My view and reasons for them. Atheist and Christians welcome here. (short)

[Quick]

My opinion is this: You have been taught the steps, what more is your belief than that? I don't believe many people thought up the idea there is no God on their own since historically speaking, humans have believed a God exists.  So I don't think they came to the conclusion themselves, but that this is something that is taught (or worse, they are simply believing in an antithesis). The point here is that people are not thinking for themselves. 

I don;t recall it having ever been any sort of idea that I came up with at all.  As you mention.."historically", people have been believers.  I just never believed what so many of you believe.  I didn't know there was a name for it until much, much later. 

I think that is a perfectly reasonable answer. The only thing I will say is that you probably changed and started playing the dance when you did find out what it was called. I find myself in a state  of reevaluation knowing that what you are saying here about your beliefs is probably true. My only problem there is that I question where the point that your learned what it was called if you are an atheist since I think that is a pretty common belief which would be difficult to not know about.

 I will say I am not a hypocrite in this manner considering I came to the only reasonable conclusion I could make, which is that in the debate of whether God is real or not, I find the only reasonable explanation is that I don't know, which leads me to thinking that because there is a debate about God in the first place that someone somewhere must be on to something a long time ago, which leads me to believing everything is miraculous and everything is God.

People thought that the browns were a lesser race since a long time ago, as well.  I don;t know how anything you just wrote absolves your "historically" common god believing hypocrisy, why you feel that you can;t know whether or not gods exist, or why something being written on a cave wall is suddenly more likely to be true...........or that any of that would lead to anything miraculous or divine. Glad to clear up your misunderstanding, in my case..anyway.  Maybe you could clear some of the above up for me?

What makes you say I am automatically a hypocrite based on my beliefs? I am not saying those things lead to things that are miraculous or divine. 

Oh yeah, this guy's gonna be around here for a looooong time.....

I might duck out if it gets toxic >.<

 I find whatever one's beliefs, one must learn the steps, and in that there is an inherent flaw: people are not thinking for themselves.

And how do you know that we're not thinking for ourselves, Quick?  It's easy to fling out vague accusations at people who don't share your worldview; it's quite another thing to demonstrate the veracity of those accusations.  Show your work, please.

I am not saying that people don't think for themselves in all aspects of their life. IME, simply living life requires at least some thinking on your own. What I am talking about is where there is when you take a stance, and it is a stance many people have taken before you, you are probably going to use what those other people have said and follow it. In a way, I am saying people are groomed to know the "correct" way. There is a psychological component here of us vs them and in doing so, this leads to a certain correctness which leads to people not thinking on their own.

Really.

Do you understand what I am saying? Can you see my PoV, because I don't think you are seeing it clearly. If you CAN in fact see where I am coming from, I would like you to tell me what you think it is that I believe. When you say it would take a miracle for you to believe something like that, what you are saying in a way is that your perception of reality is so precise that anything that appears to be an anomaly doesn't exist because you would always be smart enough to figure out why said thing appeared to be an anomaly. In essence, It's a claim that you are all knowing or close enough to it that you have no lapses in your perception. The reason I say this is because if there is even one single thing that happens that you do not understand/cannot account for due to its anomaly then you would have to admit that it is at the least possible for something to happen that is miraculous considering you wouldn't know the reason for the anomaly. Therefore, I can only assume you have never come across an anomaly in your life, which I think is a stretch. And this is assuming you remember every occurance of a possibility of an anomaly that could have happened in your life and you didn't simply forget that it happened or didn't give significance to it that it deserved and then forgot it happened.

I do not mean the God of the bible. I am very very agnostic towards what the bible says as a matter of fact. I am talking about my own subjective interpretation of how some things appear to be apart of something bigger than oneself and that this could be interpreted as the will of a greater being that is intentionally ambiguous in its dichotomies because it is very hard to see it's limitations and/or tangible observability.

There are too many fallacies in that ^ for me to even begin... sorry matey.
The word god is a loaded word ... And if not of the bible, then what? advanced alien? we can do this all day?

There's a reason why I'm ignostic... It's like agnostic but with no sugar. (for people like me with no imagination)

I am not sure what the fallacies I am making are. IME ignostic is just apathy while agnostic is uncertainty. The latter leads to discovery and the former does not.

I am talking about my own subjective interpretation of how some things appear to be apart of something bigger than oneself and that this could be interpreted as the will of a
greater being that is intentionally ambiguous in its dichotomies because it is very hard to see its limitations and / or tangible observability

Can you give a specific example of what you mean here because without it this statement of yours looks like nothing more than word salad
I think the connect between an objective phenomena and your own interpretation of it might be so loose as to allow for the God hypothesis

Sure. Like take for example how in quantum mechanics that if you are looking for something, a different things happens than if you are not looking.

I do not mean the God of the bible. I am very very agnostic towards what the bible says as a matter of fact.

I'm very confused by your use of the word agnostic here, could you define the word 'agnosticism' for me.

I am talking about my own subjective interpretation of how some things appear to be apart of something bigger than oneself and that this could be interpreted as the will of a greater being that is intentionally ambiguous in its dichotomies because it is very hard to see it's limitations and/or tangible observability.

This is not pantheism. What you have described here is a deity.

When I say agnostic what I am really saying is that I do not actually know whether that thing is true or not. I am unsure. 

I am not going to swet the details of what my belief is called or falls under, because I don't think it is important. I find what the actual belief is is more important than what it is called.

I had been a Christian from my early teens to mid thirties. I became disillusioned when I realized all those rules can't be followed, and all the guilt was for nothing. Sure I took advantage of available resources like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Stenger. But the initiative was all me, and I was convinced rather than brainwashed.

So it all flowed from this: These rules are supposed to come from god, god is supposed to be supremely moral, these rules can't be followed, resulting in unjust suffering(guilt)
Therefore this supposed just god doesn't exist, or someone has been lying about what he wants and expects.

Again, I am not saying the discovery process of finding out what you believe wasn't your own doing, but that once you knew, you started to figure out what the rules of the game were and followed them, which then leads to less thinking on your own. It is the same basic thing you did for your christianity that you are doing for atheism.

[surreptitious57]

take for example how in quantum mechanics that if you are looking for something a different thing happens than if you are not looking

Quantum mechanics is incredibly counter intuitive for sure but this in and of itself is not sufficient reason to assume anything beyond the actual facts
The Universe is not obligated to help us understand how it functions so it is inevitable that there will be gaps in our knowledge of how it actually does

[Quick]

take for example how in quantum mechanics that if you are looking for something a different thing happens than if you are not looking

Quantum mechanics is incredibly counter intuitive for sure but this in and of itself is not sufficient reason to assume anything beyond the actual facts
The Universe is not obligated to help us understand how it functions so it is inevitable that there will be gaps in our knowledge of how it actually does

Sure, but consider how we have a direct impact on things separate from what is. This to me is evidence that it may not just be more of the same old same old. To assume it is, I don't think is reasonable.

[Astreja]

And how do you know that we're not thinking for ourselves, Quick?  It's easy to fling out vague accusations at people who don't share your worldview; it's quite another thing to demonstrate the veracity of those accusations.  Show your work, please.

I am not saying that people don't think for themselves in all aspects of their life. IME, simply living life requires at least some thinking on your own. What I am talking about is where there is when you take a stance, and it is a stance many people have taken before you, you are probably going to use what those other people have said and follow it. In a way, I am saying people are groomed to know the "correct" way. There is a psychological component here of us vs them and in doing so, this leads to a certain correctness which leads to people not thinking on their own.

The very fact that we're here indicates that we want to talk about things.  Sometimes we argue and sometimes we agree.  When we do agree, IMO it's because we've found common ground such as similar experiences, not because we're trying to be "correct."

In any forum there's a tendency for people and their opinions to cluster around whatever theme attracted them to that forum.  My POV would be seen as contrary to the prevailing culture at, say, a Catholic forum -- but I have no desire to hang out there.

[surreptitious57]

Quantum mechanics is incredibly counter intuitive for sure but this in and of itself is not sufficient reason to assume anything beyond the actual facts
The Universe is not obligated to help us understand how it functions so it is inevitable that there will be gaps in our knowledge of how it actually does

Sure but consider how we have a direct impact on things separate from what is

Everything is directly or indirectly connected to everything else so therefore the notion of any type of separation is a false one
For even if there are other universes and we inhabit a multiverse what exists between them is a part of the fabric of reality too

[The Grand Nudger]

I don;t recall it having ever been any sort of idea that I came up with at all.  As you mention.."historically", people have been believers.  I just never believed what so many of you believe.  I didn't know there was a name for it until much, much later. 

I think that is a perfectly reasonable answer. The only thing I will say is that you probably changed and started playing the dance when you did find out what it was called.

What...on earth...are you talking about, lol?

I find myself in a state  of reevaluation knowing that what you are saying here about your beliefs is probably true. My only problem there is that I question where the point that your learned what it was called if you are an atheist since I think that is a pretty common belief which would be difficult to not know about.

I cant recall when I first heard the term atheist and said..hm, oh yeah.  Why would I know anything about atheism in a "historically" believing world?  You know we non-believers aren;t grown on atheist farms or anything like that...right?

What makes you say I am automatically a hypocrite based on my beliefs? I am not saying those things lead to things that are miraculous or divine. 

Fairly simple, really..you let loose a minor bitchfest about how atheists™ weren;t thinking for themselves..a common bit of nonsense for the faithful...then immediately assured yourself (I guess?) that you weren't a hypocrite...directly before listing off not only a common belief, but a common set of rationalizations for that belief.  Now...sure...sure, you could have arrived at the exact script of every other nutter in existence, by enormous coincidence alone...in a "historically" believing world.........but if you already find it unlikely that some minority viewpoint is thinking for itself...the likelihood of your scenario being representative of anything other than groupthinking hypocrisy must be even less than that.

Right?

[Whateverist]

I find this forum to be much of a dance (Re: christians being here [haven't run into any muslims yet])... I find whatever one's beliefs, one must learn the steps, and in that there is an inherent flaw: people are not thinking for themselves.

My opinion is this: You have been taught the steps, what more is your belief than that? I don't believe many people thought up the idea there is no God on their own since historically speaking, humans have believed a God exists. So I don't think they came to the conclusion themselves, but that this is something that is taught (or worse, they are simply believing in an antithesis). The point here is that people are not thinking for themselves. I will say I am not a hypocrite in this manner considering I came to the only reasonable conclusion I could make, which is that in the debate of whether God is real or not, I find the only reasonable explanation is that I don't know, which leads me to thinking that because there is a debate about God in the first place that someone somewhere must be on to something a long time ago, which leads me to believing everything is miraculous and everything is God.

Then you're not an agnostic though you may be a pantheist.

I have no belief in gods so I am an atheist.  I don't argue that gods don't exist so I am also agnostic.  I do however think that gods which people have so long believed in do not justify a belief in anything supernatural.  God belief is natural.  But that doesn't mean people have been correct to posit some ultra dimension in which they may exist.  God belief exists in people's experience and that is where you need to look to find of what a god actually consists.

[Astreja]

God belief is natural.

  Not for me.  I've never been able to suspend disbelief and cultivate religious faith.

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't believe many people thought up the idea there is no God on their own since historically speaking, humans have believed a God exists.

What about 40,000 years of prehistory and other species of humans prior to homo sapiens sapiens? What about homo erectus? What about australopithecines? What about other modern non-human apes like chimps that share over 98% of our DNA?

What about the fact that even in the year 2018 we're not born believing in God either? Belief in God is no more natural than celebrating Halloween.

[Whateverist]

God belief is natural.

  Not for me.  I've never been able to suspend disbelief and cultivate religious faith.

Well sickle cell anemia is natural but not to me either.