Comment by joshua james on September 16, 2011 at 2:55am

you can say you don't accept the belief in god or something like that. my english is not the best so maybe other people can put it in better words

Comment by Eoganacht on September 16, 2011 at 3:00am

atheism is the lack of belief in a deity/deities. hence the term 'godless'. atheist comes from Greek and is broken down into two parts. 'a' - without. 'theist' - (this explains itself).

"I don't believe in God?"

This is a statement and the inverse of it is:

"I do believe in God?"

But he is not addressing the issue at hand. Neither statement explains atheism. Atheism is a lack of (without) a belief, not a belief that no deity/deities exist. The arguement is flawed because it equals 'a lack of a belief' with 'a belief of a negitive statement'.

The above statements are negitive and positive, respectedly. Atheism is a lack of a positive belief, therefore there statement that sums up an atheistic mindset is:

"I lack a belief in god"

This is neither positive nor negitive and thus has no inverse.

Since he likes maths so much:

Belief in god = 1

Belief in no god = -1

Lack of a belief in god = 0

Ask him to find an inverse of 0 that does not equal 0 or infinity.

 

Comment by Mike Tayler on September 16, 2011 at 3:19am

Eoganacht - very well put indeed

Comment by Eoganacht on September 16, 2011 at 3:48am

Thank you Mike. You are most kind

Comment by Dale Headley on September 16, 2011 at 4:00am

  This is a fallacious argument.  "I don't believe in God" (atheism) is strictly a passive statement indicating an absence of belief.  "I believe there is no God" (antitheism) is an affirmative statement describing a presumed reality.  One is NOT the inverse of the other.  It is true that many people who  believe there absolutely is NO such thing as God often do say, "I don't believe in God," but they are doing so carelessly and improperly.  It's a semantic mistake I never make.  Just the other day, my religious dentist tried to get me to make this misstatement, but I didn't bite.  I told her that I am BOTH an atheist and an antitheist.  She had no answer for that.     

Comment by Rick on September 16, 2011 at 10:42am

Way to turn lack of belief into a math equation, fellas! Hahaha! As if the religious community didn’t have a hard enough time comprehending atheism before.

 

Kudos Eoganacht and Dan. Great answers!

Comment by Lewal on September 16, 2011 at 11:24am

I miss the days when we would just feed them to lions...

Comment by Gloria Stevens on September 16, 2011 at 12:46pm

I don't think so.  Because language is not as logical as mathematics.  In English it is wrong to say, "I don't have no money".  Because of the logic IF you have NO money then you have money.  But in other languages (thinking of Spanish) that statement means you don't have money. 

Comment by Eoganacht on September 16, 2011 at 7:31pm

@ Gloria. Yeah, languages do infer meanings rather than clearly communicate ideas. When you say 'i don't believe in a god', it is very hard to figure out whether that person is rejecting the idea of a god entirely or just lacks a faith in that entity. Sadly this phase is often used, confused, and abused by both sides.

Comment by Brian Pansky on September 17, 2011 at 12:18am

got to be in here somewhere...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy

 

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