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But do you believe there is a god? If the answer is yes, then you're an agnostic theist. If the answer is no, then your not-a-theist (which literally means the same thing as atheist) but can retain the same agnosticism we all have.
IMO, since I can't know and I don't know, I'm an agnostic. From my experience, atheists claim to KNOW there is no God. I can't claim such knowledge.
IMO, since I can't know and I don't know, I'm an agnostic. From my experience, atheists claim to KNOW there is no God. I can't claim such knowledge.
I claim no absolute knowledge - I just don't create a special exemption for 'God'.
I treat God with the same logic I treat Zeus and Loki and leprechauns and dragons. And I never hear people take the "Gee, I don't know, how can I ever know?" tack regarding those possibilities.
The fact that it is true that I can't know that there is no leprechaun in my breadbox right now doesn't mean I'm going to stake out the position that there might be a leprechaun in my breadbox right now.
Until I'm given some substantial affirmative evidence of God, that idea gets the same treatment as leprechauns and the like.
I claim no absolute knowledge - I just don't create a special exemption for 'God'.
I treat God with the same logic I treat Zeus and Loki and leprechauns and dragons. And I never hear people take the "Gee, I don't know, how can I ever know?" tack regarding those possibilities.
The fact that it is true that I can't know that there is no leprechaun in my breadbox right now doesn't mean I'm going to stake out the position that there might be a leprechaun in my breadbox right now.
Until I'm given some substantial affirmative evidence of God, that idea gets the same treatment as leprechauns and the like.
Whether we ever get to know about them or not, there are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, in his Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The miracles wrought by our technology would have seemed to the ancients no less remarkable than the tales of Moses parting the waters, or Jesus walking upon them. The aliens of our SETI signal would be to us like gods, just as missionaries were treated as gods (and exploited the undeserved honor to the hilt) when they turned up in Stone Age cultures bearing guns, telescopes, matches, and almanacs predicting eclipses to the second.
In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not supernatural? In a very important sense, which goes to the heart of this book. The crucial difference between gods and god-like extraterrestrials lies not in their properties but in their provenance. Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process. No matter how god-like they may seem when we encounter them, they didn’t start that way. Science-fiction authors . . . have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization. But the simulators themselves would have to come from somewhere. The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution…
From Richard Dawkin's God Delusion
So the question is, if one is like Dawkin and myself, is it a "fantasy" to believe in things simply because they "very probably" exists.
Although, he seems to be restricting his definition of god to the judeo-christian conception when he makes a distinction between gods and super powerful aliens.
At any rate, I agree with him that the "very probably" exists, but disagree about whether or not they should rightfully be called a god.
I claim no absolute knowledge - I just don't create a special exemption for 'God'.
I treat God with the same logic I treat Zeus and Loki and leprechauns and dragons. And I never hear people take the "Gee, I don't know, how can I ever know?" tack regarding those possibilities.
The fact that it is true that I can't know that there is no leprechaun in my breadbox right now doesn't mean I'm going to stake out the position that there might be a leprechaun in my breadbox right now.
Until I'm given some substantial affirmative evidence of God, that idea gets the same treatment as leprechauns and the like.
At least I'm consistent.
Yes . . . and most atheists are consistent in regarding God as some specific element OF reality . . . instead of reality itself. All specific elements of reality require specific evidence of their specific features (whatever they are believed to be) . . . but God is reality itself as manifested by the unified field (consciousness field) that establishes what we experience within it as reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina
Exactly. Precisely. Nail head, meet hammer.
More like chain saw meet nail in the tree of life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boxcar Overkill
I find this tidbit from Dawkins interesting.
From Richard Dawkin's God Delusion
So the question is, if one is like Dawkin and myself, is it a "fantasy" to believe in things simply because they "very probably" exists.
Although, he seems to be restricting his definition of god to the judeo-christian conception when he makes a distinction between gods and super powerful aliens.
At any rate, I agree with him that the "very probably" exists, but disagree about whether or not they should rightfully be called a god.
At the most . . . such highly evolved and technologically superior aliens would be characterized as Angels . . . not as God. God is the Source of everything that exists, period. All inferior conceptions of God that try to consider God as something separate from everything that exists requiring evidence . . . simply misunderstand the concept. Everything IS evidence of God. The myriad separate and distinct beliefs ABOUT God stand or fall on their own merits and require separate evidence to support them . . . but they do not define God. What we humans THINK about God does not affect the reality of God. It just determines what we think. Our myriad conceptions of God (or No God) are just our pitifully inadequate human beliefs . . . but they have no operative power to determine what actually IS. God IS because reality IS, period
Yes . . . and most atheists are consistent in regarding God as some specific element OF reality . . . instead of reality itself. All specific elements of reality require specific evidence of their specific features (whatever they are believed to be) . . . but God is reality itself as manifested by the unified field (consciousness field) that establishes what we experience within it as reality.
Allow me to translate: "Wrong, because... [word salad]"
At the most . . . such highly evolved and technologically superior aliens would be characterized as Angels . . . not as God. God is the Source of everything that exists, period. All inferior conceptions of God that try to consider God as something separate from everything that exists requiring evidence . . . simply misunderstand the concept. Everything IS evidence of God. The myriad separate and distinct beliefs ABOUT God stand or fall on their own merits and require separate evidence to support them . . . but they do not define God. What we humans THINK about God does not affect the reality of God. It just determines what we think. Our myriad conceptions of God (or No God) are just our pitifully inadequate human beliefs . . . but they have no operative power to determine what actually IS. God IS because reality IS, period
While I understand the point you are making, I don't think your conception of a god is shared by the majority of people now or throughout history. From your point of view that may not matter. But for me I am mostly discussing semantics: If we say we "don't believe that a god or gods exist," what claim are we making? I think that claim is more than a denial of the type of god you are espousing. I think that claim includes gods such as those claimed by the Greeks and Romans. Lessor Gods that are not responsible for the creation of earth.
Again, for your purposes you are limiting the definition of a god to the source of everything that exists. That is understandable as a belief system, but it doesn't address the more commonly used definition of gods, or more specifically, the denial that such gods are likely to exists.
But mostly I just posted it because some posters had speculated that I had a misunderstanding of evolution (even though I explicitly explained I was not limiting evolution to the biological evolution but was including evolution of technology.) They attempted to ridicule the idea as if it were fantasy, and no possible. So this was just a little appeal to authority. Hawkings said some similar things as Dawkins and I, although in some sense he went further by speculating on different motives an alien may have for visiting earth if they should ever come this way.
IMO, since I can't know and I don't know, I'm an agnostic. From my experience, atheists claim to KNOW there is no God. I can't claim such knowledge.
What some atheists claim, and what some atheists actually know are two completely different things. Also, what atheist means and what atheists claim are two different things. An a-theist (not-theist) is simply a person who is not a theist (god believer). I'm of the strong opinion that no theist nor atheist actually knows whether any gods can or do exist. It's an untenable position to hold. If my opinion is correct, then all humans fall into one of either of two camps; agnostic theist or agnostic atheist. The question is about belief, not knowledge. If you believe in a god (that one or more exist) you're a theist, if not, you're an atheist.
However, it is possible to make very strong knowledge claims about certain specific anthropogenic god claims. The Judeo/Islamic/Christian god for instance can be shown not to exist dependent on how it's defined. There are certain logical inconsistencies that exist in certain definitions. There are also certain things this god is claim to have done that can be shown not to have happened. These of course can be defined or rationalized away, but that still does not mean the god actually exists.
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