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You can NOT be devoid of BELIEF about something you are aware of, period. You keep trying to tie atheism to CLAIMS about a God so you can say you lack belief in the CLAIMS. The simple truth is you have a NEGATIVE belief about God because it is binary based on your assessment of the probability of God. Atheists have probabilities of less than 50%. Agnostics have a probability of 50%. Theists have probabilities of greater than 50%. Stop playing the lack of belief in the CLAIMS game and get real!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes
As no one is arguing this ...
Take an English lesson from the German, try using the correct preposition.
Every atheist in here who claims they just "lack belief" is claiming it!! The preposition "in" refers to CLAIMS about God. Their base belief ABOUT God is that God is NOT any part of our Reality until THEY have sufficient evidence to convince them of it. That is a tacit denial of the existence of God, period!!! They need to stop playing semantic games and have the guts to claim their belief in the non-existence of God as you do.
Very important, yes. Hey Harry, how does English compare to German? I am not bilingual so I'm curious.
The hardest thing when learning most Western European languages IMO is that they have gendered pronouns. And what is a "he" or "she" is kind of random. If you don't grow up with it, it's kind of daunting. Is a broom, for example, a he or a she? There is, I believe, no neuter "it".
I have two years of high school French under my belt and the gendering of everything was the hardest for me. The rest is relatively easy because in most other respects, they lack all the complicated exceptions to grammar rules that English has, which, in turn, drives people for whom English isn't their first language nuts.
When I visited the Czech republic one of the things I loved about their language is that the pronunciation is helpfully included in the alphabet; the accents and ligatures as written tell you exactly how to pronounce it, phonetically, as if English were written with dictionary pronunciation and emphasis markings embedded. I suspect within a couple of weeks of practice, you could accurately pronounce most Czech prose even while having no idea what it says ;-)
The hardest thing when learning most Western European languages IMO is that they have gendered pronouns. And what is a "he" or "she" is kind of random. If you don't grow up with it, it's kind of daunting. Is a broom, for example, a he or a she? There is, I believe, no neuter "it".
I have two years of high school French under my belt and the gendering of everything was the hardest for me. The rest is relatively easy because in most other respects, they lack all the complicated exceptions to grammar rules that English has, which, in turn, drives people for whom English isn't their first language nuts.
When I visited the Czech republic one of the things I loved about their language is that the pronunciation is helpfully included in the alphabet; the accents and ligatures as written tell you exactly how to pronounce it, phonetically, as if English were written with dictionary pronunciation and emphasis markings embedded. I suspect within a couple of weeks of practice, you could accurately pronounce most Czech prose even while having no idea what it says ;-)
Oh wow, that would be daunting. I am very impressed with Harry's grasp of English and it's nuances. He writes it better than me. But yeah, speaking it seems to be the biggest obstacle. I'm afraid I would butcher French, especially with this Southern accent. They would hate me. You have been all over the world haven't you? I'm jealous lol I haven't even been out of the US, except for one drunken night in Mexico.
I would like to think that you're right, that I could probably write and spell the languages fairly well, I do speak a little Spanish but not much. I remember certain French or Spanish words that impressed me like Je t'aime, I have a very small sachet that I cross-stitched many years ago that has Je t'aime on it. I was so impressed with that little kit to make a sachet that said French words that I bought it. It took me years to finish it, I have it encased in a glass trinket box. It still smells good after probably 35+ years.
I think of the most bizarre things sometimes. Thank you Mordant for your never disappointing posts.
Very important, yes. Hey Harry, how does English compare to German? I am not bilingual so I'm curious.
They are often very similar, but English does not use gendered nouns like other European languages. We have masculine, feminine and neuter, and they often do not go with the actual gender. A young girl is neuter, for example.
That means English relies more on word order (subject, object, indirect object) to say what role a word has in a sentence, where we change the endings of the nouns and adjektives to do that. So you would usually say 'the waiter brings the customer a coffee', where we could say '(to) the customer brings the waiter a coffee'. Sometimes I do this to play a joke on my English friend who lives here.
We also split some verbs, and we often use sausages in our euphemisms.
Every atheist in here who claims they just "lack belief" is claiming it!! The preposition "in" refers to CLAIMS about God. Their base belief ABOUT God is that God is NOT any part of our Reality until THEY have sufficient evidence to convince them of it. That is a tacit denial of the existence of God, period!!! They need to stop playing semantic games and have the guts to claim their belief in the non-existence of God as you do.
Regardless what language we use, it's just hard for any atheist to believe in something for which they can find no supporting evidence, proof or justification. Call that a claim or simply the truth. No matter. The fact remains this is why atheists like me are atheists. Perhaps also why we're seeing this sort of change on a broader scale, in the news this morning...
"All four of the Pew Research Center’s scenarios showed the Christian share of the population shrinking and the number of non-believers rising"
The hardest thing when learning most Western European languages IMO is that they have gendered pronouns. And what is a "he" or "she" is kind of random. If you don't grow up with it, it's kind of daunting. Is a broom, for example, a he or a she?
Masculine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
There is, I believe, no neuter "it".
That is French. German, Greek and Russian have masculine, feminine and neuter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Northsouth
Oh wow, that would be daunting. I am very impressed with Harry's grasp of English and it's nuances. He writes it better than me.
Thank you.
I started to post on this forum to improve my English, and I learnt a lot from reading Mystic's posts.
My English half brother also sent me a large container of books and DVDs from England, so I had a lot of practice during the Corona lock down, as my wife and oldest daughter went to work with my older brother. In fact I had so much practice, I had problems getting the word order correct in German when my wife returned, so my wife made a joke about me having to take German lessons.
Regardless what language we use, it's just hard for any atheist to believe in something for which they can find no supporting evidence, proof or justification. Call that a claim or simply the truth. No matter. The fact remains this is why atheists like me are atheists. Perhaps also why we're seeing this sort of change on a broader scale, in the news this morning...
"All four of the Pew Research Center’s scenarios showed the Christian share of the population shrinking and the number of non-believers rising"
The logical conclusion should be based on the correlation with where the rise of population is occurring and where it is not.
Are you refering to growth rates or birth rates?
The change for the entire country can be looked at independent of changes of populatiin patterns. If people move from New York to Texas it will nit change the changes within your country.
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But yeah, speaking it seems to be the biggest obstacle. I'm afraid I would butcher French, especially with this Southern accent. They would hate me. You have been all over the world haven't you? I'm jealous lol I haven't even been out of the US, except for one drunken night in Mexico.
