The conspiracy of "The Flying Spaghetti Monster"

God is either there or not there. Therefore you either believe or believe in a lack of God (I hate this wording, I should be able to just say not believe and you accept this is active).

No. I don’t believe in a lack of God. I also don’t believe in God. Why is that so hard to understand?

Believing in God? No. I don’t do that.

Running a marathon? No, I don’t do that. That doesn’t mean that I’m running a not-marathon.

You believe there is no God.

EDIT: I’m just going to say this: to disbelieve is an undeniably active verb, and atheism is defined as a disbelief in God. Argue all you want, you’re wrong.

You’re right. Not doing something is doing that thing you say you’re not doing. X = Not-X.

How could I be so wrong?

Face facts, Some: I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe there is no God. That believe thing you’re saying? I’M NOT DOING IT!

I am not an agnostic but I can still understand the concept of not believing in god and not believing there is no god. If you’re having a hard time let me put it this way: danielsangeo “believes” that it’s unknown whether a deity exists or not.

On the other hand, I found it very easy to believe that there is, in fact, no god out there or ever was.

I’m just going to lay this out in undeniable terms (these are the definitions of the words):

Atheism:

A disbelief in the existence of deity

So to be an atheist is to disbelieve the existence of a deity.

Disbelieve:

Antonyms: Believe

Therefore, to be an atheist is to not believe (synonymous with disbelieve) the existence of a deity.

There you have it. Undeniable. This may not mesh with your idea of atheism, but then you should choose your words more carefully.

You’ll note that you just said what I’ve been saying.

Atheism is a lack of belief in god, not the belief in a lack of god.

Holding that “not believing in god” is the same as “believing there is no god” is putting things in the perspective of someone who does believe, or has once believed in god, or at the very least views the belief in god as the standard.
It is based on the precept that belief in god is the “normal” state of belief.

I do not believe in god simply because I feel there is nothing to believe, not that there is something not to believe.

:ninja:: Theism is belief in god. A-theism is the lack of belief in god. Simple as that.

Ah, daniel you missed a point. I just proved that to disbelieve is to not believe. To disbelieve is active, and therefore to not believe active. You cannot claim atheism is inactive, because it simply isn’t. It is a disbelief, which is active.

Isn’t believe antonymous with disbelief?

Let’s say I believe in dogs. I do this because I know dogs exist, because I own one.

Now say someone believes in dogs, but has never met a dog in their life, and doesn’t know for sure what one looks like.

Now let’s say someone don’t believe in dogs because they have never met a dog in their life, although they’ve met plenty of cats.

The cat person is an atheist, the dogless one is a religious person, and then there’s me at the top.

You’re going out from a misconception. Atheism isn’t the opposite of theism, it’s the negation of theism.

It’s not “belief in god” => “disbelief in god”, it’s “belief in god” => “no belief in god”.

No, it is disbelief in god. That is the definition.

Also, believe and disbelieve are confusing words in English. They are antonyms, but the subject is key. If one disbelieves, he believes that whatever he disbelieves is not true. You cannot disbelieve without believing something.

But does that something have to be opposite to the thing you disbelieve?

Analogies like that are fine but let me remind you that you will never ever find anyone who believes in god because they have met him in real life.

Not believing seems like it makes more sense, but it’s exactly the same thing, the other side of a coin.

However you will find plenty of people who will tell you that faith is more important than facts, but believing you still have your wallet after getting mugged will not get it back.

You have to by definition believe that that something isn’t true. Beyond that thats up to you.

And I’m sure you’ve found my posts very informative.

Everyone has met a deity if they’ve met themselves.

Whoa

For the sake of argument, I’ll concede that point (especially after checking dictionary.com :p) but that doesn’t make the rest of my argument any less valid.

Edit: nah, fuck it, I stand by my point.
Edit edit: since we’re basically discussing linguistics at this point, I will support my argument with this:

This is the prefix used in atheism. Therefore atheism is “lacking theism,” just as I said.

Well then we appear to have reached in inconsolable disagreement. We really can’t debate if we do not agree on language.

I will note that no belief in God implies either a disbelief in God or a lack of ever thinking about God, and I’d assume all here have thought about God.

Where did this start anyway?

So you own God?

Wait, what?

Also nice message.

Why does every religious argument on here always turn into an argument over the meaning of the word atheism?

Because we all like to argue too much.

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