Only if you redefine atheism to mean theism, as in "they believe in atheism! Can't you see?"
Agnosticism on the other hand isn’t a religion, it’s just intellectual humility or maybe just laziness.
If you assert “gnosis” then you are not talking about belief you are talking about knowledge. Gnostics claim to know there is a god, Agnostics claim they do not know if there are gods.
But I’m an Atheist. Why? Because I do not BELIEVE there are gods. I have not made any claims. I have not asserted anything. I simply find all the arguments in favor of gods lacking.
Atheism IS NOT a positive belief system, but simply the rejection of one.
Asserting the nonexistence of something is not asserting special knowledge of something's nonexistence. Atheism isn't a Platonic Beard[1].
On a more practical level: if Protestants and atheists don't find their views mutually intelligible, there probably isn't any really meaningful sense in which one is a "bare-boned form" of the other.
You can be atheist and agnostic - most atheists are.
Atheists are people who assert "I do not believe in God" and not, "I believe there is no God." It can not be otherwise, because the opposite makes no logical sense. Which God would the correct one to "believe against"? There are infinite Gods that one must equally disbelieve. Not believing in Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Ra, Yahveh, and the flying spaghetti monster does not require any evidence at all, it's merely the default position which any rational person must take.
Atheists merely believe in one God less than believers.
Furthermore, every atheist I encounter actually asserts something like "I do not believe in God, because there is no God." After all "I do not believe in God, because there is a God" is irrational and, given the consequences of disbelief if God is as described in western tradition, exceedingly foolish. Atheism is only a rational belief if God is known to not exist. Otherwise it's no different than not believing in climate change or dinosaurs.
And in any event a transcendent creator God (first cause, etc) isn't anything at all like the easter bunny, comic book superheroes, or bad fictional characters.
As a side note, the strange idea that Yahweh is the only "possible" God is taken as granted by religious people, but it makes really little sense to those who came to disbelief through a philosophical journey. A lot of atheists will tell you that the specificity problem is one of the most convincing reasons not to believe in God.
It's really not, especially by most people who follow non-Yahwistic religions. But even those who personally believe in Yahweh who pose arguments for the existence of a god often do so for a god of a far less defined nature; belief in the existence of a god (however that term is defined) and belief that the god that exists has, in addition to those traits which are reviewed as inherently defining being a god, also has the other traits classically identified with some particular image of Yahweh are often coinciding but distinguishable beliefs.
You've unintentionally acknowledged my original point with your obsession on the nonexistence of the biblical God. Why aren't you going on about your lack of belief in Susano-o?
What you fail to understand is that there are those who have come to a belief in a transcendental creator God in a philosophical journey, because it's a logical necessity. Granted, the particulars of the incarnation are a matter of testimony. Setting that aside though, the logical argument for the necessity of a creator God is no different than the logical argument that we live in a "simulation."
Care to unpack that for me? Are you arguing for a "God", or a Prime Mover? I think they are very distinct - people attribute certain anthropomorphized qualities to a "God". I don't find an argument that there must being a prime mover particularly compelling, and if there were such a thing, I would very much doubt that it would represent any sort of deity as we define it - if anything I'd expect it to be energy and chaos. I'd just like to know which side of this argument you're going with.
However, be aware that this book is more a sketch or outline of an argument, not detailed at every step. You're going to have to do a lot of thinking about various points to decide whether you agree with his argument.
You're also going to have to pay careful attention to his definitions of words, specifically his distinction between rationality and rationalism.
And what you fail to understand is that there are those who have come to a disbelief in a transcendental creator in a philosophical journey, because it's a logical impossibility.
> You ought to put some more effort into understanding the millennia of thought that has gone into the topic before making sophomoric errors.
The arrogance is simply astounding.
Really? Why don't you share your theorem?
We know that the existence of God can be found logically, because Gödel wrote a formal proof.
> The arrogance is simply astounding.
Indeed, I'm impressed by your self-awareness.
This, of course, is why if you look online there are no refutations of said proof.
I would suggest you're being incredibly pedantic - formal logic being a place far removed from the logic to which they were referring. It seems roughly analogous to me that just because mathematically infinity exists doesn't mean it must exist as physical property.
"I don't believe in any deities existence as such a claim would require extraordinary evidence. Not only have we been provided no extraordinary evidence, we have been provided no evidence at all, save possibly the very existence of creation itself, but we can safely reject the argument that a creator deity exists because creation exists due to the innate problem with first causes arguments - if you assume that everything must have a first cause, that first cause can't have had one, thus there isn't an innate requirement for a first cause, making first causes an argument against themselves. There being no evidence provided, therefore I can safely rejected the supposition that such a being would exist."
That would have made more sense.
I’d state it as there must be a singular uncaused cause on account of the tree of causality has to have a root. We call that uncaused root of causality God. The refutation requires that we accept that some events have causes and some don’t and oh well no idea to really know which is which. Since the entire scientific and engineering endeavor relies on events having causes, I find that conclusion philosophically unsatisfactory.
Science and Engineering rely on cause and event largely in mathematical abstractions - if we draw the line out far enough "why is that real ball moving through space" the answer stretches all the way back to the big bang, and we lack the ability to see what came before. From what I understand of current science - the theory is that it was due to a big crunch, which was due to a big bang - infinite loops in an infinite cycle.
Again though, you're saying that the singular uncaused occurred just because - in a system that otherwise must have a cause and effect that MUST have had a cause and effect, unless you decide to draw a special case for it, where I can see no reason why you would. It's basically a special pleading to jam god into a hole of knowledge, just like we used to do with demons and witches before we understood the real nature of diseases.
And that is when the whole world converted overnight never to question dogma again, right? Wait, that didn't happen. Because is not posible to prove any god, let alone the overlord dictator that is, by your own "logic", making me type this words disregarding him/her.
If there are no gods, then I'm right. If there are gods and they are your kind of illogical creators that somehow do not need an explanation themselves, completely powerful and complex beyond imagination, yet simple enough to classify as "first movers", and caring enough to "die" for us but not before having a plan in-place to resurrect themselves, then leaving for some reason, he/she/it/they WANT ME to be an atheist, so I'm still right. Or are you going against your gods?
Anyway I'm done answering you. At least I hope you learned what an Atheist is and don't keep going around claiming that we are as bad as the rest because we also have "faith" in atheism! Sadly, I'm not holding my breath.
Here's the "proof": God is perfect, all perfect things must exist, therefore God exists
Which is easily refuted by observing that the statement merely shows that either a perfect God exists or it does not. The fact that one can posit a perfect God does not make it real. Even a kid can understand that.
In any event I think Gödel's proof is worth understanding simply as a nice example of modal logic and the power of formalisms. Anselm's informal attempt at a proof is famously unreadable.