I am an atheist but do not deny there some slight possiblity of there being some sort of god, however there is no evidence of there being a personal god, aboslutly none, just because things are unexplained doesn't mean that there has to be a god to explain them. the only sort of "god" i think there is a possiblilty of existing is some sort of force that led to the creation of everything, but this force isn't personal, can't have a consience, and has no power to impact the univerise that has been created. god can't be a person, it has tot be a force, it can't think, it's like gravity. this is the only possible "god" that logicly could exist, and it is only a god if you think of "god" as the creator,
it's sometimes a bit shit, but most often i find it more comforting to look at the evidence and realise that I am the only force in control of my own life.
See, I think you aren't an atheist then.
This is what my first post was all about. People think they are atheists but don't really know what the term means.
P.S. I don't think your points above are incompatible with many organized religion's view on God. I agree, it's rather elementary to think that God is a person who sits up in the clouds and has a white beard. Even the judgment day is a bit elementary to me. In my opinion, we're deciding our judgment right now... that's why near death experiences always involve flashbacks (a review of our life) and a white light (us rejoining God). Once again, to me, it's US who decide our afterlife... not God. Because, to me, we're already a part of God outside of time. The problem is thinking of "timeless" is both scary and vacant to a human on earth.
Ginormous assumptions. You have no idea what mechanisms cause the flashbacks or the white light. Even if all the people in the world have the same experience it certainly does not mean that god is involved. Everybody breathes, too. Could just be an ordinary, mechanical function of the brain, or any other possibility for that matter.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win ."
Honestly, I don't know how anybody can call themselves an atheist and say they are uncertain about anything. Atheism is the certainty that there is no god. As an agnostic I view Atheists and Theists as being cut from the same cloth. Their certainty in an absurd question screams arrogance to me. Atheists and Theists both claim that Agnostics are fence sitters (and usually dump on them for it), but this is a short-sighted definition of Agnosticism which is fueled by the need for both Theists and Atheists to be correct.
As an Agnostic I find the very question of god to be absurd. It is an improvable concept and as such, it is not worth consideration beyond academic banter IMO. In my experience, both Atheists and Theists claim victory over their opponents by pointing out that the other side can provide no certainty in support of their position. Of course both Theists and Atheists are quick dump on Agnostics for failing to play what many Agnostics simply consider to be a rather pointless game. As I see it, Agnosticism is not about indecision. It is simply understanding that a human being will never have sufficient understanding to answer an absurd proposition.
Atheists and Theists simply take opposite positions without supporting evidence.
Inlet13 strikes me as a person who needs to look into Pascal's wager and come to an understanding of why it's a pretty lacking reason for faith.
As has been said by others before, we're all atheist about the overwhelming majority of gods that have ever been dreamt up. Atheists really just add one more god to the list that aren't believed in than believers and it is always that last one that pisses people off. Christians don't believe in Zeus, Wotan, Thor, etc. and it's quite easy for them to do so. They can see the absurdity in believing in those gods and the overwhelming lack of evidence to support their existence. But they have the damnedest of a time seeing the absurdities of their own beliefs and how it too is a product of a particular time, a particular place, full of contradictions, full of superstition and supernatural.
Inlet13, isn't it a bad tactic to not believe in Allah in just the same manner as you view it a good tactic to believe in Jesus? Or isn't it an equally bad tactic to not believe in Thor just in case he is actually real and would be very upset that you'd not believe in him? Do you secretly fear that you might be wrong about Thor's existence and that he may reject you upon your death? I'd be inclined to say that most atheists feel the same way about your God's wrath and hellfire as you do about Thor's wrath. When atheists speak of certainty, they do it in the same context as lack of belief in Thor. They don't expect to be held to the most absurd extremes of proof. As a wise person once said... the invisible and the nonexistant look very much alike. And they're both pretty damn hard to disprove with 100% certainty. Disproving an angel over a person's shoulder is pretty hard to do with 100% certainty, but an invisible elephant over their shoulder is just as hard to disprove as well. Don't expect absolute levels of certainty when people declare atheism. They are speaking of having an extremely high degree of confidence, not an absurd level of certainty.
Honestly, I don't know how anybody can call themselves an atheist and say they are uncertain about anything.
Atheism is the certainty that there is no god
. As an agnostic I view Atheists and Theists as being cut from the same cloth. Their certainty in an absurd question screams arrogance to me. Atheists and Theists both claim that Agnostics are fence sitters (and usually dump on them for it), but this is a short-sighted definition of Agnosticism which is fueled by the need for both Theists and Atheists to be correct.
As an Agnostic I find the very question of god to be absurd. It is an improvable concept and as such, it is not worth consideration beyond academic banter IMO. In my experience, both Atheists and Theists claim victory over their opponents by pointing out that the other side can provide no certainty in support of their position. Of course both Theists and Atheists are quick dump on Agnostics for failing to play what many Agnostics simply consider to be a rather pointless game. As I see it, Agnosticism is not about indecision. It is simply understanding that a human being will never have sufficient understanding to answer an absurd proposition.
Atheists and Theists simply take opposite positions without supporting evidence.
while i agree with an awful lot you say i disagree with your starting assumption. i think most athiest's say there probably is no god. and then live their life as if there is no god. i find your type of agnostism very close to my type of atheism. as mine is the rejection in the belief of a personal god and religion, beyond that it doesn't matter
Inlet13 strikes me as a person who needs to look into Pascal's wager and come to an understanding of why it's a pretty lacking reason for faith.
I don't claim it's the best reason for faith. Instead, I say if that's last resort and you have the ability to reason without preexisting prejudice, than you most likely would choose to believe or at least choose to be agnostic. Because there are risks to not believing, most likely greater risks for all out rejection.... and potential benefits to believing. The same can't be true for declaring an atheist belief because in so doing you're declaring an absolute certainty in no God.
As has been said by others before, we're all atheist about the overwhelming majority of gods that have ever been dreamt up. Atheists really just add one more god to the list that aren't believed in than believers and it is always that last one that pisses people off. Christians don't believe in Zeus, Wotan, Thor, etc. and it's quite easy for them to do so. They can see the absurdity in believing in those gods and the overwhelming lack of evidence to support their existence. But they have the damnedest of a time seeing the absurdities of their own beliefs and how it too is a product of a particular time, a particular place, full of contradictions, full of superstition and supernatural.
Your point on "atheists adding one more God" to the list doesn't make any sense. They, as you should be aware, don't believe in God.
You are quite condescending to the 90+% of human kind that believe in some sort of higher power. The last two sentences are particularly douche-like.
Inlet13, isn't it a bad tactic to not believe in Allah in just the same manner as you view it a good tactic to believe in Jesus? Or isn't it an equally bad tactic to not believe in Thor just in case he is actually real and would be very upset that you'd not believe in him? Do you secretly fear that you might be wrong about Thor's existence and that he may reject you upon your death? I'd be inclined to say that most atheists feel the same way about your God's wrath and hellfire as you do about Thor's wrath. When atheists speak of certainty, they do it in the same context as lack of belief in Thor. They don't expect to be held to the most absurd extremes of proof. As a wise person once said... the invisible and the nonexistant look very much alike. And they're both pretty damn hard to disprove with 100% certainty. Disproving an angel over a person's shoulder is pretty hard to do with 100% certainty, but an invisible elephant over their shoulder is just as hard to disprove as well. Don't expect absolute levels of certainty when people declare atheism. They are speaking of having an extremely high degree of confidence, not an absurd level of certainty.
First, I think you should really do yourself a favor and read a bit on the subject of religion so you don't sound so ignorant. The Muslim God and the Christian God (and the Jewish God) are not different. In fact, they are the same exact God that spoke to Abraham, which spawned all three religions. Only someone who is clueless to what well over half the world's population believes, would be that ignorant.
Second, you clearly have a Thor fetish. I'm not going to go too much into Thor, because I clearly don't know as much about this Nordic god as you do. However, I will say that those who believed in a higher power (via gods like Thor - if there are any today I have no clue) or via (monotheistic God, like Christians, Muslims and Jews) or others who believe in some sort of other higher power, are putting faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so.
Third, it seems to me that atheists, like you demonstrated yourself, believe they are smarter than everyone else. Is it really absurd to have a belief in a higher power? Do you admit there are a lot of people who are a lot smarter than you are, yet still believe in God or a higher power of some sort? If so, why?
Honestly, I don't know how anybody can call themselves an atheist and say they are uncertain about anything. Atheism is the certainty that there is no god. As an agnostic I view Atheists and Theists as being cut from the same cloth. Their certainty in an absurd question screams arrogance to me. Atheists and Theists both claim that Agnostics are fence sitters (and usually dump on them for it), but this is a short-sighted definition of Agnosticism which is fueled by the need for both Theists and Atheists to be correct.
As an Agnostic I find the very question of god to be absurd. It is an improvable concept and as such, it is not worth consideration beyond academic banter IMO. In my experience, both Atheists and Theists claim victory over their opponents by pointing out that the other side can provide no certainty in support of their position. Of course both Theists and Atheists are quick dump on Agnostics for failing to play what many Agnostics simply consider to be a rather pointless game. As I see it, Agnosticism is not about indecision. It is simply understanding that a human being will never have sufficient understanding to answer an absurd proposition.
Atheists and Theists simply take opposite positions without supporting evidence.
These are good points and I would not try to argue them. I do see at least a few other possibilities.
For lack of a better term I'll call the first one “Phillipsists”. Writer J. B. Phillips wrote a book called Your God is to Small. Now true, Phillips was a theologian and therefore basically a “theist”, but the premise of his book is that as soon as you try to define “God” in human terms you’ve made God a human thing. To its furthest extreme, one would say that the divine cannot be described in human terms and is therefore something mysterious outside of religion or anti-religion-- call it The Great Mystery.
The other I would call Haydenist. (Say, that has a nice ironic ring to it.) Writer, activist Tom Hayden wrote a book called The Lost Gospel of the Earth. I n this book, Hayden seeks to renew our spiritual bond with the earth and shows how this is done in all religions, especially in the spiritual mythology of American Indians in particular and indigenous peoples in general. This again takes us beyond the realm of religion and anti-religion but at the same time encompasses them. The term “ecotheology” applies here quite well.
And then there is punk writer Zen priest Brad Warner who in his book Hardcore Zen hints at the answer to all of this thusly:
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
The plumb tree in the garden!
"Don't give in to the lies. Don't give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth. And to hope."
"I think we have to be flexible. Any belief system that is inflexible, closed off to other belief systems, is profoundly unhealthy. I also think that if you look at life as a long line of evolutionary changes that started billions of years ago, from little things crawling in the mud, and then you realize where we’ve got to now, that is a remarkable set of circumstances. There is more magic in that, for me, than someone creating the planet in six days and taking a day off. When you realize how long humanity has taken to get to this point, it makes you respect another person’s life in a deeper and broader sense. I wouldn’t think of killing anybody because their lineage goes back to the primordial seas, not because there’s some eye in the sky, looking out for how many commandments you’re going to break."
Another habit says it's in love with you
Another habit says its long overdue
Another habit like an unwanted friend
I'm so happy with my righteous self
Third, it seems to me that atheists, like you demonstrated yourself, believe they are smarter than everyone else. Is it really absurd to have a belief in a higher power? Do you admit there are a lot of people who are a lot smarter than you are, yet still believe in God or a higher power of some sort? If so, why?
Most people appear to believe from an emotional, conditional or psychological standpoint rather than from an intellectual one, I'd say.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win ."
Grrr, I wrote a pretty huge message and hit send on it, but it looks like the internet gods (you know those invisible things which I should have to prove exist and that you shouldn't believe in even if I tell you that it is a good wager to believe in them rather than not to avoid hellish punishment) ate it. :( I was debating making the effort of taking the time to write it in the first place because I know that internet discussion tends to usually be pretty fruitless for all parties. Not sure I'll must up the will to try to retype another, but I may.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,728
Grrr, I wrote a pretty huge message and hit send on it, but it looks like the internet gods (you know those invisible things which I should have to prove exist and that you shouldn't believe in even if I tell you that it is a good wager to believe in them rather than not to avoid hellish punishment) ate it. :( I was debating making the effort of taking the time to write it in the first place because I know that internet discussion tends to usually be pretty fruitless for all parties. Not sure I'll must up the will to try to retype another, but I may.
I know that frustration well! Bummer, Soulfire42.
When I know I'm going to be writing more than a few sentences (like here) I write my thoughts on a Word Document (which also helps me edit) then simple copy and paste to my PJ forum post. Saves a ton of frustration!
"Don't give in to the lies. Don't give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth. And to hope."
Ok, I’ve decided to type this out in Word this time so the internet gods don’t eat it again. Atheists do not need an absolute and absurd level of certainty in their disbelief. For instance, Inlet13 doesn’t believe in Wotan, Minerva, Aries, etc. At the same time, Inlet13 isn’t feeling compelled to believe in any of them or thinking it very fruitful to invest time into disproving them.
Let’s say for the sake of argument there are 10,000 gods that have been created throughout the course of human history. There could be more, there could be less, but the exact number isn’t something to fixate on for the purposes of my argument. Monotheistic believers disbelieve the existence of 9,999 of those gods. I suspect that Inlet13 and other monotheists/Christians have no problem seeing how absurd things are in the religions of those 9,999 other gods. There’s crazy stuff like virgin births, talking animals, invincibility, immortality, zombies, innate contradictions, textual logical errors, etc. They are easy to identify and acknowledge by both Atheists and Christians (which is the stand-in for monotheists as I continue). Using identical power of reason, critical thinking and demand for evidence, we can easily point to the absurdities in some 9,999 other religions as the Atheist and Christian work together to identify them. So in a sense, the Christian is 99.9% Atheist toward all the religions the world has ever known. An Atheist adds but one more number to the total number of gods s/he disbelieves in and suddenly they transform into a heretic. The Atheist instantly becomes lost, doomed to eternity in hell, becomes possessed by a superiority complex, etc, etc. But all they have done is add one more god to the list of gods they do not believe in than the Christian has already done.
The Christian is atheistic (a nonbeliever) in those 9,999 other gods with no fear of reprisal if they are wrong, in the exact same way an Atheist fears no reprisal about being wrong about any of them. The Christian doesn’t show concern about believing in the Quran or the Oracle of Delphi or Native American mythologies or Sumerian myths or even exhibit a fear of Shiva. The Christian simply dismisses them as having no real tangible evidence or support that they have seen. Both the Christian and Atheist would rightly state that the burden of proof rests upon the believers of any of those 9,999 gods to show persuasive evidence that their particular invisible god actually does exist and that the other equally invisible gods do not exist. Both the Christian and Atheist do not burden themselves worrying about retribution for not believing in any particular god from that list of some 9,999 possible gods to believe in. The Atheist merely adds the Christian’s god to the list to bring the tally to an even 10,000 gods which are disbelieved and suddenly the Christian is usually up in arms. No longer are the Atheist and the Christian similar in disbelief about 9,999 gods, they are suddenly locked into antagonism over that remaining 1 that makes the total 10,000. That is what I was trying to get at in telling you that Atheists and Christians are the same in their atheism toward all gods except for the one extra one that the Atheist adds to the list that the Christian refuses to add. Why is it that the Christian is fine sharing a disbelief in 9,999 gods, but sees the Atheist as a much different person the moment they add the Christian deity to their list of disbelief?
Now circling back to Pascal’s Wager... Why is the typical Christian not concerned about believing in the Quran or the Oracle of Delphi or any other of those 9,999 optional gods or their holy texts? Surely it could be argued that it is safer to believe in the Quran than suffer Allah’s wrath. And surely it could be argued that it is better to heed the Oracle of Delphi rather than be visited by a lightning bolt from the gods or something worse. The gain of disbelief isn’t very tangible, but the gain for belief in the Quran or the Oracle are huge. It should be easy to see why this is not real belief and not a convincing argument for belief in any particular god. Assuming there are 10,000 gods, which one is the horse you want to wager on? But then it seems the counter to this sort of reasoning is usually that it doesn’t matter so long as you just believe in A god. You know, the vanilla god, the generic one. The one people say is just “God.” Well, there are countless holy texts, dogma, words from gods, etc. that say that only one particular god or prophet counts and that any other god, like a generic god, doesn’t count. Belief in the generic god still isn’t enough to be safe from all the promises of pain, destruction, turmoil, etc. Pascal’s Wager simply doesn’t work, especially when you bring in the possibility of more than one religion.
I feel that people like Inlet13 fixate on absolute certainty of there being no god when they think about Atheism. The typical Atheist is no more certain about the nonexistence of Wotan than they are about the nonexistence of the God of Abraham. However, that’s still pretty darn certain due to the lack of credible, repeatable, scientific evidence. I have no good reason, including a Pascal Wager, to believe in Wotan (using Wotan because you didn’t like Thor... the point is that the particular god doesn’t matter). If somebody wanted me to believe in Wotan, they would entirely shoulder the burden of proof and I’d be a bit daft to start with a belief in Wotan from scratch. The same is equally true of religions like Christianity. Both require faith, instead of good science to support belief. If I did choose to start from scratch with a belief in Wotan, I would almost certainly be inclined to project my beliefs and interpretation of the world in ways which continued to be favorable toward my belief in Wotan. I argue that Christians do the same when they bother at all with a pursuit of proof, validity or evidence. Skepticism is typically not promoted in religion like it is in science.
Inlet13 seemed to have two particular lines of mine strike as “douche-like” (which amused me). I argued that Christians can easily see the absurd things in other religions. Things like 72 virgins (just an example, I know the ways in which it is debatable), blue gods, virgin births, raising the long dead, rainbow weapons, shapeshifting, end of the world predictions that have passed, and all sorts of other things are simply... absurd. The typical Christian has no problem identifying these “impossible” things in other religions, but they can’t seem to use the same critical eye when evaluating their own faith. If that appears douche-like to you, so be it. I am not trying to say that only Christians are that way, because I don’t think that at all. But rather, religious adherents tend to have no difficulty at all identifying the absurd in other religions, but will defend the absurd in their particular faith to the bitter end.
The other comment of mine which struck Inlet13 as “douche-like” was mostly about almost any religion being tied to a particular time and place and full of superstition and belief in the supernatural. I think this comment is mostly able to annoy due to the inclusion of words like superstition. Again, I’d argue that when foreigners are sticking daggers into their heads or whipping themselves that the superstition and belief in the supernatural are easily identified and often harmful. But when the mirror is turned back to the Christian, they don’t tend to see their own actions as superstitious (prayers for victory, achievement, healing, etc.) and don’t tend to question their belief in the supernatural when it comes to their god, but have no problem questioning things like aliens, ghosts, vampires, etc. Again, I don’t mean to pick on Christians, because I think this is true of many faiths.
Now to correct you on your statistic of 90+% of people believe in some sort of higher power. Secular/Nonreligious people number about 1.1 billion in the world. They are the 3rd largest religious “group” following only Christians and Muslims. Have a look at this page:
Next I had to laugh at you stating that I should read a bit about religion. Let me just give you a little background. I spent some 7 years studying philosophy and theology in two different countries. During that time I also intensively studied anthropology. I’ve studied the Bible as literature, researched its origins, studied evolution, know the tale of Muhammad quite well (not as well as most Muslims yet), etc, etc. I’m not trying to brag, just wanting you to know that you needn’t be worrying about my religious educational level. I’m quite aware of the God of Abraham and its(?) relevance to various faiths. However, it is foolhardy to even remotely presume that peace is possible between Christianity and Islam so long as their two holy books are interpreted as divine words from God. They are not compatible and will forever prove a source for fundamentalists to cause strife whenever they wish. That’s not even touching upon potential conflict with Judaism.
Inlet13 wrote that I have a Thor fetish, which gave me another good laugh. Not even remotely do I have such a fetish. I was just trying to lead you out of the usual waters of debate on here by using a random name and wanted a punching bag that wouldn’t cause offense. I completely agree with Inlet that people believing in gods are placing their faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so. However, that doesn’t make anything remotely more valid about their arguments. If a crazy person put his faith in the Chocolate Overlord god and believed he would be rewarded with a chocolate factory in the afterlife, it doesn’t prove a damn thing. The burden would remain on him to prove to me he wasn’t crazy, just as it is upon Christians to prove to me that they aren’t delusional too. It is only rational to start from scepticism and require evidence to be moved into a different opinion in such matters.
If I could only tell you how many times I’ve seen theists start hurling the, “Atheists believe they are smarter than everyone else” sort of argument around... No, I don’t think that at all. I’ve seen bitter, nasty and stupid Atheists, just as I’ve seen the same sort of Christians. People are people. There’s smart ones, and dumb ones in most any camp. I was asked if it is absurd to believe in a higher power and I’m not going to say that it is always absurd to believe in a higher power. Irrational, quite often. Can it make a person feel better? Sometimes. Can it cause harm in the world? Sometimes. Where I think things do get absurd is when people start proclaiming absolute certainty about things which they have no idea about other than having unquestioningly read snippets of a 2000 year old often-translated text and believing it to be the divine words of god... and then doing things like the Crusades. I don’t try to hold religion to any higher standard of proof than I do things which science deals with. Science deals with tricky areas like quantum mechanics. I don’t even remotely proclaim to have certainty about the facts regarding quantum mechanics, but at least they are open to study, refinement, questioning and challenge in ways which most religions appear to forbid. I would like to see religious people approach their faith with the same sort of scepticism I have toward quantum mechanics. If it can prove itself over time, I’ll believe it. If it doesn’t, I won’t. Until then, I’m waiting and seeing and trying to learn more while withholding my own verdict. I do question how many thousands of years Christians can hold onto the belief that the end of the world is just around the corner before they will ever decide maybe it isn’t and they should move on. My question is... why don’t you too? My faith in things like evolution are sturdy, but still remain quite open to challenge. If fossils started turning up completely out of place in the geologic timeline from where they should be, I’d grow instantly sceptical. However, that doesn’t seem to be happening and we seem to be getting more and more evidence supporting the notion that to think the world is only some 6000 years old really is laughable.
The final question asked of me by Inlet13 was whether I admit that there are a lot of people smarter than me who still believe in God or a higher power and if so, why. Well, I’d start answering that by stating that I feel intelligence is a fairly subjective matter. However, I don’t have a problem thinking that there “smarter” people out there in the world who believe in a god. But that doesn’t prove a damn thing either. That’s essentially an appeal to authority, similar to saying hey, “The King believes it so it must be true.” If you want to play that game though, I’d be happy to point out things like the fact that Einstein was a humanist. And here’s a list of Nobel prize winners who were nonbelievers.
But such an appeal really doesn’t have too much weight, right? Both of us can point to smart people who believed in stupid things too. Let’s just think about the belief in a flat earth that was so common at one point by really intelligent people. Your argument that there are smarter people than me who believe in god holds no weight. There are smarter people than you who don’t believe in god too. Does it add anything to the discussion? I don’t really think so. Now time to rest my typing fingers before they break.
Grrr, I wrote a pretty huge message and hit send on it, but it looks like the internet gods (you know those invisible things which I should have to prove exist and that you shouldn't believe in even if I tell you that it is a good wager to believe in them rather than not to avoid hellish punishment) ate it. :( I was debating making the effort of taking the time to write it in the first place because I know that internet discussion tends to usually be pretty fruitless for all parties. Not sure I'll must up the will to try to retype another, but I may.
I know that frustration well! Bummer, Soulfire42.
When I know I'm going to be writing more than a few sentences (like here) I write my thoughts on a Word Document (which also helps me edit) then simple copy and paste to my PJ forum post. Saves a ton of frustration!
I know better than to type long crap into forums, but obviously didn't act upon that knowledge. Haha I'm sure I'll repeat the mistake in the future, but that huge post of mine just posted above was written in Word instead. Thanks for helping me make the right choice this time around instead of having faith (maybe a little pun intended... maybe?).
...
Atheists and Theists simply take opposite positions without supporting evidence.
how can i provide evidence for something that doesnt exist?
This is a logical fallacy. Simply put; you're putting the cart before the horse. An absence of evidence is proof of nothing. There is no valid position to take here because the very question of god is absolutely pointless.
Speaking as an Agnostic, arguing whether there is a god or not is absurd. It's as ridiculous as arguing about unicorns, fairies and purple dinosaurs in space. The fact that both Atheists and Theists use such a trivial exercise to argue moral and intellectual superiority is a joke to me. I find the very conversation entertaining because it is utterly pointless and absolutely ridiculous.
Ok, I’ve decided to type this out in Word this time so the internet gods don’t eat it again. Atheists do not need an absolute and absurd level of certainty in their disbelief. For instance, Inlet13 doesn’t believe in Wotan, Minerva, Aries, etc. At the same time, Inlet13 isn’t feeling compelled to believe in any of them or thinking it very fruitful to invest time into disproving them.
Let me break something down for you. There’s a large distinction between choosing to believe in a higher power and choosing not to believe. To me, there’s a large amount of people, maybe the majority that believe in a spiritual element that is greater than themselves. You want to label this belief. In many cases our society does. But, the truth is, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddist and even someone who’s religion I don’t know could all believe in this God (or spiritual element). Whereas, an atheist can’t.
You are spending a lot of time trying to debunk “me”. Also, trying to label me as a “Christian”. You have no clue what religion I belong to, if I belong to an organized religion at all. To me, it is really apparent how ridiculously bias you are right from the get-go.
Let’s say for the sake of argument there are 10,000 gods that have been created throughout the course of human history. There could be more, there could be less, but the exact number isn’t something to fixate on for the purposes of my argument. Monotheistic believers disbelieve the existence of 9,999 of those gods. I suspect that Inlet13 and other monotheists/Christians have no problem seeing how absurd things are in the religions of those 9,999 other gods. There’s crazy stuff like virgin births, talking animals, invincibility, immortality, zombies, innate contradictions, textual logical errors, etc. They are easy to identify and acknowledge by both Atheists and Christians (which is the stand-in for monotheists as I continue). Using identical power of reason, critical thinking and demand for evidence, we can easily point to the absurdities in some 9,999 other religions as the Atheist and Christian work together to identify them. So in a sense, the Christian is 99.9% Atheist toward all the religions the world has ever known. An Atheist adds but one more number to the total number of gods s/he disbelieves in and suddenly they transform into a heretic. The Atheist instantly becomes lost, doomed to eternity in hell, becomes possessed by a superiority complex, etc, etc. But all they have done is add one more god to the list of gods they do not believe in than the Christian has already done.
I don’t think any religion is absurd. In my opinion, organized religion seeks to explain what will never be properly explained in the present time. So, in my opinion, most if not all organized religions are flawed in one way or another. That does not mean these organized religions are inherently bad. Nor does it say that one can be part of an organized religion and believe pieces of it. Nor does it say that just a general belief in some sort of creator should be cast aside. In fact, it just means there should be more discussion.
You really need to stop labeling. You want so badly for every person who believes in God to be an evangelical Christian. For one, I’m not one. I don’t think an atheist is necessarily doomed to hell. My thinking is that they might be. You continue to say that a Christian, for instance, is denying all other religions. I disagree 100%. Just like I’d say a Muslim is denying all other religions. The truth is there’s a lot of cross-over between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. There is zero cross-over between Atheism and any type of religion or spiritual belief in a higher power. In fact, it’s the opposite of religion or spiritual belief in a higher power.
The Christian is atheistic (a nonbeliever) in those 9,999 other gods with no fear of reprisal if they are wrong, in the exact same way an Atheist fears no reprisal about being wrong about any of them. The Christian doesn’t show concern about believing in the Quran or the Oracle of Delphi or Native American mythologies or Sumerian myths or even exhibit a fear of Shiva. The Christian simply dismisses them as having no real tangible evidence or support that they have seen. Both the Christian and Atheist would rightly state that the burden of proof rests upon the believers of any of those 9,999 gods to show persuasive evidence that their particular invisible god actually does exist and that the other equally invisible gods do not exist. Both the Christian and Atheist do not burden themselves worrying about retribution for not believing in any particular god from that list of some 9,999 possible gods to believe in. The Atheist merely adds the Christian’s god to the list to bring the tally to an even 10,000 gods which are disbelieved and suddenly the Christian is usually up in arms. No longer are the Atheist and the Christian similar in disbelief about 9,999 gods, they are suddenly locked into antagonism over that remaining 1 that makes the total 10,000. That is what I was trying to get at in telling you that Atheists and Christians are the same in their atheism toward all gods except for the one extra one that the Atheist adds to the list that the Christian refuses to add. Why is it that the Christian is fine sharing a disbelief in 9,999 gods, but sees the Atheist as a much different person the moment they add the Christian deity to their list of disbelief?
Once again, you’re wrong. Since you keep picking on Christians, and don’t mention any other religions, I’m going to change it up a bit. The Muslim is not a non-believer in Christianity, for instance. They believe Jesus existed and was capable of impressive feats. Also, they believe in the same God as Christians (in that it was the God of Abraham). Are their belief systems 100% in line with one another? No, not at all. But, do they believe in the same God? Yes.
I’ve said it before, at the end of the day, most likely every religion has something wrong with it. But, the belief in a higher power very well may not be the part that’s incorrect. In that sense, almost every single contemporary religion has one thing (and the most important aspect of religion) in common. And, once again, atheists completely 100% reject the potential existence of that one thing (and the most important aspect of religion) in common.
Now circling back to Pascal’s Wager... Why is the typical Christian not concerned about believing in the Quran or the Oracle of Delphi or any other of those 9,999 optional gods or their holy texts? Surely it could be argued that it is safer to believe in the Quran than suffer Allah’s wrath. And surely it could be argued that it is better to heed the Oracle of Delphi rather than be visited by a lightning bolt from the gods or something worse. The gain of disbelief isn’t very tangible, but the gain for belief in the Quran or the Oracle are huge. It should be easy to see why this is not real belief and not a convincing argument for belief in any particular god. Assuming there are 10,000 gods, which one is the horse you want to wager on? But then it seems the counter to this sort of reasoning is usually that it doesn’t matter so long as you just believe in A god. You know, the vanilla god, the generic one. The one people say is just “God.” Well, there are countless holy texts, dogma, words from gods, etc. that say that only one particular god or prophet counts and that any other god, like a generic god, doesn’t count. Belief in the generic god still isn’t enough to be safe from all the promises of pain, destruction, turmoil, etc. Pascal’s Wager simply doesn’t work, especially when you bring in the possibility of more than one religion.
You are too narrow in your approach and have been from the beginning of this discussion. To me, you’re like an evangelical Christian… just on the other side. You seem to not understand that belief in God may be black and white, but the logistics inbetween can be very very grey.
To provide an example for you, Catholics believe other religions can go to heaven. That, for one, debunks every single thing you wrote. According to Catholics, you can be Muslim, Hindu or a Jew and go to heaven. That said, you can’t completely deny God’s existence (like an atheist).
I feel that people like Inlet13 fixate on absolute certainty of there being no god when they think about Atheism. The typical Atheist is no more certain about the nonexistence of Wotan than they are about the nonexistence of the God of Abraham. However, that’s still pretty darn certain due to the lack of credible, repeatable, scientific evidence. I have no good reason, including a Pascal Wager, to believe in Wotan (using Wotan because you didn’t like Thor... the point is that the particular god doesn’t matter). If somebody wanted me to believe in Wotan, they would entirely shoulder the burden of proof and I’d be a bit daft to start with a belief in Wotan from scratch. The same is equally true of religions like Christianity. Both require faith, instead of good science to support belief. If I did choose to start from scratch with a belief in Wotan, I would almost certainly be inclined to project my beliefs and interpretation of the world in ways which continued to be favorable toward my belief in Wotan. I argue that Christians do the same when they bother at all with a pursuit of proof, validity or evidence. Skepticism is typically not promoted in religion like it is in science.
I feel like people like you try with every fiber of your brain to understand something that’s way too complex for your tiny little brain. You, for some reason, believe that humans are capable to completely understand the existence of God (and use the word science to do so). As if God is hiding behind the bolder and you just needed to use a magnifying glass to dissect. Ha ha.
This is why I asked you the question in my last post…. Do you believe there are people smarter than you who do believe in God? If you’re honest, you’ll answer yes. And my response would be, those smarter “scientists” are reaching a different conclusion than you are.
Inlet13 seemed to have two particular lines of mine strike as “douche-like” (which amused me). I argued that Christians can easily see the absurd things in other religions. Things like 72 virgins (just an example, I know the ways in which it is debatable), blue gods, virgin births, raising the long dead, rainbow weapons, shapeshifting, end of the world predictions that have passed, and all sorts of other things are simply... absurd. The typical Christian has no problem identifying these “impossible” things in other religions, but they can’t seem to use the same critical eye when evaluating their own faith. If that appears douche-like to you, so be it. I am not trying to say that only Christians are that way, because I don’t think that at all. But rather, religious adherents tend to have no difficulty at all identifying the absurd in other religions, but will defend the absurd in their particular faith to the bitter end.
I’m glad those lines amused you. By the way, out of curiosity, which religion believes in shape shifting? I think you’ve been reading too many Thor comics.
I’d say there’s many roads to home, my friend. So, in other words, although you continue to try to pain this as a Christian vs. Atheist discussion… it’s not. It’s a believer in a higher power vs. atheist discussion. And to me, there’s many ways to believe in a higher power : name the religion. And there’s one way not to: atheism.
The other comment of mine which struck Inlet13 as “douche-like” was mostly about almost any religion being tied to a particular time and place and full of superstition and belief in the supernatural. I think this comment is mostly able to annoy due to the inclusion of words like superstition. Again, I’d argue that when foreigners are sticking daggers into their heads or whipping themselves that the superstition and belief in the supernatural are easily identified and often harmful. But when the mirror is turned back to the Christian, they don’t tend to see their own actions as superstitious (prayers for victory, achievement, healing, etc.) and don’t tend to question their belief in the supernatural when it comes to their god, but have no problem questioning things like aliens, ghosts, vampires, etc. Again, I don’t mean to pick on Christians, because I think this is true of many faiths.
Belief in a higher power is as much “superstition” as non-belief. The end result is not known.
For people’s actions: believers and atheists are both subject to bad behavior. Your running in circles here.
Now to correct you on your statistic of 90+% of people believe in some sort of higher power. Secular/Nonreligious people number about 1.1 billion in the world. They are the 3rd largest religious “group” following only Christians and Muslims. Have a look at this page:
Ha ha ha… I’m sure it depends on the poll, like most things. But, according to the very site you just suggested, the number is roughly 86%, with the 16% “not”: composed of agnostics, theists, secular humanists and more.
Next I had to laugh at you stating that I should read a bit about religion. Let me just give you a little background. I spent some 7 years studying philosophy and theology in two different countries. During that time I also intensively studied anthropology. I’ve studied the Bible as literature, researched its origins, studied evolution, know the tale of Muhammad quite well (not as well as most Muslims yet), etc, etc. I’m not trying to brag, just wanting you to know that you needn’t be worrying about my religious educational level. I’m quite aware of the God of Abraham and its(?) relevance to various faiths. However, it is foolhardy to even remotely presume that peace is possible between Christianity and Islam so long as their two holy books are interpreted as divine words from God. They are not compatible and will forever prove a source for fundamentalists to cause strife whenever they wish. That’s not even touching upon potential conflict with Judaism.
I do think you should learn more about religion. You credentials don’t impress me at all. I’ve spent at least double the amount of time you spend studying religion. So, I don’t get your point. My point was that you were showing complete ignorance in your question which involved choosing between Islamic God and the Christian God.
I find it ironic that the subject immediately turns to your time studying and then the likelihood of peace between the two religions, when that does absolutely nothing to discount how you showed your ignorance or even the subject that we are discussing.
Inlet13 wrote that I have a Thor fetish, which gave me another good laugh. Not even remotely do I have such a fetish. I was just trying to lead you out of the usual waters of debate on here by using a random name and wanted a punching bag that wouldn’t cause offense.
I completely agree with Inlet that people believing in gods are placing their faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so. However, that doesn’t make anything remotely more valid about their arguments. If a crazy person put his faith in the Chocolate Overlord god and believed he would be rewarded with a chocolate factory in the afterlife, it doesn’t prove a damn thing. The burden would remain on him to prove to me he wasn’t crazy, just as it is upon Christians to prove to me that they aren’t delusional too. It is only rational to start from scepticism and require evidence to be moved into a different opinion in such matters.
You tend to try to over dramatize in order to discount belief systems (ie Chocolate Overlords, shape-shifting and your buddy Thor). You agree that people believing in a higher power are placing faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so. But, then you turn to some odd example. What you aren’t understanding is there’s many paths to believing a higher power and who’s to say each can’t be rewarded. The reality is we all are born in different regions with different upbringings on religion. The commonality of religion is a power greater than one’s self, a creator of some sort. Sure, this could be one or multiple parties and specifics on a religion can go from there. But, in one way it is pretty simple in that they are all involving a higher power. You, as an atheist are rejecting that higher power. You’re outright saying you believe that a higher power (of some sort) does not exist. This is not like an agnostic saying, I just don’t know. Instead, it’s saying… I’m very, very sure a higher power does not exist.
I said from the get-go, why not just say you don’t know? Because, as I’ve said before, the truth is you don’t know with certainty. Moreover, there’s a lot of people (if not 90% close to 90% of the world) who do believe, who aren’t crazy. And there would be absolutely nothing lost to you for saying “I don’t know” rather than “I do know” that there isn’t a higher power. I’m saying you’re betting, “potentially” betting an afterlife, and you get ZERO reward for this bet.
If I could only tell you how many times I’ve seen theists start hurling the, “Atheists believe they are smarter than everyone else” sort of argument around...
If you really get asked that that often you really have issues.
No, I don’t think that at all. I’ve seen bitter, nasty and stupid Atheists, just as I’ve seen the same sort of Christians. People are people. There’s smart ones, and dumb ones in most any camp. I was asked if it is absurd to believe in a higher power and I’m not going to say that it is always absurd to believe in a higher power. Irrational, quite often. Can it make a person feel better? Sometimes. Can it cause harm in the world? Sometimes. Where I think things do get absurd is when people start proclaiming absolute certainty about things which they have no idea about other than having unquestioningly read snippets of a 2000 year old often-translated text and believing it to be the divine words of god... and then doing things like the Crusades. I don’t try to hold religion to any higher standard of proof than I do things which science deals with. Science deals with tricky areas like quantum mechanics. I don’t even remotely proclaim to have certainty about the facts regarding quantum mechanics, but at least they are open to study, refinement, questioning and challenge in ways which most religions appear to forbid. I would like to see religious people approach their faith with the same sort of scepticism I have toward quantum mechanics. If it can prove itself over time, I’ll believe it. If it doesn’t, I won’t. Until then, I’m waiting and seeing and trying to learn more while withholding my own verdict. I do question how many thousands of years Christians can hold onto the belief that the end of the world is just around the corner before they will ever decide maybe it isn’t and they should move on. My question is... why don’t you too? My faith in things like evolution are sturdy, but still remain quite open to challenge. If fossils started turning up completely out of place in the geologic timeline from where they should be, I’d grow instantly sceptical. However, that doesn’t seem to be happening and we seem to be getting more and more evidence supporting the notion that to think the world is only some 6000 years old really is laughable.
I’ve also seen stupid atheists and stupid Buddists/Muslims/Christians. I sincerely don’t understand the vitriolic hatred for Christians from atheists. Not saying you do, but our discussion has little, if anything to do with Christianity, yet they are used as your example every single time. It’s odd to me.
All I know is that when I see a sunset, or when I go surfing, I can’t imagine a human being completely 100% understanding the formation of these sorts of things. To me, atheists hold a bit too much credence in man. We are human beings. We are so fallible it’s silly. Speaking as an economist (who practices science in one way or another), I know very well that science is also easily altered to fit agendas. Although I am not discounting science, it’s very, very fallible. At the end of the day, in my opinion, a person needs to look at the facts around them (for me it’s reading spiritual texts, discussing the subject, just general scenery and my guy feeling) and then make a call on their opinion on the subject. Sure, this can change in one way or another over time. In doing so, I choose to believe there’s a spiritual higher power, a creator of sorts, that is capable of things much greater than any human. I also think that those who chose believe that this creator of sorts does not exist, are taking an unnecessary risk with absolutely no possibility of reward.
The final question asked of me by Inlet13 was whether I admit that there are a lot of people smarter than me who still believe in God or a higher power and if so, why. Well, I’d start answering that by stating that I feel intelligence is a fairly subjective matter. However, I don’t have a problem thinking that there “smarter” people out there in the world who believe in a god. But that doesn’t prove a damn thing either. That’s essentially an appeal to authority, similar to saying hey, “The King believes it so it must be true.” If you want to play that game though, I’d be happy to point out things like the fact that Einstein was a humanist. And here’s a list of Nobel prize winners who were nonbelievers.
It doesn’t matter how you grade the subject of intelligence, so it wouldn’t matter if it was subjective because it would be coming from you. I never asked for those smarter using this or that as a measure. I wanted you opinion on whether there were those smarter than you (by your own definition) that believed in God. You basically dodged the question and went into people who are clearly intelligent and were classified as non-believers (which by the way can include agnostics). Just a note -Einstein was not an atheist. In fact, he often complained about being put in their camp. He was a believer in an impersonal creator God.
But such an appeal really doesn’t have too much weight, right? Both of us can point to smart people who believed in stupid things too. Let’s just think about the belief in a flat earth that was so common at one point by really intelligent people. Your argument that there are smarter people than me who believe in god holds no weight. There are smarter people than you who don’t believe in god too. Does it add anything to the discussion? I don’t really think so. Now time to rest my typing fingers before they break.
It wasn’t an argument. It was a point. As I suspected, you wouldn’t even answer the question. Instead, you dodged it and tried to turn it back around. To me your lack of response there along with your responses throughout, hint to your inherent belief that you are highly intelligent or superior-minded. As if you “know better than to believe in God.” No offense, but I don’t think you are at all. Once again, no offense… but, I think you’re probably as intelligent (in the grand scheme of things) as the mail guy I’ll walk by in a few minutes. The difference is.... odds are he’s betting on a spiritual higher power… and you, you’re betting on you… being the higher power. I say, good luck with that.
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,728
Intersting points all around everybody-- which we all are able to read thanks to the higher power of Word
The closest I get to being religious is a spiritual inclination to what I call The Great Mystery, which is a bit of a bullshit term for, "I can't explain it." As catefrances said, there is no proof of God. Fairies, pink dinosaurs, green people from Mars and that sort of thing could be proven if found because they would (or might) be physical entities. God is and idea. You can't prove a thought or an idea. Atheists are brave souls who say, "I know I'm going to be crucified for saying this, but there is no proof for the existence of your god- whom/whatever that may be, and I choose to not go there." And as Soulfire42 said, atheists are just like everybody, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, smart and dumb. One of my favorite atheists (and I say this to prove nothing but only because I love the man) is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The problem I have with most religions is that they are based on fear- "Believe in such and such or else!.
I don't have a problem with people believing is a god. The thing that bothers me is people telling me I have to believe in that god... or else! I'm not attracted to what people are afraid of.
One of my favorite Pearl Jam songs in "Marker in the Sand". I love this song because it expresses the intangible nature spirituality-- of the songs writer's struggle to define the undefinable- "God is nowhere,.. to be found conveniently".
"Don't give in to the lies. Don't give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth. And to hope."
-Jim Acosta
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,728
This just emailed to me from an agnostic friend with the subject title "Now we know who speaks for God :? "
Intersting points all around everybody-- which we all are able to read thanks to the higher power of Word
The closest I get to being religious is a spiritual inclination to what I call The Great Mystery, which is a bit of a bullshit term for, "I can't explain it." As catefrances said, there is no proof of God. Fairies, pink dinosaurs, green people from Mars and that sort of thing could be proven if found because they would (or might) be physical entities. God is and idea. You can't prove a thought or an idea. Atheists are brave souls who say, "I know I'm going to be crucified for saying this, but there is no proof for the existence of your god- whom/whatever that may be, and I choose to not go there." And as Soulfire42 said, atheists are just like everybody, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, smart and dumb. One of my favorite atheists (and I say this to prove nothing but only because I love the man) is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The problem I have with most religions is that they are based on fear- "Believe in such and such or else!.
I don't have a problem with people believing is a god. The thing that bothers me is people telling me I have to believe in that god... or else! I'm not attracted to what people are afraid of.
One of my favorite Pearl Jam songs in "Marker in the Sand". I love this song because it expresses the intangible nature spirituality-- of the songs writer's struggle to define the undefinable- "God is nowhere,.. to be found conveniently".
Nice post..
I dislike getting caught up in religious debate because most of us don't know anything.
I had a friend tell me that I should just try to believe because "whats the worst that can happen if you believe?"
you're just covering your own ass if you think like that, I told him.
Nice post..
I dislike getting caught up in religious debate because most of us don't know anything.
I had a friend tell me that I should just try to believe because "whats the worst that can happen if you believe?"
you're just covering your own ass if you think like that, I told him.
Good post, yours also!
"Don't give in to the lies. Don't give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth. And to hope."
Unfortunately, I don’t think Inlet13 and I are going to really get anything from each other. It is what it is. I do suggest you look into Buddhism more before lumping them in with other god-believers. I have been accused of only talking about Christianity when I’ve written about how many different gods now in just two posts? Go look. And during which you’ve also accused me of having a Thor fetish? I also tried to be certain to write that I was using “Christian” as a stand in representative for monotheism. However, I did so intentionally to also bring about a field of shared understanding as foundation from which to further discuss. We’re not just writing to each other, we’re writing in a Pearl Jam board and I feel it is important to have some roots in the dialogue that everyone has an easy time understanding. If Inlet13 isn’t Christian, it doesn’t really matter to anything I was trying to convey. My argument was equally relevant if you substitute any monotheistic faith in its place. And it doesn’t take much to substitute in plenty of polytheistic faiths in its place because they usually just have a few more gods they allow before they disallow all the other ones.
It appears to me that Inlet13 wants to really focus on spiritualism rather than any particular faith, and I think that’s a fair thing to do. However, we can’t wash away the fact that numerous faiths are explicit in stating that it isn’t acceptable to not follow their particular dogma, rituals and deities in favour of a more generic spiritualism. As I tried to previously explain, generic belief in a god doesn’t work to satisfy Pascal’s Wager unless you want to say that all the religions which say only their path, their dogma, their rituals and their particular description of god are the only right ones. And to do that, you have to establish yourself as more of a superior being than you accuse me of wanting to be. The reason I say that is because to embrace the generic spiritualism you have to have authority to tell the religions they are selectively wrong at your discretion. You’re not holding to a standard of inquiry or anything, you’re starting with a conclusion that there are many paths to the same destination, but even when those paths are explicit that they are the only path, it is you who has the authority to dismiss that part in favor of your conclusion. I think it is a pretty intellectually dishonest approach, but don’t think I’ve conveyed to you why very effectively in this paragraph. However, seeing how you argue and the fact that you still want to say I have a Thor fetish and such, I just can’t be bothered to take you as seriously as I might otherwise and don’t want to waste too much time.
Inlet13 doesn’t think any religion is absurd, so we start very far apart. To you then things like ritual sacrifice of humans, adult males making their children drink their semen to grow strong (yes, it’s a cultural and religious belief elsewhere), the cult of Jonestown, Scientology, Jediism (yep, a registered religion), etc. are not absurd. If that is the case, I have to wonder what it takes to qualify as absurd to you then. You also went on to say that organized religions are attempts to explain what will never be explained in the present time. So what do you really have left to discuss besides vagueness and a personal opinion and why should I find it compelling? We seem to be in agreement that organized religions are flawed in one way or another. Please understand that I am not the one who wrote that you can’t pick and choose pits and pieces of various organized faiths and ignore other parts. People do it all the time. However, supposed gods and prophets have made it known in multiple religions that you aren’t supposed to do that. That isn’t me trying to change the rules, that’s me just repeating what’s been said and/or written by supposed prophets and gods.
You accused me of wanting every person who believes in god to be an evangelical Christian and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You wrote that you don’t think an Atheist is automatically doomed to hell, and I would remind you that you aren’t following the Bible very well then and are showing a level of dismissiveness toward the supposed holy words of this particular text which is rather equal to that of an Atheist in regards to this subject. The Bible is explicit in what awaits the Atheist. You may not want to be, but the Bible is. It was also written that Christians are not dismissing 9,999 other religions and gods. You may want to claim Judaism and Islam as compatible with Christianity due to their shared roots, but that gets you to around 9,997 which are not disbelieved, even if granted. I would think that Universal Unitarianism would appeal to you, but can also assure you that it doesn’t do a very good job at reconciling the stark contradictions inherent between different faiths. It does, however, do a good job at trying to ignore them. You seem to easily ignore passages in various holy books that you don’t like, such as ones that call for killing nonbelievers and those of other faiths in favor of believing that there is enough overlap to ignore such passages.
I’d actually argue that there are huge amounts of crossover between Atheism and plenty of other religions. For instance, the ethics of Atheists tend to be rather positive and agreeable to most people of faith. It’s true that they don’t believe in god, but the rest of their life may be surprisingly similar if you actually look at it. They are perfectly capable of standing in awe of the universe, enjoying a sunset, etc. A religion doesn’t grant a person a monopoly on such things and experiences. I will grant that it can shape the perception of it though.
You wanted to illustrate that Muslims and Christians believe in the same god. In a sense they do, in another sense they do not. Because both holy texts say completely incompatible things if either are taken literally. And since they are supposedly divinely inspired (in one case more directly than the other), it does seem reasonable to assume they should be taken literally. Let’s also not forget that members of both faiths are quite prone to taking them literally too. An impartial reader of both would have to come away with the sense that even though the two faiths may share the same god, there is a high degree of incompatibility written into both works which can be viewed objectively. If belief in the same god isn’t even enough for religions to be compatible and not starting wars with each other, then where does that leave us in regard to the 9,997 other gods? Belief in a higher power may not be incorrect, but by your standards it has to be so vaguely defined to be compatible with all these competing gods to be essentially meaningless. You have to essentially say that there is something, greater than man, out there somewhere. The end. Does that really add value or meaning to your life and should I believe in this vague deity (deities?) because I think I might get a reward when I die? I’m afraid that I find this sort of reasoning thoroughly uncompelling.
You wrote that Catholics believe that other religions can go to heaven and that that debunks everything I wrote. Wow, you really think so? You think I’d have to struggle in the least to locate faiths which think Catholics are going somewhere nasty upon their death? You seem to want to refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that numerous religions think other camps than their own are less worthy, less rewarded, less chosen, less godlike, less blessed, etc. Showing a faith or even multiple faiths that are more welcoming regarding the afterlife does nothing to remedy all the others that are not. No matter what way you want to slice it, somebody, somewhere has thought you with any sort of your generic version of spiritualism is going to some version of a hell. Are you concerned about it? I doubt it. And guess what, Atheists aren’t sitting around in fear concerned about people thinking they are going to hell either. Annoyed, perhaps.
I freely admit that there are things which I do not understand or that are too complex for me personally. However, I think faith is one of the poorest methods of gaining knowledge possible. History has demonstrated its ability to thwart progress and it lacks an effective method of error correction. Science, while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, at least has error correction built into its process and people who disprove incorrect assumptions are typically praised. Challenging the norms is usually an encouraged scenario within science. The same cannot generally be said of faith. In fact, we are typically told to treat the subject of religion as taboo to challenge. Science is pretty good about acknowledging what they do not know, and holding things as open to challenge. Things stand in science for as long as the evidence supports them. Things stand in faith long beyond the point where evidence supports them.
To be honest, I do view religions as various failed sciences. They once were our best option for describing things we saw around us, or did not understand. However, better options have come along that have much better track records for acquiring knowledge, building upon knowledge, and usefully implementing that knowledge.
I get the impression that you think you have some profound question I tried to dodge and I read your latest restatement of it and don’t really know what you’re getting at. You asked me if I believe there are smarter people than me who believe in god. I answered that I did, and that I also knew there were smarter people than me who didn’t believe in god. I also wrote that I didn’t think it added much to the discussion. You then wrote that those smarter “scientists” are reaching a different conclusion than I am. However, I provided you a link to plenty of smarter nobel prize winning people who were, in fact, also reaching the same conclusion as me. What’s your point? I answered your question. Smarter people than me once believed the earth was flat. They were wrong about something, but nonetheless were intelligent people. I could be wrong, and you could be right. But saying there are smarter people than me who believe one way or another is... well... pointless.
I’m trying to be fair and answer every last question you ask, but I don’t think I’ll be doing so in the future because this is eating way too much of my time for the rewards I feel I may or may not be getting. Which religion believes in shape shifting? Plenty. A few include greek mythology (Zeus, Proteus, etc.), roman mythology, shamanism, Loki, Nagual, skinwalkers, Manannan Mac Lir, Cagn, etc.
You want this to be a belief in a higher power (aka generic god) versus Atheism discussion instead of looking at any particular faiths, that’s fine. The burden of proof remains on your shoulders instead of mine in such a case. It’s the same as if I were trying to convince you that I had an invisible demon hovering over my watch which spun the ticking hands. Disbelief is the natural starting point. Show me your compelling evidence to believe in your version of a higher power. I do not expect you to believe in the invisible demon making my watch work without evidence. You should not expect me to believe in your invisible god making the universe work without compelling evidence.
You are clearly not defining superstition correctly if you are saying nonbelief is superstition. Admit it. And right after saying that, you accuse me of running in circles? Think about it. Absence of belief is not synonymous with 100% proof positive of no god. And to make such a demand is... ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as me saying that you can’t be 100% certain that there isn’t an invisible demon making the hands tick on my watch. You can’t be 100% positive right, but you can certainly dismiss my claim without a second thought and the burden of proof about this demon is on my shoulders, not yours, right? You want me to believe in your invisible vaguely defined god, give me compelling evidence. I ask nothing more or less of you than you would ask of me about my invisible demon. I do not hold your invisible god in any more or less contempt than you hold my invisible watch demon. Both should not be believed in until there is adequate evidence. Can you really not see that scepticism in the starting point in such matters? Starting with belief is operating in the wrong direction. You would be a bit nuts to start with belief in my demon and then set about trying to disprove it. I’d argue it is equally nuts to start with a belief in god and then expect others to disprove it with 100% certainty.
I’ll freely accept a critique of me overdramatizing in the effort to make a point. Chocolate Overlords, demons on watches, etc. Guilty as charged. It’s because it is no more or less nonsensical than zombie prophets rising from the dead, virgin births, talking snakes, shapeshifting gods, 6000 year old earths, god sponsored genocides in holy texts, etc, etc, etc. It is an attempt to get people to see the absurdity by showing them similar absurdity. That’s the entire point of things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Just as you’re very, very certain there is no demon making my watch work, I’m equally certain Allah isn’t lying in wait for my soul, or Zeus, or Jesus, or Loki, or Cagn, or....
Is that 100% certainty with 100% proof? Nope, but neither is your disbelief in my watch demon, right? You’re not going to lie awake wondering about my watch demon, and I’m not going to lie awake concerned about your vague notion of a higher power. I want to be very clear that I don’t think people who are mistaken are automatically crazy. Sanity isn’t broken the moment one starts to believe in invisible deities, but I would argue that a portion of the importance of evidence for the individual tends to get forsaken in the process of making such a leap of faith. You’d argue the same the moment I attracted my first watch-controlling demon follower. You wrote that we are human beings and so fallible it is silly. So why do you think we might not have created religions which are so fallible it is silly... or better yet, so silly they are fallible. Scepticism is the right starting point with such a belief. If good, solid, scientific evidence comes along proving the existence of a real god, Atheists are quite willing to reconsider and look at the evidence objectively. They argue that the burden of proof is upon believers not the burden of disproof is upon the nonbeliever for reasons like I have shown with the watch demon. Now if I said that my watch demon eats and punishes people for eternity after they die if they don't believe in him, do you feel you are taking an unnecessary risk in not believing in my watch demon? Of course you don't. I don't consider myself taking an unnecessary risk in not believing in god either.
I’m tired of writing so I’m going to quit, but just wanted to mention that I have no delusions of being a higher power. So once again, that’s another “bet” of yours I feel no need to wager on.
"The difference is.... odds are he’s betting on a spiritual higher power… and you, you’re betting on you… being the higher power. I say, good luck with that."
We all need all the luck we can get. The atheist and the believer have pretty much the same odds. One in infinity vs. zero in infinity.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win ."
"The difference is.... odds are he’s betting on a spiritual higher power… and you, you’re betting on you… being the higher power. I say, good luck with that."
We all need all the luck we can get. The atheist and the believer have pretty much the same odds. One in infinity vs. zero in infinity.
And that's only if there happens to be a deity and that that deity isn't okay with us being as questioning and wanting of evidence as we seem to sometimes be. If a deity is so insecure that they require my belief as the ticket to paradise, that deity wouldn't have my support even if they were real anyway.
I don't know what I am...
I believe in some sort of greater power that is beyond the comprehension of highly evolved apes on a small blue planet circling a mediocre star in a mediocre galaxy.
But, I do NOT believe in the God in the text written by these apes, some 5,000 or so years ago. Especially from a religion founded in the seat of the Roman Empire some 2,000 years ago.
I believe that humankind has obtained a greater knowledge of his natural environment and that the Man of todays knows more about our world than the Man of 5,000 years in out past.
I don't know if that makes me an Atheist or Agnostic... all I really know is that I probably can't know if there is a God or not. But, I believe... if there really is a God... He is not the one described by these highly evolved apes.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!
You want this to be a belief in a higher power (aka generic god) versus Atheism discussion instead of looking at any particular faiths, that’s fine. The burden of proof remains on your shoulders instead of mine in such a case. It’s the same as if I were trying to convince you that I had an invisible demon hovering over my watch which spun the ticking hands. Disbelief is the natural starting point. Show me your compelling evidence to believe in your version of a higher power. I do not expect you to believe in the invisible demon making my watch work without evidence. You should not expect me to believe in your invisible god making the universe work without compelling evidence.
This is where you Atheists lose me.
Why is the burden of proof on anybody else's shoulders? Honestly, who determined that disbelief is a natural starting point. Moreover, since when was atheism a position of disbelief? As I understand it, atheists believe that there is no god just as theists believe that there is one. Aren't you simply taking the opposite side in a debate and applying the same lack of evidence to draw a comparably irrelevant conclusion. I find the atheist POV every bit as self-righteous and condescending as the theist's apparent faith in an invisible maker.
As I see things, atheists are every bit as dogmatic as theists. They rely on an absence of proof to support their position, just as theists cling to the notion that their position can't be disproven. The very dialogue is absurd. From my point of view, an atheist's conclusions are every bit as unreasonable as your average theist.
Why is the burden of proof on anybody else's shoulders? Honestly, who determined that disbelief is a natural starting point. Moreover, since when was atheism a position of disbelief? As I understand it, atheists believe that there is no god just as theists believe that there is one. Aren't you simply taking the opposite side in a debate and applying the same lack of evidence to draw a comparably irrelevant conclusion. I find the atheist POV every bit as self-righteous and condescending as the theist's apparent faith in an invisible maker.
As I see things, atheists are every bit as dogmatic as theists. They rely on an absence of proof to support their position, just as theists cling to the notion that their position can't be disproven. The very dialogue is absurd. From my point of view, an atheist's conclusions are every bit as unreasonable as your average theist.
I am assuming you read my discussion about the invisible demon and the watch. In it, I did my best to explain exactly why the burden of proof when discussing invisible, intangible and largely (if not entirely) unknowable supernatural things is upon the person believing in them instead of the person with the blank slate or disbelieving stance. I tried pretty hard to show why it is not reasonable to start with belief and then disprove it and to also show that that isn't how we most effectively operate in our daily lives usually. I also tried to detail why Atheists aren't in need of 100% absolute certainty in their disbelief. We generally expect people to have good reason(s) for believing whatever they do, whether it is about gender equality, racial equality, stances on murder, etc. We also expect to be able to ask people why they believe something and then want them to provide supporting evidence, right? If a person was accused of a crime and said that an invisible, angel told them to do it we don't tend to start by believing them and then ask people to disprove that there wasn't an angel that made them do it. We start by being skeptical and placing the burden of proof upon the person who wants us to believe the supernatural. That's all I'm trying to convey. The burden, indeed, is theirs. I dare say that we widely agree as a society that the strongest beliefs are those which are supported by the strongest and most readily provable evidence. Have I clarified or does this part continue to lose you in you in the argument?
...
Atheists and Theists simply take opposite positions without supporting evidence.
how can i provide evidence for something that doesnt exist?
This is a logical fallacy. Simply put; you're putting the cart before the horse. An absence of evidence is proof of nothing. There is no valid position to take here because the very question of god is absolutely pointless.
Speaking as an Agnostic, arguing whether there is a god or not is absurd. It's as ridiculous as arguing about unicorns, fairies and purple dinosaurs in space. The fact that both Atheists and Theists use such a trivial exercise to argue moral and intellectual superiority is a joke to me. I find the very conversation entertaining because it is utterly pointless and absolutely ridiculous.
i have to admit, i too find this very conversation entertaining. i am fully aware the existence of God relies on faith, something i admit to not having. but think about this..
an absence of evidence is proof of nothing.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Comments
Ginormous assumptions. You have no idea what mechanisms cause the flashbacks or the white light. Even if all the people in the world have the same experience it certainly does not mean that god is involved. Everybody breathes, too. Could just be an ordinary, mechanical function of the brain, or any other possibility for that matter.
"With our thoughts we make the world"
As an Agnostic I find the very question of god to be absurd. It is an improvable concept and as such, it is not worth consideration beyond academic banter IMO. In my experience, both Atheists and Theists claim victory over their opponents by pointing out that the other side can provide no certainty in support of their position. Of course both Theists and Atheists are quick dump on Agnostics for failing to play what many Agnostics simply consider to be a rather pointless game. As I see it, Agnosticism is not about indecision. It is simply understanding that a human being will never have sufficient understanding to answer an absurd proposition.
Atheists and Theists simply take opposite positions without supporting evidence.
As has been said by others before, we're all atheist about the overwhelming majority of gods that have ever been dreamt up. Atheists really just add one more god to the list that aren't believed in than believers and it is always that last one that pisses people off. Christians don't believe in Zeus, Wotan, Thor, etc. and it's quite easy for them to do so. They can see the absurdity in believing in those gods and the overwhelming lack of evidence to support their existence. But they have the damnedest of a time seeing the absurdities of their own beliefs and how it too is a product of a particular time, a particular place, full of contradictions, full of superstition and supernatural.
Inlet13, isn't it a bad tactic to not believe in Allah in just the same manner as you view it a good tactic to believe in Jesus? Or isn't it an equally bad tactic to not believe in Thor just in case he is actually real and would be very upset that you'd not believe in him? Do you secretly fear that you might be wrong about Thor's existence and that he may reject you upon your death? I'd be inclined to say that most atheists feel the same way about your God's wrath and hellfire as you do about Thor's wrath. When atheists speak of certainty, they do it in the same context as lack of belief in Thor. They don't expect to be held to the most absurd extremes of proof. As a wise person once said... the invisible and the nonexistant look very much alike. And they're both pretty damn hard to disprove with 100% certainty. Disproving an angel over a person's shoulder is pretty hard to do with 100% certainty, but an invisible elephant over their shoulder is just as hard to disprove as well. Don't expect absolute levels of certainty when people declare atheism. They are speaking of having an extremely high degree of confidence, not an absurd level of certainty.
while i agree with an awful lot you say i disagree with your starting assumption. i think most athiest's say there probably is no god. and then live their life as if there is no god. i find your type of agnostism very close to my type of atheism. as mine is the rejection in the belief of a personal god and religion, beyond that it doesn't matter
I don't claim it's the best reason for faith. Instead, I say if that's last resort and you have the ability to reason without preexisting prejudice, than you most likely would choose to believe or at least choose to be agnostic. Because there are risks to not believing, most likely greater risks for all out rejection.... and potential benefits to believing. The same can't be true for declaring an atheist belief because in so doing you're declaring an absolute certainty in no God.
Your point on "atheists adding one more God" to the list doesn't make any sense. They, as you should be aware, don't believe in God.
You are quite condescending to the 90+% of human kind that believe in some sort of higher power. The last two sentences are particularly douche-like.
First, I think you should really do yourself a favor and read a bit on the subject of religion so you don't sound so ignorant. The Muslim God and the Christian God (and the Jewish God) are not different. In fact, they are the same exact God that spoke to Abraham, which spawned all three religions. Only someone who is clueless to what well over half the world's population believes, would be that ignorant.
Second, you clearly have a Thor fetish. I'm not going to go too much into Thor, because I clearly don't know as much about this Nordic god as you do. However, I will say that those who believed in a higher power (via gods like Thor - if there are any today I have no clue) or via (monotheistic God, like Christians, Muslims and Jews) or others who believe in some sort of other higher power, are putting faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so.
Third, it seems to me that atheists, like you demonstrated yourself, believe they are smarter than everyone else. Is it really absurd to have a belief in a higher power? Do you admit there are a lot of people who are a lot smarter than you are, yet still believe in God or a higher power of some sort? If so, why?
<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/28998869"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/28998869" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href=" - In the Fire (demo)</a> by <a href="
For lack of a better term I'll call the first one “Phillipsists”. Writer J. B. Phillips wrote a book called Your God is to Small. Now true, Phillips was a theologian and therefore basically a “theist”, but the premise of his book is that as soon as you try to define “God” in human terms you’ve made God a human thing. To its furthest extreme, one would say that the divine cannot be described in human terms and is therefore something mysterious outside of religion or anti-religion-- call it The Great Mystery.
The other I would call Haydenist. (Say, that has a nice ironic ring to it.) Writer, activist Tom Hayden wrote a book called The Lost Gospel of the Earth. I n this book, Hayden seeks to renew our spiritual bond with the earth and shows how this is done in all religions, especially in the spiritual mythology of American Indians in particular and indigenous peoples in general. This again takes us beyond the realm of religion and anti-religion but at the same time encompasses them. The term “ecotheology” applies here quite well.
And then there is punk writer Zen priest Brad Warner who in his book Hardcore Zen hints at the answer to all of this thusly:
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
The plumb tree in the garden!
"I think we have to be flexible. Any belief system that is inflexible, closed off to other belief systems, is profoundly unhealthy. I also think that if you look at life as a long line of evolutionary changes that started billions of years ago, from little things crawling in the mud, and then you realize where we’ve got to now, that is a remarkable set of circumstances. There is more magic in that, for me, than someone creating the planet in six days and taking a day off. When you realize how long humanity has taken to get to this point, it makes you respect another person’s life in a deeper and broader sense. I wouldn’t think of killing anybody because their lineage goes back to the primordial seas, not because there’s some eye in the sky, looking out for how many commandments you’re going to break."
Another habit says its long overdue
Another habit like an unwanted friend
I'm so happy with my righteous self
Most people appear to believe from an emotional, conditional or psychological standpoint rather than from an intellectual one, I'd say.
"With our thoughts we make the world"
I know that frustration well! Bummer, Soulfire42.
When I know I'm going to be writing more than a few sentences (like here) I write my thoughts on a Word Document (which also helps me edit) then simple copy and paste to my PJ forum post. Saves a ton of frustration!
Let’s say for the sake of argument there are 10,000 gods that have been created throughout the course of human history. There could be more, there could be less, but the exact number isn’t something to fixate on for the purposes of my argument. Monotheistic believers disbelieve the existence of 9,999 of those gods. I suspect that Inlet13 and other monotheists/Christians have no problem seeing how absurd things are in the religions of those 9,999 other gods. There’s crazy stuff like virgin births, talking animals, invincibility, immortality, zombies, innate contradictions, textual logical errors, etc. They are easy to identify and acknowledge by both Atheists and Christians (which is the stand-in for monotheists as I continue). Using identical power of reason, critical thinking and demand for evidence, we can easily point to the absurdities in some 9,999 other religions as the Atheist and Christian work together to identify them. So in a sense, the Christian is 99.9% Atheist toward all the religions the world has ever known. An Atheist adds but one more number to the total number of gods s/he disbelieves in and suddenly they transform into a heretic. The Atheist instantly becomes lost, doomed to eternity in hell, becomes possessed by a superiority complex, etc, etc. But all they have done is add one more god to the list of gods they do not believe in than the Christian has already done.
The Christian is atheistic (a nonbeliever) in those 9,999 other gods with no fear of reprisal if they are wrong, in the exact same way an Atheist fears no reprisal about being wrong about any of them. The Christian doesn’t show concern about believing in the Quran or the Oracle of Delphi or Native American mythologies or Sumerian myths or even exhibit a fear of Shiva. The Christian simply dismisses them as having no real tangible evidence or support that they have seen. Both the Christian and Atheist would rightly state that the burden of proof rests upon the believers of any of those 9,999 gods to show persuasive evidence that their particular invisible god actually does exist and that the other equally invisible gods do not exist. Both the Christian and Atheist do not burden themselves worrying about retribution for not believing in any particular god from that list of some 9,999 possible gods to believe in. The Atheist merely adds the Christian’s god to the list to bring the tally to an even 10,000 gods which are disbelieved and suddenly the Christian is usually up in arms. No longer are the Atheist and the Christian similar in disbelief about 9,999 gods, they are suddenly locked into antagonism over that remaining 1 that makes the total 10,000. That is what I was trying to get at in telling you that Atheists and Christians are the same in their atheism toward all gods except for the one extra one that the Atheist adds to the list that the Christian refuses to add. Why is it that the Christian is fine sharing a disbelief in 9,999 gods, but sees the Atheist as a much different person the moment they add the Christian deity to their list of disbelief?
Now circling back to Pascal’s Wager... Why is the typical Christian not concerned about believing in the Quran or the Oracle of Delphi or any other of those 9,999 optional gods or their holy texts? Surely it could be argued that it is safer to believe in the Quran than suffer Allah’s wrath. And surely it could be argued that it is better to heed the Oracle of Delphi rather than be visited by a lightning bolt from the gods or something worse. The gain of disbelief isn’t very tangible, but the gain for belief in the Quran or the Oracle are huge. It should be easy to see why this is not real belief and not a convincing argument for belief in any particular god. Assuming there are 10,000 gods, which one is the horse you want to wager on? But then it seems the counter to this sort of reasoning is usually that it doesn’t matter so long as you just believe in A god. You know, the vanilla god, the generic one. The one people say is just “God.” Well, there are countless holy texts, dogma, words from gods, etc. that say that only one particular god or prophet counts and that any other god, like a generic god, doesn’t count. Belief in the generic god still isn’t enough to be safe from all the promises of pain, destruction, turmoil, etc. Pascal’s Wager simply doesn’t work, especially when you bring in the possibility of more than one religion.
I feel that people like Inlet13 fixate on absolute certainty of there being no god when they think about Atheism. The typical Atheist is no more certain about the nonexistence of Wotan than they are about the nonexistence of the God of Abraham. However, that’s still pretty darn certain due to the lack of credible, repeatable, scientific evidence. I have no good reason, including a Pascal Wager, to believe in Wotan (using Wotan because you didn’t like Thor... the point is that the particular god doesn’t matter). If somebody wanted me to believe in Wotan, they would entirely shoulder the burden of proof and I’d be a bit daft to start with a belief in Wotan from scratch. The same is equally true of religions like Christianity. Both require faith, instead of good science to support belief. If I did choose to start from scratch with a belief in Wotan, I would almost certainly be inclined to project my beliefs and interpretation of the world in ways which continued to be favorable toward my belief in Wotan. I argue that Christians do the same when they bother at all with a pursuit of proof, validity or evidence. Skepticism is typically not promoted in religion like it is in science.
Inlet13 seemed to have two particular lines of mine strike as “douche-like” (which amused me). I argued that Christians can easily see the absurd things in other religions. Things like 72 virgins (just an example, I know the ways in which it is debatable), blue gods, virgin births, raising the long dead, rainbow weapons, shapeshifting, end of the world predictions that have passed, and all sorts of other things are simply... absurd. The typical Christian has no problem identifying these “impossible” things in other religions, but they can’t seem to use the same critical eye when evaluating their own faith. If that appears douche-like to you, so be it. I am not trying to say that only Christians are that way, because I don’t think that at all. But rather, religious adherents tend to have no difficulty at all identifying the absurd in other religions, but will defend the absurd in their particular faith to the bitter end.
The other comment of mine which struck Inlet13 as “douche-like” was mostly about almost any religion being tied to a particular time and place and full of superstition and belief in the supernatural. I think this comment is mostly able to annoy due to the inclusion of words like superstition. Again, I’d argue that when foreigners are sticking daggers into their heads or whipping themselves that the superstition and belief in the supernatural are easily identified and often harmful. But when the mirror is turned back to the Christian, they don’t tend to see their own actions as superstitious (prayers for victory, achievement, healing, etc.) and don’t tend to question their belief in the supernatural when it comes to their god, but have no problem questioning things like aliens, ghosts, vampires, etc. Again, I don’t mean to pick on Christians, because I think this is true of many faiths.
Now to correct you on your statistic of 90+% of people believe in some sort of higher power. Secular/Nonreligious people number about 1.1 billion in the world. They are the 3rd largest religious “group” following only Christians and Muslims. Have a look at this page:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Next I had to laugh at you stating that I should read a bit about religion. Let me just give you a little background. I spent some 7 years studying philosophy and theology in two different countries. During that time I also intensively studied anthropology. I’ve studied the Bible as literature, researched its origins, studied evolution, know the tale of Muhammad quite well (not as well as most Muslims yet), etc, etc. I’m not trying to brag, just wanting you to know that you needn’t be worrying about my religious educational level. I’m quite aware of the God of Abraham and its(?) relevance to various faiths. However, it is foolhardy to even remotely presume that peace is possible between Christianity and Islam so long as their two holy books are interpreted as divine words from God. They are not compatible and will forever prove a source for fundamentalists to cause strife whenever they wish. That’s not even touching upon potential conflict with Judaism.
Inlet13 wrote that I have a Thor fetish, which gave me another good laugh. Not even remotely do I have such a fetish. I was just trying to lead you out of the usual waters of debate on here by using a random name and wanted a punching bag that wouldn’t cause offense. I completely agree with Inlet that people believing in gods are placing their faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so. However, that doesn’t make anything remotely more valid about their arguments. If a crazy person put his faith in the Chocolate Overlord god and believed he would be rewarded with a chocolate factory in the afterlife, it doesn’t prove a damn thing. The burden would remain on him to prove to me he wasn’t crazy, just as it is upon Christians to prove to me that they aren’t delusional too. It is only rational to start from scepticism and require evidence to be moved into a different opinion in such matters.
If I could only tell you how many times I’ve seen theists start hurling the, “Atheists believe they are smarter than everyone else” sort of argument around... No, I don’t think that at all. I’ve seen bitter, nasty and stupid Atheists, just as I’ve seen the same sort of Christians. People are people. There’s smart ones, and dumb ones in most any camp. I was asked if it is absurd to believe in a higher power and I’m not going to say that it is always absurd to believe in a higher power. Irrational, quite often. Can it make a person feel better? Sometimes. Can it cause harm in the world? Sometimes. Where I think things do get absurd is when people start proclaiming absolute certainty about things which they have no idea about other than having unquestioningly read snippets of a 2000 year old often-translated text and believing it to be the divine words of god... and then doing things like the Crusades. I don’t try to hold religion to any higher standard of proof than I do things which science deals with. Science deals with tricky areas like quantum mechanics. I don’t even remotely proclaim to have certainty about the facts regarding quantum mechanics, but at least they are open to study, refinement, questioning and challenge in ways which most religions appear to forbid. I would like to see religious people approach their faith with the same sort of scepticism I have toward quantum mechanics. If it can prove itself over time, I’ll believe it. If it doesn’t, I won’t. Until then, I’m waiting and seeing and trying to learn more while withholding my own verdict. I do question how many thousands of years Christians can hold onto the belief that the end of the world is just around the corner before they will ever decide maybe it isn’t and they should move on. My question is... why don’t you too? My faith in things like evolution are sturdy, but still remain quite open to challenge. If fossils started turning up completely out of place in the geologic timeline from where they should be, I’d grow instantly sceptical. However, that doesn’t seem to be happening and we seem to be getting more and more evidence supporting the notion that to think the world is only some 6000 years old really is laughable.
The final question asked of me by Inlet13 was whether I admit that there are a lot of people smarter than me who still believe in God or a higher power and if so, why. Well, I’d start answering that by stating that I feel intelligence is a fairly subjective matter. However, I don’t have a problem thinking that there “smarter” people out there in the world who believe in a god. But that doesn’t prove a damn thing either. That’s essentially an appeal to authority, similar to saying hey, “The King believes it so it must be true.” If you want to play that game though, I’d be happy to point out things like the fact that Einstein was a humanist. And here’s a list of Nobel prize winners who were nonbelievers.
http://philosopedia.org/index.php?title ... obel_Prize
But such an appeal really doesn’t have too much weight, right? Both of us can point to smart people who believed in stupid things too. Let’s just think about the belief in a flat earth that was so common at one point by really intelligent people. Your argument that there are smarter people than me who believe in god holds no weight. There are smarter people than you who don’t believe in god too. Does it add anything to the discussion? I don’t really think so. Now time to rest my typing fingers before they break.
I know better than to type long crap into forums, but obviously didn't act upon that knowledge. Haha I'm sure I'll repeat the mistake in the future, but that huge post of mine just posted above was written in Word instead. Thanks for helping me make the right choice this time around instead of having faith (maybe a little pun intended... maybe?).
love brad warners writing.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
how can i provide evidence for something that doesnt exist?
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
This is a logical fallacy. Simply put; you're putting the cart before the horse. An absence of evidence is proof of nothing. There is no valid position to take here because the very question of god is absolutely pointless.
Speaking as an Agnostic, arguing whether there is a god or not is absurd. It's as ridiculous as arguing about unicorns, fairies and purple dinosaurs in space. The fact that both Atheists and Theists use such a trivial exercise to argue moral and intellectual superiority is a joke to me. I find the very conversation entertaining because it is utterly pointless and absolutely ridiculous.
You are spending a lot of time trying to debunk “me”. Also, trying to label me as a “Christian”. You have no clue what religion I belong to, if I belong to an organized religion at all. To me, it is really apparent how ridiculously bias you are right from the get-go.
I don’t think any religion is absurd. In my opinion, organized religion seeks to explain what will never be properly explained in the present time. So, in my opinion, most if not all organized religions are flawed in one way or another. That does not mean these organized religions are inherently bad. Nor does it say that one can be part of an organized religion and believe pieces of it. Nor does it say that just a general belief in some sort of creator should be cast aside. In fact, it just means there should be more discussion.
You really need to stop labeling. You want so badly for every person who believes in God to be an evangelical Christian. For one, I’m not one. I don’t think an atheist is necessarily doomed to hell. My thinking is that they might be. You continue to say that a Christian, for instance, is denying all other religions. I disagree 100%. Just like I’d say a Muslim is denying all other religions. The truth is there’s a lot of cross-over between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. There is zero cross-over between Atheism and any type of religion or spiritual belief in a higher power. In fact, it’s the opposite of religion or spiritual belief in a higher power.
Once again, you’re wrong. Since you keep picking on Christians, and don’t mention any other religions, I’m going to change it up a bit. The Muslim is not a non-believer in Christianity, for instance. They believe Jesus existed and was capable of impressive feats. Also, they believe in the same God as Christians (in that it was the God of Abraham). Are their belief systems 100% in line with one another? No, not at all. But, do they believe in the same God? Yes.
I’ve said it before, at the end of the day, most likely every religion has something wrong with it. But, the belief in a higher power very well may not be the part that’s incorrect. In that sense, almost every single contemporary religion has one thing (and the most important aspect of religion) in common. And, once again, atheists completely 100% reject the potential existence of that one thing (and the most important aspect of religion) in common.
You are too narrow in your approach and have been from the beginning of this discussion. To me, you’re like an evangelical Christian… just on the other side. You seem to not understand that belief in God may be black and white, but the logistics inbetween can be very very grey.
To provide an example for you, Catholics believe other religions can go to heaven. That, for one, debunks every single thing you wrote. According to Catholics, you can be Muslim, Hindu or a Jew and go to heaven. That said, you can’t completely deny God’s existence (like an atheist).
I feel like people like you try with every fiber of your brain to understand something that’s way too complex for your tiny little brain. You, for some reason, believe that humans are capable to completely understand the existence of God (and use the word science to do so). As if God is hiding behind the bolder and you just needed to use a magnifying glass to dissect. Ha ha.
This is why I asked you the question in my last post…. Do you believe there are people smarter than you who do believe in God? If you’re honest, you’ll answer yes. And my response would be, those smarter “scientists” are reaching a different conclusion than you are.
I’m glad those lines amused you. By the way, out of curiosity, which religion believes in shape shifting? I think you’ve been reading too many Thor comics.
I’d say there’s many roads to home, my friend. So, in other words, although you continue to try to pain this as a Christian vs. Atheist discussion… it’s not. It’s a believer in a higher power vs. atheist discussion. And to me, there’s many ways to believe in a higher power : name the religion. And there’s one way not to: atheism.
Belief in a higher power is as much “superstition” as non-belief. The end result is not known.
For people’s actions: believers and atheists are both subject to bad behavior. Your running in circles here.
Ha ha ha… I’m sure it depends on the poll, like most things. But, according to the very site you just suggested, the number is roughly 86%, with the 16% “not”: composed of agnostics, theists, secular humanists and more.
I do think you should learn more about religion. You credentials don’t impress me at all. I’ve spent at least double the amount of time you spend studying religion. So, I don’t get your point. My point was that you were showing complete ignorance in your question which involved choosing between Islamic God and the Christian God.
I find it ironic that the subject immediately turns to your time studying and then the likelihood of peace between the two religions, when that does absolutely nothing to discount how you showed your ignorance or even the subject that we are discussing.
Still think you have a bit of a Thor fetish.
You tend to try to over dramatize in order to discount belief systems (ie Chocolate Overlords, shape-shifting and your buddy Thor). You agree that people believing in a higher power are placing faith in something greater than themselves and may be rewarded for doing so. But, then you turn to some odd example. What you aren’t understanding is there’s many paths to believing a higher power and who’s to say each can’t be rewarded. The reality is we all are born in different regions with different upbringings on religion. The commonality of religion is a power greater than one’s self, a creator of some sort. Sure, this could be one or multiple parties and specifics on a religion can go from there. But, in one way it is pretty simple in that they are all involving a higher power. You, as an atheist are rejecting that higher power. You’re outright saying you believe that a higher power (of some sort) does not exist. This is not like an agnostic saying, I just don’t know. Instead, it’s saying… I’m very, very sure a higher power does not exist.
I said from the get-go, why not just say you don’t know? Because, as I’ve said before, the truth is you don’t know with certainty. Moreover, there’s a lot of people (if not 90% close to 90% of the world) who do believe, who aren’t crazy. And there would be absolutely nothing lost to you for saying “I don’t know” rather than “I do know” that there isn’t a higher power. I’m saying you’re betting, “potentially” betting an afterlife, and you get ZERO reward for this bet.
If you really get asked that that often you really have issues.
I’ve also seen stupid atheists and stupid Buddists/Muslims/Christians. I sincerely don’t understand the vitriolic hatred for Christians from atheists. Not saying you do, but our discussion has little, if anything to do with Christianity, yet they are used as your example every single time. It’s odd to me.
All I know is that when I see a sunset, or when I go surfing, I can’t imagine a human being completely 100% understanding the formation of these sorts of things. To me, atheists hold a bit too much credence in man. We are human beings. We are so fallible it’s silly. Speaking as an economist (who practices science in one way or another), I know very well that science is also easily altered to fit agendas. Although I am not discounting science, it’s very, very fallible. At the end of the day, in my opinion, a person needs to look at the facts around them (for me it’s reading spiritual texts, discussing the subject, just general scenery and my guy feeling) and then make a call on their opinion on the subject. Sure, this can change in one way or another over time. In doing so, I choose to believe there’s a spiritual higher power, a creator of sorts, that is capable of things much greater than any human. I also think that those who chose believe that this creator of sorts does not exist, are taking an unnecessary risk with absolutely no possibility of reward.
It doesn’t matter how you grade the subject of intelligence, so it wouldn’t matter if it was subjective because it would be coming from you. I never asked for those smarter using this or that as a measure. I wanted you opinion on whether there were those smarter than you (by your own definition) that believed in God. You basically dodged the question and went into people who are clearly intelligent and were classified as non-believers (which by the way can include agnostics). Just a note -Einstein was not an atheist. In fact, he often complained about being put in their camp. He was a believer in an impersonal creator God.
It wasn’t an argument. It was a point. As I suspected, you wouldn’t even answer the question. Instead, you dodged it and tried to turn it back around. To me your lack of response there along with your responses throughout, hint to your inherent belief that you are highly intelligent or superior-minded. As if you “know better than to believe in God.” No offense, but I don’t think you are at all. Once again, no offense… but, I think you’re probably as intelligent (in the grand scheme of things) as the mail guy I’ll walk by in a few minutes. The difference is.... odds are he’s betting on a spiritual higher power… and you, you’re betting on you… being the higher power. I say, good luck with that.
<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/28998869"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/28998869" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href=" - In the Fire (demo)</a> by <a href="
The closest I get to being religious is a spiritual inclination to what I call The Great Mystery, which is a bit of a bullshit term for, "I can't explain it." As catefrances said, there is no proof of God. Fairies, pink dinosaurs, green people from Mars and that sort of thing could be proven if found because they would (or might) be physical entities. God is and idea. You can't prove a thought or an idea. Atheists are brave souls who say, "I know I'm going to be crucified for saying this, but there is no proof for the existence of your god- whom/whatever that may be, and I choose to not go there." And as Soulfire42 said, atheists are just like everybody, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, smart and dumb. One of my favorite atheists (and I say this to prove nothing but only because I love the man) is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The problem I have with most religions is that they are based on fear- "Believe in such and such or else!.
I don't have a problem with people believing is a god. The thing that bothers me is people telling me I have to believe in that god... or else! I'm not attracted to what people are afraid of.
One of my favorite Pearl Jam songs in "Marker in the Sand". I love this song because it expresses the intangible nature spirituality-- of the songs writer's struggle to define the undefinable- "God is nowhere,.. to be found conveniently".
http://news.yahoo.com/bachmann-irene-go ... 24573.html
Nice post..
I dislike getting caught up in religious debate because most of us don't know anything.
I had a friend tell me that I should just try to believe because "whats the worst that can happen if you believe?"
you're just covering your own ass if you think like that, I told him.
Good post, yours also!
It appears to me that Inlet13 wants to really focus on spiritualism rather than any particular faith, and I think that’s a fair thing to do. However, we can’t wash away the fact that numerous faiths are explicit in stating that it isn’t acceptable to not follow their particular dogma, rituals and deities in favour of a more generic spiritualism. As I tried to previously explain, generic belief in a god doesn’t work to satisfy Pascal’s Wager unless you want to say that all the religions which say only their path, their dogma, their rituals and their particular description of god are the only right ones. And to do that, you have to establish yourself as more of a superior being than you accuse me of wanting to be. The reason I say that is because to embrace the generic spiritualism you have to have authority to tell the religions they are selectively wrong at your discretion. You’re not holding to a standard of inquiry or anything, you’re starting with a conclusion that there are many paths to the same destination, but even when those paths are explicit that they are the only path, it is you who has the authority to dismiss that part in favor of your conclusion. I think it is a pretty intellectually dishonest approach, but don’t think I’ve conveyed to you why very effectively in this paragraph. However, seeing how you argue and the fact that you still want to say I have a Thor fetish and such, I just can’t be bothered to take you as seriously as I might otherwise and don’t want to waste too much time.
Inlet13 doesn’t think any religion is absurd, so we start very far apart. To you then things like ritual sacrifice of humans, adult males making their children drink their semen to grow strong (yes, it’s a cultural and religious belief elsewhere), the cult of Jonestown, Scientology, Jediism (yep, a registered religion), etc. are not absurd. If that is the case, I have to wonder what it takes to qualify as absurd to you then. You also went on to say that organized religions are attempts to explain what will never be explained in the present time. So what do you really have left to discuss besides vagueness and a personal opinion and why should I find it compelling? We seem to be in agreement that organized religions are flawed in one way or another. Please understand that I am not the one who wrote that you can’t pick and choose pits and pieces of various organized faiths and ignore other parts. People do it all the time. However, supposed gods and prophets have made it known in multiple religions that you aren’t supposed to do that. That isn’t me trying to change the rules, that’s me just repeating what’s been said and/or written by supposed prophets and gods.
You accused me of wanting every person who believes in god to be an evangelical Christian and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You wrote that you don’t think an Atheist is automatically doomed to hell, and I would remind you that you aren’t following the Bible very well then and are showing a level of dismissiveness toward the supposed holy words of this particular text which is rather equal to that of an Atheist in regards to this subject. The Bible is explicit in what awaits the Atheist. You may not want to be, but the Bible is. It was also written that Christians are not dismissing 9,999 other religions and gods. You may want to claim Judaism and Islam as compatible with Christianity due to their shared roots, but that gets you to around 9,997 which are not disbelieved, even if granted. I would think that Universal Unitarianism would appeal to you, but can also assure you that it doesn’t do a very good job at reconciling the stark contradictions inherent between different faiths. It does, however, do a good job at trying to ignore them. You seem to easily ignore passages in various holy books that you don’t like, such as ones that call for killing nonbelievers and those of other faiths in favor of believing that there is enough overlap to ignore such passages.
I’d actually argue that there are huge amounts of crossover between Atheism and plenty of other religions. For instance, the ethics of Atheists tend to be rather positive and agreeable to most people of faith. It’s true that they don’t believe in god, but the rest of their life may be surprisingly similar if you actually look at it. They are perfectly capable of standing in awe of the universe, enjoying a sunset, etc. A religion doesn’t grant a person a monopoly on such things and experiences. I will grant that it can shape the perception of it though.
You wanted to illustrate that Muslims and Christians believe in the same god. In a sense they do, in another sense they do not. Because both holy texts say completely incompatible things if either are taken literally. And since they are supposedly divinely inspired (in one case more directly than the other), it does seem reasonable to assume they should be taken literally. Let’s also not forget that members of both faiths are quite prone to taking them literally too. An impartial reader of both would have to come away with the sense that even though the two faiths may share the same god, there is a high degree of incompatibility written into both works which can be viewed objectively. If belief in the same god isn’t even enough for religions to be compatible and not starting wars with each other, then where does that leave us in regard to the 9,997 other gods? Belief in a higher power may not be incorrect, but by your standards it has to be so vaguely defined to be compatible with all these competing gods to be essentially meaningless. You have to essentially say that there is something, greater than man, out there somewhere. The end. Does that really add value or meaning to your life and should I believe in this vague deity (deities?) because I think I might get a reward when I die? I’m afraid that I find this sort of reasoning thoroughly uncompelling.
You wrote that Catholics believe that other religions can go to heaven and that that debunks everything I wrote. Wow, you really think so? You think I’d have to struggle in the least to locate faiths which think Catholics are going somewhere nasty upon their death? You seem to want to refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that numerous religions think other camps than their own are less worthy, less rewarded, less chosen, less godlike, less blessed, etc. Showing a faith or even multiple faiths that are more welcoming regarding the afterlife does nothing to remedy all the others that are not. No matter what way you want to slice it, somebody, somewhere has thought you with any sort of your generic version of spiritualism is going to some version of a hell. Are you concerned about it? I doubt it. And guess what, Atheists aren’t sitting around in fear concerned about people thinking they are going to hell either. Annoyed, perhaps.
I freely admit that there are things which I do not understand or that are too complex for me personally. However, I think faith is one of the poorest methods of gaining knowledge possible. History has demonstrated its ability to thwart progress and it lacks an effective method of error correction. Science, while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, at least has error correction built into its process and people who disprove incorrect assumptions are typically praised. Challenging the norms is usually an encouraged scenario within science. The same cannot generally be said of faith. In fact, we are typically told to treat the subject of religion as taboo to challenge. Science is pretty good about acknowledging what they do not know, and holding things as open to challenge. Things stand in science for as long as the evidence supports them. Things stand in faith long beyond the point where evidence supports them.
To be honest, I do view religions as various failed sciences. They once were our best option for describing things we saw around us, or did not understand. However, better options have come along that have much better track records for acquiring knowledge, building upon knowledge, and usefully implementing that knowledge.
I get the impression that you think you have some profound question I tried to dodge and I read your latest restatement of it and don’t really know what you’re getting at. You asked me if I believe there are smarter people than me who believe in god. I answered that I did, and that I also knew there were smarter people than me who didn’t believe in god. I also wrote that I didn’t think it added much to the discussion. You then wrote that those smarter “scientists” are reaching a different conclusion than I am. However, I provided you a link to plenty of smarter nobel prize winning people who were, in fact, also reaching the same conclusion as me. What’s your point? I answered your question. Smarter people than me once believed the earth was flat. They were wrong about something, but nonetheless were intelligent people. I could be wrong, and you could be right. But saying there are smarter people than me who believe one way or another is... well... pointless.
I’m trying to be fair and answer every last question you ask, but I don’t think I’ll be doing so in the future because this is eating way too much of my time for the rewards I feel I may or may not be getting. Which religion believes in shape shifting? Plenty. A few include greek mythology (Zeus, Proteus, etc.), roman mythology, shamanism, Loki, Nagual, skinwalkers, Manannan Mac Lir, Cagn, etc.
You want this to be a belief in a higher power (aka generic god) versus Atheism discussion instead of looking at any particular faiths, that’s fine. The burden of proof remains on your shoulders instead of mine in such a case. It’s the same as if I were trying to convince you that I had an invisible demon hovering over my watch which spun the ticking hands. Disbelief is the natural starting point. Show me your compelling evidence to believe in your version of a higher power. I do not expect you to believe in the invisible demon making my watch work without evidence. You should not expect me to believe in your invisible god making the universe work without compelling evidence.
You are clearly not defining superstition correctly if you are saying nonbelief is superstition. Admit it. And right after saying that, you accuse me of running in circles? Think about it. Absence of belief is not synonymous with 100% proof positive of no god. And to make such a demand is... ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as me saying that you can’t be 100% certain that there isn’t an invisible demon making the hands tick on my watch. You can’t be 100% positive right, but you can certainly dismiss my claim without a second thought and the burden of proof about this demon is on my shoulders, not yours, right? You want me to believe in your invisible vaguely defined god, give me compelling evidence. I ask nothing more or less of you than you would ask of me about my invisible demon. I do not hold your invisible god in any more or less contempt than you hold my invisible watch demon. Both should not be believed in until there is adequate evidence. Can you really not see that scepticism in the starting point in such matters? Starting with belief is operating in the wrong direction. You would be a bit nuts to start with belief in my demon and then set about trying to disprove it. I’d argue it is equally nuts to start with a belief in god and then expect others to disprove it with 100% certainty.
I’ll freely accept a critique of me overdramatizing in the effort to make a point. Chocolate Overlords, demons on watches, etc. Guilty as charged. It’s because it is no more or less nonsensical than zombie prophets rising from the dead, virgin births, talking snakes, shapeshifting gods, 6000 year old earths, god sponsored genocides in holy texts, etc, etc, etc. It is an attempt to get people to see the absurdity by showing them similar absurdity. That’s the entire point of things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Just as you’re very, very certain there is no demon making my watch work, I’m equally certain Allah isn’t lying in wait for my soul, or Zeus, or Jesus, or Loki, or Cagn, or....
Is that 100% certainty with 100% proof? Nope, but neither is your disbelief in my watch demon, right? You’re not going to lie awake wondering about my watch demon, and I’m not going to lie awake concerned about your vague notion of a higher power. I want to be very clear that I don’t think people who are mistaken are automatically crazy. Sanity isn’t broken the moment one starts to believe in invisible deities, but I would argue that a portion of the importance of evidence for the individual tends to get forsaken in the process of making such a leap of faith. You’d argue the same the moment I attracted my first watch-controlling demon follower. You wrote that we are human beings and so fallible it is silly. So why do you think we might not have created religions which are so fallible it is silly... or better yet, so silly they are fallible. Scepticism is the right starting point with such a belief. If good, solid, scientific evidence comes along proving the existence of a real god, Atheists are quite willing to reconsider and look at the evidence objectively. They argue that the burden of proof is upon believers not the burden of disproof is upon the nonbeliever for reasons like I have shown with the watch demon. Now if I said that my watch demon eats and punishes people for eternity after they die if they don't believe in him, do you feel you are taking an unnecessary risk in not believing in my watch demon? Of course you don't. I don't consider myself taking an unnecessary risk in not believing in god either.
I’m tired of writing so I’m going to quit, but just wanted to mention that I have no delusions of being a higher power. So once again, that’s another “bet” of yours I feel no need to wager on.
We all need all the luck we can get. The atheist and the believer have pretty much the same odds. One in infinity vs. zero in infinity.
"With our thoughts we make the world"
And that's only if there happens to be a deity and that that deity isn't okay with us being as questioning and wanting of evidence as we seem to sometimes be. If a deity is so insecure that they require my belief as the ticket to paradise, that deity wouldn't have my support even if they were real anyway.
I believe in some sort of greater power that is beyond the comprehension of highly evolved apes on a small blue planet circling a mediocre star in a mediocre galaxy.
But, I do NOT believe in the God in the text written by these apes, some 5,000 or so years ago. Especially from a religion founded in the seat of the Roman Empire some 2,000 years ago.
I believe that humankind has obtained a greater knowledge of his natural environment and that the Man of todays knows more about our world than the Man of 5,000 years in out past.
I don't know if that makes me an Atheist or Agnostic... all I really know is that I probably can't know if there is a God or not. But, I believe... if there really is a God... He is not the one described by these highly evolved apes.
Hail, Hail!!!
This is where you Atheists lose me.
Why is the burden of proof on anybody else's shoulders? Honestly, who determined that disbelief is a natural starting point. Moreover, since when was atheism a position of disbelief? As I understand it, atheists believe that there is no god just as theists believe that there is one. Aren't you simply taking the opposite side in a debate and applying the same lack of evidence to draw a comparably irrelevant conclusion. I find the atheist POV every bit as self-righteous and condescending as the theist's apparent faith in an invisible maker.
As I see things, atheists are every bit as dogmatic as theists. They rely on an absence of proof to support their position, just as theists cling to the notion that their position can't be disproven. The very dialogue is absurd. From my point of view, an atheist's conclusions are every bit as unreasonable as your average theist.
I am assuming you read my discussion about the invisible demon and the watch. In it, I did my best to explain exactly why the burden of proof when discussing invisible, intangible and largely (if not entirely) unknowable supernatural things is upon the person believing in them instead of the person with the blank slate or disbelieving stance. I tried pretty hard to show why it is not reasonable to start with belief and then disprove it and to also show that that isn't how we most effectively operate in our daily lives usually. I also tried to detail why Atheists aren't in need of 100% absolute certainty in their disbelief. We generally expect people to have good reason(s) for believing whatever they do, whether it is about gender equality, racial equality, stances on murder, etc. We also expect to be able to ask people why they believe something and then want them to provide supporting evidence, right? If a person was accused of a crime and said that an invisible, angel told them to do it we don't tend to start by believing them and then ask people to disprove that there wasn't an angel that made them do it. We start by being skeptical and placing the burden of proof upon the person who wants us to believe the supernatural. That's all I'm trying to convey. The burden, indeed, is theirs. I dare say that we widely agree as a society that the strongest beliefs are those which are supported by the strongest and most readily provable evidence. Have I clarified or does this part continue to lose you in you in the argument?
Or, as opposed to absence of evidence (proof), an evidence of absence from the atheist point of view.
i have to admit, i too find this very conversation entertaining. i am fully aware the existence of God relies on faith, something i admit to not having. but think about this..
an absence of evidence is proof of nothing.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say