Atheism vs Theism

[Storm]

I was actually about to post an apology. I missed the "I" in your second sentence and thought you'd posted "Just take the experts at their word."
It was a misunderstanding on my part and I'm sorry for that.

Apology accepted.

As for the sources, I intend to look into this neurotheology simply because it sounds interesting. In dealing with matters of altered consciousness it's very difficult to look at these experiences as anything more than hallucinations. Still, I'll attempt to give it a fair chance and, if it appears there is something to it, grant it its due respect.

I think you should. It's a fascinating field, regardless of one's interpretation of the findings.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

The fact that there is no evidence (in your opinion) for a God can only lead you to conclude that it is improbable that a God exists. You cannot reasonably say, with certainty, that there is no God.

Wrong. In the absence of evidence, rationality dictates that you say "There is no evidence to suggest the truth of X, and I cannot, with any amount of certainty say, that X does not exist."

Oh I remember you. You're the guy that says it's irrational to be atheist, and thinks he knows how everyone else thinks. Well as sure as you seem to be, you are mistaken once again!

Unless, of course, you think there is a small chance the bogeyman lives in your closet. If you cannot say with any certainty the bogeyman doesn't live in your closet, your case is moot and made of fail from square one.

 

[Alceste]

"Sentient Universe", sentient being the operative word. I could definitely see calling that God, but I do have issues with people simply labeling the universe as God. We already have a name for the universe-- it's called the universe-- and going out of your way to call it God just adds baggage that is really unnecessary.

Exactly - assuming the universe is all there is, if it is sentient it is "god", since "god" is generally understood to be the most powerful and expansive sentience in the universe despite whatever other attributes the various religions assign. If it is not sentient, it is just "the universe".

I don't know if the universe is sentient or not. It seems that if it were, it would have to operate on a wavelength that my puny monkey brain could never tap into, and it would be as ambivalent about my fate and behavior as I am toward that of my eyelash mites.

So, even if the universe is sentient and the universe is God, it doesn't matter at all whether or not I think so. Consequently, I don't bother wondering.

 

[Alceste]

Hmm. That sort of god is one that I'm a hard atheist about. I believe that the universe exists, but it's not something I think could be validly called a "god".

Well, that puts a hitch in Native American spirituality, since their "Great Spirit" is a pantheistic deity. A sentience that infuses everything in existence. I think that's as valid as any other definition of "god" and more plausible than most.

Which is not to say I share that belief, but I relate to it much more easily than I can relate to the idea of some bearded humanoid floating around in space and smiting stuff he doesn't like.

 

[Apollonius]

Well, that puts a hitch in Native American spirituality, since their "Great Spirit" is a pantheistic deity. A sentience that infuses everything in existence. I think that's as valid as any other definition of "god" and more plausible than most.

A god that's in everything. This is quite the same thing as what is taught regarding Brahman, that he's in all and all is in Brahman. Then again, it's said that Brahman is beyond knowing, and if Brahman is beyond knowing how then can anyone as much as speak of Brahman in that one would need to know of Brahman in order to elude to the notion that Brahman exists. Moreover, what use is there in a god that is beyond knowing, .. a god that cannot be petitioned or experienced? After all, the very term 'God' is derived from a German word which means 'to invoke'. It would seem that intellectuals have, like in all other endeavors, overly-exaggerated the meaning of 'god' to the point that it no longer has any meaning at all.

 

[TheKnight]

Oh I remember you. You're the guy that says it's irrational to be atheist, and thinks he knows how everyone else thinks. Well as sure as you seem to be, you are mistaken once again!

Unless, of course, you think there is a small chance the bogeyman lives in your closet. If you cannot say with any certainty the bogeyman doesn't live in your closet, your case is moot and made of fail from square one.

Oh I see. Don't offer any actual evidence in favor of your position. Just keep spouting out emotional outbursts.

Great job oh reasoned one.

 

[Alceste]

A god that's in everything. This is quite the same thing as what is taught regarding Brahman, that he's in all and all is in Brahman. Then again, it's said that Brahman is beyond knowing, and if Brahman is beyond knowing how then can anyone as much as speak of Brahman in that one would need to know of Brahman in order to elude to the notion that Brahman exists. Moreover, what use is there in a god that is beyond knowing, .. a god that cannot be petitioned or experienced?

It's a myth - a meaningful narrative that lends some structure to the undifferentiated chaos of our sentience. It feels nice to think that the universe, too, might be alive and thinking; that we might be a part of that process; that we are not ultimately alone and separate. That is an experience.

 

[JMorris]

Moreover, what use is there in a god that is beyond knowing, .. a god that cannot be petitioned or experienced?

ive yet to hear of any god that can be known, petitioned, or experienced. so what use is there for any god?

After all, the very term 'God' is derived from a German word which means 'to invoke'. It would seem that intellectuals have, like in all other endeavors, overly-exaggerated the meaning of 'god' to the point that it no longer has any meaning at all.

god is a word that is inherently meaningless, since it can be applied to just about anything. even if it were to be as rigidly defined as you wish, it still wouldnt hold much meaning since the god you describe is one that is defined & "experienced" in innumerable ways.

 

[sandandfoam]

Reason, you assess what is most reasonable and the most reasonable way to interact with the position you find yourself in. It does not take faith for me to believe that there is a wall in fort of me (if I am taking the time to consider the possibilities) but after considering the alternatives I find that, at least, the most reasonable course is to act as if the wall is there (since the evidence indicates this the most likely of possibilities) and walk around it instead of trying to walk through it.

mmmm I don't find it so easy. How do you know the solidity of the wall is not constituted by the fabric of a dream? Merleau-Ponty wrote of how "the rags of the dream can, before the dreamer, be worth the close-woven fabric of the true world....the fact remains that if we can lose our reference marks unbeknown to ourselves we are never sure of having them when we think we have them; if we can withdraw from the world of perception without knowing it, nothing proves to us that we are ever in it, nor that the observable is ever entirely observable, nor that it is made of another fabric than the dream"
Einstein, concluded that "reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one". You may indeed be correct that it does exist, and indeed from where I sit, for you it does, if you believe that to be the case.
I on the other hand cannot lie comfortably in a postivist position. I believe in reality - but to my mind reality is to be found, as Husserl suggested, in lived experience rather than objects.
I especially like the tale told about him by Levinas (which Husserl also apparently told about himself) inwhich he recounted his receipt of a penknife as a present when he was a young boy. THe story is that in pursuit of a perfect edge for his new blade the boy kept sharpening until there was no blade left. Husserl thought this symbolised his philosophy. I think there's a lot in that short story.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

Oh I see. Don't offer any actual evidence in favor of your position. Just keep spouting out emotional outbursts.

Great job oh reasoned one.

Lift your blinders for a second and you will see that I did. Obviously there is no such thing as tangible evidence of nonexistence. (that IS obvious to you, right?), but unless you admit a real chance of the bogeyman living under your bed, your case falls apart. What I have offered is your own logic(using that term very loosly) relected back at you.

 

[logician]

I am a positive atheist because evidence is overwhelmingly absent that any "god" definitions I have seen are true.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Wrong. In the absence of evidence, rationality dictates that you say "There is no evidence to suggest the truth of X, and I cannot, with any amount of certainty say, that X does not exist."

I think your statement is a bit broad. If X implies the existence (or likely existence) of something else, then the absence of that "something else" is evidence of the absence of X.

For example, if you find no mouse droppings or chewed food packages in your house, then this is evidence that you have no mice. If you don't see divine miracles occasionally, then this is evidence that you do not have a miracle-wielding God.

Also, the absence of evidence can imply absence of knowledge, which means that there's no valid basis to suggest the truth of X in the first place. The classic example of this is Russell's Teapot: there may be no evidence for me to explicitly disprove the existence of a small teapot between the Earth and Mars, but there is also no evidence to let you conclude that there's a teapot there in the first place.

IOW, when we're evaluating a claim, sometimes absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but sometimes it is. And absence of evidence is always evidence that you just pulled the claim out of your butt.

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, your original statement is entirely inaccurate. In a statistical sense, when you look at all the attempts for evidence together, every sample that contains no evidence of X is evidence against X with a very specific degree of certainty. That degree of certainty won't ever get to 100% until you've exhaustively looked everywhere, but even after one observation, it's greater than zero.

Well, that puts a hitch in Native American spirituality, since their "Great Spirit" is a pantheistic deity. A sentience that infuses everything in existence. I think that's as valid as any other definition of "god" and more plausible than most.

Which is not to say I share that belief, but I relate to it much more easily than I can relate to the idea of some bearded humanoid floating around in space and smiting stuff he doesn't like.

Whether it's more or less plausible than other religious models isn't really the issue; it's a question of the validity of terminology.

As an analogy, take the claim "my house is filled with poison gas". By itself, I'd say it's very implausible; it's much more plausible to say that it's probably filled with air. However, this doesn't mean that it's valid to call air "poision gas" to shoehorn the more likely situation into the original claim.

But re-thinking my original statement, maybe it would be fairer to say that how a person relates to the universe affects whether it's reasonable to call it "god" or not. I suppose that if a person actually worships the universe as a god, that's one thing, but if we're talking about "god" as a label for the universe that someone has simply feeled like anthropomorphizing a bit by endowing it with perceived thoughts and feelings, then I don't think it's valid to call the universe "god" in that case.

 

[Falvlun]

9-10's Penguin, I think what you may be missing is that Alceste is not advocating the universe being called god; she is saying that if the universe were sentient, then that would considered god.

From the conversation I was having with her on the same subject:

Exactly - assuming the universe is all there is, if it is sentient it is "god", since "god" is generally understood to be the most powerful and expansive sentience in the universe despite whatever other attributes the various religions assign. If it is not sentient, it is just "the universe".

I don't know if the universe is sentient or not. It seems that if it were, it would have to operate on a wavelength that my puny monkey brain could never tap into, and it would be as ambivalent about my fate and behavior as I am toward that of my eyelash mites.

So, even if the universe is sentient and the universe is God, it doesn't matter at all whether or not I think so. Consequently, I don't bother wondering.

I agree with the sentiment completely.

 

[Falvlun]

I started this thread due to a conversation with footprints:

Although, in my experience, it is pretty rare for a theist to not positively claim that a god exists. You will often get an athiest saying that theirs is a position of greater probabilty-- they are atheist, not because they necessarily believe that there is no god, but because they think that the probability of there not being a god to be greater than that of there being a god. I'm not sure if I've ever heard a theist make such a clarification of their position, perhaps simply because they rarely have to, generally being in the majority.

Life experience defines a persons perception. A non-believer caught in the bible belt of the USA, can easily be led to the perception that the whole world is against them. And from their perception of life, they would be right, albeit what they really mean is the known world around them, not the whole world. If that same person came into a forum like this, do you know what they would find, more believers preaching the same things at them. They would also find, others who believed just like them, who would give them hope.

The same applies to a theist who is continually debating against non-believers or even believers of another sect. Their perception of life can get twisted and distorted, simply due to the environment they continually surround themselves in. It isn't hard for these people to start to believe, due to their own perception, that they are surrounded by atheists, for basically in reality, they really are.

Life is about balance. Everybody must escape, from their own perception of life every once in a while, else they will be caught in the web of deception woven from their own perception.

Usually footprints' "all is perception" mantra doesn't convince me, but this seemed like it had the possibility of being true.

However, so far, the results of the poll do show that it is more likely, at least on this forum, for a theist to make the positive claim (God exists) and for the atheist to make the "probable" claim (It is more probable that God doesn't exist).

 

[dust1n]

The hard atheist doesn't just not believe. He believes there is no God. A completely unevidenced belief is a form of faith, is it not?

This works for me, as long as I can assume that your faith includes "I believe there is no fairies or Santa Claus" and worthy of being called part of your faith.

 

[The_Evelyonian]

This works for me, as long as I can assume that your faith includes "I believe there is no fairies or Santa Claus" and worthy of being called part of your faith.

No....Santa?!

 

[Storm]

This works for me, as long as I can assume that your faith includes "I believe there is no fairies or Santa Claus" and worthy of being called part of your faith.

Faires: I believe in the Others.
Santa Claus: Not comparable, as his non-existence has been reasonably proven.

 

[dust1n]

Faires: I believe in the Others.
Santa Claus: Not comparable, as his non-existence has been reasonably proven.

Haha, well that's fine. As long as part of your faith is 'I believe the FSM doesn't exist,' part of my faith is 'I believe that God doesn't exist.'

 

[Storm]

Haha, well that's fine. As long as part of your faith is 'I believe the FSM doesn't exist.'

Again, not comparable. Also, why do you keep assuming I'm dumb enough to make positive claim? Or are you just trying to belittle the things I DO have faith in?

 

[Alceste]

Whether it's more or less plausible than other religious models isn't really the issue; it's a question of the validity of terminology.

As an analogy, take the claim "my house is filled with poison gas". By itself, I'd say it's very implausible; it's much more plausible to say that it's probably filled with air. However, this doesn't mean that it's valid to call air "poision gas" to shoehorn the more likely situation into the original claim.

But re-thinking my original statement, maybe it would be fairer to say that how a person relates to the universe affects whether it's reasonable to call it "god" or not. I suppose that if a person actually worships the universe as a god, that's one thing, but if we're talking about "god" as a label for the universe that someone has simply feeled like anthropomorphizing a bit by endowing it with perceived thoughts and feelings, then I don't think it's valid to call the universe "god" in that case.

All I'm saying is that pantheists, who believe that the universe is alive and aware, call that quality of liveliness and awareness "god". It's not the physical stuff of the universe, but the underlying whatever-it-is that turns water, light and minerals into this:

All I'm saying is I can relate to the sentiment that inspires people to perceive an underlying force driving nature (jaw-dropping wonder at the diversity and proliferation of life) and I'm agnostic about that particular definition of "god". I am an atheist about all other definitions of "god".

To me, it's a valid definition only because that's what some people (Natives, for example) call "god" and the object of belief is defined by the believer.