A good part of the problem is that fundamentalist religion spends a huge amount of time "studying" different religions and ideologies. This "study" isn't actually study. It's an inoculation against competing ideas in the form of reinforced strawmen. It's like strawmen on steroids. Part of what began to crack my fundamentalist exterior was when I began to study other religions outside of my normal course of Bible study classes. In other words--on my own. There was a great deal of difference between what the texts of these religions expressed and what I'd been told they claimed.
I didn't know what a "strawman" was back in those days. But I realized there was a discrepancy between what I was told X-group believed, and what X-group claimed they believed.
Still, the issue is that when a young person has been relentlessly taught: "This is what a Buddhist" believes, they think they actually know what a Buddhist believes. And if someone tells them otherwise, well, they're wrong--because I took a class on Buddhism, and I know what Buddhists believe! In fact, I see my old fundamentalist self often in people I dialogue with who express a misconception.
And I gave an example at this site before of a man who insisted I was saying X. I kept, over and over, saying "I'm not say X, I'm saying ABC." And finally I stopped the dialogue and said, "You need to go back through this exchange and find the quote where I said X. Please provide that to me, and then we can continue. In your next reply, if you don't show me a quote where I said X, then I'm not going to go on with this back and forth. I have never said X."
In his next reply, he actually said something close to "You're very tricky--you're a clever debater!" because he couldn't find anywhere I'd said X. And his conclusion, despite my many protests that I didn't believe X and didn't say X--was not that he had ignored me repeatedly--but that I had somehow "tricked" him into thinking I'd said X--when I never had. It never occurred to him that it was his own mind, damaged by indoctrination, that actually kept hearing X, where X was never said, and was even flatly denied.
[original post]
This certainly helps explain how and why so many evangelists manage to come up with the same lies and misconceptions all the time. If it sounds like they are reading out of the same playbook, it may be that they are literally reading out of the same book -- even if separated by vast distances, they may be using the exact same texts with the exact same misinformation. So long as this misinformation is consistent with all the other misinformation that believers are being fed, and so long as people don't make any effort to learn something on their own, the hoax will never be revealed.
This is why broader education about religion -- and by "education," I mean academic, scholarly education -- is probably one of the best paths to atheism (or at least more liberal theism) out there.
This can’t be helped by all the prominent Christian “ex-atheists” who appear to dish the dirt on what atheists really think.
If a Christian has read The Case For Christ, they’ll know from Strobel’s own testimony that he was an atheist because he just wanted to be mean to everyone. And everything was sorted out when he found Jesus for entirely rational reasons, and he suddenly became nice.
Atheists must be really terrible people, Strobel says so himself and he WAS an atheist. Why investigate atheists any further?
As a supreme irony, I went back to my original post to remind myself what all I had written. I found later comments–on of which was from a guy claiming atheists believe no god exists (rather than do not believe a god exists OR believe no god exists). If I had a nickel for every time someone dishonestly parsed that definition!
Seriously–if you look it up in several sources, you can’t help but find that it encompasses disbelief OR denial. And yet, magically, all these critics of atheism seem to only come across the sources that just happen to support denial only (or they only seem able to read far enough to get to denial, and not disbelief).
If it were seldom, I’d say it’s possible. But the sheer frequency with which they forget/neglect to give the full definition belies at least one mode of dishonesty that is pervasive in apologetics–the half-truth.
I have finally taken to simply calling anything that is presented with intend to deceive or mislead as “a lie.” I don’t care if the dictionary says “deny”–if it also says “disbelieve,” and you purposely withhold that in order to try and claim what you’re saying is not wrong (and it will fail if you use the full definition), you’re a liar.
Tracie wrote:
And, just like the discussion you refer to in your original comment, no matter how many times you correct them in a discussion they will STILL proceed as if they haven’t been corrected. They won’t make a case for why the definition of atheism that you’ve provided is wrong, they’ll just proceed as if you’ve not said anything.
It’s the common experience of internet arguments, though. I once got into an argument on I think it was the Atheist Bus Campaign on Facebook. Some Christian was going on about how “God” obviously exists or something on those lines.
Inspired by yourself and Matt D., I responded by asking what he meant by “God”, which is really how all arguments of this sort need to start. We need to know what it is we’re talking about, and the word “God” has so many different meanings that it’s largely meaningless, and nothing can be assumed about how anyone is using the word.
He responded by saying something like “You atheist dick, You know what I mean! I mean the Abrahamic God, obviously, you’re just pretending not to immediately know what I’m going on about!”
Of course, I pointed out that there are myriad interpretations of “The Abrahamic God”, those of all the different Islams, Judaisms and Christianities. I pointed out that there aren’t just two groups of people; “Abrahamists” who all believe in “The Abrahamic God”, which is a clearly-defined and unambiguously accepted idea, and “non-Abrahamists” who don’t believe that. It didn’t make any difference, and I was apparently just being a nasty atheist for daring to try.
As you say, you get to a certain point and it becomes hard to see such pig-headedness as anything other than deliberate.
Hi Mark:
I’m glad you gleaned something useful from AE. Just to note that I have had believers address “disbelief” when confronted with it. The problem is that you show them the full definition:
disbelief or denial
But they fail to acknowledge a difference between disbelief and denial. They try to argue that disbelief IS denial–to which I generally point out that the dictionaries/sources seem to be of the view they are not the same thing (or else why list both in the definition?)
They agree that if they say X, and ask if I believe them, and I say “yes,” that I’m stating that I accept their claim-X as true. So, they start with a clear agreement that “believe” is to accept a claim as true.
So you point out that not accepting the claim as true is then to “not believe,” “unbelief,” “disbelief,” or whatever they would like to label it—not believing. I have had people tell me that “disbelief” does not mean “not believe”—and they hunt down definitions of disbelief that are actually strong rejections of a claim. But again, this begs the question: If a dictionary uses disbelief AND denial as a definition—then obviously they’re not using disbelief as strong rejection—since that would be covered by denial.
When a person can bring themselves to say “disbelief” is not the same as “not believing”—that’s just ludicrous. If we weren’t discussing atheism, and I said to any man on the street, “If I don’t believe a thing—is that disbelief?” I’d get “sure.” Who would dream of arguing that? But they so need atheism to mean denial—in order to argue against it more easily—that they will go to ridiculous extremes. I have literally had people say to me, “I do _not believe_ a god exists, but I also do not _not believe_ a god exists.” When I point out to them that if they “do X”—they cannot also “not do X” at the same time—they get flummoxed. It’s like they didn’t really even SEE what they said until I pointed it out to them. Then they try to argue that while they see what I’m saying that’s not what they meant. So, I let them explain what they meant. Ultimately they end up trying to claim that belief is not accepting a claim as true, but rather sort of thinking something _might_ be true. Then I have to point out that believing something “might be” is not the same as believing it is. In other words, I believe there “might be” a Big Foot animal living in North America. Certainly I can’t say it’s impossible. But based on the evidence presented so far, I don’t believe there “is” a Big Foot animal living in North America. Also, it is logically possible to believe two opposite propositions _might be_, but it is logically impossible for me to believe two opposite propositions _are_. In other words, I admit my husband _might be_ unfaithful, and I admit he _might be_ faithful. I not only believe, but I actually _know_ both those situations are possible, and “might be.” However, I cannot believe he _is_ faithful and _is_ unfaithful at the same time. Nor can I believe he _is_ unfaithful and _is_ faithful at the same time. So, belief in what might be is not a substitute for believe in what is. And the claim in theism is that god exists, not that god might exist. A theist is one who believes a god exists, not one who believes a god might exist. And an atheist is one who does not believe a god exists or who believes no god exists—it has nothing to do with what one believes is possible, only with what one believes _is_.
So, I will say I’ve had them acknowledge the broad definition, but they are rarely (and in my personal experience, I can honestly say “never”) reasonable about it, even after they acknowledge it. Even when they agree up front that believe means to accept the claim as true, they will back out of that like they’re running from wildfire as soon as you start showing them that not accepting the claim as true is not believing, and therefore “atheism.” They simply aren’t going to let you take “deny” and broaden it to “not believe”–once they understand the implications of how their argument dies on that sword. But the truth is that if an argument fails to address honest and actual definitions–the argument should be dropped as flawed. But they’d rather hold to the argument and try to distort the terms–than acknowledge they were misinterpreting these words in odd ways in this one particular situation–of the atheist/theist dialogue.
That’s the real basis of this whole thing, isn’t it? I’m starting to think that the best way to view such timewasting semantic digressions in arguments with believers is to view them as tacit admissions that their beliefs aren’t supportable.
After all, if there were a god and it did exist they’d be able to tell us a bit about their god and provide reasons to think it exists. If such reasons were provided then disagreements about whether atheism is really disbelief or denial or whatever would be totally irrelevant. Either way it’d be unreasonable not to believe in a clearly-defined god whose existence had been demonstrated.
The very fact that arguments with theists so often end up in pointless semantic cul-de-sacs is a strong suggestion that they really know their views are ridiculous.
Mark:
I normally think of it in terms that Russell described it loosely:
Logically speaking a general claim “god exists” can’t be refuted (until there are specifics and I have some idea what “god” is supposed to represent). But from a practical reality standpoint of what is and what is not, it’s perfectly reasonable to assert something does not exist in the absence of any evidence for the existence of that item. In other words, if I say to you “Grab my notebook off the coffee table for me,” and you look and there is a mug and a coaster, but no notebook on the table, it is absolutely reasonable for you to respond, “There is no notebook on the table.”
Nobody would assert that simply from an absence of evidence you are being illogical to conclude the notebook isn’t there–simply because there is no evidence of a notebook on the table.
Such a response to your statement would be ludicrous in practical terms.
I hit “say it” too soon! I had more to say…
So, when I argue with theists, I do note I’m a strong atheist in terms of practical reality. I tell them:
“When I say there is no god, I mean that in the same way anyone else might mean ‘there are no gremlins.’ And if you take issue with my stance on god, due to the fact it is based on a lack of evidence of manifestation of any god, then you must show me how the general stance on gremlins is not also unreasonable based solely on the lack of evidence of their existence/manifestation. And if you think that it’s also unreasonable to claim there are no gremlins, then there isn’t much for us to discuss, because we’re not even aligned on the most basic principles for what constitutes reality.”
Since I hold it’s just as illogical to claim there are no gremlins as there are no gods, I recognize that using the statement “there are no” is a practical, not logical statement in regard to items for which we have no evidence of existence. And I’m fine with that. If a theist thinks it’s reasonable to claim “there are no gremlins”–in light of that being based on the lack of evidence of manifestation–then he should not disingenously feign to be ingorant of what I mean when I say “there is no god.”
Agreed. As I said in comment 5 above, these points are so elementary and so easy to demonstrate with simple analogies that such carping or special pleading about the semantics of the meaning of atheism, on the part of theists, should just be regarded as a tacit admission that they can’t support their stated beliefs.
I find that the best response to the standard “you’re really an agnostic, not an atheist” tactic or similar tactics is just to say “demonstrate that your god exists”, because once that’s done it renders all the semantic sludge that religious arguments often get bogged down in completely pointless. Once I’m convinced their god exists, whether or not I was “really” an atheist or an agnostic beforehand will be irrelevant. The fact that they don’t tend to do that and seem far more interested in pointless semantic special pleading I take as an admission that they themselves know their god doesn’t really exist.
Another interesting point is the spectre of absolute certainty, which you allude to in comment 6. As you say, in any other situation you can say “X doesn’t exist” and it’s not taken as absolute, dogmatic faith-based certainty on your part that X cannot possibly exist, it’s simply accepted that, to the best of your knowledge you feel reasonably confident that X doesn’t exist. But when an atheist says “god doesn’t exist”, it’s suddenly painted as this dogmatic statement of absolute certainty. As you say, I can say “god doesn’t exist” or “pixies don’t exist” without making dogmatic faith-based statements of absolute certainty or compromising the principle of open-minded scepticism.
This also applies to other questions that theists will ask; questions like “How does your atheism provide meaning to your life” or “How does atheism help you tell right from wrong” or “How does atheism explain X”. It’s clear from any analogous example why these questions are nonsense: If they don’t believe in gremlins, why would they expect mere disbelief in gremlins to provide anything like what they’re expecting atheism, the disbelief in gods, to provide?
Mere theism, the belief in at least one interventionist god, doesn’t provide any of those things. Those things are provided by particular theistic belief systems and, for want of a better word, philosophies. And similarly, atheistic viewpoints and philosophies can provide such things for atheists. These are distinctions that are made time and again by atheists and which theists seem very good at ignoring.
There’s a problem with your notebook analogy, though. What if it’s an invisible transcendent existent notebook? You know, the kind in which you note down the results of games of chance played with invisible, transcendent, existent dice?