<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><blockquote type="cite">On May 5, 2021, at 11:13 AM, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 11:05 AM Ben via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>Atheists do NOT <i>believe there are no gods</i>. That is not
atheism. Atheists <i>don't believe there are gods</i> instead. Big
difference.<br>
<br>
Yes, I'm sure there are people who call themselves atheists and say
they have a belief in the non-existence of gods, but that is not
what atheism is defined as. It's non-belief in the existence of
gods. They look similar ideas, but if you look at them properly, you
can see they are worlds apart. Believing that something is not true
is a different thing to not believing that something is.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't suppose you could explain the difference? I can easily see how people would see "believe there are no gods" and "don't believe there are gods" as logically equivalent.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><br><div><div dir="ltr">I would parse atheism into negative and positive types. The former is bluntly to lack a belief in god/gods. Think of it as if you were to look into someone’s mind and could see they simply didn’t have such a belief — in the same manner that someone who doesn’t know about high energy physics theories might lack any beliefs about, say, gluons.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">The latter holds a belief there are no gods. Looking into their mind, you’d see a belief there with regard to gods, albeit one that there are none. In the same, imagine someone who knows high energy physics theories but believes that they’re wrong about gluons — that, in fact, the model is wrong about them existing and being strong force carriers.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">In this way, the two varieties are not logically equivalent.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">(George H. Smith has argued that without being clear on just what the concept of god is, it’s often uncertain just what one is supposed to believe or disbelieve.)</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Anyhow, cf.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_atheism</a></div></div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Dan</div></body></html>