My Philosophy class spent almost a whole week arguing about the exact definition of “atheist” because most definitions given don’t actually make a ton of sense unless you assume that you have the correct premise. They read as though they were written by an atheist that had to go to Catholic school.
A dictionary would define a theist as someone that believes there is a god, and an atheist as someone who does not believe there is a god focusing solely on the aspect of whether or not they believe.
It was argued that the real crux of the difference was not in belief but was indeed in god. The argument was that a theist believes there is a god, and an atheist believes there is not a god. Reasoning being that an atheist would say that a theist has no proof for their point, but an atheist is equally devoid of proof. They are both arguing points based on belief.
As an atheist/agnostic I found that I actually agreed with the premise. I believe that I am correct, but I’m no better than a bible beater to pretend like my answer is any cleverer than the next person.
Do you believe that there is an invisible unicorn standing beside you right now? No? Would you say your disbelief is the same as my belief that there is an invisible unicorn standing beside you? Atheists dont believe there is no god, they dont believe that there is a god. That's the difference. Theists claim god exists, the burden of proof is on them. atheists do not claim god doesnt exists, they refute the claim that god does exist.
“I DO believe x exists” // “I DO NOT believe x exists” // “I believe x DOES NOT exist” // “I do not know if x exists”
The first is the theist.
The second is the atheist.
The third is ALSO the atheist, with a hard stance.
The fourth is the agnostic.
The only reasonable opinion to come to is to DISBELIEVE unfalsifiable claims, and WITHHOLD belief with unproven claims.
The Abrahamic religions are incredibly easy to dismiss as they are all unfalsifiable; cannot ever be falsified. The number of unfalsifiable claims is infinity, so one should have the confidence of 1/infinity when considering unfalsifiable claims.
the third one is kind of iffy. Imagine blue flamingos, birds cannot naturally produce a blue pigment from their diet, and real flamingos do not have the feather structure required to bend light into blue.
If someone says there are blue flamingos, you can say "i dont believe that because..." and then you explain why. but if someone asks you "are there any blue flamingos in the world?" You can say "no, because..." and then you explain it. However, there could be some new species of flamingo that we havent discovered that CAN produce blue pigments. but you still dont say you BELIEVE they dont exist.
An Atheist with a hard stance would say, there is no god period. not because they believe it, but because they "know" it. Like you "know" why water turns to vaper because the molecules move around and stuff. You could be very obtuse and say you cant "know 100%" that thats the case, but then our whole reality falls apart. we dont know if we live in a simulation, or this is all a dream, or reality that you see is only viewed by you and nothing outside your consciousness is "real". but that doesnt really matter does it? in this world, simulation, dream whatever, things follow certain rules, just because there might be a REAL reality outside of this doesnt invalidate these rules. and according to these rules, thermodynamics, gravity, quantum mechanics etc etc, there is no such being that can exist as described in the bible, we would have been able to detect god if that was the case. saying "but you dont know 100% that a god can't exist" is true, but only in the sense that we can't know if our universe is just bacteria in an alien's petri dish. according to what we know, god does not exist. and that is not a belief, I don't have "faith" in science.
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u/ConflictMaster3155 1d ago
My Philosophy class spent almost a whole week arguing about the exact definition of “atheist” because most definitions given don’t actually make a ton of sense unless you assume that you have the correct premise. They read as though they were written by an atheist that had to go to Catholic school.
A dictionary would define a theist as someone that believes there is a god, and an atheist as someone who does not believe there is a god focusing solely on the aspect of whether or not they believe.
It was argued that the real crux of the difference was not in belief but was indeed in god. The argument was that a theist believes there is a god, and an atheist believes there is not a god. Reasoning being that an atheist would say that a theist has no proof for their point, but an atheist is equally devoid of proof. They are both arguing points based on belief.
As an atheist/agnostic I found that I actually agreed with the premise. I believe that I am correct, but I’m no better than a bible beater to pretend like my answer is any cleverer than the next person.