Hacker News Reader

Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

Well, my objection was not on the "belief" part, it was on the "letter of the law" part.

Atheism is just not something that has laws that can be interpreted or not. You can't be a "devout atheist" or a "non-practicing atheist", or practice parts of atheism but not others, it makes absolutely no sense. Atheism is by definition a binary property.

If you wanted to list different categories including non-religious ones, talking about national laws or vegetarianism would have been pertinent in a way that atheism was not.

View on HN

Respectfully, I disagree that you cannot be a devout atheist, but I think we are digressing.

Certainly national or government laws are applicable to my point of people who will follow the letter of the law, but find every little loophole they can if it benefits them, even if it harms others, and those that follow the spirit or principle in-which the law was enacted, sans loopholes.

practicing and non-practicing are concepts specific to christian cultures and not a general concept applied to all beliefs

> You can't be a "devout atheist" or a "non-practicing atheist", or practice parts of atheism but not others, it makes absolutely no sense.

Sure you can. You can believe God exists, but decide, like an atheist, not to follow any rules because you don't think God cares. You can believe God exists and cares, but did not actually make any rules. You can Believe God is actually the laws of nature and is omni-everything, but not intelligent. You can believe God made the big bang but otherwise left the world alone (so there are no laws to follow).

Even "devout" atheists still have to believe in something that made the big bang. Some just ignore the topic, others think "we'll figure it out", others feel "whatever made it is outside the universe and thus of no concern to me", other feel "I only care about proven things, unproven things I ignore".

> Atheism is by definition a binary property.

As you can see from my list there are a tremendous number of shades of gray here. Like any religion there are multiple branches of atheism.

I don't want to get dragged in an argument about what atheism is, but the commonly accepted definition is that it is nothing more or less than the belief that no god exists.

The big bang has exactly nothing to do with atheism (why bring it up at all ? it's just a science topic) and "believing that a god exists but deciding, like an atheist, not to follow any rules" is not being an atheist. It is being a believer in some god (so, a theist) as well as an anarchist.

ALL your examples were people that are very clearly not atheists, since all of these examples involved believing in one god. They are only various examples of monotheist practices.

There can not be branches of atheism - and I know I'm exposing myself to a misguided answer making reference to the no true Scotsman fallacy, but it would be wrong. The very etymology of "atheism" leaves no place to branches: if you believe that a god exists, good, even if you think there is only one this still leaves many ways to believe in it... however, if you believe that no god exists, which is what atheism is, there is only one way for something not to exist at all.

There is a fundamental difference between believing something exists and believing something does not exist. Believing that it does not exist is a very simple belief, with no possible nuances while believing in the existence of something does leave place to interpretation.

So clearly you belong to the branch that just ignores the topic of where existence comes from.

I define God very simply: That which created existence.

You can not just disbelieve in existence, so you have to clarify what kind of atheist you are.

You are probably using a definition of God as: An intelligence that created existence.

You are just trying to bend definitions to make them agree with what you're saying.

The common definition for "god", from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/god#Noun is "A supernatural, typically immortal being with superior powers".

The "supernatural", "being" and "superior powers" parts are very clear. If you can accept that a supernatural being with superior powers created existence, then you cannot be atheist.

If you believe that what you call "God", with a typically monotheist stance, is whatever created "existence" whatever that means, and whether or not it was a natural process or a supernatural being, then your personal definition of "God" is not the common one, and you should have given it earlier.

Also, I do not ignore the topic of where existence comes from (although that formulation sounds quite weird to me) but I leave it to science, and I am not an atheist either. I do have difficulty following the reasoning of occidental monotheists though, who seem to try very hard to spin their definition of a single "God" in order to claim that atheists are just believers like any other theist.

Whatever created existence (or the big bang) is by definition supernatural (which means outside nature). So my definition is not different, just differently formulated.

> If you can accept that a supernatural being with superior powers created existence, then you cannot be atheist.

Using your definition no atheists even exist, or at least they are illogical because clearly existence exists. It was created somehow. Or are we going to argue about the word "being" in that sentence?

Because if you are, know that I use that definition because any other is not sufficient to describe the full range of human beliefs. So yes, there is a range in atheism, it is not binary.

>Whatever created existence (or the big bang) is by definition supernatural (which means outside nature).

Unless nothing created existence, and the big bang was a natural event unrelated to the existence of existence.

>are we going to argue about the word "being"

Maybe. "being" is pretty clear and necessary to have a God. Wind comes from outside the ocean to make waves, but it is in no way a being or a God. No matter how 'supernatural' it would be from the perspective of ocean=nature.

No binary decision is ever truly perfect, but the yes/no of atheism is pretty damn close.

There's only one empty set.

> Whatever created existence (or the big bang) is by definition supernatural

This doesn't follow. It is by definition natural because it occurred naturally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com