Its an example, atheism is a stance,all we need is proof, I think that's reasonable don't you?
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Atheism people have a belief "God does not exist "
- Thread starter paarsurrey
- Start date
Its an example, atheism is a stance,all we need is proof, I think that's reasonable don't you?
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
We don't have any responsibility to give any evidence to anybody.
Regards
That's very convenient and of course you can't anyway
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
I have the responsibility of myself, primarily*, and so have others on their own and for themselves. They should be stand on their own feet independently. Right, please?
I believe they don't have any positives and sound reasons and arguments, at least they have not shared any here. If they did, they are welcome to repeat them here, no compulsion however.
Regards
____________
*Quran [5:106]:
"O ye who believe! be heedful of your own selves. He who goes astray cannot harm you when you yourselves are rightly guided. To Allah will you all return; then will He disclose to you what you used to do."
The Holy Quran - Chapter: 5: Al-Ma'idah
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Trailblazer
Veteran Member
My threshold for evidence is inside the norm... The atheist requirement for evidence is outside the norm.
This is demonstrated by the fact that only a very small percentage of the world population are atheists and the bulk of the world population believe in God or gods based upon the evidence that is available from God – messengers and their religions.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
God did speak for Himself when Hespoke to Baha’u’llah through the Holy Spirit. Baha’u’llah can speak for God because He was “appointed” by God to be God’s Representative.
“The Person of the Manifestation hath ever been the representative and mouthpiece of God. He, in truth, is the Day Spring of God’s most excellent Titles, and the Dawning-Place of His exalted Attributes.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 70
It did come before. I used my mind to investigate the claim of Baha’u’llah so now I know in my mind that Baha’u’llah was the Manifestation of God on earth.
Nobody can prove it but one can know it without proof, AFTER they verify that the messenger was who He claimed to be. It is ALL about verifying true vs. false messenger. In order to do that, one has to look at the evidence.
What I believe about Baha’u’llah is not based upon faith or hearsay. It is based on facts about Him that are verifiable.
To be clear, the evidence that Baha’u’llah was who He claimed to be is not that Baha’u’llah claimed to receive a message from God because that would be circular reasoning.
The evidence that Baha’u’llah was who He claimed to be is everything that surrounds the Revelation of Baha’u’llah, including who He was as a Person (His character); His mission on earth; the history of His Cause, from the time He appeared moving forward; the scriptures that He wrote; what His authorized interpreters wrote; what others have written about the Baha’i Faith; the Bible prophecies that He fulfilled, as well as prophecies of other religions that He fulfilled; predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that He established (followers) all over the world and what they have done and are doing now.
There is hardly any need for a reason to be an atheist.
If anything, it is a matter of being honest with oneself.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Let me ask you this... Do you think God should give you what you need just because you need it? Let’s just say that everyone needs different evidence to believe in God... Is God supposed to tailor the evidence to each individual?
Why do you assume that God doesn’t want you to believe in Him just because He does not provide you with verifiable evidence? Maybe God wants you to accept the evidence He provides and He is not willing to barter on that. That does not mean that God does not want your belief, although it does mean God does not need your belief.
NO, ‘verify’ in my own mind' method for determining reality is NOT a reliable method at all.
I guess you are referring to what I said before: “I have verified that God exists in my own mind because I believe that Baha’u’llah was a Manifestation of God on earth” and comparing that with the terrorists who heard voices in their heads and thought God was talking to them.
No, no, no... I do not claim that God speaks to me directly, like those Muslims and many Christians who believe that the Holy Spirit talks to them. Baha’is believe that there can be no direct intercourse between God and man. God only speaks through His Messengers via the Holy Spirit.
Thermos aquaticus said to me: Verification should come before belief, not after.
I said: It did come before. I used my mind to investigate the claim of Baha’u’llah so now I know in my mind that Baha’u’llah was the Manifestation of God on earth.
That analogy does not work because I did not make it up in my mind since I do not claim to hear the Voice of God. It is Baha’u’llah who claimed to hear the Voice of God. I just believe that He heard it. But first I had to check Him out to determine if He was true Messenger of God or a false messenger, a con-man or a psychotic. That was not too difficult because His Life speaks for His motives as do His Writings. I am not saying that is verifiable proof that God spoke to Him, but the evidence is as good as it gets; better than for any religion that ever existed in the past.
In that case, nobody would believe in God because God is not verifiable. However, the facts surrounding the Revelation of Baha’u’llah ARE verifiable.
Nope, normal peoples threshold for evidence tallies with the definition, and it has nothing to do with atheism which is defined as "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." Anything else is just haters trying to discredit atheism because they don't/can't comprehend.
Also a load of rubbish. There are twice as many atheists in China than the entire population (not just Christians) but the entire population of the united states. There are more atheists in Europe than Christians in the us. Please note the cia figures are a fudge to mollify the all american christian whose numbers are declining at the rate of 6 to 8 percent each year.
So cia figures aside that exclude Europe's, China and Australia and much else of the world, the actual percentage of atheist is between 18 to 23% of the world population.
So AFAIK muslims prozelytise, Ive had the sales pitch done on me,so I ask what proof they had, they point out that it's in the quran and inspired by your god, I ask what proof, none has ever been forthcoming, its taken on faith but that's not enough.
Fyi, i stand on my own feet, which means don't have or need a god sitting on my shoulder telling me what is right and what is wrong.
Sound reasons, when you can provide evidence of your god or any other god, i will review that evidence, as it stands gods are the most un-evidenced* concept in human history
Using the real definition of evidence
the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
Please note, i believe, what a holy book says, and hearsay are not valid sources of fact or information.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
It does not matter what anyone's threshold for evidence is. Evidence does not cause God to exist. God either exists or not.
That is absolutely false, not that it matters, because God either exists or not. It does not matter how many people believe in God.
According to sociologists Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera's review of numerous global studies on atheism, there are 450 to 500 million positive atheists and agnostics worldwide (7% of the world's population), with China having the most atheists in the world (200 million convinced atheists).
Demographics of atheism - Wikipedia
Strawman.
No it is not false
Your source is suspect, hardly surprising. China has over 1/2 a billion people who are atheist/irriligious. Taking it further its almost 90% of the population have no belief on god or gods but they do follow folk religions or faiths without godheads.
Religion in China - Wikipedia
People with no religion are the world's 3rd biggest grouping
You wouldn't believe it but atheism is now world's third biggest 'faith' after Christianity and Islam | Daily Mail Online
and growing while religion is shrinking.
The six countries in the world that believe in God the least
See also Irreligion in China - Wikipedia
Belief is unavoidable. Everything that is known as "the case" is "a belief," and that includes data and theories. However, it is possible to compartmentalize belief and recognize a healthy dose of uncertainty in every case.
In sciences, hypothesis are built on observations (data) and evidence (theories), but the hypothesis itself is of something not yet evidenced. For instance, we may scan the stars for planets capable of habitable life (data) and understand the means by which life might evolve on a plant (theories) to develop hypotheses about life on other planets (not yet evidenced). If testing the hypotheses yields positive results, we will safely invest belief in our conclusions, yes.
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Thermos aquaticus
Well-Known Member
That would be Baha'u'llah speaking, not God.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
It is OK for me.
Regards
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
So,you agree that every ideology/world view positive or negative with or without evidence/s and proofs is a faith/belief and even "no-faith" or "no-belief" is a "belief" in negative sense.
Regards
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
“Let me ask you this... Do you think God should give you what you need just because you need it? Let’s just say that everyone needs different evidence to believe in God... Is God supposed to tailor the evidence to each individual?”
Again, NO, I do not think that ‘god’ is obligated to give me anything. But as you acknowledged in your previous post ‘god’ already KNOWS that my brain requires verifiable evidence for fantastical claims. So if god WANTS be to believe in him/her/it them god KNOWS that he/she/it needs to provide me with verifiable evidence. And if ‘god’ doesn’t want me to know that he/she/it exist then god should continue to use the time honored method of communication that he/she/it KNOWS is not sufficient to ever get me to believe.
“Why do you assume that God doesn’t want you to believe in Him just because He does not provide you with verifiable evidence? Maybe God wants you to accept the evidence He provides and He is not willing to barter on that. That does not mean that God does not want your belief, although it does mean God does not need your belief.”
See my above response. I assume that god does not want me to believe in him/her/it because god already KNOWS that I have a logical rational brain that requires verifiable evidence for belief. IF god wants me to accept the evidence he/she/it has provided THEN god should never have created me with a logical rational thinking brain that REQUIRES verifiable evidence. Any god that would create me with a logical rational thinking brain and then expect me to turn off my rational thinking brain in order to believe in him/her/it isn’t very intelligent and hardly seems worthy of my belief.
“That analogy does not work because I did not make it up in my mind since I do not claim to hear the Voice of God. It is Baha’u’llah who claimed to hear the Voice of God. I just believe that He heard it. But first I had to check Him out to determine if He was true Messenger of God or a false messenger, a con-man or a psychotic. That was not too difficult because His Life speaks for His motives as do His Writings. I am not saying that is verifiable proof that God spoke to Him, but the evidence is as good as it gets; better than for any religion that ever existed in the past.”
It really doesn’t matter if you claim ‘god spoke to you’ or that you ‘investigated it in your own mind’ and determined that god spoke to god’s messenger. The fact remains that both you and the terrorists have no verifiable evidence to support your conclusions. For all I know the terrorists never claimed to actually speak to god. They may very well have claimed to have ‘checked out’ the validity of their ancient texts and determined that they were the genuine words of god and after ‘investigating in their minds’ concluded that god wanted them to kill people. The point is that BOTH you and the terrorists rely on purely internal evaluations of the evidence, with no external verification for what you conclude. OBVIOUSLY without some sort of external verification it’s possible for people to reach completely WRONG conclusion… such as god wanted people to fly airplanes into buildings.
“In that case, nobody would believe in God because God is not verifiable. However, the facts surrounding the Revelation of Baha’u’llah ARE verifiable.”
And if god is not verifiable then maybe it would be best if NO ONE believed it god’s existence. Sadly, the ‘facts’ you have that ‘verify’ these revelations is no more reliable than the ‘facts’ the terrorists gleaned from THEIR religious texts that convinced them that god wanted them to kill in god’s name.
The world would be FAR better off if everyone stopped believing in fantastical claims WITHOUT verifiable evidence.
Thermos aquaticus
Well-Known Member
A lack of belief is not a belief. Those are polar opposites.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I consider folk religions or religions without godheads to be religions because they are following someone, even if it is not a God or gods. In other words, they are not self-proclaimed atheists.
It is noteworthy that the reason there are many atheists in China is because of the effects of communism which had a lasting effect on people. Atheism was not a choice that was freely made. The reason for the decline in atheism worldwide (see chart cited below) is because the communist regime ended in the middle of the 19th century.
I am not going to argue with you about the statistics. All my sources say that about 7% of people in the world are positive atheists and agnostics which means that 93% of people believe in a God or gods. That does not mean they all have a religion, but 84 percent of the world population has a faith.
Religion is shrinking but agnosticism and atheism are also shrinking. What accounts for the shrinkage or religion is primarily people dropping out of Christianity in Europe and America.
Take a look at the chart here: Growth of religion - Wikipedia
To summarize, atheism was growing at a rate of 6.54% from 1910-2010 but dropped to a growth rate of 0.05% from 2000-2010. Agnosticism was growing at a rate of 5.45% from 1910-2010 but dropped to a growth rate of 0.32% from 2000-2010. That demonstrates that both atheism and agnosticism are on the decline but also that there are many more agnostics than atheists.
The growth rates of the Abrahamic religions from 1910-2010 were as follows: Judaism .11%, Christianity 1.32%, Islam 1.97%, and Baha’i Faith 3.54%.