I’m with you, man. I may not agree that theism is fiction- but at least I’m getting what fiction is.
As far as the idea of believing “God does not exist” as opposed to having no belief either way, it just sounds like semantics to me. There must be some way to verbally describe your position on theism- you’ve heard of it, you’ve thought about it, you’ve come to some conclusion. Even if “God does not exist” is not a belief you have, there must be some beliefs you do have that lead you that way.
Thanks, Ucc. I have used the common figure of speech.
I believe that evidentiary verification is possible, if not absolute, and that it is the best shot we have at continuing to inhale and exhale.
I believe that some lies are necessary, or at least very handy, and that some are not, and that we can determine which are which reasonably (and I choose this word carefully) well. The inhale-exhale test is a good one.
I believe that religious people are wrong.
So far, I have said nothing about God, nor do I intend to.
Everything we say is semantics. It’s our motives that really count.
I believe that the word “perfection” is nonsensical in the context of the phenomenal world.
No I get that, when I was referring to the book and the characters it was a metaphor for actual human existence. To be fictional is to be created, and like the characters, we don’t know if we were created or not, we merely believe one way or another.
And then for me, Agnosticism is the belief that we as humans cannot access the answer to this question, it rests outside of the system – the book. It’s a description of the absence of belief – the null set.
Like… I dunno, my brain isn’t working right now,
To me this is a blatant contradiction…
Gobbo -
I am at a loss. We can believe. Fictional characters cannot. You are getting lost in your own metaphor.
“God” is not a word - it is a collection of letters. It is not a contradiction to say that metaphysical entities do not exist. Can I say that “rebortins” do not exist? I think I can. The word is not the thing. Only the thing is the thing, and if it’s not a thing, it’s not a thing. Words are cheaply had.
I agree whole heartedly. All I’m saying is that to say ‘metaphysical entities do not exist’ is to hold a belief. Likewise with saying ‘Rebortin’ doesn’t exist. At the foundation all beliefs are based on 1 of 3 premises.
You’re totally missing it.
gobbo i ddin;t see a reply to my post… why can;t we simply take atheism as “lack of belief” ?
take the word symmetrical for example… asymmetrical doesn’t represent another form of symmetry… but the lack of symmetry…
Lack of belief is merely belief in something else.
Like Anarchy is another form of goverment?
Atheism is a belief like 0 is a number.
They both hold no substance.
I think i figured it out gobbo.
Atheism isn’t a belief… and you can’t sniff out that it isn’t because the “belief in god” is so widely spread that you feel its a characteristic of the human being to either believe in a god or not to believe where was in fact… its not.
Here’s where i’m getting at… if all notion of god was to be erased from the minds of everyone on this planet, do you think we would reinvent god in this technological age ?
You assume that being a human involves knowing that god either exists or doesn’t exist… but its not like that at all. Because you see when a child is born… he/she has no notion of any divine creature unless he/she is told about it by other people.
So the ideea of god is not inborn… but is passed on.
Thus you cannot consider atheism another form of belief.
Show me one child that knows god from birth… and i will admit atheism is a belief.
Untill then i must consider it to simply be “lack of belief”.
I see what you’re saying faust, and where I went astray.
Still though, I question how many people would go through life without questiong where ‘stuff’ came from, even with science. I have a hunch that the quantum gap would spawn religions more extreme than what we see today; religions which arn’t ancient and stagnant, but cutting edge and pragmatic – the new age of psionics. Fueled by, ironically, the technolgical path we’ve taken to see that it all comes back to the soul anyways.
I think that carpathian has made my point, the point that I share with him, more cogently than I - in fact, I have not been particularly lucid lately. But I disagree with him about one thing - that we would not have invented a god today. We would. We love certainty. Well, not all of us do. But most people do. I fact, there are more gods now, more religions than ever.
We can define this god any way we want - one of the “benefits” of near-universal eductation and the spread of leisure in the West. It’s easier than ever to invent and implement our own religion. And we do.
ur probably right faust.
but i still don’t think that if shown all the scientifical progress which is a slow process one would go one step further and postulate god.
I think this time we would have the decency to look at the issue with patience and accept that only future generations will know more.
Oh Jesus, of course people would invent a God today. (Sorry, I haven’t been on the whole day and now I’m totally off on the conversation.)
But I disagree with Faust that it would be done out of a need for certainty. There’s no more certainty in theism than athiesm; sure in the former there’s an all-powerful, omnipotent being, but for all you know he might just send you to hell or may not even care about you at all. This is countered in dogma by the old “we must be right 'cause that’s the way it is” found in many of the more rigid religions, but it remains a deep and terrible thought in the mind of the theist, a thought very hard to supress, which often finds its outlet in projecting one’s own doubts on outsiders (i.e. Pagans, etc.) but that’s a differant topic altogether.
Instead, I believe that man’s need for God (or something like it; you know: spirit of nature, collective soul, whatever. At core it’s all the same just elaborated upon in differant ways…) is instead based on a sense of the unknown (the universe, the unconcious, etc.) the manifests in the image of God. It’s easy to think that it is a manifestation of a fear of the unknown, and that, I agree, is part of what the God-figure is, but it also represents the possibilties of the unknown.
Differant faiths highlight differant aspects of the God-figure in their own way, so when one that highlights the fearful part of it particularly grows as large as some of the dominating sects of the Judaic decended relegions have, it’s easy to think of the idea of God as just a daddy figure. But this ignores the attitudes displayed in many other mythologies, particularly the old pagan ones, (Mr. Crowley’s “Do as thy wilt shall be the whole of the law,” comes to mind) or the Alchemic beliefs of the middle ages, that highlight the possibilites of the unknown.
The only half positive thing i see about belief in god is a cure for this cosmic loneliness… but even that’s not for people like me. I’m ok even if my life doesn’t have a meaning; moreover if it doesn’t have one that means i’m free to create one myself.
So maybe it’s ok as a “cure for cosmic loneliness”… but its still not worth it because of the extra baggage it carries.
Well, carp - that’s partly what I mean by certainty. That cosmic loneliness thing. It’s like mom and dad are still sleeping in the next room. Question - I think there very much is more certainty - certainty being merely a psychological state.
The mystery of God? Yeah, I guess so. I dunno. I’m going to go a couple of days without getting high, and think about it.
Good ideea 
The atheist need not deny the possibility of God, but only that it is the case that there is God.
I definitely think any being will inevitably create the notion of God, a direct consequence of their intelligence and finitude. Though if God himself did exist, how could verify that he himself was God! (Perhaps he´d simply have to believe it!)
The main problem I think creating this endless confusion is as follows:
-If the atheist is speaking of RELIGION when he denies having a belief, he can rightly do so, providing he does indeed believe no religious system. In this sense he does have a “lack of belief”. However…
-When the atheist speaks (all religion aside) of the ultimate cause of the universe (if there is one), its origin and nature, etc., he CANNOT deny having a belief if he asserts that no intelligence whatsoever can possibly be the answer to such a question.
In the religious sense, I class myself as an athiest, as I entirely reject all religion. However, philosphically, to remain true to its spirit, I cannot possibly assert, as matter of fact, that some sort of intelligent entity could not exist, as all such talk is mere speculation, and hence belief. Anything could be correct, but nothing should be taken as true. Consequently, both theist and atheist claims (in the non-religious sense) can never be treated as knowledge, but most remain as mere belief.
In my view, confusion has arisen from the strong link between religion and metaphysics. Any speak of God must therefore be accompanied by clarification on the sense in which you speak of the question.
Thats another problem i have with religion. So many times you see people parying and talking about god… but it strikes you that its not the same god. Each person sees in god what they want to see. Thats another issues which should be more clear in the future.
Oh, sorry… i just saw this post: