Michael and Larry commented whether or not I’m an atheist. As I note in my reply, one problem with labels is that people can’t leave them alone. As support, I read the Wiki entries on “agnosticism,” “atheism,” and theism” and listed the variations and derivatives on these terms.
Here is what I found:
Agnostic, agnosticism, agnostic atheism, apathetic atheism, pragmatic agnosticism, platform agnostic, hardware agnostic, strong/hard/closed/permanent agnosticism, weak/soft/open/empirical/temporal agnosticism, christian agnostic, partial agnosticism, temporary agnosticism in practice, permanent agnosticism in principle, ignosticism, implicit atheism, theist, atheist, explicit atheism, positive/hard/strong atheism, negative/weak/soft atheism, spectrum of theistic probability, theological noncognitivism, theistic nativism, practical atheism, pragmatic atheism, methodological naturalism, epistemological atheism, immanence, rational agnosticism, skepticism, logical positivism, metaphysical atheism, relative atheism, logical atheism, theodician atheist, axiological or constructive atheism, atheistic existentialism, atheistic Judaism, christian atheist, new atheism, monotheism, polytheism, hard polytheism, soft polytheism, henotheism, kathanotheism, monolatrism, pantheism, panentheism, nontheism, deist, classical deism, deism, pandeism, panandeism, polydeism, autotheism, eutheism, dystheism, misotheism, liberal theism.
So, I repeat my question, “Am I an atheist?”
It is often said that one cannot prove a negative, the relevant case being the supposed impossibility of proving the non-existence of God. One can of course prove the nonexistence of a round circle by showing the definitions of these terms to be incompatible; moreover, no attempt at visualization of a round square can possibly succeed, precisely because of the incompatibility. If the attributes commonly ascribed to God contain contradictory elements, that would doom a concept of God insisting upon those elements.
There is a similar argument that can be made based on the empirical evidence of neuroscience and its incompatibility with the definition of God as a non-corporeal person with a number of human qualities raised to the level of infinity—hence the extensive use of the prefix “Omni” in characterizations of God. According to neuroscience, all mental functions are manifestations of brain activity. Hardly an innovation, this view has been operative for over a century and is the point of departure for all scientific investigation of the brain. To say that our mental acts are brain-based is to say that such things as neurons, synapses, axons, dendrites, glial bodies, astrocytes, sodium and potassium ions, neurotransmitters, lateralization and localization of function and ever so many other details are the prerequisites of our interiority and ultimately of our identity.
If God is a spiritual, non-material being, he lacks the brain that would support all of his many human traits, including his identity. Even a modest acquaintance with neuroscience will bring one face to face with this contradiction. A believer may continue to assert that God’s creativity, reason, imagination, anger, jealousy, love and so forth are all non-physical in his specific case. On the empirical evidence of neuroscience, how is that possible? I consider this argument the coup de grace, the bullet to the head of theism. It constitutes my main critique of theistic belief.
There is something about your argument that doesn’t resonate with me, but I can’t quite pin it down. I think it’s the idea that God (or gods) has to be human-like, person-like. Humans can only conceive what they can perceive (is that a valid phrase?). The vast majority find it easiest to conceive of God (or other smaller deities) as human-like. So, culturally, that is also how we’ve come to define theism, i.e, as belief in a God or god’s with human-like qualities. But just because that is how we have come to come to culturally identify a supranatural entity, does that mean one can’t exist in some form of which we can’t conceive? Personally, it seems to me that the first argument to be made against theism is against the concept as it is practiced today, that is, oriented towards a human-like being, especially one that intervenes in our lives. But that leaves unaddressed (by your reasoning, anyway), the possibility of a “something” out beyond the limits of our perception.
My argument is against the theistic conception of God, because that is the conception that forms the basis of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is precisely why getting clear about the meaning of terms is so important. Spinoza defined God as being equivalent to Nature; Nature IS the supreme being. He dismissed the idea of a supernatural world over against and having causal relations with a natural world because he did not see how supernaturalism could explain how matter could interact with allegedly non-material entities. He, too, derided the notion of an anthropomorphic deity. A ‘something beyond the limits of our perception” is much too vague to qualify as a basis for belief. Besides, how can you establish the existence of what is beyond perception? You are free to make up anything to fill that void, but how then would it carry conviction?
Of course I meant to write “square circle.”