Thoughts On Atheism and Faith

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think Alex and robvalue have nutshelled the whole problem. Until we can get a coherent, comprehensible definition of 'God' then statements like 'I do not believe God exists' are the semantic equivalent of 'I do not believe winzlkflemp exists.'

Boru

[Sal]

"Before we address the question whether it can be disproven and whether anyone actually claims that it is"

Don't atheist claim that God does not exist?

No. Atheist just means lacking belief. No claim either way made.

"can you properly define what "God" is"
For the purposes of this discussion, I will define God as: "The creator of the universe, a spiritual being that is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. The source of absolute morality and absolute truth."

Can god make a stone so heavy he can't lift it?

Does god know what he's gonna do before he does it, and can god change his mind in what he wants to do?

[Sal]

The idea of a "burden of proof" is a matter of preference.

No it isn't. That's a rather long discussion, but the short of the long story is that Burden of Proof is a logical derivative of the impossibility of disproving a negative assertion.

Just because one is not able to prove something, does not necessarily mean it isn't true.

So what?

There is an infinite amount of baseless assertions possible and an infinite amount of them not necessarily false (careful with the double negatives...). Because of parsimony we only look at positive assertions.

[robvalue]

Right. It's called the argument from ignorance. It's a true but irrelevant statement.

[Sal]

If we do not know everything, then there will always be a degree of uncertainty when it comes to the existence of God.

That's a God of the Gaps argument.

(Since rest of this post follows from that line of reasoning, I'll post out from that.)

If someone made the negative assertion: "god does not exist", they would be hard pressed to look everywhere to fulfill that assertion, since we don't know everything. You'd have to test the assertion "god does not exist" from every possible (and impossible) venue to prove such an assertion.

It's called "... of the Gaps" because more knowledge we uncover and more we discover, less and less place - gaps in our knowledge - will there be in our knowledge for negative assertions to hide in.

[brewer]

god(s) are fantasy delusions of man. They are all imaginary. That's is my belief. Imaginary fantasy the same as unicorns, trolls, and sonic the hedgehog. There is nothing to disprove. How do you disprove imagination? You can't.

[vorlon13]

Some Gods do manage to generate a corporeal presence in our reality.

are they any more real to folks outside of their specific faith ?

[Faith No More]

I always think it's funny when Christians make this argument. Instead of trying to justify their own beliefs, they simply try to drag others down to their level. "We may be irrational, but you are too!"

I also love the attempt to obfuscate all knowledge in order to make their beliefs seem more reasonable. I take it the OP has to have faith that I don't have three penises grafted to my forehead.

[robvalue]

Faith, in the religious sense, seems to me to be holding onto beliefs in spite of a lack of evidence; or even evidence to the contrary. It's a mind boggling idea to me. It depends entirely on what nonsense beliefs got drummed into you in the first place. It could have been literally anything. And then you use "faith" to ignore reality and hold onto them.

Why, exactly? So you don't go to hell I suppose. Hell #294,728,624 in particular. Still gonna go to all the other hells.

[Jesster]

I always think it's funny when Christians make this argument.  Instead of trying to justify their own beliefs, they simply try to drag others down to their level.  "We may be irrational, but you are too!"

I also love the attempt to obfuscate all knowledge in order to make their beliefs seem more reasonable.  I take it the OP has to have faith that I don't have three penises grafted to my forehead.

This. Instead of asking us what we believe, they think it's okay to tell us what we believe. It's so common because a straw man is the only thing they can beat up.