Why them and not you?

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't believe Theists when they testify they know God exists. I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe due to their testification.

But why should Theists take seriously that you actually are justified in not believing in God? Why should we not believe it's the fault of yours and not God's or anyone else?

You're perfectly free to take me less than seriously, and blame me for my inability to see your god.  Knock yourself out?

Why should we take your testification that you sincerely sought to know whether God exists or not seriously?

If the only way to respond to the very existence of people like me is imagining that we're all liars....then you're probably in a pretty shitty state of faith.

[emjay]

@MK. I was a strong Christian until the age of 18, when cognitive dissonance finally did its thing and out of the blue it clicked for me 'there is no God'. I remember exactly where I was when that happened, such is the imprint it left. Up until then I stubbornly and ignorantly defended Christianity at every turn, much to the annoyance and mockery of my atheist friends... because pretty much everyone except me was atheist. If this site had been around back then and I'd come on it, Min and everyone else would have had a field day with me as a chew toy but it wouldn't have made any difference to how I felt. Now like they do in things like AA, I wish I could go round all my old school friends and say 'you were right, there is no God (and Nintendo is better than Sega... [another bad call I made ])'.

In my case there was no desire to leave Christianity when my click happened... no intellectual quest to disprove it; I was happy enough being a Christian and I didn't know anything else. I knew I was gay, and that was in conflict with it and the main cause of the cognitive dissonance I felt... but I accepted the consequences and implications of being gay and a Christian, and still had no (conscious at least) desire not to be a Christian... if anything, I wanted to be both. And that's ultimately what cognitive dissonance is... trying to make compatible that which is not compatible... the first-person experience of being gay compared to the third-person way it is portrayed in the Bible... one thing telling you you're wicked and unnatural vs experience telling you you're just in love. In the end, the mind cannot handle holding two contradictory world views at the same time, so it clicks, and settles on one or the other. And that's what happened for me. And once it had, I saw the world from a completely new perspective and saw all the things I had ignored as a Christian, and more and more stuff started to click, gathering momentum in leaps and bounds.

So regarding your OP I assure you I have no hope or expectation of changing the minds of emotionally entrenched theists; no-one could change my mind back then, only my own mind. In my opinion, the only way out of a comfortable delusion is initially through cognitive dissonance... then it is only a matter of time before  it just implodes under it's own weight of contradictions, as it did for me.

That last paragraph says it all. Just like a smoker or drinker wont quit until they want to. The believer will stay where they are at until that light bulb pops with cognitive dissonance.

Yeah, I agree... path of least resistance and all that. Tbh if I wasn't gay, and thus didn't have that particular cognitive dissonance, I don't know how much longer I'd have been a Christian, or even if I would have ever got out. I'd like to think I would, but I don't know. What I do know is that now that I am out, I could never go back in... at least not as I used to be... because I'm too aware now of psychology... nothing I found convincing then would I find convincing now... I was just a big blob of indoctrinated beliefs and confirmation bias back then, but now I'm wise to all of that.

[Cyberman]

By the way, if most of the world claim to see an invisible unicorn in a garage, I would be prone to investigate their claim and not dismiss it.

But you'd swallow without question someone's claim to talk to an invisible god, right?

[Mystic]

In my experience,

Atheists haven't deeply thought of the following:

1. What makes us who we are
2. What is the mysterious nature of love.
3. What is the language of love
4. What is to be truly valued and have worth.
5. What is free-will
6. What is perception
7. What is justice
8. Most philosophical arguments that assert to prove God haven't been given their due.
9. What is that we appreciate and praise
10. What is reason
11. What is goodness
12. Most of all, what is love.

These questions are essential to humanity.

Religion wise and their hostility towards religion:

1. Emphasize on differences without seeing the underlying mysterious unity of religions in the essential teachings and doctrines of what makes us human.
2. Leadership and the underlying agreement of religions on the characteristics of those worthy of leading us to God.
3. Haven't thought really what the Creator is capable of in proving his religion through literature.
4. Haven't thought of the need to have a rope from God and handhold to hold on to with all the confusing mess of diverging paths and thoughts

And I think a lot of religions have come with an agreement to much of these questions and are agreement that eternal divine being is the source of light.

[Jesster]

Why should we care what your experience of atheists is? That's straw-man material.

[paulpablo]

In my experience,

Atheists haven't deeply thought of the following:

1. What makes us who we are
2. What is the mysterious nature of love.
3. What is the language of love
4. What is to be truly valued and have worth.
5. What is free-will
6. What is perception
7. What is justice
8. Most philosophical arguments that assert to prove God haven't been given their due.
9. What is that we appreciate and praise
10. What is reason
11. What is goodness
12. Most of all, what is love.

These questions are essential to humanity.

Religion wise and their hostility towards religion:

1. Emphasize on differences without seeing the underlying mysterious unity of religions in the essential teachings and doctrines of what makes us human.
2. Leadership and the underlying agreement of religions on the characteristics of those worthy of leading us to God.
3. Haven't thought really what the Creator is capable of in proving his religion through literature.
4. Haven't thought of the need to have a rope from God and handhold to hold on to with all the confusing mess of diverging paths and thoughts

And I think a lot of religions have come with an agreement to much of these questions and are agreement that eternal divine being is the source of light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_at...ilosophers

Not that I agree with all these philosophers just because they are atheists.  But there's a whole list of atheist philosophers there who probably spent a spare afternoon or two in deep thought about some of those things on your list such as free will or reason.

Even on this very forum the topic of free will and reason tend to go on and on and on and on and on...........

[bennyboy]

You don't believe Theists when they testify they know God exists. I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe due to their testification.

But why should Theists take seriously that you actually are justified in not believing in God? Why should we not believe it's the fault of yours and not God's or anyone else?

Why should we take your testification that you sincerely sought to know whether God exists or not seriously?

The problem is that in the end, nobody cares.  You want people to believe your God idea, you will have to convince them that there's sufficient value in that belief to get them to spend the time and effort.

We don't need to prove there's no God, since there are no consequences in just ignoring the God idea and getting on with more important things in life-- like cleaning out belly-button lint.

[Whateverist]

You don't believe Theists when they testify they know God exists. I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe due to their testification.

But why should Theists take seriously that you actually are justified in not believing in God?

I seriously doubt anyone cares how you or anyone else judge our indifference to god claims.  We're not looking for that from you.  What exactly is it you're looking for from us?

Why should we not believe it's the fault of yours and not God's or anyone else?]

No one cares which you believe.  It isn't really any of your business.

Why should we take your testification that you sincerely sought to know whether God exists or not seriously?

That makes us even.  We don't take your god claims seriously either.

---

In my experience,

Atheists haven't deeply thought of the following:

1. What makes us who we are

Assumes there is something which intends us to be a certain way.  You're assuming what you're trying so hard to convince us of rather than arguing for it honestly.

2. What is the mysterious nature of love.
3. What is the language of love
4. What is to be truly valued and have worth.
5. What is free-will
6. What is perception
7. What is justice
8. Most philosophical arguments that assert to prove God haven't been given their due.
9. What is that we appreciate and praise
10. What is reason
11. What is goodness
12. Most of all, what is love.

These questions are essential to humanity.

They may be of interest to humanity but that doesn't mean we can't get along without good answers to them or that good answers are a sure thing.  In all of this you're assuming everything has a hidden meaning which is its essence.  I don't start out assuming any such thing.

Religion wise and their hostility towards religion:

1. Emphasize on differences without seeing the underlying mysterious unity of religions in the essential teachings and doctrines of what makes us human.
2. Leadership and the underlying agreement of religions on the characteristics of those worthy of leading us to God.
3. Haven't thought really what the Creator is capable of in proving his religion through literature.
4. Haven't thought of the need to have a rope from God and handhold to hold on to with all the confusing mess of diverging paths and thoughts

And I think a lot of religions have come with an agreement to much of these questions and are agreement that eternal divine being is the source of light.

Not really surprising (my bolded).  What they have in common after all is taking the idea of a god seriously.

[chimp3]

Because the existence of God is a positive existence claim. Substitute God for "invisible unicorn in my garage", maybe you get it then.

By the way, if most of the world claim to see an invisible unicorn in a garage, I would be prone to investigate their claim and not dismiss it.

If most of the world claims to see an invisible unicorn in their garage what evidence could there be that they are seeing the same unicorn?

If 2 billion Muslims claim they believe in Allah what evidence is there that they believe in the same Allah? Should I investigate 2 billion Allahs?

[Joods]

You don't believe Theists when they testify they know God exists. I understand that and you shouldn't simply believe due to their testification.

But why should Theists take seriously that you actually are justified in not believing in God? Why should we not believe it's the fault of yours and not God's or anyone else?

Why should we take your testification that you sincerely sought to know whether God exists or not seriously?

For starters, I don't give a rats ass if a theist "takes me seriously" or not. There is no law in my country requiring me to believe in some magical sky daddy. So let's get the assumption by religious nuts out of the way that atheists are demanding you take us seriously. Because from your wording, that's the impression I garnered.

Second - atheists have nothing to testify to in order to claim any sort of belief....wait for it.....

because we don't have to. science uses the scientific method and employs things like fact-based evidence. The results of which are then documented so everyone can see it for themselves. It does not need any testimony. The results and the proven evidence are there for anyone to see.

The burden of proof that any deity or god exists is not upon the person who doesn't believe it, but it is upon the person making the claim that such a god exists.

Who said there has to be blame assigned when it comes to believing vs. not believing? Why can't Theists accept that the atheist point of view is what it is? Why do theists feel the need to try and scare us with threats of eternal damnation for not buying into their brand of bullshit?

You know, religion is like a penis. It's fine to have one, but stop trying g to shove it in everyone's faces.

Provide proof your god exists via the Scientific Method, or, gasp! How about your deity show himself to his people instead of making you guys do all the work and having him take credit.

Personally, I'd like to see a human limb (thats been physically removed necessity or injury) regrow itself, to its normal state, without any sort of intervention from other humans. I mean, your god is supposed to be omni-everything, right? So how about he start with some basic parlor tricks and give people back the body parts they are missing.

Oh wait...he can't do that because he doesn't exist. Why should he replace limbs on a person when he can't even show himself in any sort of form, to his own people?