we all know time can be manipulated by moving quickly relative to any observer. so it seems likely, and certainly possible that a place exists where this “time” fad is trivial.
and an ambivalent god who has goals other than our happiness, i think is mostly accepted. some sort of higher dimensional place from which our current existence was created. some 4 dimensional black hole farted and our universe came out.
can you really say that such a thing never happened? can you say that an ambivalent god who exists outside of time could not have possibly created our universe and our afterlife for his own purposes?
no you absolutely can not.
you are agnostic. prove atheism. you will not.
you dont hate god, you just dont know what the heck is going on. get over it. embrace what has been given to us: occasional happiness. sounds religious. doesnt have to be.
What you call god is not a god it is merely a sentient creature like us. If it exists then it only has powers beyond our capability so far. As we evolve we gain on it. It is at its end, we are at the beginning. We are its future peers.
i see no reason why you would believe humanity has the capability to overcome time or other things like this being has. or any of its abilities.
maybe you have Faith that we will be there someday. maybe i do too! neither of us are atheist.
i dont have faith that we will master time and universe creation. if you do have FAITH that we will be able to create a new universe like our own with sentient beings like our own, and a new concept of time that is separate from our own,
then maybe you are atheist. but i dont think you have real faith in any of that. i mean, what the heck new dimension of time are you planning on creating?
you need to be able to make a new universe with a new dimension of time that is contained within that universe such that they cant imagine how a universe could exist without it (you know, like how god made our universe with time as we know it, and we cant imagine a univerese without it) and you would also have to have a reason for creating it. i suppose proving me wrong would, actually be a good enough reason. and i would laugh so hard if i got to the afterlife and it turns out thats why god made our universe.
but the time question, really, is the problem.
ironically its the answer for most atheists. “what created god?” most people will not have a clue. i, on the other hand will tell them that einstein and all of us should know that time is easily manipulated and
god simply exists outside of time. period. prove it wrong.
i wont prove it right. i will only prove you cant prove atheism. agnostic.
I don’t know what it is about this type of thinking, but I don’t get it at all. Not just the supposed answers, but the question itself. Maybe I’m an alien. I just can’t relate - I don’t get it.
my interpretation of atheists is that it seems that they have an answer. and that answer is that there can not possibly be a god, and they have faith in that answer.
i am just bringing to their attention ideas that result in uncertainty. “who created god ad infinitum” and “wtf bad things happen” arent proof that god is not real. special relativity and the potential ambivalence of a god counteract those anti-theistic ideas. i think.
i want to know other reasons why people HAVE FAITH that god is not real.
if you dont have faith that god isnt real, i think that makes you agnostic like most of us.
it seems if people are atheists, they need to HAVE FAITH. see where im going with my caps lock there?
I don’t have faith in what I say, I actually know what I say. Faith means you are guessing and hoping. I am not doing either.
As we evolve physically and mentally we will no longer be able to identify with our ancestors on any level. We will lose what we call humanity. We will become a different species. As we came from the amoebae we can no longer identify that as our beginning. yet it was us. There will be those that retain humanity and there will be those that evolve to a different species just as there are amoebae and humans. We have surrounding us enough data to know this to be true. Yet sentience creates walls within to ensure survival. Some can see past others cannot. And still others believe other things.
If you only have faith in something then you will never understand what you are destined to be. Faith is not supposed to be a wheel chair it is only supposed to be a temporary crutch.
Atheism from skepticism, the most common strain of atheism, is indeed agnosticism. But the line between “hard” and “soft” atheism has been long since recognized. Other philosophical systems can be and are atheist in that gods, as they are generally understood to be, cannot exist if they system is correct. Now, any such system involves a certain degree of speculation, but that’s philosophy for you.
By saying you’re an agnostic you’re not saying anything about yourself that I didn’t already know. If you’re going to pull this ‘atheists are really agnostic’ crap, then let’s bring it to it’s logical conclusion. Theists are agnostic too then. There aren’t really any theists. People who believe that the people they see yonder over there in the distance are actually people are really agnostic. Those who say that apples exist as they sense them to be are really agnostic. Everybody’s an agnostic about everything.
When I ask you whether you’re a theist or an atheist I want to know whether you and your actions are influenced by the God idea. If the God idea doesn’t influence you on your day to day life, then you’re an atheist despite the fact that you may say you’re an agnostic, or even a theist.
It doesn’t matter that I do or don’t have reasons for not having the god idea influence my day to day routine, or if I can’t ever come up with epistemologically solid reasons. If I go through the day without ever thinking of God, or have this God idea influence my life’s decisions, then I’m an atheist–atop of being an agnostic, I guess. But the agnostic label is redundant at this point. It’s like saying I’m an atheist, with a nose, legs, arms. It goes without saying that I’m an agnostic.
I mean really, when has not being able to know ever stopped someone from believing and having this belief influence their life? The whole spectrum of -isms exists in lieu of agnosticism. That doesn’t make them irrational, or non-existent–as if rationality is a condition for existence? I don’t think so. I believe that someone who says they’re a substance dualist, i.e. believes in an immaterial soul, is indeed a substance dualist, despite the fact that they don’t know, nor can they know, because this belief probably affects them as a person and how they live their lives.
Are agnostics the only true non-believers?
Do atheists have a belief system requiring as much faith as Christians or Hindus, etc.?
Perhaps Atheism can refer to the exclusion of an interceding god without excluding the posibility of some ambivalent force that farted the universe and time into existence?
I better know what atheism means if I am to continue asserting I am atheist.
The “a” in “atheism” is a negation, so the only conclusion you can draw about someone saying they’re an atheist is that they aren’t a theist. Or the only thing that all atheists have in common is that they lack that particular belief; there is no further conclusion you can draw about what they do believe or about their morality.
I agree Ingenium.
My understanding is that atheism is inclusive of a continuum of positions from the strong to the weak. Weak atheism is often synonomous with agnosticism.
My position is stronger than lack of belief, but not so strong as to exclude the possibility of some powerful causal entity that is not intercessory.
XZC, I think you nailed it, except your examples are all positive beliefs. Must I be an agnostic about whether I’m alone in this room? On some level yes, but not on any practically important level. I can safely act as though there’s no one else in this room, and I can form an argument to show that.
I think that atheism can go even further, to say that if I can believe that there is no such thing as an object that isn’t an object (i.e. if I can know anything internally inconsistent to be false), I can say that there’s no such thing as god (i.e. I find the concept of god to be internally inconsistent, and therefore nonexistent a priori).
EDIT: I accidently wrote “atheist” when I meant “agnostic”. Telling
Generally atheists will define “god” as in keeping with the majority traditions to which they are exposed and within their understanding. Now, we can argue those various bits of understanding, if you’d like.
I agree it is a shifting term and that the referents don’t line up 100%. This is seemingly problematic, but given that this is an English language website with a predominantly Western audience – almost exclusively Western, actually. I can only think of one non-Western poster here and they were banned. So the gloss of “god” to “Judeo-Christian God” tends to be fair and intuitive given the context of this website. Removing that bias from the discussion does open the door somewhat, but most atheists embrace some variation on both monism and materialism, so I still don’t see it as terribly problematic. For example, in a Hellenic context, lightening/the sky is inseparable from Zeus. So since I believe in lightening and the sky, it follows from their thinking that I also recognize the existence of Zeus as surely as my recognition of the existence of sexual passion means I believe in Aphrodite, and so on. But such a description requires a dualism that I, and many atheists, would count as a category error. That is, descriptors are being attached to the thing in question that do not belong. Pantheism suffers a similar fate.
According to Wikipedia:
Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods,[1] or the rejection of theism.[2] It is also[3] defined more broadly as synonymous with any form of nontheism, including the simple absence of belief in deities.
In the broad sense:
Theism is the belief in the existence of one or more divinities or deities.
It isn’t difficult to prove both theism and atheism. Since at least one person claims to hold a belief in the existence of a deity, and at least one other person to not hold such a belief, both are proven. Both being proven, neither can be disproven.
Most theists don’t claim to be able to prove the existence of god, but many do claim there is substantial evidence of god’s existence. Until there is sufficient evidence to prove there is a god (and I expect that will never happen), it cannot be proven that the assertion “god doesn’t exist” is false.
First, I’d like to thank Jared for using the term “nontheism” which seems to have been what everyone else has thus far referred to as “atheism,” the latter of which, in my experience at least, is most typically associated with the belief that no God, gods, or supernatural being or beings of any form exist; that we were created as a result of science and physics alone. I think it’s generally assumed (or at least it is assumed by those I am acquainted with) that when someone is referred to as an “atheist,” that person, while perhaps unable to prove to others their beliefs, do fairly solidly believe that no such higher power exists, while an agnostic is typically understood to be one who is uncertain and/or simply without opinion on the issue of religion.
But really, this discussion has gone from being about religion and philosophy to simply a debate over the English language, it seems to me. So here’s my opinion: atheists and theists both for some reason or another can and do clearly define for themselves what makes most sense. This is why there are so many people in the world of so many different religions, all of them absolutely sure that theirs is right. There’s no single answer, but many, each interpreted differently as each individual interprets it. Perhaps they can’t prove it to others, but neither can others always prove them wrong, regardless of how firm the others are in their beliefs. But as soon as we start calling everyone who can’t prove their religious beliefs to FutureMan an agnostic, then what on Earth is the point of having separate words for these different sets of beliefs at all?
