First of all, I have more in common with atheists than religious people, so my intention isn’t to come here and attack, I just want to hear your opinions. Maybe I’m wrong, I’d like to hear from you if I am. I’m just expressing here my perception of the movement and not actually what I consider to be facts.
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth. I do agree that the concept of a God is hard to believe logically, specially with all the incoherent arguments that religions have had in the past. But saying that there’s no god with certainty is something I’m just not comfortable with. Science has taught us that being wrong is part of the process of progress. We’re constantly learning things we didn’t know about, confirming theories that seemed insane in their time. I feel like being open to the possibilities is a healthier mindset, as we barely understand reality.
In general, atheism feels too close minded, too attached to the current facts, which will probably be obsolete in a few centuries. I do agree with logical and rational thinking, but part of that is accepting how little we really know about reality, how what we considered truth in the past was wrong or more complex than we expected
I usually don’t believe there is a god when the argument comes from religious people, because they have no evidence, but they could be right by chance.
How can you be certain about something related to the origin of the universe when we’re just little chimps on a rock. We’re clueless about something as complex as creation.
How can we be certain that we aren’t in the matrix? Or that my wife isn’t secretly plotting to kill me? or that I wasn’t adopted, or that my kids weren’t switched at birth, or that someone isn’t sneaking into the driveway every night and letting out a few pounds of pressure in my tires?
You have to draw the line somewhere. If you can’t assign certainty to some parts of your life, you’ll just spiral into a state of constantly questioning every possibility of every stimulus you encounter, and never being able to commit to anything without analyzing every possibility.
I have enough evidence to be certain of all the scenarios above. Until new information comes to light, I have absolutely no reason to question my stance on things I’ve come to a decision on.
All the things you said are mundane. The existence of a creator or the origin of reality is something much different to “is my kid an alien?”.
Just because you can’t be certain about something doesn’t mean you can’t be certain about anything. What I’m saying is that being certain about this particular thing feels like a monkey trying to have opinions about quantum computers. I’m sure the money is certain about the banana being tasty.
Are you certain we are not in a simulation? Isn’t the apropiare thing to do in that case to say “I’m not certain, thus I shouldn’t have any belief about it, because a belief is not based on facts”.
I think the origin of the universe is mundane.
Whether it’s a deity’s experiment, simulation, or an island on a turtles back, my day to day life still functions the same. Like I said, give me a reason to be interested. When people claim to have found bigfoots remains, I’m curious, skeptical, but I want to know if there is new information. Frankly, God is just a mundane topic because I’ve heard everyone’s case, they’ve all been debunked, and nothing new has happened in thousands of years. I think there are lots of mysteries we have left to find, and I do think there are supernatural forces that we can’t yet explain, because of what I’ve experienced, but until people start rapturing, it’s not something I need to think about.
If you don’t care and you don’t make claims about the existence of a creator, we’re on the same page. When there’s no evidence proving or disproving something, it isn’t logical to take sides.
No. You’re putting excessive burdens on this one topic that you REALLY care about.
I listed a bunch of examples of other things that I am certain of, but if I discovered new evidence, it would change my position. Let’s review:
I’m sure my wife isn’t trying to kill me. IF I find half a bottle of rat poison on the kitchen counter, and later she insists that I eat THIS SPECIAL BOWL OF CHILI JUST FOR ME. I’m not going to be as certain as I was before.
I’m sure there’s no God. IF he comes down, introduces himself and does some sweet magic shit or brings my favorite cat back to life, I’d definitely change my position.
But those things haven’t happened, and I do not think about the possibility of them ever happening, so I’m confident in my choices. I have no reason to doubt them.
This question is SUPER important to YOU, and YOU haven’t decided what YOU believe. Which is fine, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else needs to remain as uncertain as you. Once you’ve made your decision, you will be certain of it, until something makes you question your assumptions.
I have no belief. I don’t need to pick sides on a topic I have no knowledge about. With the limited understanding we have of reality, I think any outcome is equally likely to be true. I have no knowledge that tells me a creator exists or doesn’t exist.
“Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.” (Wikipedia)
I guess I’d be the first type of atheist if I were to use that label. Just lack of belief.
That’s not true. If the proposed is absurd, it’s not logical to remain on the fence. The logical standpoint is to dismiss the claim until evidence is presented. Since no evidence was presented, the claim should be dismissed.
Theists weasel their way out of this by claiming you can’t “prove” god, but that’s a scientific error/logical fallacy. If something cannot be proven, it also cannot impact the world in any way, shape or form. At that point the question becomes entirely meaningless and should be dismissed as well, because god existing or not doesn’t change anything anymore.
You seem a little stuck on the whole “knowing” part. Consider this: do you know if the sun is hot? Science knows it is, but do you? You could choose to believe in the scientific evidence, that still requires some “belief”. After all, you’ve never actually touched the sun yourself. You know sunlight is hot on your skin, but can you infer from that that the sun itself must be hot? Maybe the invisible unicorn with a liver tumor is shining an invisible heat lamp on you when you stand in the sun. You can’t prove this isn’t the case, but you still know it’s bullshit. You know the sun is hot.
You can believe that the universe was created by an invisible completely absent sky-daddy who demands worship that created Earth in particular because we’re super-special in the universe, whose actions and values are perfectly encapsulated in insert-holy-book here, and obviously all those thousands of other holy books are complete nonsense. But to me, that notion is completely absurd. Therefore, I know that this isn’t the case, just like I know how Earth isn’t wrapped up in a giant snake, or how I know brains aren’t doughnut-shaped, or how I know that tomorrow my legs will detach from my body, grow legs themselves and run a marathon.
Perhaps ask yourself this: what do you know? Why do you know it? Can you prove that at no point in your chain of evidence a secret azure pony hasn’t messed with the evidence, or your memories, or anything else?
Your conclusion could be that you don’t know anything. In that case, you should reevaluate what constitutes “knowing” something for yourself. Then you should reapply your new definition of “knowing” to the question of gods existence. I think you’ll find it hard to come up with concrete reasons to treat that question differently from the other absurd hypotheticals I’ve listed. This lack of concrete reasons is why I know god does not exist. Otherwise, for me, “knowing” has no meaningful definition anymore.
That’s what I do, I dismiss the claim. But just because their claim doesn’t make sense to me I won’t assume they are wrong.
If something doesn’t make sense to me, doesn’t mean that thing doesn’t make sense. If something makes sense to me, it doesn’t mean it makes sense. If there’s no evidence to prove something, doesn’t mean that thing is false…
I just feel my place in the universe is pretty far away from absolute truths. I prefer the humble route of just saying “I just don’t really know, do I’d rather not believe based on emotions or shallow perceptions”.
If you still assume that the claim might have merit, you explicitly haven’t dismissed the claim. You may not live like it might be true, but if you don’t assume it’s wrong either you haven’t really dismissed it.
You don’t have to consider all things you do not understand to be false. You have to ask yourself if something could be true. This involves a number of subquestions, one of which might be “does this make sense to me”, but it doesn’t have to be the defining factor. Quantum mechanics doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to most people, but you don’t see a mass rejection of QM for that reason.
You might argue humble, I might argue a sense of naivety. There’s a whole lot of things we can say about the universe with pretty absolute certainty. For the concept of god, we have about zero reasons to assume he exists and a whole lot of reasons why he probably doesn’t. In that situation I can’t in good conscience maintain the position that science is wrong about everything and god does exist. The dismissal of evidence pointing towards the absense of a god comes across to me as arrogance rather than humility, though I’m fairly certain that’s not where your position comes from.
Did you try the thought experiment? What things do you know? What constitutes the line of knowing vs believing for you? Would you believe that an alien version of RuPaul could be at the center of the moon, because we haven’t checked there? Would you consider it even possible or would you dismiss the claim? And if you dismiss it, what makes this claim truly any different from the claim that god might exist?
There’s a lot we don’t or perhaps even cannot know, but I would not say that we (or rather the people in the various fields of science ) are “clueless”. There’s a ton that we do know to different degrees of certainty, and we learn more every day.
Yeah, we can be certain about some things. I don’t think humans with their current capacity can be certain about the existence or non-existence of the creator of reality.