There is a small nuance between ‘a belief’ and ‘I believe’. There’s also a misunderstanding around the logical entailments of beliefs. In this short piece, I hope to explain the difference. Basic definitions of Belief A belief is: But “a belief” isn’t just that. It should be considered more in the noun sense. A belief…
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“You can’t prove a negative” is such a common phrase among atheists these days and it’s ridiculous!
Do You really think you can’t prove a negative or non-existence?
Well, you’re mistaken – check out this post to find out how!
Atheism is a word that has quite a rich history going all the way back to ancient Greece and the definition of atheism has changed quite a lot throughout the years. There’s also quite a contentious view pushed by some people who identify as atheists that there is only one definition of atheism. This is…
I’m an atheist, I believe gods do not exist, though atheism is polysemous so not all atheists use it that way and I want to address a term some atheists use known as agnostic atheism. This article is the written form of the video, so, if you prefer to watch, please check the below: Agnostic…
This is the audio version of the recent YouTube Video An Article version can also be found at: Discussions and The Burden of Proof DavidianI’m Joe. I write under the name Davidian, not only because it is a Machine Head song I enjoy but because it was a game character I used to role-play that…
Read More “Discussions and The Burden of Proof – Podcast Version” »
One of the problems with contemporary social media discourse is jumping around and ahead in the conversation, misusing terms, axioms, and similar and not taking the time to actually have a discussion and understand what the other person is saying. We are too quick to judge people based on the group we think they belong…
Introduction A little while ago Shannon Q released a video of her speech from Better 2022. Better is a conference organised by The Atheist Network Group, or TANG for short. The title of the video, and I’m assuming the speech also, is ‘Are you in the “Atheist Community”?’. Are you not already subscribed to Shannon…
Introduction They say you should write about what you know. Seeing as I know nothing though, I thought a good place to start would be a guide to better scepticism. By scepticism here I mean scepticism in the sense that most in the sceptic community use the term. Rather than in the sense of Radical…
Introduction You are presented with a jar full of gumballs. There are no broken gumballs inside the jar, they are all whole gumballs. Most sceptics and atheists will have heard the Gumball Analogy already. It’s a pretty common analogy used by sceptics and atheists who have discussions on places like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Fans…
Confusion is rife on the internet, especially on places like Twitter where people seem more interested in “beating” the last tweet in a discussion than maintaining a coherent thought process. Many of us atheists might think these contradictions might be limited to god claims, holy books, and fundamentalists but that is far from the case….
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The null hypothesis is used in science, and we atheists tend to have a lot of respect for science, the scientific method, scientific and empirical evidence. We think of ourselves as logical and rational people. We feel we know a lot about the topics we discuss, especially when it comes to science. In conversations with…
Read More “Misunderstanding The Null Hypothesis and Knowledge.” »
As a site that proclaims to have ‘Answers in Reason’ we have very few articles about what this actually means. When we speak of reason, we are speaking of the cognitive process of; actively thinking through a topic and coming to conclusions based on all available/known arguments and data. To summarise Plato, reason is the…
The repetitious nature of folks trying to prescribe a singular definition of atheism, and claiming that other definitions are, “talking about something else” or are “wrong”, seems to never die. What’s worse, these folks who take you saying that there are actually multiple uses of atheism claim that YOU are the one being prescriptive and…
As an atheist, even one that doesn’t feel that in tune with many other atheists, I still want atheists to come from a position of strength. I want us to have good arguments, sound reasoning and solid logic. This is a big part of why I have the Bad atheist arguments series and the SciPhi…
Read More “The Problem With ‘Atheism is the Default Position’ Arguments” »
Having discussed the definitions of belief and common misconceptions previously I felt it would be good to cover belief in a little more detail, namely how belief and non-belief inform actions. If you remember our short on belief, it was defined like this: Something accepted as true. Something thought most likely. A positive attitude towards…
Too often do conversations devolve into people splitting hairs over synonymous terminology. Obviously, a synonym doesn’t mean the word holds the exact same meaning, just that holds (at least) nearly the same meaning. Some words are shorthand for phrases. Some words or phrases can be used in various ways and their meanings can cross over…
