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You believe that it is very unlikely that God exists but that isn't a belief?
No It is a disbelief in something that isn't made believable. I concede that a case can be made for assigning credibility to the idea of a universal creator or controlling mind, but even then, that only makes it a credible possibility at best. That doesn't justify the screaming insistence that we all ought to believe it as fact, and certainly not the mental leap to one of the personal gods (all the others supposedly being misunderstandings of the one believed in).
Do you see the difference between belief and disbelief?
Apart from that is the matter of atheists of the thinking kind assessing the case for and against, and it looks like the Bayesian evaluation (or the way you interpret it) is the 50.50 believe or not choice, which is not only not good enough for the atheist, but demands non -belief until some persuasive evidence is forthcoming.
Look, with a coin, we know the head and tails exists, so one or other must come down. We don't know any kind of god exists (or we wouldn't need the Bayesian choice) so an "either it does or it doesn't" choice mandates disbelief until the claim is validated.
This is why atheism is logically correct (if one is not persuaded by the evidence) and is NOT a belief, a religion or even a philosophy.
So your answer is "yes I believe it is unlikely that God exists but no it is not a belief".
I didn't say it was a religion I just said it was a belief.
Either you know or you believe. Are you saying that you know that God does not exist? If you don't know then you must believe. Even agnosticism is a belief. Agnostics do not know.
"since they can't agree on God then it's utter nonsense"
must also apply to
"since they can't agree on atheism, then it's utter nonsense"
A silly comparison . Atheists and agnostics may disagree on what some terms describing them are , but they all understand what disbelief or not believing is. Theists have so many different and conflicting theologies that one could not even list them all here .
Disagreement over labels in non theism and disagreement over content and doctrine among theists are two things that differ so vastly one should be embarrassed to compare them .
So your answer is "yes I believe it is unlikely that God exists but no it is not a belief".
I didn't say it was a religion I just said it was a belief.
At the end of the day , so what? Your point would be completely irrelevant even if correct . But disbelief isn't a form of belief, it is a lack of belief .
At the end of the day , so what? Your point would be completely irrelevant even if correct . But disbelief isn't a form of belief, it is a lack of belief .
How does that work exactly, wallflash? All our cognitive constructs are beliefs about our reality. Are you saying negative beliefs about our reality are somehow not beliefs about our reality??? I am confused. Please explain further.
How does that work exactly, wallflash? All our cognitive constructs are beliefs about our reality. Are you saying negative beliefs about our reality are somehow not beliefs about our reality??? I am confused. Please explain further.
I have explained it . Disbelief is not a form of belief, except perhaps in semantical word games people here like to play .Disbelief is a LACK of something, not a different quality or quality of something . As I said earlier in the thread , I disbelieve in the existence of aliens because there is no evidence of such . However, at the same time I don't believe in the non existence of aliens, because there is no evidence of that either . The two are not the same .
But as I also said, even allowing the word games , the point is irrelevant .
Do you know that God does not exist? If you don't know then you must believe that God probably does not exist. You either alone or you believe. What other options are there?
Do you know that God does not exist? If you don't know then you must believe that God probably does not exist. You either alone or you believe. What other options are there?
There is the option of simply not believing ( disbelief) the current and known claims of Gods existence . Such a lack of belief does not require me to consider the probability of God or not, only the evidence or lack thereof presented by those making the claim of Gods existence .
Or to put it another way, if I disbelieve the current reports of aliens visiting Earth and abducting people for sexual and medical experiments , why does that disbelief require me to believe in the improbability of any aliens anywhere in the universe ?
So you stick your head in the sand and refuse to take any sort of position?
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