Typhon

In another thread, David Mathews brought up the topic of atheists potentially "denying" evidence of the existence of god or gods, or at least the question of that, should such evidence be reached.

I believe that this represents a crucial or at least core misunderstanding on David's part, about what atheism is, or at least is in my case and case of many, many atheists.

To that end, I've chosen to take David's questions to me on this subject as the start of hopefully a new thread.

Of course all are welcome to join the thread, though I'm specifically interested your response to my points, David.

Thank you in advance...

Hello again David,

Ask away.

A very good question. I have to say I'm fairly certain, no. I grew up in a household that had no established beliefs about god. My parents never mentioned god or religion, we never went to church or had a circle of friends who did. My parents however never claimed to be atheists, or anything else for that matter. They were not unaware of religion, they just seemed utterly and peacefully detached from it and its concerns.

I was not without exposure however, as from kindergarten to ninth grade, I attended exclusively a fundamentalist, Protestant, non-denominational private Christian school. I was sent there by my parents because it provided a much more scholastically rigorous lower-grade education and much better student to teacher ratios than our area public schools. Again, it's strange when I think back, but they were completely indifferent to the religion of the school, even though religion was part of what was taught there. We indeed had Bible Study just like any other subject, along with all the others such as Math, History, English, etc.. Religion was a part of the curriculum and its influence touched everything at the school, from the teachers to the conduct that was and was not allowed in the students. That said, all the efforts to "convert" me, and this was pretty much constant for the 10 years I was there, never made any real impact. It simply slid off me, and I can remember even as a young, young child, wondering what all the fuss was about and how anyone could think that these stories and prayer nonsense were true, rather than just that, stories and nonsense. As a child god and the Bible were clearly stuff made up by big people, for big people reasons. As I got older, I just was able to understand the reasons why, a little better.

When I was in 3rd grade, I can remember being caught by my teacher during Bible Study, reading a miniature Spiderman comic book, behind my Bible. I had read the Bible more times than I rightly cared to count, and the comic was, well, a comic and new. Alas, the book was confiscated and I received a severe dressing down, complete with gloom and doom and explanations how the devil was hard at work, seeking to snare the souls of children just like me. Furthermore, the head teacher and even the principle got involved, when they discovered one of the comics had a guest appearance by a character named Doctor Strange, a magician-hero who was "Master of the Mystic Forces." This was clear and blatant witchcraft, with a bit of demon worship thrown in to boot. As I result I can vividly remember being forced to go into the principle's office, along with her and my teacher, and at their prompting but with assurances that I was doing so out of my own will (which I was I suppose, as I wanted my comic book back) to loudly and formally proclaim that "I was asking Jesus into my heart, as Lord and Savior, to deliver me from damnation and wash me clean with the blood of the Lamb, amen." I was then assured in an equally grave manner that I was now saved, if I wasn't before, and to go out and "not sin again." I can remember clear as if it was today mouthing the words and thinking how silly it was. I wasn't interested in salvation, nor did I think that god even existed, let alone this Jesus fellow. Any teacher however will tell you that 3rd graders are if anything, pragmatists. I nodded my head, promised to steer clear of witchcraft and all that, and made some cock and bull little person's story up about having to bring the comic back home because it was my cousin's and my mom would tan my hide if I lost it or didn't bring it back. This brought definite frowns to the two previously happy ladies who grimly seemed to find some measure of success in breaking another sinner on the wheel of Christ if you would, but they seemed to buy the story and my earnest face, and so gave me back my book upon promising to hide in my backpack and take it home right after class. I did, and from then on was much more careful about reading the comics that I still regularly snuck into Bible Class.

This to the best of my knowledge, is as close as I ever got to believing in god, it certainly was the closest I got to any sort of salvation.

All through my elementary school years I just remained immune to religion and its magic lure. A lot of my classmates didn't, and even the bad ones often seemed convinced some magic guy lived up in the sky, watching what they did and sure to bring down hellfire on "all the fags in San Francisco and other perverts and commies and you know, people like that..." I merely shrugged and enjoyed the war and descriptive stories in the big ol' Black Book. I also loved science, history, and learning, so didn't have a hard time figuring out that religion had its roots in both, stories made up by historical people for reasons that were explainable by science and made a lot of sense if you saw it from the outside.

I kept this attitude all through high school and at university, and honesty never looked back or had reason to think otherwise. All my experience over my life has failed to show any credible evidence or need for a god or gods, and so I've never been able to believe in any.

n/a.

Oh goodness no. I'm an atheist because I don't have any reasons to believe in gods. I find our naturalistic explanations for the origins of life and the cosmos to be more than sufficient and to be backed up by credible, peer-reviewed, repeatable evidence that lots of folks are willing to write about, study, and even show me. I've found religion and theism to have a big fat zero in way of evidence or support, so it seems only natural (no pun intended) to go with the side that is best able to provide logical support of its claims. That said, I always keep an open mind, and depend on the best logical examination of the evidence, new or old, to keep my worldview updated and on track with what I hope is the truth. I would say it's not impossible at all to change my mind, but judging by religion and theism's past track record and abysmal failures, unlikely. The reason why it appears the world is a naturalistic universe is mostly likely because it is a naturalistic universe.


I would say no, for a number of reasons. Intellectually at least, I've pretty carefully and thoroughly weighed the many and varied theists alternatives and the arguments for them. Emotionally I'm fond of stories and myths, so there is definitely a part of me that likes to toy with the idea that magic and magical creatures might exist. However, I've never found any evidence that they do, and a lot of evidence that they don't need to. I also find the world very beautiful, mysterious, and meaningful without the existence of any supernatural metaphysics being involved. Does this open mindedness constitute doubt? I'm not sure. An example would be evolution. Evolution is an understandable, verifiable, testable fact of biology. I believe in evolution as the best explanation we have, however, I would discard it if we discovered that we had good evidence and reason to believe that things worked differently. But the major reason I am not able to doubt atheism is because atheism isn't a belief or a dogma, it certainly isn't for me. I can't really "doubt" that I lack belief in god or gods. I simply have no belief that they are real. Therefore I can't doubt my atheism, which is really, just a lack of belief not a belief in and of itself.

I would need some very convincing evidence, that was up to the extraordinary claims made by such a being. It really depends on the god as it would define itself. Regardless, I would think that it would need to be credible, verifiably, repeatable, able to be shown to others, independently tested, and able to manifest in a way that was perceivable for all those reasons. I would also need to be fairly sure that I was not insane, or being deliberately fooled, or for example, that this "god" wasn't just something more powerful than me, like a highly evolved alien or time traveler or such sci-fi stables. Arthur C. Clarke once wrote: "A sufficiently high level of technology is indistinguishable from magic" so as you can see, proving the miraculous as being from god is inherently tricky. I honestly don't have a good answer for you here. I can certainly say that I haven't seen any evidence that even gets me to this thorny problem however. Everything that has ever been put forth has fallen so short of any of these most basic criteria that I'm a long ways from having to worry about superior time traveling aliens attempting to pull one over on me.


This is a nonsensical question. I'm an atheist because I have no belief in god or gods. I don't believe in god or gods because there is no evidence for them. If there was evidence, I wouldn't lack a belief in them, and would no longer be an atheist by the very definition of the term. If I had evidence which convinced me that god or gods existed I would of course be a theist.

.T.

Koyaanisqatsi

I can't remember who first posted it (maybe Bill), but the best "evidence" argument I've ever heard (or used) was to have God spell out "I love you all, God" in the stars and leave it that way for all eternity.

Shouldn't be too difficult for a being who created the entire universe in six days and "arrested" the sun in the sky and formed Adam out of dirt and flooded the whole Earth, etc., etc., etc., and didn't follow any of the "natural" laws to do it.

No violation of free will, no intervention in our lives, just a clear, distinct and impossible to miss message in the sky that tells us all the allegedly primary/ultimate message, yes?

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

ManM

Koyaanisqatsi,
Which language would you like that written in?

MadMordigan

There are lots of stars. Write it in ALL the languages. Fuck, even Swahili would be a good start.

TooBad

Why not a different language every day?

Graeme

While this is a good one, wouldn't you assume that if there were a super-intelligent deity out there somewhere it would be capable of thinking up something even MORE convincing than what Bill (who is, of course, only a human) could think up?

ManM

And what if I told you all that you were just projecting your imaginations on the stars to justify your sky-daddy? What if I said the apparent language of the stars was not really a design at all, but a simple twist of cosmic chance?

Typhon

A fine point as usual Koy.

Thanks for the input. However, my own personal issue with this, well, issue, is more the concept that IF atheists like myself were presented with whatever evidence that they deemed credible and verifiable as solid proof of the existence of god or gods, they would no longer be atheists. They would be, by definition, theists.

This is of course because as an atheist who is an atheist because I have no belief in god or gods, I have no belief because there is no good evidence the existence of god or gods.

If there was sufficient evidence for forming belief, be it a personal message lasered on the Moon or a weekly, fireside chat with the creator over glasses of Laphroaig, I would no longer be an atheist. Hell, in the latter case I might even get to like the cuss. I can't see how anyone can be all bad if they like a nip of Laphroaig now and then.

Cheers,

.T.

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

Jamie_L

If God is all-powerful, he can make me believe. Since I do not believe, I must conclude that either:

a) God doesn't want me to believe
b) God doesn't care if I believe
c) God is not all-powerful
d) There is no god.


Since I can see no evidence pointing to the existence of a god, d) seems the most likely answer at this time. I am completely open to the possibility of changing my mind about the existence of god, should convincing evidence become available. Until such time, I'm pretty content.

Jamie

sandlewood

Would you really then be convinced there is a god as defined by some religion? (Which is it, Zeus?) Could it be that some advanced alien race used stellar engineering to move the stars into that position, knowing we would see them that way? Or maybe they did something easier: they moved large lenses into the space between here and there to redirect the starlight to spell out that sentence. Could it be that the symbols for the English language were designed based on star patterns, so it’s not so surprising that stars are formed in the shape of English characters? Could it be that the stars are arranged this way by a coincidence, though admittedly a very unlikely coincidence? In other words, are there any other possibilities that are less unlikely than an omnimax god? Surely if you can accept the god, then you can accept the aliens who move stars around, since that would be easier than creating the whole universe.

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: sandlewood ]</p>