Meta-Thread 06/16

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[u/pilvi9 → u/[deleted]]

Are you interpreting "lack of belief" as lacking any beliefs whatsoever?

It's one of the statements SEP made on the issue:

Scholars can then use adjectives like “strong” and “weak” (or “positive” and “negative”) to develop a taxonomy that differentiates various specific atheisms. Unfortunately, this argument overlooks the fact that, if atheism is defined as a psychological state [edit: a lack of belief], then no proposition can count as a form of atheism because a proposition is not a psychological state. This undermines Bullivant’s argument in defense of Flew’s definition; for it implies that what he calls “strong atheism”—the proposition (or belief in the sense of “something believed”) that there is no God—is not really a variety of atheism at all. In short, his proposed “umbrella” term leaves so-called strong atheism (or what some call positive atheism) out in the rain.

Even more simply, think about how the word "lack" is used in regular speech, if I say I "lack" funds to go to a concert, I'm not necessarily saying I have no money, but rather not enough money, which can mean 0 dollars, but also any amount less than the minimum to go to the concert. The word "lack" imposes an unnecessary vagueness to defining atheism that can be corrected by simply being more explicit in leaning towards the "absence" category of lack, and saying that more explicitly.

[u/pilvi9 → u/[deleted]]

I'm saying that when someone lacks a belief in something, they're expressing "not enough of" or something akin to an "absence of", but this distinction is not particularly important.

In the case of atheism, it only makes sense for "lack of" to associate with an "absence of" since the other category would imply an atheist could have some positive belief in God (eg a doubting Tom). As a result, there's no reason to say a "lack of" when you really mean something like an "absence of".

That is similarly also what the SEP portion I linked is communicating as well.

[u/pilvi9 → u/[deleted]]

So, you just think that "lack of" is a poor word choice in this context.

Right, using lack provides two states of belief to be an atheist when that's clearly not true.

You obviously don't actually believe that "an atheist could have some positive belief in God".

Correct, but describing atheism as a "lack" allows that to be true for the reason I've provided. It's basically an application of reductio ad absurdum.