How often do theists believe they have evidence for God's existence?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So far, the only arguments I can imagine being said is; "It is just clear that God exists, look at the world" and "No, man, you're not looking at the world right. Look at the world again, it's obvious that God doesn't exist."

If there really was a God who was active in the world, then that atheist's position would be untenable. If either perspective works, then God just doesn't matter... which is incompatible with most theist views.

If we start assuming that both views are valid and let the chips fall where they may, then the theist perspective proves to be invalid. If we assume that the theist perspective MUST be valid, then any atheist who isn't living under a rock must be either delusional or lying. I know that some theists take that second view, but I didn't think you were one of them.

 

[Thief]

I have no idea of what you mean.

Edited to add: by which I mean that you did not answer my question.

Sure I did.....it's a choice....you have to make the choice....
I'm not going to force you to sign your name in blood.....
Won't chop off your head....
Won't shun you and your family....

But I will stand back and let heaven decide what to do with you.

 

[LuisDantas]

Sure I did.....it's a choice....you have to make the choice....

Okay, now you are answering my question. Misjuding me as well, but that is par of course.

I'm not going to force you to sign your name in blood.....
Won't chop off your head....
Won't shun you and your family....

But I will stand back and let heaven decide what to do with you.

Be my guest.

 

[Thief]

Okay, now you are answering my question. Misjuding me as well, but that is par of course.



Be my guest.

And how is there judgment to you?
I just believe in cause and effect.

There is the physical give and take.
There is also the spiritual give and take.

Choose as you please.....I'm not going to rough you up.
And maybe heaven will also stand back...
and let the devil do so.
(see the book....Job)

 

[LuisDantas]

And how is there judgment to you?

You are misrepresenting me as some sort of stubborn denier of God's existence.

I am just an atheist, simple as that. There is a world of difference.

 

[Thief]

You are misrepresenting me as some sort of stubborn denier of God's existence.

I am just an atheist, simple as that. There is a world of difference.

oh!....so....you're just not sure?

 

[Sabour]

Well a reason I saw lately for people being atheists is them saying "we don't need a religion to have morality"

The flow here is that religion is not only for morality. Religion is about "right for the creation" and "right for the Creator"

So I think one of the reasons people become atheists is that they think that religion is only about morality. What makes think worst is not only that they think that religion is about morality, they also notice that many theists have no morality at all. So they see religion as a total fail.

Another major reason I see is that people tie up the existence of God with the religion they were born into. Meaning if one fails in there eyes the other will automatically fail. So if I was born a Christian and saw a flow in Christianity I would automatically say Christianity is wrong there is not God which doesn't make sense for me.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Silly /innacurate analogy.

Do you feel that any of your beliefs are a matter of choice? Do you think that if you tried really, really hard, you could make yourself genuinely atheist?

Or what about a less emotionally charged change of belief? Could you, say, choose to believe that the Declaration of Independence was written in 1998, hold this belief for an hour (or a day, or any set period of your choosing), and then choose to go back to believing that it was written in 1776?

Could you do this with ANY belief? Could you actually choose your beliefs? I've never felt like I could choose mine - they just seem to follow inevitably from various things (on a good day, evidence; on a bad day, prejudices)... but I've never found any way where I could resolve to believe something and then just do it. Have you?

 

[Desert Snake]

I don't think there is some big mystery as to why atheists choose atheism, as I have noted in other threads, it tends to be either from past experiences ( yes, I have noticed this, regardless of some who will say otherwise), or just don't want to believe in G-d or sometimes any deity, because it goes against science etc.
Theists believe for various reasons as well, there isn't some single 'theist' type of person, or atheist for that matter, however people identifying as straight agnostic seem the most unopinionated.
Anyways, often when I talk to atheists, they have a basis for atheism, related to theistic ideas, they often are actually pretty knowleable about the bible or common G-d concepts etc., this is how I know their atheism isn't just a 'lack' of something, it is usually an 'anti-something'.

 

[LuisDantas]

oh!....so....you're just not sure?

About what?

I'm very certain that I am an atheist, and that there is no God far as the matter applies to me.

I'm also very certain that there is no sense whatsoever in worrying about a speculative afterlife.

Are you asking about something else?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I don't think there is some big mystery as to why atheists choose atheism, as I have noted in other threads, it tends to be either from past experiences ( yes, I have noticed this, regardless of some who will say otherwise), or just don't want to believe in G-d or sometimes any deity, because it goes against science etc.

When you say "just don't want to believe", do you mean genuine disbelief, or are you talking about theists who pretend to be atheists?

Theists believe for various reasons as well, there isn't some single 'theist' type of person, or atheist for that matter, however people identifying as straight agnostic seem the most unopinionated.

Strange our experiences are different: I've run into plenty of agnostics of the "on the fence is the most rational place to be and those who pick one side or the other are dogmatic sheeple" variety.

Anyways, often when I talk to atheists, they have a basis for atheism, related to theistic ideas, they often are actually pretty knowleable about the bible or common G-d concepts etc., this is how I know their atheism isn't just a 'lack' of something, it is usually an 'anti-something'.

For me, it's a combination of lack of evidence combined with the principles of skepticism and freethought... i.e. that claims shouldn't be accepted on the basis of just tradition or dogma, and shouldn't be accepted when not properly supported by evidence.

 

[LuisDantas]

Well a reason I saw lately for people being atheists is them saying "we don't need a religion to have morality"

That is a reason for not having a religion, not for disbelief in God.

The two matters are fairly unconnected, all things told.

The flow here is that religion is not only for morality. Religion is about "right for the creation" and "right for the Creator"

So you are saying that (theistic) religion is in some sense a matter of giving the due credit (and perhaps gratitude and/or reverence?) to a hypothetical Creator God?

That looks like a far weaker reason to seek religion than morality, IMO. Morality has practical value and is a legitimate need - and when correctly practiced, religion is a very useful tool for developing it.

As for assuming that there is a creator God and that he somehow needs me to acknowledge his existence - well, that is just plain unconvincing. That would require a very unlikely and exotic kind of God, and it goes against the available evidence to boot.

So I think one of the reasons people become atheists is that they think that religion is only about morality. What makes think worst is not only that they think that religion is about morality, they also notice that many theists have no morality at all. So they see religion as a total fail.

There is something to that, but I think you are underestimating the downsides of associating religion and morality with belief in God.

It is possible that you are also assuming that people need a reason to be atheists. Such is not the case.

Another major reason I see is that people tie up the existence of God with the religion they were born into. Meaning if one fails in there eyes the other will automatically fail. So if I was born a Christian and saw a flow in Christianity I would automatically say Christianity is wrong there is not God which doesn't make sense for me.

That is not a very frequent situation in my experience. People tend to be far more attached to belief in God than to specific religions.

 

[Desert Snake]

When you say "just don't want to believe", do you mean genuine disbelief, or are you talking about theists who pretend to be atheists?

No, I meant just don't have the desire, interest, etc.

Strange our experiences are different: I've run into plenty of agnostics of the "on the fence is the most rational place to be and those who pick one side or the other are dogmatic sheeple" variety.

I have not met very many agnostics, so actually haven't heard that sentiment. That does make sense though. (from that perspective).

For me, it's a combination of lack of evidence combined with the principles of skepticism and freethought... i.e. that claims shouldn't be accepted on the basis of just tradition or dogma, and shouldn't be accepted when not properly supported by evidence.

O.k.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I've argued in the past that if evidence really was all that mattered then all Atheists would become Pantheists or otherwise adopt a form of Theism based on the observable material world. Similarly it seems that no amount of evidence to the contrary can shake some Theists from their particular perception of god/s.

That's what I was going to say. The concept of theism is so malleable that, really, anything could be viewed as Divine and revered as such. But sacralization of observable or abstract phenomena just seems to be outside of some people's personalities.

 

[Sabour]

That is a reason for not having a religion, not for disbelief in God.

The two matters are fairly unconnected, all things told.




So you are saying that (theistic) religion is in some sense a matter of giving the due credit (and perhaps gratitude and/or reverence?) to a hypothetical Creator God?

That looks like a far weaker reason to seek religion than morality, IMO. Morality has practical value and is a legitimate need - and when correctly practiced, religion is a very useful tool for developing it.

As for assuming that there is a creator God and that he somehow needs me to acknowledge his existence - well, that is just plain unconvincing. That would require a very unlikely and exotic kind of God, and it goes against the available evidence to boot.




There is something to that, but I think you are underestimating the downsides of associating religion and morality with belief in God.

It is possible that you are also assuming that people need a reason to be atheists. Such is not the case.




That is not a very frequent situation in my experience. People tend to be far more attached to belief in God than to specific religions.

I would say yes the two matters are not connected but many people do connect the existence of God with having a religion. That is what I was trying to explain.

You got me wrong on the other parts of your reply. What I was trying to say is that every thing in a religion is about either the rights towards the creation or the rights towards the Creator. I think you can can relate anything in a religion into one of these two categories.

 

[LuisDantas]

I don't think there is some big mystery as to why atheists choose atheism, as I have noted in other threads, it tends to be either from past experiences ( yes, I have noticed this, regardless of some who will say otherwise), or just don't want to believe in G-d or sometimes any deity, because it goes against science etc.

There may not be a mystery, but you are still failing to understand it.

Some people simply are atheists. It is a vocation, a cognitive tendency with little meaning or consequence besides atheism itself. We just won't assume the existence of deities.

Theists believe for various reasons as well, there isn't some single 'theist' type of person, or atheist for that matter, however people identifying as straight agnostic seem the most unopinionated.
Anyways, often when I talk to atheists, they have a basis for atheism, related to theistic ideas, they often are actually pretty knowleable about the bible or common G-d concepts etc., this is how I know their atheism isn't just a 'lack' of something, it is usually an 'anti-something'.

The distinction can be subtle. There is considerable social pressure to display belief. Some people will not mind pretending, and may not even realize they are pretending. Others will.

Theism, far more often than not, is learned from social expectations. Our rate of atheism is artificially low, for much the same reason; it takes some degree of active resistance to that social pressure to be acknowledged as an atheist - even by oneself.

 

[LuisDantas]

I would say yes the two matters are not connected but many people do connect the existence of God with having a religion. That is what I was trying to explain.

I guess many do, but most people seem to think of belief in God as a "higher priority" of sorts, taking it for granted and deciding what religion, if any, to follow after that.

What I was trying to say is that every thing in a religion is about either the rights towards the creation or the rights towards the Creator. I think you can can relate anything in a religion into one of these two categories.

I beg to differ. Creation is simply not a religiously significant matter, to the best of my understanding.

Sure, many people will disagree. What can I do about that?

 

[Levite]

I have sometimes seem people (most recently, it seems to have happened fairly often among Muslims) suggesting that us atheists would have a choice to believe in God if we made an attempt, or sought evidence, something like that.

I'm not really very sure what they mean.

How often do theists believe or assume that atheism is a choice, I wonder?

Is it at all usual for theists to believe that atheism is changeable?

What do theists usually believe to cause atheism?

Anyone willing to say or guess? Let's try to avoid too much passion here. "Just the facts" (and respectful guesses), please.

Ultimately, belief in anything (including that there is a God, or that there is not a God) is a choice. That is especially true for the existence of God, for which there is neither concrete and objective evidence in favor or against.

To be a theist is to be willing to believe in the absence of concrete and objective proof that there is a God. To be an atheist (as opposed to an agnostic) is to believe in the absence of concrete and objective proof that there is no God.

In my experience, theists generally fall into two categories: those who choose instinctively to believe in God because they need the surety and structure of a fundamentalist religious life; and those who believe in God because they are open to spiritual experiences, and who incorporate doubt and uncertainty into a conscious choice to believe that the numinous they yearn for is out there, yearning back.

And also in my experience, atheists fall into two categories: those who are simply not inclined to spirituality, have not been raised with a religion, or were raised with a simplistic and overly literalistic religion that does not hold up to any kind of complex questioning, and thus simply see faith as unnecessary and inexplicable unreasonableness; or those who are cynical and skeptical, absolute empiricists, unwilling to even entertain the idea that there might be anything unexplainable by our science (or at least some science foreseeable to current thinking), and believe religion is just the opiate of the masses, spirituality just superstition and ignorance, and God just a fantasy embraced by ignorant dupes.

I would suppose any reasonable theist believes some atheists might reconsider their atheism, and some never would; much like some theists might reconsider their theism, and some never would.

But also in my experience, theists who try to sway atheists with "proofs" of God's existence are fools, because there is no objective evidence for God's existence-- all evidence for belief in God is ultimately subjective. And likewise, atheists who attempt to sway theists with allusions to science are also fools, since belief in God has nothing to do with science or ignorance thereof, and may in fact be driven by personal spiritual experiences unlikely to be dismissed by the experiencer.

 

[LuisDantas]

Excellent post. I largely agree, with one exception:

In my experience, theists generally fall into two categories: those who choose instinctively to believe in God because they need the surety and structure of a fundamentalist religious life; and those who believe in God because they are open to spiritual experiences, and who incorporate doubt and uncertainty into a conscious choice to believe that the numinous they yearn for is out there, yearning back.

And also in my experience, atheists fall into two categories: those who are simply not inclined to spirituality, have not been raised with a religion, or were raised with a simplistic and overly literalistic religion that does not hold up to any kind of complex questioning, and thus simply see faith as unnecessary and inexplicable unreasonableness; or those who are cynical and skeptical, absolute empiricists, unwilling to even entertain the idea that there might be anything unexplainable by our science (or at least some science foreseeable to current thinking), and believe religion is just the opiate of the masses, spirituality just superstition and ignorance, and God just a fantasy embraced by ignorant dupes.

There also people with meaningful spiritual lives who are simply not theists.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In my experience, theists generally fall into two categories: those who choose instinctively to believe in God because they need the surety and structure of a fundamentalist religious life;

While I don't disagree, I think this is an irrational reason to accept a belief... akin to the person who doesn't believe his bank account is overdrawn because he really needs his rent cheque to clear.

and those who believe in God because they are open to spiritual experiences, and who incorporate doubt and uncertainty into a conscious choice to believe that the numinous they yearn for is out there, yearning back.

So they set aside their uncertainty in favour of certainty? I'm not sure I understand what you're going for here.

And also in my experience, atheists fall into two categories: those who are simply not inclined to spirituality, have not been raised with a religion, or were raised with a simplistic and overly literalistic religion that does not hold up to any kind of complex questioning, and thus simply see faith as unnecessary and inexplicable unreasonableness; or those who are cynical and skeptical, absolute empiricists, unwilling to even entertain the idea that there might be anything unexplainable by our science (or at least some science foreseeable to current thinking), and believe religion is just the opiate of the masses, spirituality just superstition and ignorance, and God just a fantasy embraced by ignorant dupes.

It's not a matter of rejecting the possibility of things beyond current science; it's the recognition that, whatever is out in that unknown, if some opinion about that unknown has no rational basis to draw from, it can be disregarded as being uninformed and unreliable. This idea is close enough to a tautology (i.e. "claims without a basis are baseless") that I'm not sure how anyone could reasonably dispute it.

But also in my experience, theists who try to sway atheists with "proofs" of God's existence are fools, because there is no objective evidence for God's existence-- all evidence for belief in God is ultimately subjective. And likewise, atheists who attempt to sway theists with allusions to science are also fools, since belief in God has nothing to do with science or ignorance thereof, and may in fact be driven by personal spiritual experiences unlikely to be dismissed by the experiencer.

The sort of God who not only has left no objective evidence to be found so far but can't reasonably be expected to ever provide any evidence whatsoever is a God that is utterly irrelevant to the universe. Even a deist God who set the universe in motion and then never intervened afterward could conceivably have left some sort of evidence (a divine analog of the cosmic microwave background radiation, perhaps).

I recognize that some people believe in an irrelevant God like this, but I think they're a slim minority of theists. I also think these sorts of views make absolutely no sense in a religion that purports to be revealed or that makes claims about a miracle-wielding God.

Edit: science is the study of physical reality, so if science has nothing to say about God, then this means that God can have no measurable effects on physical reality. From my perspective, you're trying to re-cast God as nothing more than an aesthetic preference... but what would make such a God any sort of God at all?