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RobinZ comments on Rationality quotes: October 2010 - Less Wrong
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Strong atheist.
Compared to typical justifications offered for God-belief? I'm not grading them on the same curve I use for Less Wrong users. And Dawkins, Dennett, and Dillahunty would pass even by that standard.
I did. I still fail to see why you think someone who can't even spell "atheist" was talking about the "four horsemen".
So why am I not an example of the kind of atheist that Dragonlord is talking about? Or is a "strong atheist" not a kind of atheist (as a "blue moon" is not a kind of moon)?
Incidentally, it is amusing that we have atheists squabbling over definitions on a thread which started with a Jack Chick quote that got voted up into double digits. :)
Please tell me what, if anything, you disagree with in my statement to Dragonlord. If you have a specific point of disagreement concerning either my definition of agnostic or my claim that you can't refute atheism by definition, I want to know. If you do not, I can't understand what we're arguing about.
I believe (without proof) that there is no God. I strongly dislike it when people like Dragonlord are dismissed when they argue that people like me also are, in a sense, people of faith. When I read that kind of dismissal, it certainly feels like I am being defined out of atheism.
As I understand it, Dragonlord was not trying to refute atheism by making a definition. What he said was in no way a refutation of my brand of atheism, nor yours. It was merely a charge that an atheist who considers himself by definition epistemically superior to a theist is something of a hypocrite. As it happens, I agree.
I find your "you can't refute atheism by definition" to be both ambiguous and ironic. Clearly, what you mean to argue is that it is impossible to refute a position (such as atheism) by making a definition. But, it can also be read as the exact opposite: "By definition, you can't refute atheism." And it certainly appears to me, as well as to most theists, that this is exactly what far too many atheists are doing these days.
I have been an atheist longer than most posters here have been alive. At the time I began calling myself an atheist, the definition was that an atheist is someone who believes that there is no God. A theist believes there is a God. An agnostic is unsure or unwilling to commit. But, as a result of jibes like Dragonlord's, our brave modern-day atheists have redefined the term to include almost everyone formerly called agnostics. They are so frightened of being soiled by that word "faith" that they deny having any beliefs at all regarding the existence of a deity.
That is what I am arguing about.
You're not being defined out - other people are being defined in. But you're correct: I don't actually address Dragonlord's point (which I assume regards the matter of the burden of proof) in any fashion by nitpicking the definition of "agnostic" and "atheism". I am writing a new reply.
Ok. We cool now.
By "without proof" do you mean that you don't have 100% evidence or by without proof you mean that you are believing this even though you don't have evidence for the claim? If the first, there's no problem as long as your probability estimate for some form of deity isn't 0. If the second then whether or not you are an atheist there's a serious gap in your rationality.
Incidentally, it might help in this discussion to taboo the word the atheist.
I would prefer to taboo the word 'evidence'.
If you want to taboo 'atheist', please provide your translation of what Dragonlord said to begin this discussion.
What does that leave us with, precisely, on a rationalist website?
Reasons for belief. JoshuaZ used the phrase "100% evidence", which strikes me as meaningless. He also asked whether I believed something with no evidence. That strikes me as an absurd question. Evidence is always present - the evidence might easily be inadequate, and conceivably could be balanced. But "don't have evidence"?
I think that if he tries to ask his questions using different words, he will find that he already knows the answers and that my previous responses provide the answers.
There are multiple interpretations I have of what Dragonlord meant. The statement wasn't very clear. Here are three translations:
In the first, Dragonlord was defining "atheist" as someone who is 100% certain that there is no god and then meant something something like "A 100% claim that there is no God is just as irrational as someone who claims to believe in God." And then he implicitly defined the term "agnostic" as anyone assigning a probability to God's existence that isn't 0 or 1.
In the second, Dragonlord was defining atheist as someone who assigns a very low probability to God's existence. He then meant something like: "Anyone who makes a strong claim about the probability of God's existence has insufficient evidence either way and so is using "faith" to push their probability estimate in a direction unjustified by evidence." And then he implicitly identified agnostic as people with a middling probability.
In the third, Dragonlord identified atheism the same way as in the second but then meant something like "I am uncomfortable with people making strong claims about this question, so I am going to declare that everyone making strong claims about this question are being irrational in the same way." And then he identified agnostics as people who aren't making him uncomfortable with strong claims about the existence of a deity.
Ah! Very good. Thank you. That exercise was more productive than I expected.
My original interpretation (and the interpretation I still hold) was that he was saying either the first or the second. And, based on that interpretation, I felt that Dragonlord's statement was reasonable and perhaps even defensible. And I felt that the downvoting was unfair. I realize that RobinZ also thought the downvoting was unfair, but I thought that RobinZ's defense of Dragonlord ("The poor guy just doesn't understand the definitions", in effect) was worse than useless, because it didn't respond to what Dragonlord was actually trying to say.
And I thank you for making clear what he apparently really was saying. And even if Dragonlord actually meant your third version, he should still have received a substantive response rather than a lecture on the modern usage of the word "atheist" among atheists.
Well, part of the response about how people use the word atheist might be something like simply clarifying that people aren't making an 100% claim when they identify as atheists. That's quite relevant if he meant the first interpretation. I'm not so sure that anything discussed is that relevant to interpretation 2.
Actually, I am making a 100% claim. Certainly a claim as strong as the claim of most theists, and they would also admit to being 100% certain. Call me irrational, if you wish. Remind me of Cromwell's rule. But don't ask me to admit that I made a mistake until you can prove to me that God exists.
The etymology fairly strongly suggests that a-theism is a lack of belief in theism, and a-gnosticism is a lack of belief in gnosticism.
Actually, the etymology of agnosticism is rejection of gnosis, which is rather broader than the gnostics. We know that because Huxley said so when he coined the word in 1869. That's also exactly the meaning RobinZ gave.