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Atheism and Faith


questor

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Hmmm, perhaps I need to reconsider.

I don't believe in the social construct of modern organized religion, I don't know if any type of god exists. Howerver, I also don't know if an undetectable, invisible pink elephant exists in my house. Because I have no evidence of either, I can't know if either exists. But I think I would still call myself an athiest.

 

As the people's actions reflect on organized religion and not on the concept of god, they should not influence my belief in god.

 

However, the organized religions that do 'tell' me what god is, leads me to not believe in 'their' god. I have heard everything from; all-knowing, all-caring, vengeful, jealous, all-powerful and a host of others. And this is just from Christianity:)

 

It is normal for mankind to try to explain the unknown. We have (as a race) created thousands of gods to explain anything we were afraid of or didn't understand.

 

I respect anyone else's faith as long as it does not negatively affect me or others (if someone believes they need to sacrifice a virgin to their god I sure as heck am not going to stand by when they come to take my sister away:)).

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So let's simplify. I tell you that I have three marbles. I show you a red one, and I show you a yellow one, one in each hand.

 

Then I say: "In my pocket I have a third marble. What color is it?"

 

Do you believe that I have the marble there?

 

These are the options granted me in this thread:

 

1) Yes, the marble is there and I don't need to prove it

2) No, the marble isn't there, but I can't prove it

 

While I claim that there is a third option:

 

3) It doesn't matter

 

I would like to hear how option 3 above can be understood as "belief".

 

I maintain that the only reason to claim that 3) is belief is that alternatives 1) and 2) both require faith. 3) disregards faith because it refuses to accept the imperative of the question!

Goodness, Tormod. This is a little tortuous. Your three options are not the definitions of the positions as all. In your allegory, the options would be:

 

1) Yes, I believe the marble is there (although I have no evidence)

2) No, I believe the marble is not there (although I have no evidence) and

3) I can't tell whether the marble is there. I therefore to not take a position.

 

Agnostics (option 3) do not impute any sense of value, or even plausibility. Agnostics only assert that either position cannot be known. Option 2 is the atheist position.

 

In any case, it looks (again) to me like you slotted yourself closest to the agnostic camp. But I don't mean to press you on this, I don't really think it matters how you classify yourself.

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Atheism is its own form of faith.

 

I am not the best candidate for conversion at this point in my life. I am appropriately firm and polite when being preached to by those who would see my soul redeemed in some fashion other than the path I have chosen. I am also appropriately firm with atheists who would sell me on the stupidity of faith. It is a person's right to believe anything they choose. In the end facts are telling, but until such a time, I don't really give two hoots about someones personal relationship with God, no matter what the form. No matter what a person's choice of belief in a deity, it is in the end a personal choice that they will realize the truth of in good time. Atheists belittling the belief in a deity as something akin to mental illness or childhood fascination with boogie men are sinking to the same level as the recruit happy religious zealots that they complain so dearly about to begin with. It is no more your place to try and disuade people from their chosen path than it is theirs to persuade you to join them. It is no sign of weakness of mind or stupidity for a person to have faith.

 

As Shakespear said via Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio."

 

Bill

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Atheism is its own form of faith.

I disagree. For me, deities and creationism are just theories like the big bang and evolution, nothing more, nothing less. There is no proof for any of them and no reason for anyone to expect that my lack of belief in any of them is a form of faith, it is merely science. I do not need to claim that any of them are wrong or impossible to be an atheist. I need only have a lack of belief in deitism based on my view of the evidence. That is not a claim that deitism is impossible, but it still makes me atheist because one definition of atheism is defined as a lack of belief, not a claim that Gods don't exist, another, separate definition of atheism.

 

As a scientist I conceed the possibility that any theory could be true. That I decline to attempt to prove any of them wrong does not make my action one of faith. That I choose not to accept someone's alleged evidence in support of any theory as "evidence enough", to believe the same as themself, does not make my position one of faith.

 

I also know that there are atheists that make the claim, as fact, that gods do not exist, some say that gods are not even possible. Their position in this respect is one of faith. Some even say there is no burden for them to support a claim they make as factual without supportive evidence. IMO, this is just another theory, unproven like all the rest, but that's not faith either, just science.

 

Atheism is a broad term. There are different kinds, some atheism is a form of faith, some is not. There is no fine line separating different kinds of atheists and no blanket statement that "atheism is a form of faith" fits them all.

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I am an atheist. There are no gods.

 

In all fairness Tormod, it is entirely one thing to say, "I do not believe in God", and quite another to say, "There are no gods". The statement, "There are no gods" is a direct statement of assumed fact, and to be truly scientific, facts do not exist without evidence.................Infy
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Take the analogy of the cat in the box. But instead of the cat, God is in the box. Our box is a tricky one, and nobody knows how to open it and look inside. We may not know how to open it forever. By extension, for this analogy, if God is in the box, then God exists. If God is not in the box, then God doesn't exist. Looking in the box would be absolute proof. Believers have faith that when they look in the box they will see god, based upon whatever criteria they choose but lacking absolute proof. Agnostics don't know what they will see when they look in the box. Athiests have faith that God is not in the box based upon any criteria they choose but lacking absolute proof. Two groups make commitments on faith, and one group sits on the fence. For my purposes I try to look at it that simply.

 

Bill

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Athiests have faith that God is not in the box based upon any criteria they choose but lacking absolute proof. Two groups make commitments on faith, and one group sits on the fence. For my purposes I try to look at it that simply.

 

Bill

You cannot lump all atheists in one group like this. An atheist does not have to claim "there is no god" to be an atheist. Simply lacking belief based on the evidence thus far is sufficient. Agnosticism is the claim that the existance of god cannot be proven either way, not just a claim that we don't know if god exists or not.

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You cannot lump all atheists in one group like this. An atheist does not have to claim "there is no god" to be an atheist.
That is very true C1ay, but those that do claim, "there is no god" do so based on faith even though they still are, by their own definition 'atheists'..................Infy
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You cannot lump all atheists in one group like this. An atheist does not have to claim "there is no god" to be an atheist. Simply lacking belief based on the evidence thus far is sufficient. Agnosticism is the claim that the existance of god cannot be proven either way, not just a claim that we don't know if god exists or not.

Point taken C1ay as based upon the definitions given earlier on this thread. But I think the definitions put forward on this thread earlier are not entirly correct. An atheist does not believe that God exists. While an agnostic believes that the evidence is inconclusive to prove the existance of God. By these definitions you do indeed have to claim that there is no God to call yourself an atheist. If you have doubt about there being no God, but do not believe for lack of evidence then you are agnostic. Those definitions are what I based the analogy upon.

 

Bill <--- hair splitter :naughty:

 

Its late, I should get to bed.

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An atheist does not believe that God exists.

True. That does not mean that all atheists claim god doesn't exist. To say that deist theorists have not proven their belief is not the same as saying they are all wrong even though both are atheist statements. One statement is fact, the other is faith.

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There are more shades of atheism than I can begin to describe - I know atheists who genuinely don't care, to them it doesn't even begin to factor into their lives. I know atheists who do tend to treat it as a faith, adhering stringently to it and claiming that anything else is wrong, there must not be any gods. I'be known atheists who, I think like C1ay and Tormod, approached the problem logically, saw the evidence, and found that there was as much evidence for a god as for dragons, wizards, goblins, and fairys. Do you claim that disbelieving in dragons wizards, goblins and fairys is based on faith? I doubt it - you can argue the point, but by and large, it is not the same kind of faith as one has in a god.

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TheBigDog: A person who says "I do not believe in god" does not have to believe that god does not exist, their statement only concerns themself, it says nothing about god. They have not expressed any belief, only the lack of a particular belief. The question of whether they believe that there is no god or they believe that gods are possible but unproven/unindicated/etc or dont consider the question important enough to have a feeling strong enough to qualify as a belief, is undecidable from the statement given by you as a definition of an atheist.

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from Wikipedia:

''Atheism, in its broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of gods. This definition includes both those who assert that there are no gods, and those who make no claim about whether gods exist or not. Narrower definitions, however, often only qualify those who assert there are no gods as atheists, labelling the others as agnostics or simply non-theists''.

while there may differences in atheists, i would think that all people who call themselves by that title share a belief that there is no God.

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I just have to laugh at this conversation. I often hear critisizm of religion because there are so many of them. So many different flavors of religion all claiming to be the true path. And many an atheist looks at that as proof that religion must be wrong, because they cannot all be right. But I am finding out now that there are just as many ways to NOT believe in God as there are ways to believe. I'm a reformed atheist, I'm a conditional atheist, I'm an atheist based upon science, I'm an atheist based upon being pissed off, I'm an atheist who believes there could be a God, I'm an atheist because life is unfair, I'm an atheist becasue the illuminati tell me to, I'm an atheist because the aliens who abducted me proved that there is no God. Who is the real atheist? LMAO! :hyper:

 

Bill

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for the sake of discussion, would some of you declare your belief and explain the reasons why?

 

Do you believe Mohammed is the seal of the prophets? Or in the tooth-fairy? Or that we are reincarnated after our death? If not, why not? I don't believe in god because he doesnt exist. I need no further reason than that.

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It's reasonable to assume that everybody who takes part in atheism vs theism discussion, has a concept of god, that is, a concept specific to god that isn't subject to changes in definition. To say 'Helios is the sun, the sun exists, therefore god exists' or 'god is the whole universe', changes the discussion from one of whether or not to believe in god, to one of whether or not to believe in the sun or the universe. These concepts have their own specific terms and changing the definition of god to something that could equally be expresed by an existing term, renders discussion of god meaningless.

As everybody in the discussion has a concept of god, they recognise that god has an existence in human imagination. In this sense, to believe, as in 'be convinced of the existence of', in god is redundant, we know god exists. So, belief in gods of the imagination is a trivial matter unworthy of discussion. To be worth discussing, the conviction of existence must concern a god enjoying a reality independent of human imagination.

Gods, independent of human imagination, have never been observed, catalogued, researched, their very nature is a matter of dispute according to the dictates of imagination. Neither have any actions or effects of gods been observed, and as this leaves us with no evidence, either direct or indirect, for the nature or even the existence of god, we are unable to know which phenomena, if any, point to the presence of independent gods. So, any belief in god as an independent entity necessarilly reduces to a belief in a god of the imagination. However, the fact that there is no evidence to support or suggest the existence of gods outside the mind, doesn't mean that such gods dont exist, they either do or they dont, regardless of what we think or believe. As these gods are, in any case, undetectable, believing or denying their existence are equally futile acts. As we know nothing of the mechanism of god, or how to exploit it, knowledge of actual existence would be useless to us, and as we can discuss concepts bound only by our imagination without any need for consistency or communicability, god is an uninteresting topic for productive discussion. Even if gods exist independent of the imagination, they are unimportant, useless and uninteresting, to me, so I hold no belief concerning any mooted existence, I dont care sufficiently for a belief.

A possible exception that comes to mind is that of entities like Haitian loa, but as those ridden by loa have a strong concept of loa and their manifestations, and as the effects are brought on by dedicated and prolonged rituals designed for that purpose, I find the case of loa no more convincing, as evidence for independent gods, than I find the claim that a hangover confirms the existence of Dionysos.

The above considerations apply to the term believe in the sense of 'be convinced of the existence of', but religious people also use believe in the sense of 'rely on' or as in 'I believe in brushing my teeth after every meal'. Where this sense of believe is concerned, I wouldn't dream of delegating responsibility for my life to an imagined entity for which there is no evidence.

So my answer to the question of whether or not I believe in god is "yes, I couldn't care less and no". To the question as to whether I'm an atheist or theist, I have no inclination to ally myself with either camp.

Naturally I understand that plenty of people do seriously believe that gods exist outside their minds, and I have no problem with that, I think it makes the world a richer place to have stories of Zeus' bizarre disguises when philandering or Thor drinking so heavilly that he created the tides.

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