The definition of atheism

Emphasis addedI think this is where your logic goes wrong. Evidence should never give rise to a belief. Evidence gives rise to tentative conclusions which often lead to theories which outline predictions of future occurences.
Your example of the sun rising in the east is just such an evidence/conclusion/theory combination. You observe the sun rising in the east every day. You learn why it does so and you reach the tentative conclusion that it will most likely continue to do so every day. This is not a belief, at least not in my definition of the word "belief".
Personally I don't beleive there is a god because I have seen absolutely zero evidence to push me toward that conclusion. Likewise I don't beleive that there is no god. The evidence either way is non existent so no conclusion can be reached. No theory can be formulated and no prediction can be made.
If I were to say that I beleive there is no god then I would be guilty of reaching a conclusion without evidence to substantiate it. That is what beleif is to me and to many others. Beleif can only exist in the absence of proof or else it becomes a scientific conclusion based on established observations, complete with theories and predictions.
So in short, not believing in god is almost diametrically opposite to believing that there is no god. One is an absence of belief while the other is a positive affirmation of something.PY

I don't really consider myself as anything other than a student of science.
I always thought of an atheist as having the same views as I do though so if the cap fits I guess i will have to wear it.What is in a name anyway? I doubt that any 2 people anywhere ever share exactly the same viewpoint on anything so definitions like atheist have to be pretty broad.

I seem to recall going over a discussion a little like this with you about a year ago. Experience would lead me to predict that it with smash the crap out of my foot. I have personally carried out a number of experiments with gravity, physics and a number of other things which lead me to that conclusion. No belief involved. You actually believe that stuff? Shame on you.Your point is taken though. A certain amount of belief is required at some point or you could never trust that anything is right unless personally tested. When I hear on the news that there has been a bombing in London, I have no reason to doubt it so I suppose that is belief of a kind.
However it is still a case of scientific methodology determining if a given source of information is trustworthy or not. ie. BBC America have never lied to me before (to my knowledge) so they probably aren't now. In this respect the trust I place in their honesty is not entirely without proven merit so my original argument still stands. Past experience allows me to predict that their information will be correct so I give them the benefit of the doubt and believe what they say until such time as they are caught out in a lie. I realise that I may not be the norm in this case but personally I try to verify everything before I trust it. Possibly. Like I said though, what is in a name? I don't need to be compartmentalized. I am just me.This message has been edited by PurpleYouko, 07-20-2005 09:07 AM

But I don't put a label on myself. Others do that for me. First someone calls me an Atheist because I don't believe in god and because they don't accept that there is a difference between absence of belief and belief in absence, then someone else like 1.6 above says that I am a closer fit with the definition "Agnostic". Make your mind up guys! What am I? I couldn't care less either way.I am just here to say that there most definitely is a difference between belief in absence and absence of belief.

Sure I realize that. Knowing anything for certain is impossible IMO. Agreed! I can see where you are coming from but this is where I disagree with you. I don't think belief is necessary at all. As you pointed out above, I am never going to be certain that one event will follow another just because it did so the last 317 times I did the same thing. If I am not certain then I don't beleive it will happen. I simply calculate that there is a pretty strong chance that the 318th time will result in the same sequence of events. That isn't belief. That is playing the odds in a calculated fashion. No. I calculate that there is a very strong chance that I will need a cast based on my previous observations that the anvil falls. No belief because I don't know for sure without proof. No I don't. There is actually a fairly good chance that I won't. uhhhh! NO! (see above points)I do understand what you are trying to say but I just don't see any degree of absolute certainty about anything, anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Without unfounded certainty there is simply no belief. There is just a tentative prediction of the future based on past experience which may or may not turn out to be correct.

While writing my latest reply to 1.6, it occurred to me that maybe we are not working with the same definition of the word "belief" so I went looking for the meaning of the term.Here is the meaning that I am adhering to. Maybe others see it differently but my argument hinges on this definition. Not too sure about #1 but either way it doesn't fit the context of the question posed. "Is belief in absence" the same as an "absence of belief"Belief in something (anything including absence of something) requires a conviction or acceptance of the truth of one's position.
The absence of belief means that there is no conviction or acceptance of any truth at all. That is my position.I do not accept that there is any way to objectively know the truth of anything. In fact I don't even know that for sure.

No offence taken. I know what you mean about the way my arguments are starting to sound. Before I got into this discussion I probably would have thought the same thing about someone else posting this stuff. It is just that while actually examining the subject and the way I really feel in the most objective way I am able to, I find that my views are actually nothing like I first thought they were. I never did really buy into that line in the first place. "I think therefore I am" is a bit of a large leap of logic. It is also an incomplete statement in many ways.
"I am". I am what though? As an analogy, what if I am just a small subroutine in a large program that has developed some kind of self awareness. I could be completely delusional about what I actually am. My image of myself lives within a framework that appears to follow a bunch of rules. My life and work is in studying (at least some of) those rules, interpretting them and trying to make sense out of what I see. I have no way to know if what I see is correct or even if it exists at all, but that has no bearing on the way I live my life. I have to live within the framework, be it real or not, so learning the way it appears to operate would seem the best approach, right?
When I look really deeply into the rules of this place I find that at some level the things that seem real actually break down under extreme conditions.
We may have found a pretty good way to describe our universe mathematically but nothing is 100% certain ever. All the time our perceptions and models are improving.Admittedly, I am actively exagerating the uncertainty levels to reinforce my position. In the anvil/foot example I am 99.99999999999999999% sure that I am going to need a bunch of repairs done on my foot when I drop the thing but there is a theoretical possibility (incredibly slim) that it could quantum tunnel through my foot without ever touching it. A whole number of other things might also happen to divert its path or forcibly move my foot out of the way. That sounds like the same thing I have been saying. The key words are "not recognize". To me, an absence of recognition is completely different than a positive assertion of non existence and that is the whole point. I can never say with absolute certainty that no god exists. The evidence points that way but if I can't even be sure that an electron exists in a given position at a given time then the best I can say is that I am 99.99999999999% convinced.

That must put me somewhere in the middle then.
I have most certainly been exposed to the concept of god yet have reached the position where I hold no belief in either his existence or non-existence. I hold to a tentative conclusion that based on the available evidence (or lack thereof) of his existence, that there is no god. Does that make me a middle of the road atheist? an agnostic? a scientist with a "theory of the non-existence of god" (not really a feasible concept I know) that has yet to be falsified?As Catholic Scientist said, do you actually see a difference between "absence of belief" and "belief of absence".
Even my own wife can't or won't see that the two concepts are totally different.

Hi Kongstad That has always been pretty much my view on the subject too. Thanks for confirming that I am indeed an atheist.PY

It's all in the definition of the word.
I will leave out number one as it isn't really relevent since it involves a completely different usage of the word belief.2.Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validy of something: "His explanation of what happened defies belief."
3.Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenants accepted by a group of persons."Conviction in the truth", "Accepted as true"How can any of us objectively know that anything is true?
Sure there may be other possible meanings of the word belief but as I stated earlier, these are the meanings that I assume when I use the term.When I say I see what you are saying I mean that I understand your logic but that I think that you are not applying the same definition to the term belief as I am. My statement was ridiculous?
Yours is self contradictory using the above definition of belief.In the first part you say, "One does NOT have to have certainty to BELIEVE something., Do you mean to tell me that you can believe something without being certain of it? How the heck is it belief then? I would call that a tentative acceptance of it.
Belief requires that something is "accepted as true" and "truth" is an unwavering absolute. There are no degrees of truth. Something is either true or false and not some gray area in between
"Faith" is the absolute epitomy of certainty in the absence of proof. Anyone who truly believes in a god has just such a conviction of the truth of their position without any real proof. They are certain. They believe. If they lose that certainty then they are often well on the road to becoming atheists.
Been there. Done that. Bought the T-shirt.
To me, belief and faith are pretty much interchangable terms.In short, yes you DO have to have certainty in something in order to BELIEVE it since BELIEF directly implies an ACCEPTANCE OF TRUTH.If you want to argue for a different definition of BELIEF then that is a completely different subject but under the definition stated above your statement is blatently false. And I am beginning to reach the tentative conclusion that you are being awkward just for the heck of it. You know full well what I mean. OK then prove it! Math is just a construct to help us understand things. I vaguely remember seeing a mathematical 'proof' that showed that 1+1 actually didn't make 2 in every case. Wish I could remember where.

So would most people. I probably would (and in fact do) myself in every day life. It is only when I really examine the definitions that I find myself thinking that this is incorrect.This is my line of reasoning.Given that TRUE is a boolean concept (true or false) and that believe is defined as accept as true then that would mean that both accept as true and believe are also boolean concepts with no varying degrees existing between absolute TRUE and absolute FALSE.In this scenario "tentative acceptance of truth" is not a valid concept. It would be like being a little bit pregnant.One may tentatively accept a theory as being probably TRUE since that does not imply actual TRUTH but rather allows one to remain in a state of non decision with a tendancy towards absolute TRUTH. What you cannot do is assign faith or belief to it without complete certainty of truth.I have found a whole load of definitions of the word TRUTH. Most, but not all, state it as an absolute. If you chose a non-absolute meaning then my logic above is not going to apply.
Here are a few of them.Truth:
1 a fact that has been verified.
2 conformity to reality or actuality
3 the quality of nearness to the truth or the true value (this one could work the way that you stated but it appears to equate accuracy with truth)"accuracy: the quality of nearness to the truth or the true value; "he was beginning to doubt the accuracy of his compass"; "the lawyer questioned the truth of my account" (actually still sounds like absolute TRUTH to me)Most people very likely do not apply the absolute meaning to either TRUTH or BELIEF, particularly in every day life. I don't myself most of the time. Quite possibly not doing so rigorously could be the cause of a whole lot of miscomunication.I would like to see somebody write a computer program and assign a value of "almost certain" to a boolean variable. Not gonna happen!

I will grant you that the term acceptance does not have to be binary under all definitions. My argument only applies to the most absolute meaning of the word. ie. "accept as TRUE"Also the word belief doe not always have to be absolute.Actual dictionary definitions of both words vary from absolute to tentative.You are quite correct in saying that if a non-absolute meaning of belief is used then there is nothing wrong with the concept of tentative belief. Quite true (tentatively that would be ) but since I never claimed anything about the actual truth of anything, also irrelevent.All this started from a perspective of belief in god or a set of religious tenets and somehow got twisted around to dictionary definitions. My point is and always was the followingI am quite confident that the majority of people who have such a belief are whole-hearted in their knowledge that what they believe is in fact TRUE in the absolute sense. There have been a pretty much never ending stream of people on this very forum claiming just such a "knowledge" of truth.
In this respect, FAITH = BELIEF = TRUTH and all in the complete absence of PROOF.It is this, and only this, definition of belief that I have used in defining an absence of said belief. ie. there is no way to honestly know, have faith in or believe that there is no god. Any such assertion is every bit as unfounded as knowing, having faith, believing that there IS a god.I never really intended the discussion to be dragged into the realms of scientific practice in this way. Somehow these things always seem to get dragged away from the original area of discussion.

But a falsehood can still be uncatagorically BELIEVED in if person accepts the falsehood as TRUTH.
Knowing the real TRUTH is something that cannot ever be done anyway.Statement: The world is flat!Anyone is free to BELIEVE this unreservedly. They just have to assign the statement the value of TRUE in their own mind. Even though TRUTH is absolute in regards to being boolean/binary it is also subjective. There may be an infinite number of claimants to the ultimate TRUTH of a given situation. Each can be believed in without causing any problems. Each person believing something is absolutely convinced that they have the ultimate TRUTH of the situation.(added by edit)
As far as belief goes, any TRUTH is just as valid as any other.This message has been edited by PurpleYouko, 07-21-2005 01:50 PM

Right, from definitions, the absolute nature of the TRUTH of a statement DOES NOT overrule the rest of the definition of BELIEF provided that the definition of BELIEF is "The acceptance of the statement as TRUTH" and ACCEPTANCE is not absolute, ie. it is tentative. In that case BELIEF could indeed also be tentative.But if the definition of ACCEPTANCE is also absolute then the defininition of BELIEF becomes "The absolute acceptance of the statement as absolute TRUTH"
In this case the belief may still be assigned to a false TRUTH or more accurately to a possibly false TRUTH.

I never did actually define "accept".here is about the only applicable definition that I could find. This could go on forever. Next we will have to define "consider" and "hold"Let's just say that if "accept" is not absolute then you are right and it is possible to believe tentatively, but if it is then I am right and it isn't possible. In the broader sense of the terminology I am with you completely but in the context of BELIEF in god, I contend that the BELIEF, ACCEPTANCE, FAITH or whatever other terms come into play, are all absolute.I do not have this kind of BELIEF in the absence of god therfore there IS a difference between "absense of belief" and "belief in absence"That IS what all this is supposed to be about.