Don't tell a Religious person "There is no God"

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Bugger if I'm going to censor myself for the purpose of sparing the feelings of people who already think I'm an immoral moron because I don't cater to their fantastical notions about the universe. I have no more reservations about telling theists 'There is no God' than I have about telling the waiter, 'Sorry, but I didn't order this.'

Theists (by and large) have already made up their minds about us. I see no reason to cozy up to them at the expense of my own dignity and reason.

Boru

[Heat]

In my opinion, and in the best interests of helping other religious peoples understand our belief, I think people should refrain from saying "There is no God"

First off, this is how all religious people view our beliefs as. They think we "know there is no god somehow" and therefore, see it as a radical position.

Also, saying "there is no god" is inherently wrong, due to the fact that you can never know, most will agree that it is very unlikely, but a common argument is "How do you know", I think it's dangerous to say you "know" anything.


Most importantly, though, it offsets any argument you use it in, or any scenario interacting with a religious person that it is said. If you are talking to a moderate believer, even though they probably think they know god exists, they will still most likely claim "I am not positive". If you say this, you give the impression you are positive, you as well give theists an argument to use. 



I guess.. What i'm trying to say even though this was poorly explained is that..
A large amount of theists see atheism as people who say "There is no god" hell, my Bible teacher listed that as basically the only trait of atheism. I don't think this represents a large scale of atheists beliefs. I'm not saying it's "50-50" or anything like that, but even people like Richard Dawkins-almost as far atheist as you can go-said he would say it is still a 99-1 percentage chance of god existing in some form. If you want theists to stop misrepresenting atheist beliefs, and have people come to a better and more peaceful understanding of them, we need to start saying "I Don't Know" as a go to response for the question of "Does god exist". Because no matter how far you lean to one side or another, you can never know for sure, you can say it's 1/1000000000000 chance, but you still don't know and need to profess this so that theists don't think your position is so radical.

So do you really think that Hindu gods exist?

Yeah because that's definitely what I said.

[Athene]

Theists have no problem telling us there is a God; all day, every day. Their in no more of a position to make their particular claim than we are; actually less so. 

So, once again it's up to us to do all of the accommodating.

Okay, fine. I'll play this silly little game...up until I won't. Know why? Because the fundamental types don't know how to stay in their goddamn lane. And when they cross the line, I will tell them that "There's no one up there." 

They'll survive.

[Homeless Nutter]

Doesn't matter how you dress it up - unless you declare yourself a believer, the religious people will inevitably grab the wrong end of the stick. And then they'll proceed to beat around the bush with it...

[Bob Kelso]

Eh?

Sure, we can't be completely positive there aren't any deities in the deistic sense -not if we're being intellectually honest- but we can be damned sure the theistic concepts of god aren't real.

Can telling someone "there is no god" come back to bite you in the ass? Sure. Pragmatically speaking though I don't see anything wrong with it. It's like saying fairies/unicorns/djinns/insert fantastical bullshit here don't exist.

[I_am_not_mafia]

As far as I know, I have never encountered a gnostic atheist here (although I have in other forums).

You have.

[abaris]

In my opinion, and in the best interests of helping other religious peoples understand our belief, I think people should refrain from saying "There is no God"

Stop right there. There is no belief of ours. There's only the absence of belief. It's people making claims like that who play into the hands of those claiming atheism to be a religion.

I'm not part of any belief. I'm an individual, who just doesn't believe. Other than that, there's virtually nothing connecting me to atheism. My values and what makes me are based on different things entirely.

[houseofcantor]

As far as I know, I have never encountered a gnostic atheist here (although I have in other forums).

You have.

I found you.

http://de4thkiss.deviantart.com/art/mafia-girl-43756734

(How did that make a picture? I'm all confused and stuff. )

[I_am_not_mafia]

Are you telling peeps what to do? Because fuck that. 

I'm a gnostic atheist, it's such an absurd concept that fits in my case. 'Cause I'm a prophet, meaning I speak for god, and god's like, tell them peeps I don't exist. 

My thoughts exactly.

I call myself a gnostic atheist because while we can't know 100% for sure, we can't know anything 100% for sure. So why only apply this criterion to atheism?

What we do know though, is that for all intents and purposes, we know as much it is possible to know, that there is no god. And I am confident that I can back this up.

The very concept of god is meaningless and no one even defines what a god could be. Existing out of space and time? Meaningless. Intelligence not situated in an environment? Meaningless. Self organisation without non-equilibrium thermodynamics? Meaningless.

Science has determined what has happened to a greater or lesser degree since quite soon after the Big Bang. Since the era where there was nothing but radiation. We understand the process of star and planet formation, of how chemicals were created. We still trying to figure out abiogenesis but we have good theories to explore and we will figure it out. And we understand the evolutionary process that has created the tree of life thereafter. We know this as well as we can know anything.

So the gap for a god, even if you can determine a meaningful concept for one, is so small as to make it irrelevant. The god that theists believe in.cannot exist.

[I_am_not_mafia]

You have.

I found you.

http://de4thkiss.deviantart.com/art/mafia-girl-43756734

(How did that make a picture? I'm all confused and stuff. )

Ah I just scanned the FBI most wanted posted which was captured from a CCTV camera when I was gunning down bank clerks with my tommy gun during the last heist.

Not that I'm Mafia mind you ...