Could this be logically flipped?

Theism: The belief that God exists.

P: God is a being that exists.

C: Therefore: ????

You have to admit you're leaving out a few premises (the baggage) that comes with most god beliefs.  The sets of rules, what you can't eat, sacred shit, an illogical story on the creation of everything, who to vote for, when you can fuck or not, who's going to hell, begets, etc.

This little thing is partly in jest, but there's a real point to be had.  I honestly can't think of any political philosophy or moral philosophy that begins with atheism.  Every philosophy I'm aware of starts with another premise about humanity, or the universe, or whatever it's starting with, but nobody that I know of has managed to connect atheism to any meaningful philosophy.

Seriously, has anyone heard of a philosophy built on the foundational premise of atheism?

These are unnecessary premises to theism.  I think the point of the first post was to keep it as basic as possible.

Ah so you are admitting atheism is inherently illogical. Good to see..

Atheism is a presupposition - a belief that is defined as the absence of a belief, and thus self-contradictory

You really aren't that bright, are you? He stated that, in effect, that it is not possible to derive any conclusions from the lone statement "God does not exist", except for its own identity statement. This is a proposition that holds under all syllogistic reasoning. All it demonstrates is that it is a fallacy of non sequitur to assert that something like, for example, Communism, follows from the denial of the proposition "God exists". This is not an assertion which logically leads to the conclusion "atheism is inherently illogical" as you claimed, hence demonstrating you have no understanding of basic syllogistic logic. It is an assertion which leads only to the conclusion he demonstrated by constructing a proper syllogism, namely that it is insufficient to reach a syllogistic conclusion. You seem to equivocate that statement with the statement that "X is irrational" hence demonstrating you don't actually know what a syllogism is and hence you should probably go away as to avoid further humiliation.

Wow, your stupidity amazes. These two statements are not logically equivalent. A "presupposition" is an a priori belief held as the justificatory basis for some other belief. There is no logical equivalence between his syllogistic argument and the assertion that atheism constitutes a presuppositive belief.

This is a fallacy of non sequitur. The premise that began the syllogistic argument was "atheism is not a belief". The argument you have attempted to craft is as follows:

P: atheism is the abscence of a belief

C: atheism is a belief

This isn't actually an "argument" in any meaningful sense, nor have you demonstrated from precisely where you have derived (C) from. Normally when two contradicting statements are derived, they are done so via a reductio. You haven't assembled a reductio, indeed, I suspect you are incapable of doing so, and thus there is no reason to hold to (C). It does not follow from the syllogistic argument. It is unjustified.

Willie, I'm so glad you dropped in.  I was beginning to despair that anyone would even be able to come up with a nonsense rebuttal to my simple little gambit.  You have proven me spectacularly wrong, and I thank you.

Let's do this really, really slowly...

Anytime I want to prove something, I need two statements to put together.  It's like a puzzle.  If you have one piece of a puzzle, you don't have a finished puzzle.  You just have a puzzle piece.  You need at least two pieces to make a finished puzzle.

Here's a simple sentence for you:

God is a being that does not exist.

Ok.  Remember grammar school?

God = Subject

Is = Verb

Being = Object

that does not exist - modifier

This is one idea.  One piece of information.  We know exactly one thing.  God is nonexistent.  Now, class... how many pieces of the puzzle do we have if we have one piece of the puzzle?

That's right, Willie!  We have only one piece of the puzzle.

Now, here's another simple question for you.  If we need two puzzle pieces to make a conclusion, and we only have one puzzle piece, how many do we need before we can make a conclusion?

RIGHT AGAIN, Willie!  ONE!  You're doing very well.   One plus one equals two.

So, class, Willie has shown us that he can do simple math, and understands how puzzles work.  Tomorrow, we'll teach him how to go to the bathroom all by himself.

No, Willie.  Bad Willie!

Babies are atheists.  When they come out of a woman's tummy, they don't know what god is, and so there's no way they could possibly believe in it, now, is there?

Babies don't even know how to make a presupposition, do they?  They don't know anything yet.  But they're still atheists!  So let's do a simple logic game.

P: Babies can only be things that do not require presuppositions

P: Babies are atheists

C: Atheists do not require presuppositions.

See how easy that is?  That's a complete puzzle.

Oh... yeah..

QED.

Oh, my.  We can't have that, can we.

Willie, I'm making fun of you because you're horrible at critical thinking.

I thought Willie might like to see what a proof by contradiction looks like. I couldn't do one on atheism and non-belief because.... well... there's just no contradiction. Atheism literally defines "not belief in god(s)", how can not belief contradict not belief? :S

So anyhow Willie this is for you, I chose logical thinking for the subject (it may help to maintain your interest).

1. -Proposition- logic (ie coherent logical thinking) is not belief
2. if logic is not belief then it is not believed
3. and from (2) then - if it is logic (then it's not belief and not believed)
4. and if (logic is not belief and not believed) is untrue then logic is not not believed and is a belief

5. consider that logic is not belief and not believed

a. definition of belief: cognitive content held as true
b. definition of believed: accepted as true, credited with veracity
c. definition of logic: system of reasoning
d. definition of reasoning: coherent and logical thinking
e. definition of logical: legitimate {ie based on known statements or events or conditions}

definition of logic from e&d: system of coherent and legitimate {ie based on known statements or events or conditions} thinking

insert into 5:
5. <a system of coherent and legitimate {ie based on known statements or events or conditions} thinking> is not <cognitive content held to be true> and is not <accepted as true, credited with veracity>.

definition of cognitive content: thinking {and system of thought}
definition of held to be true/accepted as true: considered to be legitimate {ie based on known statements or events or conditions};


6. contradiction!! - this is what a contradiction looks like, Willie - therefore logic is a belief and is believed.

Conclusion: Logic (as in coherent logical thinking) is belief (and distinguished from the basic definition of belief by "coherence".)

you can follow this up with something further to think about if you like such as...

... definition of coherence: orderly and consistent relation of parts.

and you can then even advance a statement about the original subject based on what you have derived without looking a total fool...

logic = belief with the quality of being composed of orderly and consistently related parts.

Any questions?
 

Right and wrong are just words.   What does it mean to be right?  What helps us survive?  How can it be universal if it just on the whim of god?  If it is not just a whim of god, then why does we need one to understand it?  The only way there can be a universal right or wrong is if there is a logical reason to consider it right and wrong, but that would require a definition for right.

I believe in logic.

'Cept not. 

Look man, I know you said this was partly in jest, but I know you really do believe that no ideology can be inferred from atheism.  Without materialistic atheism, we wouldn't be talking about Marxism right now.  You may not be able to infer that syllogistically, but syllogisms mean very little in the face of actual Marxism practiced in actual places.  Also, this highlights the inherent redundancy of syllogistic logic--it very rarely if ever tells us anything about the world that we don't already know. 

The connection between any belief and any practice (i.e. atheism and Marxism, theism and racism, etc.) would be impossible to express syllogistically; that's just not what syllogistic logic does. 

No, I believe it's patently obvious that atheism, defined as the lack of belief in god, cannot lead to any other conclusion at all.. about anything, including politics, the nature of existence, logic, or anything else.  A non-belief in anything cannot philosophically lead to anything else.  Its the nature of a negative belief.

Now, I recognize that there are philosophies that could not exist without atheism.  I'm quite familiar with dialectical materialism, and I'm happy to concede that it would fail without atheism.  However, it's crucially important to note that DM did not come from atheism.  It came from materialism.  Materialism doesn't follow from atheism.

Marx took materialism, the law of opposites, negation, and transformation, and combined these with his lack of belief in a god to form Marxism.  None of these laws can be deduced from atheism.  They must come from other observations of the universe and other foundational beliefs.

Think of it this way.  Atheism only produces an empty space.  It tells us absolutely nothing about what we should believe.  Nada.  Zip.  Scratch.  Nil.  Love.  Goose egg.  An atheist is free to believe in absolutely anything except a god, at which point he has to turn in his badge and decoder ring.  Marxism, Libertarianism, Communism, Socialism, fetishism, monism, platonism, and a thousand other isms can be put where there is nothing.  Any one of these must hinge on some positive belief about existence.  Atheism provides not a single positive belief.  Nothing can be derived from it.  Nothing.

Justin, I'm not sure why you can't see the disconnect here.  It's really simple.

1. NOTHING logically follows atheism.

2. Anyone who has a philosophy that they claim is founded on atheism is just wrong.

3. Many philosophies INCLUDE atheism, but atheism comes AFTER the foundation of the philosophy.

WILLIE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Mick, you've missed the whole point.  It's completely relevant whether atheism has only one premise or not.  One premise a conclusion does not make.  Therefore, the ONLY possible statement is that Marxism includes atheism, but that it does not derive from it.

Never heard of liberation theology?

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if Marx/Stalin whoever were Theist, they would have merely replaced atheism with Christianity or Islam.

This is a misunderstanding. What I said and meant to convey was that someone can ~p as a conclusion from say:

p-->q

~q

Thus, ~p

---

And argue that [](~p-->r) or (~p-->[]r) is true. Thus, r ultimately follows.

Single analytical statements can derive conclusions. The premise that <>(A&B) can lead to the conclusion that <>A just like []A does to <>A or p=q can be concluded with q=p.

You use the operators in a very confusing manner. What precisely do you mean by <>(A&B)? To me, this immediately reads "Iff A and B" which doesn't make any sense by itself since it isn't a wff. What is []A supposed to represent? It doesn't look like any sentential or quantifiable operator I have ever seen.

Anyway, we are veering off point. The argument in question is quite simple. Let us begin with the premise:

P: I am an atheist

where we attempt to derive the conclusion

C: I am a Marxist

To do this would require attaching a conditional such that A=>M where A and M are respective symbolization keys for "I am an atheist" and "I am a Marxist". The problem is that this would require demonstrating that A logically leads to M. Here again, we take our premise to be:

P: Atheism is a lack of belief in God

where we attempt to derive the conclusion.

P: God does not exist

P2: ?????

C: Workers of the world, unite!

I agree that there is nothing inherent within the definition of atheism that states anything about Marxism. However, a person need not depend on the definition of atheism to get its dependency. Rather, as you and I agree, they'd need to argue that atheism logically entails marxism. This is analogous to an apologist focusing on the common belief that objective morality exists. It is not prima facie obvious that asserting the existence of objective morality entails the existence of God but that's irrelevant to the apologist. For he will take the belief that objective morality exists and argue that if objective morality exists, then God exists.

Likewise, the arguer would take the atheism and argue that it entails marxism. I'm not sure how the arguer would approach the issue because it seems to blatantly false but that's besides the point. I'm merely speaking amount the logical form of the argument.