First of all, I have more in common with atheists than religious people, so my intention isn’t to come here and attack, I just want to hear your opinions. Maybe I’m wrong, I’d like to hear from you if I am. I’m just expressing here my perception of the movement and not actually what I consider to be facts.
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth. I do agree that the concept of a God is hard to believe logically, specially with all the incoherent arguments that religions have had in the past. But saying that there’s no god with certainty is something I’m just not comfortable with. Science has taught us that being wrong is part of the process of progress. We’re constantly learning things we didn’t know about, confirming theories that seemed insane in their time. I feel like being open to the possibilities is a healthier mindset, as we barely understand reality.
In general, atheism feels too close minded, too attached to the current facts, which will probably be obsolete in a few centuries. I do agree with logical and rational thinking, but part of that is accepting how little we really know about reality, how what we considered truth in the past was wrong or more complex than we expected
I usually don’t believe there is a god when the argument comes from religious people, because they have no evidence, but they could be right by chance.
Congratulations, you’re an agnostic
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth.
Atheism is not about truth, it is about belief. Atheists do not believe there are gods.
If an atheist says that it is an absolute truth that there are no gods, they are an atheist, but also a gnostic. Gnostics claim to know essentially unknowable things as truths.
OK, it still seems like taking sides to me when there’s no evidence one way or the other. I’d just say “I don’t know” and move on. No need to take sides on something that I’m clueless about, like what’s reality or its origins.
A human believing that God’s don’t exist based on reason is totally irrelevant, considering how limited human knowledge and reason is in these matters.
There is no third position here. You have to know whether or not you believe something. Either you believe it or you don’t.
Either you believe unicorns exist or you don’t. You can’t not know whether or not you believe they exist. You can not know whether or not they exist, but that is a different thing.
You have to know what you believe because it’s what you believe.
I think you can’t say this is a rule for every scenario. “Believe or not believe” seems to be an opinion of yours that I’m personally not bound to. I’m fine just accepting I don’t know something that is clearly outside of the grasp of my rational thought or logic.
I’m not sure why you guys keep comparing the existence of a god with unicorns or leprschauns. But ok, I’ll play along. Do I believe there are unicorns in earth? No, we have a pretty good understanding of the land of this planet. If you said “they live in another dimension” I’d just dismiss that because whoever said it has no clue about what “another dimension” is.
There is no end to things that may exist but are not provable. Where do you draw the line? There might be a toaster orbiting the sun.
Based on our understanding of human history, we KNOW that toasters were created on earth and that it is unlikely one is in orbit on the sun… This is based on knowledge. Even if based on knowledge, I could be wrong.
Now, what do you KNOW about the creation of the universe or the nature of reality?
This is my whole point. I’m not saying it is wrong to have solid opinions about some things. I’m saying it is wrong having solid opinions about things we really don’t understand.
Atheism is nothing more than a response to the claim that there is a God of some sort.
Specifically, a response that says “I don’t believe you”.
That’s it. That’s the minimum position to be considered an atheist.
Yeah, it seems like there’s a wider spectrum of atheists than I expected.
I guess I disagree with a subset of the atheist community and people are bringing up the other parts of the community that don’t match what I disagree with.
My disagreement is mostly with the atheists that say “there is likely no god because there’s no evidence”. There’s no human evidence for most things in reality, yet reality exists.
I’m aligned with the atheists that say “I don’t really know, so I won’t waste time setting my mind to a specific belief”.
The concept of “god” implies not being bound by physical laws. So science simply doesn’t apply here. We can never scientifically prove or disprove god’s existence, because if we could, then whatever we proved or disproved wouldn’t fit our concept of “god” anymore. It would just be another natural phenomenon that can be studied.
But our world functions very well without a god. If one does exist, it doesn’t seem to affect anything meaningfully and noticeably. So is it really a god if you can just ignore it with no ill effects?
And without any real proof of its existence, it becomes equivalent with any other explanation that may or may not be true and can never be proven, like the flying spaghetti monster or the invisible pink unicorn. It becomes meaningless and useless, so it can be discarded as untrue.
I agree, we will never know if it exists or not… So why should we believe something about it?
Isn’t “I know” much better than “I believe”?
Because that’s not how it works. You either believe or you don’t. This isn’t quantum physics, you don’t exist in some superposition of belief. You seem to keep ignoring everyone reminding you that knowledge and belief are two entirely separate things.
Just because you say “I don’t know” doesn’t have any bearing on your belief or lack thereof. You either believe or you don’t, it’s that simple.
It’s possible to have no belief, not sure why you’re saying there are only 2 options as if that was an absolute truth. In fact, some people have pointed out that atheism is lack of belief, Wikipedia says that.
Yes, knowledge and belief are different, I never said they are the same. My point is that knowledge is more valuable than belief. When there’s no knowledge, belief is worthless. We have no knowledge about a creator or the actual events of the origin of the universe, thus, belief is pointless. Whatever you choose to believe is just a very uncertain guess.
Why believe based on almost zero knowledge? Isn’t that as bad as what religious people do?
That’s agnosticism. Atheism is still a hard set belief. Agnostics know that they don’t know.
(A)gnosticism and (a)theism are orthogonal.
The former deals with whether or not it is possible to know for certain if god exists. The latter with if you think she does or doesn’t exist.
You can be an agnostic theist (you don’t think you can be sure god exists, but you think she does), a gnostic atheist, or any other combination.
Atheism doesn’t claim there is no god. You can’t prove a negative beyond “we’ve been unable to find convincing evidence that it does exist, therefore it probably doesn’t”.
Atheism claims there isn’t sufficient evidence that a god exists, therefore we don’t believe in it. That’s it.
If god shows up on earth and can prove being god, like idk by spawning a live dinosaur out of thin air, atheism dies instantly.
As a more concrete example: I can’t prove my glass of water won’t kill me. What I can do however is perform a series of tests and establish that it contains no known toxins to man, with the likelihood of it killing me being so minuscule I can be reasonably confident it is safe to drink. Bring me evidence people do die at an increased rate after drinking it and I’ll gladly reevaluate. But until then, I call it safe because evidence overwhelmingly tells me it’s safe.
If god shows up on earth and can prove being god, like idk by spawning a live dinosaur out of thin air, atheism dies instantly.
All that proves is that something in the universe can “spawn” a live dinosaur out of thin air. It doesn’t prove that thing is a god. It could be an advanced civilization that has mastered teleportation - which would merely be an advanced technology humanity doesn’t possess.
Said being still has the burden of proof to demonstrate with irrifutable evidence that it is a god. And even if it manages to do so, that doesn’t mean it is one of the gods spoke of in the bible. There’s more irrifutable proof that must be shown for that claim.
That’s not a counter argument though. It’s just an interesting thought experiment that doesn’t relate to the above comment
Every fucking time I try and have a discussion with atheists, you’d think I’d learn by now.
Since no one is answering me and everyone is just blanket downvoting, it’s removed, the subs and every person in this fuckdamn thread is blocked.