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.
I think you can't say this is a rule for every scenario. "Believe or not believe" seems to be an opinion of yours that I'm personally not bound to. I'm fine just accepting I don't know something that is clearly outside of the grasp of my rational thought or logic.
I'm not sure why you guys keep comparing the existence of a god with unicorns or leprschauns. But ok, I'll play along. Do I believe there are unicorns in earth? No, we have a pretty good understanding of the land of this planet. If you said "they live in another dimension" I'd just dismiss that because whoever said it has no clue about what "another dimension" is.
Bernard Russell used a teapot in space analogy to show that belief in something that may or may not exist and isn't tangible to living doesn't seem to be worth investing the effort of belief in.
Carl Sagan had a quote, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
Christopher Hitchens had his own: "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
All of these are open-minded observations that can be easily changed with evidence that supports the religious claims. Which are lacking.
I agree with all of them. I feel both sides have the problem of belief. "May or may not exist", as you said.
Whether you believe something or not is not outside the grasp of your rational thought. Just... answer the question. That's all it takes to know if you believe something, you take a moment to introspect and you say whether you believe it or not.
There's also a difference between lacking a belief in a proposition and believing in the negation of that proposition. Lacking a belief in something (for example, any particular god) is not the same thing as believing that that god does not exist. Both are atheism, they're just different kinds of atheism. "Strong atheism" and "weak atheism" are the usual terms to distinguish between them.
I'll play along. When I ask myself that question I immediately answer "I don't believe", just because I've conditioned myself to answer that over the years. The same way I answered "I believe" when I was conditioned during my childhood.
My point is that choosing sides is a fallacy, it's something very human though. Over the past years I've realized that I don't need to take sides and that I'm better off accepting when I just don't know something, just avoid having opinions about matters that I can't understand.
But yes, I still answer "I don't believe" internally. Hopefully I'll learn to turn "I don't know" into my instinctual answer.
You seem to think if you believe something, you have to hold that belief for a length of time before it becomes a belief. That's not how believing things work.
If you don't believe that there is a god for 10 seconds and then start believing again, you are an atheist for 10 seconds.
I honestly didn't understand what you said there. I don't believe a person needs to hold a belief for some time for it to be valid. Not sure how you arrived to that conclusion.
I just said that my instinctual answer isn't one that matches my worldview clearly. When I say "I don't believe" I actually mean "I have no belief/I don't know". I just need to train myself to say "I have no belief" which represents what I feel much better and with less ambiguity.
What you don't "understand," despite multiple people telling you multiple times, is that belief isn't knowledge.
Maybe the text wasn't large enough for you.
BELIEF ISN'T KNOWLEDGE.
"Knowing" and "believing" are two separate things. There are plenty of theists who would say "I don't know that god exists but I believe that it does."
Yeah, in this case believing anything is worthless because we don't understand the origin of reality. That's my point. It's fine to believe something when enough evidence has shown it is likely the case. It is not fine to believe something is true without evidence, or false because of lack of evidence. Specially when gathering evidence about it is nearly impossible with our current understanding.
Maybe the humble thing to do is to wait until we gather more evidence that supports or rejects these ideas.
Of course it's a rule of every scenario. It's a binary. There is no third position just like there is no third position between breathing and not breathing. You either believe something or you don't. If you accept that you don't know something, you can still believe it's true. You can also believe it isn't. You keep confusing belief and knowledge.
Again, not sure where that "it is binary" affirmation comes from. Is that what you believe? Or do you consider that to be an absolute truth?
There are some many things I honestly have no beliefs about. It's like I'm a walking counterargunent to your affirmation.
Do I believe we live in a simulation? I honestly don't know and I don't know what to believe because I have no idea how reality works. Maybe? Maybe not? I honestly have no idea. How can I know if reality is real? I don't know.
Is there a god? I don't know. The question is too deep and if I said yes or no I'd be just guessing because I do not understand reality like that. There are things I do understand... how reality was created isn't one of them.
That would be a lack of belief.
For the hundredth time, knowledge is not belief.
Understanding is also not belief.