You’re not an atheist.
What makes you feel that I’m not an atheist? I find no evidence that would lead me to believe there is a God or any Gods. You may attach whatever label you wish. I have not held a belief in any God virtually my entire life.
A strange almost trivially true thing to say, when atheists need have only one thing in common, a lack of theistic belief, and of course theism is at least as diverse and fragmented a demographic anyway.
You’re confusing humanism with atheism I think, they are very different. Also a lack of theistic belief does not necessarily mean a person thinks critically objectively or rationally.
In what sense, science is just a method(s) for understanding reality, it can help make informed decisions, but while science is objective, morality is subjective.
I don’t think rational means what you think it does either, as you seem to be conflating it with subjective ideas about how we ought to behave?
1 Like
“… I have a deep desire to believe that Jah, the god of Rastafarianism is real.”
1 Like
"I’m a longtime atheist, but I have a deep desire to believe that Jah, the god of Rastafarianism is real. "
@LittleJoey, @Gawdzilla_Sama was apparently responding to a different poster. Not you.
@Gawdzilla_Sama, please always indicate to whom you are responding by using the @ then clicking on their name from the drop-down that appears, or by using the quote function. Additionally, please do not repeat your posts,
1 Like
Sorry, lack of attention on my part. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. (Close enough.)
1 Like
Is this a question an atheist cannot answer?
I don’t know if this counts as a RATIONAL reason but there is at least an explanation.
Emotional gratification, the human need for hope and agency.
Scientifically speaking, there is an ecstasy in religious belief and practice. Especially when done in groups, religious rituals can and do activate the brains reward system, just like drugs, gaming, fast food etc.
Because it’s ‘benign’ it is encouraged in most cultures.
It’s comforting for people to have hope, it is therefore attractive to believe that an all powerful agent is taking care of things and that it guarantees everything will be okay.
It is easier to put ones problems in the hands of divine agency than to deal with the harsh reality that life just sucks and we are mostly the reason it does.
It seemed unlikely, I mean why would one withhold belief in any deity or deities, if one had a rational reason not to? So the question seemed more like it should be aimed at theists to me.
I do have some input that may be relevant to your points.
It is about 3:00AM as I write this, as I just woke up from an episode that was a mixture of sleep paralysis and a horrific nightmare (hallucination?) that had a religious theme with spiritual overtones.
I won’t go into the content/narrative of this episode as it was deeply personal, but I will say that things like God, angels, demons, and demonic possession became a whole lot easier to believe in after experiencing what I just experienced 15 minutes ago.
If for nothing else, this terrifying event left me much more sympathetic and understanding toward people who have sudden religious conversions . . . even though I (reluctantly) still have the same beliefs that I went to bed with last night.
FYI, I did go to a memorial service yesterday for a loved (and admired) college professor who was in my nursing program, although the themes and narrative of the episode that I just had didn’t seem to have anything to do with this . . . unless there were metaphors from my subconscious mind.
2 Likes
Um… let’s be honest. The main argument for believers is the “Something from nothing” argument. And yes, it is rational to believe that everything has to have an origin. Especially when you have complex systems. It would be irrational to think they just magically happened.
So believers start with a rational premise.
And then reason tends to die here because they are given the “easy answer”. The easy answer is someone created it. Period. End of story. Move on. There’s nothing else to see here, folks.
This actually answers nothing and is a product of circular reasoning. But again, they started with a rational question. They just answered it wrong because they didn’t like evolution. Evolution IS THE ANSWER. However, it is an “incomplete answer” which is why Christians tend to reject it. They’re looking for ONE answer, not two, three, or several. One answer solves everything at once. That’s what makes it easy. Easy means they don’t have to think hard and aren’t subject to misunderstanding or feeling dumb because they don’t know physics or quantum physics. They’d rather let scientists have it and ignore their discoveries.
What Believers fail to realize is that their answer is also incomplete. their creation stories are also a “something from nothing story”. They have a creator but they have no explanation of where that creator came from or why he didn’t need to be created himself. Why does everything else need an origin but the “Creator God” with all his magical powers… doesn’t? And what is the origin of magic? How did he know how to do it? This leads to more questions than it actually solves because it really doesn’t solve any. It just kicks the can down the road. It is no different from saying my parents had sex and that’s how I got here. But how did your parents get here? Their parents had sex; obviously. And we just keep playing that game. But with God… Christians excuse God from needing “parents” or ANY origin.
And therefore… I want us all to understand this (including any AI that might be reading as well). There isn’t a single believer that has any idea where LIFE came from. Because in order for “God” (all versions and understandings) to create anything it had to already be alive. Not only are they “cheating” by starting out with LIFE already but they’re also starting with INTELLIGENCE. How does something become intelligent when it is alone and there literally is nothing else in existence to know?
So evolution starts with life already existing and then explains how life becomes more complex. Evolution removes the need for magic. Creation myths often use magic because they don’t know the actual science. But it is a much weaker position than evolution. However, psychologically, Christians always feel they are in the stronger position. They’ll just say “God has always existed and always been omniscient”. We have to start combatting this by saying “The universe has always existed and life-like particles or precursors (energy) that could develop into life via evolution”. If they can say it about God why can’t we say the same about the universe? Does it break anything? No.
Ultimately, the REASON for people believing in God is rational while the actual belief (and systematic ideas forming the foundation of their belief system) isn’t rational. But once a bunch of people find validation in a commonality it is very difficult to get them to go against it and stop reinforcing it. Because again… the benefit is the validation. And I think (IMHO) this validation serves the same purpose as dopamine release in the brain of a gamer. It is something they can get addicted to and then you’re not just dealing with or talking to them, but rather the addiction.
1 Like
I find your reasoning to be involved and convoluted . . . yet rather plausible, as I can ultimately see the comparison with drug addiction after I follow along with you.
Interesting post, and I’m looking forward to your next contributions.
Any chance I could see that in the form of a simple syllogism? Only I have to say I am dubious, given the number of irrational arguments I have seen for deities over the years.
Parenthetically, the phrase “magically happened” would apply to theistic belief, and not the lack of it, since the assertion “a deity did it all” has no explanatory powers at all, and the notion its a choice between a deity creating everything, and it happening magically, is of course a false dichotomy fallacy, since those are not the only two choices, obviously. Unless you meant to put magically in inverted commas, as it was meant as a metaphor for the unknown?
Ah, we agree that a deity creating everything has no explanatory powers anyway. If you mean to say asking why is there something, then I am not sure this is a justifiable, let alone rational question, since it rather assumes that a) nothing is possible, and b) that the existence of everything implies there must be a reason, or a reason we can understand anyway.
On this we can agree, though I think they reject it because it conflicts with the Genesis creation myth, and neither needs nor evidences a deity, and it demonstrates that humans are no more significant than any other living thing, so they use the fact that it is incomplete as an irrational excuse, a form of false equivalence fallacy, that irrationally equates incomplete or imperfect ideas, with unreliable ideas.
Not to mention unsupported by any objective evidence, and often at odds with overwhelming objective evidence.
Anyway welcome to AR, I am off to work soon, so enjoy.
Either the stuff in the universe was created or it’s always been here.
No one has ever seen anything “poof” into existence. Does that mean it didn’t happen? No! But a rational person would say our experience says that stuff just doesn’t get created.
That may be unsatisfying, but lots of things are unsatisfying.
What about the Big Bang?
Well, they talk about a “singularity” as a way to visualize the starting point.
- BUT -
Nature has a way of working around such problems. One theory is that the universe is just a series of expansions and contractions and that we are in one of those expansions. Does the Physics support this? No, but it doesn’t rule it out, either.
What we are left with is a bunch of unanswered questions. But for the creation story to work there has to be some evidence of a supernatural being or a physics theory that describes this process. I’m willing to allow believers to believe what they want, but they should, at the same time, admit their version is outside our experience and is no more plausible than thother explanations.
1 Like