How is "strong atheism" tenable?

[Hydesland]

So? Logical positivism is not necessarily true. On its terms, we can't talk about the existence of anything at all, except maybe direct experiences.

It also violates the falsification principle, and the null hypothesis (failure to reject a null hypothesis does not make it objectively true to the extent that even weak agnosticism is false, despite Fass's claims).

[Acentinia]

Strong atheism would seem to violate logical positivism.

That's not necessarily a drawback. Logical positivism is for most intents and purposes a dead philosophy.

Agreed! Long live Critical Falsification!

[Soheran]

Plausibility isn't that black and white, if the majority of the population of the earth started claiming that they saw, or experienced in some way a unicorn, then outright asserting that a unicorn does not exist for certain would be considerably more illogical.

If people believed in them, not because they had actually seen a unicorn or directly experienced one, but because they were taught all their lives that unicorns exist, and whatever "experience" they might have of them coincidentally happened to be in accordance with the particular (contrary to all others) theory of unicorns that they were taught to abide by, then, no, I don't think we'd get much greater plausibility. The evidence--the contradictions in tales and between tales, the strong cultural biases toward believing one theory rather than another, the utter lack of direct evidence--would suggest baseless mythology.

Actually, God is even less plausible. Unicorns are broadly in accordance with what we understand of the way the world works: they don't exist, but they could without changing much else. God--an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal being--radically violates the ordinary understanding of the way reality functions: everything we have seen of the world suggests that natural laws are universal and eternal, that entities are bound by them and do not themselves meddle with them. And the more implausible the claim, the stronger the evidence we would need to substantiate it: we have very bad evidence for a very implausible claim, so strong atheism seems pretty reasonable.

It's true enough that "absence of proof is not proof of absence", but what is going on here is more like a modus tolens, though not as deductively rigorous: the question, in both the unicorn case and the God case, is "What would the world plausibly be like if this being existed, and, given what we know about this world, how well do the pictures coincide?"

[Soheran]

It also violates the falsification principle,

Hardly much better than logical positivism...

Edit: Further, on the theory of truth justification I've advanced (in my above post), I'm not sure "God does not exist" is actually unfalsifiable. If we had some strong evidence--a series of miracles, a great booming voice lecturing to us, and so forth--that would change things.

and the null hypothesis (failure to reject a null hypothesis does not make it objectively true to the extent that even weak agnosticism is false, despite Fass's claims).

This is not the real issue. The real issue is whether it makes sense to assert something ("God does not exist") without proof, when we have solid but not sure-fire grounding. Once it is put this way, it's pretty clear that we make such assertions all the time, and while they may not qualify for a philosophically-rigorous standard of "knowledge" they are quite good enough in ordinary contexts.

[Hydesland]

If people believed in them, not because they had actually seen a unicorn or directly experienced one, but because they were taught all their lives that unicorns exist, and whatever "experience" they might have of them coincidentally happened to be in accordance with the particular (contrary to all others) theory of unicorns that they were taught to abide by, then, no, I don't think we'd get much greater plausibility. The evidence--the contradictions in tales and between tales, the strong cultural biases toward believing one theory rather than another, the utter lack of direct evidence--would suggest baseless mythology.

We're not talking about one specific religion though. We're talking about literally an infinite amount of possible scenarios, an infinite amount of possible deities, paranormal entities, prime movers etc... A very specific belief in a invisible pink flying unicorn is significantly less plausible than the sum of all probabilities of all possible realities involving some sort of creator being. Billions of people have claimed that they have experienced some sort sort of supernatural experience, or some sort of deity.

Actually, God is even less plausible. Unicorns are broadly in accordance with what we understand of the way the world works: they don't exist, but they could without changing much else. God--an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal being--radically violates the ordinary understanding of the way reality functions: everything we have seen of the world suggests that natural laws are universal and eternal, that entities are bound by them and do not themselves meddle with them. And the more implausible the claim, the stronger the evidence we would need to substantiate it: we have very bad evidence for a very implausible claim, so strong atheism seems pretty reasonable.

See above, that's not the only definition of God a strong atheist is required to reject. But saying something highly implausible is not strong atheism, not in the sense that fass obnoxiously describes it at least. You can simultaneously believe something to be highly implausible whilst still being technically agnostic about it. In fact, since human knowledge is not absolute, it's really impossible at this stage not to be technically agnostic.

It's true enough that "absence of proof is not proof of absence", but what is going on here is more like a modus tolens, though not as deductively rigorous: the question, in both the unicorn case and the God case, is "What would the world plausibly be like if this being existed, and, given what we know about this world, how well do the pictures coincide?"

I don't see a reason why the concept of some sort of deity or alternate reality that links things together in a causative sense is so massively implausible, I see absolutely no argument as to why this is as implausible as a flying invisible pink unicorn, plausibility is along a spectrum, and comparing two implausible concepts just because they both happen to be unfalsifiable is not valid. And even if the chance of something existing is 1/99999999999999^9999999999, that STILL doesn't mean that agnosticism about the fact is 'idiotic'.

[Hydesland]

Edit: Further, on the theory of truth justification I've advanced (in my above post), I'm not sure "God does not exist" is actually unfalsifiable. If we had some strong evidence--a series of miracles, a great booming voice lecturing to us, and so forth--that would change things.

It's practically falsifiable, since all possible hypothesised incarnations of a creative or God like being approaches infinite, and it's existence may not be contingent on anything humans can physically observe on this universe.

This is not the real issue. The real issue is whether it makes sense to assert something ("God does not exist") without proof, when we have solid but not sure-fire grounding. Once it is put this way, it's pretty clear that we make such assertions all the time, and while they may not qualify for a philosophically-rigorous standard of "knowledge" they are quite good enough in ordinary contexts.

Yes, in ordinary contexts, if something has absolutely no evidence supporting a conclusion, it's normally sensible to reject it, as we know that this very rarely happens if something is true. With questions about deities, we have no such experience or any frame of reference, we can't form a significance level.

[Autumn Wind]

Is it actually explained what, exactly, "strong" Atheism is in relation to "weak" Atheism? Either it's not their or I missed it.

There was someone who posted yesterday or so with regards to a conversation about how "anything is possible."

As long as you aren't of the mind to "question everything," then to answer the OP, I'd say that "Strong" atheism is as teneble as "Strong" anything else.

[The Tofu Islands]

Is it actually explained what, exactly, "strong" Atheism is in relation to "weak" Atheism? Either it's not their or I missed it.

Strong atheism is the belief that there are no gods.
Weak atheism is the lack of belief in any gods.

I mentioned it somewhere on the first page.

There’s a wiki page about it.

[Dyakovo]

BREAKING NEWS: Sometimes people aren't logical.

You don't say...

[Grave_n_idle]

Surely weak atheism is the only logically tenable atheist position? For that matter it doesn't seem to differ from agnosticism. Strong atheism would seem to violate logical positivism.

I don't care if it's 'tenable' or not, it just doesn't work in my head.

To me, it seems more illogical than theism, because at least theists (tend to) have some scriptural or cultural reason for their beliefs... and I don't see how you can have a scriptural basis for an absolute negation of god(s).

[Maurepas]

Not really...

I maintain that if it isnt proven, it doesnt exist...

Easy...

[Ashmoria]

Not really...

I maintain that if it isnt proven, it doesnt exist...

Easy...

yeah

i see no reason to parse the difference between "doesnt believe" and "believes there isnt" until there is a better argument on the "there is" side.

[Grave_n_idle]

Not really...

I maintain that if it isnt proven, it doesnt exist...

Easy...

Maybe it's too much science - I don't like to rule anything out that I can't verify is actually 'out'.

[Maurepas]

Not really...

I maintain that if it isnt proven, it doesnt exist...

Easy...

Maybe it's too much science - I don't like to rule anything out that I can't verify is actually 'out'.

I look at it from the other side, I wont rule anything in, till it is verified to actually be in,

[Hydesland]

I look at it from the other side, I wont rule anything in, till it is verified to actually be in,

Bullshit. If your mother claims she went to the shops today, you don't look at surveillance footage before you can actually believe her.

[Ashmoria]

I look at it from the other side, I wont rule anything in, till it is verified to actually be in,

Bullshit. If your mother claims she went to the shops today, you don't look at surveillance footage before you can actually believe her.

mom saying its so is reason enough to believe her story.

mom saying god exists, not so much reason to believe.

[Maurepas]

I look at it from the other side, I wont rule anything in, till it is verified to actually be in,

Bullshit. If your mother claims she went to the shops today, you don't look at surveillance footage before you can actually believe her.

Nah, I check her gas gauge, and whether she brought anything back,

[Hydesland]

mom saying its so is reason enough to believe her story.

mom saying god exists, not so much reason to believe.

Ok then. If I said that yesterday (assuming your mother is perfectly healthy etc...) your mother went to the shops (despite me not having any reason to know, thus me claiming not being reason enough to believe it), would you then actively rule it the idea that your mother went to the shops yesterday?

[Ashmoria]

mom saying its so is reason enough to believe her story.

mom saying god exists, not so much reason to believe.

Ok then. If I said that yesterday (assuming your mother is perfectly healthy etc...) your mother went to the shops (despite me not having any reason to know, thus me claiming not being reason enough to believe it), would you then actively rule it the idea that your mother went to the shops yesterday?

i would find your claiming anything about my mother to be no proof whatsoever, positive or negative, about my mother.

since you have no knowledge of my mother.

[Grave_n_idle]

mom saying its so is reason enough to believe her story.

mom saying god exists, not so much reason to believe.

Ok then. If I said that yesterday (assuming your mother is perfectly healthy etc...) your mother went to the shops (despite me not having any reason to know, thus me claiming not being reason enough to believe it), would you then actively rule it the idea that your mother went to the shops yesterday?

i would find your claiming anything about my mother to be no proof whatsoever, positive or negative, about my mother.

since you have no knowledge of my mother.

Since you assume that he has no knowledge, you mean?

[Hydesland]

i would find your claiming anything about my mother to be no proof whatsoever, positive or negative, about my mother.

since you have no knowledge of my mother.

But that doesn't answer my question. Would you then rule it out completely, would you then positively assume that she certainly did not go to the shops yesterday?

[Ashmoria]

mom saying its so is reason enough to believe her story.

mom saying god exists, not so much reason to believe.

Ok then. If I said that yesterday (assuming your mother is perfectly healthy etc...) your mother went to the shops (despite me not having any reason to know, thus me claiming not being reason enough to believe it), would you then actively rule it the idea that your mother went to the shops yesterday?

i would find your claiming anything about my mother to be no proof whatsoever, positive or negative, about my mother.

since you have no knowledge of my mother.

Since you assume that he has no knowledge, you mean?

my mom is dead. his saying she did something yesterday is proof that he knows nothing about her.

[Ashmoria]

i would find your claiming anything about my mother to be no proof whatsoever, positive or negative, about my mother.

since you have no knowledge of my mother.

But that doesn't answer my question. Would you then rule it out completely, would you then positively assume that she certainly did not go to the shops yesterday?

no. i would not consider your statement as proof or disproof of anything. you dont know my mother. what you might say about her is irrelevant to whether or not she did it.

[Maurepas]

This is why bad jokes are always the correct answer,

[Grave_n_idle]

mom saying its so is reason enough to believe her story.

mom saying god exists, not so much reason to believe.

Ok then. If I said that yesterday (assuming your mother is perfectly healthy etc...) your mother went to the shops (despite me not having any reason to know, thus me claiming not being reason enough to believe it), would you then actively rule it the idea that your mother went to the shops yesterday?

i would find your claiming anything about my mother to be no proof whatsoever, positive or negative, about my mother.

since you have no knowledge of my mother.

Since you assume that he has no knowledge, you mean?

my mom is dead. his saying she did something yesterday is proof that he knows nothing about her.

Ah, as far as you know your mother is dead.

You clearly haven't watched enough conspiracy theory movies. She's actually alive, and a spy... you'll find out all about it in a few years, when you're recruited by a top secret agency, to fight aliens.