Viviane

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Posts by Viviane

• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

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• 

  Viviane

  So, well done, good job, thread derailed.

  As we left it last, so far we still don't have clue what absentheism is actually saying (or not) and I suspect we never will.
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  I don't know where you got that idea from. Aten was depicted as a solar disc with rays emanating from it. And the sun exists, I see it mostly every day here.

  From reading on the subject.

  Aten was originally a hypostasis of Ra as well. His origin story is that a dead king rose to the heavens and united with the sun.

  Either way, assigning spirit power to a real thing no more makes that thing a god than does painting orange and black stripes on a poodle make it a tiger.
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  Again, please read carefully what I wrote. I didn't say you had the trait of an apatheist. I simply said that functional atheist and apatheist are domains of attitude towards life, whereas atheism, skepticism, agnosticism are theoretical stands.

  And I disagree. My attitude comes from action, not attitude. You are 100% incorrect.
• 
  42

  Something a CO once said.

  by cappytan in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  "there are only three reasons you should miss a meeting.

  fever, fracture or funeral.

  everything else is a sorry excuse.

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  Viviane

  but really, a person should be reasonable and accept other excuses to miss a meeting:

  "That bottle of Malbec isn't gonna drink itself, you know"

  "I needed to take the kids to the pool"

  "Feeling too frisky"

  "Because I have better things to do that sit there and listen to moronic drivel."
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  I didn't say you were an apatheist. I only said that functional atheism and apatheism both belong to the domain ofattitudes rather than theoretical positions. If I knew for sure that God existed, for sure I would care.

  And I strongly disagree because apathy implies my attitude is "don't care" which is not true. My actions are defined by my attitude of "do care, have looked all available material and found no evidence that any deity exists". That is wildly different than "don't care".
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  I take 'absent' in the simplest and most rational of its meanings: not present

  OK, that 100% implies existence. If a student is marked "not present" then that student MUST exist.

  It may include "exists, but not there", also "not paying attention/not caring", "existed in the past, now dead", or "non-existent".

  So, if you are saying it could mean any of those things, then you aren't saying anything and that position is already defined.

  That's exactly the problem that absentheism attempts to address: Atheism assumes a certain kind of deity - invisible, all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, entirely good and then debunks the notion that a deity like that may exist. But there are two problems with this, to wit:

  Atheism, is no definition, takes on defining any deity. Absentheism is not taking it on, in facts, it's simply making something unclear even less clear by refusing to say what it means. It could literally mean "god exists but isn't here or doesn't exist or we don't know what god is to even figure it out". That's not addressing any problem, it's simply mashing together several well defined positions.

  • What about deities that are known to have existed and have been worshiped as such - Caesar Augustus, Aten, the Sun-Disc, or the emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I (the Jah/Messiah of the Rastafarian movement)?

  For example, Ceasar is known to have existed as a person. That is a fact. The worship portion, the divinity, was specifically tied to existence of other gods and heaven, being related in some way to those gods. Without them, you get no divinity of Ceasar. His divinity is NOT a fact as there is no evidence of those gods or spirit world.

  Aten was the disc of the sun depicted as a falcon headed man. Unless you show me a falcon headed man, I fail to see the relevance. Ditto for Selassie. Objects that DO exist were co-opted into a belief system of the unprovable and invisible deities. So what?

  • What if a deity that exists leaves no physical footprint in the universe, doesn't communicate or interact directly with humans? What if said entity escapes any known definition that humans so far have come up with? How would we even collect evidence that it exists?

  Then all you can say is that there no evidence for that deity and no way to get any evidence, which is already a well defined position and the functional equivalent of "no deity at all".
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  Eden, I should also add "what do you mean by absent" to the list. It can mean "exists but not here" or "not paying attention" or "non-existent". Any of those definitions is taking a position on the existence of God, unless you are meaning all of them, in which case there are already definitions for that.
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  This appears to be a sensible reasoning. But let me ask you this: A child of one year old who holds no belief that deities exist. Is that child atheist?

  Yes, that child lacks a belief in any deity.

  Because according to the simplistic definition that "atheism is a disbelief in deities", a child is atheist.

  According to one dictionary that's one of many. Another is simply a lack of belief in deities, spirits, etc. They imply and mean different things.

  It's not so simple. There must be something more to atheism than simply disbelief in deities.

  There is, and you have been told that many times.

  • I posit that the overtly rejection of deities on the premise that they don't exist should be called atheism.

  • I posit that the disbelief in deities based on lack of objective evidence for their existence is skepticism.

  • I posit that the inability to believe or disbelieve in deities based on the premise that they are unknowable isagnosticism.

  Well, for starters, all of those things do mean that, but also more than and they all can mean variations on that. You are also missing a lot of similar but subtle variations on belief in deities or the spirit world. That's why, as I said previously, you often see people define the specific thing they are talking about when a word can have various meanings.

  My proposition is that there is a fourth stand: That the only thing that can be said about deities is that they are absent, not present, from the known universe, thus leaving the questions of belief or disbelief, existence or non-existence, entirely open. This I coined absentheism but feel free to call it anything else if you come up with a more suitable term.

  Define what you mean by absent, please, and how we know they aren't here. If a student is absent from class, that pre-supposes the student exists. If an item is absent from a drawer, say a fork, that supposes the fork exists. Your position isn't clear. Are you saying deities exist but removed from us? That's already a position that is defined. Are you saying they don't exist? Already defined. Are you saying it's unknowable? Already defined.

  Your position is very muddy in that it's not at all clear what you are trying to say. How do we know they are absent unless someone defines the specific properties of a deity so we know to look for it? What gap in positions is absenteism filling?

  However, you introduced another concept: functional atheist. That is, regardless of how your intellectual position towards deities is, your attitude in life is consistent with a belief that deities don't exist. This functional atheism is very much on the same domain of attitude of an apatheist, who "regards the question of the existence or non-existence of a god or gods to be essentially meaningless and irrelevant".

  Apathy implies that I don't care. That's not my position at all.
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  But ain't it funny how people demand definitions? Well, that's the place where they can be found. One can't demand definitions from an authority and then refuse said definition from said authority because it doesn't fit your model.

  Sure you can, particularly when the definitions given have a ton of nuance not taken into account that don't accurately convey what is being discussed. That's why you often see people say things like "for purposes of this discussion, we are using the specific definition of 'x' to mean 'abc123'"

  This is because, as MASH suggested, I use the label atheist to mean I live my life as if no deity exists. I can't know whether or not there is no deity, of course, but since I have no evidence that any exists, certainly not any that anyone has told me about, I live functionally as an atheist and indeed consider myself one. I simply lack the belief.

  That is the type of subtle nuance not conveyed by MW dictionary with two short lines.
• 
  284

  I'm an ABSENTHEIST. Are you also?

  by EdenOne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it just dawned on me.

  the existence of god can't be proved, neither is there evidence of god's inexistence.

  so, i'm neither theist neither atheist.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Viviane

  I agree. But that wasn't my point. The use of "absent", as I've demonstrated by using a respected dictionary (and yet Cofty and others dare to claim they know better that Marriam-Webster) can adequately describe a state of non-presence

  But you gave a definition for god that DOES presuppose existence when I asked. You also didn't tell me how I would know how to objectively determine whether or not we could tell if he was here.

  However, I said that if someone had a better term to positively describe a state of not being present, without presuming existence or non-existence, I was listening.

  There is 1) no evidence that deity or deities exist and 2) even if they do, that we have any measurable way to objectively determine the status of their presence in the universe. This position shall be called "makes-sense-ithsm".

  Seriously, that took me like, one minute.