How to Trigger Atheists (Part I, Fence Sitting)

                                                                     HOW TO TRIGGER ATHEISTS

So I posted this in a Facebook group, one of the ones which contains the usual New Atheist™, and one of the admins was uber triggered by it…and threatened me with being muted, even though no rule was broken, I was uber polite, and I had explained why this post is completely correct.

I am more than ever convinced that lack of belief atheists are in fact, are at least on par as dumb as flat Earthers and Young Earth Creationists. The level of stupid is almost too ineffable for me to explain writing, so I’m not even going to try…but I will tell you how to TRIGGER AN ATHEIST. (Don’t use it to troll! But facts are facts and facts don’t care about fee fees right?)

Just tell an atheist that holds atheism as merely a lack of belief God exists that is called “fence sitting”, sit back and watch them lose their shit even though that is exactly what they are…fence sitters. They are sitting on the fence between believing God exists and believing God does not exist. Just like agnostics do. If you really want to see them get triggered, tell them that most atheist groups promote fence sitting…because they do. It is objectively and logically the case. (See diagram below).

This was the post, which uses the atheism as lack of belief…their OWN definition and shows that in fact makes them fence sitters. That seems to trigger them, even though *I* am a fence sitter to! (the ANSII graphics may not line up on some devices)

Begin of post from Facebook Group _______________________

Merely saying that you do not believe God exists doesn’t not mean you took a position and are not a fence sitter.

If you do not believe God exists AND you do not believe God does not exist then you are still a fence sitter between both those propositions. You just do not believe either one of them and are fence sitting in the middle between believing God exists and Believing God does not exist.

Atheist who merely hold to they lack of belief are *in fact* fence sitting.

 

ONE SIDE OF FENCE         X     OTHER SIDE OF FENCE
(Believes God exist)          |      (Believes God does not exist)

“|” is the fence
“X” are weak atheists with no positive epistemic status

 

X= Atheist who merely lacks a belief there is no God

 

Most atheist groups implicitly promote fence sitting by promoting atheism as merely a lack of belief.

That’s kinda funny if you really think about it 🙂

End of post from Facebook Group.

EDIT:

I am adding in a little more clearer explanation of the argument here:

1) “I am a lack of belief atheist!”
2) “I am not a fence sitter”

As those two statements both can NOT both be true at the same time.

Explanation as to why:

Lack of belief atheist say they merely lack a belief in God and make no other definitive statement. This logically is represented as ~Bp and sometimes also referred to as “weak atheism/implicit atheism”.

An atheist who claims there are no Gods is logically denoted by B~p. (Sometimes referred to as “strong atheism/explicit atheism)

A theist who claims there is at least one God is logically denoted by Bp
B~p would logically entail ~Bp.
(This means an atheist who believes that no Gods exists, and does not believe that Gods exists).

Stop there to make sure that makes sense to you. If a person says there are no Gods, it just follows they do not have a God belief so they don’t believe Gods exist)

The logic works like this:

If someone just holds to ~Bp but does not hold to B~p the only other option is they hold to ~Bp ^ ~B~p which means they do not believe God exists AND they do not believe Gods do note exist. All is happening here is we are negation (B~p) right, so that is ~(B~p) or just ~B~p. Visually you can see this:

p=”at least one God exist”
~p=”it is not the case that God exist”
~Bp= I do not believe at least one God exist
B~p=I believe it is not the case that at least one God exist

~B~p=I do not believe it is not the case that God exist

So now:

If a person only holds to ~Bp, but fails to hold to B~p they hold to ~Bp ^ ~B~p (which is logically the agnostic position). Then they are fence sitting between Bp and ~B~p.

Bp <——- ~Bp ^ ~B~p —–> B~p

Author: Steve McRae

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