Why I'm not an Atheist

[TeSik]

inb4 atheism makes the assertion "there is no god" and requires a burden of proof

haha yeah.

thing is i kinda don't like to follow the discussion thoroughly because i find you're all discussing for the sake of discussing getting nowhere

i mean.. has ANY point mentioned throughout the discussion led to anything?? has anyone reconsidered his opinion so far or is about to do so?

 

[GwJ]

If it was easy enough to convince someone their idea of god just from a forum thread, we wouldn't have theists anymore.

These discussions prove nothing, but I still like having them.

The debate will go absolutely nowhere until theists can prove the existence of their god or admit that they can't prove it and that its stupid to believe something on faith.

 

[john!]

haha yeah.

thing is i kinda don't like to follow the discussion thoroughly because i find you're all discussing for the sake of discussing getting nowhere

i mean.. has ANY point mentioned throughout the discussion led to anything?? has anyone reconsidered his opinion so far or is about to do so?

i'd reconsider my opinion if i heard something that i haven't heard 10 times before.

 

[GwJ]

Wouldn't we all say the same?

 

[john!]

i suppose, but i would hope that they had a better response to my questions if that was the case

 

[Solaris1110]

woah, I never imagined I could read a 38 page thread like this in one sitting, not skimming anything. Hopefully I dont disrupt the debate but hey, its not the debate hall lol.

 

[GwJ]

i suppose, but i would hope that they had a better response to my questions if that was the case

What questions weren't answered?

 

[kataklysm336]

i suppose, but i would hope that they had a better response to my questions if that was the case

But we have responded to you. For instance, I replied to the last thing you posted at the top of this very page, and your first inkling is to ignore it and say that the opposing party is faulty.

 

[BSP]

Nice read Mura

 

[john!]

okay, i'll respond if you like.

Atheism makes the claim: Since theism proposed there is a deity, and sufficient evidence was not provided, there is no reason for me to believe there is a deity.

You see someone making a claim, and someone rejecting that claim on lack of evidence can't both have the burden of proving their proposition. That would be to say the atheist should provide evidence that the theist has not provided proper evidence.

earlier in this thread we were talking about what atheism actually is, and your definition is extraordinarily broad. just the act of identifying yourself as an atheist goes beyond the status of "i lack reasons to believe in god". when you say "i'm an atheist" you're saying that you actively reject all "proofs" of god's existence made by all theist philosophers, as well as all evidence supporting god's existence, in favor of an alternative theory about the origin of the universe. am i right? if so, then why do you think that you don't need a reason to reject all of this?

i'd say the atheist DOES need to give evidence that the theist has not provided proper evidence. if a prosecutor gives evidence in a trial, it is up to the defendant to explain why that evidence isn't sufficient or doesn't work. they can't simply sit there and claim that they are innocent because the prosecutor hasn't PROVED their guilt.

 

[GwJ]

The reasons that atheists don't provide their evidence of refuting the other claims is that they are so COMMONLY REFUTED that a quick youtube search should find refutations of many of them. As an atheist, I'm not going to refute every single claim every claimed. I will ask for your assertion and then respond to that particular assertion. If I had to refute every single one every claimed, I'd need to be here for days compiling pages and pages.

So, moral of the story is the order goes like this:

1. Theist provides assertion
2. Atheist responds

It is NOT

1. Theist provides assertion
2. Atheist responds to every single assertion about god ever made.

 

[Djent]

I'm not truly sure what my religious views are at this point in my life, but I am sure that I've heard some awful arguments for pretty much every perspective. That's probably why I keep thinking I'm going to post in this thread, only to end up saying "**** it" instead.

 

[GwJ]

I'm not truly sure what my religious views are at this point in my life, but I am sure that I've heard some awful arguments for pretty much every perspective. That's probably why I keep thinking I'm going to post in this thread, only to end up saying "**** it" instead.

If you don't know what your religious views are, you're probably an atheist.

 

[john!]

The reasons that atheists don't provide their evidence of refuting the other claims is that they are so COMMONLY REFUTED that a quick youtube search should find refutations of many of them. As an atheist, I'm not going to refute every single claim every claimed. I will ask for your assertion and then respond to that particular assertion. If I had to refute every single one every claimed, I'd need to be here for days compiling pages and pages.

So, moral of the story is the order goes like this:

1. Theist provides assertion
2. Atheist responds

It is NOT

1. Theist provides assertion
2. Atheist responds to every single assertion about god ever made.

oh, so someone on youtube refutes an arguemnt for god's existence, and it's just over then? there's no counter-refutation? there's no more discussion? it's just decided that god doesn't exist because you think an argument might be wrong?

as an atheist, you ARE obligated to respond to all the evidence in favor of god's existence, or else face the fact that your atheism is based on the belief that the evidence in favor of god is false.

If you don't know what your religious views are, you're probably an atheist.

LOLLLL

wow...

"you say that you're still thinking about the nature of god and the universe? you're unsure about your beliefs?

you must be one of us! down with religion! god doesn't exist!"

^ cult recruitment

 

[Holder of the Heel]

oh, so someone on youtube refutes an arguemnt for god's existence, and it's just over then? there's no counter-refutation? there's no more discussion? it's just decided that god doesn't exist because you think an argument might be wrong?

as an atheist, you ARE obligated to respond to all the evidence in favor of god's existence, or else face the fact that your atheism is based on the belief that the evidence in favor of god is false.

This is quite the ridiculous thing to say, considering you haven't refuted everything that has been put out against your own belief system. Too many things have been put against each belief for someone to say something as ambitious as, "I have thought of every angle against my belief and crushed it! Bwahahaha!"

No. You're wrong.

If you don't know what your religious views are, you're probably an atheist.

Um... agnostic? O__o

 

[GwJ]

If you've read my posts, you should understand I don't believe anybody can be just agnostic.

Also, I have a question for any christians: How do you know Satan isn't the good guy and Yahweh isn't the bad guy? There is a saying that history is written by the victors. Is it possible Yahweh is portrayed as good because he was dominant?

 

[Jim Morrison]

"you say that you're still thinking about the nature of god and the universe? you're unsure about your beliefs?

you must be one of us! down with religion! god doesn't exist!"

^ cult recruitment

Gonna agree with John here, I don't see how you can classify someone as "not believing in God" if they haven't formed a solid, personal view on the subject.

Also, I find it hard to distinguish a line between atheist and theist, where do you stop believing in a god?
For example, the belief that every single thing is god-like and everyone is a god in their own ways, but not believing there's a higher power looking over it all. I have no idea wether that would be a theistic or an atheistic view. Help me out here.

 

[john!]

This is quite the ridiculous thing to say, considering you haven't refuted everything that has been put out against your own belief system. Too many things have been put against each belief for someone to say something as ambitious as, "I have thought of every angle against my belief and crushed it! Bwahahaha!"

i don't need to refute all evidence against my belief system AS LONG AS I ACKNOWLEDGE that it is just a BELIEF. atheists don't do that. they think their atheism is some kind of fact-belief that is already proved and yet doesn't need any proof and yet isn't 100% certain.

 

[GwJ]

Gonna agree with John here, I don't see how you can classify someone as "not believing in God" if they haven't formed a solid, personal view on the subject.

I understand my point of view on the topic of agnosticism is unpopular and that's fine; I don't take that view into my arguments unless someone asks me about agnosticism.

I just think that if you don't know if you believe in something, you probably don't. You should be able to tell if you believe something or not.

 

[TeSik]

when millions and millions of people, including the most brilliant men on earth, over a period of thousands of years, there was not a SINGLE person who was able find a solution that EVERYONE took as seriously, you are guaranteed you won't have the final yes/no answer you are looking for delivered. chances are that you won't for the rest of your life.

and i'm sure there are numerous points you haven't heard 10 times yet john!, because you don't know about every single aspect that has ever come up in history about this. but even if you did, it wouldn't change anything.

@GwJumpman
don't call it stupid to believe something on faith.. alright, for "usual" matters i'd agree to you, but the debate clearly is about something different, about something you won't have the answer for till your dead, technological progress or not. transcendental questions (you accept the question of god to be a transcendental one right?) have one thing in common: they go beyond imagination. imagination isn't measured with/by machines and devices and atoms, it takes place in our minds. so if there is any building lot, it's our mind.

as you can see what the dimensions of THIS matter are, you logically cannot say it would be stupid to believe something on faith, because your opinion on this very topic is a faith itself, believe it or not. and if you claim to know it, the burden of proof automatically lies on you, regardless if you say yes or no. same goes for rejecting others' claims: for "usual" matters, it is kind of an approach to the truth, but not for this one, because you don't know what you're even looking for. you will just keep on rejecting ANYTHING that comes, as long as you're assumimg there is this final yes/no answer. or as long as scientists don't come up with something and say, "people, look, this is god!" (you'd be the right one to call others naive then lol). just as good as someone who goes "peace out my people, i'm jesus, I'M BACK!!" hell no. this person wouldn't be taken seriously. be put into psychiatry at best.

bah there is so much more to write but i don't want to anymore lol
just lose some words about myself

i went from atheist to agnostic to .. dunno, agnostic believer? lol.
now i think it's impossible to find this answer you guys are looking for and started believing in being reborn last year because of different personal reasons which are of a subjective kind and not this objective scientific proof stuff you are looking for. i started to notice things i haven't before and my attitude became different. i'm feeling more sensible and friendly. others enjoy my presence even more. i've found more friends because i have more open-minded. although not everything is perfect (doesn't has to), stuff is working out in general and i'm feeling ****ing amazing.

if you want to call that stupid that is your right, but i really don't see why. i know that i cannot proof that my claim is scientifically correct. but do you really think i need to? ANY claim lacks evidence and chances are that this won't change in some time if not for ever. so far ... basically ... it is what you make it.

 

[Jim Morrison]

So by default, if you're not convinced that god exists, you're an atheist? Or am I not seeing your stance right?

 

[GwJ]

@GwJumpman
don't call it stupid to believe something on faith.. alright, for "usual" matters i'd agree to you, but the debate clearly is about something different, about something you won't have the answer for till your dead

I'm going to stop you right there. If you're making a claim for which you cannot get the answer for unless you're dead, then it is a useless claim. I'm sorry, but that is idiotic to say.

as you can see what the dimensions of THIS matter are, you logically cannot say it would be stupid to believe something on faith, because your opinion on this very topic is a faith itself, believe it or not.

Faith is belief without evidence. I have not been talking about faith and using faith in my arguments.

and if you claim to know it, the burden of proof automatically lies on you, regardless if you say yes or no. same goes for rejecting others' claims: for "usual" matters, it is kind of an approach to the truth, but not for this one, because you don't know what you're even looking for. you will just keep on rejecting ANYTHING that comes, as long as you're assumimg there is this final yes/no answer.

And I'll stop you again. I used this argument earlier I think. If you were to assert that you have an invisible dragon in a box that is intangible and invisible, would I require positive evidence to reject your claim? You said it right in the first part of your quote.

"if you claim to know it, the burden of proof automatically lies on you, regardless if you say yes or no."

If the person making the claim does not fulfill the burden of proof, do I need to provide a burden of proof that proves the unjustified claim false?

i went from atheist to agnostic to .. dunno, agnostic believer? lol.
now i think it's impossible to find this answer you guys are looking for and started believing in being reborn last year because of different personal reasons which are of a subjective kind and not this objective scientific proof stuff you are looking for. i started to notice things i haven't before and my attitude became different. i'm feeling more sensible and friendly. others enjoy my presence even more. i've found more friends because i have more open-minded. although not everything is perfect (doesn't has to), stuff is working out in general and i'm feeling ****ing amazing.

And I've felt better and more confident about myself now that I'm an atheist, so what? You can't choose your belief system because it makes you feel good.

if you want to call that stupid that is your right, but i really don't see why.

I explained why just above.

i know that i cannot proof that my claim is scientifically correct. but do you really think i need to? ANY claim lacks evidence and chances are that this won't change in some time if not for ever. so far ... basically ... it is what you make it.

If you cannot make a case for something, ESPECIALLY something as significant and life-altering as theism, then you PROBABLY shouldn't believe it.

So by default, if you're not convinced that god exists, you're an atheist? Or am I not seeing your stance right?

That's accurate enough. Although keep in mind that's my personal belief on the matter and I can't defend it that much. I was mostly joking around when I said that, but I was half serious at the same time.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

i don't need to refute all evidence against my belief system AS LONG AS I ACKNOWLEDGE that it is just a BELIEF. atheists don't do that. they think their atheism is some kind of fact-belief that is already proved and yet doesn't need any proof and yet isn't 100% certain.

I'm pretty sure it has already been covered that atheism asserts that there is nothing out there that is sufficient to prove God and that they aren't a follower of any beliefs that assert that proposition. I don't think anyone here right now is the way you say they are.

People who are actually opposed to the idea of God are called antitheists. Well, that is a type of antitheist, there is another type that is simply against religions, which is open to justification.

If you've read my posts, you should understand I don't believe anybody can be just agnostic.

I think you guys talked about this earlier. When no one has heard of God or atheism, or thought of such ideas, they can't be either, but you're saying once someone hears or thinks about the idea, they must be either/or. But this is simply false, if you are not thinking that there must be a God or follow some religion, that doesn't mean you think there isn't one. This ambiguity state of just kind of not philosophizing upon it is very common among people who think pondering such things are "lame" or people who believe that getting involved mentally in such a thing is philosophical destructive/counter-productive. These days we have a lot of people who think in both methods, sadly more so of the former probably.

Gonna agree with John here, I don't see how you can classify someone as "not believing in God" if they haven't formed a solid, personal view on the subject.

Also, I find it hard to distinguish a line between atheist and theist, where do you stop believing in a god?
For example, the belief that every single thing is god-like and everyone is a god in their own ways, but not believing there's a higher power looking over it all. I have no idea wether that would be a theistic or an atheistic view. Help me out here.

What do you mean by saying everything is god-like or everyone is a god? If you don't believe in a deity, you are either agnostic or atheist, depending on your logical/ethical preferences.

when millions and millions of people, including the most brilliant men on earth, over a period of thousands of years, there was not a SINGLE person who was able find a solution that EVERYONE took as seriously, you are guaranteed you won't have the final yes/no answer you are looking for delivered. chances are that you won't for the rest of your life.

and i'm sure there are numerous points you haven't heard 10 times yet john!, because you don't know about every single aspect that has ever come up in history about this. but even if you did, it wouldn't change anything.

@GwJumpman
don't call it stupid to believe something on faith.. alright, for "usual" matters i'd agree to you, but the debate clearly is about something different, about something you won't have the answer for till your dead, technological progress or not. transcendental questions (you accept the question of god to be a transcendental one right?) have one thing in common: they go beyond imagination. imagination isn't measured with/by machines and devices and atoms, it takes place in our minds. so if there is any building lot, it's our mind.

as you can see what the dimensions of THIS matter are, you logically cannot say it would be stupid to believe something on faith, because your opinion on this very topic is a faith itself, believe it or not. and if you claim to know it, the burden of proof automatically lies on you, regardless if you say yes or no. same goes for rejecting others' claims: for "usual" matters, it is kind of an approach to the truth, but not for this one, because you don't know what you're even looking for. you will just keep on rejecting ANYTHING that comes, as long as you're assumimg there is this final yes/no answer. or as long as scientists don't come up with something and say, "people, look, this is god!" (you'd be the right one to call others naive then lol). just as good as someone who goes "peace out my people, i'm jesus, I'M BACK!!" hell no. this person wouldn't be taken seriously. be put into psychiatry at best.

bah there is so much more to write but i don't want to anymore lol
just lose some words about myself

i went from atheist to agnostic to .. dunno, agnostic believer? lol.
now i think it's impossible to find this answer you guys are looking for and started believing in being reborn last year because of different personal reasons which are of a subjective kind and not this objective scientific proof stuff you are looking for. i started to notice things i haven't before and my attitude became different. i'm feeling more sensible and friendly. others enjoy my presence even more. i've found more friends because i have more open-minded. although not everything is perfect (doesn't has to), stuff is working out in general and i'm feeling ****ing amazing.

if you want to call that stupid that is your right, but i really don't see why. i know that i cannot proof that my claim is scientifically correct. but do you really think i need to? ANY claim lacks evidence and chances are that this won't change in some time if not for ever. so far ... basically ... it is what you make it.

Yeah, there is faith in all things in a sense, for we are all locked in the inductive reasoning dilemma where we have to simply induct things. Induction implies probability, and therefore there is obviously something wrong with avoiding lack of certainty.

 

[Chuee]

LOLLLL

wow...

"you say that you're still thinking about the nature of god and the universe? you're unsure about your beliefs?

you must be one of us! down with religion! god doesn't exist!"

^ cult recruitment

ha

ha
ha



ha
ha




ha



ha

when millions and millions of people, including the most brilliant men on earth, over a period of thousands of years, there was not a SINGLE person who was able find a solution that EVERYONE took as seriously, you are guaranteed you won't have the final yes/no answer you are looking for delivered. chances are that you won't for the rest of your life.

Which is why you don't pretend that you DO know the answer.

@GwJumpman
don't call it stupid to believe something on faith.. alright, for "usual" matters i'd agree to you, but the debate clearly is about something different,

Faith is inherently stupid because it justifies a belief without evidence. Why anyone would want to believe in something that has no proof is beyond me.

about something you won't have the answer for till your dead,

Well, you still won't know because you won't be able to think once you're dead.

technological progress or not. transcendental questions (you accept the question of god to be a transcendental one right?) have one thing in common: they go beyond imagination. imagination isn't measured with/by machines and devices and atoms, it takes place in our minds. so if there is any building lot, it's our mind.

Except transcendental stuff is produced by our brains. Not sure saying something exists would be lumped in with stuff created by our minds.

as you can see what the dimensions of THIS matter are, you logically cannot say it would be stupid to believe something on faith, because your opinion on this very topic is a faith itself, believe it or not.

I can assure it is not. I don't take anything on faith. Whether or not I believe in a deity has nothing to do with faith, but evidence. If evidence points to the existence of a deity, then I'll believe in one. If the evidence doesn't, then I won't. All faith is is believing in something because you want to believe in it, not because it's true.

and if you claim to know it, the burden of proof automatically lies on you, regardless if you say yes or no.

I don't claim to know whether God is real or not. Our current amount of universal knowledge is way too small to choose.

you will just keep on rejecting ANYTHING that comes, as long as you're assumimg there is this final yes/no answer.

I reject claims that aren't supported by solid evidence.

now i think it's impossible to find this answer you guys are looking for

Impossible with our current knowledge pool, but certainly not 100% unknowable.

and started believing in being reborn last year because of different personal reasons which are of a subjective kind and not this objective scientific proof stuff you are looking for.

Reborn as in reincarnation?

i know that i cannot proof that my claim is scientifically correct. but do you really think i need to?

Yes, why would one believe in anything unless it had evidence?

 

[TeSik]

when you say "god does not exist", it is just as much of a claim that needs to be proven as "god does exist".
the main problem i see is that you try to find the objective final answer when maybe there is none. burden of proof always lies on you when you start to claim something. logically, that applies when you claim that god does not exist as well.

Faith is belief without evidence. I have not been talking about faith and using faith in my arguments.

i meant that although you don't call your opinion to be faith, it actually is faith, because you don't have evidence that is ultimatively convincing. but in my opinion that is not due to intellectual inability of yours, but due to simple impossibility to find any. i think there is no evidence that can have the characteristic to be ultimatively convincing, which is why one should acknowledge belief/faith as what it is, not as knowledge.

And I'll stop you again. I used this argument earlier I think. If you were to assert that you have an invisible dragon in a box that is intangible and invisible, would I require positive evidence to reject your claim?

if i wasn't able to give you convincing evidence and still claim from the deepest of my heart that i am experiencing the invisible dragon in the invisible box, it would be up to you if you trusted me or not. you would probably still deny its existance and just call me insane. but why should i even care? (esp. when i don't do any harm lol) and why should you bother then?

If the person making the claim does not fulfill the burden of proof, do I need to provide a burden of proof that proves the unjustified claim false?

no, you don't have to, but it wouldn't make his claim automatically false. it may appear false to you, but it can still be true to him if he believes it [and when you don't succeed to refute it].

And I've felt better and more confident about myself now that I'm an atheist, so what?

nothing to complain about. although i think it's impossible to make such claims as "god exists" or "god does not exist", your answer at least applies to yourself and so there is no possibility and need to argue. i think that is the exact thing you haven't considered yet: there aren't just two arrows directing to "yes" and "no" with one being correct and the other false, but there is one arrow for each single person, possibly going into whole different directions.

You can't choose your belief system because it makes you feel good.

oh sure why not? when there is nothing that can refute it, why not choose?

If you cannot make a case for something, ESPECIALLY something as significant and life-altering as theism, then you PROBABLY shouldn't believe it.

i'm willing to change my mind when i learn something definite that says otherwise, but so far i really don't have to. what would i lose?
in addition, as mentioned already, i think the claim "god does not exist" is just as much in need for evidence, or you just stop claiming it like you "knew" it, which would be my solution.

Induction implies probability, and therefore there is obviously something wrong with avoiding lack of certainty.

hume is aight

@chuee
my post was mainly adressed to GwJumpman, but you should figure what i think of your replies when you read it
but i do have a question: what is solid evidence for you? what kind of evidence would you need to decide? certainly not a picture lol, you know
uhh and yeah, being reborn kind of as in buddhism, but i'm no buddhist

 

[GwJ]

Well, you still won't know because you won't be able to think once you're dead.

when you say "god does not exist", it is just as much of a claim that needs to be proven as "god does exist".
the main problem i see is that you try to find the objective final answer when maybe there is none. burden of proof always lies on you when you start to claim something. logically, that applies when you claim that god does not exist as well.

You haven't been reading, have you? As an atheist, I reject YOUR claim on the basis that it is not sufficiently demonstrated/proven by you. I do not need to prove that you do not have a pet invisible dragon in your backyard.

i meant that although you don't call your opinion to be faith, it actually is faith, because you don't have evidence that is ultimatively convincing. but in my opinion that is not due to intellectual inability of yours, but due to simple impossibility to find any. i think there is no evidence that can have the characteristic to be ultimatively convincing, which is why one should acknowledge belief/faith as what it is, not as knowledge.

There's a difference between having a baseless opinion and a baseless belief system. I have the opinion that I'm rather introverted. Can I prove that my opinion is true? Of course not; if I could, it wouldn't be an opinion any more. Belief systems are different in that they assert truths about the world. If you cannot justify that, you're a fool to live your life with the presupposition that it is true.

if i wasn't able to give you convincing evidence and still claim from the deepest of my heart that i am experiencing the invisible dragon in the invisible box, it would be up to you if you trusted me or not. you would probably still deny its existance and just call me insane. but why should i even care? (esp. when i don't do any harm lol) and why should you bother then?

Of course I still wouldn't believe you. And why should I care if you have an invisible dragon? I don't. If you lived your life in regards to that dragon and a large following of people believed that and lived THEIR life and thus morphing society based on that belief, THEN I'd care.

And the whole "Why should you care? It doesn't hurt anyone." argument makes me want to break my computer screen. I don't care if I should care or not. The fact of the matter is I do. Now move on.

no, you don't have to, but it wouldn't make his claim automatically false. it may appear false to you, but it can still be true to him if he believes it [and when you don't succeed to refute it].

It doesn't make it false, but it is in the same realm of consideration as being false. It is unproven and thus nobody will act as if it's true.

nothing to complain about. although i think it's impossible to make such claims as "god exists" or "god does not exist", your answer at least applies to yourself and so there is no possibility and need to argue. i think that is the exact thing you haven't considered yet: there aren't just two arrows directing to "yes" and "no" with one being correct and the other false, but there is one arrow for each single person, possibly going into whole different directions.

PLEASE tell me you aren't implying "personal truths". PLEASE.

oh sure why not? when there is nothing that can refute it, why not choose?

Because I care about what's correct, not what feels good.

i'm willing to change my mind when i learn something definite that says otherwise, but so far i really don't have to. what would i lose?

I believe snowmen are actually sentient beings.
It does me no harm to believe that.
Nobody can personally prove to me that they're not.
Therefore, I'm justified in believing that they are indeed sentient beings.

in addition, as mentioned already, i think the claim "god does not exist" is just as much in need for evidence, or you just stop claiming it like you "knew" it, which would be my solution.

Refer to the top of my post.

 

[kataklysm336]

when you say "god does not exist", it is just as much of a claim that needs to be proven as "god does exist".
the main problem i see is that you try to find the objective final answer when maybe there is none. burden of proof always lies on you when you start to claim something. logically, that applies when you claim that god does not exist as well.

Do you think unicorns exist? Because if you don't, it is up to you to provide evidence about why they do not exist. How about dragons? We have evidence of them in ancient texts, do you deny their existence? If you do then you need to provide evidence for why you don't believe they do. Which I would honestly want to hear.

earlier in this thread we were talking about what atheism actually is, and your definition is extraordinarily broad.

and? Being a theist means "believing there is a deity". That is also broad...and irrelevant.

just the act of identifying yourself as an atheist goes beyond the status of "i lack reasons to believe in god". when you say "i'm an atheist" you're saying that you actively reject all "proofs" of god's existence made by all theist philosophers, as well as all evidence supporting god's existence, in favor of an alternative theory about the origin of the universe. am i right? if so, then why do you think that you don't need a reason to reject all of this?

No, actually you aren't right. Atheism has nothing to do with the origin of the universe, it is the rejection of a claim about the existence of a deity (one which people posit created the universe).

I do reject all of the so called evidence. The argument from design and others that try to prove god all fail for one reason or another. If you gave evidence right now about the existence of God I would refute it, then provide you with evidence for why it was incorrect. You haven't given any reasons, all you have done is shift the burden of proof.

 

[crawlshots]

So the prerequisites for being Christian are 1) having been baptized, 2) knowing God, and 3) living a humble life. But when does one know God, and when is one living a humble life?

I like your brain my friend, I'll poke at those three prerequisites and then answer the questions.

It all goes back to God's grace. Again, it's not about what one does, but what one believes and thus pursues. So, addressing #3, it's not about if our hypothetical Christian is a humble person or not but if he's trying to be... and even that's a little misleading, because wanting to be humble is a direct result of encountering God and realizing how small we are but that he really cares about us and likes us. The same is true of #2. And the Christian actually WANTS to work at it because of his experience with God, tiny as that experience may have been. The more one knows God, the more humble one becomes. It all connects. I'll say that #1 is super important because of what it represents (living a sanctified life, cleansed of old ways of doing things, etc.). Whether it's a prereq. is debatable in the church. I'll retell a story from the Bible to show how it goes back to God's grace like I said and it's not so much about what you do.

As Jesus was hanging on the cross, two criminals were dying on crosses next to him. One of the criminals, while painfully enduring the last hours of his life, realized who Jesus was, and that he had lived an innocent life but was crucified for it. He compared that with the weight of all the bad things he had done in his own life. He was brought to the end of himself and his understanding about Jesus was opened up--he wasn't offended by Jesus, unlike the people who crucified Jesus. He got it. In desperation and sincerity, not knowing any of the proper ways to pray or anything, he pleaded to Jesus: "Remember me when you go to your kingdom." That was all it took. It was ugly and bloody, there were no stain-glass windows or preachers or liturgy. Jesus didn't say, "Sorry buddy, but unless you can somehow get down from there and get yourself baptized then I can't associate with you." Jesus was touched by the man's realization of his own need and met him where he was, so to speak, immediately promising that they would be with each other in paradise. Reference is Luke 23.

So you see, your prerequisites were along the right lines but not entirely accurate, and I realize you gathered them from my previous post so I wanted to clear that up. The Christian God is not performance-oriented, he's heart-oriented.

Answering your questions, knowing God is not only hugely progressive and gradual, but literally a limitless process. But to "believe in Jesus" requires understanding the tiniest of fractions of the limitlessness that is God, and actually God will help us understand (again, his grace) but in general we have to want it. We have to begin to realize our need. He doesn't violate the free will that he gave us. God makes himself known to people through everyday life when they talk to him honestly, read the Bible, interact with others, and really just live life wanting to know him.

Living a humble life is also a progressive thing that takes lots of failure, encouragement, revelation, self-awareness, etc. Just like living a joyful life, or a pure life. God cares a ton about humility, joy, and purity but one does not have to reach a certain threshold of humility, joy, or purity to go to heaven. So I just regurgitated all kinds of stuff (happily I may add) but I hope all this this makes some sense and clears up a lot of common misconceptions of the Christian faith, not to mention stirs some people to try and talk honestly to a God that has not convinced them of his existence. It's worth a try.



Jumpman - I logged away your question about Satan and God and I might get to it later when one of the topics at hand dwindles a bit.

 

[Dre89]

Rv- The energy is physical in the sense that it is natural, not supernatural or divine.

Again, the problem is how this energy came to be. If he says it just exists, then he's assuming brute contingency. He's also rejecting the psr and assuming that the most ontologically prior reality can be contingent. These are mp positions he doesn't justify at all. That's what my issue is.

As I said before, his model is useful for refuting specific theistic arguments from science, but isn't an argument that removes the need for God, unless he justifies his metaphysical assumptions.

Honestly after reading the last couple of pages I can see why most of the debate hallers don't want to participate in this thread. From what I saw Rv seems like the only other person remotely educated on the topic. There could have been a few I missed though.

 

[G-Beast]

Here's my thoughts:

Religion is just a means of explaining some things that we cannot comprehend, that's it. Thousands of years ago, there were soooo many things that humans could not comprehend that have been scientifically proven today and back then, they needed a means of explaining it because humans tend to have a natural fear of things they cannot comprehend so it had to have been magic or something like it by an all-powerful being.

The very basis of religion has been disproved:

We thought everything revolved around earth because we are gods greatest creations, when in fact we revolve around the Sun.

We thought the earth was flat, held up by great pillars that the gods left when they created our world, when it is in fact quite round.

God loves us all as his children, even unbelievers, yet he allows all the pain and suffering to go on in the world *cough* twin towers.



I also want to mention, religion has caused a lot more of death and strife in the world than anything else because others didn't believe what they believed. Particularly Catholic beliefs. Do not even try to disregard all the "Holy Crusades" that went on.

I think that the primal belief of religion, a means of explaining that which we do not understand, had it's place at the time but now, in our more evolved sensibility, no longer has its place anymore because we have disproved its basis and have science leading the way now.

You might ask me to use science to explain the big bang, well sorry to burst your bubble but just because we can't explain something does not mean it HAS to be magic or it HAS to be the work of an omnipotent, all-powerful entity. We didn't know why people got sick until the microscope was invented and we realized that it is not God's wrath but is, in fact, the doing of beings smaller than the eye can see.


EDIT: Oh yeah, Jesus was just a religious fanatic who got popular and that's it.

You ask us for proof of how god did NOT create the universe, and when we ask you how you know god created the universe your response is...?

Yeah... Sorry but you still need to prove that god exists before I'll even think about believing.

 

[Mota]

Before Christianity, there was the Norse with their Valhalla, then Egyptian God(s), mummification and their version of the afterlife, Greeks and Romans, Zeus on Mt Olympus and Neptune. At the moment some people are on Christianity, some on Islam and whatnot, What will be the next Gods/fad? Religions seem to come and go. Why are the Greek Gods now considered myth, when people back then believed in Zeus just as much as Christians and other religious faiths now? Who's to say the Norse Gods weren't right? Odin sounded like a Bad**s. I wouldn't mind some divine intervention from Aphrodite Also love the stories of Perseus.

Hey if Scientology can do it, why not Harry Potter? People will believe anything.
I predict the next big religion will be that revolving around Harry Potter.
In about 2000 years or so, people will unearth the lost books and follow the gospel of Harry Potter. Prophesied as The Chosen One to save us all, he traveled and spread the word with his faithful companions. He performed many miracles, defeated evil and brought justice. Many did not believe in him, that he was not The Chosen One, but those that truly knew believed.

Spoiler

He died for us, and resurrected (in less then a day mind you, porblem Jesus?).

Needs mooar animal sacrifices though imo.

A tried and tested recipe.

 

[GwJ]

And for the record, there aren't records of common unicorns in ancient texts. If you break down what the unicorn meant before they were given the modern meaning, it meant a uni-horned rhino.

 

[kataklysm336]

And for the record, there aren't records of common unicorns in ancient texts. If you break down what the unicorn meant before they were given the modern meaning, it meant a uni-horned rhino.

If you are referring to my last post, I was referring to dragons being in ancient texts/paintings etc. not unicorns.

EDIT: Really wish Dre would respond to the massive wall of text I wrote back to him.

 

[GwJ]

If you are referring to my last post, I was referring to dragons being in ancient texts/paintings etc. not unicorns.

Oh ok, disregard what I said then.

EDIT: Really wish Dre would respond to the massive wall of text I wrote back to him.

Please no. Every time Dre posts, it's something along the lines of:

"Metaphysically, the metaphysics of this state that you do not metaphysically understand metaphysics."

 

[crawlshots]

Here's my unpopular opinion, as a Christian, about the problem of scientific proof regarding the existence of God. I think the scientific evidence is there to lead someone to belief in a god, but it always seems to be just unconvincing or ambiguous enough to be dismissed as not hard evidence (I could talk about some of that evidence in another post).

Maybe some religions are "just a means of explaining some things that we cannot comprehend" (G-Beast). I can see that. But that's not why I read the Bible every day, thankfully. If it were, I think I'd have burnt out years ago. There are still so many things humanity doesn't understand, but I'm not drawn to God because I think I can explain all the scientific mysteries of the universe via his existence. I'm drawn to him because I've realized… through experience… that I can talk to him and he listens, he actually speaks back to me (not usually in the ways that I'd expect), that he's always right, that he does miracles in my life and my friends' lives simply because he likes people, that he makes sense of all my needs, desires, gifts, issues, etc. He is literally life, strength and joy to me, and that's why I choose to get up half an hour before I "need" to every morning so I can spend time with him. I’m not bragging and I’m not better than anyone, but I literally enjoy him. This is all very hard to understand if you haven't experienced it, and understandably so. Discovering the God of Christianity is so much more than scientific evidence or metaphysical speculation, although those are important. Discovering God is personal.

But you see, this is why we'll never have "proof" that God exists or doesn't exist anytime soon (I mean, proof that convinces all of humanity). There’s so much I don’t know but I’ll try my best to explain this. 1) I believe God wants to meet us all on an individual level. He could make himself visible to humankind easily (and the Bible says he will one day), but he doesn't want to people to obey him just because they see him and are scared they will get punished if they don't. It wouldn’t be individual anymore. In my opinion, that's called religion... it's performance-based, results-based, and there's no life in it. This principle is seen at work in many religious families. The parents do their best to instill good morals and biblical truths into their children, but neglect to teach them that God wants us to talk to him. The kids behave pretty well through growing up and high school years because their parents expect it. Then they leave home and are just like any other non-religious person their age after a few years, because their faith was never their own. They don't know how to go to God during rough times, so they go the easier, fleetingly gratifying routes of video games or pornography (or anything really). I know because that's been me in many ways. 2) Also, God is not about instant gratification, which is why he doesn’t usually give people a Ferrari when they ask for one. The Bible says he’s a Father that likes to give good gifts to those who ask, and that he does more for us than we could ask or imagine, but he also knows what’s best for us. If we ask for a Ferrari and we’ve totaled our last two cars, or we just want attention, or we’re trying to prove someone wrong, then he still might give it to us because he wants to show us how we really don’t know what’s best for us, but he probably won’t. Instead, God is about the process of everything. We are more impacted by being immersed in a process, difficult and tedious as it may be, than by being instantly gratified. He might give us that Ferrari twenty years after we initially asked him for it, because by that time we’ve gotten to know him a little through our asking, and knowing God is more gratifying than anything we could own or accomplish anyway. 3) We can’t live in the presence of a physically tangible God as we are, because of our “fallen” nature. God walked with Adam through the Garden of Eden in Genesis, before he and Eve rebelled against God. Since then, God has made a plan to make things the way they were in the garden (the pinnacle of which has thus far been Jesus’s death). We simply can’t handle being with the visible God in all his beauty and perfection. Note: I’m getting all this from the Bible of course, so I don’t expect everyone to just believe everything I say. It’s mind blowing for some Christians to think that non-Christians don’t accept the Bible as the God-inspired book of ultimate truth, but that’s not me.

If an eternal God exists and he’s going to spend eternity with people, it's going to be the people who actually love him and want to be with him. We cultivate that love and desire by the way we live life on this earth. If you go into eternity and you don't love and enjoy God, then heaven would probably be just as miserable as hell.

So, the very basis of religion has indeed not been disproven. It has been disproven that the earth is the center of the universe, but I am not rattled by that at all, because it doesn’t contradict anything I know about God, and actually it makes me enjoy science even more. This is why religion is not just a fad, Mota. More and more scientific findings will never eradicate religion, specifically Christianity, because science and God (whether or not he exists) aren’t on the same levels.

I have a hypothesis: that the amount of people in the world who believe with sincere, 100% certainty that God exists far outnumbers the amount of people who believe with 100% certainty that God does not exist. This wouldn’t mean that God exists per se, but it would show shed light on the notion that so many people have experiential understanding of his existence, which trumps everything in one’s own mind. Atheists have good scientific arguments, but no personal experience to back up their beliefs. (Granted, tons of people who call themselves Christians don’t either.) This struck me when I listened to Richard Dawkins say that he thought it was "very unlikely" that God doesn't exist. He's smarter than me, but it seems like I'm more sure than he is. I want to hear y'all's thoughts about this, as I'm sure I will.


Summary: Although I have doubt sometimes, when I forget the things I've seen God do, the “evidence” for God’s existence is so strong in my own life that nothing could ever convince me that he doesn’t exist. But, my experiences are not enough to convince any of you that he exists. And I believe that’s how God wants it—he wants you to individually seek him out. I’ve never known him to disappoint when I genuinely seek him out. And that's not just a cute saying or a cop-out.

 

[Jim Morrison]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

This video has made it clear to me, a while back, why I can't believe in a God. I just can't comprehend everything being made by something for just people believing in a certain religion at a certain point in time on a certain small planet.

I have no idea where I was going with this lol.

 

[Dre89]

Kataklysm- I ignored that post because you made a million unjustified assumptions. The argument is that God is necessary, yet you never showed why that isn't the case.

By assuming physical things could have always existed, you assume brute contingency. You didn't justify this at all. You also reject the principle of sufficient reason without justification.

You also didn't show how it's impossible for God to have existed.

As for OR, you're assuming God is beyond necessity but you never show it. You simplify the issue. What you're doing is applying quantitative OR, which is translates to the lesser beings the better. The problem is you're not accounting for the metaphysical properties of the beings. You assume that physical, contingent beings are sufficient to be the first existence. This assumes brute contingency and the rejection of the psr, as I mentioned above. The jump to the conclusion that God is unnecessray is unjustified until you justify those positions.

No offence, but this is why I just ignored most posts like yours, because they don't realise how many metaphysical propositions they assume. This is just the tip of the iceberg too, I could delve into a lot more mp assumptions your argument assumes.

Gw- It seems like everyone who doesn't understand metaphysics seems to get annoyed when I use it. It's as if they don't like the idea of them not being educated in something important to the topic, so they want to believe it's not important to the topic.

I've happily debated people like Rvkevin and Underdoggs22, who believe different things to me but at least understand the metaphysics enough to make articulate responses.

 

[Meru.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

This video has made it clear to me, a while back, why I can't believe in a God. I just can't comprehend everything being made by something for just people believing in a certain religion at a certain point in time on a certain small planet.

I have no idea where I was going with this lol.

oy that was quite a beautiful vid you shared with us! We're all so great yet so insignificant, the human species bursts of contradictions!

 

[Muro]

Kataklysm- I ignored that post because you made a million unjustified assumptions. The argument is that God is necessary, yet you never showed why that isn't the case.

By assuming physical things could have always existed, you assume brute contingency. You didn't justify this at all. You also reject the principle of sufficient reason without justification.

You also didn't show how it's impossible for God to have existed.

As for OR, you're assuming God is beyond necessity but you never show it. You simplify the issue. What you're doing is applying quantitative OR, which is translates to the lesser beings the better. The problem is you're not accounting for the metaphysical properties of the beings. You assume that physical, contingent beings are sufficient to be the first existence. This assumes brute contingency and the rejection of the psr, as I mentioned above. The jump to the conclusion that God is unnecessray is unjustified until you justify those positions.

No offence, but this is why I just ignored most posts like yours, because they don't realise how many metaphysical propositions they assume. This is just the tip of the iceberg too, I could delve into a lot more mp assumptions your argument assumes.

Gw- It seems like everyone who doesn't understand metaphysics seems to get annoyed when I use it. It's as if they don't like the idea of them not being educated in something important to the topic, so they want to believe it's not important to the topic.

I've happily debated people like Rvkevin and Underdoggs22, who believe different things to me but at least understand the metaphysics enough to make articulate responses.

I'm sorry, I didn't read the whole thread, but could you please explain what is it you refer to as "metaphysics"? Wikipedia didn't help much

 

[GwJ]

I'm drawn to him because I've realized… through experience… that I can talk to him and he listens, he actually speaks back to me (not usually in the ways that I'd expect), that he's always right, that he does miracles in my life and my friends' lives simply because he likes people, that he makes sense of all my needs, desires, gifts, issues, etc. He is literally life, strength and joy to me, and that's why I choose to get up half an hour before I "need" to every morning so I can spend time with him.

How can you be sure god is talking to you? You said that it's in ways you wouldn't expect; so in what ways has it happened? Keep in mind that if it's something like being lucky, natural occurrences that can happen regardless, and so on, then that can be disregarded immediately.

How has he done miracles? Miracles are by definition things that cannot happen in the natural world through natural causes. Do you have any examples?

It sounds like you have a case of the God Syndrome. Let me show you a short video of what I mean by that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j8ZMMuu7MU

I’m not bragging and I’m not better than anyone, but I literally enjoy him. This is all very hard to understand if you haven't experienced it, and understandably so. Discovering the God of Christianity is so much more than scientific evidence or metaphysical speculation, although those are important. Discovering God is personal.

You fail to realize that many atheists are former theists. I was a christian up until about 3 years ago and went through a lot of the things you talk about. However, I dismissed that when I realized what I was feeling was nothing unusual or paranormal.

But you see, this is why we'll never have "proof" that God exists or doesn't exist anytime soon (I mean, proof that convinces all of humanity). There’s so much I don’t know but I’ll try my best to explain this. 1) I believe God wants to meet us all on an individual level. He could make himself visible to humankind easily (and the Bible says he will one day), but he doesn't want to people to obey him just because they see him and are scared they will get punished if they don't. It wouldn’t be individual anymore.

HOLD IT! I know exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about the whole "free will" argument. If god makes himself known to humankind, then humankind won't have the free will to choose anymore, correct? Too bad there's a DIRECT example of a PERFECT being contradicting that: Satan. Satan was a perfect being who knew god directly and yet he still defied and rejected god, so your argument is invalid.

In my opinion, that's called religion... it's performance-based, results-based, and there's no life in it. This principle is seen at work in many religious families. The parents do their best to instill good morals and biblical truths into their children, but neglect to teach them that God wants us to talk to him. The kids behave pretty well through growing up and high school years because their parents expect it. Then they leave home and are just like any other non-religious person their age after a few years, because their faith was never their own. They don't know how to go to God during rough times, so they go the easier, fleetingly gratifying routes of video games or pornography (or anything really). I know because that's been me in many ways.

I'm sure other religions have a different opinion on what you're saying.

2) Also, God is not about instant gratification, which is why he doesn’t usually give people a Ferrari when they ask for one. The Bible says he’s a Father that likes to give good gifts to those who ask, and that he does more for us than we could ask or imagine, but he also knows what’s best for us. If we ask for a Ferrari and we’ve totaled our last two cars, or we just want attention, or we’re trying to prove someone wrong, then he still might give it to us because he wants to show us how we really don’t know what’s best for us, but he probably won’t. Instead, God is about the process of everything. We are more impacted by being immersed in a process, difficult and tedious as it may be, than by being instantly gratified. He might give us that Ferrari twenty years after we initially asked him for it, because by that time we’ve gotten to know him a little through our asking, and knowing God is more gratifying than anything we could own or accomplish anyway.

Ok, at this point you're just preaching.

3) We can’t live in the presence of a physically tangible God as we are, because of our “fallen” nature. God walked with Adam through the Garden of Eden in Genesis, before he and Eve rebelled against God. Since then, God has made a plan to make things the way they were in the garden (the pinnacle of which has thus far been Jesus’s death). We simply can’t handle being with the visible God in all his beauty and perfection. Note: I’m getting all this from the Bible of course, so I don’t expect everyone to just believe everything I say. It’s mind blowing for some Christians to think that non-Christians don’t accept the Bible as the God-inspired book of ultimate truth, but that’s not me.

I'm sorry, but I take this argument as one of the most idiotic ones in Christianity. The whole idea that Adam and Eve ruined it for themselves is preposterous. If your god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good (which you claim he is), then he has ABSOLUTE that Adam and Eve would rebel, correct? Why punish them for something they could not control?

If I was a personal god who cared about my creation and there was a force trying to harm them, you know what'd I'd do? I'd remove it (Satan).

There is a fundamental problem with your god being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. It simply does not work in the slightest.

If an eternal God exists and he’s going to spend eternity with people, it's going to be the people who actually love him and want to be with him. We cultivate that love and desire by the way we live life on this earth. If you go into eternity and you don't love and enjoy God, then heaven would probably be just as miserable as hell.

So if he only wants to spend it with the people who love him, why create the people who won't and go on to punish them for all of eternity in Hell?

So, the very basis of religion has indeed not been disproven. It has been disproven that the earth is the center of the universe, but I am not rattled by that at all, because it doesn’t contradict anything I know about God, and actually it makes me enjoy science even more. This is why religion is not just a fad, Mota. More and more scientific findings will never eradicate religion, specifically Christianity, because science and God (whether or not he exists) aren’t on the same levels.

Nothing can disprove religion because it was designed in a way for people to not be able to know if it's real or not. That's kinda how it works.

I have a hypothesis: that the amount of people in the world who believe with sincere, 100% certainty that God exists far outnumbers the amount of people who believe with 100% certainty that God does not exist. This wouldn’t mean that God exists per se, but it would show shed light on the notion that so many people have experiential understanding of his existence, which trumps everything in one’s own mind. Atheists have good scientific arguments, but no personal experience to back up their beliefs. (Granted, tons of people who call themselves Christians don’t either.) This struck me when I listened to Richard Dawkins say that he thought it was "very unlikely" that God doesn't exist. He's smarter than me, but it seems like I'm more sure than he is. I want to hear y'all's thoughts about this, as I'm sure I will.

Ok, and I know there's a helluva lot of Muslims out there. Does that mean they hold weight in this too? You cannot say that since a lot of people think something, it must be more likely to be true. That's nice to think and is harmless when the outcome is harmless, but when you get down to it, it proves nothing. The majority of the world didn't believe in your god before the time of the Jews. Does that mean you're wrong in that case?

People like Dawkins say there is "probably" no god, because he's doing something called being INTELLECTUALLY HONEST.




PLEASE, if you're going to post about this, don't preach. Post something I can respond to and not personal testimony.


@Dre - I'm sorry, but that's just because the whole metaphysics thing is currently beyond my grasp. I've yet to get a clear answer on what it is, because something like that isn't easily explained. It's best understood through practice and observation, but I've only ever seen it used in practice from you in actuality. So every time I get into a debate and you pop up, I have no choice but to drop out because you start talking about things I cannot respond to.