Frustrated athiest asks why do you believe in God?

[PureX]

It's an interesting g phenomenon that there's such a diversity of religious belief. It amazes me that very liberal people can be Christian, but also members of the KKK. I suspect there are many theists who would not be religious had they not been expose to religious belief in early life. Just being religious is a malleable term, because there are people who are not openly religious, like don't go to church, but do believe in God. Can they explain why they believe in a God but are in different to religious ritual? Not in my experience. They tend to just be following the crowd.

The way to unravel it is to recognize that the "beliefs" are not what's relevant to the function of theism or religion. It's faith. That's why there can be so many different belief systems that still "work" for people. Because it's not the specific belief systems that work for people, it's the action of their faith.

 

[F1fan]

The way to unravel it is to recognize that the "beliefs" are not what's relevant to the function of theism or religion. It's faith.

Sorry but beliefs are crucial to faith. Without belief in a God there is nothing to invest faith into.

Faith can also be synonymous with belief, that being a category of belief that is unjustified and not rational. So even in that application belief is relevant.

That's why there can be so many different belief systems that still "work" for people. Because it's not the specific belief systems that work for people, it's the action of their faith.

Quite the contrary. The reason there is so much diversity in belief systems is because of different beliefs that make up the systems. Christianity has different beliefs that Hindus and Muslims. Fact. You seem to think you can take a Muslim out of their belief system and put him in another and the "action of his faith" will be intact?

Perhaps you can expand on what "action of their faith" means specifically. If beliefs are not relevant then this has to be a very basic thing. But then you still have to account for the real diversity of belief that theists value.

 

[F1fan]

Nobody can find God with logic. There is no sound argument that ends, "Therefore God."​

Hogwash.

OK, prove you are correct.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Nobody can find God with logic. There is no sound argument that ends, "Therefore God."​

OK, prove you are correct.

You prove God doesn't exist.
See how that works?

 

[F1fan]

You prove God doesn't exist.
See how that works?

No one has to prove the non-existence of things not known to exist.

Plus proving a negative is a logical fallacy. This is why the burden of proof is on claimants, like those who claim any number of Gods exist.

You replied that it is "hogwash" that Nobody can find God with logic. So show us how anyone can find God with logic. Use facts. Provide a coherent explanation of the facts.

Or were you just bluffing?

 

[PureX]

Sorry but beliefs are crucial to faith. Without belief in a God there is nothing to invest faith into.

That's simply not so. I am profoundly agnostic. I have no idea if God even exists, let alone what the nature of such an existence would entail. It's all a great big mystery, to me. And yet every morning I thank this mystery for the gift of my existence. And I pray that I can use that gratitude to try and set my mind in a mode that will enable me to be a good, productive, helpful, positive human this day. To be grateful for the gift of experiencing existence not lone, but with other humans like myself. And so to treat them like I appreciate them. An so on. Not because I "believe in it", but because I choose that way of moving through the world, today. As I did, yesterday. Because I find it makes my life more valid and meaningful, ... to me.

It's all faith in action. I neither believe nor disbelieve anything, anymore. Because I have discovered that I have no need for such silly pretense. Through faith, I can just take whatever comes as it comes. And so far it's working. Life is better than it was before I chose to live this way.

Faith can also be synonymous with belief, that being a category of belief that is unjustified and not rational. So even in that application belief is relevant.

You've got the wrong guy. I don't see belief as ever being justified or rational. I see it as an unnecessary pretense.

 

[Wildswanderer]

No one has to prove the non-existence of things not known to exist.

Plus proving a negative is a logical fallacy. This is why the burden of proof is on claimants, like those who claim any number of Gods exist.

You replied that it is "hogwash" that Nobody can find God with logic. So show us how anyone can find God with logic. Use facts. Provide a coherent explanation of the facts.

Or were you just bluffing?

What is a fact?
Anything can be debated, even our own existence.
But logically for life to exist, something or some one has to start the process. No one has ever proven that life can kickstart itself from nothing.
It's actually illogical to believe some kind of creator doesn't exist.

 

[F1fan]

That's simply not so. I am profoundly agnostic. I have no idea if God even exists, let alone what the nature of such an existence would entail. It's all a great big mystery, to me. And yet every morning I thank this mystery for the gift of my existence. And I pray that I can use that gratitude to try and set my mind in a mode that will enable me to be a good, productive, helpful, positive human this day. To be grateful for the gift of experiencing existence not lone, but with other humans like myself. And so t treat them like I appreciate them. An so on. Not because I "believe in it", but just because I choose that way of moving through the world. I find it makes my life more valid and meaningful, to me.

It's all faith in action. I neither believe nor disbelieve anything, anymore. Because I have discovered that I have no need for such pretense. Through faith, I can just take whatever comes as it comes. And so far it's working. Life is better than it was before I chose to live this way.
You've got the wrong guy. I don't see belief as ever being justified or rational. I see it as an unnecessary pretense.

Given all this I'm not sure why you oppose atheists.

 

[F1fan]

What is a fact?

If you don't know what a fact is why are you debating?

Anything can be debated, even our own existence.
But logically for life to exist, something or some one has to start the process. No one has ever proven that life can kickstart itself from nothing.

Prove it. This is just an assumption you are making, not logic.

It's actually illogical to believe some kind of creator doesn't exist.

Another assumption. So you can't present an explanation with facts how a person can conclude a God exists. That means they are believing without adequate evidence.

 

[firedragon]

Well done, so accurate too - in lieu of any appropriate frubal.

Very good comment. Feel good please.

 

[PureX]

Given all this I'm not sure why you oppose atheists.

Because they are idiots that think they aren't.

We're ALL idiots, you see. But there is a way through this predicament (if we call it that). And that is to first acknowledge that we are idiots. And then, to consciously learn to live with it honestly, and humbly, and as effectively as we can.

But atheists don't believe they're idiots. They think that through the magical gods of science and objective reasoning they can "figure it out". They can become, ... not idiots. But they can't. And all the more-so because they don't even realize that they can't. It makes them not only idiots, but fools, too.

The same is true of religious fundamentalists, by the way, that think that through their magical gods and inerrant Bibles they can somehow become ... not idiots. They can't. And all the more-so because they also refuse to realize that they can't. And so they also become fools as well as idiots. (It's why they and the atheists waste so many hours on here arguing with each other about who isn't the bigger idiot and fool. )

Hey, you asked.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Nobody can find God with logic. There is no sound argument that ends, "Therefore God." Theistic philosophers have tried and failed for centuries.

Hogwash.

I would think that if you had a rebuttal, you'd provide it. You called the claim unsupportable (I assume that you mean unsupported). The following from Arguments for and against the Existence of God is support for the claim, and is a rebuttal to your opposite claim. The two cannot both be correct. Either God can be arrived at logically, that is, God's existence is the conclusion of a sound argument as you claim, or the opposite is true as the refutations below conclude. Your job, if you intend to rebut the claim (Hogwash is mere dismissal, not rebuttal), is to either find the flaw in any of these counterarguments, or find a new argument that has not and cannot be refuted.

Spoiler: refutation of the commonest arguments for God

Arguments for the Existence of God
Philosophers have tried to provide rational proofs of God's existence that go beyond dogmatic assertion or appeal to ancient scripture. The major proofs, with their corresponding objections, are as follows:
1. Ontological:
It is possible to imagine a perfect being. Such a being could not be perfect unless its essence included existence. Therefore a perfect being must exist.
Objection: You cannot define or imagine a thing into existence.
2. Causal:
Everything must have a cause. It is impossible to continue backwards to infinity with causes, therefore there must have been a first cause which was not conditioned by any other cause. That cause must be God.
Objections: If you allow one thing to exist without cause, you contradict your own premise. And if you do, there is no reason why the universe should not be the one thing that exists or originates without cause.
3. Design:
Animals, plants and planets show clear signs of being designed for specific ends, therefore there must have been a designer.
Objection: The principles of self-organization and evolution provide complete explanations for apparent design.
3a. Modern design argument:
the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. This is the strongest card in the theist hand. The laws of the universe seem to have been framed in such a way that stars and planets will form and life can emerge. Many constants of nature appear to be very finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical.
Objections: The odds against all possible universes are equally astronomical, yet one of them must be the actual universe. Moreover, if there are very many universes, then some of these will contain the possibility of life. Even if valid, the anthropic cosmological principle guarantees only that stars and planets and life will emerge - not intelligent life. In its weak form, the anthropic cosmological principle merely states that if we are here to observe the universe, it follows that the universe must have properties that permit intelligent life to emerge.
4. Experiential:
A very large number of people claim to have personal religious experiences of God.
Objections: We cannot assume that everything imagined in mental experiences (which include dreams, hallucinations etc) actually exists. Such experiences cannot be repeated, tested or publicly verified. Mystical and other personal experiences can be explained by other causes.
5. Pragmatic:
Human societies require ethics to survive. Ethics are more effectively enforced if people fear God and Hell and hope for Heaven (cf. the origin of ethical systems).
Objections: The usefulness of a belief does not prove its truth. In any case, many societies have thrived without these beliefs, while crime has thrived in theistic societies believing in heaven and hell.
General objection against all the rational proofs for God:
Each of the above arguments is independent of the others and cannot logically be used to reinforce the others.
The cause argument - even if it were valid - would prove only a first cause. It would tell us nothing about the nature of that cause, nor whether the cause was mental or physical. It would not prove that the first cause was the personal, judging, forgiving God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. It would not prove the existence of a designer or of a perfect being. Equally, the design argument would prove only a designer, the ontological argument would prove only the existence of a perfect being, and so on. None of these arguments individually can prove that the cause, designer or perfect being were one and the same - they could be three different beings.

I can say that exact same thing about atheism... it's completely illogical.

But you'd be wrong. The argument for atheism is simple: skepticism, or the idea that one ought to have sufficient support to justify a belief before believing it, and that no such evidence exists. Reason tells us that if those two premises are true, that atheism, or the lack of belief in gods, is the only logical position possible. Once again, to refute that rather than simply dismiss it with the wave of the hand and an utterance of hogwash, you need to present a counterargument that either demonstrates why one or both premises is incorrect, or why the conclusion derived from them is not sound.

Logical has a specific meaning, and it's not whatever you say it is or isn't according to what you choose to believe is the case. Just because you want theism to be a logical position and atheism illogical doesn't make either of them either of those. You have to make your case logically.

You're welcome to jump on board the logic express, but you'll need to learn and master its rules first, and demonstrate competence in their application. The rules aren't arbitrary, and can't be violated with out loss of validity. That's true for all of us, not just you. But until and unless you do, your claims of being logical after presenting invalid arguments whose fallacies have been correctly identified is rejected. You have to conform to the rules of logic to claim it for your arguments, and making fallacious arguments is evidence that you didn't.

You prove God doesn't exist.

Why? Did he make that claim? Most atheists don't. Most are agnostic atheists, and don't claim that gods do or do not exist, merely that they don't have a reason to believe that they do.

You, however, implied that the existence of God could be demonstrated, which is what calling that belief logical requires, and which would constitute a rebuttal of the atheist's claim that insufficient evidence to believe in deities is lacking if you could provide it. Why don't you go ahead and prove that with an undefeatable argument that concludes, "Therefore, God" if you can, and defeat the atheistic position, or agree that you can't, and that the skeptic therefore has no reason to believe you.

What is a fact?

A fact is a linguistic string such as the following sentence that accurately maps a piece of the world: I live five blocks north and three blocks east of the pier. If that is an accurate depiction of the geography between my front door and the pier, it will be the case that walking five blocks south and three blocks west from that front door will bring one to the pier. It is demonstrably true, hence a fact, truth being the quality that facts and only facts can claim to represent. This is the correspondence theory of truth. Ideas not drawn from experience and not demonstrably correct cannot be called facts, truth, knowledge, or correct.

Other types of claims cannot be called fact, such as that a deity exists. To do so, that deity needs to be demonstrable. You would need to provide evidence of this deity and any you argument you have that validly connects that evidence to a conclusion that a God exists, precisely what I said has never been done, why the claims of the theist are unsupported if he claims God as a fact, and why agnostic atheism is the only sound conclusion possible given reason and the evidence reality offers about its nature.

You're free to think however you like and believe whatever you choose to believe. I can't see anybody arguing with the claim that you believe there is a God, until, that is, you add that your belief is logical, and fail to provide sufficient support for it. You can tell me that you choose to believe that I actually live on the pier itself, zero blocks away, but if you call that a fact, you'll need to demonstrate the piece of reality that your alleged fact actually maps, the one that has me living on the pier.

 

[F1fan]

Because they are idiots that think they aren't.

We're ALL idiots, you see. But there is a way through this predicament (if we call it that). And that is to first acknowledge that we are idiots. And then, to consciously learn to live with it honestly, and humbly, and as effectively as we can.

I don't know what you mean when you say we are all idiots. If that is the case then it's not anything meaningful. We are all human by category, and it doesn't change anything that we acknowledge we are human. If we are all idiots by category then it's meaningless to acknowledge we are idiots as it's just the baseline fact. And of course "idiot" in your usage includes people with high IQ and and the mentally handicapped, so as I noted, it's meaningless.

But you don't explain what it means to be an idiot. It's certainly not the true definition of the word. So we are left with not knowing what you mean and what you are talking about. Is that the best you can do, to use words that mean one thing but don't apply to what you are saying?

But atheists don't believe they're idiots. They think that through the magical gods of science and objective reasoning they can "figure it out". They can become, ... not idiots. But they can't. And all the more-so because they don't even realize that they can't. It makes them not only idiots, but fools, too.

If what you are being critical of is how atheists use facts and reason to debate then how is that in error? How is reason unreliable as a means to assess ideas and claims? As noted your intuition and faith are very unreliable, so we know not to use these approach to discerning true from false.

The same is true of religious fundamentalists, by the way, that think that through their magical gods and inerrant Bibles they can somehow become ... not idiots. They can't. And all the more-so because they also refuse to realize that they can't. And so they also become fools as well as idiots. (It's why they and the atheists waste so many hours on here arguing with each other about who isn't the bigger idiot and fool. )

But they use faith, which is the approach you advocate for, so how can you be critical of them for coming up with beliefs that feel good to them?

 

[cladking]

Prejudice and bias, which are preferences for one thing over another, are good things if they're rational, that is, derived empirically.

And this is exactly where believers in science went wrong. People believe what they want to believe and every single person wants to believe they can act rationally. This is a characteristic of consciousness to which modern people are blind. Consciousness is life, consciousness is rationality imposed on the "mind" which is difficult for us to see because we think in a language that is no longer rational. We each look around for the beliefs we choose to adopt and those who choose science do so for excellent reasons; it is highly rational. But many of us do not choose to believe in science because we know "science" can not answer any of the big questions and might never. It can't even shed any light on whether there's a God or not but it certainly can't tell us to marry Sharon or Marylyn. It can't tell us why we're here or how we got here and even if we choose to accept the shallow and facile explanations we are no closer to the truth.

You can have all the rational explanations you want but believing in science can't even tell you how gravity works. Indeed, believing in science can even close your eyes to things like the wonder of creation if we lose our ability to see anomalies completely. If you have no ability to see what you don't understand then everything you see is limited by your beliefs.

 

[cladking]

Intuition isn't any more reliable than faith, so irrelevant.

This isn't true. Or more correctly there is more than one meaning of "intuition".

When I use the word I mean that I am skipping a great number of steps in deductive logic in order to cut straight to the answer.

"Intuition" is getting an answer without all the hard work. "Intuition" has other meanings as well and some people are skipping inductive logic or don't know they are using logic at all. They easily see they should marry Sharon rather than Marylyn with no flow charts, quizzes, or experimentation. They don't even ask their pastor or rabbi and just go with their gut.

 

[cladking]

People do believe in God because it feels good. Not because it is a reasoned conclusion.

So exactly why did you decide to believe in science? Did you just assume that it must know more about life than religion? Did you assume you can understand everything if you accept a few simple axioms and definitions?

 

[F1fan]

This isn't true. Or more correctly there is more than one meaning of "intuition".

When I use the word I mean that I am skipping a great number of steps in deductive logic in order to cut straight to the answer.

"Intuition" is getting an answer without all the hard work. "Intuition" has other meanings as well and some people are skipping inductive logic or don't know they are using logic at all. They easily see they should marry Sharon rather than Marylyn with no flow charts, quizzes, or experimentation. They don't even ask their pastor or rabbi and just go with their gut.

Thanks, but you supported by point that it is unreliable. It might be correct sometimes, but not reliably correct. It is a gut feeling, and could be wrong.

 

[F1fan]

So exactly why did you decide to believe in science?

People don't believe in science. Science is an objective method that tests hypothesis and reports results. We accept the results as they minimum standard in 99.95%.

Did you just assume that it must know more about life than religion? Did you assume you can understand everything if you accept a few simple axioms and definitions?

No, religion demonstrates it is wrong about a great many things, thus unreliable as a means for truth.

 

[cladking]

I've explained many times, that we can exist in God's vision and can't anywhere else because only God can truly see us and judge us as we are. Who we are is subject to judgment, it's contingent on judgment defining it, without a perfect judgment there is no exact who we are, and there is no even guessing who we are in this case. It would be an illusion and we would be a made up fantasy by the mind as far as our value and inner image/beauty goes.

Perhaps I should hold my tongue instead but this is one of the many things I like about religion. Religion has several advantages on believing in science and one is the concept we will be judged and we are always being judged as well. Our every action has consequences and since we our actions are determined by what we believe these have consequences as well. Almost everybody wants to do what is best or right so the judgement that occurs at our death also concerns us. This judgement is passed by nature/ God. We are laid to rest and remembered fondly or we are tormented in hell from doing the "right" things wrongly and forgotten by good people.

It is our choice.

Even the genes we leave behind us are telling forever. The values we instill in children never really go away and are a determinant of our "afterlife".

 

[cladking]

It's an interesting g phenomenon that there's such a diversity of religious belief. It amazes me that very liberal people can be Christian, but also members of the KKK.

Obviously Thomas Jefferson was a worse human being than a kkk member since he owned slaves and most kkk members just burn crosses.