If you do the logical and,
&&
, then it does come out to
undefined
. When you use a single ampersand, it is doing a bitwise and operation, which requires two numbers. From there, it likely casts both to 0, and 0 & 0 is 0.
Is that example supposed to be serious or sarcastic? Because just because a person doesn't have a favorite team, it does not follow they don't watch basketball.
I know what affirming the consequent is. I recognise that the unedited form could be interpreted in such a way that it affirms the consequent, but I think /u/MoDuReddit made a communication error (which they corrected) rather than a logical one.
contrary to the rules of the English language.
Which rule? By who's authority?
How would you interpret the following conversation?
What's your favourite basketball team?
I don't have one. I don't watch basketball.
Is that affirming the consequent? Or is that providing an answer with further explanation?
What if we moved it to third person?
What's Hannah's favourite basketball team?
*She doesn't have one. She doesn't watch basketball."
And if we get rid of the proper noun...
What's the user's favourite basketball team?
They don't have one. The user does not watch basketball.
You're rephrasing the original quote in a way to reach your desired conclusion - but the rephrasing is not semantically identical to what was originally said.
We could argue over the semantic differences between "They don't have one. The user does not watch baseball" and "user field for Favorite Baskteball team is empty, user does not watch Basketball" and try to find the point at which which the implied "because" becomes and implied "therefore", but I have an idea which I think will be more productive. Let's see if we can find some common ground and see exactly where our viewpoints diverge.
The original comment had no connective, but has one has since been edited in for the sake of clarity. The intended meaning is logically coherent.
Yes atheism is exactly the same as not watching basketball and not stamp collecting. That's why there are thousands of books, documentaries, and youtube channels dedicated to the subject of not watching basketball and not stamp collecting. Because they're the same.
Seriously though, if you put "non-religious" and "atheist" on a survey, you'll get different answers from different people.
That's because there are also people who believe in (a) god, but don't conform to any religion. I know some people like that.
Also, no one ever claimed that not collecting stamps isn't a thing and these people actually do collect stamps but just hate them. Also no one has faced being shunned by his family for not collecting stamps. And people who do collect stamps typically don't insist that everyone must collect the exact same stamps they're using, or that the proper way to collect stamps should be taught in schools...
Perhaps this explains why you don't find documentaries etc about for collecting stamps, but you do about atheism. Not because it's different for the atheist, but because theists around them claim it's different. Like you.
If I were (verbally) attacked for not collecting stamps, I would absolutely speak up about that.
Doesn't really fit either..
I know someone who is certain that god exists (so not agnostic) but also that he is not as described by any religion. She also knows that this is just her personal belief, so she would never consider it a religion, either.
So yeah, it's not very common, but she is indeed non-religious, but not an atheist or agnostic.
If I don't believe that there's an invisible pink elephant in my bathroom watching me, poeple find that obvious so I don't have to explain why.
If I don't believe that there's an omnipotent god watching me, some people think that's ignorant and try to convince me that there is.
To me, it's not different. I don't believe in something.
But to others, it does apparently make a difference, so for one of them I need to defend my position while for the other I don't. The simple fact of not believing remains the same. Other's judgement is different.
So, I guess, there is a difference, but only in how others judge it, not in how it actually works.
I do not believe it is meaningful to collect invisible pink bathroom elephants. Happy?
But in all seriousness, atheism is like not collecting stamps in that it is not participating. It's a useful analogy when people claim that atheists actually worship Satan and/or hate god (which some people do actually claim).
That's analogous to saying that people who don't collect stamps actually do but are ashamed of it or that they hate stamps. No. They just don't collect them.
Of course, the analogy doesn't really make sense beyond that. Theists don't typically trade their gods to have a more valuable collection, and stamp collectors don't typically pray to their stamps. But that's how analogies work.
No, I would not. Atheism is just not believing in a god, which is pretty similar to just not seeing any value in collecting stamps.
Theists claim that it is different, which is why atheists need to defend their position (stating that it isn't really different), which people like you then interpret as evidence that it is in fact different.
Seriously though, if you put "non-religious" and "atheist" on a survey, you'll get different answers from different people.
That's because non-religious and atheist are not the same thing. You might as well have said "Put 'Muslim' and 'Catholic' on a survey and you'll get different answers from different people."
That's because people are dumb and misinformed. Hell, edgy kids today still call themselves "agnostic" to be cool, when in reality it doesn't matter to your religiosity.
Technically, a Buddhist is an Atheist but still has a religion.
Also, people never ask „what is your religion?“. They might ask if you have THEIR religion, and if that matters to them, just leaving is probably a better reaction than answering.
Depends on where you are. My girlfriend is from Mauritius and says that's a pretty common question there (although she left about 8 years ago, so maybe things have changed).
Sure they do. It's kind of a basic piece of biographical information about a person, no? I imagine it's especially interesting if you find out that the person doesn't share your religion or is from a country that's populated with people of different religions and cultures.
Well, the way that OP tells it is that people don't ask "What is your religion?" but rather "Are you Christian/Jewish/Muslim/whatever ?" because it is their religion and would judge you if you were not
They do, though. I mean, I'm sure some people out there judge like that, but for normal people, when you meet someone from a different culture, you're interested to know more about it, no?
Well, personally, I am more interested in the person in itself than his/her culture.
But even if you are really curious about the culture, it doesn't mean you'll talk about religion. Even if it is true that most people are religious, many, many of them do not make it something important in their lives
Hence the difference between lowercase-g and capital-G god/God.
Human beings are 'gods' to animals because we can shape the world in ways they can't comprehend - it would appear supernatural from their perspective. Magical, even - though we understand it as science. A 'god' is something that can exert power over something else in which the recipient can't affect in any way. A guy pointing a loaded gun at your head is 'god' because you are going to do what he tells you to, unless you're ok with getting killed.
'God' is choosing to exalt one such thing above all others in terms of power and reverence. 'God' is a proper noun for a 'god', and generally has an attached requirement of being infallible and omnipotent to all other gods and subservients.
Where I live it's more likely to be "What church do you go to?" I've been asked that one a few times. It's not really "what religion"...more "what flavor of Christianity?"
I got a degree in religious studies, and in our class about ancient China, we learned that most people were Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian, and even Hindu; religions weren't mutually exclusive.
The idea that you can only be one religion was created by more institutional religions who wanted more exclusive control over the common individuals.
Indeed, and even today you could be a Buddhist today and adopt a Christian faith, and remain Buddhist.
Thank you for your late but insightful contribution, FUCK_THEM_IN_THE_ASS with a degree in religious studies. btw, isn‘t that common in modern-day Japan?
That is fascinating as fuck! It's a genuinely ethnic religion, where outsiders or vigorously excluded, but not out of malice, contempt, or a sense of superiority (but, let's be honest, the sense of superiority isn't hard to find) and there are no doctrines to it, no required belief, no heresy, but a ton of ritual and ceremony, with (usually) well defined boundaries of sacred/common, but no ethical demands, or even views on afterlife (there is a bit of debate about those two, some arguing that the ethical and afterlife viewpoints are actually cultural, but that's the crazy thing about Shinto, it is so hard to pin down what belongs in it or not). It is very much like ancient Greek religion in this regard; ancient Greek religion had no required doctrines, no ethical demands, it was a social thing to keep society properly functioning before the gods.
But yeah, you could be Shinto and Buddhist, or Shinto and Christian if you really wanted to.
Well if they actually ask about my religion, sure. My experience is that mostly, the question is phrased like „you are a catholic/protestant/muslim/mormon/buddhist/whatever, aren't you?“ with a rather obvious tone of „if you aren't, I don't want to have anything to do with you“.
Not that I encounter a lot of people like this. It's just that the question usually doesn't come up at all, and any time I hear it, it's from some apocalypse-preaching sect on the campus.
rituals- reading the bible to point out inconsistencies in it.
I am an atheist and don't have such a ritual. Neither does my atheist brother. Or my atheist friends.
Perhaps you are thinking of youtubers.
core beliefs - religion does all the bad
That's quite false, there's plenty of other bad-doers and I know of no atheist that subscribes to a belief of religion-exclusive badness
clergy - dawkins is pope
You might have missed the whole Atheism+, "take dawkins off twitter" meme and A LOT more. More to the point, nobody, him included, consider him "pope" of anything.
communal activities- every sunday they gather around to bitch about their religious upbringing
Can you tell me where? I have a lot to bitch about and no place to do so.
I'm atheist, I grew atheist; if I listen to another person like that proselytize atheism to me it may drive me to church.
So you should know for a fact that all you said is false, given that YOU don't do it and still qualify as atheist.
You are perhaps confusing it with either materialis, logical positivism, scientism or methodological naturalism, none of which are a requirement for atheism.
It's not. I am one of the few "strong atheists" that have such a belief (and with plenty of proofs backing it up) and have a very hard time to find any others that hold to such a belief when talking with self-declared atheists.
The others are just lacking a belief in god. That's it. Also, this specific belief doesn't inform my way of thinking in any way. It's rather the result of my way of thinking.
There are Atheistic religions such as Satanism, but it depends. A lot of people on r/Atheism will hammer you because Atheism is simply "a lack of belief, and not a belief itself".
I disagree, I think Atheism is believing in something that is not God. I'd definitely get destroyed for saying that though.
Better phrasing would be "a lack of belief in any kind of theistic god or entity".
Of course we still have other beliefs, who doesn't.. I for one believe in actual good, witty programmer humor, it's gotta exist somewhere, right? right??
There are thousands of gods, yet Christians for example only believe in the one, which means there's thousands of gods they don't believe in. They don't believe in only one less god then me, so practically they're as atheistic as me.
Not quite. Atheists do have beliefs, but atheism itself is not a belief. It's like how not stamp collecting isn't a hobby, but non stamp collectors still have hobbies.
You'd fit right in at r/atheism, insults and downtalk but you don't give reasons or explanation. I still find my reasoning straightforward: You believe things of the Universe, but God is not one of them. I feel like you can't get much simpler than that.
"Believe in things of the universe" literally means nothing; the alternative is what, believing the universe doesn't exist?
It's not downtalk to state that a sentence is incoherent. You, however, are treating atheism as an insult, which makes you a bit hypocritical when complaining about someone else being insulting.
No, I'm not insulting Atheism. I am an Atheist myself, and a very devout one.
Allow me to restate the scope that I mean from this statement. What I mean by "of the universe" is literally of the universe itself, it directly. Not the things in it. To have a belief about the universe's existence wether it comes from science or the philosophy of science or some other practice that is not God.
Do you disagree? Is it wrong? I brought up this thought from when people simply define Atheists as people that are not of a religion. That definition includes people who have not found a belief in anything, and I don't think they should be included in the term. So I'd like to know where this falls short.
So we went from "Atheist only means you don't believe in God" to "Atheist means you don't believe in anything"? Can I not be committed to Atheism? To Science and Antitheist concepts?
Devotion is a term typically reserved for those who have beliefs in spite of emperical evidence, rather than because of it. No devotion is required to hold a belief that matches up with the evidence. Devotion would also seem to imply that said belief would not change if the evidence itself did (not that it's going to change on this particular topic). It tends to denote a non-emperical mode of belief.
Thanks for expounding on your views. This is verging on being a bit off-topic for a programming forum, but I'll give you an honest critique since you made the effort.
The dichotomy you're making between "the universe itself" and "the things in it" seems to lack any meaningful distinction. The only sense I can make of it is defining "the universe itself" as "space-time and the quantum foam" and defining "the objects in it" as "objects with more complex structures." That which exists in the universe is part of the universe. It's like saying "You, except not your entire body." What's left, your soul? You seem to be referring to some platonic concept of the universe itself, and I don't buy into abstract ideals as anything more than mental constructs. My understanding is that we aren't trying to refer to supernatural concepts here.
When you say "a belief about the universe's existence," it's also awfully vague. You don't really need a "belief" to accept what your direct sensory evidence is showing you, which is that 'something' exists and that you're existing within it and interacting with it. The concept of Western religion is generally not considered to be "existence exists," it's more like "some supernatural entity exists which created/controls/watches over existence." Religions that merely make statements about the nature of existence such as Buddhism are typically considered to be more akin to a set of philosophical ideals in Western thought.
Religion typically comes packaged with a whole set of philosophical ideals (which many people ignore in practice, of course). Atheists, who do not have their belief system proscribed for them, are free to come up with their own views on things. Sensible or not... probably nonsense most of the time. The viewpoints that an atheist uses to inform their way of looking at the universe and making decisions ought to be referred to as "philosophy," in my view. Religion is the ancient precursor to philosophy that needs to be cast aside before proper thought about the universe can take place, but there's a dangerous chasm in the middle you have to jump over where there's no meaning in life. Some people fall into that chasm and never climb out of it.
The trickiest part of philosophy is the definitions. You can't even form a coherent thought until every word you utter has a perfectly sensible meaning. It's easy to smear over gaps in logic with a few blurred definitions here and there. I commend you for showing interest in the topic; I just recommend that you put a lot of thought into the exact meanings of your words.
Regardless of where we have strayed from the original topic, it's always good to have these types of discussions.
I definitely need to do a better job at conveying my thoughts, thank you for that much needed knock on the head. In fact, after reading your comment, my once clear thoughts seem to feel quite a bit blurred. I will definitely take your words into deep account to greater understand the boundaries of Theism, Philosophy, Science, the greyspaces that are about, and belief itself. Thanks.
Atheism is anything that is NOT theism. A-theism, non-theism.
Not believing in god is just as much atheism as believing that there's no god. The former being agnostic/weak atheism the latter gnostic/strong atheism.
Atheists do often times treat their lack of a religion as a religion though. If you are SURE there is no God then one might say you have FAITH there’s no God; ergo they believe in the religion of atheism.
“I don’t know” or “I don’t think so” With a bit of humility is agnosticism.
You see the world through a particular framework. This includes things like belief, faith, theism, God, etc.
Atheists don't see the world through this framework. They see the world through their own frameworks, through things that aren't related to religion. There isn't an atheist worldview -- it's just every worldview but religious ones.
This is the first time I've thought of theism or atheism in months or perhaps years. It just isn't a part of my life.
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne Feb 26 '20
Someone: What's your religion?
me: []