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The Amazing Atheist!

I call the lack of streaming, when I'm tuned into a channed, "static", or whatever channel I happen to be tuned in, but the TV being off I call channel zero. That analogy probably works for everybody else in the world :\ Ignore me.

I remember me and my Grandpa creating an entire class of jokes revolving around these paradoxes. We called not reading a book "reading blank verse", not riding a bus "catching the 11", and not drinking anything "sipping light water".

The definitions correspond exactly with what I claimed. Where did I go wrong?
 
The problem of your definition lies in your simplification.

I will admit, rereading your post I can understand your definition of agnostic. An agnostic does not claim there is no god, but rather believes that there is possibility of a god existing, without necessarily believing that on does exist.

However, an atheist is defined by disbelief, and therefore does not believe anything about god, but rather disbelieves everything except observable reality. Stating that an atheist is defined by treating their lack of faith religiously is completely incorrect.
 
I'm sorry for the confusion; I was specifying a specific subset of atheists, who act in such a manner , not trying to say that all atheists are like that, or that it is the definition of an atheist. Again, I'm sorry for the wording.
 
You can't be absolutely one hundred percent certain that there is no god. There is no empirical system that can prove, beyond doubt, that there is no supernatural force. Therefore, it's a belief.

For example, tomorrow will be Sunday. That is a truth. That is not a belief. Tomorrow cannot not be Sunday, because Sunday is defined as being the day after Saturday. Therefore tomorrow will always be Sunday, and the day after that will always be Monday.
That is a tautology - something that defines itself - that gives itself its own meaning.

However, there even being a tomorrow is a belief. Just because we have always rotated in a 24 hour period, doesn't mean we always will. Therefore, believing in tomorrow is just that - a belief.
I don't know that there will be a tomorrow. I believe in it.

That seems irrelevant but good god, you guys don't seem to understand what a belief is.

Atheism isn't a tautology. It isn't something that cannot not be true. It isn't something that defines itself.
Atheism is the belief that there is no god.
Well.
The way you guys (and pretty much everybody else on the planet) uses atheism means that.
True atheism, that is the exact knowledge that there is no god, requires so much goddamn faith that it might as well be a religion.

So you guys - all of you who call yourselves atheists - are actually agnostic. You believe that the probability of a god existing is so low that you might as well assume that one does not exist.

This is all semantics, and I'm hating myself for writing something this long just to explain a word, but good god, someone pulled out a dictionary.
 
Atheism isn't a tautology. It isn't something that cannot not be true. It isn't something that defines itself.
Atheism is the belief that there is no god.
Well.
The way you guys (and pretty much everybody else on the planet) uses atheism means that.
True atheism, that is the exact knowledge that there is no god, requires so much goddamn faith that it might as well be a religion.

So you guys - all of you who call yourselves atheists - are actually agnostic. You believe that the probability of a god existing is so low that you might as well assume that one does not exist.
Click to expand...
I don't care how you define it - you can define "atheist" to mean "purple elephant" if you like - but most of the time when people say they're atheists they mean they lack belief in deities, not that they actively believe in the nonexistence of deities (the latter tends to be referred to as 'strong atheism'). Your goal when people say words to you is to decipher what they're actually trying to tell you, not to tell them they're wrong because actually it means this, so it's more productive for you to be aware of this definition than to trumpet your own.

Also, dictionaries are in fact relevant when the question at hand is literally "how is this word generally defined?"

Meanwhile, definitions of words - whether they come from a dictionary or from you - are not relevant to deciding meaningful questions. If you decide to define "belief" in such a wide sense that even things we have such abundant evidence for as the sun rising tomorrow rely on "belief", then of course both religion and atheism fall under it (if only because in theory we could all be prisoners of the Matrix and none of the evidence that we see is real and the real world is in fact stuffed full of evidence of God), but it's also a terribly meaningless word. Just because you can define the word 'belief' to include both atheism and religion does not make them the same thing or even remotely comparable.

What most actual atheists call atheism in itself, however, is just the lack of belief in deities, not any kind of positive belief - there are positive beliefs behind why we consider ourselves atheists, like the assumption that we probably don't live in the Matrix and can consider the evidence we see evidence about the real world, but calling atheism itself a belief is misleading.
 
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Saith said:
You can't be absolutely one hundred percent certain that there is no god. There is no empirical system that can prove, beyond doubt, that there is no supernatural force. Therefore, it's a belief.

For example, tomorrow will be Sunday. That is a truth. That is not a belief. Tomorrow cannot not be Sunday, because Sunday is defined as being the day after Saturday. Therefore tomorrow will always be Sunday, and the day after that will always be Monday.
That is a tautology - something that defines itself - that gives itself its own meaning.

However, there even being a tomorrow is a belief. Just because we have always rotated in a 24 hour period, doesn't mean we always will. Therefore, believing in tomorrow is just that - a belief.
I don't know that there will be a tomorrow. I believe in it.

That seems irrelevant but good god, you guys don't seem to understand what a belief is.

Atheism isn't a tautology. It isn't something that cannot not be true. It isn't something that defines itself.
Atheism is the belief that there is no god.
Well.
The way you guys (and pretty much everybody else on the planet) uses atheism means that.
True atheism, that is the exact knowledge that there is no god, requires so much goddamn faith that it might as well be a religion.

So you guys - all of you who call yourselves atheists - are actually agnostic. You believe that the probability of a god existing is so low that you might as well assume that one does not exist.

This is all semantics, and I'm hating myself for writing something this long just to explain a word, but good god, someone pulled out a dictionary.
Click to expand...

There's a reason dictionaries exist you know, so that you can understand and use words correctly. In fact, in this whole argument I'm the only one that's actually backed up his claims by using a dictionary. Dear god, somebody used a source to back up his claims? What the hell is the world coming to?

be·lief
   [bih-leef] Show IPA
noun
1.
something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2.
confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.

fact
   [fakt] Show IPA
noun
1.
something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have no basis in fact.
2.
something known to exist or to have happened: Space travel is now a fact.
3.
a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true: Scientists gather facts about plant growth.

Do I even need to elaborate on this? I mean, you could go by the only fact being "I think, therefore I am", but for practicality's sake I'm sure we could make acceptance for things that have been observed to occur. For instance, I know the sun will rise tomorrow because we still haven't frozen solid.
 
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I do agree to an extent what this guy is saying; like we shouldn't ban things completely just because their offensive to some people ('if you don't want to see something, don't look at it' sort of thing) and a girl raping a guy is just as bad as a guy raping a girl. I guess that if we want to be entirely equal, instead of trying to ban everything that's offensive (which would be almost everything), we should stop getting so up-in-arms about offensive things. Unless it's, you know, intended to directly insult someone.

Although, this guy might not be trying to get his point across in the best way...

Also, wow, you people should stop arguing about atheism and words. One would think the point of this thread would be to discuss what the videos are about, not bring up a dispute on atheism or the meaning of atheism just because this guy is atheist. This entire thread is off-topic. Since it would be hypocritical if I put in my own opinion on this, I'll just shut up about it.

And please, if you notice that I used a word in a way that isn't exactly, positively, absolutely correct, don't get on your high horse about it...
 
I just plain cannot understand how anyone can defend that. There are plenty of things that are Not Okay but that could just be said/done as a result of ignorance or denial or stubbornness or some kind of understandable human emotion, but this is so far beyond an understandable response to anything that I just. What. I don't even mind if you're a fan of some things the guy does, but you just have to recognize how utterly psychopathic that is.

And yet there are people who don't and are going "you just have no sense of humour!!" and... guh.
 
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