Reasons for the belief in no God

[McBell]

A true revelation of God--assuming such a event can occur--would have to be the conscious realization of God's existence as self-evident truth, because a revelation is a divinely caused miracle for which there could be no logical proof.

The knowledge of God attained would not come from any presumed existence of God in any definition, but via a divinely caused event in which knowledge of God is attained.

There is no presumption, only a realization. Don't you ever read the paper?

You are the one who has gone on and on about not entertaining any argument that assumes god.

 

[WanderingSoul]

But are you saying that a "supreme being" that nobody has ever known about would be "God"?

How do you define "God"?

Let's make peace with this thing. If you want to define god as any particular thing that has been worshiped, and then argue about God's NON-existence, then who am I to stop you?

You can define God any old way you want.

It's just that, when you define God as such, you seem to be doctoring the definition.

The argument changes from, either God exists, or does not exist; to God exists as one of those gods already worshiped as a particular thing, or God does not exist.

Those are two different arguments; to me, anyway.

According to your approach, God must be a particular thing in history, known by at least a portion of humanity--OR God is non existent.The truth of God's existence now rests solely on man's past understanding and religious conceptions, and not on current understanding and free of religious bias. I must, as a modern thinker, give full consideration to a 15th century, African fetish-lover and his power statue, and disregard all that humanity has come to know about the universe and ourselves since that time, and forgo a fresh approach in my search for a proper definition of God.

Do you see my point?

Honestly, now that I've settled my fanny down a bit, I understand you better, and I think what you're trying to do has potential for good discussion. I may have gotten too riled up about your post; I suppose because I'm new in here.

 

[WanderingSoul]

You are the one who has gone on and on about not entertaining any argument that assumes god.

A true revelation of God would not be an argument, but a realization. There's no assumption involved, only an acceptance in faith of the knowledge acquired in the experience.

Yes, faith. Because in the end, that miracle cannot be proven, even to ones self. The self evident truth of God is no bigger than the realization that it is true. And it is known to be true, simply but powerfully, through the sheer power of intuition.

That's what I argue.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Let's make peace with this thing. If you want to define god as any particular thing that has been worshiped, and then argue about God's NON-existence, then who am I to stop you?

You can define God any old way you want.

It's just that, when you define God as such, you seem to be doctoring the definition.

The argument changes from, either God exists, or does not exist; to God exists as one of those gods already worshiped as a particular thing, or God does not exist.

Those are two different arguments; to me, anyway.

Right - but I think this is because we lose sight of the purpose of all of this.

When someone says "God exists", they aren't talking about some nebulous, undefined, might-be-conscious-might-be-not entity floating out in the cosmos beyond the ken of humankind. They're talking about the God they worship.

"God" (or "god") is a label that people assign to their beliefs. It has no meaning outside that context. When someone says "God exists", what they're really saying is "the God I believe in exists".

God is a positive claim. It's also, IMO, inherently a knowledge claim. When examining it, we only need to consider claims that are actually made. When trying to decide whether God exists, we don't need to consider the things unknown to humanity, but would make a god-believer say "yeah - that's what I meant when I said 'god'." It's not what he meant; he didn't know about it, so it couldn't have been what he meant.

According to your approach, God must be a particular thing in history, known by at least a portion of humanity--OR God is non existent.The truth of God's existence now rests solely on man's past understanding and religious conceptions, and not on current understanding and free of religious bias.

Well, yes.

Keep in mind that I draw a distinction between things like "supreme being" and "God". Maybe there is some "supreme being" floating out there that we haven't discovered; I could never disprove that (though I could probably put together a good argument about problems with objectively defining the word "supreme"). But if it has never interacted with humanity, it can't have been the thing that everyone was referring to all this time when they were saying "God".

I must, as a modern thinker, give full consideration to a 15th century, African fetish-lover and his power statue, and disregard all that humanity has come to know about the universe and ourselves since that time, and forgo a fresh approach in my search for a proper definition of God.

Do you see my point?

Who says you have to do that?

I'm not saying you have to throw away evidence or critical thought; just that we can think logically about what's implied by claims like "God exists".

 

[Debunker]

What are your reasons for believing that there is no God? I don't want you to prove a negative, I want you to give me a reasonable argument that shows there is not logical possibility for God.

It may not be a philosophical reason that a person rejects a belief in God. Political tyrants who reject self evident truths reject God because God is the harbinger of justice for all men. Hitler would disagree with that type of government as would Stalin.Hedonist and humanist reject God because they want to justify their lifestyles with moral relativity. These are just a few reasons other than philosophical reasons of rejecting God. There are especially many psychological reasons for a rejection of God. The desire to do homosexual sex is a major reason, which relates to hedonism.

I don't say anything about how good these reasons are, I just say these are some of the reasons other than reasoning. Not everything people do is based a philosophy of God.

 

[Meow Mix]

It may not be a philosophical reason that a person rejects a belief in God. Political tyrants who reject self evident truths reject God because God is the harbinger of justice for all men. Hitler would disagree with that type of government as would Stalin.Hedonist and humanist reject God because they want to justify their lifestyles with moral relativity. These are just a few reasons other than philosophical reasons of rejecting God. There are especially many psychological reasons for a rejection of God. The desire to do homosexual sex is a major reason, which relates to hedonism.

I don't say anything about how good these reasons are, I just say these are some of the reasons other than reasoning. Not everything people do is based a philosophy of God.

Someone could also raise only the negative examples of why someone would believe in a God too, such as needing a war god to help them win a genocide war on their foes.

Many atheists aren't atheists because of such petty reasons as you describe but rather through intellectual inquiry.

 

[WanderingSoul]

Right - but I think this is because we lose sight of the purpose of all of this.

When someone says "God exists", they aren't talking about some nebulous, undefined, might-be-conscious-might-be-not entity floating out in the cosmos beyond the ken of humankind. They're talking about the God they worship.

"God" (or "god") is a label that people assign to their beliefs. It has no meaning outside that context. When someone says "God exists", what they're really saying is "the God I believe in exists".

God is a positive claim. It's also, IMO, inherently a knowledge claim. When examining it, we only need to consider claims that are actually made. When trying to decide whether God exists, we don't need to consider the things unknown to humanity, but would make a god-believer say "yeah - that's what I meant when I said 'god'." It's not what he meant; he didn't know about it, so it couldn't have been what he meant.


Well, yes.

Keep in mind that I draw a distinction between things like "supreme being" and "God". Maybe there is some "supreme being" floating out there that we haven't discovered; I could never disprove that (though I could probably put together a good argument about problems with objectively defining the word "supreme"). But if it has never interacted with humanity, it can't have been the thing that everyone was referring to all this time when they were saying "God".


Who says you have to do that?

I'm not saying you have to throw away evidence or critical thought; just that we can think logically about what's implied by claims like "God exists".

I can't deny, what you have here certainly makes sense, at least as far as it goes. But practically speaking, I don't see how it is of any value in proving God's non-existence (That's what is this thread is about.) We could never rediscover every faith and its variant in history, and even if we could, we could never disprove all of them.

For example, Christianity believes that God is a personal God that intervenes in human affairs. There's no possible way to test every claim of God in history. All it would take it just ONE claim to be true, and God is truth.

So on the surface, your definition seems intelligent, but pragmatically speaking, it's pretty much worthless.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I can't deny, what you have here certainly makes sense, at least as far as it goes. But practically speaking, I don't see how it is of any value in proving God's non-existence (That's what is this thread is about.) We could never rediscover every faith and its variant in history, and even if we could, we could never disprove all of them.

I think it all goes back to an even more fundamental question: when someone asks "does God exist?", what do they mean by "God"? If they mean anything by it at all, then this implies some sort of claim about God that can potentially be evaluated. If they don't have any real meaning for "God", then they render the term meaningless, and phrases like "God exists" are meaningless as well and can be disregarded.

For example, Christianity believes that God is a personal God that intervenes in human affairs. There's no possible way to test every claim of God in history. All it would take it just ONE claim to be true, and God is truth.

When it comes to claims of specific religions, we can also look to see whether what they claim is logically coherent. If a religion's claims about God are internally contradictory, then it would be impossible for them to be true.

So on the surface, your definition seems intelligent, but pragmatically speaking, it's pretty much worthless.

I don't know - it's probably beyond anyone's ability to evaluate every religious claim ever made, but it still takes us from having to comb every nook and cranny of the universe (and potentially beyond the universe, if "beyond the universe" even means anything) over all time before disproving God to simply having to examine the comparatively short history of one species on one planet. This reduces the workload involved in disproving God by 99.99999...% in one fell swoop. Without tooting my horn too much, I don't think that's anything to sneeze at.