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Has anything shaken your choice of atheism?
- Thread starter Sententia
- Start date
OmarKhayyam
Well-Known Member
I see a very real difference between what I believe to be true and what I can say I know to be true.
I KNOW the house number the post office has assigned to this structure. If I didn't know I could easily find out. So could anyone else and all such efforts would come up with the same answer. We all KNOW the right number.
I bought a stock last week. I BELIEVE it will increase in value, so far it has. But I do NOT KNOW it will. I only believe (and hope
) it will.
Ah, but that is a matter of future events, you say. None but a con man claims to know the future.
No, not quite. I KNOW if I let this pen fall off this desk it WILL hit the floor. And I can make literally thousands of such predictions and be fully confident that I KNOW the outcome of each. And some can very far into the future indeed.
But the future value of my stock is still just a belief.:sad:
I KNOW the house number the post office has assigned to this structure. If I didn't know I could easily find out. So could anyone else and all such efforts would come up with the same answer. We all KNOW the right number.
I bought a stock last week. I BELIEVE it will increase in value, so far it has. But I do NOT KNOW it will. I only believe (and hope
) it will.Ah, but that is a matter of future events, you say. None but a con man claims to know the future.
No, not quite. I KNOW if I let this pen fall off this desk it WILL hit the floor. And I can make literally thousands of such predictions and be fully confident that I KNOW the outcome of each. And some can very far into the future indeed.
But the future value of my stock is still just a belief.:sad:
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themadhair
Well-Known Member
Stop focusing on beliefs - start focusing on why we hold beliefs.
Imagist
Worshipper of Athe.
Why do you hold the belief that this is what we should do?
themadhair
Well-Known Member
I think I wasn't clear. I was complaining about the use of the word 'belief'. Belief in god and belief that the sun will rise tomorrow are very different situations due to the differing reasons for those beliefs. In other words, the word belief is being used to equivocate very different situations.
Tackling the reasons behind the belief will allow those situations to be differentiated avoiding the equivocation.
Big Mouth
New Member
Of course!! Having faith that there is no God can be shaken just like faith in a God. But it is a different sort of crisis of faith.
Whenever I am shaken, I think that yes, I could go back. But would I want to? Would I be able to swallow it? Thus far the answer is no, but I am open to where my experiances take me.
Whenever I am shaken, I think that yes, I could go back. But would I want to? Would I be able to swallow it? Thus far the answer is no, but I am open to where my experiances take me.
linwood
Well-Known Member
So you can "choose" whether or not to hold a belief in a deity?
I don't think that's implied in what was said. With new experiences comes knew knowledge, new understanding, and a new image of the world.
JMorris
Democratic Socialist
the existence or non existence of god is irrelevant to my life.
i have no knowledge of god, and have never met anyone who does. only belief. whether i believe in god or not dosent have any effect on whether god is real or not, as he either is or isnt.
if he is real, my belief that he is good or bad has no effect on whether he is good or bad. regardless, i will continue doing what i think is right. so trying to please god would be irrelevant as theres no way to know what would or wouldnt please him. and if he dosent require us to do certain things to please him (heaven or hell) then what does it matter? nothing gained, nothing lost.
so no, no arguement would effect my belief in god. as becoming a theist wouldnt nessesarily bring me any closer to god, if a god even exists. god may very well hate worship.
i have no knowledge of god, and have never met anyone who does. only belief. whether i believe in god or not dosent have any effect on whether god is real or not, as he either is or isnt.
if he is real, my belief that he is good or bad has no effect on whether he is good or bad. regardless, i will continue doing what i think is right. so trying to please god would be irrelevant as theres no way to know what would or wouldnt please him. and if he dosent require us to do certain things to please him (heaven or hell) then what does it matter? nothing gained, nothing lost.
so no, no arguement would effect my belief in god. as becoming a theist wouldnt nessesarily bring me any closer to god, if a god even exists. god may very well hate worship.
JMorris
Democratic Socialist
I was with you right up until the end.
Why so?
why not? theres no evidence that a god even exists. so if one does exist, what can we say about him/her/it? nothing, as we have no knowledge of it. so if a god were to exist, why would one assume that it wants worship? it might want worship, but as theres no way to even know that it exists, so how could we assume anything about it?
All the more reason to susepct there is no one to "hate worship".
JMorris
Democratic Socialist
All the more reason to susepct there is no one to "hate worship".
i agree. but there could still be a god. one that hates worship, and loves blasphemy. one that hates faith, and loves.......... cats.:sarcastic but since i have no way of knowing, i simply dont care.
Except in that there's no evidence.
For someone who doens't care, you hold a considerable amount of opinion.
JMorris
Democratic Socialist
Except in that there's no evidence.
For someone who doens't care, you hold a considerable amount of opinion.
well, just because i dont care now, that dosent mean i didnt care at one time
if i never cared, i would never of been able to gain hold of my opinion
im just saying, that just because there is no evidence of god, that dosent mean some sort of god like thing couldnt exist. but since i have no way of knowing whether god exists, or if it does, what its like; then i find it irrlevant.
*edit* theres no evidence that (if god exists) that it wants worship........or anything.
uhmmm.........what are we debating? we seem to be saying pretty much the same thing............
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Diederick
Active Member
No. Perhaps a few years ago when I had the 'religious period', but no Theist has come up with anything particularly new these days. To top that, all new arguments that are not based on ancient scribblings support Atheism.
Since my little stroll into religion I've changed a lot and have done a lot of research on many things that I had doubts on. Things like evolution, physical cosmology, nature physics, etc. Right now, my default viewpoint is this: The world makes complete sense, everything that happens has a logical cause and everything works as it logically should. In this system there is no place for a Deity.
Imagine a day without God. And ask yourself: What changed?
rageoftyrael
Veritas
I have questioned my beliefs, but not my atheism.... There were some things i wasn't in complete understanding of, but god is not one of them. I don't believe there is a god. I wasn't sure what type of atheist i was and such, but no, i haven't been even close to convinced that there is a god. Why? Logic says otherwise.
Vile Atheist
Loud and Obnoxious
I used to be a Christian fundamentalist, so I know just about every argument they can throw at me. I became an agnostic when I went to an Internet forum called "The Ethical Atheist". My thoughts were that atheists were atheists because they did not understand Christianity. So I went there to answer questions about Christianity and defend it.
While some were legitimate misunderstandings of Christianity, they asked questions I never thought of before and slowly but surely I became agnostic. It wasn't until then I realized how much religion had impacted me. I was too afraid to utter the words "I hate God" for fear of roasting in Hell for eternity, even after I proclaimed agnosticism. The psychological damage was frightening, and my situation was a lot more favourable than to those that occur in the US with their "Hell Houses".
When The God Delusion came out, I saw all the controversy around it. I picked it up out of curiosity and it simply destroyed all arguments I had to support both religion and agnosticism. That was the point I saw no reason to continue to be a faith-leaning agnostic and decided to embrace atheism as the only rational approach to thinking. Since then, I've never looked back.
No theist has been able to present me with an argument that has not been full of logical fallacies that has made me stop and ponder if my atheism is tenable.
While some were legitimate misunderstandings of Christianity, they asked questions I never thought of before and slowly but surely I became agnostic. It wasn't until then I realized how much religion had impacted me. I was too afraid to utter the words "I hate God" for fear of roasting in Hell for eternity, even after I proclaimed agnosticism. The psychological damage was frightening, and my situation was a lot more favourable than to those that occur in the US with their "Hell Houses".
When The God Delusion came out, I saw all the controversy around it. I picked it up out of curiosity and it simply destroyed all arguments I had to support both religion and agnosticism. That was the point I saw no reason to continue to be a faith-leaning agnostic and decided to embrace atheism as the only rational approach to thinking. Since then, I've never looked back.
No theist has been able to present me with an argument that has not been full of logical fallacies that has made me stop and ponder if my atheism is tenable.