A will not be A. I was right.

Thanks I realized that after I wrote it. +1

Some people just cannot be taught, nor will they learn. I guess you just gotta have some "faith!"

>It is not trivial. Atheism is commonly defined as without or lacking a belief in a supernatural being. "A" meaning without and "theism" meaning a belief in a supernatural being. Also, belief isn't something that exists only when consciously focusing on it -- that's just silly. That is not what I meant either.

You claimed that infants are atheists because they lack a belief in God (not being fully conscious on the conceptual level yet, they lack any belief in anything — so would you therefore call all babies "Nihilists"?). It makes no difference what the cause of the "lack of a belief" is: it could be because they are not yet on a conceptual level of consciousness; it could be because they are not on any level of consciousness — which would include sleeping imams and anesthetized rabbis. It would also include anything not having consciousness at all (because these things, too, lack beliefs), such as clouds, rocks, and stars.

Since lots of things "lack beliefs" for lots of different reasons, it may be true to specify that babies, too, lacking ANY belief, therefore lack the specific belief in God, and must therefore be called atheists. But by the same reasoning process, you must also include sleeping imams, etherized rabbis, comatose priests, stones, stars, and clouds. That is why your point is trivial. TRUE, but TRIVIALLY TRUE.

>I don't believe I said I assume that a colony wouldn't develop atheism (as you mean the term).

You said that each colony would necessarily develop a religion (or religions) unique to itself, differing from the religion (or religions) of each other colony; but that mathematical and scientific concepts would necessarily be the same across all the colonies. Since you mentioned nothing about atheism (however meant), it was clear that your thought experiment excluded it by definition. I thought it was a significant omission, since in fact — in human history, that is — atheism arose nowhere in antiquity or pre-antiquity; atheism is a late arrival philosophically.

>If that's what you mean by natural, then no religion doesn't have to develop, since belief is a choice and what one bases a belief is a choice.

The details (customs, practices) are by choice; the essential religious experience is not. That's why all human societies begin with some sort of religion; atheism, as I wrote above, is a late arrival. Read "Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James.

And that's also why "atheism" might be informally described (not defined, but informally described) as simply lacking a belief in God; but since you cannot define a concept by what it is NOT but only by what it IS, then the specific difference of "atheism" cannot be a "lack of something". It has to substitute something for God as the unifying principle of existence. For atheists, that principle is materialism: i.e., all events in the universe are, at root, material events (including psychological events such as thinking, reasoning, imagining, dreaming, etc.) with immediate material causes, and those causes are themselves material effects with immediate material causes, etc., ad infinitum.

>I was implicitly saying true mathematical and scientific concepts.

And I pointed out that "true mathematical and scientific concepts" are simply "tentatively true"; i.e., true for the time being, until we disprove them.

>I find the rest as more of the same so I'll skip to the questions.
>Objectivism's position on objective reality: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/object......

You couldn't summarize the Objectivist position in your own words?

(sigh)

You asked for it:

>"Objectivity is both a metaphysical and an epistemological concept. It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically, it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness."

Except, of course, those big chunks of reality that absolutely RELY on consciousness to become manifest, such as the entire realm of perceptual qualities — QUALIA, in Aristotelian terms — "color" is a subjective experience that becomes real INSIDE consciousness. The only thing that exists apart from consciousness that correlates with the experience of color is something that itself does not have color: wavelength, or any quantum-mechanical refinement of that idea.

The basic idea that the reality of QUALIA resides in consciousness, not "objectively" in material existence, goes back to Galileo.

What applies to color as a quality also applies, of course, to sound, texture, smell, taste, force, weight, and perhaps others.

Physics proves to us that the desk I'm working on right now is actually mainly empty space. My experience of it is anything *but* empty space: it feels solid, weighs a lot (i.e., exerts what I feel as force on my arms when I try to lift it, etc.). But a neutrino wouldn't even know it was there; it would pass right through it as if it didn't exist, because a neutrino is so much smaller than the spaces between the atoms comprising the desk. So why is my experience of the desk "more true" than the neutrino's?

Returning to the Official Lexicon's definition of "Objectivity": only some aspects of reality exist apart from consciousness. Much of it — all qualities, for example — manifest themselves AS qualities only IN consciousness. A photon exists outside of consciousness; light does not. "Light" is a qualitative experience; photons are not. Photons CORRELATE to the experience we call "light".

The real relationship between consciousness and matter/energy is one of *inter-penetration*, not one of a Great Divide, with consciousness a kind of evanescent "something" bouncing around in your head between your ears, and "existence" outside of that.

And I should also point out that I have always strongly objected to the Objectivist habit of calling one side "consciousness" and the other side "existence." Obviously, consciousness exists and is part of existence — a natural, *irreducible* part of existence: it's not reducible to little particles behaving according to physical law. So I divide things up by calling one side "consciousness" and the other side "matter/energy". Both comprise Existence.

Continuing:

>Epistemologically, it is the recognition of the fact that a perceiver’s (man’s) consciousness must acquire knowledge of reality by certain means (reason) in accordance with certain rules (logic).

The function of logic is not to acquire knowledge; it never has been and it never will be. The function of logic (in science, at least) is to ensure coherence between new knowledge and old knowledge, so that there are no (glaring) contradictions or anomalies. The acquisition of scientific knowledge is a creative act, no different from artistic creation. Logic is useless for that. The main tool of knowledge acquisition is imagination, not logic. Logic comes in *after* the fact.

I could go on, but I've digressed long enough. It's your fault, by the way. Had you summarized all of this in your words, I could have replied to your summary. Instead, you linked to a site with a long, detailed explanation, putting me in the position of answering everything point by point (thus risking a long excursus), or answering only one or two points (thus risking your replying with something like, "Yeah, but you forgot THAT point! And you omitted THIS point! And you didn't say anything about the OTHER thing!" etc.)

You can a start a separate thread if you wish with that link to the Official Lexicon and I'll answer everything point by point.

>I brought up contradictory now because I was implicitly including it in the original post.

It might have been implicit to you, but it certainly wasn't implicit to me. See how "reality", per se, cannot be the arbiter of anything? "Reality" is silent and "truth" is NOT manifest, but subtle and elusive. So why not try being explicit, instead of omitting things and pretending later on that your meaning was clear but "implicit"?