Is this what happens when someone tries to use bigger words than the nexy guy?

---

Is this what happens when someone tries to use bigger words than the nexy guy?

Yes it is.....and if you could do me and him a favor and tell her that the cellphone keeps going off....

It is seriously interrupting my engagement with your girlfriend....

Now kiss off, you wanker.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Octagon, I love your avatar...it is an example of a serious metaphysical and epistemoligical statement. Again. I am quite busy but I will answer your latest questions quite soon......

Do not fret....answers are coming.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Again here you have begged the question and are assuming that which you are trying to prove. Your predelictions toward these apparent prejudices wash away your arguments and is clearly seen..

I started off explaining my position, and I'm still not writing a formal logical proof. The first and only logic professor I ever had was woefully unprepared to teach on the subject (he was confounded by the Knights and Knaves puzzles). I since transfered from that school and never had the "free elective" to take formal logic after that.

The atheist requires no 'faith' to believe in 'no god' just as you don't require faith in other arenas of life. Else you would not be able to function on a day to day basis....(please don't resort to fencing with me here, we are both seeking veritas, no?)

Anyone who leaves his house is demonstrating some "faith" in humans and their institutions or else, as you say, it would be impossible to lead a normal life. Thus statements like "I have faith in our legal system." There is a fuzzy threshhold along the faith continuum, one wide side the faith is considered rational and on the other it is considered "blind faith." This threshhold varies per person and seems to roughly average out in groups... among a specific church's followers it is "rational" that Biblical teachings be applied literally to everyday life. I believe it is possible to live a completely rational life, but one would probably be living alone in the woods. In general society, it is rational to believe that an airplane will head toward its destination (accepting the calculated risk of an air disaster) because customer would not long patronize an airline that failed to meet this basic level of service. At least, that is what those with faith in market economies believe.

I am not attempting to build a straw man argument and play "gotcha" to force you into a category of "one who has faith." When dealing with laws penned by theists, the ability to point to a "personal faith" is a huge weapon. When making apples-to-apples comparisons between atheist views and theist views, it allows the atheist to map the theist views onto his own frame of reference then proceed to argue the traits without having to bring the whole argument to a halt and hashing out minutae of definitions.

5. Your quote---There are shades of meaning in "exists." I am using it in the sense of "describes something in reality."

Here is a grand contradiction...a thing either is or it isn't...even with quantum theory..but that is beyond our scope here. Your logic here is framented. You can't have a pick and choose reality on monday and a new set of laws on saturday. See your own assertions above about how firm the Universe is over light years and into the stars.

See what I said earlier about Tolkein's Hobbits. There is an entire category of US law that deals with things that don't "exist" in a tangible sense: intellectual property. You can patent an idea, copyright an expression of an idea, trademark a distinguishing characteristic, or protect knowledge with a trade secret. What all of these things have in common is that they are not normal consequences of any natural objects (you cannot trademark the clarity of bottled water nor patent the action of gravity).

Given this broader array of objects, ones that "exist" at some point in spacetime and ones that are described but do not "exist," one can now ascribe attributes to any particular religion's god just as one can ascribe attributes to a fictional character. When one says with certainty that "fairies do not exist," one can only make this assertion because he or she knows of a widely-understood set of attributes for "fairies" to seek out. It is therefore not correct to say that fairies have no attributes... rather there is nothing in reality that matches the attributes assigned to the symbol "fairies."

My understanding of your use of "exists" goes roughly like this:

Theist: "God is X, Y and Z."
Atheist: "If X was true, then A would be true, and we know that A is untrue."
Theist: "It's because we don't have the language to properly describe the X in God. But there's something X-ish about God."
Atheist: "But X is impossible for the following 11 reasons--"
Theist: "Forget X. We can agree that God is Y and Z, no?"
Atheist: "If both Y and Z were true, then B could not occur, but we know that B is true based on--"
Theist: "But God is Almighty and can will Y, Z and B to all happen at the same time."
Atheist: "Then X would be true. But we established that X isn't."
Theist: "You aren't listening. God is X, Y and Z because He's God."
Atheist: "But there is no X, and if you like I show you why there is no Y or Z either."
Theist: "God doesn't need X, Y or Z to be God. He's God."
Atheist: "So the argument is that God is God because God is God. Fascinating."

thus reducing the theist's god to a set of no agreed-upon attributes. However, humanity has about as much of a handle on the Universe's fundemental laws... some ideas about the concept but no agreed-upon attributes.

---

No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

I like this post of yours...and largely agree with it except for a few minor points. I will post more in a minute or 2.

Fundamentally speaking, I believe your systemology is flawed in the sense that you have a way of overcomplicating what should otherwise be simplistic.

There's a nice online 1 hour lecture I listened to last night (from my own school of philosophy) that I think would benefit you greatly.

Ordinarily I don't post my email here because it is a public forum. If you would email me perhaps we could arrange to have an online discussion on aim or msn messenger? I fear we are boring people to death in here...

brookerobert@hotmail.com

I have been busy today but will shortly provide a more comprehensive opinion of the posts you have made that are not yet responded to.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Octagon/Brooke:
Hey guys,
I haven't seen such sophomoric discussions on existential fodder as this, since I participated in them back in 1970.
If you both would just post bibliographies to cover your plaguristic statements, it would save all of us a great deal of time. Also, Logic IS fun. I enjoy confusing my undergraduate students with statements like yours. Please continue!

Entertainingly,
Leinad_12551

PS: If you would like to read an intelligent post(unlike yours, it has original thoughts) concerning the the biological processes needed for the 'Evolution Hypothesis' to function. Please follow the URL.....http://www.rae.org/FAQ02 This paper starts at the 'Logical Begining' of the 'Evolution VS Intelligent Design' debate. You know....amino acids and proteins and DNA. It is scientific rather than the more common philosophical debate on GOD




quote]

Again here you have begged the question and are assuming that which you are trying to prove. Your predelictions toward these apparent prejudices wash away your arguments and is clearly seen..

I started off explaining my position, and I'm still not writing a formal logical proof. The first and only logic professor I ever had was woefully unprepared to teach on the subject (he was confounded by the Knights and Knaves puzzles). I since transfered from that school and never had the "free elective" to take formal logic after that.

The atheist requires no 'faith' to believe in 'no god' just as you don't require faith in other arenas of life. Else you would not be able to function on a day to day basis....(please don't resort to fencing with me here, we are both seeking veritas, no?)

Anyone who leaves his house is demonstrating some "faith" in humans and their institutions or else, as you say, it would be impossible to lead a normal life. Thus statements like "I have faith in our legal system." There is a fuzzy threshhold along the faith continuum, one wide side the faith is considered rational and on the other it is considered "blind faith." This threshhold varies per person and seems to roughly average out in groups... among a specific church's followers it is "rational" that Biblical teachings be applied literally to everyday life. I believe it is possible to live a completely rational life, but one would probably be living alone in the woods. In general society, it is rational to believe that an airplane will head toward its destination (accepting the calculated risk of an air disaster) because customer would not long patronize an airline that failed to meet this basic level of service. At least, that is what those with faith in market economies believe.

I am not attempting to build a straw man argument and play "gotcha" to force you into a category of "one who has faith." When dealing with laws penned by theists, the ability to point to a "personal faith" is a huge weapon. When making apples-to-apples comparisons between atheist views and theist views, it allows the atheist to map the theist views onto his own frame of reference then proceed to argue the traits without having to bring the whole argument to a halt and hashing out minutae of definitions.

5. Your quote---There are shades of meaning in "exists." I am using it in the sense of "describes something in reality."

Here is a grand contradiction...a thing either is or it isn't...even with quantum theory..but that is beyond our scope here. Your logic here is framented. You can't have a pick and choose reality on monday and a new set of laws on saturday. See your own assertions above about how firm the Universe is over light years and into the stars.

See what I said earlier about Tolkein's Hobbits. There is an entire category of US law that deals with things that don't "exist" in a tangible sense: intellectual property. You can patent an idea, copyright an expression of an idea, trademark a distinguishing characteristic, or protect knowledge with a trade secret. What all of these things have in common is that they are not normal consequences of any natural objects (you cannot trademark the clarity of bottled water nor patent the action of gravity).

Given this broader array of objects, ones that "exist" at some point in spacetime and ones that are described but do not "exist," one can now ascribe attributes to any particular religion's god just as one can ascribe attributes to a fictional character. When one says with certainty that "fairies do not exist," one can only make this assertion because he or she knows of a widely-understood set of attributes for "fairies" to seek out. It is therefore not correct to say that fairies have no attributes... rather there is nothing in reality that matches the attributes assigned to the symbol "fairies."

My understanding of your use of "exists" goes roughly like this:

Theist: "God is X, Y and Z."
Atheist: "If X was true, then A would be true, and we know that A is untrue."
Theist: "It's because we don't have the language to properly describe the X in God. But there's something X-ish about God."
Atheist: "But X is impossible for the following 11 reasons--"
Theist: "Forget X. We can agree that God is Y and Z, no?"
Atheist: "If both Y and Z were true, then B could not occur, but we know that B is true based on--"
Theist: "But God is Almighty and can will Y, Z and B to all happen at the same time."
Atheist: "Then X would be true. But we established that X isn't."
Theist: "You aren't listening. God is X, Y and Z because He's God."
Atheist: "But there is no X, and if you like I show you why there is no Y or Z either."
Theist: "God doesn't need X, Y or Z to be God. He's God."
Atheist: "So the argument is that God is God because God is God. Fascinating."

thus reducing the theist's god to a set of no agreed-upon attributes. However, humanity has about as much of a handle on the Universe's fundemental laws... some ideas about the concept but no agreed-upon attributes.[/quote]

---

D Daniel

Show us your credentials. Not that it matters much. Logic stands on its own legs.

What have you to add to this? So far I've seen nothing...no statements, nothing.

edit--- spelling

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Using the term god for foundational laws does lead to some bizarre comparisons because of everyday connotations of the word. The vast majority of theists ascribe anthropomorphic traits to god which have no meaningful corresponding description in fundemental laws. These statements can have truth values, but they are so outside everyday experience that it seems silly to an atheist to even argue. (e.g., "The oak tree does not have a driver's license.")

OCTAGON.....
Again.....I am not concerned here. It is the chore of the the claimant to adduce evidence for what it is he believes in. I'm not employed to investigate ghosts, gremlins, aliens, mothmen, or whatever.

Let's just focus on simplicity here please? I understand your contemplations of fundamental forces implicated as a 'godhood'. Let us not forget that what we are discussing is also a sociological phenomenon. It is one that needs clarification and simplicity. There is no difference, logically speaking, whether these arguments come out of society or philosophers. (truth doesn't take votes)

I will disagree also about your physics, which I think are flawed. We can deal with this later. Most physicists, to my knowledge, acknowledge there is no 'zero point' in space for a body of matter to accumulate itself.

Looking forward to your next post as I have very much more to express.

Please email me using the above address. I rarely hand that out but am willing to argue until my face turns red. LOL

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

ps.....as far as the word 'faith' goes.....stop using it....it is vague and misleading. I have 'faith' my friend will pay me back 20$ but this is not what we deal with here........

One factual matter of 'faith' is simple....you asserted earlier that you desire to have us reconcile our definitional differences? Let us start here with this word.....

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Again here you have begged the question and are assuming that which you are trying to prove. Your predelictions toward these apparent prejudices wash away your arguments and is clearly seen..

I started off explaining my position, and I'm still not writing a formal logical proof. The first and only logic professor I ever had was woefully unprepared to teach on the subject (he was confounded by the Knights and Knaves puzzles). I since transfered from that school and never had the "free elective" to take formal logic after that.

The atheist requires no 'faith' to believe in 'no god' just as you don't require faith in other arenas of life. Else you would not be able to function on a day to day basis....(please don't resort to fencing with me here, we are both seeking veritas, no?)

Anyone who leaves his house is demonstrating some "faith" in humans and their institutions or else, as you say, it would be impossible to lead a normal life. Thus statements like "I have faith in our legal system." There is a fuzzy threshhold along the faith continuum, one wide side the faith is considered rational and on the other it is considered "blind faith." This threshhold varies per person and seems to roughly average out in groups... among a specific church's followers it is "rational" that Biblical teachings be applied literally to everyday life. I believe it is possible to live a completely rational life, but one would probably be living alone in the woods. In general society, it is rational to believe that an airplane will head toward its destination (accepting the calculated risk of an air disaster) because customer would not long patronize an airline that failed to meet this basic level of service. At least, that is what those with faith in market economies believe.

I am not attempting to build a straw man argument and play "gotcha" to force you into a category of "one who has faith." When dealing with laws penned by theists, the ability to point to a "personal faith" is a huge weapon. When making apples-to-apples comparisons between atheist views and theist views, it allows the atheist to map the theist views onto his own frame of reference then proceed to argue the traits without having to bring the whole argument to a halt and hashing out minutae of definitions.

5. Your quote---There are shades of meaning in "exists." I am using it in the sense of "describes something in reality."

Here is a grand contradiction...a thing either is or it isn't...even with quantum theory..but that is beyond our scope here. Your logic here is framented. You can't have a pick and choose reality on monday and a new set of laws on saturday. See your own assertions above about how firm the Universe is over light years and into the stars.

See what I said earlier about Tolkein's Hobbits. There is an entire category of US law that deals with things that don't "exist" in a tangible sense: intellectual property. You can patent an idea, copyright an expression of an idea, trademark a distinguishing characteristic, or protect knowledge with a trade secret. What all of these things have in common is that they are not normal consequences of any natural objects (you cannot trademark the clarity of bottled water nor patent the action of gravity).

Given this broader array of objects, ones that "exist" at some point in spacetime and ones that are described but do not "exist," one can now ascribe attributes to any particular religion's god just as one can ascribe attributes to a fictional character. When one says with certainty that "fairies do not exist," one can only make this assertion because he or she knows of a widely-understood set of attributes for "fairies" to seek out. It is therefore not correct to say that fairies have no attributes... rather there is nothing in reality that matches the attributes assigned to the symbol "fairies."

My understanding of your use of "exists" goes roughly like this:

Theist: "God is X, Y and Z."
Atheist: "If X was true, then A would be true, and we know that A is untrue."
Theist: "It's because we don't have the language to properly describe the X in God. But there's something X-ish about God."
Atheist: "But X is impossible for the following 11 reasons--"
Theist: "Forget X. We can agree that God is Y and Z, no?"
Atheist: "If both Y and Z were true, then B could not occur, but we know that B is true based on--"
Theist: "But God is Almighty and can will Y, Z and B to all happen at the same time."
Atheist: "Then X would be true. But we established that X isn't."
Theist: "You aren't listening. God is X, Y and Z because He's God."
Atheist: "But there is no X, and if you like I show you why there is no Y or Z either."
Theist: "God doesn't need X, Y or Z to be God. He's God."
Atheist: "So the argument is that God is God because God is God. Fascinating."

thus reducing the theist's god to a set of no agreed-upon attributes. However, humanity has about as much of a handle on the Universe's fundemental laws... some ideas about the concept but no agreed-upon attributes.

These things are called abstractions...fundamental concepts involving principles integrated into the human mind. All based in reality. I fail to see what the confusion is. Without these upper level abstractions how would we function? Above that, this is part of our nature and identity as humans. This is what is necessary for our survival just as a lion's teeth are necessary for its survival. We have our minds and our mind's abstractions...all that is necessary for us to place ourselves above the cockroach.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

I'm an agnostic myself. For the simple reason it takes just as much faith to be an Atheist as it does to be a Believer. :)
Forgive me if somebody's already trotted this one out. My head started to hurt about half way up this thread. :D

Ah yes..there it is. Well..defining faith as 'believing in something one cannot objectively prove' the Atheist surely does require faith.

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

Octagon/Brooke:
Hey guys,
I haven't seen such sophomoric discussions on existential fodder as this, since I participated in them back in 1970.
If you both would just post bibliographies to cover your plaguristic statements, it would save all of us a great deal of time. Also, Logic IS fun. I enjoy confusing my undergraduate students with statements like yours. Please continue!

Entertainingly,
Leinad_12551

PS: If you would like to read an intelligent post(unlike yours, it has original thoughts) concerning the the biological processes needed for the 'Evolution Hypothesis' to function. Please follow the URL.....http://www.rae.org/FAQ02 This paper starts at the 'Logical Begining' of the 'Evolution VS Intelligent Design' debate. You know....amino acids and proteins and DNA. It is scientific rather than the more common philosophical debate on GOD

Why so hostile?

---

I read enough of this post to know that I want to post that I'm an atheist and believe as per the definition that all religions are cults. All dogmas are based on faith and the lack of fact and can only be based on opinion.

Atheists simply do not accept a magical solution to the unknown because we believe that, eventually, we can figure it out for ourselves. Atheists do not believe in the eternal spirit in the individual sense. The difficulty in approaching the unknown and attempting to understand the unknown is having the ability to drop any preconceptions and see it for what it is. Preconceptions are all too pervasive in science without god in the equation. Often this is produced from popularized views through publications and graduate students being rushed through too quickly by their professors without taking the time to truly understand the fundamentals or develop individual thoughts beyond their professors. Thus science is bound by its own bias and by adding god to the equation, a solution is drawn up to include the biggest possible unknown. That unknown is god. Thus any solution that includes god is not a solution but has only confounded the solution since god then must be well defined and understood. Since god would be the most complex piece of any equation, it would be comparable to building the roof to a foundation that has yet been built.

---

TEAM
LL

Bingo......

I like your post

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

I'm an agnostic myself. For the simple reason it takes just as much faith to be an Atheist as it does to be a Believer. :)
Forgive me if somebody's already trotted this one out. My head started to hurt about half way up this thread. :D

Ah yes..there it is. Well..defining faith as 'believing in something one cannot objectively prove' the Atheist surely does require faith.

He requires faith in what exactly? Atheism isn't a philosophy. It is only an absence of belief in a positive.

---

Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

I read enough of this post to know that I want to post that I'm an atheist and believe as per the definition that all religions are cults. All dogmas are based on faith and the lack of fact and can only be based on opinion.

Atheists simply do not accept a magical solution to the unknown because we believe that, eventually, we can figure it out for ourselves. Atheists do not believe in the eternal spirit in the individual sense. The difficulty in approaching the unknown and attempting to understand the unknown is having the ability to drop any preconceptions and see it for what it is. Preconceptions are all too pervasive in science without god in the equation. Often this is produced from popularized views through publications and graduate students being rushed through too quickly by their professors without taking the time to truly understand the fundamentals or develop individual thoughts beyond their professors. Thus science is bound by its own bias and by adding god to the equation, a solution is drawn up to include the biggest possible unknown. That unknown is god. Thus any solution that includes god is not a solution but has only confounded the solution since god then must be well defined and understood. Since god would be the most complex piece of any equation, it would be comparable to building the roof to a foundation that has yet been built.

If it's Science you're persuing, it would seem to me you're bound to be an agnostic not an atheist. I myself lean toward the atheist side of the agnostic spectrum but, damnitall, we can't PROVE it either way.
Along the same lines, if someone were to assert 'there's an intelligent, humanlike race on the third planet in the Tau Ceti system, I'd have to say 'maybe', pity we can't know yet, do you have any evidence I can look at?

---

If you don't touch it, you can't break it.
;

I've read the bible. I went to church when I was younger, I went to the week long bible school at 3 different churches each summer as a kid. I knew many verses by heart. It was my choice, my parents weren't religious. I have yet to actually see compelling evidence. Ted Kaczynski wrote a manifesto. The government of the time of Jesus treated him (Jesus) the same way we treated the Waco incident with the Branch Davidians. I feel that the government might have been right about that one. Basically, what I'm saying is that I gave it a chance and came to the conclusion that there is no real compelling evidence that there is any god at all. Because of that there is no reason to be an agnostic, I've grown beyond that. I believe in the prehistoric cave paintings of spaceships in France and I believe in the ancient Egyptian drawings of spaceships.

---

TEAM
LL

Found someone who articulated what I'd been trying to say, although not perfectly...

Viewpoint: The religion of atheism
By Lloyd Eby
World Peace Herald Contribotor
Published December 2, 2005

WASHINGTON -- My article "Giving privilege to atheism in today's America" in the World Peace Herald (www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20051123-091553-1212r) provoked numerous responses and comments from atheists who claim that this article misrepresents what atheism is and what atheists actually believe.

If we accept the usual or most prevalent definition of religion, a definition in which religion is explicitly tied to belief in and/or service of a supernatural god or supreme being, then atheism could not be a religion because active atheism can be defined or described as the positive rejection of the existence of any supernatural god or supreme being. Atheism is the active belief that there is no god. As one atheist put it, "Atheism is the rejection of supernatural belief. As an atheist, I do not believe in the reality of any supernatural being, and as a result of this, reject religion."

That usual or most prevalent definition of religion is defective, however, because it is too narrow. Religion has to do with what a person thinks or believes about first or ultimate things. German theologian-philosopher Paul Tillich (1886-1965) was especially insightful and instructive on this, saying that religion has to do with what he called "ultimate concern." "Our ultimate concern," he wrote, "is that which determines our being or not-being." Furthermore, "every human being exists in the power of an ultimate concern, whether or not he is fully conscious of it, whether or not he admits it to himself or others." In this sense of religion, religion is unavoidable because every person does have an ultimate concern and therefore has a religion. The theist finds his ground of ultimate concern in a supernatural supreme being or God. The active atheist asserts, tacitly if not explicitly, that no such supernatural supreme being exists so his ground for ultimate concern cannot be found in or rest on such a being. Both the theist and the atheist do make an assertion, tacitly if not explicitly, about ultimate concern, although they find or ground that ultimate concern in very different places. So they both do hold a view that is properly understood as being religious, in this extended and more accurate understanding of "religious."

The situation of the atheist with respect to religion is similar to that of the logical positivists in philosophy, who declared that metaphysics is meaningless and should be eliminated. The problem is that this statement or declaration is itself a metaphysical statement, so the logical positivist program could not succeed because it was internally inconsistent and possibly even incoherent. In a similar way, the religious fundamentalists who declare, for themselves, "I have nothing to do with philosophy," do in fact have something to do with philosophy because their statement is itself a philosophical one. It is the same for atheists: Their statement, "I do not believe in any religion or any god," is itself a religious statement.

In discussing atheism we do need to distinguish between passive and active disbelief. Passive disbelief is to be uninterested in the question, to have no opinion one way or the other. If I know nothing about X or am completely uninterested in X, then I cannot have either an active belief or active disbelief in X. Some atheism is indeed of that sort in that some people have no opinion about or interest at all in any supernatural being or any received religion. But those are not the atheists who agitate for changes in American law so as to eliminate references in it to God or religion. The atheists who do such agitation are active atheists or active unbelievers, and it is those active atheists I am concerned with here.

One atheist objected to my article that, under the definitions given in it and taken from Webster's, where religion is defined as "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith," and faith is defined as "allegiance to a duty or a person; loyalty; fidelity to one's promise,' then - as this respondent wrote - "anything that one clings to fervently can be a religion: Naziism, fascism, Ba'athism, communism, even capitalism could be considered a religion under this definition." That respondent is correct. Nazism, fascism, Ba'athism, communism, even capitalism function as religions for many people who adhere(d) to them or have (had) an ardent faith in them. For those people these things do function as what Tillich called their "ultimate concern," and thus they are indeed their religions, at least functionally.

One commentator wrote, "What boggled my mind in your piece was that you attempted to show that "A" and "not A" are equal. Quite a feat. In your world 0 = 1. So, by your peculiar logic, to be with god (theism) and without god (atheism) mean the same; they both mean religious."

Although this respondent's way of putting his point is misleading - I do not and did not say that 0 =1 or that "A" and "not A" are equal - he is correct in attempting to say that I hold that active belief and active disbelief are logically equal. Each can be fully expressed in terms of the other. To say that I actively believe in the existence of X (the theist position with respect to God), for example, is exactly the same as saying that I actively disbelieve in the nonexistence of X. To say that I actively disbelieve in the existence of X (the atheist position with respect to God) is exactly the same as saying that I actively believe in the nonexistence of X.

I do indeed hold that theism and atheism are both religious. The atheist who thinks otherwise is mistaken because he is using a tendentious or incorrect definition of religion, a definition that attempts to privilege atheism and give it a logical, legal, and evidential status over the usual notions of religion. But that is unwarranted. The theist cannot prove that his belief is true; his belief is metaphysical and a statement of faith that goes beyond the observable evidence for it. And the atheist cannot prove that his view is true either; his belief is also metaphysical and a statement of unbelief that goes beyond the observable evidence for it.

Over about the past half-century the courts in the United States have moved to acceptance of the view that atheism constitutes a religion, at least for purposes of law and public policy. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the US Supreme Court said that a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being; the Court described "secular humanism" as a religion. Two cases dealing with defendants who claimed the status of conscientious objectors to military service, decided during the Vietnam War, dealt at least indirectly with this question. In United States v. Seeger (1965) the US Supreme Court held that adherence to some form of religious orthodoxy is not necessary in order for the person to be a legitimate conscientious objector. Five years later, in Welsh v. United States (1970), the Court held that "A registrant's conscientious objection to all war is 'religious' ... if this opposition stems from the registrant's moral, ethical, or religious beliefs about what is right and wrong and these beliefs are held with the strength of traditional religious convictions. In view of the broad scope of the word 'religious,' a registrant's characterization of his beliefs as 'nonreligious' is not a reliable guide to those administering the exemption."

Most recently, in August, 2005, a federal court of appeals ruled that Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat his atheism as a religion. "Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said, deciding that the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.

Concerning this last case one respondent wrote, "While it is true that some atheists claim that they follow a religion, as you cited with the prison inmate, this is usually done for some cynical purpose." But this is incorrect. The locution "cynical purpose" is tendentious because the commentator does not know what was in the mind of this prison inmate; it is entirely possible and even likely that the inmate was totally sincere. Moreover, using the words "cynical purpose" assumes what the commentator needs to prove, namely that any atheist who admits that his belief is a religion is mistaken and is doing so for some untoward reason.

The conclusion then is that the courts have finally gotten this issue right. An atheist's faith and belief system is and should be on the same logical, evidential, and legal status as Roman Catholicism, Islam, Methodism, and every other religious belief system, protestations of atheists to the contrary notwithstanding. And, since Article VI coupled with the First Amendment are properly understood as requiring government neutrality with respect to religion, it must not privilege atheism either.

One respondent did see correctly where this leads us. He wrote, "While I will not dispute that Atheism can be considered a religion, I don't think that the absence of a God alone constitutes Atheism. If that were the case, then we would really have a problem in America because the Government would have to by that view endorse a religion." He is correct. I doubt that it is possible for government to be completely neutral on this question. Government does indeed have to endorse religion, at least to some extent.

For that reason the view that government could and should be completely neutral concerning religion and religious issues does tend to break down because that view was built on a foundation that is legally, logically, and philosophically weak and perhaps even incoherent. The courts thus have to tread very cautiously here. They should be especially wary of attempts by atheists to privilege the atheist position at the expense of their theistic opponents. The so-called naked public square with respect to religion - religion now understood in the usual theistic sense -- is not really so naked after all; it is instead a public square that has a high probability of having given undue regard and privilege to atheism.

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Lloyd Eby holds a doctorate in philosophy and teaches business and professional ethics at the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

So if I actively do not believe in the monster under my bed, then i've just started a religion?

Sure if they are active atheists it might be a religion but if someone simply asks, then is it actively? Should actively be defined as marching on the captitol for the rights of atheists to be respected? For example, an atheist might want to print on the dollar bill: "there is no god, so get over it". How is it then allowing "in god we trust" to continue to printed on currency respecting religion in light of atheism possibly being a religion in it's own right? They have then denied the atheists their right to freedom of religion.

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TEAM
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