You know the type..."What sort of god would....(insert perceived horrific act here)" or "A GOOD God would never allow (insert death toll of some natural disaster, or some historical telling of heinous act committed by people who claimed that God told them to do it).
How is that anger at, or belief in a god?
I base them upon the arguments of atheists who DO understand the difference between blaming the deity believed in and blaming the people who believe...that it gets pretty obvious when someone is mad at God rather than at the worshipers.
If somebody is mad at a god, he is not an atheist.
You seem to like to depict atheists as angry. You referred to tirades from atheists (I asked you to show me one, but you didn't, which does not surprise me). I don't respect faith-based thought, but I am not angry at those indulging in it.
On the other hand, many theists are angry at atheists, who they have been taught are immoral, sothey emulate their imagined god's anger at what they are taught are sinful, rebellious attempting to escape accountability.
And as we have seen, many theists consider us all liars.
That's also not surprising, given their holy book:
[1] "The fool says in his heart,'There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good" - Psalm 14:1
See there? You are taught that we are corrupt and vile, and do no good. Sounds pretty despicable to me.
[2] "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." - Revelation 21:8
We're also the moral equivalent of murderers and whoremongers, deserving of extreme punishment. Why shouldn't people trained to thing like this despise atheists?
[3]"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"- 2 Corinthians 6:14
Apparently, in the eyes of this good god, we're also wicked and dark.
[4] Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ." - 1 John 2:22
We're also all liars.
[5] "Whoever is not with me is against me" - Luke 11:23
And the enemy of a loving god. Who wouldn't hate such people?
[6] “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” - 1 Timothy 5:8
Worse than an unbeliever? That must be pretty bad.
[7] "They are puzzled that you do not continue running with them in the same decadent course of debauchery, so they speak abusively of you" – 1 Peter 4:4
Our lives are decadent and debauched, and our criticism are verbal abuse. What horrible people we are. No wonder so many Christians hate us.
Unbelievers are certainly justified at thinking poorly of such a religion, and taking the anti-theist position that the world would be better off with fewer people being taught hate an entire class of basically law-abiding, honest, hard-working people trying to support their families and communities, communities that might benefit from having fewer bigots and fewer churches.
In apprehension, a person has the ability to understand something, but this ability is dependent on something concrete. For example, if you go outside in the winter without a coat, you will get cold. Therefore you learn not to go out in the cold without first putting on a coat. You do not need prior experience in order to comprehend something, so comprehension involves a different process.
I learned to use those words differently. Apprehension is the barest perception. Comprehension is understanding the significance of the apprehension.
Throw down a piece of paper. It catches my eye before I know what it is - a bare apprehension of something moving. I see that it is white, rectangular and very thin, and begin a journey of comprehension - this is a piece of paper that just arrived. I also see markings on the paper which I very shortly thereafter understand to be writing, an early layer of comprehension. Some is in a language I don't understand and can't pronounce because of the alphabet or characters used are unfamiliar, additional comprehension.. Some is in a language I don't know that uses my alphabet, so I can read it aloud without comprehension of the meaning. Some is in English, and even more comprehension follows because I can read and understand English. There may be more comprehending to come, such as recognizing the author of the legible part, and having knowledge about what motivates that person to write such a thing.
Since you identify as either atheist or agnostic, you have a definition in your mind about those three letters and what they mean. GOD has specific meaning to you,
When I am discussing gods, I let the believer define god. They generally mean an immaterial sentient, volitional, potent or omnipotent being that transcends our universe and is its source. Other details about what is believed may follow, such as whether this god wants this or that for us, whether the god is triune, whether the god has a son or not, etc..
Of course things get more fuzzy when you move away from naming concrete objects, like tree, or rock, or car, and get into abstractions, like love, value, truth, meaning, happiness, etc. These are all very real things,
What are real are the manifestations of love - the feelings that can be experienced (subjective reality) and the actions that can be observed (objective reality). These can be subsumed under the abstraction love, but it is just an idea.
Is two a real thing? No. Two horses can be real. Two apples can be real. But their twoness is an abstraction derived from real things, and is not in itself real.
We aren't seeing reality. We are seeing our ideas of reality.
That is our reality - our only reality. What is called external reality only matters to the extent that it informs conscious experience. We assume that there are things out there with certain qualities in order to predict and control experience, making that experience primary and its source subordinate.
I know what agnosticism is. You look at what is told you what God is, and you don't see a reason to believe it.
That's atheism, the logical result of applying rational skepticism to the question of gods.
Atheist might also be agnostic. Most seem to be. It doesn't mean that they doubt or don't believe, it means they don't claim to know that gods don't exist
Abrahamic faiths such as Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, have proofs from God in form of scripture
Scripture is proof of nothing except that it was written, disseminated, and read. Scripture could exist without gods, so scripture is not evidence of a god. It's evidence of a writer or writers.
Scripture is not a reliable source for anything. Nothing in a holy book can be known to be true except by consulting some aspect of reality such as archeology, in which case, it's the physical findings that let us know that the scripture was correct, not the scripture itself.
Are strong atheists atheists or not?
I think where this conversation came off the rails was when you or somebody else indicated that asserting that no gods exist was not essential to atheism, and this was understood to mean that such people are not atheists.
there may be such a thing that a believer knows that God exists, and its 100%, whereas an atheist wouldn't believe that there is no God 100%, knowing that their might be, even a tiny percentage on his belief that God exists
If the atheist is an educated secular humanist trained in philosophy and critical thinking, he claims 100% certainty about nothing, and recognizes that those who do are simply unaware of what philosophical doubt is.
Also, we're trained to see doubt as a virtue, whereas the theist is told that doubt is from the devil trying to steal his soul away, or that doubt displease a god demanding certitude, making doubt a weakness or sin.
I hereby challenge atheists to admit they have beliefs/hopes/concepts, however suppressed, that God loves them, watches them.
I hereby challenge you to try to conceive of what is presently inconceivable to you = atheists don't believe in gods.
atheists friends here will assault your thesis because they HAVE to, it's in their nature.
That applies to you much more than me (see below)
What you perceive as assault is what we call reasoned discourse. You clearly perceive atheists as defective people worthy of your scorn.
when you claim that my stating an "If... Then" scenario like the one above means that I am "angry at God" and therefore "believe in God,"
Theist "friends here will assault your thesis because they HAVE to, it's in their nature."
I hate mushrooms. I absolutely detest the things. Their taste is just odd, and their texture is disgusting. Now, I KNOW that this is my opinion about mushrooms, and that other people like them very much. I DON'T BELIEVE that mushrooms taste objectively odd, and that their texture is objectively disgusting. I know it is only my opinion of them. Others may enjoy the taste or the texture, or both. I find them completely disgusting - I mean... to no end are they vile and horrifying. But I don't truly believe that to be the case objectively. It is true for me, and that is where it ENDS.
A nice description of subjective truth. Your experience is "observable" to you (alone), can be reproduced, and the outcome predicted.
If you believe, then it's 100%. If it's anything less than 100%, then it means that you don't believe.
That's not how I see it. Any belief can become stronger or weaker as new evidence surfaced making the belief seem more or less likely, assuming that one uses evidence to decide what is true about the world. The degree of belief is therefore ideally commensurate with the quality and quantity of available relevant evidence.
As I indicated, no idea should be held as certain. That doesn't mean that we feel doubt about there being a sun (psychological doubt), just that we understand the limits of knowledge (philosophical doubt).
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