How I rationalize my atheism

[paradox]

Yes. I agree.

That would depend on what one refers to as "the universe". This is a metaphysical topic. In theology, the traditional or the "Only Traditional" idea of the universe is that it's everything that exists in the natural world.

Thus when it's everything, there is nothing outside of it in the physical world. The sentence "there is nothing" does not mean "existence of nothing" if you know what I mean. That means there is nothing called "outside the universe".

Yes.
I'm wondering, if there is "nothing" outside universe, then God is inside natural or universe since nothing is outside.
Does this mean God is natural and real? what a paradox

 

[syo]

God: An intelligent thing outside our universe with some power over our universe

Nope.

 

[firedragon]

Yes.
I'm wondering, if there is "nothing" outside universe, then God is inside natural or universe since nothing is outside.
Does this mean God is natural and real? what a paradox

Nope. God is metaphysical.

 

[paradox]

Nope. God is metaphysical.

hm, thus God is not real??
I can understand that this mean God is not natural, ex. it's supernatural, but how is God real if it's metaphysical concept?

I'm not much into metaphysics so my question might sound noobish, but it's interesting topic.

 

[firedragon]

hm, thus God is not real??

Metaphysical. Metaphysical does not mean not-real.

I can understand that this mean God is not natural, ex. it's supernatural, but how is God real if it's metaphysical concept?

Metaphysical does not mean "conceptual".

I'm not much into metaphysics so my question might sound noobish, but it's interesting topic.

I think Paradox a simple explanation of metaphysical is supernatural. It's beyond the physical world. It's supernatural.

 

[PureX]

If I understand your first claim here, "Starting with something akin to the realm of possibility/impossibility regulating the expression of energy, and causing it to manifest as motion, space, time, matter, gravity, light, heat, and so on through the "Big Bang"." is undermined by my first assertion that we cannot know what exists outside our universe because you are making a claim about what exists outside our universe.

We know that the universe is an expression of order. And order requires consistent limitation (laws), to occur. It is those 'laws' governing the expression of energy that exploded into being at the Big Bang that then determined the nature of the universe that followed. We do not know the origin of those 'laws'. But we can see that they were present from before the beginning, because they controlled it's expression, and determined it's outcome. Without them only abject chaos could have resulted. And nothing can exist in a state of abject chaos but abject chaos.

It's true we do not know what this "energy" is that exploded into a universe, or what governed it's expression to create this universe. But we can see and experience (and are) the result. And that result is extremely complex, and highly organized (though it does employ some chance) far beyond the reach of our own intellects. Such that most of us presume that mystery source, whatever it is, must be or have been intelligent beyond measure. And it's not an unreasonable assumption. Though that's all it can ever be from our perspective: an assumption.

 

[Brian2]

I don't see how science's inattention to the supernatural can be said to be based on "presuppositions".

There's simply nothing out there in reality that answers the description. Not a single instance of magic, or miracles, or ghosts, or souls, authenticated to modern standards ─ nothing. Please correct me if that's wrong.

Indeed, the very word "supernatural" means "outside of nature" ie "outside of reality" ─ so that the only manner in which the supernatural is known to exist is as a set of concepts / things imagined in individual brains, no?

That being so, would it not be fairer to say that the reality of the supernatural is the "presupposition"?

In my thinking I guess the reality of the supernatural is my presupposition.
When 'science' thinks it knows that the supernatural is outside of nature and so knows that it has not the tools to determine an answer.
Science however does not equate "outside of nature" with "outside of reality", that would be going beyond what science has and can determine.
But because science has not discovered anything that can be measured and tested in a scientific way to be termed the supernatural, science does not include the supernatural in it's thinking. That's the naturalistic methodology, but "methodology" does not mean that science know about the supernatural or that the supernatural is not real.
Getting back to my presupposition of the existence of the supernatural in my thinking, it is in response to what I see as the experiences of other people with the supernatural and is not just something I have imagined and made up in my own brain.
When I use this presupposition in my thinking (usually called faith) it allows me to see things from a different pov and to see things in nature which I think are related to the supernatural/ existence of God, which those without faith may not see or be willing to see.

 

[Audie]

Honest honest honest. If I did not have the Bible as a guide I would be "out there..." really bad.

The Bible is terrif for guiding one to believe
whatever they choose to believe.

 

[Audie]

We know that the universe is an expression of order. And order requires consistent limitation (laws), to occur. It is those 'laws' governing the expression of energy that exploded into being at the Big Bang that then determined the nature of the universe that followed. We do not know the origin of those 'laws'. But we can see that they were present from before the beginning, because they controlled it's expression, and determined it's outcome. Without them only abject chaos could have resulted. And nothing can exist in a state of abject chaos but abject chaos.

It's true we do not know what this "energy" is that exploded into a universe, or what governed it's expression to create this universe. But we can see and experience (and are) the result. And that result is extremely complex, and highly organized (though it does employ some chance) far beyond the reach of our own intellects. Such that most of us presume that mystery source, whatever it is, must be or have been intelligent beyond measure. And it's not an unreasonable assumption. Though that's all it can ever be from our perspective: an assumption.

Ever notice how every line of reasoning by
a believer ends up with " therefore god"?


You might consider reading Tegmark' s book.
Might.
Our Mathematical Universe - Wikipedia

 

[PureX]

In my thinking I guess the reality of the supernatural is my presupposition.
When 'science' thinks it knows that the supernatural is outside of nature and so knows that it has not the tools to determine an answer.
Science however does not equate "outside of nature" with "outside of reality", that would be going beyond what science has and can determine.
But because science has not discovered anything that can be measured and tested in a scientific way to be termed the supernatural, science does not include the supernatural in it's thinking. That's the naturalistic methodology, but "methodology" does not mean that science know about the supernatural or that the supernatural is not real.
Getting back to my presupposition of the existence of the supernatural in my thinking, it is in response to what I see as the experiences of other people with the supernatural and is not just something I have imagined and made up in my own brain.
When I use this presupposition in my thinking (usually called faith) it allows me to see things from a different pov and to see things in nature which I think are related to the supernatural/ existence of God, which those without faith may not see or be willing to see.

That's a good explanation, especially that it's a choice. And I agree that it's a choice. But I think the relevance to the rest of us would be in why to choose this view. What are the advantages and disadvantages of choosing such a 'supernatural' pretext?

I cannot help but think that whatever state was occurring before the Big Band would have been 'supernatural' simply because what I would call 'natural' is defined by and contained by the 'laws' of the universe that resulted. Whatever happened before that point is beyond the limitations of those laws.

But this is all an issue that comes from speculating beyond what is here and now. Which is all in keeping with the natural universe. So why would we want to impose a possible supernatural pretext to that?

 

[blü 2]

In my thinking I guess the reality of the supernatural is my presupposition.

I won't argue with that.

When 'science' thinks it knows that the supernatural is outside of nature and so knows that it has not the tools to determine an answer.
Science however does not equate "outside of nature" with "outside of reality", that would be going beyond what science has and can determine.

Objective reality is the world external to the self, which we know about through our senses. It's the same thing as nature (in its wide sense). And it's what the physical sciences explore, and have had great success in exploring.

Are we still on the same page, or do you define "objective reality" differently?

But because science has not discovered anything that can be measured and tested in a scientific way to be termed the supernatural, science does not include the supernatural in it's thinking. That's the naturalistic methodology, but "methodology" does not mean that science know about the supernatural or that the supernatural is not real.

It's simply the case that 'supernatural' is derived from Latin words meaning 'above' and 'nature' (in the sense I've been using 'nature'). It means 'not in nature' so to me it means 'not in reality'.

Therefore the only way it's known to exist is as a set of concepts / ideas / things imagined in an individual brain. That would be consistent, I'd suggest, with the observable fact that there are hundreds if not thousands of religions, many or most of them claiming to possess the genuine knowledge of the supernatural, yet claiming incompatible things.

By contrast, if they were making claims about reality then we could simply check those claims by examining reality and seeing which is correct. But there's no objective standard for supernatural belief, is there?

Getting back to my presupposition of the existence of the supernatural in my thinking, it is in response to what I see as the experiences of other people with the supernatural and is not just something I have imagined and made up in my own brain.

I think it's correct to say we haven't found a culture on earth that didn't have supernatural beliefs of one kind or another. It follows, does it not, that religion is something humans do by instinct. I subscribe to the idea that because the human brain has evolved to provide an instant explanatory narrative to whatever it observes, this has meant supernatural narratives to explain things like weather, thunder, drought, famine, plague, good or bad luck in hunting, fishing, war, love, and so on. It has also operated to give a sense of control over such things, even if that control is in truth imagined, such as both sides in the two world wars praying to their respective versions and understandings of the Christian god for success in war or at least survival.

When I use this presupposition in my thinking (usually called faith) it allows me to see things from a different pov and to see things in nature which I think are related to the supernatural/ existence of God, which those without faith may not see or be willing to see.

I'd wonder if you were then the generator of the supernatural, and the world external to you was not.

 

[joe1776]

Much of the setup if the argument is to establish that within the confines of our knowledge about the extraverse (IE, we know nothing except that logic can apply to it), anything an intelligent creator can do, a non-intelligent force can do. Given this, intelligence becomes the one assumption that differentiates the two and is unnecessary for the act of creation. You would need to undermine my first proposition, "The extraverse can be any conceivable or inconceivable state of structure, laws, or existence" to show that intelligence is necessary.

The worth of an argument is measured by its power to persuade intelligent, unbiased minds.

Would you expect your argument to persuade an agnostic to adopt hard atheism with an argument based on a lack of knowledge (We know nothing except that logic can apply to it) and an questionable application of Occam's Razor to eliminate one of the two possibilities?

 

[Ella S.]

I think the claims of the existence of a God or gods cannot be proven or disproven through pure argumentation. They're claims about whether something exists in reality, and for that you need evidence.

When I say "evidence" here I mean "empirical observations which indicate the likelihood of a particular claim."

Currently, the evidence suggests that "mind-body dualism" and "agency detection" are more like convenient illusions that our nervous systems evolved.

Moreover, we have disproven mind-body dualism in neuroscience and psychiatry for quite some time now.

I think that's enough to claim that no gods exist, since almost all gods are some form of disembodied agency. In fact, it also disproves the existence of the soul and the afterlife, too, in one fell swoop.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Ever notice how every line of reasoning by
a believer ends up with " therefore god"?


You might consider reading Tegmark' s book.
Might.
Our Mathematical Universe - Wikipedia

 

[LuisDantas]

I don't see any need for a rational justification of atheism.

Atheism is self-justified because it is the logical alternative to an unnecessary and unsupported belief.

Claims that there would be a need of an "uncreated creator" are nothing more than attempts at having meaningless answers to questions that are not necessarily meaningful themselves.

 

[Audie]

View attachment 65602

Would one plus one be two, without God having to say so?

 

[sun rise]

This argument specifically deals with a creator god who brought our universe into being. By extension, this creator god must be capable of existing outside our universe. To my knowledge, the definition I give encompasses all possible creator gods. If it doesn't encompass all creator gods, can you give an example of one that doesn't fit that definiton?

The human analogy is dreaming. When we dream, we interact with characters that appear to be separate from us and individual. But when we awake, we know we dreamed a world that does not really exist,

Rather than there being a creator separate from creation, advaita (and Meher Baba) indicates that there is only God with God as human souls in the state of reincarnation not aware of their nature as God due to ignorance which can be personified as "Maya".

So in this framework, "creation" is God's great dream. The structure of the dream is what Meher Baba indicated in God Speaks as the "Ten States of God":

• State I God in Beyond-Beyond
• State II God in Beyond
• Sub-States A, B, C
• State III God as Emanator, Sustainer and Dissolver
• State IV God as Embodied Soul
• State V God as Soul in the State of Evolution
• State VI God as Human Soul in the State of Reincarnation
• State VII God in The State of Spiritually Advanced Souls
• State VIII God as The Divinely Absorbed
• State IX God as Liberated Incarnate Soul
• State X God as Man-God and God-Man

 

[Alien826]

So far there had been no falsifiable evidence presented of a god despite literally billions of people over ten thousand years making claims.
In the same way there is no falsifiable evidence for invisible pink polka dot unicorns and leprechauns. For that reason i don't believe any gods, unicorns or leprechauns exist.

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

Hughes Mearns

 

[ChristineM]

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

Hughes Mearns

Chuckle. When i was an infant my dad used to recite that to me when he tucked me in to bed at night.
Thanks for the memory

 

[Tinker Grey]

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

Hughes Mearns

The poem also factors into a movie with John Cusack, Identity (2003) - IMDb