Atheism is the default position

| Opening | Discussion on Judicial Criteria Since Pro did not comment, I will take that as an agreement with the criteria. | Constructive | The Default Position is a unique Position My opponent wants to define the default position (of everything) as the lack of everything. Not everything, speaking in terms of beliefs. Saying that the default position is the absence of beliefs, not necessarily everything. Baby senses is not what I’m talking about, what a newborn baby believes is what I’m talking about, and it believes nothing. Atheists on the other hand do not always believe nothing, but sometimes carry religious beliefs. "Atheism is the default position" (of religious beliefs). Yes, the words "of religious beliefs" are left out, but implied. Okay, I think I see your fallacy here. Atheism is not the absent of religious beliefs, it’s the absent of a particular religious belief (belief in god). For example, Buddhism is a religion and is atheistic as it lacks a belief in God. Many variations of the UFO religions (e.g. Scientology & Raelism) can lack a belief in god. Some atheists do seem to believe in magical monsters (e.g. flying spaghetti monster) though I’m not certain if it’s just a prank on religion, or they really do believe (hard to tell with pastafarians). Also, there are atheists that do believe in the supernatural, such as you evolved from a rock (some variants of evolutionist). If you think that atheism is the lack of religion, that’s entirely incorrect. In fact, there are some atheist mega churches that are rising these days. http://www.huffingtonpost.com... So atheism is not the default to religious beliefs, as the default would be the lack of all religious beliefs. (A unique position) not the lack of one belief So why bother to bring it up? I brought it up because I was comparing all the major positions with relevance to the belief in god. And showing how they differed from the default. I was trying to show it being “unique”, not just to atheism. | Rebuttal | If you lose your faith in a God, you automatically (without having to choose to) go back to the default position I think your just thinking of a certain brand of atheism, particularly the non-religious variety (which is not always true about atheists). You’re not considering atheists that are pantheistic or just plain religious quacks. So when the rubber band snaps back it could snap back to the religious end of atheism, not the non-religious end (default position). Now the use of the statements my opponent uses is another play on words. Yes, I do quarrel around with the words to make a point about using strict definitions. You don’t seem to understand that it doesn’t really matter what the definer meant, it’s how people want a word to mean. You defined it that way because you (or someone else) wanted it to mean it that way, not that it actually means that. When the word atheist was coined, it probably meant something more along the lines “a person who believes there are no gods” because the suffix -ist (athe-ist) indicates the word is a doctrine, not a lack of belief. For example amoral means (not + morals), however the word amoralist (not+ morals + doctrine) means someone who believes there are no morals (not that your born without morals). What your doing is having the prefix (a-) mutilate the meaning of the suffix (-ist) when the prefix is only supposed to modify the meaning of the root word (theos, as in [a-the-ist]) not rape the meaning of the suffix (-ist). You can research the meaning of the suffix if you don’t believe me. And yes I’m aware that it can mean something along the lines of someone who “does” something (e.g. pianist, contortionist) http://www.etymonline.com... Yes, I know that I accepted the definitions. And i'm not arguing that I should win because of bad definitions (as I've agreed to accept them for this debate) The definition is applicable in this debate, but doesn’t really work outside of it. (Maybe useful to some clusters of atheists who want to have it mean that way) If that definition is used, you will spawn some “atheist theist” because some people will want to be both. If you’re wanting a better definition to what I think you’re after would be the “absence of belief in any god and goddess.” But that isn’t atheism (its closer to nontheism) This attempt on word play in a debate may be fun and amusing, but has no value when seeking the truth. If we are debating the truth, have you considered at all that this isn’t atheism we are debating? That the definitions might not accurately represent atheism? I know you might scoff at the idea… who knows, maybe we both are wrong about atheism. Or maybe it’s just you.