Your reasons for not having Faith & absolute knowledge of No G-D
Posted on: January 23, 2007 - 2:35pm
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Your reasons for not having Faith & absolute knowledge of No G-D
Let me define my terms first; Faith- A belief in something that can not be absolutey concluded. .
Of all of the reasons I have heard, I enjoy this one the most.
1. There is no G-D.
2. But some people believe in G-D.
3. Since there is no G-D, this must be the result of some kind of delusion or wishful thinking.
4. People believe in G-D because they want to. Their faith is just a wish-fulfilment.
5. So faith in G-D is just a human invention, corresponding to a human need.
(People differ over how this need arises: Marx puts it down to social alienation and Freud to psychological forces).
So what are your favorite reasons/arguments and How is it that you can KNOW without a doubt that there is No G-D?
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You might not get many responses to this because not many people on this site claim to know without a doubt that there is no god. Actually I haven't heard anyone on this site claim that. It's good that you are taking the time to try to learn the position of other people. But you should not make assumptions like the one you're making.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Here is yet another theist, claiming that we have faith because we KNOW there is no God. The answer to this is simple as Gauche has said, no one here actually claims that we know for certain there is no God. But of course, there is tons of things we can't know for certain, or can't disprove without doubt. We can't disprove in the existence of fairies, or hob-goblins, or Baal, or any of thousands of ancient Gods and deities.
I've always liked the analogy that Richard Dawkins has used:
Imagine a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. It is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of the teapot, since our telescopes can not see anything that small. But only a mad man would claim to have faith in the existence of teapot, just because you can not disprove its existence. Technically speaking, we must remain agnostic about the teapot, but in practice, we are all teapot atheists.
It is the same with God. Technically we can't completely disprove the existence of god, and are technically agnostic. But in practice, we are atheists.
Also, there is one huge difference between theists and atheists. Atheists like myself, are fully willing to believe in God (Heck, I love the idea of going to heaven and living in paradise, this is infinitely more desirable then just rotting in the ground). Most theists on the other hand, won't even entertain the idea of a universe without a god. And this is all because of one thing, theists are willing to believe in something without any evidence (faith), atheists do not.
http://flyingbagpiper.blogspot.com
Richard Dawkins uses it a lot, but Bertrand Russel came up with the teapot analogy.
Ah, thank you, I was trying to think who first came up with that analogy.
http://flyingbagpiper.blogspot.com
Believe it or not, everyone has absolute knowledge of no god(s) existing, although many believe in gods. There's a huge difference between knowledge and belief that religious people can't seem to recognize.
The definition of "faith" is belief without evidence or contrary to evidence. Essentially, it's just believing something is true for no other reason than you just want it to be. Believing it's true doesn't mean it actually is.
Fool, I have a question. Are you a christian?
Fool said:
Let me define my terms first; Faith- A belief in something that can not be absolutey concluded. .
That is so wrong: Religious 'faith' is almost the opposite of that - belief in something with little or no evidence.
Since virtually every significant fact about the world, aside from simple logic definitions, has at least some uncertainty, we all make 'working assumptions' about what is probably true, and proceed accordingly.
Your definition is actually more appropriate to the word 'belief' itself - if there is no doubt, we can say we 'know' it, not just believe it.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology