Every object is a being. — Lionino

By being I meant something with a mind.

'Anti-' means opposition, that is what the dictionary says. You ascribe this "morally" adverb to the word opposition when it is not there. There are countless examples of 'anti-' prefixed words without moral meaning.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-ageing
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-id
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-romantic
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/anti-aircraft
The word anti-matter itself indicates reverse, instead of moral stance or counter-action. — Lionino

You're right. Anti-theist can mean asserting God doesn't exist.

I believe it will snow because I believe someone said so to me earlier. Knowing is not a requirement for believing. — mentos987

You couldn't rationally believe what they said if you had no knowledge it was possible, e.g., if you don't know what snow is or don't know that it can snow.

Experience is not the same as knowing. In my experience, the earth is flat. — mentos987

But you know what the Earth is because you experience standing on it. What you directly experience is what leads to knowledge, and you don't experience the roundness of the Earth, so it's not an appropriate example to prove your point.

No, in this case, the beliefs derived from knowledge does not refer to the same thing. — mentos987

It still refers to knowledge.

Uncertainty and certainty are the scales themselves. Being certain and being uncertain, those are the actual levels of certainty, and they are separate. However, being certain can still contain a degree of uncertainty (0-5%). — mentos987

This just doesn't make sense. They're separate but they overlap?

This doesn’t make sense to me. You seem to be saying that we must have knowledge of X before we can believe X; but then you say it is atemporal: can you give an example? — Bob Ross

By dependency, I mean logical dependency. So believing X requires having knowledge about the concept of X. Our beliefs have a structure, so in order to believe, we have to have knowledge in that structure as well as knowledge of how the thing believed in fits into that structure.

"Beliefs that we formulate without knowledge are usually predictions or estimations"
Isn’t this a temporal dependency? — Bob Ross

Validating a belief as rational (as knowledge) can depend on information we don't currently have access to, yes.

This also seems like you are saying that we just need to have knowledge of Y (as opposed to X) to believe X, which is compatible with the etymological schema. — Bob Ross

I have to know what the president of the United States is in order to have a belief about who will become president in the future.

Not necessarily, I can be unsure about it. — mentos987

You're misrepresenting what I said. I said: "And you believe it because you know something". The thing you are unsure about is the thing you believe, which you believe because of some other fact that you know.

However I probably have some experience that suggests that it will snow. — mentos987

And the experience is what you know.

But yes, I can know some things and use that to form beliefs about something else. The belief is weaker than the knowledge though. — mentos987

So this agrees with my original point, meaning you shouldn't have written "not necessarily". What you're now doing is acknowledging that belief coincides with knowledge, which undermines the continuous scale between the two you were advocating for. Since belief is based on knowledge, I can believe in something in which I know.

I think that what you are doing is using belief as a synonym for uncertainty and knowledge as a synonym for certainty, but incorrectly representing this on a continuum in which certainty and uncertainty get mixed together, but not belief and knowledge, each of which you're representing as an admixture of certainty and uncertainty. It is in fact certainty and uncertainty that do not mix, being binary opposites, and belief and knowledge which can mix, shown by the fact that we base belief on knowledge and lack of belief on lack of knowledge.

My bad, it is supposed to read "Being uncertain indicates that you are not certain". — mentos987

But that means the same thing. What you wrote was that "Being certain is a step on the Certainty scale: 95-100%" so I pointed out that you earlier that this is what knowledge is, not what certainty is. "You said earlier that knowledge is 95 - 100% certainty." Saying that certainty is a step on the certainty scale means you're mixing uncertainty together with certainty, which is a contradiction that I earlier pointed out.

If someone asks me "Do you believe you need oxygen to survive?" then I answer, "No, I know I need oxygen to survive". — mentos987

But this isn't a case of you not believing that oxygen is needed to survive. You believe it because of what you know.

"I believe it will snow". — mentos987

And you believe it because you know something.

Being certain is a step on the Certainty scale: 95-100% — mentos987

You said earlier that knowledge is 95 - 100% certainty.
Your new comment means that you can be both uncertain and certain, in contradiction to your last comment.

Not to me, uncertainty indicates that you are not certain. — mentos987

"I am opposed to the pilot-wave", everybody understands that as thinking that pilot-wave is a bad theory — Lionino

Because you're talking about an object in that case, not a being.

Opposition to the existence of something is clearly denial of existence. — Lionino

The kind of opposition indicated by the "anti-" prefix is moral. See: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-

Opposition shouldn't be read to mean "denial of" — Hallucinogen
Well, you said it yourself:
Antitheism means opposition to the existence of a God — Hallucinogen — Lionino

Yes, so "opposition to something" doesn't mean "to deny". It means moral opposition.

No, to me you either believe it or you know it. Knowing is stronger than believing. — mentos987

This entails that saying you know something means you don't believe it, which is absurd.

Not to me, uncertainty indicates that you are not certain. — mentos987

You said the opposite of this in your previous comment.

There's a binary distinction between certainty and uncertainty — Hallucinogen
Not to me. The term “uncertain” would indicate 5-95% certainty. — mentos987

And what do you call someone who does, other than "atheist"? — Hallucinogen
Antitheist. — Lionino

Antitheism means opposition to the existence of a God. Other definitions even say opposition to religion. Opposition shouldn't be read to mean "denial of". If I deny the existence of unicorns, we don't say I'm opposed to them. Although there are definitions of it the way you mean it. Whichever definition one gives the word, it's defined as such based on what the position purports to know, which underlines that that's how these words should be defined.

. If you see any logical fallacies in the way I use my definitions, feel free to point them out. — mentos987

Not to me. — mentos987

Certainty in X cannot coincide with uncertainty in X, so suggesting that they're not disjoint is a fallacy.

But not between belief and knowledge (they can coincide, — Hallucinogen
Not to me, knowledge is a step above believing. — mentos987

Belief and knowledge don't coincide to you? One cannot believe in something and have knowledge of it?

I think that knowledge can contain a small degree of uncertainty. — mentos987

I explained in my previous comment that it couldn't.

Likewise, if we only have uncertainty at our disposal, then we don't have belief in it. We would just have lack of belief. — Hallucinogen
I don't follow. — mentos987

If you only have uncertainty in something, then you don't have belief to any degree in it, only lack of belief.

Lack of belief can come from contradictions, no? — mentos987

Understanding that there's a contradiction in something is a form of knowledge.

5-50% certainty would indicate disbelief.
0-5% certainty would indicate knowing that something is not true.
The term “uncertain” would indicate 5-95% certainty. — mentos987

Already debunked all of this.

you have the relation backwards between beliefs and knowledge. Knowledge, traditionally, is a true, justified, belief. A belief is not determined after one recognizes they have knowledge — Bob Ross

The relationship is not temporal but one of dependency. If we're rational, belief depends on knowledge.

The etymological schema is going to say that we formulate beliefs, which are not yet knowledge — Bob Ross

But those are irrational beliefs. Beliefs that we formulate without knowledge are usually predictions or estimations. The knowledge involved is what the predicted entity is, what it means, as well as all the wheres and whats involved. The knowledge that might be missing could be the hows. If this is missing, the belief would still be irrational, i.e., not based on knowledge. It's based on knowledge of some details, but the knowledge detailing the hows, and therefore the full proposition in which one believes, is still lacking. That's what makes it irrational.

e.g., I believe that the tree I walked passed 3 days ago is still there even though I have little justificatory support for it, etc — Bob Ross

Your justificatory support is the knowledge that there's a tree there, and the knowledge that trees don't typically disappear over a period of 3 days.

then there is a meaningful difference between those who claim to only believe something and those who believe it and know. — Bob Ross

It's rationality.

Knowing something indicates a certainty of 95-100%

Believing something indicates a certainty of 50-95% — mentos987

There's a binary distinction between certainty and uncertainty. But not between belief and knowledge (they can coincide, and they do if we're rational). If you try to impose a boundary between belief and knowledge at 95% certainty, not only do you disrupt the fact that they often coincide, but you also create a category (in knowledge) where certainty and uncertainty are paradoxically included. This contradicts the fact that they're disjoint from each other. Knowledge about something only comes from certainty about some detail, not uncertainty. Likewise, if we only have uncertainty at our disposal, then we don't have belief in it. We would just have lack of belief. We can have degrees of belief about something if we know (and therefore have certainty) about some of the details, but not all of them.

The same fallacy arises on the other side of the spectrum. Lack of belief can't mean less than 50% certainty, because lack of belief only (rationally) comes from lack of certainty/knowledge. If you have 0% certainty about something, then you don't have any knowledge regarding it. If you then become 1% certain in it, it means you now know some detail about it. But that means you believe something about it. So trying to push 0% certainty and 1 - 49% certainty into the same category is going to be paradoxical.

This is based on my previous comment that it's rational to believe in something that you know and to not believe in something you lack knowledge of. The same applies to any model of belief and knowledge in terms of certainty and uncertainty that we try to create.

Having faith in something is when you simply choose to add a percentage of certainty. E.g. 55% belief + 41% faith = knowing that God exist.

How do you feel about this? — mentos987

I just wouldn't agree that definition of faith.

If I don't believe in the existence of God, any god, because there is no evidence for its existence, what does that makes me? An agnostic, an atheist, an agnostic atheist? — Alkis Piskas

If you're claiming to know that no God exists because to you, lack of evidence is indistinguishable with, or indicates, lack of existence, then you are an atheist.

If you don't know whether God exists, and hence lack belief, you are an agnostic.

But it does seem important to me to note that religious belief may not be entirely rational. — Ludwig V

If it is faith alone then it is believing without knowledge which is irrational.
Belief/faith as a function of knowledge is rational.
We are trying to establish the terms for referring to people's mental states, so in order for those terms to be clear, the connections between definitions need to also be rational. Sacrifice that and we end up mired in the confusing mess that the new atheists have succeeded in creating.

I'm attending the actually, etymologically sound usage of the words. Why would you accept randomly-ascribed meanings that don't fit the etymology. — AmadeusD

You're doing the opposite. Atheism has always meant denial of God's existence and it's only recently that new atheists began to popularise the "lack of belief and nothing else" definition.

That isn't looking at the words - that's taking a definition that fits your point. — AmadeusD

Selecting any definition is selecting one that fits your point. If anything, this reveals that your original basis "Just look at the bloody words lol" was poorly-informed.

The one provided by an institutional atheist organisation has much more authority, imo. — AmadeusD

And you say this right after complaining I'm taking a definition that fits my point. It shows you're not sticking to your original basis, which you claimed was "just looking at words". Now it has to be from a specifically atheist source, all of a sudden.

2. I have identified robust meanings for these words which avoid double-counts, inaccuracies and inconsistencies, on my view. — AmadeusD

It doesn't, because as pointed out in the OP, defining atheism as lack of belief doesn't distinguish it from agnosticism, since agnostics also lack belief in God.

Knowledge and truth are not the same thing. — Philosophim

Knowledge is the mental representation of truth.

Knowledge is the most reasonable conclusion we can make with the information we have at the time. That can change as new information comes about. — Philosophim

Then it's not knowledge, and this definition you're offering means you need a term for information that we're certain about. I call what you're referring to "faith" or "confidence".

We can only assume that what we know is the closest to the truth at the time — Philosophim

This isn't knowledge. Knowledge is what you are correctly certain about.

because at the time rationality and reality are not contradicting our conclusions. — Philosophim

Knowledge isn't just absence of contradiction. You are thinking of belief (or "confidence") - the space of possibilities inferred from what we know.

No. No it wasn’t. — AmadeusD

Then you have a burden to explain why that's the case. Insisting on your own definitions isn't reason-giving.

And the citation has been provided more than once. — AmadeusD

?

Just bloody look at the words lol. — AmadeusD

I did -- I gave the Oxford definition in the OP.

atheism -- The theory or belief that God does not exist. — Oxford Reference

Did you look at that? If so, why didn't you give a reason for rejecting this dictionary definition?

As Tom helpfully provide earlier in the https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/ — AmadeusD

It was the OP that originally provided this, not Tom. All of this is making me think that you didn't read the OP.

They are anti-theists. ... Anti-theism. That there is NOT deities. — AmadeusD

No, anti-theism is moral opposition to God on the basis that belief in God is harmful to people. It's not an ontological claim, but a moral one.

A-theism literally means not theism. It doesn’t contain anything close to a positive claim. — AmadeusD

This reasoning doesn't follow, because if theism is the opposite of belief in God, rather than lack of theism, then it's the positive claim that belief in God is false.

I know there is no matter that can travel faster than light as of today. I believe we might find something in the future. — Philosophim

But the Lorentz transformations, which are what constrains matter to travelling below the speed of light, aren't derived from empirical evidence or subject to data that is variable. They're derived from the postulate that the laws of physics are invariant (necessary for science to be consistent with itself) along with mathematical modeling.

As long as that's accepted, then we can prove that certain forms of matter don't exist, which is tantamount to "proving a negative".

An atheist merely abstains from belief. They do not assert that God does NOT exist.

An agnostic believes/thinks we can’t know if God exists.

They can co-exist in one entity. — AmadeusD

All of this was proven wrong in the OP. What's your reason for thinking atheists do not assert God does not exist? And what do you call someone who does, other than "atheist"?

You cannot prove a negative. Proving something requires what's called, "The burden of proof". Someone must present evidence of what they are claiming exists. To claim things don't exist requires no burden. — Philosophim

Do you think matter that travels faster than the speed of light can exist?

Who's calling themselves an agnostic atheist? — Philosophim

The New Atheists.

That's just misunderstanding the definition of the terms. — Philosophim

Glad somebody realizes it.

'lack of belief in god' and / or 'belief in the nonexistence of god' and is not a statement of knowledge — 180 Proof

If you lack knowledge of something, then it's rational to lack belief in it.
If you know something doesn't exist, then it's rational to believe it doesn't exist.

not a truth-claim) like agnosticism. — 180 Proof

???
Agnostics lack knowledge (the lack of a claim) and therefore lack belief.

it can be "rational" to believe something without knowing whether it is true. — 180 Proof

Any belief that you have is a result of what you know, not lack of knowledge.

So do you think it is "irrational" to know that there is a god and not to believe in that god — 180 Proof

Yes.

ust as a wife can know that her husband exists and does not believe in him — 180 Proof

This seems like equivocation. I'm not talking about "believing in" in the sense of trusting their character.

If so, please explain. — 180 Proof

If you know something, it is rational to believe it. Why would you not believe something that you know?

I think your conflation of knowing (i.e. a proposition) and believing — 180 Proof

I'm not conflating them. I'm saying they're connected by rationality. See 1st sentence of the OP.

No, I don't believe in gods, I consider myself an atheist — Tom Storm

Neither do agnostics, so you need more reason than that to call yourself an atheist.

But the rest of what you're saying -- that we don't invent labels for a host of other lack-of-beliefs -- actually supports my side of this. It supports not defining atheism in terms of what it lacks belief in. Instead, it should be defined in terms of knowledge.

Atheism goes to belief, agnosticism goes to knowledge. — Tom Storm

Belief and knowledge are coupled, if we're being rational. So if by "goes to belief" you mean "is about lacking belief", then you're defining atheism to be the same as agnosticism.

I do not believe there are gods. But I do not know that there are no gods. — Tom Storm

You're an agnostic.

2) to have no rational justification to assert that God does not exist, and 3) to have no disposition to believe that God might exist. This differs from agnosticism vis-à-vis (3). — Leontiskos

And (2) as well.

but I belive that noone is ever 100% sure — mentos987

That isn't a belief that I share.

I also believe that most people that call themselves atheists are really agnostics. Atheism is just a more common term. — mentos987

Agreed.

When I say that I am "absolutely certain" about something what I really mean is that I believe it to be true with an error margin of about 0.01%. — mentos987

Then you aren't certain, you just have a high degree of confidence.

But I think a person can be 85% sure that god does not exist and still call themselves an atheist. — mentos987

As long as you don't know, you are an agnostic, because you lack knowledge. There aren't degrees of knowledge in a thing; it takes only a binary value.

To me it is about the level of certainty. — mentos987

This is about belief, so you're describing how agnostics might differ from one another. But you still can't put lacking belief in x on a continuum with believing x doesn't exist, because they are different propositions that are separated by a binary divide.

"a bit of belief" still means uncertainty and lack of knowledge. Don't cross lacking belief in something with belief in the nonexistence of something. They are not on a continuum.

What does it come from? If you say reasoning about reasoning about the world, that lands it in higher-order reasoning about the world. Now, I challenge you to name what a priori reasoning responds to in total separation from the world. — ucarr

I wouldn't say it "responds", it's not a mechanism. It's intentional content and it's abstract and propositional. You have a mind, so you have it.

Quantum computing has something contrary to say about the last part of your claim. — ucarr

Everything that quantum computing allegedly does is mathematical. If by physical you mean something more generic than existing at a point, then you'd have to mention what it is.

If mind emerges from brain — ucarr

I don't think it does.

Functional mind that has impact upon existentiality, meaning and usefulness is never uncoupled from the physicality of the natural world. — ucarr

An abstract mind could have an impact on the natural world without being identifiable in it, if abstracta are more generic than concreta.

What a priori reason is practiced by brain in a vat never in contact with the world? — ucarr

All of it? A priori reasoning doesn't come from sensory stimuli, by definition.

Do you believe math is metaphysically prior to physics? — ucarr

It has to be, since mathematical concepts are more general than physical entities, which only exist at a given coordinate in space. Mathematical truths whoever enjoy far greater comprehensivity.

What do math theoreticians say about the physical mind’s — ucarr

I don't presuppose the existence of "physical minds".

If so, what say you about the fact that math, like physics, possesses pre-analytical axioms? — ucarr

What a priori axioms does physics possess? Any that math possesses supports my position.

Also, what say you about math axioms being incomplete? — ucarr

They are more general than physical rules but less general than logic and also less general than the global identity.

The structure you are looking for is an identity - a mathematical space/expression/set of operations that is always true.
Counting numbers originate from the fact that the identity self-distributes its own Boolean algebra. The set in its entirety (unity) corresponds to "1" and the empty set to "0". Subsetting allows the construction of von Neumann ordinals - sets that correspond to counting numbers.
Because physics consists of a set of points with trajectories in a mathematical space, this structure is everywhere-distributed in physics. That explains the connection between your "starting-point physical entity" and your "starting-point counting number". They do not "begin" simultaneously though - every physical fact depends on facts about this mathematical structure, but not vice versa.

It seems logically possible for syntax to be sufficient for semantics. It just turns out when we investigate with thought experiments like the Chinese room argument, that syntax is actually insufficient for semantics. But without knowing that beforehand, it appears possible that we might understand the meaning of some symbol purely by looking at the instructions of which it is a part.

It's logically possible for reductionism to be the case, but not metaphysically possible.
There has to be a whole binding all the parts of something from the top-down for it to be coherent, you can't actually building anything by "combining parts" without that, despite what a pragmatic heuristic it is to think so.

what do you think the best arguments for it are? — frank

I think I've only ever seen one kind of argument for it, and it is fallacious. They all depend entirely on setting up definitions about the world so as to define any non-physical phenomena out of existence. That's question begging and that's irrational.

A non-simulated world is a set of objects in space. But if that's the case, then a simulated world is not a set of objects in space. — Philosophim

What I said to you above, was:

A world is a set of objects in a space. The decision of whether something is simulated versus non-simulated would rest on whether something emerges from information processing. — Hallucinogen

A set of objects in a space that is not emergent from information processing is a non-simulated world.
A set of objects in a space that is emergent from information processing is a simulated world.

These really aren't separate issues though. — Philosophim

If we have no information then we can begin from the premise that they are. "Space is either mental or physical" assuming that the physical = non-mental, and the mental = non-physical.

A mind is not itself a simulation right? Meaning that it is a non-simulated bit of reality that simulations can run in. — Philosophim

Correct.

An accurate simulation of a non-simulated world can be applied to a non-simulated world without difficulty. — Philosophim

Why is it of importance to point out what we can simulate about a non-simulated world?

That doesn't mean the world is simulated, it just means that simulation of the actual world is accurate. — Philosophim

I'm not sure what you're rebutting here. The world is emergent from information processing, exactly because our models that treat it as such have more explanatory power than those that don't.

All that we can conclude from this is that our simulations of the world accurately reflect how our minds function. — Philosophim

Are you using "our simulations of the world" to mean what theoretical physicists do? What we can conclude is that the information processing space emerges from and the kind that minds produce are the same thing.

The only way you can validly claim 4 is based on one is to state, "A simulated world is either..." Because that's what you stated in 1. — Philosophim

I'm not following this. Claim 4 isn't subject to exceptions about simulations existing in mechanical space because of claim 2. There doesn't need to be an "either" because of 2.

There has to be something non-simulated to simulate right? — Philosophim

There has to be something non-simulated to do the simulating. Those are minds.

Otherwise there isn't a non-simulated world — Philosophim

Yes, there isn't.

and thus the simulation cannot be accurate or inaccurate, it just is. — Philosophim

I don't know what you are referring to when you say "accurate". There isn't a non-simulated world, so the fact that space is emergent from information processing isn't "accurate" to anything other than the information processing in God's mind.

But if it is an accurate simulation, it is not indistinguishible — Philosophim

It isn't indistinguishable from what? Information processing from which physical space is emergent is scientifically indistinguishable from the information processing that occurs in a mind.

because it lacks the key property that you defined a non-simulated world as being: A set of objects in space — Philosophim

I defined a world as a set of objects in a space.

If a simulated world is a set of objects in space, then it is not a simulated world. — Philosophim

Why have you decided this? Every simulated world is a set of objects in a space.

What I meant is that without defining what a non-simulated world is — Philosophim

But I just did this? A world is a set of objects in a space. The question is whether it emerges from information processing or not.

its turned out like:

A. Its given that the world is simulated.
B. Therefore the world is simulated. — Philosophim

That's not the conclusion of the argument. And it leaves out the rest of the argument, which establishes the connections between space, information processing and minds.

The possibility of a non-simulated world existing is implicit in the first part of premise 1.

Then you're really only arguing Spinoza's position.. — Vaskane

The conclusion of Cosmological or DPA arguments doesn't specifically identify Spinoza's God. Neither entail that God has infinite properties, for example.

The rest of what you said is right.

If the universe is a manifestation within the mind of God that's more of a pantheistic view of God. — Vaskane

Panentheistic. Pantheism would mean the universe is all God is, instead of a program-output relationship.