Agnosticism is a subset of Atheism. If you don't know if God exists then by extension you don't believe in him. @m1k3jobs. I'm also number 2 with #1 leanings however I would not call my self a weak atheist because I believe that the type of thinking brings us closer to the kind of irrationality that we should be getting away from.
I would disagree. I don't know if the water from my work's water fountain is clean but I believe it is. I wouldn't drink it otherwise. There are many things that we don't know but do believe.
Some Buddhist traditions are more clearly religions than others. It is possible to be a Buddhist where the only faith you have is in the Buddha's teachings. Of course, Buddhists would say that arguing about whether Buddhism is a religion or not is a complete waste of time.
I think it boils down to the inherent limitations of semantics and classification. You can be a Taoist without believing in the supernatural, for instance. I have had experiences that could be classed as "supernatural", but I can believe them to be supernatural or not, depending on how I want to utilise that belief. I class myself as an atheist, even though I have a rich inner "spiritual" life. I guess post-modern mysticism would describe it, more or less.
If you believe your water is clean then you have a reason to believe that. If you don't have a reason one way or the other, then when someone asks you about your water you will say I don't know I drink scotch.
There is a whole new tradition starting up in Buddhism known as Secular Buddhism or Buddhism 2.0. It's a look at the early teachings of the Buddha without the 2500 years of stuff piled on top and with a western scientific outlook. It's rather interesting with a lot of diverse opinions.
Having a reason for a belief is not the same as knowing it to be true. The chair I'm sitting on has always held my wieght. I believe it will next time I go to sit on it. I don't know that it will.
What has that got to do with the difference between belief and knowledge? I disagree with the statement below. This statement suggests that if you don't know something you cannot believe it. I've given two examples of that being incorrect - cleanliness of the water and the reliability of my chair.
But aren't those beliefs at least based to some degree on evidence? The cleanliness of the water at work because other's have drunk it without getting sick. The reliability of the chair because you and others have sat on it with no issues. A more realistic example would have been I don't think my chair can fly but I believe it will. There is no evidence that the chair has ever flown in the past but you choose to believe it can. The reasonableness of the 1st 2 is much higher than the reasonableness of the 3rd.
They are based on evidence and are more reasonable than the belief that you have suggested yet they all show the same thing - it is possible to believe something without knowing it. Which was the point. I think that the point that WhitePanda was trying to make is that if something is unknown to you then you can't make a belief about it. For example if there is an invisible unicorn in my living room that I don't know about I am not going to form a belief about whether or not there is an invisible unicorn in my living room. But atheism is a response to the claim that there is a god. An atheist considers the claim and makes a judgement to not believe, even though they don't know if the claim is true or not. EDIT - In extension theism is a response to the same claim, but with the judgement to believe, even thought they don't know whether it is true or not.
I disagree. Atheism is the default position. Much like your invisible unicorn. Do you feel the need to declare you anti invisible unicorn position, most likely not because there is no need to. If no one talked about their belief in god then I would have no need to talk about my lack of belief. There are lots of things that I have never heard of and don't believe in and feel no need to label myself as anything due to this lack of belief.
I would say that atheism should be the default position, but the claim is out there and your label as an atheist (even if you don't like having that label) is a response to that claim. There isn't a label for those who don't believe in unicorns because there isn't a substantial claim that there are unicorns.
It would seem that belief in supernatural entities or forces are somewhat hard-wired in humans, so I'm not sure that no god could be called the default position.
I know that religion is pretty universal, but I wouldn't say "supernatural" belief is hard-wired. There are a lot of supernatural beliefs, but the frequency of said supernatural belief tends to inversely correlate with the level of education and applied science in that society. Supernatural beliefs tend to be poor inferences due to incomplete knowledge; it's a very wide category that means "beliefs we held before we knew better". Rather than saying "we are hard-wired to believe the supernatural" I think it'd be more accurate to say "we are hard-wired, to get things wrong". Regardless, logically speaking the default position is to assume nothing, which means starting with a lack of belief in the supernatural.
How many educated people still touch wood (stop sniggering at the back!), or have a lucky pair of pants, or perform any other superstitious rituals? And what do humans and logic have to do with each other?
While it's common for people to adhere to stuff they don't think is logical I think we can generally trace that to mis-firing of various basic instincts, the desire to find patterns in phenomena et al, rather than a specific drive to believe in "the supernatural" especially when "the supernatural" is a very culturally relativistic collection of things.
I think religions are just the bloated and baroque results of centuries of apophenia. [edit: and the brain's ability to present itself to the conscious mind as a seperate entity] I'm off to start the cult of the lucky pants...
