Why I'm not an Atheist and believe in what I believe.

[Ace Otana]

The laws of nature are not broken as far our experience with them goes, but can they broken? Can you prove they can't be broken?

Try and break one.

You might be interested in watching this -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-jQUHUF1...re=related

[Taqiyya Mockingbird]

Well for one, creating energy violates a law of nature. If god is outside of time, he cannot cause anything seeing as to cause something requires the passage of time.

Hmm...I'll think about that one. I don't know if God is outside of time or with us at the moment. I tend to believe in the latter, simply because past, present and future all existing with God outside of it, doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Then it should be easy for you to pull it out of your pocket and show it to us.

---

Yeah, the thing about the laws of nature is that they cannot ever be broken.
Not only do I question the possibility of his existence but his actions. How does he create without violating the laws of nature?

The laws of nature are not broken as far our experience with them goes, but can they broken? Can you prove they can't be broken?

OK, break one. Stick the barrel of a loaded shotgun in your mouth, flip the safety off and pull the trigger. then tell us all about how you broke a law of nature.

It's a concept but has meaning to us. Whether it has any basis in reality is another matter. Like the god concept, does it have any basis in reality?

Well of course you already know my view.

In other words, no.

[Mystic]

Try and break one.

I'll try.

[Taqiyya Mockingbird]

Try and break one.

I'll try.

I suggest using the simple method I outlined immediately above: It's easy, quick, cheap, and....decisive.

[Angrboda]

I've examined quite a few "proofs" for the possibility/probability of God, and invariably they all have the same property: they are persuasive to those who believe, unpersuasive to those who don't, and rarely if ever change minds. So obviously, there is a likelihood that a prior belief in His existence makes you open to such arguments as proof. But note, that if this generalization of the effect of proofs of God is valid, you likely believed prior to any proof or argument. Which gets back to intuitions versus wishing. Samuel Johnson once said that if he is undecided about any serious matter, that he takes out a coin and tosses it in the air. His point is not to let chance decide for himself, but that when he tosses the coin in the air, he suddenly knows intimately what it is that he truly wants, by knowing which way he wants it to land. I suspect these arguments you reference are like Samuel Johnson's coin — they don't tell you what to believe, they simply uncover your pre-existing disposition to believe.

Briefly, while I'm a strict materialist, I am becoming convinced that the predicate/property "real" or "is real" has no valid meaning. To put things in a nutshell, basically, there is no way to tell what the basis of our experience is: it could be atoms and quarks, we could be brains in vats, we could be ideas in the mind of God — there is no way to tell on the basis of experience which, if any of these, is the case. So while we can make projective predictions on the consistency and coherence of our experiences, those projections cannot inform or provide us knowledge about what is real. It's okay to have a model of reality, just so long as you accept its limitations, that any talk about the metaphysical/ontological cause of our experience is essentially empty, it's noumenon; to paraphrase Hume, consign it to the flames.

I'm feeling lazy tonight, so I'll return another time, but my signature encapsulates a truth I feel strongly about, and is relevant here:

"It doesn't matter what I believe, it only matters what I can prove." — Lt. Kaffee, A Few Good Men

However there's another favorite quote from this movie which probably better captures my feeling about your intuitions about a deist God:

“No, I won’t listen and I won’t hear you out. Your passion is compelling, Jo; it’s also useless....” — Lt. Kaffee, A Few Good Men


If you take a jar, and some pads of paper, and start writing on the paper notions that possibly or plausibly might be true, if you are possessed of imagination, you can fill many jars this way. Possible or plausible may be used as a sieve to separate out ideas not worth considering, but if you don't go beyond this criteria, you have to admit all those slips of paper into your world as "intuitions" you believe in. Even if one wanted to settle for this, the brute fact is all the notions on those pieces of paper are mutually inconsistent: you can't assert a worldview based on that standard and hope for it to be consistent. If you want your worldview to have a chance at consistency, you have to use a stricter standard, or, admit you're relaxing the standard for non-logical, non-rational reasons. I'm not suggesting this is a problem uniquely yours; even scientists fall prey to conflating plausibility with probability, as the vast wasteland of discarded evolutionary stories can attest. If you want consistency, if you have any hope of approaching knowledge, you need better standards.

[cratehorus]

I've examined quite a few "proofs" for the possibility/probability of God, and invariably they all have the same property: they are persuasive to those who believe, unpersuasive to those who don't, and rarely if ever change minds. So obviously, there is a likelihood that a prior belief in His existence makes you open to such arguments as proof. But note, that if this generalization of the effect of proofs of God is valid, you likely believed prior to any proof or argument. Which gets back to intuitions versus wishing. Samuel Johnson once said that if he is undecided about any serious matter, that he takes out a coin and tosses it in the air. His point is not to let chance decide for himself, but that when he tosses the coin in the air, he suddenly knows intimately what it is that he truly wants, by knowing which way he wants it to land. I suspect these arguments you reference are like Samuel Johnson's coin — they don't tell you what to believe, they simply uncover your pre-existing disposition to believe.

Briefly, while I'm a strict materialist, I am becoming convinced that the predicate/property "real" or "is real" has no valid meaning. To put things in a nutshell, basically, there is no way to tell what the basis of our experience is: it could be atoms and quarks, we could be brains in vats, we could be ideas in the mind of God — there is no way to tell on the basis of experience which, if any of these, is the case. So while we can make projective predictions on the consistency and coherence of our experiences, those projections cannot inform or provide us knowledge about what is real. It's okay to have a model of reality, just so long as you accept its limitations, that any talk about the metaphysical/ontological cause of our experience is essentially empty, it's noumenon; to paraphrase Hume, consign it to the flames.

I'm feeling lazy tonight, so I'll return another time, but my signature encapsulates a truth I feel strongly about:

"It doesn't matter what I believe, it only matters what I can prove." — Lt. Kaffee, A Few Good Men

However there's another favorite quote from this movie which probably better captures my feeling about your intuitions about a deist God:

“No, I won’t listen and I won’t hear you out. Your passion is compelling, Jo; it’s also useless....” — Lt. Kaffee, A Few Good Men

Palmer Joss: [Ellie challenges Palmer to prove the existence of God] Did you love your father?
Ellie Arroway: What?
Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?
Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much.
Palmer Joss: Prove it.

Contact 1997

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Palmer Joss: [Ellie challenges Palmer to prove the existence of God] Did you love your father?
Ellie Arroway: What?
Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?
Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much.
Palmer Joss: Prove it
Contact 1997 [quote]

Strawman fallacy.

[KichigaiNeko]

Palmer Joss: [Ellie challenges Palmer to prove the existence of God] Did you love your father?
Ellie Arroway: What?
Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?
Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much.
Palmer Joss: Prove it
Contact 1997 [quote]

Strawman fallacy.

Ya know....I have always thought that, that argument supports the non-existence of a god(s) and the incredible delusions we can put ourselves through

[hoppimike]

I fail to see how the existence of any god makes explaining reality anything other than more complicated o.O

Morality is most likely a product of our evolution and a drive for social cohesion, and by wishing a god into existence to explain the Big Bang... well, we are waiting for the explanation of how the god got there himself! Good luck with that one!!

[Brian37]

I've examined quite a few "proofs" for the possibility/probability of God, and invariably they all have the same property: they are persuasive to those who believe, unpersuasive to those who don't, and rarely if ever change minds.

If that were true, even if one keeps a belief in a god, belief in a certain god wouldn't change over time, women couldn't vote and blacks would still be slaves.

You might say change can be slow, but the rate of growth of atheists is only second to Islam. Not over all numbers, but in pace of increase in numbers.

Our voice was nothing 11 years ago and now you cannot google "atheist" and news and not find some story somewhere about atheists.

AND if change was not possible the UK which started in a history of theocracy during the dark ages wouldn't be a majority of atheist now.

I once believed and now I don't, but I do not think de conversions are as rare as you might think.