Sorry for the late replies y'all
Originally posted by dadudemon
Well...not really. The actual difference is that Digi still holds that some form of God CAN exist but he doesn't know because he requires tangible evidence.This is literally an agnostic approach.
The difference between that and Teller and you is you both say things like, "I know God doesn't exist."
There is a difference between the two and it is a significant difference.
my belief here comes almost more from neuroscience than it does anything else. Sure, there might be differences in terms of whether knowledge of God comes from semantic or episodic memory, or something like that, however, at a basic level, the only thing we are talking about is certainty, if that. Like, they do memory studies that investigate such things... "knowing" is really just about more available traces to a specific memory that is stored, versus "belief", which is accompanied by some uncertainty because of less direct traces or more interference. Anyone with a sufficiently developed theory on anything would fall into the "knowing" category, regardless of their own modesty about how absolute they feel their knowledge is. This is obviously not the best example, but like, when someone knows they see a face, it is associated with heavy activation in their FFA. If they see a less obvious face, or other things arranged in a "face-like" manner, its not some different "belief" system that activates, it is just less FFA activation and therefore less certainty in what they have seen. "Knowing", in a neuropsych sense, is about a lack of competing trace information and directness of connections, not some special thing that is beyond "believing".
I tend to see Digi and my difference in description as flowing from a semantic difference, as any time we have discussed these things our opinions are virtually identical. He spends more words letting people know his knowledge has limitation, I think such limitations are inherent in anything people claim to know by default (and thus don't spend too much time with the "but I could be wrong..." stuff, as that is both tautological and redundant).
For instance, I certainly wouldn't deny that some evidence could convince me of God's existence. I haven't made an absolutist statement about the nature of the universe, because it is impossible for humans to ever make such a claim (which "knowing" seems to insinuate is possible). But to say being open to a good argument is the same as not really believing would be like saying someone couldn't be a conservative because at some point someone might convince them a liberal policy is better.
Originally posted by dadudemon
No, it is very easy, actually, to label you as such.
well, fine
ontologically though, I don't feel your label is really valuable in any sense, as, like I mentioned before, I don't think you can abstract any sort of ideology away from what its followers believe. Like, ideas of "pure Islam" or "pure communism" seem silly to me, as if these things had ever existed in a form that wasn't entirely reliant on what people believed about them. To say you have some abstract definition of what atheism is doesn't mean much to me in this sense. Certainly it becomes immediately subjective, so there is no reason for one to follow your strict definition over any other, and like I said before, I would question the value of a definition of an ideology that excludes those who do wanted to be included while including those who don't wish to be.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Yeah, that's closer to what I was talking about. Labels as practical constructions.
I suppose this is true, though again, I'm not sure how informative it is. Even, as you say, if 99% of things are green, knowing the non-greenness of things only says it differs in a single feature from 99% of things (likely something that is true of most "things" anyways).
It may be accurate, but saying "all people who do not believe in God are atheists" carries no significant information, and certainly, atheists themselves could have more, theologically, in common with theists than other atheists, save along that one dimension.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Why? (Not to start a debate or anything, I'm just curious)
A number of reasons, some practical some not so much.
Largely, I feel the term is colloquially attached to a lot of things I don't want to be associated with. Like, it is an ideology where I think it is entirely hypocritical with its stance on religion compared to other institutions. So like, atheists get pissy if a teacher promotes religion in the class, yet, I rarely hear them apply that type of criticism to the other authoritarian aspects of education. There are many atheists (Dawkins being one) who have compared indoctrination of children with religious values to child abuse, yet fail to recognize how all of the other institutions in the world act to indoctrinate each of us. It almost seems like a philosophy of special pleading, where one identifies the thing they don't agree with and nit picks anything they can think of, almost like how some radical feminists go off the deep end with things like unisex bathrooms, etc. Obviously this is all anecdotal, and there is nothing that says atheists have to act this way, but I've had few conversations with self-identified atheists which I feel were overly productive. Any experience I've had, "belief" or "know", atheists have come off looking, I'd say at best, needlessly transgressive and dismissive. Additionally, I think a lot of the moral traditions in religion, some of the community aspects, are very important and commendable, and I don't want to be in a position where it seems that I am dismissing these.
In a more general sense, I don't really like any form of group identification. Not only does calling oneself an atheist promote a specific image to others, having a self-identity like that literally changes the way the brain interprets new information. I'm not trying to say I think I've found a way to get out of the way our brains are naturally biased to what we already believe, but certainly if I am not basing a strong part of my personality on this type of group identification I am less motivated to reaffirm what I already believe. Certainly there are issues with conformity, authority, etc, that come from group identification that I have no interest in at all.
I guess another thing would be that, outside of not believing in the supernatural, I don't think I'm an irreligious person. Like, I don't like churches as institutions, but I certainly don't see them as being more dangerous than state or financial institutions. I'm very open to religious experiences, and for myself, I can easily see something like psychedelic drug use as a religious experience, and one that I don't think really needs to be stripped of that connotation.
ok, so sure, if the definition of atheism is "the population of people who do not believe in the divine", I would fall into that camp. But given how I feel about religions in general (they are defined not in the abstract), I find it very difficult to identify with atheists. I suppose this hasn't even gotten into the like political/social atheism, like the Atheist Alliance, or other such groups, but I can't imagine my thoughts on institutionalizing atheist philosophy are that opaque.