Is Theism arrogant?

Well, just because you're not certain about something, doesn't mean you can't arrive at any sort of conclusion about it. What assumption is that? That, when there's no evidence for something that can be found anywhere we look, and when there's plenty of evidence that that something isn't anywhere at all, reasonable people can come to the conclusion that that something probably doesn't exist?If you want to talk about extra assumptions that aren't universally accepted, how about agnosticism? Where the assumption is "ideas about God are immune to rules about when to conclude that something probably doesn't exist"?Position 1 says "the entity exists." Position 2 says that "the entity does not exist." In the face of the fact that there's no evidence that the entity exists, only the agnostic takes the position that both those positions are equally supported.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Sure. I'm not familiar with any atheists who take the position that they know, absolutely for sure, that there are no gods.But as an atheist I certainly come to the conclusion that that's the best-supported position. I don't know that they are completely independant. But if you want definitions, lets unpack the words in question:Atheism - a + theos + ism - "the absence of the position that god exists."Agnosticism - a + gnosis + ism - "the absence of the position that we can know."The thing that's never been clear to me is why the conclusions of agnosticism, though, are taken only to apply to God and never applied to anything else that's mythical. Well, that's exactly the same thing, isn't it? If you're saying that you don't know either way, you're saying that the confidence we can have in both positions is the same.Otherwise, if we could be more confident in one position than the other, we would know one way or the other. Leaving aside for a moment that the conclusion of atheism does seem pretty self-evident to me, I don't see how logic, as opposed to empiricism, is the relevant tool to apply. Can you explain?

Well, even I take that position. I think the mistake you make is failing to recognize that disproving that god doesn't mean that there are no gods at all. There are some formulations of "god" that can't be disproven from the evidence. You can be pretty sure, though. If you have a pretty clear accident record and you're a safe, attentive driver, you have more reason to believe that you won't be in an accident than to believe that you will. That's not "not knowing either way", that's "having imperfect knowledge about the future" - a universal human condition. There is evidence that leads you to prefer one conclusion over another. That's not the same as "not knowing either way", even if your conclusion isn't certain. I don't see any reason why that would be the case. The basic idea of empiricism - the idea that what happened in the past is indicative of the future - is a well-known logical fallacy. Moreover, empiricism and inductive reasoning can only be trusted because they've proven trustworthy in the past. In other words, induction and empiricism can only be verified inducitvely and empirically - another logical no-no.Logic proceeds to deduce from what we assume to be true. Logic therefore doesn't seem to be much of a useful tool to tell us about the universe, since we don't start by knowing anything true about it.

never mindEdited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : deleted

But there is no such definition. And your idea that atheists don't oppose any god but big-g God is pretty silly on the face of it. By that definition, we're forced to conclude that everybody who holds to a non-Abrahamic religion is an "atheist". As an athiest I can assure you that you are quite incorrect. Denying all the supernatural garbage that people regularly promulgate still leaves plenty of room for natural existence and purpose, which is hardly even close to nihilism. Well, look. Words have meanings. Phrases, too. People say "we don't know either way" when they're faced with two positions and no way to come to any sort of conclusion, tentative or otherwise, about which one is probably right.They don't say it when there's one position that is probably right, and one that is probably wrong. If you meant something else when you said "don't know either way", then it's time for you to realize that you used language that didn't accurately capture your meaning. I can accept that. There's no logical basis for extending the ratio of results in the past into some kind of probabilistic conclusion about the future. It's reasonable to do so, and obviously people do that all the time, but I'm not aware of any logical basis that extends that rationale about the past into the future.And that doesn't even count all the times that people reason about the future based on the past without actually establishing any probabilities. But I think we're kind of off-topic about this. If you've got a refutation of Kant's Inductive Fallacy, I'd love to see you open a thread on it. I'm not interested in defending Kant, but I'm just saying that there's a pretty high bar already set in terms of trying to justify empiricism and induction via deductive logic. If you could meet that I'd be very impressed, not to mention grateful. That would be a very interesting thing to be shown. Well, obviously when we investigate the universe, we're more interested in what is actually true about it, not what is true based on our assumptions about it. Reasoning from assumptions is tautological, and doesn't really tell us anything. Reasoning from assumptions is only true as long as the assumptions are true. When it comes to the universe, we're more concerned about the truths that are true so long as the universe is true.It's the difference between finding something out and just making something up, in my opinion. Finding out what's true in the little game-world your assumptions create may be fun but it has limited applicability to the real world, which is not predicated on your assumptions but on the very nature of reality itself, whatever the hell that is.This is another thing that's getting off-topic, though. Maybe we should just stick with the atheism?

Don't believe in the what? I don't know what the "supernatural" is, but I gather you think it's pretty well tied up with having a purpose, but I'm here to tell you that as far as I'm aware, the purpose of things has nothing to do with anything "supernatural." I don't know where your purpose comes from, but mine came from me. No "supernatural" required, whatever that is. I'm a computer programmer too, and I'm here to tell you that while the idea that it's possible to excise connotation out from some kind of purer, more precise language is seductive for people like us, it's also patently false. You can't ignore connotation in language because language is entirely connotation.It's not like a language like C, where some guys define the grammar and meaning (in EBNF or something) and then other people build the compilers and interpreters from those definitions. Human languages are spoken first and defined second. The people who write dictionaries simply observe speech and write down the meaning.What I'm trying to say is, I can't interpret your statements the way you wish I could. No one can. I think that reality is really real, if that's what you mean. The extent to which that reality is accessable to us is uncertain. I believe that truth exists; I don't know that I believe it can be known. Maybe we do start with some assumptions; I don't know. You might be the first one to think so. There's no need for the conversation to end, though. Plenty of threads here for us to talk about.

I think your mistake is that you privilege that purpose over other purposes. If I purchase a hammer, my purpose for doing so supercedes the purpose of the creator of that hammer. The purpose that the Craftsman Tool corp had in mind is less important than whatever purpose I had in mind when I bought their product.Similarly, since the purpose I determined for myself - me, who is the "owner" of myself - is privileged over the purpose of my creators - my two parents - the fact that there's no supernatural god creator doesn't matter. I have just as much purpose without as with. Another mistake you make is that this kind of purpose is still self-assigned. People adopt religion by choice. People have always determined their own purpose, and then, paradoxically, assigned the origin of that purpose to some higher power. It doesn't change the fact that people cleave to religions voluntarily, and therefore, are selecting their own purposes.For humans, there is no other purpose beyond that which we select for ourselves. Even the people who believe in God's purpose for their lives are selecting their own purposes, and then putting those purposes in the mouth of their chosen god-figure. As a student of languages, I assure you the opposite is true. Neologisms arise in context, almost universally. The definition follows usage. It does not preceed it. Neologisms are nearly universally coined at the immediate instant that they need to appear in a sentence, and only later is a "formal" definition laid out. Almost every new word follows this pattern.The writers of dictionaries do not proscribe definitions - they describe them. The job of a dictionary is not to be the authoritative source on what words mean - contrary to their main mode of employ, I realize - but to represent a snapshot of how words are used by the people that speak them, at that time. That is how dictionaries change over time - they are led by changes in language. I think you're chasing shadows with this. Don't put yourself in a position where you're using terms like "logical meaning", because you'll be asked to put forth the formal logical reasoning you employed to arrive at that conclusion. Right. And I'm telling you that, in English (which is what we are speaking), the phrase you used indicates complete uncertainty about which of two contradictory positions is true. The phrase absolutely never denotes that the speaker believes that one position is better-supported than another, but perfect certainty cannot be reached.To the extent that words and phrases mean anything at all, the phrase you used simply doesn't mean that. To "not know either way" is to express complete uncertainty. You will not be able to do this. To compound your problem, connotation is not particular only to location; it's particular to individual.Yes, that makes effective communication between two persons a non-trivial problem. Welcome to life in the real world. You might research the various ways that persons who wish to be understood attempt to overcome the imprecisions of communicating in a flexible, changing human language. Tip: it's not by pretending that connotation and idiom are non-existent. With the caveat that I don't know much about philosophy because I find it rather boring, and almost entirely antithetical to actually getting work done, I invite you to do so. I should be most interested.

One more thing - I don't want to get sidetracked by going back and forth about what you said vs what you meant. You're the only one who knows what you meant. I'm the only one who knows how I interpreted what you said.Trying to impeach the other on these positions is obviously fruitless. I'm not in a position to dictate to you what you meant to say; you're not in a position to judge my interpretation of your words.I'm eager for us to reach a mutual acceptance that miscommunication occured, because I don't want to lose sight of your original point. I'm happy to discuss language and communication in general with you but I can't imagine anything more boring than going back and forth about what a specific word or phrase is "supposed" to mean. Can you?