Do you ever doubt your atheism?

[robvalue]

For me it comes down to definitions of what it is I'm not believing in.

I generally say I'm an atheist because I don't believe any of the current claims about god. I have no doubts that I am right to not believe them as there is no good evidence. In fact the "evidence" presented is just plain laughable to the point where I can't even believe there is any kind of debate about it.

If you take this classical definition of god as being all knowing and all powerful, then this isn't even something that is internally consistent, such a thing cannot exist.

If you start applying caveats to this (like religions do to avoid these paradoxes) then the whole thing just becomes so utterly ridiculous that I have absolutely no reason to believe it either. It's clearly just some imagined concept of a "powerful enough but plausible" god, which beggars belief.

If you tone it down and just say that god is the creator of our universe, then the only believable version of this is the deistic approach. It created the singularity (or similar) which led to the big bang, then left it all to spiral out from there. There is absolutely no reason to believe that such a god has had any influence over the universe following this initial creation. But this is still an argument from ignorance. We don't know what happened before the big bang, so some being created it. I could also only view such a creation as an experiment on behalf of the god, seeing what would happen after making this singularity. And it doesn't go any further explaining things, because you then have to ask where is this god, what meta-universe is he existing in that we can be a lab experiment within his universe, or outside of it.

If you tone the crazy way down, and forget all this creator business (which is just the human desire to attribute explanations to things in my opinion) you are left with "there may be other stuff going on in ways we cannot understand or cannot yet detect". This stuff could possibly include "life forms" of some sort. That's the point at which I will hop on and say sure, it's in fact very likely there is plenty of stuff going on of this kind. But I see no reason to try and attribute any kind of qualities to it, for the very reason that we know nothing about it by definition!

I mean, that is my main objection to religion in the first place. Believers define god in such a way that he is totally and utterly beyond our understanding, exists beyond our universe and time, and so on, he is so amazingly "different" that you can't prove he doesn't exist, because he is outside any framework you try and place him in. His plan is too complex for anyone to understand. But yet we have a personal relationship with him and have evidence that he is 100% true (a book) and that his motivations are purely good. That seems like a lot of understand of something which cannot be understood.

[RobbyPants]

I stopped doubting my disbelief several years ago. I really only doubted for the first six months or so, as I began to contextualize my new lack of beliefs and slowly became comfortable with them. I remember I stopped worrying when I realized that I've never lost any sleep over not being a good enough Muslim or Pastafarian, so why was I worried about Christianity? That pretty much ended that.

[Little lunch]

We say that when a plant appears to think or have thought it is just a chemical reaction.
But when did a human ever have a thought that wasn't a reaction. Never.
Perhaps after a long while plants will think they have free will too.

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps they already do..lol. Semi-jokingly, it may only be a barrier of communication. They might register us as "non-conscious entities" in their analog. More amusingly, any species that might otherwise be recognized as sentient -by us- would be under no such compulsion to recognize -us- as sentient.

[Whateverist]

Perhaps plants have tried to 'speak' to us with their pheromones but we appear deaf/blind to their efforts.

[The Grand Nudger]

They release GLVs when we stress them. Some of them -are- used to communicate with other plants, but just as many (if not more) are used to deter predators. Unfortunately for the plants, some of that stuff is pretty choice to us (nicotine, for example).

[Thumpalumpacus]

one major difference in favor of our superiority I think it is fair to admit, is that consciousness, specifically ours, creates meaning, for everything, even for the very distinction between the alleged importance of certain functions in the first place.

Except that "meaning" might just be more self important mental masturbation. Point to some meaning? Show me that it exists in some manner without reference to our conception of it? Perhaps to a plant, "meaning" is a chemical cocktail leveraged for effect (and perhaps, for us, it is the same) - a GLV scream "means" stress (and that's another thing we've discovered that plants are capable of, communicating and interpreting those signals - then acting upon them). Don't get me wrong, I also think meaning is important; but I -would- think that...wouldn't I. It's troublesome to describe some ability we have (or think that we have) as though it has importance beyond our having it- even the importance of meaning. Things that you and I wouldn't accept as ascribing "meaning" to things don't seem to be any worse for wear on that percieved difficiency. Meaning, to me, just seems to be another strategy, indicative of what -we- are, and how -we- operate, not indicative of whatever we ascribe "meaning" -to-. I'd say the same things for those plants as well. The GLV doesn't -actually mean- "stress" (because GLVs are just chemicals)- it's just a useful way for them to interpret the signal which would otherwise be noise.

Or as Yogi Berra, perhaps the smartest American ever, once said, "No matter where you are, there you are." We look at the Universe through our individual frames of reference, and cannot escape them.

No matter where you are, there you are.

[ComradeMeow]

Doubted my atheist for a while. For years I knew that I could not support the existence of a god bu I loved what frivolous things religion provided. It was not the belief in god but the fact that atheism seemed so materialistic and pointless.
When I got over religion I felt as if all the meaning in my life was zapped out but after 2 weeks I got over it because it then became inherent that I was just used to associating with religion.
The irony is that I have never been theistically inclined or given a crap about a god at all.

[Dawsonite]

I don't think it's a good idea to be absolutely certain about anything. Reason itself has its limits. Even mathematics -- where there is precious little room for opinions -- is rife with paradoxes. (Paradoxi? Paradices?)

One specific example is Galieo's parardox. Simply stated:

Some integers are perfect squares and some are not, so there must be more integers than perfect squares;
BUT...
There is a square for every integer, so there must be the same number of squares as integers.

Whatever you believe, you could be mistaken.

[psychoslice]

To be a true atheist is to doubt, continually questioning.