Re: The logic of atheism

On 18 Mar 2006 08:29:41 -0800, "Paul Holbach"
<paulholbachDELETETHENAME@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Christopher A. Lee wrote:
"Paul Holbach" <paulholbachDELETETHENAME@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Many non-believers hide behind "weak" atheism because they think this
would shield them from any burden of justification on their part. They
consider their kind of atheism a free lunch.

Why invent falsehoods as ad hominem reasons for your misinterpretation
of honestly held positions that you can't even be bothered to try and
understand?

Frankly, I have no intellectual trouble at all in understanding
atheism, weak or strong or whatever.

What do you mean by "invent falsehoods"?

Was it some other Paul Holbach who accused many non-believers of
hiding behind weak atheism, when nobody does that let alone "because
it shields them from any justification on their part".

Those were your inventions. They were not true. Which makes them
invented falsehoods.

That it is not the case that many non-believers consider their weak
atheism a free lunch, i.e. that they think they do not have to justify
themselves at all?

None of the ones I've met. That sounds like your spin on the fact that
they have nothing to defend, and that you refuse to grant this.

The world does not revolve around the hypothetical object of somebody
else's deity belief, that's all there is to it.

Denying, believing etc are actions performed. They simply don't have
it as part of their paradigm to perform those actions about - no
matter how many people think they should.

And not for the reasons you invented for them.

Well, experience teaches me that this really is the case!

It's your own spin.

But is that really so? -- As a matter of fact the theists have
presented arguments in favour of God's existence. Even the so-called
weak atheist cannot simply ignore these, for it's his job to analyse
those theistic arguments and to refute them. Only if he succeeds in
doing so, the weak atheist's standpoint is rationally justified.

They're abstract logic exercises about something that isn't even part
of the weak atheist's worldview.

It's a matter of fairness to concede that there are sophisticated
theistic arguments (e.g. Platinga's Free Will Defense) which cannot
simply be brushed aside with a wave of one's hand.

Sigh.

It's STILL merely part of somebody else's religion. No different than
any other religious beliefs. There is simply no reason even to
consider it.

The weak atheist does not have to present arguments which positively
prove God's nonexistence, but what he's got to do at least is disprove
the theist's arguments.
In this respect weak atheism is not a totally free lunch.

Good thing it's just your straw man then, isn't it?

I didn't erect any straw man!

Then why say they were hiding behind it, and inventing ad hominem
reasons why you imagine they are?

My practical experience (as a "strong" atheist among the irreligious)
has taught me that there actually are many so-called weak atheists who
are intellectually dishonest insofar as they stubbornly refuse to
accept that they too bear some burden of justification, for if some of
the theistic arguments should turn out to be sound, one would no longer
be rationally justified in /not/ believing in God's existence.

All of which is your own deningrating spin. The only dishonesty I've
seen here is your own, due to your refusal to grant that weak atheism
isn't what you imagine - incidentally a problem I've seen other strong
atheists having.

For starters, there isn't even a coherent, valid, real world
definition of it as something that could be denied.

Think of the presumptions behind what you think we should do: why the
heck should we start off fromthe implicit presumption of something
that is onlypart of the theist paradigm, not ours?

Regards
PH
.

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