Reviewing "Deep Dive into the Meaning of Atheism"

Reviewing: “Deep Dive into the Meaning of Atheism”

Posted on By Davidian No Comments on Reviewing: “Deep Dive into the Meaning of Atheism”

Part 3—My Specific Position

I am an explicit agnostic positive atheist.

  • Minimum Requirement—I lack belief in the existence of God. I.e. I cannot truthfully affirm, “I believe God exists”
  • Explicit—I am familiar with the idea of God, I have considered theistic beliefs, and I consciously do not believe it
  • Positive—I believe God does not exist. With the caveat that God is defined as “a divine entity that intervenes in the physical universe”
  • Agnostic—I do not claim to know that my belief is true. I am convinced, but not certain. Indeed, if my reasons for believing are demonstrated to be unsound, my conviction will falter until I cease to believe, thereby becoming a negative atheist
https://amrestorative.wordpress.com/2022/09/01/deep-dive-into-the-meaning-of-atheism/

I’m an atheist. I accept the proposition of atheism, in other words, I believe gods don’t exist.

Believing something is already explicit, and there is no knowledge claim necessarily entailed by a belief. I’ve taken your verbose label and simplified it by using the label that is the standard/common use within philosophy/history etc.

You also have used agnostic in a different way to how you defined it before.
There is a difference between:

  • The Belief/Claim that knowledge of gods existence is impossible
    and
  • Not claiming to know if gods exist or not

They are two very different things. I think there is a consistency issue with your use. I think you’re probably thinking along the lines of “If I believe it is impossible to have knowledge of gods existence then I won’t claim to know if god does/does not exist” but that doesn’t make them the same. If I believe gods do not exist, I don’t believe gods exist… but those statements are not the same either.

I noticed this when having a chat with agnostic atheists and what agnostic atheism means to them: Agnostic Atheism.

I am not interested to—and would never—try to convince anyone of my uncertain belief that God does not exist. For this reason, and also because there are no ideologies that depend on God not existing, the pragmatic difference between lacking belief in God’s existence and believing that God does not exist is negligible for me. I.e. I do not think that my behaviour as a positive atheist is different to what it would be if I were a negative atheist.

https://amrestorative.wordpress.com/2022/09/01/deep-dive-into-the-meaning-of-atheism/

The argument can sometimes be made that all non-theists live as if gods do not exist. They don’t go to church (or any other ‘holy house’) or engage in any rituals, they probably don’t pray unless it is out of habit and so on, but they all operate very different epistemological positions.

That said, even if you don’t want to convince others, if rationality is important to you then you should be able to justify why you believe no gods exist.

As such, I generally assume the minimum requirement position when speaking with other people. Theistic belief is likely to be consequential, while atheistic belief is not.

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https://amrestorative.wordpress.com/2022/09/01/deep-dive-into-the-meaning-of-atheism/

I disagree. Even in the very weakest version of atheist (the set of being a non-theist) there are consequences of this atheism. It is largely the consequences of things you won’t do, but also the assessment of other things that you don’t have god as the answer for. Both theism and non-theism are consequential.

Summarising the Article

My main point of contention is probably the title, it says it is a “Deep Dive into The Meaning of Atheism” but the article was more “How I See Atheism & Agnosticism and The References that Back Me Up”.

If it was truly a deep dive it should have spent more time looking at the other uses of atheism, how it is commonly used outside of the internet debate sphere and American politics etc and made some effort to justify why the ‘standard’ use in philosophy for atheism and agnosticism should be rejected.

The guy actually writes well, much better than me, uses references properly (which I don’t usually) and, in general, seems to be an open and honest guy. I can imagine in a discussion, if I wanted to use my preferred uses of atheism and agnosticism he would happily use those labels and stipulated definitions for the conversation.

He makes some good points and misses out on some information in others. Overall though, it isn’t a bad article, just seems to be missing some information and occasionally switches definitions of agnosticism.

Key Positives and Negatives of the Article

  • The Deep Dive only looks into his preferred terminology.
  • Acknowledges atheism is polysemous.
  • Generally seems to not be prescriptive, though occasionally makes comments about what atheism/agnosticism are/are not ignoring said polysemy.
  • Defines Agnosticism as Hard Agnosticism ignoring other definitions.
  • Switches the definition of agnosticism to “I don’t claim to know” in the labels.
  • Makes a good point about labels being less critical than underlying content.
  • Defines terms at the start of the article which makes it easier to understand what he means.
  • Uses a lot of philosophical references but seems to ignore how some terminology is used in philosophy, e.g. in propositional logic the use of disbelief to mean belief is false.
  • Brings up the burden of proof but doesn’t really describe the concept. From the comments made, it seems there is a mild misunderstanding.

We’ve covered a lot of ground about atheism and atheists in the past, so if you’re interested, there is tonnes of information here:

Pages: 1 2 3
Agnosticism, Article Reviews, Atheism, Terminology Tags:, , , , , ,

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