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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482779)	5/22/2009 1:43:27 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575859

Atheism a: a disbelief in the existence of deity b: the doctrine that there is no deity I'm using definition a. You're using b. a pretty much is b. Disbelief isn't the same as "not believing" (which would include having no opinion at all, or not having even considered the idea) its the opposite of belief, or belief in the negative of the idea. The only difference is that definition a can be more casual, it doesn't have to rise to the formality or detail of a doctrine, which would imply something formalized or something taught, and wouldn't include a vague, non-stated, not fully developed thought. Does Big Foot exist? I don't know. Do i believe it does? No. I don't think your thoughts about big foot are really issues of belief. Its a skeptical weighing the evidence and coming to a conclusion that big foot is extremely unlikely. Well belief is somewhat vague. If you think something is very unlikely you might say "I believe it doesn't exist", other people might say that if your considering evidence and argument the proper term would be "think" not "believe". Know is vague as well. Do you know that your really a human being who posts on SI, using a computer of some sort? You think you are, in some senses you believe you are, in some sense you know you are, but would you say there is absolutely zero percent chance that you aren't? Not 1 in a trillion trillion, but really zero? Trying to define these things based on some sort of solid distinction between "know" and believe" runs in to the fact that the line between them is rather thin and blurry. In practical terms, since we can't be metaphysically certain of the answer, "Does God exist?", is just a different way to phrase the question, "Do you believe in God?".