Barefoot Bree

If I had a magic wand, and could truly choose and MAKE myself one or the other, I would freely choose atheist, because I don't want to feel dependent upon, or abdicate my conscience to, an unknowable, unfathomable being who hides so well that millions who earnestly "seek" him don't find him, yet will condemn those millions, and billions of others who believe in something else, to eternal torment.

(Took me half an hour to compose that sentence, but I think it sums up my feelings better than any I've yet constructed.)

Jayhawker Soule

Why would anyone want to be an atheist? Intellectual integrity.

Stephen T-B

Dragging things back a bit here, but Spuleeah’s post in which he stated: “People deny God because the idea of Him violates their sense of ‘arrogant, deluded, inflated image of self importance’�? exactly illustrates how the Believer and the Unbeliever can approach the same subject and use the same language and the same terms and make perfectly good sense in their own heads, yet be incomprehensible to one another.

The Unbeliever considers himself to be a puny, vulnerable, short-lived creature of very minor significance, for even if the actions he takes during is life were to change the course of human history, the span of that human history in comparison with the life of the Universe is of vanishingly-small significance.
He sees the Believer as one who cannot tolerate this view of reality, and therefore elevates himself into the special creation of an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who requires his service and his love, and in return bestows upon him his love, and rewards him with immortality. Thus “arrogant, deluded, inflated image of self importance.�?

The Believer, on the other hand, envisages himself as the inadequate, sin-prone servant of an Almighty God whose love and guidance alone can preserve him from the fate which would await him if he did not prostrate himself, acknowledge his inadequacy, pray for forgiveneness and seek to obey his loving Master.
He sees the Unbeliever as one who cannot tolerate such self-abasement; as one whose vanity makes him believe in his own capabilities, his own power, his own Free Will. Thus “arrogant, deluded, inflated image of self importance.�?

Spuleeah - am I right, or am I right?

Jayhawker Soule

I think I'll hold off until I have more options.

spuleeah

uh-huh and since atheists know what they think is plausible and implausible infallibly corresponds to what actually is plausible an implausible, they feel quite justified in accusing believers of arrogance.

spuleeah

yet another fallacious, inductively established false conclusion

If this is what you understand the passage to say, and still consider yourself wise in doing so, I can completely understand and agree with why Jesus rejoiced.

spuleeah

Perhaps in part. However, the true arrogance of the atheist lies in the fact that he cannot from his epistemology establish the truth about signifigance, God, the purpose of our existence and many other such questions. The answers to these questions are required in order to stand in judgement of the theist and declare him to be arrogant on the basis that he adopts theistic views. Thus, the atheist purports to be more than he is and know more than he knows...and this is arrogance indeed.

spuleeah

Perhaps, rather, intellectual dishonesty.

Prof

But...if we simply allow ourselves to "assume" or "presuppose" that our God is the true God - without having to prove it - then somehow we are absolved of arrogance when we dismiss other people's God.

Neat.

Prof.

RGD

sp, Since when did it become arrogance to recognize the limitations of reason and cognition? Since the theist relies on these qualities in much the same fashion, your remark is remarkably... incorrect.

The same evidence is available to the theist and the atheist. The atheist does not move beyond the bounds of what can be objectively - and thus mutually established. The theist does. Which is more arrogant? Those who accept the world as it is? Or those who reject it in favor of their own personal revelation.

Precisely what the theist is doing, I'm afraid. Your logic applies equally well to both sides of this debate.

Both the theist and the atheist have access to the world, and the various sacred texts of the past.

The theist insists on the existence of an untestable, unobservable, unverifiable addition to that information.

Why is that not hubris? :huh: