Why exactly does Atheism not have burden of proof?

[Jarsa]

Theists can say all sorts of silly and definitionally false shit.  So what.  Atheism has no burden of proof because nothing can be proven.

I agree with you. Atheism cannot be proven. It was my mistake to say "burden of proof" in the thread title. I think all you need is a reason to be an atheist. (Absence of evidence is evidence of absence). If in a hypothetical scenario, where I had absolutely no evidence for or against god, I would be agnostic.

[Rhythmcs]

-and yet you're still wrong. An atheist might have a reason, and might not. Not everyone thinks about this stuff as much as we do on the boards. None of us thought about it that much at some point in our own pasts, and if we did we would not have been thinking rationally in the strictest sense of that term. We can be agnostic atheists, gnostic atheists, and even other-than atheists. Maybe it's just a persons intuition. You'll hear that on the other side of the aisle as well. No proof, nothing explicitly rational or specifically empirical. They just know it in their bones.

[Jarsa]

I'm sure they exist. I just don't think their position is valid if they don't have a reason.

[Rhythmcs]

Wonderful, and since they exist, and since they do hold a particular position..even if you think they're wrong..the term applies and accurately describes this content you disagree with them about in the first place. The term agnostic atheist and gnostic atheist both describe -them- not the fucking world in some super ultimate knowledge contest. Where's that cogito again?

I think you're already heading in the wrong direction if you think that logical validity constrains human beliefs. You're going to see all sorts of weird little blips, just like this thread..if you follow through on that one.

[Deesse23]

How do you decide what is actually true (and thus known) and what you consider to be true (believe)?

As for the actual truth, I simply don't know

Then you dont know and cant know even cognito. Then you cant know ANYTHING, EVER, accirding to YOUR philosophy/ epistemology.

Of what use is an epistemology that tells you, you cant kniw any.thing.ever!!???

Meanwhile, i can know things, not because i believe them 100%, but because i can DEMONSTRATE THEM to you. i neither do 100% believe nor 100% know, ever, but my beliefs and knowledge evolve over tine and adapt and improve, because of EVIDENCE i gather and PRESENT to anyone, or show them how to demobstrate to themselves.

Do you now see how completely useless your solipsism is? it IS navel gazing. An utter waste of everyones time.

[Vorpal]

Who cares?  Atheism doesn't have a burden of proof because nothing can be proven.

Nothing really matters, anyone can see.  Nothing really matters to me.

[Jarsa]

What term, atheist? Sure. Agnostic atheist? Same thing.

[Jarsa]

As for the actual truth, I simply don't know

Then you dont know and cant know even cognito. Then you cant know ANYTHING, EVER,  accirding to YOUR philosophy/ epistemology.

What? I do know that cogito is real, because it doesn't need me to make any assumptions.

Of what use is an epistemology that tells you, you cant kniw any.thing.ever!!???

Meanwhile, i can know things, not because i believe them 100%, but because i can DEMONSTRATE THEM to you. i neither do 100% believe nor 100% know, ever, but my beliefs and knowledge evolve over tine and adapt and improve, because of EVIDENCE i gather and PRESENT to anyone, or show them how to demobstrate to themselves.

Yeah, that's how I form beliefs too. I just don't call it knowledge.

Do you now see how completely useless your solipsism is? it IS navel gazing. An utter waste of everyones time.

I never claimed solipsism is some super pragmatic philosophy. It's just what's true.

[Rhythmcs]

Like a bot stuck in a linguistic loop.

[Jarsa]

Like a bot stuck in a linguistic loop.

You're calling me a bot? You just spammed "Atheism has no burden of proof because nothing can be proven." for 2 pages.

[KingEric]

Then you dont know and cant know even cognito. Then you cant know ANYTHING, EVER,  accirding to YOUR philosophy/ epistemology.

What? I do know that cogito is real, because it doesn't need me to make any assumptions.

Of what use is an epistemology that tells you, you cant kniw any.thing.ever!!???

Meanwhile, i can know things, not because i believe them 100%, but because i can DEMONSTRATE THEM to you. i neither do 100% believe nor 100% know, ever, but my beliefs and knowledge evolve over tine and adapt and improve, because of EVIDENCE i gather and PRESENT to anyone, or show them how to demobstrate to themselves.

Yeah, that's how I form beliefs too. I just don't call it knowledge.

Do you now see how completely useless your solipsism is? it IS navel gazing. An utter waste of everyones time.

I never claimed solipsism is some super pragmatic philosophy. It's just what's true.

Do you 'know' it's true?

[Jarsa]

Yes. Because cogito is the only thing that doesn't need me to make assumptions.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, it may be. But no one lives life on absolute proofs. If I want to live a decent life, I have to assume that I am not hallucinating, and the reality I live in is real. Assuming that, I can look at the lack of evidence and say I think god doesn't exist.

Which rather impugns solipsism as a meaningless epistemology, given that it cannot demonstrate any facts about the world. Your cogito needs to exist somewhere, but a solipsist will be logically unable to learn the slightest bit about that somewhere without appealing to evidence that may well be bullshit.

[Rhythmcs]

-and cogito is telling people that you're wrong. Even if you disagree with the validity of their positions..whatever you think that means....and whatever you think their position is.....that is still their position. Even if they are wrong...that is still their position.

So, no, agnostic atheism isn't just atheism or regular atheism, they aren't all gnostic atheists, who do make a knowledge claim, and gnostic atheists aren't insane. All of these adjectives are employed as clarification of ones own internal metrics and confidence levels as they relate to ones belief states, and specifically belief states about gods. There have been attempts to use some other set of terms to refer to all of this. Numbered systems or strongs and weaks - they haven't caught on, and are problematic in and of themselves.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The difference is that knowledge is apprehending truth, while belief is what is considered to be true. 

How do you decide what is actually true (and thus known) and what you consider to be true (believe)?

Easy-peasy, you use evidence which may or may not actually exist ... i.e., cherry-pick your points of argument.

[Deesse23]

I never claimed solipsism is some super pragmatic philosophy. It's just what's true.

Nope
In your last reply you admitted that you CAN NOT tell what is actually true from what you believe.

[Jarsa]

Which rather impugns solipsism as a meaningless ontology, given that it cannot demonstrate any facts about the world. Your cogito needs to exist somewhere, but a solipsist will be logically unable to learn the slightest bit about that somewhere without appealing to evidence that may well be bullshit.

What do you mean by "Your cogito needs to exist somewhere"?

[Jarsa]

How do you decide what is actually true (and thus known) and what you consider to be true (believe)?

Easy-peasy, you use evidence which may or may not actually exist ... i.e., cherry-pick your points of argument.

Read my reply to epronovost. I don't cherry pick.

[Jarsa]

I never claimed solipsism is some super pragmatic philosophy. It's just what's true.

Nope
In your last reply you admitted that you CAN NOT tell what is actually true from what you believe.

Yeah. Except I don't believe cognito, I know it. Because it doesn't depend on assumptions like all other beliefs.

[Jarsa]

-and cogito is telling people that you're wrong.  Even if you disagree with the validity of their positions..whatever you think that means....and whatever you think their position is.....that is still their position.  Even if they are wrong...that is still their position.

So, no, agnostic atheism isn't just atheism or regular atheism, they aren't all gnostic atheists, who do make a knowledge claim, and gnostic atheists aren't insane.  All of these adjectives are employed as clarification of ones own internal metrics and confidence levels as they relate to ones belief states, and specifically belief states about gods.  There have been attempts to use some other set of terms to refer to all of this.  Numbered systems or strongs and weaks - they haven't caught on, and are problematic in and of themselves.

Ok? Can my opinion not be that those people are automatically wrong?

[Rhythmcs]

Entirely full of shit, lol. Atheism has no burden of proof because nothing can be proven, and cogito fully supports and entails further clarification of ones own internal metrics and confidence levels in ones own belief states or premises.

[Thumpalumpacus]

-and cogito is telling people that you're wrong.

That's okay. He doesn't exist, there's no evidence he does, and if someone finds some evidence no one can tell whether it's actual Truthy™ evidence or solipsist hallucination.

So I'm comfortable just taking the occasional poke at his more egregious laughers.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Which rather impugns solipsism as a meaningless ontology, given that it cannot demonstrate any facts about the world. Your cogito needs to exist somewhere, but a solipsist will be logically unable to learn the slightest bit about that somewhere without appealing to evidence that may well be bullshit.

What do you mean by "Your cogito needs to exist somewhere"?

If there's no somewhere, there's no somewhere for your cogito to exist. Do keep up, this isn't rocket surgery.

[epronovost]

In real life, we cannot assume that the premises (the lack of evidence for god) is true, because everything could be a simulation.

That's also incorrect. It would be true within the bound and context of the simulation. For example, it's true that Homer is in love with Marge Simpsons. Neither of these characters are real; they are "simulated", but their love is as real as can be within the context of their story and quite central to it and our identification of these characters. 

The problem of last Thursdayism or other forms of solipsism is that the uncertainty they generate about the nature of nature itself is completely pointless to the question of nature. If the natural world we observe, experience and live in is a simulation, it doesn't change anything to the observations and experiences that it generates; it remains the things we experience. Solipsism makes an insightful observation on the nature of human knowledge or truth and our "epistemological quest" for them, but it's of no consequences to philosophical questions.   

But philosophical proof (as opposed to scientific proof) doesn't have room for assumptions. In that case, one cannot prove god does not exist without at least one assumption

Of course philosophical proof has room for assumptions. Philosophy itself is entirely based on assumptions, axioms and observation of the natural world. One cannot prove that god doesn't exist without assumption because god itself is an assumption as are proofs and rules of evidence as well as systems of logic.

For the second part, could you expand on that? I didn't understand why god is a logical contradiction.

Basically, a deistic god creates and order things prior to the existence of spacetime and causality which are necessary to create and order things. They possess a sentience despite having no spacetime, nor causality, nor matter nor energy to interact with making sentience impossible since sentience is defined by the interaction of such thing. It's about as contradictory as playing music with no sound or building a wooden cabin out of metal.

[Rhythmcs]

You know the real victim here are the poor pure agnostics. I've met maybe two in the course of my whole life. I say maybe because it's hard to tell. Definitely one, though. Just full throated positively asserted and completely okay with that confusion. He didn't really know whether or not gods existed or what he believed about them. A very introspective person. 35 years old..and so, basically a corpse. A hawaiin deeply into buddhism and ayurveda. He went awol for one month once and then just came back and got in line like nothing had happened. Attempts to discipline him were entirely pointless, as he genuinely did not understand what the fuss was all about and did pt with the calm of a hindu cow. The chillest e-1 I ever met. None of us believed that we could count on him to kill the other guy when our back was turned..but he was so endearing and had such a great way of disarming the numerous conflicts that arise between 19yr old adrenaline junkies that none of us could consider not taking him everywhere or letting the ncos drum him out. We'd get blackout drunk down in the hole while he pontificated on all things from his impenetrable fugue-state..sipping water and speaking softly......and we loved him for it.