Are you an atheist? if so, What is your POV about God?

[ArtieE]

Zeus and Poseidon, and Thor or any other god you can mention apart from the God of Abraham (YHWH) is no god at all.

Zeus and Poseidon and Thor aren't gods? I have doublechecked. They are all on the list of gods in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_deities

And since these "gods" as you like to call them are impotent

Impotent? Zeus and Poseidon and Thor? Are we talking about the same norse and greek gods here?

 

[ArtieE]

That would mean you're leaving the possibility that the money exists in your hand even though your view of reality may tell you otherwise?

English please...

 

[Sonofason]

Zeus and Poseidon and Thor aren't gods? I have doublechecked. They are all on the list of gods in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_deitiesImpotent? Zeus and Poseidon and Thor? Are we talking about the same norse and greek gods here?

In comparison to YHWH, if they were indeed existent beings, they were and are impotent. I personally do not believe that these entities were ever anything in comparison to God, the Creator of the Universe, and Essence of all existence. Maybe they were mightier than men, but they were no Gods.

 

[ArtieE]

In comparison to YHWH, if they were indeed existent beings, they were and are impotent. I personally do not believe that these entities were ever anything in comparison to God, the Creator of the Universe, and Essence of all existence. Maybe they were mightier than men, but they were no Gods.

No comment... I just quote the Wikipedia list.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Please. No sarcasm.

English please...

That would mean you're leaving the possibility that the money exists in your hand even though your view of reality may tell you otherwise?
​

Clarification

You are leaving the possibility that the money exists
Even though how you may interpret and view reality is opposite of allowing that possibility.

In other words, for example, in my reality there are no fictional characters that exist in the real world. So, if someone said Batman exists, I will say, no he does not exist. His existence isn't a part of how I see and interpret the world. So, it would not make sense for me to say there is a probability to say that he could exist. I would either be lying or just playing with my imagination.

Replace Batman with money.

How could the possibility of god exist that, in a reality (what we know of life now), doesn't support his existence?

Another example:

My reality is that the English alphabet contains 26 letters. If you told me that there is one more letter, pretend it's &*, I would tell you you are wrong. &* does not exist as a letter. I know this. An agnostic would say it is possible he just doesn't know and/or claim not to know. That's fine but doesn't make sense. If the alphabet only contains 26 letters, how can there be any probability that any more letters exist and why keep that probability rather than just saying "I know there are no more letters in the alphabet"?

 

[ArtieE]

My reality is that the English alphabet contains 26 letters. If you told me that there is one more letter, pretend it's &*, I would tell you you are wrong. &* does not exist as a letter. I know this. An agnostic would say it is possible he just doesn't know and/or claim not to know. That's fine but doesn't make sense. If the alphabet only contains 26 letters, how can there be any probability that any more letters exist and why keep that probability rather than just saying "I know there are no more letters in the alphabet"?

I can't figure out what you mean.

 

[Segev Moran]

It's "a certain level of absolute certainty."
In philosophy there are many levels of certainty.

I Agree there are levels of certainties.. But none of them is absolute...

 

[Unveiled Artist]

I can't figure out what you mean.

Let me think.

If I were blind since birth and no one mentioned and explained colors, colors would not exist in how I interpret the world. To me, the color red does not exist.

Jane, sighted, comes to me and says "did you know red exists"?

I ask her what is a red and she tries to explain. It still does not make sense. Red isn't in "my world." It's a concept, an idea, a claim. It's not tangible. I can't feel it, smell it, taste it, nor hear it. It is completely non existent.

In my world view red does not exist. (I am an atheist to the color red).

If I came to you and said I am agnostic to the color red, that would mean I am giving the probability of the existent of this color without claiming I know it exists.

Why would I do that?

Why would I leave the probability that the color red could exist because Jane told me it does?

What is my making the existence of red based on going by my experience not Jane's?

The color red does not exist to someone who is born blind (pretending he has not heard of the color and understood the concept of it). Why would he leave the probability that it does; and, what would that probability be based on?

 

[Segev Moran]

If we went by what we know of reality, for now, we can say "I know god does not exist" because that isnt part of our (well my) reality.

I Don't know if its part of my reality or not.
I do say, That based on what humans know and experience about the universe, it doesn't seem that there really is a God.

Unless you are taking what you do not know into consideration that it may be true (agnoticsm) by what lack of knowledge of reality do you have that you believe god does not exist but do not know?

A bit confused
I Don't believe there is a God.
I Don't know if there is a God.
There might be a God, but as of now, It seems there is none.
God supposedly operates in a different way than how the universe AS WE KNOW IT.
God might exists but we have no way of knowing.
I Tend to believe things that I can verify or seems logical and rational based on my current knowledge.
God is not one of them things.

If I had no money in my hand and there is a claim that said I did, by what reason should I say "I believe I dont" rather than "I know I dont" based on what you know of reality and how things can be said to exist to our naked eye to those that cant?

I Think I understand what you are asking.
Our entire understanding of life, existence, universe and reality, is based on things we can predict and measure.
If for example you will run into a wall, it is reasonable to think you will be hurting.. why? because millions of people before you did it and got hurt.
The same goes for every decision we make in life... We think of what we know, we calculate the odds for and against our choice, We choose and hope for the best.
Many times, a "Reasonable" decision might have destructive effects, and many times its the unreasonable decision that got the wanted effect.
I Know reality based on things I can predict.
I can predict that if I throw 50 Millions balls from the top of a building, 50 Million of them will fall down.
thus, I Know that the balls will fall.
Same goes for God.
Until today, Nothing unnatural has ever happened that cannot be explained by statistics or at best, a small anomaly of the average predictions.

Better question to all atheist.

Is your lack of belief based on knowledge or lack of knowlede?

Both.
It is based on the fact that NOBODY KNOWS what theist claim to know.
It is also based on the fact that what we DO KNOW, doesn't suggest there is a God.

 

[Segev Moran]

What are your premises for determining that the odds of their being life on other planets is increasing daily.

I Didn't say anything about Odds...
I Was talking about chance.
Odds are basically Theoretical Probability which as its name suggests, have nothing to do with actual probability except for the predicted set of possible results (Which is also btw, not relevant to a sample of one item)

If I flip a coin, the odds of the coin landing on heads are a 50/50 chance, each time I toss the coin.

Yeah, I know how odds (theoretical probability) work.
but that's a bit different than probability (experimental)...
Probability is something that is dynamic. (Chance is based on Probability)
for example, the odds an egg will break falling from a 100 ft height, are 50%
It can either break or not (no matter how many samples we take into consideration).
The probability (chance) of it breaking is much much higher!
How so? If you drop 1000 eggs and only 1 egg doesn't break, chances are more towards the egg breaking (99.9% chance or 0.999 probability).
As far as we can say, The chances of life emerging in a universe, are 100%...
As we don't really have any other reference to check against it.
(Basically, it will be considered an impossible thing to predict as you need more than one sample to calculate chance).
Now as for the question of a God, It is not a 50% chance... as we don't have a known number of samples.. If we had known that out of 100 Gods, 50 created life, we could say there is a 50% chance of a God creating life... as we yet to even know if there is one God, the question of probability is not relevant rather a theoretical probability.
Even so, The theoretical probability is also not relevant to the question of God, as we don't know the number of possible sets here. It might be that god created life. It might be that Nature, It might be Alien race, It might be that we are a simulation, It might be we are not even real so life are not even created... there is an unknown number of possible creators of life that we can't even calculate the odds of it happening...
So Chance.. Not Odds...

A fact about chances is that the true chance of something happening does not change as a result of our knowledge about the object.

that's wrong.

It is the predictability of those chances that we are estimating on account of our knowledge about the object, how it behaves, what it is made of, how the various forces of nature affect it, etc. that we base our calculations of chance upon. In this case you are talking about life. No one knows how life originated. No one really knows what life is. So how is it that we are closer than we were ages ago at predicting the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe?

Again... lets assume we can today observe 1000 planets and we don't have any data on them, it is true that the odds of life being able to emerge on each planet are very very low... because as far as we know, we are the only planet with life...
This will make the chance of life emerging on other planets close to zero.
But then, we discover that 30 out of those planets can actually support life and life might emerge on them...
From this knowledge, we can more precisely estimate the chances of life emerging on other planets and they will be higher than the chance we knew before.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Following a Post I wrote, I Heard the claim that Atheism is claiming there is No god,
I tried correcting the person and explaining him that Atheism is the lack of belief in a God.
Its not saying there is no God, rather saying you don't believe there is A god based on current evidence.

I Would love hearing Atheists POV on the matter..

I am an atheist -- let there be no question about that. But I do NOT say, "there is no god." That would be a claim that I could not demonstrate, and I hate being put in the position of asserting things for which I can give no good reason.

However, I will also say that as I observe the reality in which I find myself, I can find no reason to suppose that there is anything like any god that I have had described to me. And more, I find the arguments against the Abrahamic God (of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) to be completely unsupportable and in direct and certain contradiction to what I would expect to see if such an entity existed.

If anybody would like to try and convince me, in the world that I perceive, that such a God exists, let me be clear -- they have an enormous task ahead of them. But I will give them the opportunity to try, by saying, "I do not believe, but neither to I absolutely deny."

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

To equate God with fairies in your backyard garden betrays a very narrow definition of God, that which little children imagine.

We atheists see this sort of thing all the time, and really, it's not very convincing. In fact, what you are doing is the equivalent of saying, "well, the god I believe in is NOT the one you DON'T believe in." But then, you don't say anything about what the god you DO believe in is like.

That's always a little unfair, really. It's like the scientist saying, "I have a theory about how to unite Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, but I can't tell you the details -- but prove me wrong!" No thanks! If you have a theory (or an idea about God), present it, and all the details of what it actually means and how you can know. Then we'll have a look. Otherwise, you're just making a belief statement that anyone else is perfectly justified in ignoring.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

How about the prophesy of Daniel chapter 9, verse 25 stating 300 years before Christ the exact day that Christ would make his triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem as King and Messiah? Oh wait, never mind that. I forgot that I was talking to someone who doesn't really care to know the truth.

Very funny. Daniel, of course, was written long after the Bible suggests it was, and that makes "prophecy" so much easier, doesn't it?

My evidence of God is in me. It is not for you. I cannot give it to you. The evidence I have apparently isn't meant for you. If it was, you'd have your own evidence.

I wonder if you'd care to examine what you've written. If, as you say, "the evidence isn't meant for you," then what you are also saying is that "what God wants me to know, God doesn't want you to know." Why, therefore, would you think that to be true? Do you like a God that doesn't play fair, and will condemn someone for His own unfairness anyway? I certainly wouldn't.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

There are two categories of atheist: those who have defined "god," and those who have not. Those who have not have no business forming an opinion about "god."

I await breathlessly your "definition" of God. It will be so much easier to deal with.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

The atheist claims it is not about belief, but it is about belief. They believe there is no God. They claim to lack a belief in God. Yet they will vehemently oppose the existence of God despite the fact that they have absolutely no evidence showing that there is no God

I am really fascinated with the inability of theists to actually "do" grammar. It's not that hard, really! Look, let's try to simplify it for those with little ability to think for themselves:

There is a very real difference between these two statements:

• "I believe there is no monster in my closet"
• "I do not believe there is a monster in my closet"

Why is there a difference? Because of how we accept the origin of the premise itself. The first posits a theory ("there is a monster in my closet") that one thinks one can disprove. The second posits a theory that doesn't merit the effort to disprove.

 

[Segev Moran]

There are two categories of atheist: those who have defined "god," and those who have not. Those who have not have no business forming an opinion about "god."

Atheists don't define God... As to us there is nothing to define it from...
It is the Theist who define a God...
each BTW have he's own small modifications that better suits his need.

To tell me to define God will be like asking me to define "bre-efsora-minkata"

 

[Willamena]

I await breathlessly your "definition" of God. It will be so much easier to deal with.

How is that relevant?

 

[Willamena]

Atheists don't define God... As to us there is nothing to define it from...
It is the Theist who define a God...
each BTW have he's own small modifications that better suits his need.

To tell me to define God will be like asking me to define "bre-efsora-minkata"

Well, we know which category you're in.

 

[Segev Moran]

Well, we know which category you're in.

I Would love hearing Atheists here that have a definition of a God...

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I await breathlessly your "definition" of God. It will be so much easier to deal with.

How is that relevant?

Are you unaware of what you yourself wrote? You said that there are those who have defined God, and those who have not -- and that the latter have no business having an opinion. Okay -- I define "God" as an 85 million pound pumpkin that condemns all blond Americans to instant death. Then I look around and decide, "nope, none of that happening."

But I am powerless to say anything about your definition of God -- because you do not provide one. Okay, I will accept your "definition" (or rather lack of any), as meaning "God defies definition, is unknowable, unprovable and unobservable." And I will agree with you. But in my view, anything that defies definition, is unknowable, unprovable and unobservable does not -- in any meaningful way down here where I live --exist in any what that has meaning for me.

Now, if you suppose that God is knowable, provable and observable -- then I would expect you to be able to say at least SOMETHING about His nature. And that, I'm sorry to have to tell you, is the ONLY thing that IS relevant.

And I doubt you will actually provide a meaningful answer