First of all, I have more in common with atheists than religious people, so my intention isn't to come here and attack, I just want to hear your opinions. Maybe I'm wrong, I'd like to hear from you if I am. I'm just expressing here my perception of the movement and not actually what I consider to be facts.
My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth. I do agree that the concept of a God is hard to believe logically, specially with all the incoherent arguments that religions have had in the past. But saying that there's no god with certainty is something I'm just not comfortable with. Science has taught us that being wrong is part of the process of progress. We're constantly learning things we didn't know about, confirming theories that seemed insane in their time. I feel like being open to the possibilities is a healthier mindset, as we barely understand reality.
In general, atheism feels too close minded, too attached to the current facts, which will probably be obsolete in a few centuries. I do agree with logical and rational thinking, but part of that is accepting how little we really know about reality, how what we considered truth in the past was wrong or more complex than we expected
I usually don't believe there is a god when the argument comes from religious people, because they have no evidence, but they could be right by chance.
The concept of "god" implies not being bound by physical laws. So science simply doesn't apply here. We can never scientifically prove or disprove god's existence, because if we could, then whatever we proved or disproved wouldn't fit our concept of "god" anymore. It would just be another natural phenomenon that can be studied.
But our world functions very well without a god. If one does exist, it doesn't seem to affect anything meaningfully and noticeably. So is it really a god if you can just ignore it with no ill effects?
And without any real proof of its existence, it becomes equivalent with any other explanation that may or may not be true and can never be proven, like the flying spaghetti monster or the invisible pink unicorn. It becomes meaningless and useless, so it can be discarded as untrue.
I agree, we will never know if it exists or not... So why should we believe something about it?
Isn't "I know" much better than "I believe"?
Because that’s not how it works. You either believe or you don’t. This isn’t quantum physics, you don’t exist in some superposition of belief. You seem to keep ignoring everyone reminding you that knowledge and belief are two entirely separate things.
Just because you say “I don’t know” doesn’t have any bearing on your belief or lack thereof. You either believe or you don’t, it’s that simple.
It's possible to have no belief, not sure why you're saying there are only 2 options as if that was an absolute truth. In fact, some people have pointed out that atheism is lack of belief, Wikipedia says that.
Yes, knowledge and belief are different, I never said they are the same. My point is that knowledge is more valuable than belief. When there's no knowledge, belief is worthless. We have no knowledge about a creator or the actual events of the origin of the universe, thus, belief is pointless. Whatever you choose to believe is just a very uncertain guess.
Why believe based on almost zero knowledge? Isn't that as bad as what religious people do?
I believe that there is no god BECAUSE there is no evidence to support one. I base my belief on the fact that there is zero evidence. When someone makes a claim, it is the responsibility of the claimant to give evidence.
And again, either you believe there is a god or you don’t believe there is a god. It is a yes or no question.
There is zero human evidence about most of the things that are actually happening right now in the universe.
Looking through your other comments, it’s pretty clear you’re just arguing in bad faith.
Just because I'm arguing doesn't mean it is in bad faith. I enjoy standing my ground and seeing what comes out of it. Otherwise it isn't actually a discussion. I do feel some people are getting triggered by this, but I don't care, I'm being respectful and explaining things the way I see them.
Maybe this is a bad habit of mine, but it's when the good stuff happens. I've actually learned a lot through my stubbornness in this post.
You’ve refused to listen to what anyone has tried to explain to you and just keep regurgitating the same nonsense. It isn’t a discussion. You had your mind made before you made the post and choose to be deliberately ignorant. That is bad faith.
I guess I can't change your mind about that.
Yea, I hope that learning a few things ( like that you either believe or not believe in sth., or that extraordinary things need extraordinary evidence or else they can be dismissed) led to you stop "standing your ground". Thats what learning and expanding ones knowledge is all about.
If not, if you still stubornly repeat your opinion without taking the well described points into consideration, you are not discussing in good faith, you are ragebaiting.
I guess if my opinion makes them angry, they could have stopped with an "agree to disagree". Personally, arguing doesn't make me rage.
So I'll give this to you before you get angry, let's agree to disagree.
Sure, but nobody is making claims about the contents of the universe outside the boundary of what is observable. Or they are, and they are presenting it as theory and creating some sort of mathematical model to describe it.
Even then, those are still falsifiable, in that we could potentially test the validity of the mathematical model locally.
The concept of gods does not allow for any descriptions that could be tested. Last I check all real things can be described, that's how we define real.
So this concept can't be defined as real. If you get this far without concluding that it isn't real, that's a deliberate act of intentional ignorance.
Exactly, because we don't have the means to prove or disprove it, we shouldn't have any belief about it. A belief in this matter is just a guess based on personal preference. There's no knowledge or evidence to back any position besides "I don't know, I can't know".
I don't think because we haven't figured out how to test it so far it means it is impossible to do so. We may just need to get a better understanding of reality.
Ok so if there's no theoretical method to test it, it's not real. Prove or disprove aside, there's no test.
Back to the beginning of the universe, there are methods to test those theories that we aren't yet capable of testing.
Again, forcing no conclusion is an intentional act of ignorance.
If something can't be tested with current technology or theoretical knowledge, then it isn't real?
Was electromagnetism real in the 800s?
If you don't know how old magnetism is can you just fuck off and read some books or something?
Sure, I will