thing. The Bible talks about God sending spirits to deceive people. Perhaps fifth is a target.

  45. KN:

    On the Cartesian picture, we can envision the mind as a self-contained entity that has access to its own thoughts, feelings, and sensations. But since the mind only has immediate access to its own sensations as intrinsic properties of itself (“modes of sensory consciousness”, one might say), then the question will arise: is it logically possible that there is nothing other the mind?

    Once this possible gulf opens up between mind and world, there has to be some way of crossing it, of getting back to some secure knowledge of the world and of something external to the mind that constrains it.

    What I don’t understand, of course, is why the reliability of the senses and the authority of logic should be in need of any justification at all if one does not assume a Cartesian starting point.

    The answer’s pretty simple, and it’s hinted at by your first paragraph. You don’t have to assume a Cartesian starting point, in which the mind is separate from the world; you can just allow it as a possibility and go from there.

    The same is true for idealism, of course.

  46. fifth, to ALurker:

    I will withdraw it just as soon as you provide an answer that is not subject to further regress

    fifth,

    You’ve got your own goofy regress to deal with.

    Get cracking.

  47. fifth:

    Good, then why not spend some time trying to justify the process you use to discover reality.

    Rumraket:

    This is ironic coming from a guy who thinks typing the word “revelation” into his browser constitutes “justifying the process you use to discover reality”.

    And who denies that this…

    It’s revelation all the way down.

    …is a regress.

    You can’t make this shit up.

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