Do You Know Why You Don't Believe? (beliefs, experience, atheist)

[Super Universe]

Originally Posted by eudaimonia

I see no sufficiently persuasive reason to believe in God.

It's not that for me. The number one reason for me is just that the universe appears to be a godless one to me. I just don't see any good reason to explain it by reference to a God.

Where do you rate your own ego, and do you realize it's the main reason behind your key question?

(I can ask leading questions too! It's fun!)

eudaimonia,

Mark

So you must see sufficiently persuasive reason's to not believe in God then? What are they?

The universe appears to be Godless? So you think particles built it all by themselves?

Yes, I'm well aware that my ego can be quite high at times, thanks. Perhaps you could start your own thread on that.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Super Universe

What power does uncertainty have? Do you see visions? Any at all?

Uncertainty is omniscient.

The entire Universe is a vision. Uncertainty reveals it as such. Don't kid yourself, S_U.

Originally Posted by Super Universe

Hmm, maybe it's all just a dream that God is having?

That's a nice metaphor, actually. Just don't confuse the metaphor with what it signifies and you'll be okay.

Originally Posted by Super Universe

Did you ever think that it's impossible for anything to truly exist because it would have to come from something and that something would then have to come from something and on and on forever...

The causal nature of the Universe springs from the act of observing and organizing primal chaos. You should take a moment to meditate on the inner phenomenology of the "law of cause and effect." Causes follow effects. They do not precede them.

Think about it.

Originally Posted by Super Universe

Think of it this way, God made a deal with the void, the value of the universe will stay at zero but to balance the positives an equal amount of negatives will be created.

Also a nice metaphor . . . but again a sign and not the thing signified.

[Super Universe]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

The causal nature of the Universe springs from the act of observing and organizing primal chaos.

If by observing you thus organize primal chaos, where did the observer come from?

Where did the First Cause, as in "cause and effect", come from?

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Super Universe

If by observing you thus organize primal chaos, where did the observer come from?

The concretizing of the process of integrating sensory input with memory as though it were a thing it itself.

"Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language. " -Wittgenstein

Originally Posted by Super Universe

Where did the First Cause, as in "cause and effect", come from?

Logic predicated on a sloppy understanding of "cause and effect." You obviously didn't do the homework assignment I gave you in my last response, S_U.

Originally Posted by Nietzsche

"We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language — in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere reason sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of "thing." Everywhere "being" is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego. In the beginning there is that great calamity of an error that the will is something which is effective, that will is a capacity. Today we know that it is only a word.

Very much later, in a world which was in a thousand ways more enlightened, philosophers, to their great surprise, became aware of the sureness, the subjective certainty, in our handling of the categories of reason: they concluded that these categories could not be derived from anything empirical — for everything empirical plainly contradicted them. Whence, then, were they derived?

And in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: "We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, because we have reason!" Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. "Reason" in language — oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar."

[eudaimonia]

Originally Posted by Super Universe

So you must see sufficiently persuasive reason's to not [sic] believe in God then? What are they?

I think you made a typo. I must see sufficiently persuasive reasons to believe in God.

As an example, I would have to see clear evidence that the universe is created, and cannot be uncreated. For instance, unambiguous evidence of intelligent design. I see nothing of this sort that persuades me.

The universe appears to be Godless? So you think particles built it all by themselves?

That's not quite the way I would word it, but that is the basic idea.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Super Universe]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

The concretizing of the process of integrating sensory input with memory as though it were a thing it itself.

What control causes the concretization of this process?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Originally Posted by Super Universe

The universe appears to be Godless? So you think particles built it all by themselves?

If simple particles are too complex to have just occurred spontaneously, invoking an infinitely complex deity doesn't really answer the question any better.