[AtomicClucker]

@Mars: Shhh...  don't tell them that everything is a teapot replete with spout and handles.

[Bobboau]

well, given that atheism is the lack of a belief in a god, that is to say the word for people who are not theists it is not a learned anything let alone position. now learning can cause one to become an atheist, but that is by no means a requirement, the only thing you need to be an atheist is an absence of a belief in god, how that state came to be does not figure into the situation.

now as for newborn you are absolutely correct as far as I can tell in saying that they are physically incapable of understanding what a god is let alone holding a belief in it or anything really. it is because of this that they have no belief in any sort of god and are therefore atheist. theist again means that you do not have a belief in any god, not that you know of belief in god and do not subscribe. it is simply you do not believe. and being incapable of belief means you don't hold a particular belief obviously, this would include a belief in god, and would make such people atheists, because again, atheist means you lack a belief in god.

decisions or choices do not factor into it so being incapable of making them has no effect.
there is no projection or assignment of meaning (other than perhaps your own), it is simply a statement of fact that they do not have a belief.
capability or attempts to learn to not change the fact of what a one's state of belief is, that would be none in this case.

a blank slate is one with no belief in god and therefore is atheist.

[Bobboau]

actually let me put it a different way, I am assuming you do not believe in Tlaloc, the Aztec god of thunder, you are atheist in regards to Tlaloc, when did you learn your atheism of Tlaloc?

not when did you learn of it.

[Mars]

@Mars: Shhh...  don't tell them that everything is a teapot replete with spout and handles.

It's a serious point. Babies are born atheist, agermist and afairist - they simply have no belief in gods, germs, or fairies. That doesn't mean - for the purposes of what I'm trying to point out, that one or all of these things can't exist! But the initial state is an absence of belief. Wall-boards are atheistic, as are, presumably goldfish.

EDIT: Bob already said everything I was trying to say, but I'm hoping that something someone says makes sense - so I post at the risk of redundancy.

[AtomicClucker]

well, given that atheism is the lack of a belief in a god, that is to say the word for people who are not theists it is not a learned anything let alone position. now learning can cause one to become an atheist, but that is by no means a requirement, the only thing you need to be an atheist is an absence of a belief in god, how that state came to be does not figure into the situation.

now as for newborn you are absolutely correct as far as I can tell in saying that they are physically incapable of understanding what a god is let alone holding a belief in it or anything really. it is because of this that they have no belief in any sort of god and are therefore atheist. theist again means that you do not have a belief in any god, not that you know of belief in god and do not subscribe. it is simply you do not believe. and being incapable of belief means you don't hold a particular belief obviously, this would include a belief in god, and would make such people atheists, because again, atheist means you lack a belief in god.

decisions or choices do not factor into it so being incapable of making them has no effect.
there is no projection or assignment of meaning (other than perhaps your own), it is simply a statement of fact that they do not have a belief.
capability or attempts to learn to not change the fact of what a one's state of belief is, that would be none in this case.

a blank slate is one with no belief in god and therefore is atheist.

That's according to your definition, but I say the problem with that is *we* are making that call, not them. The problem lies within us attempting to assign meaning upon a circumstance that should, theoretically be intrinsically motivated. But they have no intrinsic motivation to do so: belief or not it doesn't matter to them, and actually falls into a classification outside our normal bounds. The problem is that atheist is deluded into a vague concept, but what happens we is applied to a situation where "belief" isn't a part of the equation, and therefor doesn't exist. To an infant, there is no such thing "Atheist" and "Theist", it's us trying to put a convenient label on that state using per-existing concepts without their intrinsic motivation. Call it stupid, but it's like calling primordial soup "aware" when self-awareness isn't developed. Problem is, who's calling the soup aware when there's no narrator?

The point is I'm arguing it's perhaps a mistake for us to assume the role of a narrator?

Falling back to this question as well? Is the definition made by an internal or external, and who is doing it?

Edit: @Mars: Wall-boards and goldfish don't have a concept of Atheism, we label them as Atheists because we place that meaning on an external object: the object itself doesn't acknowledge any of it. Therefor, atheism, theism, clucker-a-hoody-hoo is nonsense. Arguing that the objects are "atheistic" is us projecting a view they are atheistic: the reality I argue is they aren't, because the objects cannot acknowledge that state. The problem of definition then falls back on our shoulders. Merely defining an object has no belief in gods in a flawed statement: can the object at hand acknowledge this? We don't know. Prove to me a chair believes itself to be an atheist... and you can't, it has no concept of self, and therefor no atheism or theism. It's a chair.

[Bobboau]

Its not anybody's "call" it is for lack of a better word an objective property.

Atheism requires no motivation, only that you do not believe.
It does not matter if it maters to them, only that they do not believe.
What happens when belief isn't part of the equals ion and does not exsist is you are an atheist, because you have no belief.

Are you noticing the pattern yet?

To a tree there are no such things as trees and yet they are still trees.
No its like calling primortial soup unaware when awareness doesn't exist yet.

The definition is made by humans who wanted a word to describe the people who were not theists. The word exists and some people meet up with its criteria, no decision is made by anyone. Its like asking "who said 3 is greater than 2"

[AtomicClucker]

Its not anybody's "call" it is for lack of a better word an objective property.

Atheism requires no motivation, only that you do not believe.
It does not matter if it maters to them, only that they do not believe.
What happens when belief isn't part of the equals ion and does not exsist is you are an atheist, because you have no belief.

Are you noticing the pattern yet?

To a tree there are no such things as trees and yet they are still trees.
No its like calling primortial soup unaware when awareness doesn't exist yet.

The definition is made by humans who wanted a word to describe the people who were not theists. The word exists and some people meet up with its criteria, no decision is made by anyone. Its like asking "who said 3 is greater than 2"

I'm telling you its an issue of meaning: it only works when a human acts upon the role of meta-narrator. It's folly to attempt to argue that everything has an inherently atheistic value when the value is only tied to human designed and desired meaning.

Unless you can prove the object can make a self-referential statement to it being atheistic, therein lies the problem. You can't. You assume the role of the meta-narrative and to extent, play the part of a god.

So you can't merely call a goldfish an atheist: does it acknowledge itself? How do we know? Then the answer is that we a) either ignore, or b) create artificial logic and bridge the meaning gap and declare it atheistic by our definition. And  lies the self-referential mess all over again.

[Bobboau]

Yes, it is an issue of meaning, and the meaning of atheist is "doesn't have a belief in gods" not "can but doesn't", not "chose not to", but "does not". There may be many contexts in which there is little value, but that doesn't change the meaning.

[AtomicClucker]

Yes, it is an issue of meaning, and the meaning of atheist is "doesn't have a belief in gods" not "can but doesn't", not "chose not to", but "does not". There may be many contexts in which there is little value, but that doesn't change the meaning.

And the problem lies within its meaning. Is it an internal or external application? A tree is a tree, but it is not a tree. So how do we know this statement is valid?

A goldfish is an atheist. Or is the human calling the goldfish an atheist the problem, who assigns an external value on an object who carries no intrinsic value of an atheist because it cannot distinguish said concept?

So I would argue the goldfish is not an atheist: we call it so because it's convenient, and easy to assign external values. It, in my opinion, is almost cheating our own methods of verification in the process.

Edit: We can spend all night arguing whether a fish is an atheist or not, but I feel it's better to cut our debate short here. I argue we can correctly use "Atheist," "Agnostic," and "Theist" if there's an element of self-reference and confirmation with the object, but we run full tilt into a paradoxical problem of meaning when dealing with objects that actually have no concept of it themselves. You reply by saying "it's an atheist by definition" I hold this is a dangerous resuscitation of Logical Positivism, which tenets held that statements could be verified in a black and white manner: it works until confronted by vagueness, which is naturally rooted in language. Verification by mathematical and linguistic means were undermined by both philosophers and logicians, whom Godel played an important part in terminating it. The problem with calling goldfish an atheist is there's no verification that the fish is indeed an atheist, we simply have no mechanism to solve this problem short of deliberate ignorance.

The problem is a lot of Materialism and Physicalism relies on the trends established by Logical Positivism, which runs counter to metaphysics and ontology.

[karajorma]

The funny thing is that again this is something the theists shouldn't have a problem with. Pretty much any religious person knows you have to raise your children with knowledge of God or else they'll never be good Christians/Muslims/whatever. Even if they never put it that way, it's fairly obvious that most religious people understand that children have no faith unless you've raised them to have it.

[Luis Dias]

Either way, Atomic makes some good metaphysical points that shouldn't be unadressed, and a good argument against this "atheist until otherwise". I do agree with Kara here, for with the religious it is quite common for one person either be a believer or not. Such a person (or a fish) is either part of the group or he is outside. If outside, then that person is often characterized as an unbeliever, an atheist, etc. There is a necessary effort from the part of the person to be included into the believer camp.

But this does not solve the entire issue. People might not be included in any particular "camp" and still would find it silly and stupid to be called an atheist. I see people like MP, who will "feel" something divine about the universe as being out there, (I've witnessed lots of people arguing that they do believe in a sort of "energy" that they cannot explain but wouldn't ever trust any preacher or church), who have doubts about this kind of emotions but never ascribe them to a sort of a bland crude materialist atoms and fields sort of explanation (a kind of a desert of the real). It is quite clear by now that such people are always doomed from the christian or muslim POV, but they are not to be called atheists.

The discussion has suffered from our inability to distinguish this fence-sitting group and Agnosticism as a philosophical conclusion about epistemology. They are not the same, but we call them the same. Thus all the ****storm. Now I think I get the picture a little better .

[Bobboau]

What he is saying is that because you cannon believed something then you believe it. He is saying if you cannot believe something then you can not not believe it, which is a double negation

being incapable of believing means you do not believe.

Not believing in god means atheist.

[Mars]

Edit: @Mars: Wall-boards and goldfish don't have a concept of Atheism, we label them as Atheists because we place that meaning on an external object: the object itself doesn't acknowledge any of it. Therefor, atheism, theism, clucker-a-hoody-hoo is nonsense. Arguing that the objects are "atheistic" is us projecting a view they are atheistic: the reality I argue is they aren't, because the objects cannot acknowledge that state. The problem of definition then falls back on our shoulders. Merely defining an object has no belief in gods in a flawed statement: can the object at hand acknowledge this? We don't know. Prove to me a chair believes itself to be an atheist... and you can't, it has no concept of self, and therefor no atheism or theism. It's a chair.

No acknowledgement is necessary. Atheism follows from unawareness. Unless it turns out that goldfish worship Shiva or follow The Prophet, for example, they are "ahindi" and and "amusilim." Since we know goldfish haven't the cognizance to "believe" in any such thing, they are default atheists. This is because atheism is the lack of a belief.

Atheism is not a belief that requires logical thinking, it is the lack of a belief.

EDIT: I actually read on BBC that pidgins can actually end up doing some very religious-like rituals. This would suggest that they cannot simply be considered default atheists - for example.

[MP-Ryan]

And I thought we had this sorted out so neatly two pages ago.

There are two different things being argues now:

1.  Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s).
2.  It's idiotic to use that definition of atheism because it captures unintentional atheists.

Bobb and kara:  It is not that people are arguing that atheism defined as a lack of belief in god(s) is fundamentally correct on a semantic level.  We're arguing that it's an idiotic way of defining atheism, which is why I railed against it for so bloody long.

You guys are saying lack of belief can be an unconscious act.  A number of the rest of us (which seem to include Herra now?) are saying that only conscious lack of belief should count as atheism, because otherwise you're including all kinds of other people in your definition that really shouldn't be there - for reasons that include the political connotations of atheism generally.  Otherwise, you have to deal with notions like unconscious belief in god(s) or supernatural powers, which should remove people from the atheist camp, yet doesn't under your wide definition.

Since Wikipedia indicates that two prominent thinkers have debated this previously, for the purposes of further discussion I would suggest people refer to the unconscious atheism paradigm as "Smith" and the conscious as "Nagel," since its a convenient shorthand that avoids words like implicit/explicit that have their own connotations which will likely wreak further semantic havoc.

[Turambar]

But it doesn't matter that you think it's idiotic.  That's what it is.

[Luis Dias]

Yes, I agree with MP's and with Atomic's criticism. The trouble is that if we are going to attribute this kind of semantics, then all sorts of ridiculous questions seem unavoidable:

• If I label myself as a theist but I am not thinking about God this precise moment, where my thought processes could be labeled as absolute materialist, am I being a theist or an atheist right now?
• If I am unsure what or if to believe, even despite the fact that I go to Church and pray and what not am I being an atheist or a theist?
• If I really have a crisis of faith right now and can't bring myself to believe, but I do pray, go to church and desperately want to believe, am I an atheist or not?

Notice that these can change throughout the day, the hour, the second. This is a metaphysical problem: how will we "define people" if we are so worried about their "true feelings" and so on? And is there even such a thing? Or is it even plausible to place these questions in the first place?

Notice too that the last point on my list describes perfectly what was happening to Mother Theresa in her later years. Should we call MT an atheist then?

There's also the added problem of "belief" being somewhat undefined. What if belief is a psychological state of mind that is independent of any theological teachings one might glue them or not? If this is so, even if one person could be called an atheist for what he rationally tells you, he would be in a certain state of mind that one should call "believer". Perhaps this is easier to do than what I think (we do have words to describe this, the numenous, the transcendent, the poetic, the human condition, irony, and so on and so on), or perhaps it is not.

If it is a psychological condition, then animals could be downright theists and we don't even know it.

Lots of issues here.

[Flak]

Yes, I agree with MP's and with Atomic's criticism. The trouble is that if we are going to attribute this kind of semantics, then all sorts of ridiculous questions seem unavoidable:

• If I label myself as a theist but I am not thinking about God this precise moment, where my thought processes could be labeled as absolute materialist, am I being a theist or an atheist right now?
• If I am unsure what or if to believe, even despite the fact that I go to Church and pray and what not am I being an atheist or a theist?
• If I really have a crisis of faith right now and can't bring myself to believe, but I do pray, go to church and desperately want to believe, am I an atheist or not?

Notice that these can change throughout the day, the hour, the second. This is a metaphysical problem: how will we "define people" if we are so worried about their "true feelings" and so on? And is there even such a thing? Or is it even plausible to place these questions in the first place?

Notice too that the last point on my list describes perfectly what was happening to Mother Theresa in her later years. Should we call MT an atheist then?

There's also the added problem of "belief" being somewhat undefined. What if belief is a psychological state of mind that is independent of any theological teachings one might glue them or not? If this is so, even if one person could be called an atheist for what he rationally tells you, he would be in a certain state of mind that one should call "believer". Perhaps this is easier to do than what I think (we do have words to describe this, the numenous, the transcendent, the poetic, the human condition, irony, and so on and so on), or perhaps it is not.

If it is a psychological condition, then animals could be downright theists and we don't even know it.

Lots of issues here.

None at least in my point of view.  The first one, definitely not. Even among 'believers' there are times people fall. That doesn't mean Christians tolerate sins, but then the nature of sins in man is still present when people still live. As long as you still hold on to your faith afterwards, you are still a Theist.

Second one, you are not sure which faith to believe in. For example you pray both in a church and some other place (like Buddhist temple). Then you are still not, you are an Agnostic. Atheist probably would just say 'I don't have time for any of these religious nonsense'.

The third one is similar, you looks like you are trying to make God 'prove' His existence. I am not very sure what to say here, afterall, many people go to church these days for the same reason they get drunk in night clubs, I mean to relieve stress or temporary forget their life burden. Even if you go to church for that reason, you still have to believe in some way, even though I wouldn't say that would be a true believer.

[MP-Ryan]

But it doesn't matter that you think it's idiotic.  That's what it is.

And yet there is disagreement among atheists on this point.  Re-quoted for great justice:

Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist. Atheism has sometimes been defined to include the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."[41] Similarly, George H. Smith (1979) suggested that: "The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would also include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved, but who is still unaware of those issues. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist."[42] Smith coined the term implicit atheism to refer to "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it" and explicit atheism to refer to the more common definition of conscious disbelief. Ernest Nagel contradicts Smith's definition of atheism as merely "absence of theism", acknowledging only explicit atheism as true "atheism".[43]

The connotative definition of atheism and the denotative definition of atheism have two separate meanings, and the denotative is also completely unsettled.  I think criticism of the Smith paradigm is perfectly reasonable.

[swashmebuckle]

For me, the useful meanings of the words theist and atheist are derived from the fact that people self-declare as such. Unless you are telepathic (or God), you have no way to knowing whether someone is lying to you about their beliefs (knowingly or unknowingly), whether they actually understand the issue, etc. All you have to go by is their word.

If you are willing to unilaterally name all undeclared persons (as well as animals, inanimate objects, whatever) atheists without knowledge of what is going on in their heads, I'd argue that you're doing as much damage to the word as a theist would be if he claimed them all as theists, just with varying levels of ignorance regarding God's truth. It's kinda presumptuous where it isn't totally ridiculous (as in the case of the atheist sea slug), and it dilutes the meaning of the word.

[AtomicClucker]

What he is saying is that because you cannon believed something then you believe it. He is saying if you cannot believe something then you can not not believe it, which is a double negation

being incapable of believing means you do not believe.

Not believing in god means atheist.

I'm implying were giving a solution to a problem that doesn't exist or have any bearing on a goldfish. I.E. where we put semantics out of context. We have the problem, the goldfish doesn't. The goldfish doesn't even engage in that issue we have.