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Atheism and Faith

ImmortalFlame

Woke gremlin
I've already explained this many time in this thread and others.
But your explanation doesn't actually make sense. What is dishonest about using words that illustrate your position and giving clear definitions of those words?

You keep alleging dishonesty, I keep refuting your arguments and asking you what is being lied about, and you've never given a suitable answer. You're an intelligent person, PureX. Why can't you give a cogent response regarding this?

Allow me to try and make this clearer.

- I am an individual who does not believe there is a God, but I do not actively believe that there is no God.
- My position is that I do not claim to know or believe that there is or is not a God, because I do not believe there is sufficient evidence for me to believe either proposition, and/or I believe that the evidence I have been presented with is flawed or insufficient.
- I define my position as atheism, using the broad definition of atheism as a "lack of belief in the proposition that there is a God", as my position comes under this umbrella rather than under a narrower definition of the term that entails an active belief in the nonexistence of any God.

Now, please point out what is dishonest about any of the above statements.
 
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It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
And what is dishonest about it?

I've already explained this many time in this thread and others.

But not convincingly. Your explanation reveals no dishonesty in the posters telling you that they are agnostic athiests - just you telling them that you don't believe that they mean what they say, that they are actually concealing that they hold a gnostic atheist position, but dishonestly try to conceal that. That is not happening. The dishonesty is all with you telling the rest of us that we are lying and being dishonest.

Sorry, dude, but when you called atheists liars, you opened the door to having your own character and motives examined. You're the one being dishonest in the promotion of a stealth agenda to demean atheists. I assume that you have no rebuttal to that claim, since you ignored it the last time I made it accompanied by a supporting argument.

You keep alleging dishonesty, I keep refuting your arguments and asking you what is being lied about, and you've never given a suitable answer. You're an intelligent person, PureX. Why can't you give a cogent response regarding this?

Allow me to try and make this clearer.

- I am an individual who does not believe there is a God, but I do not actively believe that there is no God.
- My position is that I do not claim to know or believe that there is or is not a God, because I do not believe there is sufficient evidence for me to believe either proposition, and/or I believe that the evidence I have been presented with is flawed or insufficient.
- I define my position as atheism, using the broad definition of atheism as a "lack of belief in the proposition that there is a God", as my position comes under this umbrella rather than under a narrower definition of the term that entails an active belief in the nonexistence of any God.

Now, please point out what is dishonest about any of the above statements.

I think you know what the answer would be. No discussion of your individual points, just a return to his formulation that if you don't believe in gods, you can't call yourself agnostic, or as he words it, "undecided." You will never be told what he thinks is dishonest about what you wrote, just that it is, and you're hiding what you actually believe, again, a sign of your dishonesty. He is stuck in that mental rut. None of several posters after making a concerted effort to get through to him ever did. That's not changing.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
We do not know for sure if the sun would rise tomorrow but 'Sigma 6', 99.999% possibility is that it would and would not explode in the next 24 hours, that is why we say the sun would rise tomorrow.

"Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1980. Jack Welch made it central to his business strategy at General Electric in 1995. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects."
Six Sigma - Wikipedia

Tell me if you agree:
Earth will continue rotating and the sun shining, and the sunrise coming every day.

And something like 99-100% of people agree this is so (say, those able, with language ability and over age 6).

Correct?

But...in contrast regarding 'evidence' for the divine...whole different picture.

No longer a 100% vs 0% situation.

But instead, intriguingly a very mixed thing, with as much as 1/2 of all the world's population (or more) saying there is Something, divine. They have some kinds of personal evidence. Evidently. You'd find out billions say there is 'evidence' of personal kinds.

You could dismiss their numerous reports, and assert that there is "no evidence in all of history", because you meant for instance, there isn't a tangible object you can personally examine. Or a reproducible physical phenomena you could control, manipulate on demand.

Right?

Once, not that long ago, a couple of pilots claimed they had seen lightning rising upwards from the top of the highest thunderstorms, up into space, basically.

People, including a lot of us that have taken nighttime flights on airlines and seen storms out the windows with lightning in the distance, and including other pilots(!), have seen no such thing.

You could assert (or could have once recently asserted, only just a decade ago) "there is no evidence at all" for that.

But it would not have been a reason to dismiss it for an objective person.

Right?
 
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Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
They have some kinds of personal evidence. Evidently. You'd find out billions say there is 'evidence' of personal kinds.
That is what is not acceptable. If they have personal evidence which cannot be reproduced for anyone else, then they are free to believe in whatever they want - One God, Satan, Adam and Eve, the great fall, immaculate birth, his son, heaven and hell, apocalypse, and the great final judgment where their God will pronounce rewards and punishment for billions upon billions of souls, some will be raised again, others will go to eternal hell, and perhaps some will be snuffed out. Such believers should not be surprised if others refuse to accept their fairy tales and make fun of them.

For the unbelievers, there is the story of 'Emperor's new clothes', they don't want to loose their noses in hope to see Emperor's new clothes.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
And how do atheists cope with death?

Pretty well, based on what I've seen in four and a half decades. I'm not expecting it to be justifiable. It simply is. Something I can accept. Trying to rationalise it seems way harder.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
That is what is not acceptable. If they have personal evidence which cannot be reproduced for anyone else, then they are free to believe in whatever they want - One God, Satan, Adam and Eve, the great fall, immaculate birth, his son, heaven and hell, apocalypse, and the great final judgment where their God will pronounce rewards and punishment for billions upon billions of souls, some will be raised again, others will go to eternal hell, and perhaps some will be snuffed out. Such believers should not be surprised if others refuse to accept their fairy tales and make fun of them.

For the unbelievers, there is the story of 'Emperor's new clothes', they don't want to loose their noses in hope to see Emperor's new clothes.
Well, as one eventually sees over time, the idea that God definitely doesn't exist itself has of course no evidence or proof. If believed, then it's a 'belief without proof.'

Ergo, this is is why the agnostic position is the only 'scientific' (or 'objective') position for a person without evidence for God.

Analogy: "dark matter" has never been observed, and the seeming evidence is only indirect -- seeming extra gravity in galaxies and superclusters. Though some small minority of theorists have speculated gravity itself may not work as current theory thinks instead of there being an unknown type of extra matter ('dark matter' is the idea it must be matter, and thus fit current theory of how gravity works).

So, we have indirect seeming evidence -- extra gravitation -- but no observable evidence that definitely shows there is an actual type of matter that actually exists. Not yet.

It's thought likely there is some type of unknown matter, because that is an appealing theory in that it would fit existing theories and not make us toss in the trash our seemingly well supported theory of gravity.

But no evidence. No theory about 'dark matter' has ever been supported by any evidence.

Would you then jump to the conclusion dark matter doesn't exist?

I would not. It's better to learn to be comfortable with unknowns. Life will always have unknowns, and we shouldn't insist we know what we don't know.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
Some evidence is better than no evidence. :)
Some evidence is the exact parallel. :)

We have seeming extra gravity, and the popular guess is it seems likely to be from an unknown type of matter. The exact parallel for the agnostic: there is something motivating very widespread insistence from a worldwide set of people of very diverse background, culture and education and experience, yet all insisting, from around the world, that they've experienced 'God' in some way.

It's a perfect parallel from the point of view of the agnostic who is scientific: indirect evidence of something -- this indirect evidence being widely observable.

Just like the effect of the seeming extra gravitation can be seen widely in the cosmos.

Indirect evidence. Nothing you can actually see. Not yet....

But it's there.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
The exact parallel for the agnostic: there is something motivating very widespread insistence from a worldwide set of people of very diverse background, culture and education and experience, yet all insisting, from around the world, that they've experienced 'God' in some way.
Not parallel. We know a little about 'Dark Matter'. Do we have any evidence for God, soul, prophets/sons/messengers/manifestations/mahdis, heaven, hell?

"Primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing many galaxies would fly apart instead of rotating, or would not have formed or move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing, from the cosmic microwave background, also astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, the formation and evolution of galaxies, mass location during galactic collisions, and the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters."
Dark matter - Wikipedia

"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 27% and 5%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount. The density of dark energy is very low (~ 7 × 10−30 g/cm3), much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it dominates the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space."
Dark energy - Wikipedia
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
Not parallel. We know a little about 'Dark Matter'. Do we have any evidence for God, soul, prophets/sons/messengers/manifestations/mahdis, heaven, hell?

"Primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing many galaxies would fly apart instead of rotating, or would not have formed or move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing, from the cosmic microwave background, also astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, the formation and evolution of galaxies, mass location during galactic collisions, and the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters."
Dark matter - Wikipedia

"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 27% and 5%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount. The density of dark energy is very low (~ 7 × 10−30 g/cm3), much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it dominates the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space."
Dark energy - Wikipedia
Yes. By the way, astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology are lifelong interests of mine for decades. I recently estimated that combining all the articles and astronomy news I've read, it's closer to 10,000 articles than 5,000. I'm glad though you are looking up summaries.

I think you might at some later time see what I'm pointing is the parallel. But yes the rotations of galaxies, deflection of light, etc. is an observable, and if you categorically decide that all individuals accounts are not, then I'd point to the other parallel, that about the seeming lightning flashing upwards towards space some claimed they saw, the unproven (at that time) individual accounts that other pilots had not seen. While no parallel is perfect, this one addresses the quality of it being individual accounts. A claimed something others said they had never seen. Even when scientists first made a big effort to observe the claimed upward flashes, they failed, and did not observe them at all on their first 8 hour flight near thunderstorms, even with perfect camera monitoring.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
Not parallel. We know a little about 'Dark Matter'. Do we have any evidence for God, soul, prophets/sons/messengers/manifestations/mahdis, heaven, hell?

...

What's a scientific attitude towards the claims of individuals?

To not assume that lack of proof precludes future confirmation. While this fun/interesting instance below is for an only-physical phenomena, not for a Being with autonomy to choose whether to be found, it's still suggestive of how we could see claims from individuals: as a provocation to investigate.

This was a fun episode that came to mind: NOVA on PBS, may also possibly be available on other sites like Amazon:
At the Edge of Space | Season 40 Episode 23 | NOVA
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
The video is not available there. Does not matter, because with my hearing problem (I am an old man), I do not see videos. But it any case, I do not believe claims of ANY individual if it is not from (as they say) peer-reviewed real scientific journals (there are many fake pseudo-science journals around).
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
The video is not available there. Does not matter, because with my hearing problem (I am an old man), I do not see videos. But it any case, I do not believe claims of ANY individual if it is not from (as they say) peer-reviewed real scientific journals (there are many fake pseudo-science journals around).
Ok,that NOVA program relates the search to try to find the claimed odd upward lightning flashes, that only a few reported, and that seemed possibly non existent.

They are elusive, rare, and only last a few milliseconds. It would have been easy to think the sporadic claims to see upward lightning up towards space was just....

...imagination, only.

Sprite (lightning) - Wikipedia

Now we have them on video:
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
That is possible, Halbhh. I am told that once my brother and myself were sleeping in open on one cot (in Nagaur, a desert region of Rajasthan in India) in stormy conditions. My parents said that they saw a flash of lightening come down and barely escape touching us and returned or dissipated. Perhaps something like that happens in the upward burst of lightening, sort of a false start.
 
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halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
That is possible, Halbhh. I am told that once my brother and myself were sleeping in open on one cot (in Nagaur, a desert region of Rajasthan in India) in stormy conditions. My parents said that they saw a flash of lightening come down and barely escape touching us and returned or dissipated. Perhaps something like that happens in the upward burst of lightening, sort of a false start.
Sprites are pretty cool, and actually I didn't know of the other kinds of unusual lightning shown in that short video I put in that last post. Imagine seeing the type called an " ELVES" -- just wow. If you saw it the first time, and didn't know it was a known thing, it would be pretty surprising. If it was new to you and a friend, and you told your friend you saw that ring thing (new to them), they would have trouble believing you, even knowing you, I bet.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
If these elves, unicorns, and jinns exist, I would like to see them to believe, not otherwise. Photoshop can do a lot of things.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
If these elves, unicorns, and jinns exist, I would like to see them to believe, not otherwise. Photoshop can do a lot of things.
ah, but while that particular video is only from Accuweather, a weather forecasting company, they are only reporting what is known from other sources I can see.

Have a look:
Upper-atmospheric lightning - Wikipedia

Or if you prefer science papers published in journals, I suppose I could try to search for those. If you like?

Hey...you know what's interesting and weird and I've wondered about? Ball Lightning. How's that for unexpected?
 
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