Number 6

hey Vfr

You know, more is less.
I am not going to read that lengthy comment, and, I suspect, so most of the others.

and to those who want to read it, let me reveal the end instead: it was the butler with the knife in the kitchen.

HomoCyclist

Very well said!

I absolutely love your statement. It's so true. And we can even apply that wisdom to other areas in our lives, even in the profesional one or in our private one.

3DJay

Exactly. Atheists also carry a burden of proof, for their statement of belief, that Gods don't exist. It is the Agnostic position that puts the burden of proof on all believers, on both sides of the isle.


Peace

HomoCyclist

No, atheists don't carry a burden of proof, sorry. The burden of proof lies exclusively on the theists because they are the ones that say with absolute "faith" that there is a God.
Atheists don't carry any burden of proof because nobody can prove the non-existent, in other words, how can anybody prove what's not here, what doesn't exist???!!!

Only theist carry the burden of proof.

I'm atheist, but I don't consider myself a militant or fundamentalist atheist. I am an atheist agnostic and humanist.

3DJay

There's no such word as A-theists. Every single dictionary will tell you that the root word is Atheos, to which an -ist was attached. Zero will tell you that the root word is Theist, to which an A- was attached.

The word A-theist was made up, by Atheists, to take over Agnosticism's Burden of proof position. Huxley specifically directed Agnosticism at the formation of belief process. He put the burden of proof on those professing a belief, either way.

Atheists, like Smith and Flew, promoted false definitions of Agnosticism, along with their false A-theist and A-theism definitions, which make no sense. Atheism is a statement of belief, that carries a burden of proof.

Atheism: the belief that God does not exist (Compact Oxford English Dictionary)

Atheist: someone who believes that God does not exist (Cambridge Dictionary of American English)
Atheism: the belief that God does not exist (Cambridge Dictionary of American English)

Atheist: one who believes that there is no God or gods (The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus)
Atheism: the belief that there is no God (The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus)

Atheist: one who believes that there is no deity (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition)
Atheism: a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition)
Disbelief: mental rejection of something as untrue (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition)


Peace

jaej

Exactly, which is why I'm agnostic. There is just so much that science cannot explain, atheism is just another religion. It's too bad that each and every religion is such bs.

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mister_lister

Can one actually prove there is no Diety? Simply because there is no evidence of a Deity, does not mean it doesn't exist. It's like a tribe in some deep jungle declaring, "there are no dogs" after one is described to them because they have never seen a dog. We can disprove the existence of A God, but we can not disprove the idea of deity.

This is why I call myself a Reasonable Agnostic. I have reasoned myself back to agnosticism. I have looked at many available arguements pro and con religion and have made a decision on those subjects and the existence of those gods. However, I am like a member of that proverbial tribe in the deep jungle, that hears that description of a dog and replies "when I see one, touch one, I will believe it exists". It is only reasonable to with hold judgement until proof is available. I have been called a materialist for this point of view.

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"The trouble is not with what we don't know, it is with what we think we know that just ain't so". ~ Mark Twain

3DJay

"Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions." ~ Thomas Huxley


Peace

Og

I can illustrate, through repeatable experiments that anyone can observe or carry out, that we are ultimately deterministic organisms that have an illusion in their minds that they have choice. The ultimate cosmic reality of our form is that there is no true distinction between you and me. Signals hit our senses and stimulate our neurons and cause cascades of electrochemical signals, none of which may be modified by anything that could be considered a free agent.

So our behavior, sin and all, is ultimately not something that can be changed. It is important that we think that it is. That is how societies are formed. In the same way that your immune system labels "good/bad" agents in your body, good and evil act as the immune system of the human population. But this distinction is only there to offer population stability and good/bad elements are as arbitrary as good/bad elements in the human body that your immune system targets.

This is what modern neuroscience illustrates. I'm in the thick of it and finishing my PhD in Biophysics with my field of concentration in neurobiology. This term I'm teaching a neurophysiology lab course and we're recording from snail brain neurons today and tomorrow.

Therefor, a god who judges and who casts good people that choose to act/believe a certain way into heaven and who casts "evil" people into hell is simply a regulatory factor on the society. It gives people the idea that they should play nice now to get infinite rewards later.

It's a regulation factor for an uncivilized society. The God of western religion is clearly a mental construct in the same way that the "self" and "choice" is a mental construct.

The gods that they cling to in the west (allah and yaweh), can not be ultimately real. They can only exist as creations in our mind.

This is the evidence that god doesn't exist. The gods are hoisted by their own petard. We can illustrate that free will is an illusion and since the gods are so inextricably linked to free will, they get cast out with the disprovable notion. This is the basis for my signature here on these forums. The catch of this realization is that it disproves "you" as well. But hey, it's real, and we have experiments that can illustrate it repeatedly.

Now this doesn't disprove that some godhead concept like "Brahman" in hinduism/buddhism isn't a real concept, but this is not a well defined term. These eastern ideas of god are very elemental in nature and are hardly anthropomorphized like the gods of the west.

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Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

jaej

Correct me if im wrong, but i dont think this is 100 percent accurate. Dont hate me because im just drudging something up from memory and actually havent researched it at all. Isnt' quantam mechanics all about how you cant really predict particles and its all based on probability? That you could predict the most probable outcome, but even if you knew the position and velocity you could not predict with 100 percent certainty the destination? Thus, youre right we still have no free will, but our lives are the product of the roll of some dice, victims of chance. Sorry Einstein.

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