Open to explore possibility

[Ryantology]

One thing that is still a bit scary to me as a fairy new atheist, is accepting "I don't know" and leaving myself open to new arguments, new evidence, etc. I think as a Christian, I was lazy about my religion and took a lot of things for granted. I didn't push or dig, or experiment, I just believed because that was what I was told was true. I mean, I had my own experiences and I studied the scriptures and doctrine, but lazy in the sense that I never questioned or followed my doubts. I never fully researched or tested a belief in a God.

So, for about 30 years of my life, I've been operating on this system of accepting "this is the truth about the world and existence" and moving on with my day. In some ways, I'm still trying to get there, to find something solid to accept so that I can move on with my day and not think about it. But that's not the way I want to live. I don't want to feel secure in something and ever get the rug swept out from under me ever again, simply because I was ignorant or wasn't paying close enough attention.

However, even though this is still something I've only explored for about 4 or 5 months, I do find myself occasionally consumed by the pursuit of arguments and questions. Probably 80% of my waking hours are involved with thoughts about the weight of reality and the flaws in Biblical morality, the nature of God(exploring a "if it were true" thought process), the flaws in the history or literal aspects of the Bible, etc. I can feel myself trying to hammer it all down to make sure the world makes definitive sense.

Have you guys also struggled with "I don't know"? Was it ever scary or painful to reach that place? I recognize it's still new for me and the likelihood that healing from religious trauma will eventually happen.

Anyone who is really honest with themselves is, and forever will, struggle with "I don't know". The thing is, when we're talking about something which is, allegedly, supposed to be, the biggest, most powerful force there is. All of the religions, and most of their denominations, either attempt to describe this concept, or claim to already understand it. Religion is not the same as belief, and belief is strictly a personal matter. You can associate with a religion and, for whatever reason, be convinced that its take on the ultimate explanation of reality is a good fit for their own, entirely unique blend of firsthand experience, natural preconceptions and cultural inculcations. And you can associate, but feel impaired or even vanishing faith in its teachings. Maybe it never caught on to begin with. Likely, it did, to a degree small or large, but your accumulated experiences have not borne out the truth of them, or present contradictions you can no longer ignore or explain.

Maybe now, you're sure there must be nothing or no one in charge. It could be that the obvious ancient mythical nature and character of all large, organized religions, just seems so cartoonish and absurd that you reject not just the specific example of capital G God, but toss out right along with it the very philosophical foundation of a higher power or creator.

Maybe you're right.

But, maybe, we like to think that our science, technology, and understanding which all have expanded so rapidly and have revealed so many amazing secrets, gives us the right to assert that we can state, with any degree of certainty, that we are anywhere close to understanding the nature of existence and reality with anything resembling total understanding. We can see to the end of the observable universe, and we know there's more beyond, which many people like to believe will be invisible to us forever, because our current understanding of physics insists it shall be so. We have theories about whether or not this universe of ours is unique or impossibly, perfectly irrelevant in terms of how unique it is. We barely comprehend a level of existence and reality above that. Now, think about how there's no rational reason to believe there's any upper limit to this, or lower, for that matter. If the universe is really just an eternally vibrating string concerto, the strings are going to made of something, acting according to some rules, and performing some actions which make it possible for reality to have a functional physical foundation. That, also, expands into apparently infinitely small resolution.

And since we accept the existence of consciousness, and that it is exceedingly rare but not unique (there are 8 billion of us, after all). We simply understand some of the basic physical mechanisms, and still have only hypotheses on why it came into existence. We can only imagine how consciousness may work on levels of reality which are beyond the micro and macro to our observational capabilities. We can't say for sure it doesn't exist on a level high enough to affect us on levels we can't perceive (no more than a bacterium can't ever conceptualize the impossibly larger lifeforms which know you are there and completely rewrite your existence on a whim). That sounds like a hot sesh talking, but it's reality and we all accept it in one form or another. We can all likely come to consensus on the idea that our understanding of our existence will always, necessarily, never be totally comprehensive, because the goalposts can always move. There will always be infinite uncertainty lurking behind every individual conquest of ignorance.

If you think you have 'the' answers, I'm not going to believe you.

[John 6IX Breezy]

And if you want to argue this, go to the correct forum thread to do it.  It's not going to be debated here. 

You're correct—this is not up for debate. I respectfully stand by my quotation.

[Astreja]

Why not?  In the absence of empirical evidence, a belief essentially is based on feelings.

I disagree. We can have good reasons to believe in something, which can extend beyond mere feelings or emotions. Let's take a simple but telling example: We both believe that Siera Leone exists somewhere in Africa, although we very probably never set foot there, nor saw any incontrovertible evidence/footage supporting its existence.

Ah, but I said "in the absence of empirical evidence." It's possible to go get that evidence by travelling to Sierra Leone. I know of no way to obtain comparable evidence about gods.

I've considered the possibility on more than one occasion.  I've dismissed it every time.  The assertions of religion are not adequately supported by real-world data, so it's a waste of my time to consider the issue again.

The assertions of religions are mostly metaphysical, they clearly aren't the same as scientific assertions, so it's a category mistake to try to fit them to real world data. And actually, some parts of scripture - both in the Bible and in the Qur'an/hadiths - actually mention natural phenomena, making the entire respective religions vulnerable to falsification.

I don't "do" metaphysics. I have no respect for that particular methodology, none at all.

And mentioning natural phenomena in a scripture only indicates that the people who wrote the scripture were aware of those phenomena. It does not support any of the supernatural claims.

I'm prepared to reopen the issue if and only if better data is found - testable data, not scriptures or believers' personal experiences or philosophical thought experiments.

Again, please consider that whatever convinced you may simply not be enough for someone like me.

It's actually not up to you to decide what would be convincing or not. There is a whole field in philosophy called epistemology that deals with this problem. It's a stretch already to restrict the scope of knowledge to testable data. Mathematical truths are not testable data, nor are historical facts or truths based on inference, such as the existence of an external world and of other minds, etc.

You are correct in that I did not consciously decide what convinced me. Nonetheless, I am unconvinced. I am in a state of intractable disbelief regarding religious claims. Wittering about epistemology and mathematics and history does not change the fact that I find religion execrably silly and childish, and am baffled as to why anyone takes it seriously.