Comments on: PosnerBlogging: Take One

By: jk

jk — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

I agree that his claim that there is “no fruitful debating of God’s existence” is too strong. However, I would say that although there is probably a lot of debating of God’s existence, the amount of such debating which proves to be fruitful (by fruitful, I assume he means changing one’s mind about the topic)is probably so deminimus as to be almost non-existent, although it appears that you may be an exception to this rule.

In Posner’s response to the comments, he says “I think that whether or not God is dead for one depends on upbringing and temperament, but not on arguments.” I agree whole-heartedly.

By: Lane

Lane — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

I once believed in God, and then debated with reasonable people and chose the side of reason. Since it drastically increased the quality of my life, I’d definitely consider it “fruitful.” But yea, it’s hard to pull off, because one of the sides of the debate has to get to the point of being genuinely willing to accept a new ontology, be it Logic or Faith. And that’s probably pretty uncommon. Just wanted to add my anecdotal statement that it does happen.

By: Brock Tice

Brock Tice — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

Regardless of the debating issue, I do see a real distinction between what are classically defined as strong and weak forms of atheism. One (strong) implies a belief (that there is in fact no God), while the other implies no belief either way.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

I am in Posner’s first category, I think. As far as I can remember, I have never had a religious feeling, and not only “God” but Platonism, idealism, Kant’s ding-in-sich, Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence, Shirley MacLaine channeling Gilgamesh, the “bright light at the end of the tunnel” and any other kind of transcendentalism is not only unattractive, but utterly incomprehensible. I literally do not know what the heck they are talking about.

Seems to me there is a qualitative difference in being able to approach such concepts, and then rejecting them on the merits. Although it may not be a rational difference.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

jk-
I don’t know, just about everybody I know is an atheist, but I’m pretty sure that very few of them were raised that way. Which means most of them changed their minds at some point, presumably for some set of reasons. Of course, another question is whether it’s the result of argument; I do suspect that most people will either figure it out on their own, without the need to be debated into it, so to speak, or they won’t, and the latter group won’t be as likely to be swayed by debates.

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

Brock, I’ve never really understood the weak/strong distinction. Suppose that two seconds ago, I hadn’t thought about whether or not there is a bear in my office . . . and now I just did. Did I suddenly move from a weak to a strong no-bear-in-my-office-ist simply because I explicitly formulated something that I was already presupposing?

By: Maestro

Maestro — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

Actually, Will, that is a significant change, or is in some instances. Never even considering an idea, and explicitly thinking about and rejecting an idea are very different. Does the difference affect how you live your life? In most cases, no, but so what?

By: Luka Yovetich

Luka Yovetich — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

Will,

I think that some people want to call agnosticism a weak atheism.

A person that feels she has equal reason to believe in the existence of God and the non-existence of God can be said to not believe in God, in some sense. But this type of belief definitely seems relevantly different from the strong atheist’s. The strong atheist, like me, thinks that he has more reason to believe that God does not exist than to believe that He does.

Don’t you think that distinction is relevant?

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

No. I don’t think the distinction has cash value. I guess you could say there is something interesting in the difference between someone who attaches a .1 probability to P, and thus a .9 probability to not-P and someone who has never considered P. But I couldn’t tell you what it is that’s interesting about it.

By: Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

But I shouldn’t confuse the issue. It’s not about one’s attitude toward a proposition, exactly; it’s whether one’s theory of the world quantifies over certain properties (the “godmaking” properties). I think there are hundreds of millions of people who would sincerely assert “There is a God,” and who thus believe that they believe that there is a God. But they are simply mistaken about what they believe, and they do not in fact believe that there is a God because they are not in fact ontologically committed to any of the godmaking properties.

Note: I’m not saying that many many people don’t believe in God. They do. I’m just saying that not everybody who bvelieve they do really do.

By: Alex B.

Alex B. — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

Agreed on both points. There is fruitful debate for those who care about such things and take pleasure in discussing them.

On the question of definition, I accept the distinction between negative and positive atheism. Negative atheism (or ‘weak atheism’) is lack of belief in god’s existence. Positive atheism (or ’strong atheism’) is a positive belief that god doesn’t exist. I think it makes sense to make this distinction, insofar as I’ve found these two views to be actually quite distinct in practice.

Sorry Will, but I don’t find the counterexample of the no-bear-in-my-office-ist convincing. A proposition about whether or not there is a bear in your office at some moment is pretty different from a general belief about whether a god exists. Distinguishing weak and strong atheism is helpful, I think, because it clarifies views that many people hold on a difficult and complex topic. If your no-bear-in-my-office philosophical theory reached widespread contention and it become helpful to distinguish between weak and strong forms, then, yes, you went from weak to strong.

By: monkyboy

monkyboy — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

There is a distinction between someone who just thinks about robbing a bank and someone who actually does it.

If my neighbor believes in god, it doesn’t effect me. If he comes to my door every day armed with religious pamphlets and tries to convert me, it does.

I think Posner has it right.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

Monkyboy-
You and Posner forget that millions of people change their premises all the time. If that didn’t occur so rampantly, evangelism wouldn’t be so lucrative and successful.

Bob-
I read recently about a scientific study that discovered that feelings of spirituality and transcendence are caused by a stimulation of a happy-juice part of your brain and a shutting down of the time/space identification part (sorry i can’t remember the specifics). Some people have a more active mechanism than others. Sounds like yours is virtually non-existent. This is not to say spirituality is a mere chemical reaction; just recognize that it’s a very real, tangible experience for gazillions of religious/spiritual people and the biology is one explanation of your bafflement.

By: Julian Sanchez

Julian Sanchez — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure what Alex thinks is usefully clarified by the distinction. Most often, people I encounter describing themselves as either weak atheists or agnostics mean something like: “Well, it’s *logically* possible that there’s a God, and I can’t prove there isn’t, so I’ll call myself this.” I suppose for some people, the God hypothesis is one they might actively employ when thinking about what explains various things in the world, or be something they grapple with regularly, then “agnostic” or “weak atheist” might be a useful distinguishing term. But if we’re just talking about someone who concedes that it’s logically possible, that nobody can disprove it for certain? By that standard I’m both a God-agnostic and a Santa Claus-agnostic, but I don’t see what the distinction adds, since both my practice and my way of thinking about the world remain pretty much the same.

By: Tom Hanna

Tom Hanna — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000

What are the “godmaking properties” then? Would a Deist be an atheist because he believes God has no effect on the here and now? How about any of the Christian sects that believes God no longer performs miracles?

But more importantly for the moment - What if there really is a bear in your office?