Hypothesis Two....(completely different)

[Simon Moon]

Some reasons that emotional draw me against belief in God but are not convincing to me:

1) The problem of evil.
2) The fact not everyone believes in God

There are many more reasons to justify the disbelieve in the existence of a god than the above. If you think these are the most convincing, you must not be aware of many others.

Now the bottom line is, when I question myself, do I know God exists, the answer seems to me always to be yes.

This answer is highly fueled by your previously admitted "wishful thinking". There is no way that your answer can NOT be prejudiced.

Bottom line, if you think you truly have 'knowledge' then you should be able to justify it with something other than, "gosh, I really want there to be a god".

What bothers me, is why everyone whom asks themselves this question, doesn't come to the same answer as me?

To say that some humans don't have a way to know God exists, just seems problematic. People in the hypothesis thread stated why don't I just ask Atheists. Well, ff they have no way of knowing, why should I believe myself and other human beings have a way of knowing?

I don't know. Perhaps, this all part of the greater design of the Creator.

How do we act with each other. Atheists and Theists?

Perhaps God doesn't want to be universally known, but part of his design, is to be known by many people, while many people would not know him.

Perhaps part of the design is how we would interact with another.

Would we still respect each other? Or would we go against each other, simply because we have different beliefs?

Perhaps many Atheists don't have a way of knowing God.

See all the mental gymnastics you are forced to put yourself through in order to justify your unsupported belief? And don't fool yourself, you do not have 'knowledge' that a god exists, you have 'belief'. If you had a shred of intellectual integrity, you'd be able to admit it, at least to yourself.

[Angrboda]

That was a hypothesis? Sounded like just a bunch of senseless rambling to me.

The concept of "knowledge" is greatly overrated. Science doesn't deal in knowledge but probability. Philosophically, the problems with knowledge are manyfold and difficult to reconcile. (See Gettier problems; I believe I know the solution to Gettier problems, but the solution doesn't bring us any closer to the ideal of knowledge that we desire.)

I think it is an instructive exercise to replace every instance of the name of one's god with "Shub Niggurath" and see what that does to the sense of your argument. If the sense is preserved, you may be on to something. If the sense changes, then you're probably engaged in wishful thinking. When I replace "Kali" with "Shub Niggurath," I go from "The Dark One; She Who Destroys" to "The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.” I think that's close enough for government work.


"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."
Woody Allen