Sunday, October 11, 2009

Whaddaya mean, "Belief is meaningless"?

Unbelievable.

I was reading a discussion on atheism recently. Two guys were arguing about whether atheism means belief that there is no God or whether it simply means an absence of belief. (FTR, the traditional definition has been an active belief that there is no deity. In more recent years though, a good number of people have used the term to simply denote a lack of belief. Personally, I think this simply leads to confusion, especially since there were already terms to describe a mere lack of belief: either non-theism or, arguably, agnosticism. But I digress.)

One other fella said, "Belief or disbelief doesn't enter into it, for atheists. There isn't anything to believe or not believe in." I've paraphrased slightly, but only by removing some parentheses.

Now that's unbelievable. This person failed to grasp that his statement -- namely that God does not exist -- is a statement of disbelief. Another person said in response, "As an atheist, I am dubious about any assertion that means that 'I don't believe in that' is an impossible statement to correctly make."

Believing that something does not exist is a statement of belief --- or alternatively, a statement of disbelief.