How many here are atheists?

[kola]

what was the title again?

err..ahh..ummm

kola

[J’raxis 270145]

Well, what I'm asking them to try isn't a specific "thing". It's merely to open their mind to the possibility.

I would consider myself open to the possibility that a god exists, as I said earlier, if the existence of said god is actually possible. But I would still consider myself an atheist because, unless I myself see evidence that something does indeed exist, I'm going to believe and act as if it doesn't exist. And so long as it exerts no influence on my being (thus providing no evidence of its own existence), it may as well not exist. To believe that something exists without any evidence is arbitrary (Why do you believe in this god, but not that god? Or all gods? Or just anything at all?), but to categorically disbelieve in something when there's simply no evidence in either direction would be incredibly arrogant.

That said, I try to stay out of these debates as much as possible, because they go nowhere, and often end in the situation you described happened at PorcFest, with people acting like jerks and screaming at one another.

[dalebert]

EDIT: Apparently several posts were made as I was typing this so keep in mind that I haven't read them when I wrote this. The last post was by Vitruvian.

---

OK, I've said this before, but Vitruvian isn't tactful. But I understand where he's coming from so I'll try to express what he's saying more tactfully, and then I'll respond to your post, which I really appreciate, btw. I can see that you really put some effort into a thoughtful response.

He's talking about the drive-by that I was referring to earlier. With your few short posts, you essentially implied that atheists are unreasonable, you were way smarter than them (the ones you argued with in the past while you made some special exceptions for a few of us), and that if I don't understand God it's because of something missing in my own way of thinking. Sorry for gross over-simplifications, but essentially that was it.

I disagreed, and made the point that the notion of God is not logically consistent. I'm now in a position of defending my own intelligence, after all. I tried to apply a sort of Socratic method which if you participate in should either have you applying greater scrutiny to some of your conclusions or depending on how you answer, may make me apply greater scrutiny to my own conclusions. I predicted the former of course. But instead of responding, you got more and more vague and evasive with your answers, essentially boiling down to "Dale if you and other atheists don't get it, you just don't get it. I remain correct despite failing to substantiate my claims of superiority."

That's the impression that was left on me and I suspect that's why Vitruvian responded in his usual less than tactful manner. But I will reply separately to your post, which again, I really appreciate, to keep this from getting too long. I'm not sure if I'll get it up tonight though because it's late and I want to give you the same sort of effort for a thoughtful response that you gave me.

[Seamas]

When I try to explain my atheism I do so by pointing out the infinity of things that I do not believe for lack of evidence.  God is just one of them.  For example, I don't believe that on 1/1/2010 a space alien will land on earth and solve all our problems or destroy us.  I don't deny that this could happen but there is no chance that I'd base my life on the expectation that it will.  Basically; there are an infinity of improbable possibilities with no evidence in their favor so why waste time on any of them.

"Strong" atheism seems another form of faith to me but at least it has the force of evidence behind it.  It is the form of atheism that believers understand.

[Caleb]

Well, I'm sorry that I made you feel that your intelligence was under question.  I'm not particularly feeling like debating, so I was a little dismissive of what you were saying, not because I think you're stupid, but because I really don't feel like debating it. The "i'm smarter than you" comments were designed to get people thinking about what a silly way that is to approach people. Hence the 

[J’raxis 270145]

When I try to explain my atheism I do so by pointing out the infinity of things that I do not believe for lack of evidence.  God is just one of them.  For example, I don't believe that on 1/1/2010 a space alien will land on earth and solve all our problems or destroy us.  I don't deny that this could happen but there is no chance that I'd base my life on the expectation that it will.  Basically; there are an infinity of improbable possibilities with no evidence in their favor so why waste time on any of them.

"Strong" atheism seems another form of faith to me but at least it has the force of evidence behind it.  It is the form of atheism that believers understand.

That's sort of what I was getting at with my previous comment. If you're going to categorically reject the existence of gods due to mere lack of positive evidence, you're basically turning an operational procedure of science ("don't believe something exists until there's evidence") into an article of faith.

[Jacobus]

Do you experience consciousness (i.e. self-awareness, free will, etc.)?  What is the source of this consciousness? 

I define God as the source of this consciousness.  I believe humans have evolved to tap into the universal consciousness (God) in some small way, just as we've evolved eyes to see objects around us.

I experience seeing a tree, and I believe a tree exists.  I experience consciousness, and I believe God exists.

I have moments of enlightenment when I am conscious of (and at peace with) the present moment and can observe the rest of my mind.  I've realized that so much of my life has been spent unconscious (in the egoic mind) and developing bad habits and addictions.  I break these with the help of God; that is, through self-awareness and in-the-moment consciousness.  This is essentially a form of meditation, but I am working on letting it pervade my entire life (instead of say, 10 minutes each morning).

[Caleb]

It doesn't take too much investigation into theoretical physics to realize that science isn't quite so free of speculation as you might imagine. My favorite new theory is the one that "hey, maybe there's matter that exists in another universe, but has influence on ours"

[dalebert]

Since I don't have TV right now, I have my coffee to YouTube. This was just posted yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymHX8jYvFvs

[Jacobus]

I've been thinking a little more about science and the tendency for atheists to use the phrase "your god", which seems condescending and dismissive to me.  Do theists in turn use the phrase "your science"?

In any case, I was thinking about the post Vitruvian had with the lists of gods rejected by atheists and Christians.  I am sure I have seen him post or link to it in another thread as well.  It is clever and amusing.  However, it is also attacks a strawman.  

To illustrate why, I think we could come up with a similar list for scientists (or at least, someone smarter than me could).  Come up with all of the theories that scientists have produced that have subsequently been discarded, discredited, replaced, or laughed out of popularity.  For example, Lamarckian evolution.  Now we put all of those theories in a list called "Science Rejected by Scientists".  Now put all of those same theories, plus one that is currently used but is incompatible with the idea of God, and put it in a list called "Science Rejected by Theists".  

The strawman here is the misunderstanding of what a theory is.  The misunderstanding is the demand that a particular theory be true or false.  But, given that demand, all theories are false because they are simplified models of a more complex phenomenon.  A theory will never be the One True Theory that explains and predicts everything perfectly.

Similarly, the strawman with the list of gods is the demand that a particular concept of God be true or false.  But I agree with Caleb; any definition given to God will be wrong given this demand.  

The sad part is that it seems most religous people make the same mistake as atheists in this respect; they trumpet their belief system as the One True Belief System.  But nevertheless, attacking that idea is a strawman with respect to attacking the existence of God.

[dalebert]

But I don't have every answer you seek.

I'm not trying to get you to explain the universe to me. I'm trying to get answers about your belief system. You should have answers even if the answer is something like "that question is invalid and here's why..." I know what I believe and why I believe it. You should too.

It's not important to me to convert anyone. Mainly I defend myself and theism out of irritation of the bigoted attitude that is expressed. I sort of feel like I have to be the protector of the minority here who would get ganged up on and attacked if it wasn't for people willing to call them on their bullshit.

I understand that. I've even said that of you myself. I think that's true in general, but then you do a drive-by, as I call it, and that invites dissent. This is why I think it's more than appropriate to apply Socratic method and get you to examine even that statement, that you're not trying to convert anyone. Atheists are generally the ones in the minority. A gathering of anarchists is an exception. We're usually the ones being talked down to and having strangers knock on our doors to proselytize to us, so try to keep that in mind when some of us get really defensive. They're not all going to be as tactful as I am.

My brief outline of my beliefs is this...

This is where you give a detailed summary of some reading you've done and some people you disagree with. That's fine. I take no issue with 90% of what you just talked about. I don't know what Newton said about religion but I'm reasonably confident it has no relevance to what I'm about to say. I'm not embarrassed that I haven't read it and I don't particularly care to to be honest. Let me try and summarize where I'm coming from to explain why.

For some time now I've rejected the label "atheist" for myself for reasons you've already given, that the universe is vast and the fact that we keep learning new things that we didn't know before shows me that there are a bajillion things out there that we haven't discovered yet. Someone said, I forget exactly who right now, that sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic to someone who doesn't understand it. I believe that very sincerely. The term "supernatural" bugs me. Maybe it's just semantics, but if something is happening and if something exists, then it's natural. We just don't understand the workings behind it. There are things that were completely unknown to us because they were outside of our senses until we developed technologies to sense them. However, on a gut level, on an intuitive level, I can say that the notion of a supreme being just hasn't made sense to me for some time. It doesn't jive. I was not receptive as you might call it, to the notion of God, the there-can-be-only-one kind. It's only recently after seeing some well-framed discussion that I've been able to describe it, and having done so, I feel the term "strong atheist" is more applicable to me.

I can only interpret God (or anything really) in one of two ways. Either it's infinite and pre-existed the universe, or it's finite and is a part of the universe. In the second case, we're not really talking about a supreme being obviously. It may be a very powerful creature. It might be so advanced either from natural evolution or through technology, that it is in fact, by comparison to anything else, supreme. It's still not God in the modern there-can-be-only-one sense of the term though. It's more like some of the characters from Star Trek that can bend space and time with their minds. It's not magic but it appears to be for all practical purposes. A creature like that might even exist on a dimension that we can't even affect but it could affect our dimension. In that case, that just means the universe is even bigger than we think. It doesn't mean that creature exists outside the universe. I'm going to write a short sci-fi story depicting just such a scenario. It's completely in the realm of believability for me.

Ok so case two is not God, while it might essentially be god-like from our point of view, but more like older notions of gods (Zeus, Thor, etc.) that were just really powerful beings. So let's look at case one.

Here's where I try to wrap my noggin' around an infinite being. What would such a being be like? Well it wouldn't be a being at all. That's just it. It's so foreign to anything that I know that it's fruitless to even apply any sort of description of it. But here's where I end up when I try. Imagine an omniscient being. This thing knows everything that's ever happened, every thing that ever will happen, where every single molecule in the universe is, and even what every sentient creature is thinking. Now compare that to our sentience. We make decisions right? Well how do we make decisions? We make them based on our limited information from our five senses, and even from information from our own bodies. How hungry am I right now? What am I in the mood for? How much wood do I need to build Mark's house? But this thing has ALL the information presumably. It even knows what it's going to decide before it decides! Wait a minute... WTF? This thing isn't thinking at all. It just is. The notion of a decision doesn't even mean anything to it. A decision is only meaningful to a limited creature. This thing isn't thinking. It's not making decisions. It can't even will an action. To apply human traits to it is patently absurd to me, like love or free will. A computer thinks more than this thing does. You can cop-out and just say it's beyond my limited human comprehension and you'd be right. I can't even begin to imagine how to be "receptive" to that sort of entity.

Now you can call that "God" if you want to, and you might see this as merely an argument of semantics. I've said myself that math is God, but even now I realize that using the term "God" in that way is completely redefining it away from any traditional meaning that it has had in our culture or any culture. Mathematical laws seem to be part of the foundation of the workings of the universe. You cannot defy them. You cannot destroy them. They affect everything about our world but we can't affect them. But they are not a being. They are just part of the integral nature of the universe. If you manage to define "God" broadly enough to just say he is the universe itself or some foundational laws of the universe, then everyone is a theist and you win the argument, but that argument is meaningless. If it comforts you to know that I am a theist under that extremely broad definition of the word, then sleep better tonight and congratulations.

I can believe in a remote possibility that there might be invisible pink unicorns somewhere in the universe. I used to play super-hero role-playing games and I can come up with half a dozen semi-plausible explanations for invisibility practically off the top of my head, including telepathic suggestion to make someone ignore their sight of you. We will probably figure out how to make things invisible some day. We already do to some extent. I've seen people merge the horns of goats so they have one horn. Some mad scientist might invent invisible pink unicorns and send them back in time with modern technology to our time period. They are remotely plausible. God is not. I am a strong atheist.

Now if you want to talk about things like psychic ability or life after death or some quantum energy that we have yet to discover that connects all life, in these areas I would consider myself a skeptic and proud of it, but effectively agnostic. New information may very well change my beliefs on these topics. The realm of what's possible seems huge to me. I believe humans are going to evolve out of our bodies in the near future and that we will expand our minds beyond what our limited biological brains are capable of. We will extend our lives and with those longer lives, begin to comprehend more than we ever thought possible about the universe. At the same time, we'll be able to survive and thrive with an exponentially smaller use of natural resources. I'm incredibly optimistic about all the things we do not yet know that remains to be discovered. However, I can't think of any experience or new information that would make God seem possible to me. I have no motivation to seek this thing out. God is quite possibly the one thing I cannot ever believe in.

[srqrebel]

Alright, I'll answer the question without reading the entire thread. I lost interest after the second page, at least for now... so if I repeat something that has already been said here, please accept my apologies.

I am an atheist... or at least that is what I call myself. Perhaps I am technically not entitled to that label: I do believe, quite strongly, that any and all conscious/volitional beings -- including the Human species on Earth -- are the true Gods of the Universe. Only consciousness is capable of establishing order and purpose, and creating value. I recognize no such thing as a "higher consciousness". Consciousness is consciousness is consciousness.

That said, I would like to point out that there are, in my estimation, two distinct kinds of atheists, in addition to agnostics. Let me explain...

Let's start with agnostics: Agnostics are simply those who do not have much of an opinion about whether or not there is a 'God'. They hold that there is no way of establishing the facts regarding the existence of a 'higher consciousness', and are content to leave it at that.

Then there are the bigoted, close-minded atheists, who proclaim that they know for a fact that there is no 'God' -- case closed. Many of those base their "superior knowledge" on specious rationale, such as a mere hatred of all things metaphysical. They are often the ones who turn against religion because they had it "crammed down their throats" growing up -- or they rationalize that "if there was a God, he would not let evil things befall mankind".

Finally, there are the rational atheists, who simply believe (not claim to know infallibly) that there is no 'God' (a.k.a. higher consciousness). They apply Occam's razor, and find no rational reason to believe. Since they do not claim to have a monopoly on knowledge, they leave open the remote possibility that anything could be the case, that there is always some finite possibility they could be wrong; but they also recognize that there is absolutely no rational reason to act on that possibility, unless they encounter empirical evidence to support it.

I am a proud member of the latter class of atheists.

[Puke]

@ Dale -

Basically, yeah.

[FTL_Ian]

I believe humans are going to evolve out of our bodies in the near future and that we will expand our minds beyond what our limited biological brains are capable of. We will extend our lives and with those longer lives, begin to comprehend more than we ever thought possible about the universe.

I like that vision.   

[ReverendRyan]

I don't know what Newton said about religion but I'm reasonably confident it has no relevance to what I'm about to say.