Do you ever doubt your atheism?

[Whateverist]

*tries to maintain the appearance of actually following all of that*

*walks off shaking head*

[MJ the Skeptical]

No. I wasn't indoctrinated so I have no lingering fears or doubts like that.

Even if I play Devil's advocate for fun against my friends, I never come out having doubts, even when I play the other side in arguments.

[Mudhammam]

*tries to maintain the appearance of actually following all of that*

*walks off shaking head*

Lol, what part didn't you follow?

Also, as I thought more about this thread yesterday, I fully understood why I put forth that this being would seem to demand necessity and true freedom from any laws of casualty... but for the life of me I'm not sure why I insisted it would have to also be infinite. I tried to Google whether or not there is anything philosophically problematic with a finite deity and couldn't find much that wasn't related to Christian apologetics and the nature of Christ.

So, I take back the "infinite" quality. I see no reason why logic would demand or even suggest this... and it makes me wonder, why don't more people just make their gods finite (as drich does)? It seems to get god, at least conteptually, out of some truly problematic dilemmas.

[Ben Davis]

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At first thought, that may appear to be a paradoxical question; like asking, "Do you doubt your disbelief in X?" With certain propositions, however, that is not a meaningless, nor fruitless inquiry to initiate. I have grown increasingly convinced that God, as an idea in its purest form, the free, unconditionally necessary, infinite source of our existence in this particular Universe, is one of those propositions. I am reluctant to use the term Being as this seems an unfortunate presumption, but that this state of affairs--which has historically and in measured respect been the God of true religion--in fair terms, a necessary mechanism on which all rational and empirical experience depends upon, seems to have a mounting case, no longer merely the crowning achievement of philosophy, but apparently also the crown that physical science so desperately seeks: A theory of everything.

But ah, I digress. I could go on but the point is, in atheism, what I am willing to call God, may be a middle ground where two polar opposites can meet, fully aware that in no way does this Ideal of Reason alter any of the functions of our Universe, but instead serves as the systematic unity by which we can perceive reality for what it is, the source of which makes that unity in consciousness we understand as the Self or the Ego possible. At what point of understanding does true religion earn the respect that its name is supposed to represent?

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Isn't one of the main defining attributes of a god that it's a 'being' of some kind? A prime mover? An uncaused causer? A conscious entity? The way that you seem to be defining god could include a non-conscious mechanism in which case, the term ceases to have any discrete meaning and could be replaced by the name/function of the mechanism.

[Mudhammam]

Isn't one of the main defining attributes of a god that it's a 'being' of some kind? A prime mover? An uncaused causer? A conscious entity? The way that you seem to be defining god could include a non-conscious mechanism in which case, the term ceases to have any discrete meaning and could be replaced by the name/function of the mechanism.

I take being as in "to be," i.e. to exist, not as in a composition of sorts with definable boundaries. Primal mover and uncaused causer seem safe enough, but if I were to ever believe in God, I'd have to base it in the hope the belief implies rather than any specific metaphysical characteristics, other than perhaps negations of material attributes and the mere ineffability that at times swells my insides and confounds my intellect. I'd also be reluctant to call it "conscious," as that to me implies almost a physical brain.

I use God in the broad, traditional sense as utilized in natural theology, but whatever particular name we give this mechanism is of marginal importance.

[Whateverist]

I take being as in "to be," i.e. to exist, not as in a composition of sorts with definable boundaries. Primal mover and uncaused causer seem safe enough, but if I were to ever believe in God, I'd have to base it in the hope the belief implies rather than any specific metaphysical characteristics, other than perhaps negations of material attributes and the mere ineffability that at times swells my insides. I'd lso be reluctant to call it "conscious," as that to me implies almost a physical brain.

I use God in the broad, traditional sense as utilized in natural theology, but whatever particular name we give this mechanism is less important.

But don't you envision a god as something capable of "communicating" with you? And a creator god would have a prior "intention", no? If not 'conscious', not sure what you would call this god.

[Mudhammam]

But don't you envision a god as something capable of "communicating" with you? And a creator god would have a prior "intention", no? If not 'conscious', not sure what you would call this god.

Perhaps my depth cannot grasp the possibility but I see it as completely paradoxical to state that a timeless being could ever "act in time," which it would seem to require if I were envision it "communicating" with me. Maybe this being exists within its own time and space? I dunno. Non-temporal and non-spatial, even if physicists define this as a "vacuum," is totally inconceivable. Even the act of creating a Universe, from the vantage point of timelessness, suggests to me that it's in ever-present function rather than one that takes place at any given moment. I'm not sure about "intention" but in terms of being "conscious," if consciousness is a function of material entities than it seems meaningless to speak of "immaterial consciousness." How would that be even conceptually possible? A stream of pure experience that is omnipresent in everything?

Now we're going into territory so obscure and devoid of content that it basically reaffirms to myself why I am not a believer. :-)

[BlackMason]

I'm surprised you'd describe such a god as "necessary". What is it that we understand so well as to be able to say what is or isn't necessary to account for reality as we find it?

The other thing I'd like to know is how you can be sure that a single god was accountable for space, time and energy/matter. How does anyone know that gods do not work from a basic substrate which includes all of these? But if you insist that deist gods created everything from an absolute, unqualitfied nothing .. what created them?

But this is fantastic!

[robvalue]

If god = everything we don't know, then god is getting smaller all the time.

[Dawsonite]

If god = everything we don't know, then god is getting smaller all the time.

Disagree. Larger.

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Free will is a nothing but semantic shorthand indicating long-term random outcomes.