The atheist who has no belief!

Greg Koukl and Amy Hall have a great podcast on this topic.

The topic was dealing with an atheist who clams to have 'no (particular?) world view' 

 Ask for a response to this statement, there are only three possible answers:

    1. Affirm

    2. Deny (affirms that God does not exist)

    3. Neutral/withhold (God may or may not exist: so how do you test that position?)

The statement is: "God exists!"

They lack a belief in God, because they have a belief about God: that he doesn't exist. Thus they have no belief in his existence/in him.

What does lack of belief in God mean for any objective (or actually, any) morality.

Evolution cannot provide an objective morality, or any real morality of any type as an 'ought' cannot be derived from an 'is'. Hume's guillotine. 

World View:

1. Ask what they think a 'world view' is?

2. Ask what they think reality really is.

There are three obvious options: It is illusory (an exilic religious/world view, such as Hinduism); it is self-sustaining/existent (a mimetic or pagan religious/world view, such as materialism) or that there is an independent God who defines what is really real (a 'covenental' religious/world view, that could extend to include deism, but not theistic evolution, which is more like a mimetic view). 

The issue is how does an atheist explain 1. the evident coherence of the world and our existence in it, with the 2. obvious discontent that existence in the world produces.

A belief: a mental attitude by which one holds that something is so. They can be true or false. So a belief can be false, or true.

Knowledge is a subset of belief; indeed, a true justified belief. This has to be tested.

A collection of beliefs about what is, sums to a 'world-view'. The atheist claim to no particular belief or world view, seems to seek to avoid the burden of proof and dump it on the other side, without having to answer for their beliefs intellectually.

Another tack is to ask if the person believes the underpinning reality is basically material, or basically mind.

If material: how does material produce information: the chemically carried language that governs life. How would this be the basis for any transcendental function? Functions that dominate our mental life, for instance in our constant desire to set, pursue and achieve things of 'value'. Axiology: the final dilemma for the naturalist.