The Alter Bible

I'm glad you edited your response.

> An atheist would not explain the position that you're explaining. The existence of a commonality doesn't preclude any differences. I'm simply arguing that the differences exist and are very important when understanding what people believe.

Now it's you that's nitpicking. The specifics only matter when you want them to matter. When they're inconvenient to you, you simply say you don't want to have a religious discussion. If you want to say what theists do and why, you're having a religious discussion. Because the reasons are important.

Me saying I'm acting like anyone would is right in line with how everybody else would use that phrase. If I get mad at something, it's just like everyone else getting mad at something, even if the reasons why I'm getting mad are different. Acting like someone is not doing exactly the same thing. Postgres has a LIKE operator, and it's not the equivalence operator.

Fine, whatever. I shouldn't expect an atheist to be able to be specific about what a theist is. After all, you need belief to even be able to begin to understand it anyway. Sure, ok, let's talk about atheism instead. If only so you can have a sure footing. I'll ask the questions so you can answer.

> A person is an atheist because of the specific things they do to be one.

That claim is... fascinating. It hearkens all the way back to the beginning of Christianity. Faith, what you call belief, is what makes you a Christian. According to you, works, actions, is what makes you an atheist. Most atheists tell me that it's lack of belief / faith that makes you an atheist. You're literally the first atheist in my 15 years of exploring the space that has said to me that it's actions that makes you an atheist, not lack of belief. I have never even once contemplated that atheism could be so like Islam in this way. So understand that your claim is quite the interesting one to me.

So are you saying that there are atheists in name but not in deed? That there are atheists who don't toe the party line, so shouldn't be considered "real" atheists? Because that's the space you're inhabiting here when you claim it's by action and not by belief.

It would be a rather fun debate space to play in, markedly different from the usual one where I have to take ever finer slices out of what the meaning of "belief" is so as to show that the atheist's position necessarily reflects belief instead of the lack thereof, and then showing that the "agnostic atheist" is belied by his actual debate style rather than his stated (non-) beliefs.

First off, I would never equate "faith" with "belief", nor would most atheists in my experience. As human beings, we have to make decisions. Sometimes we have to make decisions without the time, experience, or resources to make them in an optimal way. So we can make decisions based on what we know about the world, or we can make decisions based on ignorance.

Furthermore, we often have to justify our decisions to other people or against our own moral principles. Belief is what your brain does with prior knowledge and experiences that you have, and it is often invoked to justify decisions made with experience. On the other hand, we sometimes have to justify decision that are based in ignorance. We have a really good word for this: hope. Usually you're just getting lucky. Or you say "I did this because I didn't know what else to do, and I didn't know how to find something better." (You can also call hope a sort of emotion, if you're just commenting on other peoples' decisions rather than evaluating your own.) You're hopeful that it will work, even if you don't have any knowledge or experience that it will. Usually, this is not ideal. You'd always rather do the right thing because you know what the right thing is, rather than doing it on accident. There's no way to teach your methods of victory if you only win your battles on accident!

Faith is not belief per se, nor is it hope, though it looks a bit like both on the surface. Faith is what happens when you say it is good/important to make decisions based on hope. It is the promotion of ignorance as a virtue, rather than as an unfortunate fact of life which we must work to overcome. Faith is a particular belief that hope is better than knowledge, at least sometimes.

If you're having unsatisfying discussions with atheists, it is probably because you're failing to make these distinctions. Most atheists will tell you they believe things. Those beliefs are based in knowledge and experience with the world. They will also tell you they have hope. They will not tell you they have faith, because they don't want to promote ignorance as a virtue.