Faith also applies to atheism

Author: Benjamin

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#1
Benjamin
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Definition of faith according to the dictionary:

colloquial: "Trusting in something or someone"

religious: "Strong belief in God or religious doctrines, not based on proof but rather religious apprehension"


This definition can be showed to have strange conclusions.

1. Intelectual theism is based on faith, while atheism is not
2. Faith is a strong belief in God or religious doctrines, not based on proof but rather religious apprehension
3. Intelectual theism is based on a strong belief in God based not on proof but rather religious apprehension

In other words: Intelectuaul theism is based on a strong belief in theism based not on proof but rather religious apprehension




This definition makes all non-atheistic world views seem ungrounded and religious

How can we accept such a definition to exists?

If an intelectual raised an atheist and after a lot of reasoning becomes a theist (not religiou), his world view would be based on "FAITH"
While an atheist raised to believe in randomness or a multiverse, would be considered as "free-thinking, not relying on faith but instead proof"

This attitude brought about by the definition is not a correct perception of neither people nor ideas.
Gods existance is a binary question with only non-emperical evidence from both sides. So both a convicted athesit and a convicted theists use the same"faith-thing-ish"
If one were to be "free thinking, not relying on faith but instead proof", one would be an agnostic not an atheists.




Another argument is that God is kind of like the tooth fairy, something that must not exist but is instead "inserted" into ones world view. In other words, believing in God is not the same as not believing in God with regards to this "faith-thingy". But that assumption, that God is an addition to a world view is not correct:

The basis of a world view:
1. The logic law of causality: every effect has a cause
2. The big bang is an effect which requires a cause

We know that the ultimate reality exists, since "something" must have always existed. This thing could be either personal or impersonal. And the difference between theoretical theism and atheism is not their view of facts, but their interpretation of it. If miracles were documentered the two groups would most likely be split regarding the validity of the doccuments, based purely on their differing world views. Thus we can call this "faith-thingy" the assumption that is regarded as ultimately true, and which other truths or facts are interpreted around. THis would be a much more fair way to talk about world views, as it does not label one group as religiously apprehended people that have no proof to back up their views.

God is not an "addition" to a world view, he is the basis of it. Thus, if God exists the entire world view of all Christians, Jews, Muslims and so forth would collapse. The other way around, if God does exist then all atheistic world views like the multiverse, the infinite universe, the primacy of energy etc would collapse.




Why is are only non-atheistic world views based on faith. Simply put, because atheists want it to be so.

"Those that controll language, controlls ideas, and those that controll ideas, controlll people"
Therefore I want to challenge the basic assuption that only "positive claims" require evidence in order not to be based on faith.

We should have a new word, or change the definition:

Faith-thingy = "The basic lens a man believes in and bends his world view around"

This thing could just as easilly have been called Faith.



Thus I believe any claim or answer to a question not answered (the ultimate reality), should be based on "faith-thingy", not only the positive ones.

Example:

Does a the mind objectively exist as a single thing?

"YES requires faith, no requires no faith" - is this statement honest or true to the nature of the question at hand? I think not!
 



#2
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@Benjamin
Except you are completely biased in this question. Why is it that someone can believe in an agent only through faith? Technically speaking - you have to have some level of confidence about anything you see (due to the whole solipsist thing), so in that regard you're kinda right, in any other you are incorrect. After you presume that we share a reality, and that logic works, nothing else has to be assumed. People do not have "faith" in science. That's what someone who isn't literate in science would say, whenever something is demonstrated, whenever something has predictive  is whenever it is scientific, or whenever the evidence points to a conclusion. Now - that isn't to say that people can only become an atheist through that process, plenty of Theist have claimed that the reason they believe is because of science. Now you can try to say, "Well no they don't." Well you can't read minds. So no, you have no room to say that. Your problem is like a false dichtomy but its not a dichtomy instead of two things its one, yes, atheists can believe that no god exists through faith, but they can not lack a belief in god through faith... that's not how claims work. Every time you claim, "But that makes no sense" that is your own bias talking, and the "logic" you provide proves that. You don't have any actual logic, just "that doesn't make any sense.." 
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#3
Benjamin
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You assume Atheism is "lack of faith" in God

You claim that atheists "lack faith" in God.

Lack of faith:

1    an insufficiency, shortage, or absence of something required or desired  
2    something that is required but is absent or in short supply  

If that were the case, then Atheism is the state of not having enough faith in God, making many religious people atheists.

No, atheism is realy the belief in this claim: "God does not exist", thus, lack of faith would make an atheist doubt God nonexistance.

Lack of faith makes people agnostics, not atheists.


Analyse this example:
  • I lack faith in the existance of objective morality
  • I am an amoralist
As the example clearly showed by ridiculing the idea, lack of faith does not make anyone have a strong opinion about anything.

#4
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@Benjamin
"-a" means not/without. if one is without theism, they are an atheist. You are an atheist to thousands of gods. We just believe in one less god than you.
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#5
Benjamin
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What do you mean?

First off all, most "gods" were just a stronger "human" thing, they got babies and married, effectively making them "created", they were created by something else, the ultimate reality.

And again the ultimate reality is either Personal (GOD) or impersonal (not God)

Theists have faith that the ultimate reality is Personal

Atheists have faith that the ultimate reality is not personal.


"I lack faith in climate change. There is evidence, but I do not trust science. I do not have any faith."
Do you disagree with the logic of this statment? 
You will probably say there is evidence of global warming. Its true, but there is also evidence for God. Denniers of both need faith.

A has two meanings, which often melt together:
  • Without 
  • The oposite of 
Amoral is both without morality and the opposite of morality, because lack of morality is the definition of being amoral.


The point is, lacking faith in theism, makes you a doubting theist or an agnostic, not an atheist.

Do you believe one cannot have faith God does not exist? Why not?

#6
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@Benjamin
You assume Atheism is "lack of faith" in God

You claim that atheists "lack faith" in God.
I do no such thing, you assume that all Atheists have a faith for their disbelief in god or lack of belief in god, I simply reject the premise as something you can't possibly know. I claim that atheist do not believe in god, in a way, yes they can lack belief in god, but that is presuming that a god exists, which you haven't demonstrated. Both of these statements show how biased you are.


Lack of faith:

1    an insufficiency, shortage, or absence of something required or desired  
2    something that is required but is absent or in short supply  
That's lack, not lack of faith



If that were the case, then Atheism is the state of not having enough faith in God, making many religious people atheists.
That is incorrect, again, you are assuming god to exist, but from an atheist's perspective, there is no one to have faith on in the first place. Your entire claim palace is a non-starter. And again, if you were to use that framing it would be "a total lack of faith in god to the point of believing god to not exist" which is not at all the same as what you are trying to compare that to, that is a false equivalence. 


No, atheism is realy the belief in this claim: "God does not exist", thus, lack of faith would make an atheist doubt God nonexistance
That's not how that works, you don't need faith to not believe in a god(s), there are tons of reasons to not believe in gods, from the logical contradictory nature of god(s), to the impossibility of anything supernatural in a natural world, to the fictitous ways of religion throughout all of times, to emotional trauma. Your argument is a non-sequitur, that means your premises do not logically lead to your conclusion, you are making an invalid argument.


Lack of faith makes people agnostics, not atheists.


Analyse this example:
  • I lack faith in the existance of objective morality
  • I am an amoralist
I never claimed that, and again, your bias is showing, I never claimed that "a lack of faith is what makes atheists" I said its a way that there could be atheists, but your rhetoric is so uninformed that there is no logical thread,  I do not "lack faith in objective morality" I know it does not exist through syllogism. And you aren't necessarily an amoralist because you don't believe in objective morality, you can be a subjective or relative moralists like I am. Your example doesn't even work.


As the example clearly showed by ridiculing the idea, lack of faith does not make anyone have a strong opinion about anything.
Your entire argument is a straw man, as you were the one that claimed atheists to have a "lack of belief in god" I never claimed that, I simply said you were wrong. This entire tirade has nothing to do with my response, how about you make a proper rebuttal this time?
#7
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@Benjamin
Prefix "-A" has three meanings, but the one that is relevant to atheism is the meaning "not/without"

Can you demonstrate that the "ultimate reality" even exists? Because you're talking about causes of the big bang, but time words like "before" have no meaning when t=0 (the point at which spacetime are converged into a point with infinite curvature.) 

Also, even if you could empirically prove there was a cause, that doesn't indicate that the cause is a god. 

Your argument relies on redefining words to construct a straw man "atheism." Then you posit that strawman against your personal belief that a god exists, and project your own religious faith onto that straw man. Your whole argument is a fallacy on top of a fallacy. Straw man on top of false equivalence on top of projection.


#8
oromagi
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This definition makes all non-atheistic world views seem ungrounded and religious
seem?

While an atheist raised to believe in randomness or a multiverse, would be considered as "free-thinking, not relying on faith but instead proof"
randomness is just an assertion that no pattern has been discerned.
Anybody who asserts that the multiverse theory is true based on present evidence is making a "faith-based" assertion. Faith is belief in spite of the absence of proof.

Gods existance is a binary question with only non-emperical evidence from both sides. 
What is the non-empirical evidence for God?

Lexico.com is  an abridged, free version of OED.  I'm comfortable sticking with the Oxford definition.

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#9
Benjamin
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Can you demonstrate that the "ultimate reality" even exists? Because you're talking about causes of the big bang, but time words like "before" have no meaning when t=0 (the point at which spacetime are converged into a point with infinite curvature.) 
Yes:
  • I exist
  • I did not exist in the past
  • I came to be at some point
  • My created had a cause
  • My creator had a cause
  • My creators' creator had a cause
  • Etc
  • We only have two options:
    • An infinite array of caused causes
      • Still, a "reality" in which to cause something is needed
      • That "reality" must have been eternal
    • A cause that did not have a cause
      • That "reality" must have no cause
      • That "reality" must have existed infinitely before becoming the first cause
      • That "reality" must have been able to choose to create


We can call that first "reality" = the ultimate reality, the reason something exists.
As you can see, I clearly have evidence backing my point.



I'm comfortable sticking with the Oxford definition.
Yeah, me too.

    faith
     noun
    /feɪθ/
     
     
  1. [uncountable] faith (in somebody/something) trust in someone's ability or knowledge; trust that someone or something will do what has been promisedI have great faith in you—I know you'll do well.We've lost faith in the government's promises.Her friend's kindness has restored her faith in human nature.He has blind faith (= unreasonable trust) in the doctor's ability to find a cure.
  2. [uncountable, singular] strong religious beliefto lose your faithFaith is stronger than reason.Topic Collocations

  3. [countable] a particular religionthe Christian faithThe children are learning to understand people of different faiths.
  4. [uncountable] good faith the intention to do something rightThey handed over the weapons as a gesture of good faith.
Then I suppose intellectual theism is not based on faith.



I see that the definitions are bent by anyone that wants to "prove a point", as the definition I showed clearly is anti-theistic by only comparing that to religion.
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#10
Benjamin
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@oromagi
@Sum1hugme
@Theweakeredge
seem?
"Makes it obvious" - without it being true


Prefix "-A" has three meanings, but the one that is relevant to atheism is the meaning "not/without"
Why? So that atheists can have their own world views, but not "rely on faith".

I will just copy-paste my argument, you said nothing against it:

You assume Atheism is "lack of faith" in God

You claim that atheists "lack faith" in God.

Lack of (not faith - sorry)

1    an insufficiency, shortage, or absence of something required or desired  
2    something that is required but is absent or in short supply  

If that were the case, look at this:

  • Atheism is the lack of faith in God
  • Atheism is the insufficiency, shortage or absence of something required or desired, faith in God
  • Atheists require or desire faith in God
  • Theists might doubt God without wanting to, thus being both theists and atheists at the same time

How come the dictionary contradicts itself all the time? Because words carry no meaning outside of context.
That is why I could define the definitions so they fitted the situation - Sum1hugme



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#11
Benjamin
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I have no problem with atheists not believing in God,

but when they still believe in the same things I believe in:

  • The mind
  • Morality
  • Rationality and reasoning
  • Democracy
  • Human rights
  • etc
Clearly, if any person believes in these things, they have a world view based on the same "strong belief without evidence" that I believe in.
But they are supposedly "free-thinking" purely because their world view is based on more recent literature.

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#12
Benjamin
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What is the solution.
Today, many people in Norway people become atheist purely because they don't want to be labelled as "indoctrinated" and their ideas discarded.
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@Benjamin
Definition of faith according to the dictionary:

colloquial: "Trusting in something or someone"

religious: "Strong belief in God or religious doctrines, not based on proof but rather religious apprehension"
Dictionaries are a poor source of learning about culture. In particular, the culture that launches any specific language. Culture begets language, not the other way around. So, why should I trust a lingual meaning for a term that is a cultural, not a lingual phenomenon? Rather than your lexico, I more fully trust the OED, but even in its interpretation of "faith," it holds no candle to Paul's meaning offered in Hebrews 11: 1: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."  Two terms in that definition yours totally denies: substance and evidence. Your definition offers "no proof." Excuse my French, but that's bullshyte. Lest you think I'm just pulling a verse out of context, I invite you to read the entire chapter, which explores the rationale of that beginning definition. Your definition from lexico assumes that all proof is derived essentially from our five senses via the empiric method. Who says we are limited to five senses? If we are the paragon of animals [Shakespeare, Hamlet], and we are, why are we so limited when other animals express more than five? The answer is, we, too, have more than five senses. I'll call faith one of them; faith that aligns with Paul's definition and provides "substance" and evidence." Faith is greater than mere belief, because it demands you act on what you believe to prove it to yourself. After all, how do you prove to others your experience in five senses? Well, you can also demonstrate a sixth, a seventh, and probably more. One just needs to know how to do it. But, argue for your limitations; they're yours.
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#14
Benjamin
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Yeah, I totally understand.
But it was written from the perspective of Christianity.
Nothing wrong about that, just that atheist do not accept the idea of "substance, evidence or proof" as even possible. That's why they wrote their definition into the dictionary.
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@Benjamin
You ignored almost all of my points (thank you for including the lack of as the definition there), but I don't see an answer to my arguments in this response.
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@Benjamin
You haven't even tried to address your fallacies.
#17
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@Benjamin
Also, it's not that atheists invented a term and definition so that they can be godless. There's just people who don't believe in god. Those whose understanding of the world does not include a supernatural god are not theists. Well what's a better way of saying "not theists"? A-theist, because a means not. It's just a way of shorthanding the demographic of non-believers.
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@Benjamin
If you redefine atheist to actually mean deist, or anything other than one who does not believe in god, then the term is no longer describing the people it originally did. If you redefine atheist to mean something else, then the non-believers will just find a different word. 
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Benjamin
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Your entire argument is a straw man, as you were the one that claimed atheists to have a "lack of belief in god" I never claimed that, I simply said you were wrong. This entire tirade has nothing to do with my response, how about you make a proper rebuttal this time?
What is an atheist then? Clearly, not simply a person that "lack faith in god".


Atheism is in the broadest sense an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.
This part cut from wikipedia proves my point. Atheism is "absence of faith", in other words, whatever life philosophy they have, it must be based on proof not faith.

It is ridiculous to call ALL other world view than an atheistic one: "Strong belief in God or religious doctrines, not based on proof but rather religious apprehension", while all atheists are "absent of faith". Why cannot the definition of faith just be "A strong belief in a certain life philosophy"? Because then atheists would also be included. And we cannot have atheism on a level playing field with theism or any other philosophy, can we?
#20
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@Benjamin
Does the mind objectively exist as a single thing?

An atheist would say, I don't know.


I am an atheist because I do not know if a GOD does or does not exist.....Some might refer to this as agnosticism...But by definition agnostics believe/have faith...Whereas atheists  lack belief/have no faith....Atheists are not "convicted".

I think that you might be confusing Atheism and Agnosticism.

And you base a lot on definition...And so I would therefore suggest that "convicted" is wholly inappropriate....Unless you are suggesting that all theists and atheists have been found guilty of something.
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#21
Benjamin
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Convicted? Executed? Or more apropriately, impeached.
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@zedvictor4
So much for a guy that doesn’t like labels, but at least your coming to terms with who you really are.
#23
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@Tarik
Hi Tarik.

I don't like labels, but I am aware of them....And I'm also aware of their definition.


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@zedvictor4
Then what’s not to like?
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@Benjamin
To have faith is to believe in something upon a) insufficient evidence or worse and more commonly so, b) irrespective of evidence. It is impossible to have faith in atheism, for the very definition of atheism is to have a lack of faith. 
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#26
Benjamin
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@Wagyu
All people base their world view on faith, even atheists.

For example, even atheist have oppinions on:
  • Morality
  • Philosophy
  • Meaning
  • etc

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@Benjamin
One of the many reasons the atheist position baffles me.
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Benjamin
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@Sum1hugme
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@Wagyu
As a person that wants to seek truth, I must amit:

Atheism is not based on anti-faith or faith.
I could agree on calling Atheism "lack of faith", because it is applied scepticism.
But then no atheists would really exist, as all humans have a world view, and all world views require faith.
I think the word "atheist" is correctly defined as you said "absence of faith in God".

But I still cannot accept the definition of faith as:
"Strong belief in God or the doctrines of a religion, based not on proof but rather religious apprehension."
It seperates people into two groups: those that believe in religion (philosophy with stories) and those thate believe in philosophy. Why?
We need a word to describe "faith - just extended to everyone"

Also, what is the definition between an agnostic and an atheist really, if they both lack faith in God, and both have a world view without proof.

I found this word:
Antitheism, sometimes spelled anti-theism, is the opposition to theism. The term has had a range of applications. In secular contexts, it typically refers to direct opposition to the belief in any deity.
I have changed my mind about atheism, but not "faith".
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#29
Benjamin
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@zedvictor4
But by definition agnostics believe/have faith...Whereas atheists  lack belief/have no faith....Atheists are not "convicted".

I think that you might be confusing Atheism and Agnosticism.
I think we are all confused, at this point.

Agnostics have faith in this statement: "all faith is in vain, there is no way to know what is right, and as such, no faith is deserved for any idea (regarding the ultimate reality)"
#30
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@Tarik
Mutual bafflement is the ongoing contention....Nothing really baffling about that.