Lady MagsJy,
I heretofore knight you JUST SPIRITUAL.
Namaste 
I just noticed this and I take back what I said.
One cannot just be spiritual since we are also biological organisms.
We don’t like to be labelled but at the same time I think we can be a bit conflicted or unreconciled. The labeling allows us to define who we are or allows us to be define by others. Well, not so much defined because who can really know us that much, including ourselves but the labeling acts as a mirror to show us something.
It is actually impossible for a human being to think in any way that is entirely free of any type of subjective interpretation
As what we term objective is not absolute objectivity as such but instead an acceptable level of intersubjective consensus
Only a machine can think absolutely objectively but human beings are not machines but biological organisms with minds of their own
You can be the most logical rational left brain thinking human being who has ever lived but you will not be just that and nothing else
On the question of discovering more about reality I simply study as much as I can with material that I determine is beneficial to me
So the books that I choose to read will involve a degree of subjective interpretation for I cannot read absolutely everything there is
Firstly because I am old so have limited time and secondly because I will not be able to understand everything as I have limited intelligence so do what I can
Of course these conditions also apply to everyone else as no one is immortal or omniscient although some will have more time or intelligence relative to me
surreptitious75
I agree with this. But most scientist do that best.
I may be mis-interpreting your words. For instance many people believe in a God ergo there is a God? You seem to be saying that there is “objectivity” within a number of people sharing the same thoughts and opinions.
I have a weird mind. What came to my mind as I read your quote were the Borg.
True and emotions too. The problem with us is that we tend to forget that we have minds of our own.
True. Again emotions get in the way but not so much with the most logical and rational left brain thinking person.
Beneficial in which way? Enjoyable and that which you already agree with/knowledge which appears to be “real” to you? Perhaps I am projecting here. 
Please explain though.
Only in relation to the intersubjective consensus of scientists after something has been subject to the rigours of the scientific method
I am not talking about anything beyond this because there would be far less rigour involved and a far greater degree of emotional bias
But scientists are trained to deliberately find fault in anything that they think may be true in order to counteract any bias of their own
Beneficial in the sense that I will gain new knowledge of the subject matter in question and that I will hopefully understand it at a deeper level too
I am interested in learning for the sake of it but it has a deeper significance in that an active mind is the best antidote against dementia in old age
I try not to have too rigid a world view because that can lead to dogmatism and at my age I have no real need for such intellectual rigidity
I find myself being very comfortable with different interpretations of various subjects such as history or physics or philosophy for example
My default position is to be emotionally detached but intellectually focused on all subjects which allows for as great a variety as possible
I think nothing of reading those whose world view is fundamentally different to mine for to not do so would be intellectually irresponsible
But I try not to focus on having a world view - certainly not one which is set in stone - because all opinion is merely one point of many on a spectrum
I do not think any opinion I have on anything at all is of any great value and they only exist as markers to give me some perspective and nothing else
At my age I am slowly learning to let go by making mental space for the inevitable which is merely another point on the spectrum and nothing else
And all I am doing in the meantime is keeping myself busy for the very brief period between now and my eventual transition into non consciousness
There are atheists and there is atheism but there is no such thing thing as atheist philosophy - that is not something that actually exists
Atheism is simply a skeptical position with regard to the existence of deity and nothing else - it is too sparse to be called a philosophy
You can philosophise just fine from premises that do not involve the existence of Aslan the Narnian Lion in any way, yet still understand what it is that people are thinking about when the character is brought up.
Talking about Aslan as an “Anaslanist” doesn’t make you an “Aslanist”, it doesn’t disturb your “Anaslanism” or the quality of your “Anaslanist” philosophies. You don’t invoke the real existence of Aslan by philosophising in terms that refer to him - you remain “Anaslanist” even if the topic is “Aslanist”, or “not Anaslanist”.
Such an argument as the one that the OP seems to be hinting would require that one’s beliefs, one’s philosophies and/or the quality of one’s philosophies are dependent upon what one is talking about at the time, and what one is able to understand of others’ beliefs.
If such an argument were the case, simply hearing about God would make you theist or at least a bad atheist, when you can clearly philosophise consistently from fundamental principles without any reference to God (or Aslan) - as you yourself presumably exemplify when you clarify how much of an atheist you are - and still understand what it is that theists are misunderstanding when they philosophise about God.
A good sign of intelligence is the ability to entertain beliefs without holding them yourself.
Atheists philosophising about how there is no God doesn’t make them theist or bad atheist philosophers, it’s a show of intelligence (as is philosophising about atheism as a theist).
Atheists - continue to not shut up!
Tbh. fundamentally, how aren’t theism and atheism not the same…? Both are unfalsifiable beliefs.
I always picture them as orbiting around each other, dully, forever.
Some games you win by burning the board, throwing the rules into the blender, punching everyone else in the face and slamming the door behind you. Everytime I see a new thread with god in the title I die a little.
Tab,
I think that the former IS a belief in God but the latter lacks any belief in God, Tab.
How can a lack of belief be the same as a belief?
Well, perhaps if the so-called atheist becomes so emotionally attached to his lack of belief in a God that it becomes more of an obsession, then I daresay if that becomes the case perhaps he is not really a full-fledged atheist.
I may be wrong here though. Humans are such complex creatures. Often we do not know our own minds.
Considering how they go after one another, I can picture them as being interchangeable dolphins and sharks.
Something about that sounded almost poetic to me, Tab.
Perhaps your little “mini” death means that you are not quite finished with your God problem.
(I will send you my bill).
But why do you think you die a little?
I agree with this. Scientists are cool in this way.
MagsJ wrote:
You are a free spirit who is touched by everything good and beautiful in the universe.
You are not bound up nor shackled by any kind of dogma.
I think that Maxfield Parrish had you in mind when he painted the below.
Stay with it!
Say I meet you in the street one day, with a pamphlet. It has REJOICE on the front in big shiny letters. The blurb reads "Tsathoggua is the one true source of all things and Aston Smith is its prophet. And here it is, isn’t it lovable…?"
Now, you look in my whirlygig eyes and see I absolutely believe its true.
I have a belief in Tsathoggua.
However, you, prior to meeting me, had no conception or knowledge of Tsathoggua whatsoever, and therefore had formed no beliefs about Tsathoggua either way because it’s impossible to think about things you don’t even know you don’t know about.
This is a ‘lack of belief’. An utter absence of belief.
Of course now though, I have introduced you to Tsathoggua, the one true source of all things… So now and only now, do you form a belief concerning its divine sourceness, very probably along the lines of “Tab is a loon and this Tsathoggua business is baloney.” You become an A-Tsathoggua-ist. Denying its greatness. The only difference is now you have a belief about Tsathoggua, whereas before you didn’t have any.
ie. believing god exists is a belief, a thing. And believing god does not exist is also a belief, a thing. They are both just opposing points of view, that revolve around one idea - god. And worse still, an idea that is impossible to prove, or disprove. 
Because anyone still debating god/not god really hasn’t gotten past level one of the great philosophy game. Which makes me have a sad.
A lack of theistic belief says nothing about what you do believe in - if you believe in anything at all (if such a thing is possible).
It is a term solely about what you don’t believe in, which in this case just happens to be God/gods.
What you do believe in as an atheist can range from literally anything to any combination of things, just not God/gods. Not believing in that one category of things (God/gods) is literally the only thing atheists have in common.
This is the standard “new-atheist” argument.
It pretty much wraps up the exact way in which “theism and atheism (are) not the same” exhaustively and sufficiently.
Theism is of course unfalsifiable, and probably intentionally so, and no doubt this isn’t even a problem for thinking/honest theists. Christian clergymen with any intellectual ability, who seem to have wrestled with all the issues with their religion over their lifetime don’t even bother to argue that their belief is “knowledge” - they admit it’s meant to be blind faith and that’s the whole point.
Likewise there isn’t going to be any evidence that could prove atheism, because that could only ever be evidence of absense, but there can be logical proof of atheism if some essential characteristic to God/gods is definable and logically contradictory with something that is necessary.
My proof that God doesn’t exist defines this essential characteristic as being at least in part beyond human conception.
This is logically contradictory with the human ability to believe in anything that fully qualifies as God, because entirely within human conception nothing can ever fully qualify as God i.e. something that is at least in part beyond human conception.
The conclusion necessarily follows that anything humans believe in is something less than God, that doesn’t qualify as such, and therefore isn’t God - making God-belief by humans impossible. God doesn’t and cannot exist to us.
But no matter how convinced I am of this syllogism, or how obsessed any atheist is with their lack of belief in God, of course they can still be a fully-fledged atheist. Any common ground between obsession and religion doesn’t make an obsessed atheist religious “and therefore not a fully-fledged atheist”. And the assertion of a premise that is proven false isn’t a belief in the existence of the subject of that premise.
At best, atheist argument posits a provisional existence of a definition of God, which they believe to be true, in order to disprove it.
If that makes atheists theists or “bad” atheists, then argument against anything is proof that it exists - therefore everything logically exists. Including logically impossible square circles.
At best, positing a premise awards “some degree” of existence, but in light of the above, it’s illogical for that to constitute belief in that something based only on that degree of “existence”.
People try to get sophisticated about atheism.
The actual argument is that god hasn’t been born YET!
Why? People are living any fragment of life against their will.
An omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator would make this impossible.
A belief that ‘notX’ is a true statement, especially when ‘notX’ is unprovable, is a belief, and to be honest, also an expression of faith.
If you have knowledge concerning something, whether material or immaterial, you automatically form beliefs about it.
Just as inaction is an action, disbelief is also a belief. This is not rocket-science.
I believe in the existence of god = I don’t believe that god does not exist.
I don’t believe in the existence of god = I believe god does not exist.
You do see the ‘believe’ in both of those right…?
Even a weasley “I do not believe that your conceptualization of god can exist” still equals the statement “I believe your conceptualization of god cannot exist.”
Allow me to turn around your turnaround.
What is this belief in ‘notX’? What is it that you believe in? A lack?
This certainly isn’t close to believing in that which is lacking in existence - it’s the opposite.
If the grammar of “belief that God doesn’t exist” is a belief, but it’s in the logic that when applied to God, results in a logical contradiction.
I am married, I have a piece of paper that tells me so. Joe is not married, as far as I know. He’s a slippery fish sometimes, hard to know for sure.
I believe I am married. I believe I am not single. In my lack of batchelorhood. I believe in a state of the world in which this is so.
I believe Joe is unmarried. That he is single. In a state of the world where he lacks a wife.
An atheist believes in a godless universe. In a state of the universe which has no god, nor requires one. ‘Lack’ implies an certain degree of unfulfilled necessity. Something an aetheist would argue against.
We believe in lacks all the time. I usually believe I have a lack of money, especially near the end of the month. 
I looked at that, but it doesn’t scan. The ‘if’ clause doesn’t go with the ‘but’ clause - Could you rewrite it a bit more clearly…? It’s early morning, my brain is too dumbz to process.
This is true by definition. In practice, new atheists you find on youtube arguing against theism or in articles online or in ‘newspapers’ or arguing with theists online do share, generally, large chunks of a belief system, often with very similar epistemologies, ontologies (and not just in the negative), modes of interaction, and even attributions of blame for a variety of ills.
So while a theist labeling atheism as a belief or belief system is wrong, they are also on to something in terms of what they encounter in media in discussion forums. And to simply, without qualitification, deny that there is a new atheist subculture with strong commonalities is a kind of falsehood by omission.
Sure, Joe presumably lacks a llama husband and tentacles as well as all sorts of other things (though you did say he was slippery so who knows). But the parenthesised aside, is that his “unfulfilled necessity”?
I’m also guessing Joe is “just being Joe” at that particular point in time, just as you being you has a particular piece of paper in your possession - neither of you are “lacking” until you come up with some “thing” that’s not part of who you are at the time, for the sake of being able to say you now “lack” something.
This just seems a little gratuitous to me.
We might as well say you’re lacking the single status and on those grounds Joe’s not lacking anything.
Belief in a lack doesn’t say anything, except in the context that something irrelevant to your beliefs comes up just so you can say “not that”, in exactly the same way as theists “lack” the first principles that Atheists A, B and C (etc.) have.
Let’s say atheist D believes in “Secularism” - just to frame some kind of belief that an atheist might have (but doesn’t necessarily have) as opposite to something he “doesn’t have”/lacks (which posits something merely to then say “not that”). We might as well then say that “Asecularists” are bad theists and let Faust redo this thread in those terms instead…
This whole “belief in a lack” just doesn’t fly.
Therefore atheists not shutting up is perfectly fine.
My phrasing is always dodgy at least in parts it seems, especially if I just bash something out.
What I meant was something more like this:
If the grammar of “belief that God doesn’t exist” is a belief, then such a belief is merely in logic, such that when said logic is applied to God, it results in a logical contradiction.
Still unwieldy probably, but hopefully it at least scans now.
Yeah, it’s a good argument - can’t really argue against literal definitions.
Yeah sure, in practice many atheists probably have very similar beliefs in the same way that in practice Christians of all kinds have similar enough beliefs to all go under the same umbrella despite having various kinds of disagreements with one another about what Christianity is. But the theory rather than practice is important, because not only does it define atheism properly (by definition as you correctly say) it also allows for atheism to apply just fine to all the atheists that don’t have these very similar beliefs. That’s important, especially when “what’s usual in practice” is being used against atheism.
So yeah, theists are “on to something” in their observations of general beliefs that atheists have in practice, but to only look that far as they so often do is lazy.
More accurately, “there is a newish subculture of people with similar enough beliefs, who also happen to be atheist and it’s probably not that big of a coincidence that they are in practice”.
So it depends what kind of precision you’re after, I guess.
It’s sufficient for most people to lump all atheists in the same box and all theists “in the other box” as though you’re either in one or the other.
Personally I prefer maximum pedantry for maximum precision and insight - but that’s boring for “most people”. Hence why I have to come here to let loose on all you suckers 