Dismantling “Proof” Atheism Is a Belief System

[00:00:00]I found a really bad video about what atheism is and how it relates to belief from a guy who doesn't seem to understand atheism or belief. It's got the very bold title, Here's the proof atheism is a belief. While many atheists claim their stance is merely an absence of belief, a closer look at the logic suggests otherwise. If you claim that the non-existence of God is more likely than his existence, you've taken a stance. Yeah, but we'll get into that.

[00:00:30]You've taken a stance, and that stance requires a burden of proof. Well, if you're trying to convince someone it's true, then sure. But this position he's talking about people holding is not required to not believe in God. And claiming it to anyone also is not required. So this claim that he's implying here that atheists are making is not a claim that atheists need to be making to meet the definition. It's just one that they can make, which has no impact on whether they meet the definition in the first place. And just so that we're not talking past each other too much on the definition of the word atheist because that tends to trip things up, let me show you this from the comments section. Okay, what word defines the non-belief in God's existence? Atheist. Great. Atheism is the non-belief in God, which does make it confusing why the video starts out like this.

[00:01:17]>> Atheism is a form of belief.

[00:01:20]>> Well, it can be. there's a subtype of atheism which is the belief that God doesn't exist. But if atheism just means non-belief in God's existence in general, then that subcategory doesn't seem to include all atheists.

[00:01:32]>> In this video, I want to explain as simply and clearly as possible why atheism is belief system.

[00:01:41]>> Belief system. I was already a little skeptical when you said it's a belief, but now you say it's a belief system, and that's a big change. I don't think you understand the implications of that term. A belief system is not just a belief. It's like a big container full of beliefs that interact and interlink with each other. You know, this would be ideological stuff, religious stuff, political stuff, philosophical stuff.

[00:02:03]It's not just, oh, I think the sky is blue or there is a god or there's not a god. None of those is a system of beliefs in and of itself. But apparently that's what's going to be defended here about atheism somehow. Why atheism is belief system and why it requires same level of proof as theism >> requires the same level of proof. Okay, so that's three claims that are going to be supported in the video. Atheism is a form of belief. Atheism is a belief system and atheism requires the same level of proof as theism does. That third one's a bit confusing because the question is in what context to achieve what? Like things don't just require proof or require some level of proof.

[00:02:46]They require it in some context for some goal. It's not some inbuilt property of an opinion existing in a void that it requires some specific level of proof as like some metaphysical fact. So we'll see >> to demonstrate this. Let's use simple analogy.

[00:03:03]>> Let's use an analogy, you say. And then you show a picture with nothing indicating that there's any analogy here. Everything I'm looking at is a reference to God and probabilities of I guess God. And by the way, I'm already not liking the look of this. I think I already know kind of what you mean just from this and I have some problems with it. Also, I don't like the actual look of it. Why do your big A and B have scribbles all over them?

[00:03:24]>> We are faced with the question, does God exist or does God not exist?

[00:03:30]>> Yeah. Can I have an analogy? Can we talk about cars or computers or something?

[00:03:34]It's way more fun. Why don't I make videos about the existence of cars?

[00:03:38]>> Since people often find it very difficult to define what God means and what it truly implied when discussing faith, let us simplify the topic to make it easily understandable.

[00:03:53]>> Okay, that seems fair. Define what God means as a term in simple language that people can understand. That seems fine as a starting point. Let us simplify the topic to make it easily understandable for everyone. Why atheism is also a belief. Oh, never mind. You're not going to simplify the concept of God to make it easily understandable. You're going to simplify why atheism is a belief. And yes, that does mean that we're entirely skipping the definition of what the word god means. The concept of that being complicated and difficult to agree upon is totally ignored for the rest of the video. He said that as though it was relevant and then never spoke of it again.

[00:04:33]>> Let us conditionally call the position that God exists position A.

[00:04:40]>> I don't know if I can follow this analogy. This is getting pretty complicated.

[00:04:45]>> And position that God does not exist.

[00:04:48]Position B.

[00:04:50]>> It's genius. In response to the question of whether God exists or not, the answer must be either A or B. Correct.

[00:05:00]>> No, not correct. You know this. You have a C right there.

[00:05:04]>> In other words, God either exists or does not.

[00:05:08]>> Yeah. With a clear definition of God, the fact of the matter is either that it exists or not. Sure. But that doesn't mean you can only answer yes or no when presented with the question. you're conflating two entirely different things. And then also, of course, there's that thing you brought up before, which is that it can be kind of hard to agree on what the word god actually means. This is why you get people calling themselves igtheists.

[00:05:32]People who think the definition of the term is so unclear that you can't even reasonably have a position on whether the thing exists. But I think we can set that aside and at least treat it as if the term itself is reasonably well- definfined. However, a person might hold third position.

[00:05:49]>> Uh-huh. So, a person can hold this third position. But in response to the question of whether God exists or not, they still must answer either A or B.

[00:05:59]What a fascinating view.

[00:06:01]>> If someone is unsure whether God exists or not, they might view this as 50/50 matter.

[00:06:09]>> Yeah. So, unsure does not mean balancing on a knife edge of 50/50. nor does just lacking belief one way or the other.

[00:06:16]Everything about your percentages here really makes very little sense, but I think we can talk about that a little bit later.

[00:06:22]>> This means they consider A and B to be equally possible. This position does not provide a definitive answer as to whether God exists or not.

[00:06:34]>> Sure. Well, it doesn't settle on either of the two possibilities definitively.

[00:06:38]It's not a definitive answer to the question of God's existence, but nevertheless, it's still a response to the question. What you said before about there being only two possible responses made no sense. Now, having mocked you a little bit for that, I'll let you off the hook for it. You probably just spoke sloppily, which seems to be a trend here. So, let's see what other sloppy speech there is.

[00:06:58]>> It lacks sufficient knowledge to make a conclusion and therefore leaves the matter at 50/50. No, it leaves the matter unsettled, unconcluded. That's different from 50/50. And I think an easy way to explain this is to stop operating in the 50/50 realm of a coin flip and increase the number of possibilities a bit. So what if instead of two real possibilities, you had say six. Instead of a coin, it's a die. Pick a number 1 through six. And then tell me, do you believe that's the number that's going to come up? Probably not.

[00:07:31]It's only a one in six chance. Okay, now flip it. Do you believe that that's not going to be the number that comes up?

[00:07:37]It's more likely that it won't be. It's 5:1. But that's not the question. The question is, do you actually believe that the number you picked will not come up? I wouldn't personally, not on those odds. If it was a million to one and it was only going to be rolled once, then I probably would believe that my number won't come up. Right? That's basically a lottery. Anytime I've been in a lottery, which has not been by my decision, but I have been in them, I've believed I'm not going to win because the odds are just overwhelmingly against me. I'm open to being corrected, but nevertheless, I think it's reasonable to think I'm not going to win. But if it's 5:1, those odds are not enough for me to be confident in either outcome. I don't believe either of them, but it's also not 50/50. So, I would be in the third position of not accepting either of the two definitive answers. But your 50% thing would have no applicability. And to be honest as well, I think operating in percentages on issues of belief kind of fails to acknowledge the way the human brain works. I think it's a lot fuzzier than that. I've spoken in similar terms as well in the past, talking in terms of percentages with regard to this, but I don't think I've done that anytime recently, as in the past several years at least, because I don't think that's the way to go. I don't think that's really how people work.

[00:08:47]>> Consequently, choosing answer A implies a probability higher than 50%. And choosing answer B likewise implies a probability higher than 50%.

[00:09:02]>> Well, so okay, there's a difference, right, between prior probability, regardless of whether you believe the claim, and whatever probability you might put on it as a person who does believe it. Before you're convinced of the truth of any given answer, the former could be anything. But sure, once you're convinced and someone asks you, "How likely do you think this really is to be true?" Yeah, I mean, if you believe it, you're going to say more than 50%. I don't know what percent you will say. Probably not like 51, cuz that's not really the kind of thing a person who's actually convinced of a thing would say. What number you would say, of course, kind of depends on you.

[00:09:36]It's kind of like you're trying to describe the strength of a feeling in numbers. And that's going to rely on how you interpret numbers. I mean, if you say 90%, maybe to you that sounds extremely confident, but to someone who works a lot with percentages, maybe that doesn't sound like that much at all.

[00:09:51]Maybe the strength of their belief is exactly the same as yours. But they'll come out saying, "Oh, it's 99.9999%."

[00:09:58]A very different number, but meant to convey the same thing. Again, these kind of things are not so easily pinned down to a specific number in the human mind.

[00:10:06]And before we move on, I want to point out that yeah, belief and disbelief and uncertainty, or more accurately, I would say indecision, are brain states that can reasonably accurately be referred to as feelings. They refer to different types of responses that your brain has to information. It's not some number that's stored somewhere. Since our third position, the 50/50 stance differs from both answer A and B, we can conditionally call this position position C.

[00:10:35]>> Wow, it's revolutionary thinking.

[00:10:38]>> Now, let us determine which of these is the atheistic position.

[00:10:43]>> B and C. As long as you agree to scribble out all the numbers, otherwise none of them because I reject all of these as being meaningful positions. For example, if a person says, "I believe position A." It is equivalent to say that there is a higher probability that position A is correct.

[00:11:04]>> No, I would not say those two statements are equivalent. The second statement of there being a higher probability that it's correct is implicit in the first statement about believing the claim, but not vice versa, and therefore they're not equivalent. Now, another thing I want to say about my own sloppy language here, and this is a bit of a mayulpa. In the past, I've referred to belief as thinking something is likely true. And upon thinking about it, I don't know if that's clear enough. I think it does more or less get the point across. But, for example, in the case of rolling that six-sided die, it's likely that any given number that you pick is not going to come up. If you keep rolling that die and calling a number out every time, five times out of six, you're going to be wrong. But even though it is likely true that your number will not come up, that doesn't actually mean that you believe it won't. So I guess the question is what does the word likely in likely true really mean? What level of likely are we talking about? Well, again, I don't really want to talk in terms of numbers. So it's kind of hard to really clarify that and I think that can cause confusion. I think it's better, simpler just to say that to believe something is to be convinced it's true. It's whatever state your brain has to be in that when you hear that information, you confidently feel that it's correct. However, when a person says, "I do not believe position A," this does not automatically mean they believe position B.

[00:12:24]>> Correct? Especially because even though position A and position B directly negate each other, they're not both being evaluated simultaneously. If a person goes in totally cold, not having heard about whatever question we're discussing at all, and you tell them this is true, they're essentially only looking at position A, and whatever opinion they have of it is only about position A, at least for right now.

[00:12:46]Coming to a conclusion about position B will be a different issue.

[00:12:50]>> This is because if someone does not believe position A, we are left with two possible options, >> right? Weak atheism and strong atheism.

[00:13:00]They might believe position B or they might be unsure whether position A or position B is correct.

[00:13:09]>> Exactly. So where's the problem?

[00:13:12]>> In other words, if a person does not hold position A, they could hold either position B or position C.

[00:13:20]>> Okay, I can't deny those are in fact other words, at least some of them. But it was so similar that it didn't really add anything. Let us define what each position represents.

[00:13:31]>> Isn't that what we just did? We've already done that. And long- windedly enough, I would have thought.

[00:13:36]>> Position A, God exists. This is the theistic position.

[00:13:41]>> Oh, really? Oh, jeez. I hadn't noticed that.

[00:13:43]>> Position B, God does not exist. This is the atheistic position.

[00:13:50]>> Okay. Well, obviously that's not going to be something that the majority of self-identified atheists are going to agree with you on. that believing there's no God is the atheist position.

[00:13:59]But whatever, it's an atheist position at least.

[00:14:03]>> Position C, God may or may not exist. It is 50/50. This is the agnostic position.

[00:14:13]>> Is this what the video is? Just an excuse to try to say, um, actually no, the lack belief people are agnostics, not atheists. Okay, look, that doesn't have any relevance to anything. If a person comes up to you and says, "Hey, I'm an atheist." And what I mean by that is I don't believe in God. You're not altering anything about that person or the conversation by saying, "Uh, that means you're an agnostic, not an atheist. The person stays the same. The positions are the same. The conversation is the same. What is the point of this?"

[00:14:42]And what's even weirder is you use the term atheist in a way that includes position C. Or at least you did in the comments. I showed it before and here it is again. The word for non-belief in God's existence is atheist. And I think the reason that this person was even asking you about this is because they wanted to know, okay, if atheist is the word for believing there's no God, then what's the word for just not believing in a god? So, positions C and B together inclusively expecting you to say something else, right? But your response was atheist. I don't think you know what you're doing. The only scenario where a person can claim they do not bear the burden of proof is the agnostic position.

[00:15:26]>> Look, if I quibble about what the positions are called the whole time, this is going to take forever. I'll just accept your labels for now cuz who cares? Sure, the middle position is the agnostic position for now. Well, no, that is not the only one with no burden of proof. None of them has a burden of proof unless somebody wants to convince somebody else. However, let's say that they're in a three-way argument. All three of these people want to convince each other. The theist people, the atheist people, and the agnostic people.

[00:15:54]Well, I think it goes without saying that positions A and B both have a burden of proof in that case. But position C does, too. And I'll explain why in your own words that you say immediately after the clip I just showed. The only scenario where a person can claim they do not bear the burden of proof is the agnostic position when they state that the probability between A and B is 50/50.

[00:16:22]>> Right? When they state the probability, you're saying that position C has no burden of proof for their claim that there's a perfect 50/50 balance of probabilities between positions A and B.

[00:16:34]Even if they only mean inside their own head, that's still a claim. No, the only person who has no burden of proof solely on the basis of what their claim is is a person with no claim at all. And by saying it the way you just said it, you've excluded position C from that.

[00:16:49]Look, I know that's not what you're trying to say. You're trying to say the person doesn't lean in one direction or the other and so they basically stay out of the conversation entirely, but you have this sloppy way of talking where you keep ending up stepping on your own rakes for no reason. However, when a person claims that the probability of B is greater than 50%. This stance is already asserting that B is more likely than A. Therefore, those holding position B must explain where the additional percentage of probability they believe in comes from.

[00:17:29]>> You already have the position labeled no God. The person is claiming there is no God. That's what matters. The person's making a claim. Your job's already done with that. All this 50% stuff, it doesn't add anything. Atheists often like to frame the issue as if atheism is merely the absence of belief. Yes.

[00:17:50]Because they're using an inclusive definition of atheism that includes both position C and B. Nobody needs it explained to them that if they claim there's no God, they have a burden of proof if they want to convince someone.

[00:18:03]That's not in dispute. What's in dispute is you saying that people who don't claim that can't, I don't know, call themselves atheists or objectively qualify as atheists or who knows what because of your pet definition. And again, that makes it such a useless discussion. Just talk to people and if you don't know what they mean by atheist, ask them what they mean by that. Hey, what is your actual position?

[00:18:27]Let's get on the same page so we can converse meaningfully. This is not hard.

[00:18:31]It's one issue. It'll probably take you all of one sentence to figure out where you're at and then you're good. But this thing of trying to like redefine labels based on people, redefine people based on labels, whatever it is you want to do here is an enormous waste of everybody's time. To prove this, they use analogies along these lines. If one person comes forward and says they believe in A and then a second person says they do not believe in A. This does not automatically mean the second person believes in B. Consequently, the one who believes in A must prove why they believe it while the one who does not believe in A has nothing to prove. Well, that last bit is true cuz the one who's claiming A is making a claim. The other one's just saying I don't believe you.

[00:19:25]But the reason A has a burden of proof and not A doesn't has nothing to do with whether not believing A means you automatically believe B. I mean, think about if it did. If you don't believe there's a God, you automatically believe there's no God. If that were how it worked and someone who believes in God made the claim that God exists to someone who believes there's no God, it's exactly the same situation. A has the burden of proof cuz A said something and the other one has no burden cuz he's not saying anything. It doesn't matter if the A guy knows that he believes there's no God or doesn't know which position he holds. None of that is relevant. The position of the B person is not relevant in this scenario. And yet you're treating it as if this is somehow crucial for deciding who has the burden of proof. You have no clue what you're talking about. Also, at the start of the clip, you said this was an analogy. What's the analogy? What is analogous to what here? The problem here, however, is that we can set up the argument the exact opposite way.

[00:20:24]>> The exact opposite way. What? With the one saying they don't believe A being the one making the claim? Maybe. I hope not. More likely, I think you mean with B being the one making the claim and someone saying I don't believe you. If that's what you mean, then yes, obviously you can do that. If a person says they do not believe in B, this does not automatically mean they believe in A. Therefore, whoever believes in position B must prove why position B is correct. And again, you have the same problem. As if the reason that B has the burden of proof and the other one doesn't is somehow based on the implication of not believing B. No, that's not what it's based on. It's based on the fact that Be made the claim. Nothing about the other person matters. Be might not even know anything about the other person. The other person might not even be there. Be might be making a YouTube video and posting it a month later to a million people he'll never hear from. The level of confusion you're operating at is mind-boggling.

[00:21:24]There's so much confusion to untangle here, it almost makes me confused.

[00:21:28]>> Thus, it is actually very simple to understand what each position implies.

[00:21:34]At the start of that sentence, you said thus, as if this is going to be some kind of a conclusion of all that nonsense you just said. I have no idea how that's going to work.

[00:21:42]>> If a person holds the position that it is 50/50 between A and B, this position represents an absence of beliefs. It is an undecided stance.

[00:21:55]>> Well, I can't argue with you there.

[00:21:57]That's at least an undecided stance. I wouldn't say it's the only possible one.

[00:22:01]That's probably the biggest point of disagreement here. But it's one.

[00:22:04]>> On the other hand, a person who holds position B and believes that the probability of B is higher than 50% even by a single percent even if they believe that probability of B is 51% must provide an explanation from where they get that extra percentage of probability. Look, if the claim being made by that person is the probability of God's existence is 51%.

[00:22:40]Then yeah, that's a claim. It's a very weirdly specific claim that doesn't really make much sense, but that's not for me to worry about. That's for them to worry about. I would need to be convinced of that one, too. That person would have the burden of proof to prove that number, just like the people in positions A and C would have the burden of proof to prove whatever weird numbers they come up with. But you don't really mean the numbers. You mean any opinion that one thing seems more plausible on the face of it, even without an expression of belief, I think. And of course, you mean actual expressions of belief. And you seem to want to equate viewing one thing as even slightly more plausible than another with outright belief, which it is not. And that difference in seeming plausibility to a person probably won't be enough for them to start arguments defending the claim.

[00:23:27]I think not God seems 1% more plausible than God. So now I'm going to start going on debate shows and arguing that there's no God. That does not seem realistic at all. This whole thing about the burden of proof to prove there's no God really has no relevance in a scenario like that. Therefore, just as the existence of God is a matter of belief, so too is the nonexistence of God. You say things like therefore and thus, almost like filler words. It's weird. But anyway, who are you arguing with? Do you think there's some sort of deep disagreement on that in particular?

[00:24:05]Or do you think the disagreement is more about things like how you're labeling people, definitions, how you're characterizing things like lacking belief or belief for that matter? You know, all this other kind of stuff.

[00:24:17]There are so many problems with your video here that this statement about an assertion that there is no God having a burden of proof is one of very few unobjectionable ones, if not the only unobjectionable one. And somehow you think this is the one people need to be convinced of. You are deeply confused.

[00:24:34]>> The only position that is not a belief is the one that allows for both answers equally. The one that's not a belief is the one where you don't have a psychological state of belief.

[00:24:47]Everything else is irrelevant. This whole balancing on the edge of the knife 50/50 stuff. It's just not realistic. If someone assigns a higher probability to one of the answers, they cross over into the category of belief.

[00:25:03]>> No, I don't buy that.

[00:25:04]>> And they then bear the burden of proof.

[00:25:08]>> No, they don't. The burden of proof is not defined by what you believe or if you believe. The burden of proof is something you have when you have something to prove. Where do you think this term even comes from? Why do you think people bring it up? If you're not arguing about it, if you just walk around with a belief in your head that nobody ever knows about, you don't have a burden of proof. If you talk about it and just express it without trying to convince anybody, you still don't have a burden of proof. It's when you try to make someone else believe what you believe that it comes into play. And it's not something to be negotiated about or shifted onto anyone else. It's about if you want to change a mind, you do something. If you want someone to think you're right, it's on you to show you're right. It's as simple as that.

[00:25:52]Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. Therefore, it is quite evident that the atheistic position is a form of belief in the exact same manner as the theistic position. Strong atheism is indeed a form of belief, a belief in the non-existence of God. If you want to define atheism as only including that for the sake of your video, fine. It's your video, I guess. I don't define it that way, but I can accept that you do that because you do all kinds of weird stuff. But that doesn't mean that when a person comes up to you and says, "I'm an atheist. I lack belief in God." That somehow you can define them into believing there's no God. Cuz that's what the atheist position actually is.

[00:26:36]So that's what you believe now or whatever else it is you're trying to do with this. If everyone on Earth accepted everything you're saying here and adjusted their terminology accordingly, nothing would change. People still think what they think. Labels aren't what people think.

[00:26:52]>> Since atheism is form of belief, it manifests in politics, ideologies, and forms of governance. Well, again, if we're taking the definition only in the strong sense, then sure, an active disbelief in anything can have some sort of relevance to those things. I don't really know what that has to do with the video in general. That kind of came out of left field. And you don't give any examples, so that's good. I don't really have to deal with it anymore than this.

[00:27:22]>> It must also be understood that fanatical forms of atheistic beliefs do exist.

[00:27:30]>> Okay, again, no examples. cuz I really don't know what we're talking about here. Is this the typical chairman Mauo kind of stuff or are we talking about some kind of weird subreddit? Whatever.

[00:27:39]Sure. I guess it's possible to be fanatically committed to basically any position on any question if that's all you mean. But without further information, I see no need to ponder this any further.

[00:27:49]>> But that is a separate topic.

[00:27:52]>> Yes, very separate to the point that I'm really confused why you brought it up.

[00:27:56]>> That we will discuss in another video.

[00:27:59]>> Great. Have fun with that. And that means this one's done. So, thank you for watching. If you would, please do subscribe and like before you go.

[00:28:07]Enormous thanks to all of my supporters on every platform. I appreciate you so much. Email list for early access list.

[00:28:15]And I'll see you next time.