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How I Feel About Atheists
- Thread starter PureX
- Start date
PureX
Veteran Member
"God" exists as an ideal in everyone's head, and in the world, through us. We are not able to ascertain the existence or non-existence of God further then that.
You can't conclude that it's true or false, because you have no way of ascertaining the nature of God beyond the human ideal. You should try thinking a little, before spewing ridicule, perhaps you could answer your own stupid questions before bothering others with them.
PureX
Veteran Member
Because the definitions of words don't determine the nature of existence.
PureX
Veteran Member
It is beneficial to you to know, but you don't know, so you have to hope. The fact that the hope has been validated makes the hoping easier. It also creates the illusion that you know something that you don't really know. Because waking up 10.000 days in a row proves nothing. You are still just as likely to wake up tomorrow, as not to.
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That's the definition of real.
The confirmation bias equates 'exists' with 'real.'
But that's a conversation for another thread.
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So in your mind, a "human ideal" - and nothing more than that - qualifies as God by itself?
If that's how you define God, so be it... though recognize that you aren't going to get much agreement from atheists or theists.
Though if that's really your position, then the anti-atheist bigotry you've displayed in this thread is surprising, since the only difference between the position you describe and a typical atheist position is just your aesthetic preference.
Good advice for yourself, I'd say.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
To a certain point, of course they do, otherwise how am I to interpret 'existence' without relying on its definition ?
Koldo
Outstanding Member
It might be beneficial for me to know, but I don't believe in it just because it is beneficial to believe in it. This is the main point I want you to comprehend.
PureX
Veteran Member
Which definition? See, this is the problem with allowing the definitions to dictate the concept. Also, what's the context within which the concept is being expressed? Does "gay" mean happy, or homosexual, because those are two very different concepts.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Definitions are not prescriptive, but rather descriptive.
However, if you want to convey meaning with your words you better either explain your terms or use them as in everyday speech. Why do you criticize others for not using your definitions ?
That's exactly how I feel about faith and theism. It is a foolish and unnecessary rejection of reason that both reason and my experience indicate serves
no useful purpose in my life.
Your argument seems to be that a god belief comforts you.:
- "It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people…If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behaviour we ought to interfere with." - Isaac Asimov
My return to atheism was due to opening the barn door and finding no horse there. You don't seem to understand that there are people who have followed your path, had a different experience, and now reject your claims for a benefit in belief. If frustrates you. Sorry, but maybe you should start listening to others rather than filtering them through a confirmation bias that transforms them into stubborn people that won't even consider the possibility of gods or give theism a chance.
If you still have difficulty understanding that, imagine somebody making an analogous claim to you about astrology. How about if I said that rejecting astrology was foolish - that you were rejecting for no rational reason a very useful, positive option that satisfied a need in me?
Then how about if you answered that had tried it - had been into it for years when younger - and found it to be less than useless because you actually made bad decision based on horoscopes. How about if I answered that you just didn't try the right kind of astrology - that you just tried some man-made version of it, and search for your own ways to write horoscopes?
Pretty tempting, huh?
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
He would not have an argument?
Regarding understanding, you still apparently don't understand what atheism is. It's nothing more or less than the absence of theism. No claim about the existential status of gods is required to say that one does not believe in gods, and that lack of belief is the sine qua non of atheism with or without a comment about whether gods might or do not exist.
This atheist makes no claim that no gods exist. If your definition of atheism excludes people like me, you need a new definition.
As a strong atheist, atheism to me is much more significant than a plain and simple absence of theism (which includes ignorance). It is meaningful. It stands for what I believe rather than beliefs slaved to a god-thing. Philosophically, it stands for firm insistence that a god-thing has no place in the sum of things that make up the world. It stands for a particular idea of what a god-thing is, albeit mine.
To say that no claim about the existential status of a god is required for atheism is to say that strong atheism is absurd. I assure you that I am not absurd in my atheism.
I think it's you who doesn't understand what atheism truly is. In all its breadth.
When we ask if God exists, we are asking if God is something other than just an idea (or even an ideal) in human minds. In other words, whether God is 'real'.
The question of existence and reality are equivalent.
Are there things that aren't real?
And if they are not things, then what are they?
If God only 'exists' as a human ideal and not in reality, that means the atheist position is verified. You have given no reason to think God is anything other than a product of human imagination, which says *precisely* that God does not exist.
Further, you are begging a number of significant questions: is your 'ideal' the same as another person's? If not, they aren't the same ideal and you can't say they refer to the same thing. And that means there is a different 'God' for each person. Again, that is simply equivalent to God being a figment of your imagination.
Also, I am not at all sure I have an 'ideal' that corresponds to a 'God'. The whole concept to me seems silly and rather worthless.
And if there is nothing about God beyond the human ideal, that is enough to say, to me, that God does not exist.
Figments of our imagination. Unicorns are not real. The do not exist.
There are ideas that do not correspond to anything that exists.
Figments are things.