Athiests, I'm curious part II?

Question

I want to clarify to see if I can get a logical response:

Athiests, don't you think it's slightly irrational to denounce the existence of a higher power based solely on your human perception of the universe?

**Now, I don't want to hear "It's just as irrational to profess the existence of a higher power". I'm NOT saying there is a God, or you should believe. I would simply like to know how you could be SO sure that there isn't a God. It's kind of arrogant of you. Like you're just that in touch with all of existence.

Once again , stop bringing religion into this, it has nothing to do with the question. No mentioning of the Bible on behalf of your defense. Thank you athiests.

Jesus Christ! Stop it! IM NOT SAYING THERE IS A GOD. IM JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND YOUR LOGIC. HOW ARE YOU SO SURE THAT THERE ISN'T A GOD. IS IT NOT A POSSIBILITY????

ZERO COOL, YOU'RE A DOUCHE BAG

One more thing; I'm not a Christian. I follow no religion. However, I'm not so bold as to say that I KNOW there is no God simply because I haven't seen it. Also I love the "green fairy" defense. Very astute!

Answer 1

If you want to get VERY technical about it, of course we don't know for a fact that God doesn't exist. So what !? I mean really ! I don't know why you bother even pointing out the technicality. IT GETS YOU NO WHERE ! How could you possibly use it to justify believing in God. Your using a double standard in your evaluation of reality.
Rene Descartes has already pointed out that the only thing we can know is that our mind exists. That's the very thing that is doing the perceiving. Using your standard of knowing with absolute certainty, and then only acting on that, we wouldn't be able to function.
Consider all the things we TECHNICALLY really don't know with 100% certainty. We don't know that George Bush is President. I don't know that my backyard exist when I'm not looking at it. I don't know that I even have a body ( perhaps just a mind). What if I gave the slightest credence to the possibility any of that is true ? My actions in responding ( even in a small way) would be out of proportion to the probability that it might be true.
We might as well eliminate the word "know" from language. You have achieved nothing by pointing out that when it comes right down to it I don't know God exist. REALITY CHECK!!!

Answer 2

Reality ,irrational nope. Reality has it's roots in Atheism, Humanism, and Science. Atheism isn't a religion but a statement about reality; about the non-existence of God. Humanism is the basis for building a social structure and determining right and wrong in the absence of some holy text declaring the will of mythical deities. It also has roots in Free Thinkers who seek an understanding of the real world.
Reality Based Religion - Every religion has a basis. Most have some holy text which describes a deity and miracles and grand stories and commandments and such. These religions are "faith based" and you are generally required to accept it without proof. The Church of Reality is a reality based religion and it is based on what is real. A religion that is based primarily on the commitment to the pursuit of reality the way it really is represents a new world view. It offers a religious choice that few other religions offers.
Realists practicing Realism.

Answer 3

Knowledge is not arrogance, first of all. Don't place value judgements upon rational thought.

There is nothing irrational about refusing to accept, as fact, that which has not been proven. What I believe determines how I behave, how I relate to others, how I raise my kids, everything. For that reason, if I am told that a supernatural deity exists that created the world, etc., and if I have been educated and I know that science provides more plausible explanations for those things that are being attributed to that deity, my rational mind will come back with a DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Because it doesn't compute. It really doesn't. I am a strong atheist, and when I say that God does not exist, what I am saying is that I cannot be expected to even acknowledge the possibility, because God is a mythological creation - a character in a book. No more existent than Harry Potter, the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus. I'm sorry, but that certainty has nothing to do with arrogance, it is simple common sense. Examine your own beliefs. Do you believe in Thor? Do you believe that Thor will strike down your enemies with his hammer? Or, should you decide one day to sail around the world, will you fear an encounter with the Sirens? The mythology that you reject as antiquated and silly is the very same mythology that I reject.

I am aware of a psychological behavior that consists of accusing others of the very traits and behaviors of which you yourself are guilty. A man who is cheating on his wife might suspect and accuse her of cheating, because of this little idiosyncrasy of the human mind. It is called "projection".

When someone says that they are posing a question to atheists to see if they can get a logical response, asking whether they think their postion regarding the existence of a higher power is "irrational", and stating that our certainty is "kind of arrogant", the first thing that leaps to mind is projection.

Atheists, of all people, value logic and rationality more than most other members of society. As I said, there's nothing arrogant about it. That of which we are often accused says more about the accuser than it does about us.

Your ad hominem attacks also speak volumes about your attitude, which is so disrespectful and antagonistic that one has to wonder whether the well thought out responses you have received have been worth the time and effort that went into providing them.

Answer 4

In what possible way could it be "arrogant" to acknowledge that there isn't any god? That doesn't make any sense at all.

It sounds like you're assuming that atheists believe that they know everything, and that's why they do not believe in gods. But in fact the typical atheist is acutely conscious of the limitations of his or her knowledge. It is the believers, not the atheists who claim to know something that they cannot possibly know.

As far as being "so sure" that there isn't a god - being an atheist isn't about being certain. It's about accepting the natural conclusion one draws from the lack of evidence. I'm exactly as sure that there is no god as I am that there are no lime-green flying elephants. If such an elephant flew by my window, I would change my mind. If a god appeared, I would change my mind. How sure am I that won't happen? Well, how sure are YOU that you're not going to see a lime-green flying elephant?

I think that the core of your difficulty in understanding this is that you're insisting on 100% certainty. That's not the appropriate standard. Certainty is almost always the product of ignorance. Atheists are comfortable with the fact that we're justified in believing things we can't be 100% sure about.
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You're not the first person here to do what you're doing. Let's review: If you look over the answers you got from atheists, you can see that we do NOT typically claim to know for certain that there is no god. The "arrogance" that you think you see in atheists simply isn't there. We're perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there is a god. That means that your "arrogance" argument is a complete strawman: it's like saying "Why do Christians insist that pizza is evil? They can't prove that pizza is evil!". Er...

So why do people get so enthusiastic about this false "atheists arrogantly insist that they know everything" argument? I think it's pretty clear. You're not observing an arrogance and then trying to explain it. Instead, you're wishing that atheists WERE arrogant, and trying to create a scenario in which we would be. The problem with that, as I just pointed out, is that your scenario is simply false. Sure, it'd be arrogant to claim to know everything about the universe, but it's not the atheists who are doing that, it's the believers.

You've got a sharp arrow there, but you're aiming it at the wrong target.

Answer 5

Science seems to come up with 'how' things work (explanations) that do a more convincing job explaining events from the past than what is told in the Bible. However, science may explain the how but somethings, like earth's distance from the sun, our ecology, etc. seem to involve too many .000001 'chances' so I'm not fully convinced there isn't a thinking force of some type involved.
I'm a non-believer b/c a singular/monotheistic deity does not make sense. Look around. Everything has an opposite. 'No matter how flat it is, a pancake has two sides.
'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.'
Anything that is appealing to the senses has many different shades and/or colors.
When you study ancient civilizations, their polytheistic religions are not hateful (I know some involve practices we disagree with) and they have their own sense of morality.
Satan, as the character we know him as, was 'made up' by Christians of several different descriptions and names of others from the Old Testament. The mention in Job of 'satan' was originally an adjective like word meaning 'anti' and it referred to anti-human. There's even a verse that says something similiar to 'I the Lord God do all these things. I create good and evil.'
The description of a single, male creator deity in the Old Testament just doesn't seem to be logical.

Answer 6

If you want LOGIC then study Buddhist philosophy on the concept of why we find the idea of an omnipotent creator being illogical. Apparently, from your question, it depends on how you define "arrogance" and "irrational". Perceptions are 9/10ths of the battle.

From a Buddhist pov, arrogance is making a declaration from only one point of view without an understanding of the "bigger picture"... and THAT is "irrational" as you might define it because we consider it "incorrect view". Arrogance is saying that my truth is only the one true way... or only truth... to ME it is the right path and true way, but for you, according to the causes and conditions of your life's circumstances, etc. it might not work for you.

Simply putting the pov out there isn't irrational nor arrogant, but to declare that you must somehow believe it, or something will befall you that is less than pleasant is arrogant. If you can't understand the concepts then you just can't, but to say that it's "irrational" that others can is arrogance. LOGICALLY speaking, there's such a thing as "valid perception" and "correct perception"... once you can define both correctly, you'll understand much better.

Hope this helps some.

_()_

Answer 7

I actually agree with you. It is irrational to denounce anything based on human thought. As I see it, it is also irrational to look at the Bible and think that is the wisdom of the allmighty. I think all religions haven't got one spec of wisdow that any powerful god would have. The Bible clearly is written by humans. I am just saying, that when I look around and examine everything I know, it doesn't add up to a god, and if there is a god, he is not so egotistical as to need to take credit. If there is a god, he would make it more logical to believe in him, for everybody to believe in him, in a uniform fashion. As an Atheist, I know I don't have infinite wisdow, the difference is, I am going to keep looking, you stop at the Bible.

Answer 8

It's so highly doubtful that there is such thing as an "old testament" God, that it's ridiculous. this is what most atheists base it on, since mostly they were born into that faith.

however, even Richard Dawkins says there is most probably no God.

NO one. says for certain anything is true with no proof (excluding the religious faiths). That is very unscientific.

There very well be some force, some higher power, some "creator' like thingy if you will--whatever is outside the universe, or if there is no outside, perhaps "God" IS the universe????,

Is it ANYTHING like what ANY of the religions make "him" out to be? Highly doubtful, Highly unlikely. NO, It would be nonsensical to say it were.
---- That is to say, only special human animals, were plopped on a teeny tiny blue planet, amongst billions, in an obscure part of the universe, in an obscure place in our galaxy, just to test our "souls" and the entire universe, though our globe is but a tiny speck of dust in a million and one oceans, is a grand elaborate game created for that single, seemingly irrational purpose.

Oh, and it's not "our" view of the universe by the way, unless you mean 'our' by including the entire scientific community.

Answer 9

I think it's irrational to persist is spelling the word "athiests" despite all the evidence that it's spelled "atheists."

I suspect, however, that it is somewhat illogical to dismiss the existence of a higher power based solely on human perception, just as it is illogical to insist on the existence of a higher power based on the same perception.

There is no verifiable evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. It is for this reason, I think that theists and atheists are free to engage in a debate fueled with smirking superiority and righteous indignation without encountering any risk that either side can be said to be "wrong."

Answer 10

Here's the issue: the mystery of existence is there -- first cause is something we can't get our minds around. Contemplation of this and the nature of the self can yield a direct experience of this reality. The problem is that believers -- those who don't have direct experience -- don't like what those who have had the experience tell them: non-duality, unconditional love, no judgement, illusion of the self, etc. And, so, God is manufactured according to what the ego wants. It's not the higher power that people are rejecting; it's the self-centered ego god that is an obvious projection of people's egos. It's this god that is found in both the Old and New Testaments and is found in the Koran, etc. If you find yourself dismissing this, then how can you expect atheists to consider your ideas?