First of all, I have more in common with atheists than religious people, so my intention isn’t to come here and attack, I just want to hear your opinions. Maybe I’m wrong, I’d like to hear from you if I am. I’m just expressing here my perception of the movement and not actually what I consider to be facts.
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth. I do agree that the concept of a God is hard to believe logically, specially with all the incoherent arguments that religions have had in the past. But saying that there’s no god with certainty is something I’m just not comfortable with. Science has taught us that being wrong is part of the process of progress. We’re constantly learning things we didn’t know about, confirming theories that seemed insane in their time. I feel like being open to the possibilities is a healthier mindset, as we barely understand reality.
In general, atheism feels too close minded, too attached to the current facts, which will probably be obsolete in a few centuries. I do agree with logical and rational thinking, but part of that is accepting how little we really know about reality, how what we considered truth in the past was wrong or more complex than we expected
I usually don’t believe there is a god when the argument comes from religious people, because they have no evidence, but they could be right by chance.
Congratulations, you’re an agnostic
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth.
Atheism is not about truth, it is about belief. Atheists do not believe there are gods.
If an atheist says that it is an absolute truth that there are no gods, they are an atheist, but also a gnostic. Gnostics claim to know essentially unknowable things as truths.
OK, it still seems like taking sides to me when there’s no evidence one way or the other. I’d just say “I don’t know” and move on. No need to take sides on something that I’m clueless about, like what’s reality or its origins.
A human believing that God’s don’t exist based on reason is totally irrelevant, considering how limited human knowledge and reason is in these matters.
There is no third position here. You have to know whether or not you believe something. Either you believe it or you don’t.
Either you believe unicorns exist or you don’t. You can’t not know whether or not you believe they exist. You can not know whether or not they exist, but that is a different thing.
You have to know what you believe because it’s what you believe.
I think you can’t say this is a rule for every scenario. “Believe or not believe” seems to be an opinion of yours that I’m personally not bound to. I’m fine just accepting I don’t know something that is clearly outside of the grasp of my rational thought or logic.
I’m not sure why you guys keep comparing the existence of a god with unicorns or leprschauns. But ok, I’ll play along. Do I believe there are unicorns in earth? No, we have a pretty good understanding of the land of this planet. If you said “they live in another dimension” I’d just dismiss that because whoever said it has no clue about what “another dimension” is.
Bernard Russell used a teapot in space analogy to show that belief in something that may or may not exist and isn’t tangible to living doesn’t seem to be worth investing the effort of belief in.
Carl Sagan had a quote, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
Christopher Hitchens had his own: “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
All of these are open-minded observations that can be easily changed with evidence that supports the religious claims. Which are lacking.
I agree with all of them. I feel both sides have the problem of belief. “May or may not exist”, as you said.
“Believe or not believe” seems to be an opinion of yours that I’m personally not bound to. I’m fine just accepting I don’t know something that is clearly outside of the grasp of my rational thought or logic.
Whether you believe something or not is not outside the grasp of your rational thought. Just… answer the question. That’s all it takes to know if you believe something, you take a moment to introspect and you say whether you believe it or not.
There’s also a difference between lacking a belief in a proposition and believing in the negation of that proposition. Lacking a belief in something (for example, any particular god) is not the same thing as believing that that god does not exist. Both are atheism, they’re just different kinds of atheism. “Strong atheism” and “weak atheism” are the usual terms to distinguish between them.
I’ll play along. When I ask myself that question I immediately answer “I don’t believe”, just because I’ve conditioned myself to answer that over the years. The same way I answered “I believe” when I was conditioned during my childhood.
My point is that choosing sides is a fallacy, it’s something very human though. Over the past years I’ve realized that I don’t need to take sides and that I’m better off accepting when I just don’t know something, just avoid having opinions about matters that I can’t understand.
But yes, I still answer “I don’t believe” internally. Hopefully I’ll learn to turn “I don’t know” into my instinctual answer.
You seem to think if you believe something, you have to hold that belief for a length of time before it becomes a belief. That’s not how believing things work.
If you don’t believe that there is a god for 10 seconds and then start believing again, you are an atheist for 10 seconds.
I honestly didn’t understand what you said there. I don’t believe a person needs to hold a belief for some time for it to be valid. Not sure how you arrived to that conclusion.
I just said that my instinctual answer isn’t one that matches my worldview clearly. When I say “I don’t believe” I actually mean “I have no belief/I don’t know”. I just need to train myself to say “I have no belief” which represents what I feel much better and with less ambiguity.
“Knowing” and “believing” are two separate things. There are plenty of theists who would say “I don’t know that god exists but I believe that it does.”
Yeah, in this case believing anything is worthless because we don’t understand the origin of reality. That’s my point. It’s fine to believe something when enough evidence has shown it is likely the case. It is not fine to believe something is true without evidence, or false because of lack of evidence. Specially when gathering evidence about it is nearly impossible with our current understanding.
Maybe the humble thing to do is to wait until we gather more evidence that supports or rejects these ideas.
Of course it’s a rule of every scenario. It’s a binary. There is no third position just like there is no third position between breathing and not breathing. You either believe something or you don’t. If you accept that you don’t know something, you can still believe it’s true. You can also believe it isn’t. You keep confusing belief and knowledge.
Again, not sure where that “it is binary” affirmation comes from. Is that what you believe? Or do you consider that to be an absolute truth?
There are some many things I honestly have no beliefs about. It’s like I’m a walking counterargunent to your affirmation.
Do I believe we live in a simulation? I honestly don’t know and I don’t know what to believe because I have no idea how reality works. Maybe? Maybe not? I honestly have no idea. How can I know if reality is real? I don’t know.
Is there a god? I don’t know. The question is too deep and if I said yes or no I’d be just guessing because I do not understand reality like that. There are things I do understand… how reality was created isn’t one of them.
There are some many things I honestly have no beliefs about.
That would be a lack of belief.
I honestly don’t know
For the hundredth time, knowledge is not belief.
Understanding is also not belief.
There is no end to things that may exist but are not provable. Where do you draw the line? There might be a toaster orbiting the sun.
Based on our understanding of human history, we KNOW that toasters were created on earth and that it is unlikely one is in orbit on the sun… This is based on knowledge. Even if based on knowledge, I could be wrong.
Now, what do you KNOW about the creation of the universe or the nature of reality?
This is my whole point. I’m not saying it is wrong to have solid opinions about some things. I’m saying it is wrong having solid opinions about things we really don’t understand.
There is no precedence for the existence of deities.
For belief in deities, yes, but not for their existence.
That is all we need to say if we believe in the existence of deities; prior plausibility.
Staying in the middle ground of “maybe, we don’t know” makes no sense, because it puts the plausibility one step further towards “yes” than is warranted based on the evidence we have.
“There is no precedence for the existence of deities”
What makes you think humans have the capacity to perceive or understand deities?
It feels like you guys are really not understanding my point. Please put human existence into perspective and tell me how much we really know. Now, how much is there to know?
It’s like a blind person saying color doesn’t exist because he can’t experience it. You see? Humans will live and die in the relative blink of an eye. Chances are we won’t really get to know what’s actually going on. Right now we don’t really know, so having any opinion about what’s happening based on lack of evidence is really pointless. We have no evidence for most things that are actually happening in the universe.
Sorry for my very late response.
In your example of color, there are people who can, and people who can’t see colors.
Is there any analogy between that and god belief?
Not just belief, because anyone can believe anything. I mean knowledge, or sensory input.
If no one can sense (detect) deities, then how can anyone say that there is one?
And if we can’t say that there is one, why would it be unreasonable to conclude that there probably isn’t one?
That is all I as an atheist believe. That, lacking any evidence, it seems reasonable to conclude that there probably aren’t any deities.
All this talk about it being beyond our understanding sounds like begging the question if you can’t demonstrate it.
Yes, it is unreasonable to conclude anything when the subject is so out of our reach.
My point is that human perception, intelligence and understanding of the universe is comparable to a blind person and colors. Just because a blind person doesn’t perceive colors or has evidence of its existence, doesn’t mean that colors don’t exist. Just because humans aren’t intellectually capable of understanding the origin of the universe and the existence of a creator, doesn’t mean a creator doesn’t exist.
This whole “there’s no evidence” isn’t an absolute statement, it’s more like “humans haven’t gathered the evidence”. Humans haven’t gathered evidence for most of the things that are actually happening in the universe, and they are happening. We’re miniscule. We’re so small that we’re trapped in the observable universe, which is probably miniscule itself.
Yet, we stand tall and say aloud “I firmly believe this doesn’t exist because we, humans, haven’t experienced it”.
I hope you see my point now. An ant has no evidence of black holes, yet, they are. Yes, we have no evidence. No, we shouldn’t BELIEVE something based on lack of evidence.
The thing I love about science is that it is a tool, it isn’t concerned with questions such as “does God exist”. Atheists use science as the basis for a belief that not even scientists are concerned with. Science is a practical tool to increase our knowledge, it doesn’t take a stand on matters outside of it’s reach. Science doesn’t say “there are probably no gods because there’s no evidence”. That belief is not a direct result of the evidence we have gathered, that’s just atheism thinking science and evidence have more power than they do.
So again, yes, it is unreasonable to conclude something besides “I don’t know”.
So there is actually a valid critisism of Russel’s teapot, or toaster in this case, that there could be a detectable causality that put the object in orbit even if the object itself cannot be observed (such as a rocket to deliver it). However, this (minor) flaw in a popularized analogy does nothing to reject what the analogy represents: A stupid idea that cannot really be falsified, even though it is false (see what I did there?).
Atheist do not carry any belief in not believing (this even sounds stupid). We simply have come to the conclusion that there is no basis for believing in any particular denomination, nor some unspecific general one for that matter.
Yeah, I guess it really comes down to semantics.
Does “I don’t believe” mean “I believe there is no god” or “I don’t have a belief”? I think there is a very important distinction here. The first one says “based on my experience, I think it is unlikely there is a god”. The second one says “I really don’t believe anything about it, one way or the other”.
My point targets the first one. The experience and evidence built by humans is just relatively insignificant… This is my problem with this line of thought. “There is no evidence” doesn’t give any degree of confidence at all when it comes to this matter. There no evidence for most of the things that make reality exist, and yet here we are.
Atheists mean by the second that they find as little material basis for believing in god as in [insert whack theory here (teapot, spaghettimonster, etc.)]. We do make a judgement one way or the other, we say that our default position is not believing literally incredible things without proof.
The bar for what needs to be proven unless assumed false is higher the more that is claimed. Since god (especially to monotheistic denominations) are by definition the highest being claimed to exist, there is a huge burden of proof required for believing in it. Since there exists none, we choose to assume that the statement is false.
The reason we make all these stupid analogies is to hammer through the point that we, like everyone else, make a lot of assumptions that unproven things are false. The question of god is not really special in this regard, except for the historical and biological conditions that makes people inclined to believe in the fairytale absent of any good objective reason.
You used “not believing” in your explanation. Does that mean “I have no belief” or does it mean “I believe it is false”?
Edit: ah ok, so you choose to believe it is false. Yeah, I can’t agree with this. I do agree with having no belief at all. Assuming something is false because there is no evidence seems like a rushed conclusion to me. I understand the burden of proof falls on them, but the fact they don’t have evidence doesn’t make them wrong.
If you want to make conclusions about matters humans can barely comprehend based on your human comprehension, that would be something very human to do, so it’s understandable.
Atheism is nothing more than a response to the claim that there is a God of some sort.
Specifically, a response that says “I don’t believe you”.
That’s it. That’s the minimum position to be considered an atheist.
Yeah, it seems like there’s a wider spectrum of atheists than I expected.
I guess I disagree with a subset of the atheist community and people are bringing up the other parts of the community that don’t match what I disagree with.
My disagreement is mostly with the atheists that say “there is likely no god because there’s no evidence”. There’s no human evidence for most things in reality, yet reality exists.
I’m aligned with the atheists that say “I don’t really know, so I won’t waste time setting my mind to a specific belief”.
Atheism doesn’t claim there is no god. You can’t prove a negative beyond “we’ve been unable to find convincing evidence that it does exist, therefore it probably doesn’t”.
Atheism claims there isn’t sufficient evidence that a god exists, therefore we don’t believe in it. That’s it.
If god shows up on earth and can prove being god, like idk by spawning a live dinosaur out of thin air, atheism dies instantly.
As a more concrete example: I can’t prove my glass of water won’t kill me. What I can do however is perform a series of tests and establish that it contains no known toxins to man, with the likelihood of it killing me being so minuscule I can be reasonably confident it is safe to drink. Bring me evidence people do die at an increased rate after drinking it and I’ll gladly reevaluate. But until then, I call it safe because evidence overwhelmingly tells me it’s safe.
If god shows up on earth and can prove being god, like idk by spawning a live dinosaur out of thin air, atheism dies instantly.
All that proves is that something in the universe can “spawn” a live dinosaur out of thin air. It doesn’t prove that thing is a god. It could be an advanced civilization that has mastered teleportation - which would merely be an advanced technology humanity doesn’t possess.
Said being still has the burden of proof to demonstrate with irrifutable evidence that it is a god. And even if it manages to do so, that doesn’t mean it is one of the gods spoke of in the bible. There’s more irrifutable proof that must be shown for that claim.
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That’s not a counter argument though. It’s just an interesting thought experiment that doesn’t relate to the above comment
Every fucking time I try and have a discussion with atheists, you’d think I’d learn by now.
Since no one is answering me and everyone is just blanket downvoting, it’s removed, the subs and every person in this fuckdamn thread is blocked.
If everyone else is always the asshole… you’re the asshole…
My conclusion given the world as presented to me and the information I have is that there is no God.
There also is no Thor, no Santa Claus, no miracles, no ghosts, no easter bunny, and no afterlife. These are my conclusions from my time alive. If information is presented to me that changes these beliefs I’ll change my conclusion. But for now, that is my conclusion. That’s all. I’m not stating that “no matter what, no matter what information is presented, there can not be or has there ever been a god!”, rather I’m saying that I don’t believe there are any gods. It’s just the conclusion from the evidence.
Your experience is irrelevant. Do you realize how little you know and how ephemeral humanity is? The human race will be gone in the blink of an eye.
This is exactly the type of argument I disagree with. Humans need to be more humble about how they perceive the universe. We’re like two blind men arguing about the existence of color.
The individual experience is irrelevant for the effectiveness of a medicine or the height of a building.
But of you want to have a own opinion, a (personal) believe or your own conclusion about a thing, then the things you have read and the ideas you have thought, so your experiences, are necessary and the only thing forming your believe/opinion/conclusion.
This can be wrong or changed, if the person recieves more information, like if they think their specific god has spoken to them, then their believe might change. Or they explain the fact in another way and still dont believe.
All of this is personal and not set in stone
First of all there is no atheist movement. Not sure where that’s coming from.
Atheism establishes nothing. It is the default position. It is the religious who make the claim of a god and put forth no objective and independently, peer-reviewed evidence to support it. It is not the burden of atheists to bring anything to this debate.
So we keep to our default position.
You have this quite, quite backwards. If religionists would provide some actual tangible evidence of their god, that is scientifically verifiable, then we would be the first to change our position.
Strangely, religionists don’t seem to comport to that same, actual, open-mindedness and understanding.
Hm, I’ve talked with people who self-label themselves as atheists and they seem to be sure there is no god. Maybe I talked to the type of atheist that is just a minority.
In all these replies I’ve been told that most atheists just don’t believe anything and if that is the case, I’m aligned with that and now I’ve learned that I can consider myself atheist.
I just don’t waste time believing stuff that can’t be verified, one way or the other.
Yep, that makes sense!
The concept of “god” implies not being bound by physical laws. So science simply doesn’t apply here. We can never scientifically prove or disprove god’s existence, because if we could, then whatever we proved or disproved wouldn’t fit our concept of “god” anymore. It would just be another natural phenomenon that can be studied.
But our world functions very well without a god. If one does exist, it doesn’t seem to affect anything meaningfully and noticeably. So is it really a god if you can just ignore it with no ill effects?
And without any real proof of its existence, it becomes equivalent with any other explanation that may or may not be true and can never be proven, like the flying spaghetti monster or the invisible pink unicorn. It becomes meaningless and useless, so it can be discarded as untrue.
I agree, we will never know if it exists or not… So why should we believe something about it?
Isn’t “I know” much better than “I believe”?
Because that’s not how it works. You either believe or you don’t. This isn’t quantum physics, you don’t exist in some superposition of belief. You seem to keep ignoring everyone reminding you that knowledge and belief are two entirely separate things.
Just because you say “I don’t know” doesn’t have any bearing on your belief or lack thereof. You either believe or you don’t, it’s that simple.
It’s possible to have no belief, not sure why you’re saying there are only 2 options as if that was an absolute truth. In fact, some people have pointed out that atheism is lack of belief, Wikipedia says that.
Yes, knowledge and belief are different, I never said they are the same. My point is that knowledge is more valuable than belief. When there’s no knowledge, belief is worthless. We have no knowledge about a creator or the actual events of the origin of the universe, thus, belief is pointless. Whatever you choose to believe is just a very uncertain guess.
Why believe based on almost zero knowledge? Isn’t that as bad as what religious people do?
I believe that there is no god BECAUSE there is no evidence to support one. I base my belief on the fact that there is zero evidence. When someone makes a claim, it is the responsibility of the claimant to give evidence.
And again, either you believe there is a god or you don’t believe there is a god. It is a yes or no question.
There is zero human evidence about most of the things that are actually happening right now in the universe.
Looking through your other comments, it’s pretty clear you’re just arguing in bad faith.
Just because I’m arguing doesn’t mean it is in bad faith. I enjoy standing my ground and seeing what comes out of it. Otherwise it isn’t actually a discussion. I do feel some people are getting triggered by this, but I don’t care, I’m being respectful and explaining things the way I see them.
Maybe this is a bad habit of mine, but it’s when the good stuff happens. I’ve actually learned a lot through my stubbornness in this post.
Sure, but nobody is making claims about the contents of the universe outside the boundary of what is observable. Or they are, and they are presenting it as theory and creating some sort of mathematical model to describe it.
Even then, those are still falsifiable, in that we could potentially test the validity of the mathematical model locally.
The concept of gods does not allow for any descriptions that could be tested. Last I check all real things can be described, that’s how we define real.
So this concept can’t be defined as real. If you get this far without concluding that it isn’t real, that’s a deliberate act of intentional ignorance.
Exactly, because we don’t have the means to prove or disprove it, we shouldn’t have any belief about it. A belief in this matter is just a guess based on personal preference. There’s no knowledge or evidence to back any position besides “I don’t know, I can’t know”.
I don’t think because we haven’t figured out how to test it so far it means it is impossible to do so. We may just need to get a better understanding of reality.
All good atheists are open to the possibilities, because we do not have atheism as a belief, but as a word to express that we are a=without + theism=religion.
Personally, even if a deity showed up and perform a miracle right before my eyes, I would not convert without a massive discussion because my personal moral compass would not allow myself to worship a being that holds so much power, but actively refuses to reduce suffering in such a large scale, but that is just me.
If it had a good reason such as being imprisoned by an evil deity and just having freed itself, and coming back to us to help us, then it would get my full support and belief, after some scrutiny of course.
I mean, I’m pretty sure if 20 gods descend from heaven, a lot of Christians would stop believing there’s a single god.
Being open to the possibilities doesn’t mean that you’ll change your mind once presented with irrefutable evidence, it means you’re not limiting your mindset to a single possibility until proven wrong.
Christians are not open to the possibilities because they live a religious life that assumes God exists. Until proven wrong.
Russell’s Teapot.
Also, the dragon in my garage.
Yeah, Schrodinger’s was also a logical paradox that contradicted superposition. Too bad reality is more complex than human logic. “well I’ve never seen a cat being dead and alive at the same time, I guess superposition is just false because there’s no evidence”.
The fact you’re pointing Russell’s Teapot shows exactly what I mean with this post. You’re using a simple logical thought experiment to derive a most likely conclusion about the nature of the universe, when in reality you have basically null knowledge of what is actually going on with reality. This is exactly my disagreement with atheism.
But reality isn’t more complex than human logic… There are solid mathematical proofs that superposition is valid. Superposition is also falsifiable.
Yes, we discovered that AFTER the thought experiment. That was possible through knowledge and experimentation. Two things we don’t have about the origin of the universe… We have a lot of theories though.
You should know that theories like superposition are articulated after they find math implying the behaviour.
OK, so if maths were so clear about it, why very smart people who think logically didn’t think it was the case?
Could it be because maths have said many times in the past “Hey, this could be possible”… Only to find out that, yes, it is possible in maths but not in reality.
https://youtu.be/6akmv1bsz1M?feature=shared
And yeah, we don’t have the tools right now to fully unrestand the origin of the universe, so we can’t know how to make falsifiable theories around it. For example, Dark Matter is non-falsifiable because we don’t have enough knowledge about it.
We observe certain behavior in the universe, we call the cause Dark Matter even if we don’t fully understand how to prove or disprove it. We observe the existence of reality and we assume there is a creator even if we don’t fully understand how to prove or disprove it. We can observe reality, thus, theorizing about the existence of a creator isn’t absurd.
Dark matter is theoretically falsifiable. The god concept is not.
If it is falsifiable or not depends on how you define it.
It could be defined in many falsifiable ways, give it a try, pretty sure you can find many.
My point about Dark Matter is that it isn’t something we will likely have the means to falsify soon given the nature of the problem. It is also a pretty weak theory that contradicts many of the facts that we already know about the universe. So I could also create a very weak falsifiable argument about the existence of a creator and then call it a day.
“The creator was physically present in the origin of spacetime”. In theory, if we could look back in time, we could verify this. There are plenty techniques that allow us to “look” back, we may just need to discover a better one.
“God is physical and exists in the universe”
Making something falsifiable isn’t a problem.
You’re saying the concept of a god used by traditional religions isn’t falsifiable, which is right. But there’s no reason to limit the idea of a god to those traditional definitions.
This seems to me like a categorical error. You speak about proof and facts, which are ultimately connected to the scientific method. Scientists often say “There is no evidence, that this happens/exists” (that phrase is important) and will disregard it, until there is evidence. That doesn’t make them close minded. Changes in knowlege are applied when they arrive, not through speculation without evidence beforehand. That way we can approximate the truth in our physical world. There is no scientific evidence of a god existing, so scientists disregard her, until such evidence appears.
Now you could say, that a god would exceed the physical limits of our world/existance. But then the whole scientific method becomes useless (as how would you get scientifical evidence for something outside of the scientific world) and you cannot speak about facts or truth or proof. This is the realm of belief, not science. And it will stay this way until a god would bridge over this devide.
So i would say: When talking about science, proof and facts, you need to stay in the reach of the scientific method. When talking about something outside of its reach (metaphysical), then its belief. Even you talking about the possibility of a god is a question about belief.
First of all, I have more in common with atheists than religious people, so my intention isn’t to come here and attack, I just want to hear your opinions.
Welcome. Happy to talk with people rather than have to counter rhetorical attacks.
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth.
Personally, I’m partial to the definition of Atheism as ‘Lack of belief in any gods’ rather than ‘Belief that there are no gods.’ I fit both definitions but I think the first is more accurate and better represents most Atheist’s relationship with the truth value of the claim. Even for those of us who believe there are no gods I believe it’s a grand commonality between a super-majority of atheists that there’s some quantity of sufficient evidence that would change our minds… though quite likely the specific amount will vary from one to another.
But saying that there’s no god with certainty is something I’m just not comfortable with. Science has taught us that being wrong is part of the process of progress.
The way I see it most of the time scientific advancement doesn’t say our previous understanding was wrong, rather that it was incomplete. One of the better examples being Newtonian Physics and Relativity, Newton wasn’t wrong so much as his work didn’t account for special behavior under extreme circumstances. We do occasionally have counter examples such as miasma being replaced with the Germ Theory of Disease but this tends to be when a historical unscientific position is unraveled by a scientific explanation.
As-is I don’t see how any such gods that have been commonly claimed could exist as stated without them violating various scientific, and in some cases logical, laws. So, I feel quite secure in my position that these things that contradict our best evidenced understanding of the universe are not real.
I feel like being open to the possibilities is a healthier mindset, as we barely understand reality.
Sure, it’s worthwhile to look at the evidence against our own positions. But evidence is the key word here. The theistic position has yet to forward any noteworthy body of anything that would fit the definition of the word. They’re welcome to keep trying in perpetuity if they so wish but I’m not going to lend credence to the claim until such time as they are not only successful in finding something that is evidence but a sufficient body of it to outweigh what the claim is mutually exclusive with which already has evidence or they can by some means discredit the whole body of evidence against their claim and forward evidence for it.
That being said so long as there is measurable harm to come from theistic belief and the benefits of it are ephemeral I will be opposed to inflicting it on others.
I usually don’t believe there is a god when the argument comes from religious people, because they have no evidence, but they could be right by chance.
I don’t believe that that’s the case. To be no amount of assertion creates a chance that anything could be the case. What makes a chance is that an assessment of possibilities puts a known or estimable probability on it being the case.
If most atheists identify with “lack of belief” and not “believe God doesn’t exist” then I don’t have much else to say because I think that pretty much describes myself. I just don’t have a belief, I don’t support or reject.
I feel that even if evidence is not given, we can’t rule something as false. Let’s assume the idea of God wasn’t impossible to deny or prove. Do you think lack of evidence provided by humans, little animals who live in a dust spec for a relative short amount of time, gives you enough confidence to say “there is no creator”?
That is exactly my issue with atheism, that they think their human reason gives them enough capacity to take a position to something as complex as the origin of reality. It feels to me like an ant taking a position on quantum mechanics. It’s just outside of our reach. Anything we choose to believe, even if rooted in reason, is a wild guess.
The most rational thing to do is just to stop guessing. I feel if people accepted their ignorance more frequently instead of taking sides without actual knowledge, the world would be a better place.
Do you think lack of evidence provided by humans, little animals who live in a dust spec for a relative short amount of time, gives you enough confidence to say “there is no creator”?
For some generalized creator figure? I can’t disprove that, however I think Russel’s Teapot comes into play at this point. We couldn’t detect a porcelain teapot the size of a common teapot in stellar orbit between the Earth and Mars. So, currently, it would be impossible to disprove that claim, however there is also no reason to accept it. The burden of proof is on those who make these claims to support them, not on those who don’t accept them to disprove every claim they could posit.
For any of the creator figures I’m aware of non-deist theists claiming exist? At least of all those that I am familiar with they have self-contradictory stated natures, operate in logical contradictions, and perform impossibilities. In short: They don’t exist because for that not to be the case then the few things we can demonstrate to be true must be false.
That is exactly my issue with atheism, that they think their human reason gives them enough capacity to take a position to something as complex as the origin of reality.
The only times I’ve seen an atheist back their atheism just with human reason is when explaining logical contradictions about the asserted god. Most arguments I’m aware of use more than just logical contradictions in the opposing claim. More often than not I see them engaging with the proposed evidence for the claim and providing contrary evidence against it.
It’s just outside of our reach and anything we choose to believe, even if rooted in reason, is a wild guess.
We use the terms ‘rooted in reason’ and ‘wild guess’ to mean different things. To me a wild guess is made in the absence of reason or without regard to it while something that is ‘rooted in reason’ is about as opposed to that as is possible, a belief that stems only from what it well supported by evidence, reasoning, or most preferably both.
I’m not sure I take your meaning for ‘just outside our reach’. Are you stating that we’re close to it but not there yet or that it is categorically beyond our ability to reach such that we will never reach it?
The most rational thing to do is just to stop guessing. I feel if people accepted their ignorance more frequently instead of taking sides without actual knowledge, the world would be a better place.
I’m sorry but this comes off as somewhat disingenuous directed toward atheists. We’re not accepting the other side’s guess and generally also provide reasoning for that decision when prompted. Contrast with the theistic position of the assertion of some grand causer or creator and subsequent assertions that anything not yet explained rationally is somehow the work of this unsupported asserted entity.
Something rooted in reason can be a wild guess when the reasoning isn’t mature enough to handle the subject. This is a subject that is out of our reach.
As you already pointed out, not all atheists think “God doesn’t exist”. My last paragraph was aimed towards religious people and atheists that have a solid opinion. I don’t think accepting ignorance is something bad, I advice to do it whenever possible.
Saying “I don’t know” or “you don’t know” is much better IMO. In reality we don’t know and can’t know.
Something rooted in reason can be a wild guess when the reasoning isn’t mature enough to handle the subject.
Example, please. I would say when you start wildly guessing, it ceases to be reason. Speculation based on available evidence might involve reason, but a wild guess is, as far as I can tell, as lacking reason as possible.
This topic is the example. Just because you’re using your rational thought doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere near an actual answer or having a better chance of answering “is there a creator”?
You can use all the reason you want, you just don’t understand reality with such depth that you can start scratching that question.
Schrodinger was using reason when he proposed his paradox… But he was wrong because he lacked knowledge. Without actual knowledge, logical thought can make sense but still be wrong. Reality is more complex than the conceptual abstractions our minds use.
I don’t have to make any wild guesses to say that I don’t believe there are any gods due to a lack of empirical evidence.
But then you’re still, and I think intentionally now, trying to claim that knowledge and belief are the same thing. They are not, and atheism is still about belief and not knowledge.
I realize you don’t like that, but that’s still what atheism means. A lack of belief. Guesses aren’t needed to lack belief in something. I don’t have to guess to not believe in werpreopwerwqop because there is no reason for me to believe it exists.
I don’t know why you keep saying I’m saying belief and knowledge are the same. They are not the same. My point is that belief without knowledge is pointless. See? Not the same.
Belief based on knowledge = good.
Belief without knowledge = not good.
Do I have knowledge about the creation of the universe? Do I understand reality? Do I know anything about a creator? No. Thus, I choose not to believe anything about it. Anything I choose to believe without actual understanding is just a guess.
I think you are assuming more than is warranted. Why is it beyond our reach?
It is outside of our current reach. Maybe in the future we’ll have actual knowledge and have a solid opinion based on evidence. For now, believing anything, one way or the other is just pointless.
Again, my understanding was that most atheists believed “the is no god”. Most people are telling me that this isn’t the case. So my main assumption was wrong.
If saying “I have no belief one way or the other” is something an atheist could say, then I might be an atheist. I just didn’t agree with the “there is no god” type of argument. “There is no god because there’s no evidence so far” or “There is no god because religions contradict themselves”. I think the origin of the universe and the concept of a creator are much deeper than the religions people built. Also deeper than our current scientific understanding of reality.
My last paragraph was aimed towards religious people and atheists that have a solid opinion.
Alright. Was thinking about this prior to seeing your reply and meant to apologize as on thinking about it your statement could be meant that way and now with the clarification doubt has further been removed. Sorry.
I don’t think accepting ignorance is something bad, I advice to do it whenever possible.
I agree that it’s not bad to accept legitimate ignorance however I don’t think it’s best practice to accept ignorance just because it’s one of the possibilities. Rather, I feel that ignorance should be the fallback position, over baseless speculation, when hard facts on a subject are insufficient in number and/or scope to paint a reasonably clear picture.
Where sufficient facts on a matter exist to show a clear picture exist I don’t believe it proper to accept an assertion of ignorance. Firstly because it’s false, we know at least some things on the topic, and secondly because it can be harmful, shysters leveraging ‘we don’t know’ to insert a baseless speculation paired with hawking a product or marketing themselves as a problem solver.
Yeah I totally agree. Accepting ignorance about things we actually understand would be impractical. Even if philosophically we can’t truly know if we actually know anything, practically we need to establish truths that work as tools to build more complex systems.
What I’m trying to say is that we don’t really understand much about the origin of the universe, so saying “I don’t believe there is a god because of lack of evidence” seems too harsh. Like, ok, we don’t really understand much about this topic, we don’t have evidence, how can lack of evidence help you make up your mind then? The humble thing would be to say “I don’t really know much about this because we don’t really understand this subject, so I can’t form opinions”.
I guess it’s just a matter of linguistics, I’m just realizing that “I don’t believe” means something different for different people. Personally I thought it meant “I think chances are there is no creator”. But for some people it means “I don’t believe in the religious ideas, even if I don’t believe the opposite”. For others it is “I have no belief one way or the other”.
So yeah, this is the problem with language. Sometimes ideas are more complex than words.
What I’m trying to say is that we don’t really understand much about the origin of the universe, so saying “I don’t believe there is a god because of lack of evidence” seems too harsh.
I don’t think many Atheists come to the conclusion based off of arguments about the origin of the universe. It appears to be more common that logical or ethical contradictions within theistic doctrine lead to its rejection.
For me personally it began with the divine hiddenness problem. Being raised in a faith that states its god wants a relationship with me and yet is wholly imperceivable to me. From there building with additional arguments such as the abhorrent ethics of their mythical figures when viewed from a frame of reference other than ‘they’re the good guys because their god said so’.
Yeah, I also have that in common with them. I was very religious as a child and then started changing because of the nonsense of religions. I’m trying to go a bit deeper here though, I think we can assume religions are just human ideas with no basis, so these are already discarded for me. I’m talking about an actual creator, not about our interpretation of it. I don’t think we have the tools, knowledge or experience to actually tell. The only thing we have is ignorance.
The biggest issue I have with your points are you can apply that same logic to all kinds of absurdity. Pick one or create one and it applies.
I also disagree with you that it is a healthier mindset to believe in essentially an unlimited amount of possibilities (unlimited because you can’t define an unknown in this case) but whether something is healthier or not is not a factual statement. It is just a subjective statement that is based too much on the individual and the mental status of that individual to determine if it is healthy or not. I could argue that it was unhealthy to believe in what I used to believe(specifically evangelical/Protestant Christianity) because of my underlining condition of dealing with obsessive compulsive disorder and depression, but that claim of being unhealthy doesn’t hold much weight because again, it depends on the mental state of an individual.
For myself, yes I am an atheist and yes if I come across evidence that convinces me differently then my views will change, but that doesn’t make my current stance any different or say weaker as some weak atheism(I find that term laughable), especially when I don’t have the knowledge of what that evidence would be to convince me.
Also remember, theories are believed to be true until proven wrong when it comes to science. The word theory is used differently in science then in colloquial type of discussions. So for example, just because we believe the theory of evolution is fact, that doesn’t mean we think a creation story myth is possible because we use the phrase, theory of evolution. I bring that up only because, the fact science has changed in the past doesn’t mean we can’t believe our current understanding as fact.
The chances of any particular theistic belief being correct by sheer chance are beyond astronomical. Even if I believed there was a possibility of a deity (and that depends a great deal on exactly what qualities were ascribed to a divinity), I would be 100% certain it’s not what anyone currently believes.
Yeah, that chance might be low, but we’re not talking about religions here, we’re talking about the existence of a god or creator.
Science teaches us to believe things as true if the stated theory matches with the given evidence or impossibility of evidence for the inverted thesis. There is no evidence either way but we can accept what the answer is most likely and wait for someone with actual evidence for the contrary who will most likely never appear.
The problem is that “most likely”. Just because we don’t have evidence for something it doesn’t mean it is most likely false. Humans most likely won’t discover 0.001% of the truths of the universe, so saying something is likely or not based on our capacity to understand the universe is a joke.
Please don’t pull the “Russell’s teapot” argument. This isn’t the same. That thing is very close to our human experience, the creation of the universe is not.
Atheism doesn’t mean I know there are no gods. I suspect there aren’t, because religious claims about gods and reality don’t stand up to scrutiny. The more excuses you have to make for why reality doesn’t work the way you insist it should, the less inclined I am to believe you know what you’re talking about. Arguing for a prime mover or appealing to consequences doesn’t convince me either. I’m intellectually honest enough to say that I don’t have concrete knowledge that there are no gods the way I know there’s no money in my wallet, but not being able to prove there are no gods isn’t enough for me to believe that there are. Wanting to believe there are gods is no more useful than wanting there to be money in my wallet. It’s still a claim that requires validation, not a default assumption.
It is possible to reasonably demonstrate there are no gods by disproving the opposite claim.
I.e. by disproving the claims by theists.
I do not claim there is no god, as hard fact. I do, however, see the absolute lack of evidence for a divine being as justification to believe that divine beings don’t exist.
Do you believe in Santa Claus? Leprechauns? Do you have the same concern with saying they don’t exist either? Gods and Santa Claus and leprechauns are all human constructs.
