Re: Evidence of God

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 07:04:33 -0500, 386sx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Al Evan writes:
>
>> Thanks for the in-depth explanation of the two trains of thought.  So, if
>> I understand your explanation, an Atheist can say either of two things to
>> an assertion that God exists: "I don't believe you!", meaning she don't
>> believe the person making the assertion; or, she could say, "There is no
>> God!" meaning, she don't believe a God exists.  However, in considering
>> the first response-"I don't believe you!"  It has, as I see it, at least,
>> two meanings:
>>
>> 1.  The speaker could be saying, "I don't believe the asserter
>> personally"-i.e., the asserter is without credibility-not the assertion
>> itself.  It says nothing about the assertion.
>>
>> 2.  The unbeliever don't believe the assertion itself: "I don't believe
>> God exists."
>>
>> If consideration 1 is true, then, your argument says nothing about what an
>> Atheist is or is not, since the statement, "I don't believe you!" has
>> nothing to do with believing, or not believing, in God, but everything to
>> do with the personality of the asserter.  
>
>Possibly you have eliminated this particular predicate, yes, but you have
>not exhausted all the possible cases.  You could have an atheist who thinks
>there is not one soul with the credibility to determine God's existence, but
>who acknowledges that there are lots of people who would be credible about
>other things, but are making incredible claims when it comes to this one
>thing.  Such would have nothing to do with the personality of the asserter,
>everything to do with the assertion.  For example, I could describe to you
>in detail the leprechauns inside of the planet Angus-McTavish, but you
>probably wouldn't think that was very credible.  Nor would you likely think
>it was believable coming from anybody else.  But if you really wanted to
>show all those crazy McTavishites they are misguided, you would have to
>scour the entire universe looking for the planet and its leprechauns, and
>then convince all the Angushists you did look and came up with nothing.

The poster was making the same basic mistake the majority of theists
do when they attempt to describe atheists:

Approaching it from presumptions that don't even apply outside your
religion. Failing to understand that atheists and theists aren't even
talking about the same thing - it's merely something theists believe
as part of their religion. That has no particular relevance or
importance outside it.

>> If, on the other hand, consideration 2 is true, then, what the atheist is
>> saying is, "I don't believe God exists!"  But, this is the same thing as
>> saying, "There is no God!"
>
>They are not the same, as illustrated above.

If only theists would realise that atheists are discussing somebody
else's belief object, that would not even occur to them if theists
could only live and let live. Which makes it little different than
"there ain't no Santa Claus".

He is inventing statements he imagines atheists might say but fails to
realise that they would not say these things unprompted - because they
neither describe the actual atheist position. And as long as he keeps
interpreting or inventing this through his inside-the-religion
perspective instead of our outside-his-religion one, he is always
going to get it wrong.

It shouldn't really be this hard to understand, but all an atheist is,
is somebody who isn't theist. It acknowledges that people called
theists exist, and that we are not among them.

There are hundreds if not thousands of different god-beliefs and their
associated religions out there. Christians imagine that their one is
special not just for them but for everybody else as well. But then so
do Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs and all the others.

The same Christians fail to grasp that from outside Christianity, it
is seen in much the same light as christians see all the other
religions: something they sincerely believe but that is all, apart
from overtones of being misguided, cultural etc. 

If they did the simple thought experiment of substituting their view
of eg Hinduism and its gods, and projecting that on non-Christians
they would be a lot closer than the strawman positions they invent for
us. Whether it is belief in false gods, just somebody else's wacky
belief, etc etc.

>> Therefore, as far as atheism is concerned, my argument that there is no
>> such thing as an atheist who does not say, "I don't believe God exists!"
>> still stands.  From you arguments I don't see any particular reason to
>> change my mind.

The biggest reason to change your mind should be the simple
observation that there is major disagreement between Christians and
atheists about what it means to be atheist. But for some reason the
Christians won't let atheists have the position we actually do, and
all too often go to the extent of trying to "prove" that we're
perjuring ourselves.

When common decency says that they should accept what we say about
ourselves even if they don't understand it.

That they don't is a major cause of acrimony, which they imagine is
the fault of the atheists - which only makes it even worse.

>http://www.bagpipes.freeuk.com/ should be very helpful for you.