Seems like a rational question
Offline I know many on this site consider the concept of an eternal being (God) to be unworthy of pursuing.
My questions, however, are, I think, completely logical, and are as follows:
Do we want to know truth, or just what suits our pre-conceived ideas? Whether theist or atheist, I would hope we would want truth above all. Next question...
Do any of us know everything there is to know? Do we we know 90% of everything there is to know? How about 1/2, 50%?
Let's be kind and say that the most intelligent among us is able to have a firm grasp on 50% of all there is to know. Is it illogical/irrational to consider the possibility that in the 50% percent of things the most intelligent among us doesn't know about, there could be such an eternal being as the one many in this world call "God"? Is it not possible?
If in centuries past, we have discovered things that previously seemed ideologically impossible, is what many on this site deem rationally and ideologically impossible (the existence of a God who defies our logic), possible? Just maybe? And if it is possible, and I say that I want truth to the highest degree to which I can know it, wouldn't intellectual honesty force me to search for it, rather than just dismissing it as "impossible" & "irrational"?
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The very fact that we talk about whether or not to believe in a god contradicts this.
On to your questions.
I want to know truth.
I think 50% is way too high, but lets go with that. The answer is, yes it's possible there some unknown evidence for God out there. But this sword cuts both ways. There could be evidence that one doesn't exist. This not a good reason to be a theist.
Go ahead and search for it. I'd like to hear your results. Honestly. What we consider irrational is faith, i.e. unjustified belief. Right now that's basically all you have. If you were to find justification for the belief in God, hopefully something new and not the same old arguments, then we'd be all ears.
A very fine question. Nietzsche once wrote that "man only has to have a need for a belief to hold it to be true.
Yes, but there is an asynchrony here - a person of faith is biased by definition. Of course, one can work around their biases (and must) but we need to remember this.
Can you please, please consider that we've heard this argument literally 100s of times, over decades of time?
You're arguing from ignorance. The fact that we don't know a lot of things lot doesn't give us a grounds to hold to something!
It's just a reason why we should be skeptical of any claim, particularly a god claim.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
so you find it to be reasonable to hold firmly to a belief based on what you DON'T know? simply because there is a possibility (really absorb the meaning of that word) that it may be true? why? and is the belief in a god the only belief that you encourage people to hold on these grounds, or are there others? like, say, the belief someone may hold that aliens are controlling his thoughts? would you find that belief reasonable on the grounds that we don't know everything and that there is a possibility that belief could be true?
Rill
I will try to give you a satisfactory answear.
I cannot speak for everybody but I sure want to know the truth, no matter what. The thing is, what is truth? Everything we knew at one point has changed and all we know now will most likely not be "the truth" in a couple of thousends of years. But I would like to have as much information as humanly possible and take my own conclusions with it. That is what I percieve as the truth (which changes with the addition of new information).
I don't think any of us know everything there is to know and being one of them, I can't be sure. But, of course I don't think so. If you want to talk percentage, I don't think we know 1% of "all there is to know" and possibly never will much more than that.
It is absolutely not illogical to CONSIDER (nice wording by the way) an eternal being. That said, the concept of all the religion-based gods out there is absolutely irrational. The kind of god that gives a shit about humans, loves us and etc is pathetic as an idea. It makes no logical, even reasonable sense. Being so, I see no problem with a person believing in an eternal being that simply spawned the universe. Some sort of energy or whatever. Personally, I don't think there was/is a deity behind creation because it's too unlikely.
I don't think anybody here says the existence of A god is impossible. I don't. I think that most people here agree that there is no such thing as impossible. The thing is, the kinds of gods we find in whatever religion are too damn improbable. The holy books are totally flawed and plain stupid, there is nothing that suggests the existence of any of them and so on. If there actually is a god, of course I would want to know. But where is the evidence? Can we test the existence of god? So far, the existence of a god is irrational but I think nothing is impossible. So, until I have proof of invisible unicorns, I don't believe they exist. The same goes to gods.
Have a nice life!
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If in centuries past, we have discovered things that previously seemed ideologically impossible, is what many on this site deem rationally and ideologically impossible (the existence of a God who defies our logic), possible? Just maybe? And if it is possible, and I say that I want truth to the highest degree to which I can know it, wouldn't intellectual honesty force me to search for it, rather than just dismissing it as "impossible" & "irrational"?
This is an interesting point. The problem is that God is an entirely man made concept, so there is a point where intellectual honesty becomes borderline retarded. For instance, if somebody claimed that fluffy pink unicorns were floating around in the sky, I would be very suprised if a tough scientific and philisophical panel were appointed to rigorously debate and evaluate the possibility of fluffy pink unicorns in the sky. The God Hypothesis, is just that: FAILED. Science works like this. You make an observation, hypothesize, test, evaluate. The God Hypothesis looks like this.
Observation: The universe and life in particular is beautiful, complex, and elegant.
Hypothesis: the universe was brought about by a transcendant, omnipotent intelligent designer.
Experiment: We never bothered with this stage, and that is why the idea of God is just as fallacious as the idea of fluffy pink unicorns in the sky.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Other people have already made a lot of the points I have made I will just add a bit of my own ideas on to them. If the god idea, or any idea, is contradictory in nature it can not exist. If a horse is called a cat it does not make it a cat. There are different ideas of god which people say exist, even within the same religions, if I were to say I deny the possibility then I would need to hear the ideas. I simply lack a belief in them. Ironically you don't need to come to atheists and ask them to consider the other side yet you are suggesting it is the atheist who must be more open minded.
Truth is preferable, obviously.
Indeed.
Obviously not.
My educated estimate is less than 1%. In order to know how much we don't know we'd have to know what we don't know however, so no estimate can be completely accurate.
That's being more than kind.
Certainly it's possible that there is an omnipotent being. I guess. But no religion could be accurate in their description of such, so the point is moot.
And here is where you make your big mistake. The search for truth will lead you nowhere if you stop once finding belief of a god. Even better, I can now flip every single argument you made on it's head and apply it in reverse. Isn't it possible that there isn't a god? Isn't it possible that out of all you don't know, the non-existance of a supreme entity is one of these things? Isn't it rational to not believe in a supreme being when there's no evidence of one, and continue the search for truth where there is evidence?
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.