Atheists... why do you believe that God doesn't exist?

[Rampant.A.I.]

That would be a more semantically slick way of substituting a specific God for a generic God-of-the-gaps, but it's still a get out of jail free card: the theist gets to dump ALL of their dogma, all of their believed qualities of their particular deity, the tenants of the religion, hey, *poof* it's now assumed Jesus was in fact their Deity/his son, and now the bible is definitely true.

It never stops at "I dunno :. God," there's the inevitable scuffling sound of the theist sneaking their God and all his paraphernalia in through the back door.

If they're Catholic, suddenly we assume Demonic Possession, miracles and saints. They take a little more time to round up and sneak through the back door, but they "don't need" any additional justification to get to them.

[fr0d0]

So people rely on faith, or claiming there is evidence, and then claiming you have to believe before you can even discern the evidence.

I'm sure people who believe in Unicorns believe they have rational reasons for their beliefs, too.

I would hope that unicornists do. I would also hope that YOU had valid reasons to support your world view too. Of you have no reason... you lightly float between scraps of ideas, that's OK too.

You don't HAVE to believe to discern the evidence. You just confirm it is true in practice. People have to be first convinced of the truth of something before they are able to trust in it. Because that's what faith is: TRUST in INFORMATION that you understand to be TRUE.

[Coffee Jesus]

That would be a more semantically slick way of substituting a specific God for a generic God-of-the-gaps, but it's still a get out of jail free card: the theist gets to dump ALL of their dogma, all of their believed qualities of their particular deity, the tenants of the religion, hey, *poof* it's now assumed Jesus was in fact their Deity/his son, and now the bible is definitely true.

It never stops at "I dunno :. God," there's the inevitable scuffling sound of the theist sneaking their God and all his paraphernalia in through the back door.

If they're Catholic, suddenly we assume Demonic Possession, miracles and saints. They take a little more time to round up and sneak through the back door, but they "don't need" any additional justification to get to them.

I edited the previous post a lot, initially proposing "the god", then the phrase "the real god".

It could be an intervening god or a god of the gaps. They could claim that people everywhere have witnessed Yahweh's interventions even though they believed the real god that performed these miracles was Wadjet or Zeus.

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No I believe that God intervenes and leaves evidence. I believe all humans are aware of him. He let's nature take it's course. Sure. Nothing wrong with that.

Except for the contradictory nature of the two bolded parts, I guess.

He has a point, fr0d0. To let nature take its course is to abstain from intervening.

Intervention - The action of intervening; interfering in some course of events. --Wordnik

If God does intervene, why doesn't he intervene to stop child rape? Why does he have a special exception for child rape?

[Silver]

Because that's what faith is: TRUST in INFORMATION that you understand to be TRUE.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You would be correct in your definition only if you were referring to secular faith.

Faith, the religious faith to which you are alluding, is a belief that is not based on proof.

[Mister Agenda]

Now that you've been duped into opening this thread, you might as well help us with our little survey to find out your opinion of what atheism is all about.

Thanks for your time.

Love,
Me

I don't find the claims of theists about God convincing.

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No science in the history of the world supports possibility of existence of gods and nobody has found any signs of god anywhere ever.

That's lovely!

* fr0d0 points to poll up there ^^^

To be fair, the poll shows two different conclusions about God and the question seems to be about why we would have reached one of those conclusions. You're going to get a lot of 'disbelieve' and a lot of 'other'. My disbelief isn't the reason I disbelieve.

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Other - Non-belief in gods.


You have been told repeatedly by many atheists that atheism is the lack of belief. You just can't wrap your head around that?

I totally understand your frustration chas.

I made the statement in another thread that atheists here make sure everyone understands that atheism is a lack of belief, and they called me a liar and demanded I make a poll.

You ARE a liar, because your claim was that atheists will tell you they don't believe in anything. Of course they'll tell you they don't believe in God, dumbass. Is that what this poll was about? Your idiocy in making such a stupid claim in the first place and your mendaciousness in being unable to retract it?

However, in your defense, disbelief encompasses lack of belief.

[Ryantology]

You don't HAVE to believe to discern the evidence. You just confirm it is true in practice. People have to be first convinced of the truth of something before they are able to trust in it. Because that's what faith is: TRUST in INFORMATION that you understand to be TRUE.

Faith in some invisible god, which can only be experienced subjectively, means that you also have to have faith in your ability to correctly interpret every unusual and abnormal sensory experience which your brain processes, without error.

Until you can justify the faith you have in your ability to accurately discern legitimate meaning in your subjective experiences, you can't offer any honest rational or logical justification in your faith you have in your god.

[Mister Agenda]

I totally understand your frustration chas.

I made the statement in another thread that atheists here make sure everyone understands that atheism is a lack of belief, and they called me a liar and demanded I make a poll.

You made a dishonest poll by not including that choice.

More dishonest than you know. It's Fr0d0's contention that most of the atheists on this forum won't admit they believe anything, yet he neglected to make THAT an option.

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I totally understand your frustration chas.

I made the statement in another thread that atheists here make sure everyone understands that atheism is a lack of belief, and they called me a liar and demanded I make a poll.

The whole "atheism is simply a lack of belief" card turns out to be a lie the minute atheists start to defend their lack of belief by giving reasons for it.

I dare you to say something more stupid. At least make the equivalent effort of raising your little finger a millimeter in establishing your mere assertion that one can't lack belief in something if they have reasons not to believe.

Once you start making claims for or against an idea then you have stopped being agnostic (that strangely forgotten word) and have started to advocate a position.

Yes, and if your position is that you don't have a belief in something, that would be the position you're advocating. To believe something is to hold it to be true. Agnosticism is not about belief, it's about knowledge. Atheism is about belief, and at the least, it's not believing in any God or god propositions one has heard thus far.

It's a dishonest bait-and-switch tactic to avoid the burden of proof.

It would be dishonest to pretend to know something that you don't. You dishonestly refuse to accept that we hold our position honestly because it's inconvenient to your arguments for the burden of proof to be on you. What a putz.

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Good grief fr0d0! Haven't you been on this forum long enough to answer your own poll?

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Agree with Aral Wooters. You come across as rather silly with that post.

He's trying to back up his contention that atheists lose their minds when it's suggested that they believe something. Naturally, he focused the poll on the one thing he knows no atheist believes, by definition. He could have polled 'Do you believe bunnies are cute?', but that wouldn't give him the results he wants and he's being a little bitch about it.

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Good grief fr0d0! Haven't you been on this forum long enough to answer your own poll?

You talking to me ms Kichie?

If you notice, the poll was to answer some atheists here who thought that belief that there wasn't a god was the position of a vast majority of atheists. I said it wasn't and they called me a liar.

This is what you actually said: "The vast majority of atheist rial at the notion that they believe anything, let alone that God doesn't exist."

Because you're too much of a little bitch to correct yourself, here we are with a poll that really highlights just how dishonest you're being.

The wording of the options was a direct quote from the first dictionary definition to appear in my Google search.

A definition which doesn't have anything to do with what you're actually butthurt about: you said something stupid about atheists and got called on it. Now you're pretending the dispute was about whether atheists have a positive belief in no God when that wasn't what it was about at all.

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Can you demonstrate proving a negative? Do making the claims "unicorns, leprechauns and elves don't exist" require extensive evidence, or is rejecting their existence "burden reversal" as well?

I refer to the multitude of threads claiming to show problems with various doctrines, claiming that believers are delusional etc. For example...

Believer: I believe in God.
Atheist: You're wrong.
Believer: Why am I wrong?

In this case the burden of proof is actually on the atheist. That's very different from the following...

Believer: I believe in God.
Atheist: Why?

The problem is that some of you flip flop between the two pretending not to know the difference.

That's not your claim, Chad. Your claim is that we ALL do it. If you're backing off from that stupid assertion, at least have the grace to apologize for paining us all with the same brush.

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Believer: I believe in God.
Atheist: You're wrong.
Believer: Why am I wrong?
Me: Because there is no proof that your god exists.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But it is evidence that belief isn't justified. The believer isn't necessarily wrong that God exists, it's conceivable that God does, the atheist is claiming that the believer is wrong to believe God exists, and offers as his or her reasoning, lack of sufficient evidence that God exists.

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But yes. Burden of proof arguments are trivial like you say. At the same time I think its disingenuous for some to rail against believers and hiding behind a facade of indifference. If they were simply nonbelievers then the appropriate position is agnosticism.

Agnosticism isn't properly a belief position, it'a a knowledge position. Even if you don't agree with that, you've been around here long enough to know that's how we use the term. I suppose some gray area in the middle for those on the fence is available for 'agnostic agnostics', but the rest of us agnostics are agnostic theists or agnostic atheists.

In other words, the position of most of us regarding God's existence is agnosticism, but we're currently talking about belief or the lack thereof, not knowledge.

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You imply that faith has no rational basis. That's not true. Religious faith is based on specific revelation. We rationally evaluate the credibility of the subject and reliability of the witness. Reasonable people can disagree about the data without insults.

What I'm hearing is that a reasonable person wouldn't poison the well by calling everyone he disagrees with dishonest in his first post on a thread.

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Guy's been around for like five years or something.

Meanwhile, I've been around for just over one, and I have the same amount. Just sayin'...

There are people with more, but I just didn't see any recently.

For him, just being around awhile doesn't really satisfy my curiosity, but it's all good.

He's been known to make some really good posts. Something I wish he'd do more often, but I'd say he earned his rep fairly.

[fr0d0]

Hey Mr A. You're right I could have worded the poll better.

What do you think the options should have been?

What I was trying to discover by it was to counter what I thought two people in particular were giving me grief about, which was their assertion that most atheists believed that there was no god, rather than what I have experienced to be the vast majority experience, admittedly of vocal atheists, is that they vehemently opposed that view, and claim to: "lack belief in any god". I can quote that from memory as I've seen it so many times.

Over on Dad's old forum there was an atheist guy fighting for the right to state that his was a belief. You wouldn't believe the shit he received.

[Coffee Jesus]

The word "disbelief" is ambiguous.

[fr0d0]

The word "disbelief" is ambiguous.

I agree