McBell
Unbound
Only those who profess there is no god.
There are those who simply lack a belief either way.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Faith in no God
- Thread starter rrobs
- Start date
There are those who simply lack a belief either way.
Bird123
Well-Known Member
Hmmm? How about this? I think everyone is capable of Discovering God. If God exists then God can be found. On this level for whatever reason most theists and atheists are equal. The assumption is that God can not be found. Seems most give up if the task proves a certain amount of work.
This leaves us to Beliefs. Religious people, having been taught a set of beliefs, have been told to convert others to their beliefs. Some people Question rather than accept. They discover so many of those religious beliefs do not add up. This does not fall under a belief. Perhaps, it's Math.
Religious people can be persistent. This might lead people to have negative feelings. Tension between can lead into more negativity. This has nothing to do with faith on either side.
Does one accept or does one Question? To Question is the start on the journey to Discover the Real Truth. The Question comes down to Who wants the Real Truth and who sees only what they want to see? A important consideration is who is being true to themselves? There are many many issues that have nothing to do with religion or beliefs coming out. This is on both sides.
The true love of my life who is no longer alive, once told me: When people are really hurting, they are praying to Someone. I think deep down we all know God, whether we realize this or not. God will be familiar when we see God. It's so easy when one is with God. This is for atheists too. Forget all those conditions religion attempts to make. They are not true. Beliefs have never ever been important to God.
Perhaps it comes down to a few questions. For atheists: How much of your view that God does not exist stems from all those religious stories, views and conditions, not to mention all those who want to convert you?
For theists: Why do you value Beliefs over knowing the Truth? Why do you follow blindly instead of questioning everything? I have seen atheist throw many questions at theists only to get those memorized recited beliefs back at them. Everything about God will add up completely. If it's not adding up, It's NOT God!!
So atheist and theists really need each other. When the view is shared long enough even through all the struggles, a Wider, Better view will be Discovered. Until then, my only advice is that more knowledge will be gained if the interaction is through Love and Kindness.
There is much more equality between the two groups than some want to believe. To think different is to value so many of the petty things than mankind holds so dear. These petty things are incorporated in those holy books so if one blindly follows them, it is not God one is following.
Have I said too much??? OK! OK! That's what I see. It's so very clear to me.
rrobs
Well-Known Member
I did not mean to trip you up in any way. The whole point of the OP was to perhaps make those who criticize Christians from living by faith see that they themselves live by faith when it comes to things unseen. It might change their attitude about God.
If I have any feelings of superiority it because of God in Christ in me which has nothing to do with my ability in anything. My sufficiency in all things is of God. I'm nobody special in any sense of the word apart from Him, and yet with Him, I am everything. There is nothing shameful in knowing God as revealed in the scriptures.
rrobs
Well-Known Member
Lacking belief either way is the only logical choice once it is accepted there is no actual proof either way.
Howard Is
Lucky Mud
McBell
Unbound
I am not about to do your homework.
If YOU claim god did it, then it is on YOU to provide a workable definition of god.
Actually, I do not.
God doing it has to rest on God doing it, not on there being a better, or any other, explanation.
Otherwise you are merely using God to fill in the gap.
huh?
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
Lacking a belief in something requires ZERO faith. All it takes to have a lack of belief in something is a lack of verifiable evidence that it is true.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
The question is: Do you believe that unicorns definitely DO exist. If the answer is: I don't KNOW if they exist, they you do NOT definitely believe that they DO exist. You are in essence an 'atheist' when it come to belief in unicorns.
I do not criticize Christians -- or anybody else. I only ever point out that believers of every faith have accepted -- in the absence of any evidence whatsoever -- something that has never made sense to me. And for most of my life, they insisted that even though I couldn't see it, they were sure I had to live it.
What I would like theists to know is that their unevidenced suppositions are meaningless to me, and that therefore I won't be playing.
Too many people in my 72 years have told me "God wants..." or "God hates...." but unfortunately, God himself never bothered to inform me. And I have never, ever, found a reason to suppose that some human, just like myself, had a special channel to some being that was making rules for me -- but couldn't find a way to inform me itself.
So my take on this is I will not tell you what you should believe, or what you should do -- and I'd ask you to do the same for me.
But I will also say this: I come to my world-view through examination of -- wait for it! -- the world and everything I have access to and can experience. Most religious people base their world-view on what they were told, and what they then go on to imagine without ever having any concrete evidence.
As you yourself said, "With Him I am everything...." except you will never, no matter how you are tested, provide a single piece of evidence that this "Him" you speak of is anything more than an idea in your very human brain.
Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
I can never quite prove I'm not a brain in a vat.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
Nope. I don't accept any significant claim without evidence, thus I don't require faith.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
Not how it works. My lack of faith in any god is based on a lack of evidence for same. Absolutely no faith is required. As for proving the non-existence of something... again, that's not how it works. It's impossible to prove a negative.
Satans_Serrated_Edge
Deicidal
Replace all instances of 'God' with 'Cthulhu' in your post, read it back, and tell me if you think the logic holds up.
wandering peacefully
Which way to the woods?
So if one doesn't know, why would a person conclude or declare there is definitely a God?
Do they also believe in the existence of every other unknown and unproven entity or idea?
The difference is that one set of humans declare there is this god *depending and varying on culture and exposure*, stating it as undeniable fact, and the other people who do not believe those claims. For the millionth time.
There is a difference. And why theists always want to depict atheists as 'just the same as they are' when it comes to having faith, is beyond me.
Theists usually want to point out the difference between atheists and themselves. So why the attempt to put them in the same boat when it comes to faith? I would think they would revel in the superior position of having faith in the not knowable answer about God/gods.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
Not really. Existence is a pretty solid argument for existence. You're going to have to offer a great deal more to claim that it's an argument for a creator.
No jumping required. Your OP was quite clear on the matter.
Why would proof be required? Why is that your standard?
A related question: without opening it to look, how much cheese is in your refrigerator right now?
Nonsense. Do you understand why that's a false equivocation?
Jim
Nets of Wonder
The difference is that when people have faith in no God, they aren’t conscious of it and don’t call it “faith.” Also, sometimes when people are defending God beliefs they look to me like they have more faith in no God than some people who are denouncing God beliefs. I don’t think they would act the way they do if the God they say they believe in was real to them.
Last edited:
cladking
Well-Known Member
I can state with 99.9% probability that there is no unicorn.
A can not state there is 99.9% certainty there is or is no God.
lukethethird
unknown member
Why not?
Nimos
Well-Known Member
I think you might be slightly misleading yourself or misunderstanding what it means to prove something. Nothing, at least within science are absolute, like I could say to you, that it is a fact and it is proven that gravity works the way it does.
But there is no way for me, to take into account that tomorrow gravity will not have changed to work complete different compared to how we know it works now. So maybe the Universe works in a way so gravity changes how it works every 14.6 billion years or how old the universe is and that just happens to be tomorrow that this shift takes place.
So when scientists talk about facts and something being proven, it will always mean within this limit and that this is based on the current data that are available to us. And if all those data from experiments, observations etc. throughout the years keep confirming a certain thing to work a given way, it is reasonable to assume that, this is how something works and that this is also how it will be tomorrow.
Therefore in the case of unicorns, where no data have been collected, in form of observations and fossils etc. then there is no basis to assume or even consider that unicorns are real and therefore the believe in unicorns being real is not equally valid to there not existing unicorns.
But again that doesn't mean that on some random planet in the Universe there ain't running unicorns around, but it is simply not valid until some sort of theory or observation have been presented for why they should exist. Someone simply believing it to be the case, is not something anyone ought to take serious.
Take something like dark matter and dark energy (See below), we can't see it, taste it or touch it. So why is that a valid hypothesis when unicorns ain't?
The reason is due to other observations where things doesn't add up, but if something like dark matter and energy exists, it would fit what some of the scientific models predict. Which is why it makes sense for us to test and look for it. And should it turn out to be wrong, then they will have to start over, because with our current knowledge, things still doesn't add up, if dark matter and energy is not there. A lot of people have the impression that science is simply about proving what is correct, but actually its much more about figuring out what is definitely not correct.
Which is why you could make an experiment, trying to figure out what will causes paper to burn?
So first you take an ice cube and see if that works, which clearly doesn't cause paper to burn. Eventually you try to light a match and the flame make it burn. Obviously that tells you that fire from a match will cause it to burn, but that doesn't mean that nothing else will also not do it. So its very informative to know that fire can cause it to burn, but equally interesting to know that the properties of a ice cube won't. (Clearly this is a very simple example)
But the moment we don't have an answer that is obvious, finding out what is clearly not the case, is very important.
So in regards to unicorns and whether they exists, there is no reason to look for them, and therefore it is not equally reasonable to assume that they exists as them not existing.
So, ultimately, saying that "I don't know" is correct, but from a rational point of view, it makes little sense, because you would have to relate to whatever claim people make, in discussions with no purpose to them, like me saying: "You not believing in a planet made out of marshmallows, doesn't mean that one doesn't exists." But such statement is completely useless and meaningless, if I give you no reason to even consider whether or not one should exist in the first place, Which is why, a meteor made out of marshmallows hitting Earth could change that. But until that happen, why even bother with it?
Hope it makes sense
From wikipedia:
Dark matter is a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total energy density. Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained by accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seen. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and that it has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. Dark matter is called dark because it does not appear to interact with observable electromagnetic radiation, such as light, and so it is undetectable by existing astronomical instruments.
Primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would fly apart, or that they would not have formed or would not move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing and in the cosmic microwave background, along with astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, the formation and evolution of galaxies, mass location during galactic collisions, and the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters. In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the universe contains 5% ordinary matter and energy, 27% dark matter and 68% of an unknown form of energy known as dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 85% of total mass, while dark energy plus dark matter constitute 95% of total mass–energy content.
Because dark matter has not yet been observed directly, if it exists, it must barely interact with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation, except through gravity. Most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic in nature; it may be composed of some as-yet undiscovered subatomic particles. The primary candidate for dark matter is some new kind of elementary particle that has not yet been discovered, in particular, weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Many experiments to directly detect and study dark matter particles are being actively undertaken, but none have yet succeeded. Dark matter is classified as "cold", "warm", or "hot" according to its velocity (more precisely, its free streaming length). Current models favor a cold dark matter scenario, in which structures emerge by gradual accumulation of particles.
Although the existence of dark matter is generally accepted by the scientific community, some astrophysicists, intrigued by certain observations which do not fit the dark matter theory, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. These models attempt to account for all observations without invoking supplemental non-baryonic matter.
Last edited: