Since atheism is a belief

Originally posted by lemon lime
So believing god(s) do not exist is a belief.

Believing that god(s) do not exist is a belief.

Lacking a belief about whether god(s) exist is NOT a belief.

Your an atheist either way, which is why it's not true to claim that being an atheist means you
believe that gods don't exist.
Because many atheists don't believe that gods don't exist, they just lack a belief that they do.

It's really not that complicated.

Originally posted by C Hess
Can you provide an example of one thing your belief provides you, and I (as an atheist) lack, which also affects how I view this physical reality I'm in?

10 commandments, I know you asked for 1 but I thought I'd give you more. 🙂

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
That doesn't seem logical to me. Perhaps that's because of my archaeological background. It's axiomatic in archaeology that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I'm not entirely sure how that 'axiom' is relevant, but an absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.
[albeit, usually not very strong evidence]

C Hess' problem is that he is excluding the middle position of lacking a belief either way.

It's easier to think about if you ditch the word belief and replace it with it's relevant meaning of
"a firm conviction that". It's then obvious that for any claim P, you can have a "firm conviction" that
P is true, you can have a "firm conviction" that P is not true, and you can lack a "firm conviction" either
way.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
Indeed. By extension we can probably just assume that sometimes, some people will behave badly regardless of their belief in god or lack thereof. There's certainly no evidence to suggest that christians (or those of any other religious persuasion) conduct themselves to any higher standard than atheists.

I do believe they do; however, truth be told I have to admit I cannot prove it. Mainly due to
the "whose a true Christian", since we could never settle on that, all questions about
people's lives are just wide open and anyone who names the name if they are true or not
would by most be labeled as Christian.

Originally posted by C Hess
It simply means we don't have the evidence, and you will be logically justified in not believing X.

Yes, but not believing X, is not the same as believing Not-X [~X].

Originally posted by C Hess
Yes, that's true in general, but we don't walk around thinking that absence of evidence is evidence of something either. It simply means we don't have the evidence, and you will be logically justified in not believing X.

If you use the absence of evidence to justify non-belief in X, you are taking the absence of evidence as evidence of absence, are you not?

Originally posted by googlefudge
Yes, but not believing X, is not the same as believing Not-X [~X].

Again it depends upon what it is your talking about, you can enter a room because you do
not believe there is a gas in it that will kill you, and you die from it. You acted in your
non-belief about gas and it cost you your life. The only way the not believing argument
really has any meaning is if what is not believed in will be meaningless if you are right
or wrong, but if it can have an effect on your life, you will have made a very bad error.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I'm not entirely sure how that 'axiom' is relevant, but an absence of evidence IS evidence of absence.
[albeit, usually not very strong evidence]

C Hess' problem is that he is excluding the middle position of lacking a belief either way.

It's easier to think about if you ditch the word belief and replace it with it's relevant meaning of
"a firm ...[text shortened]... have a "firm conviction" that P is not true, and you can lack a "firm conviction" either
way.

I tend to think this axiom is entirely relevant to the discussion of the existence of a god. Not the god of the bible - to my mind that one can be quite easily dismissed - but some sort of creator. Not something I can believe in with the evidence so far revealed to me, but not something I can dismiss either.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Again it depends upon what it is your talking about, you can enter a room because you do
not believe there is a gas in it that will kill you, and you die from it. You acted in your
non-belief about gas and it cost you your life. The only way the not believing argument
really has any meaning is if what is not believed in will be meaningless if you are right
or wrong, but if it can have an effect on your life, you will have made a very bad error.

What you just said is irrelevant to my point/post.

Lacking a belief that X is true, is not the same as believing that ~X is true.


For example, let the proposition X be:
"656516145313465421498783216549238749621958162978562543652314432165465659218943 is a prime number."

Without going and checking it on a computer, it's near impossible for a human being to tell.
It's an odd number so that easy check is ruled out.

Odds on it's not a prime number, they are rare, so it would be foolish to assume this random number I picked out is
prime. However it's not impossible that it's prime either.

So it's unlikely to be prime, so you shouldn't believe [have a firm conviction] that X is true.
However it's not impossible [or sufficiently improbable] that it's a prime number so you shouldn't believe [have a firm conviction]
that X is not true either.

Which leaves you lacking a belief either way, demonstrating that "Lacking a belief that X is true, is not the same as believing that ~X is true."

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
I tend to think this axiom is entirely relevant to the discussion of the existence of a god. Not the god of the bible - to my mind that one can be quite easily dismissed - but some sort of creator. Not something I can believe in with the evidence so far revealed to me, but not something I can dismiss either.

It was more a question of whether it was relevant to whether lacking belief was the same in believing in a lack.

However, the axiom is still false.

A lack of evidence is an evidence of a lack.

How strong that evidence is will entirely depend on the circumstances.

In general a lack of evidence for a proposition will modify the prior probability by a factor <1

Originally posted by googlefudge
It was more a question of whether it was relevant to whether lacking belief was the same in believing in a lack.

However, the axiom is still false.

A lack of evidence is an evidence of a lack.

How strong that evidence is will entirely depend on the circumstances.

In general a lack of evidence for a proposition will modify the prior probability by a factor <1

I would have to disagree with you on this point.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
I would have to disagree with you on this point.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/

Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
By
Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 August 2007 08:34PM


From Robyn Dawes's Rational Choice in an Uncertain World:

"Post-hoc fitting of evidence to hypothesis was involved in a most grievous chapter in United States history: the internment of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of the Second World War. When California governor Earl Warren testified before a congressional hearing in San Francisco on February 21, 1942, a questioner pointed out that there had been no sabotage or any other type of espionage by the Japanese-Americans up to that time. Warren responded, "I take the view that this lack [of subversive activity] is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get, the Fifth Column activities are to get, are timed just like Pearl Harbor was timed... I believe we are just being lulled into a false sense of security."

Consider Warren's argument from a Bayesian perspective. When we see evidence, hypotheses that assigned a higher likelihood to that evidence, gain probability at the expense of hypotheses that assigned a lower likelihood to the evidence. This is a phenomenon of relative likelihoods and relative probabilities. You can assign a high likelihood to the evidence and still lose probability mass to some other hypothesis, if that other hypothesis assigns a likelihood that is even higher.

Warren seems to be arguing that, given that we see no sabotage, this confirms that a Fifth Column exists. You could argue that a Fifth Column might delay its sabotage. But the likelihood is still higher that the absence of a Fifth Column would perform an absence of sabotage.

Let E stand for the observation of sabotage, H1 for the hypothesis of a Japanese-American Fifth Column, and H2 for the hypothesis that no Fifth Column exists. Whatever the likelihood that a Fifth Column would do no sabotage, the probability P(E|H1), it cannot be as large as the likelihood that no Fifth Column does no sabotage, the probability P(E|H2). So observing a lack of sabotage increases the probability that no Fifth Column exists.

A lack of sabotage doesn't prove that no Fifth Column exists. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. In logic, A->B, "A implies B", is not equivalent to ~A->~B, "not-A implies not-B".

But in probability theory, absence of evidence is always evidence of absence. If E is a binary event and P(H|E) > P(H), "seeing E increases the probability of H"; then P(H|~E) < P(H), "failure to observe E decreases the probability of H". P(H) is a weighted mix of P(H|E) and P(H|~E), and necessarily lies between the two. If any of this sounds at all confusing, see An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning.

Under the vast majority of real-life circumstances, a cause may not reliably produce signs of itself, but the absence of the cause is even less likely to produce the signs. The absence of an observation may be strong evidence of absence or very weak evidence of absence, depending on how likely the cause is to produce the observation. The absence of an observation that is only weakly permitted (even if the alternative hypothesis does not allow it at all), is very weak evidence of absence (though it is evidence nonetheless). This is the fallacy of "gaps in the fossil record"—fossils form only rarely; it is futile to trumpet the absence of a weakly permitted observation when many strong positive observations have already been recorded. But if there are no positive observations at all, it is time to worry; hence the Fermi Paradox.

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality; if you are equally good at explaining any outcome you have zero knowledge. The strength of a model is not what it can explain, but what it can't, for only prohibitions constrain anticipation. If you don't notice when your model makes the evidence unlikely, you might as well have no model, and also you might as well have no evidence; no brain and no eyes.

Originally posted by googlefudge
What you just said is irrelevant to my point/post.

Lacking a belief that X is true, is not the same as believing that ~X is true.


For example, let the proposition X be:
"656516145313465421498783216549238749621958162978562543652314432165465659218943 is a prime number."

Without going and checking it on a computer, it's near impossible for a hu ...[text shortened]... onstrating that "Lacking a belief that X is true, is not the same as believing that ~X is true."

I fail to see the difference as I explained it to you. If something is completely a "who cares"
type of thing, nothing about the topic one way or another is going to carry any meaning at
all to your life. That is not true with many other things not just God!

Believing and walking out your beliefs, can cause you great harm as I pointed out with the
gas. What you don't know can kill you! So is one a positive belief and the other different
because just because it doesn't carry a positive result? I can believe in a 1 just as much
as I can believe in a 0, the value could be positive or not, just because the meaning will
be different it is still a matter of faith.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I fail to see the difference as I explained it to you. If something is completely a "who cares"
type of thing, nothing about the topic one way or another is going to carry any meaning at
all to your life. That is not true with many other things not just God!

Believing and walking out your beliefs, can cause you great harm as I pointed out with the
gas ...[text shortened]... d be positive or not, just because the meaning will
be different it is still a matter of faith.

KJ, you are talking about the consequences of holding a belief or not.

We are talking about whether or not there is a middle ground between believing something is
true, or believing that something is false.

The consequences of any given belief are irrelevant to that discussion.

Originally posted by googlefudge
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/

[b]Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
By
Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 August 2007 08:34PM


From Robyn Dawes's Rational Choice in an Uncertain World:

[i]"Post-hoc fitting of evidence to hypothesis was involved in a most grievous chapter in United States ...[text shortened]... s well have no model, and also you might as well have no evidence; no brain and no eyes.

[/b]

That certainly makes sense in the circumstances considered there. I do not think the statistical argument is relevant to the existence of a creator however. It would, I allow, apply to archaeological contexts which have been extensively analysed.