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Let's give this one a new box as it raises an important question, touching on the burden of proof.
This is why it is so important to first ask what one means by 'God'. That you put it in capitals like a title and not in quotes suggests that you have in mind a thinking, existing being which exists apart from any part it has in human consciousness (e.g if we suddenly vanished, it would still exist) and which plans actions and brings them about. It is assumed to be invisible (since we can't see it) and is huge (since it creates everything) and is powerful as it influences and knows things.
This is so much like nature that it can be confused (often deliberately) with nature and the difference is that nature operates through reacting to conditions without an advance plan in mind; this God is working to bring about a planned conclusion.
That is what at least in needed to make the term "God" valid use. I suspect that you further have in mind (as I do) the god of a particular kind - the Abrahahamic god of the Bible. If the other religions have an idea of the same god, then they fail to understand it and worship it correctly because they don't use to right Book.
So your question. I cannot be entirely sure that there in no god - of any kind. But I do not need to be to be an atheist. I only need to be unconvinced by any claims that such a god exists and, logically, rationally and evidentially, I am quite correct in not believing those claims. In fact, logically, it is wrong to believe those claims if the evidence is not good enough. This is why agnostic theism, though I can be tolerant of it, is illogical.
Now, where that applies to a postulated invisible forward -planning creator of everything, I am atheist because I see no evidence either way. As theist apologists say: I have not looked everywhere in the universe. But I don't need to, as a god at the far end of the universe means nothing to me - nor to you.
If one goes a bit further and postulates a god that intervenes in our existence here on earth, then I find a significant lack of evidence for such a god where there ought to be some. The claims of personal experience could as well be the brain playing tricks as some existent being and the claims of miracle healings or miraculous survivals smack of self -delusion rather than of statistical fact, so there is reason for me say that I have negative evidence that argues rather strongly against a god here with us.
Now, here we get to the Abrahamic god, we are using the Bible as evidence for what this god is like and what it wants, and that I can can say, camps, is so flawed and crapulous a document that I can say that the god of the Bible does NOT exist, just as I can say that leprechauns, pink unicorns and Santa do not exist (though of course be 100% sure) and nobody would think I was being unreasonable in saying so.
Arequipa,are you saying you do not believe in God ?.
I think I said to you that "we are God". I do not believe in a god who is hiding up in the sky.With us being God ,we as God plan actions and bring them about. Most of us doing so unconsciously.
Do you know in truth there is no God, or are you assuming there is no God ?.
Of course not. But I know in truth that no one of our species has yet offered even a modicum of substantiation for the idea there is one. More than that I do not require.
Arequipa,are you saying you do not believe in God ?.
I think I said to you that "we are God". I do not believe in a god who is hiding up in the sky.With us being God ,we as God plan actions and bring them about. Most of us doing so unconsciously.
Maybe to animals we are all gods. I guess its all about perspective.
Arequipa,are you saying you do not believe in God ?.
I think I said to you that "we are God". I do not believe in a god who is hiding up in the sky.With us being God ,we as God plan actions and bring them about. Most of us doing so unconsciously.
I like discussions where there is increased mutual understanding.
I do not believe in Sortagod, deistgod, Biblegod or any personal god.
I can sympathize with the idea of the god of Einstien, but I think it is an unconscious god in that it does not plan ahead.
I can sympathize with the idea of god-as-nature, but also I do not see nature as planning ahead, therefore I do not use the term 'God, god or 'God' and disapprove of the practice as being misleading and confusing.
I do not see humans as gods either because of their abilities in problem -solving any more than I see cuttlefish as gods because they can change colour - which we can't do. Nor do I see our awareness of the mysterious as anything more than the mundane. I do not see humans as gods. We are very mundane, very prone to error, very animal and very evolved.
We are also amazing, tremendously adaptable and able and quite remarkable - as is all of nature, but we are not gods and neither is nature.
What is truth is (as I believe we already said) what actually is so, no matter what humans think about it. The earth was round and circled the sun, even when we thought differently. The Truth is what it is and all we have to do with it is to find out what it is - and science has by far the best track record is doing that.
What is actually so, is so, even if we and other animals see it differently. If I saw a tomato as red and a fly saw it as blue, it would still be the same tomato, reflecting the same light and the mechanism of human and fly for realizing and interpreting the information brought by the light might present it or we might interpret it differently, but the reality (Truth) of the object and the reflected wavelength would be the same (1). This (as mentioned in the Hard Question discussion) is like seeing information on a radar or TV screen or the difference between stellar information collected by optical telescope and by radio telescope.
It looks different, but is all a way of conveying information about a reality and it should match, too. So far as I know, the two different types of information - interpretation come together to tell us about the reality. What is 'True'.
Now, where this is a question of human preference, there is no truth, except that it is human preference. It really is a question of convention, concensus and very often personal opinion. I'll leave it there.
(1) aside from speculations about some cosmic computer- game which would somehow give us a different reality from the fly's, but there is not the slightest reason to suppose that such a far -fetched reality is so, and that is why we have Occam's razor, otherwise we could not use the tools in the mental tool - box, just as we could not use a box of tools because of someone asking how we could be sure the chisel wouldn't suddenly explode and take our head off.
What is truth is (as I believe we already said) what actually is so, no matter what humans think about it. The earth was round and circled the sun, even when we thought differently. The Truth is what it is and all we have to do with it is to find out what it is - and science has by far the best track record is doing that.
So in the same token it would be fair or not unreasonable to say God as always existed within us and not in the sky like most of us assume,even though it is still to be scientifically proved ?.
The earth was always round and always circled the sun, even when we assumed differently ?, Right ?.
So in the same token it would be fair or not unreasonable to say God as always existed within us and not in the sky like most of us assume,even though it is still to be scientifically proved ?.
Nope. It might be a fine hypothesis, provided it could be tested and falsified. To hold it as truth without evidence is not reasonable.
Nope. It might be a fine hypothesis, provided it could be tested and falsified. To hold it as truth without evidence is not reasonable.
-NoCapo
Well we assumed as the truth that the sun circled earth until it was proved differently. I am sure it was dismissed as a fine hypothesis too,when the idea was presented by Galileo or whoever it was thought,considered, believed it before it was scientifically proved,then set out to prove so. Proving it was the truth before it was proven to be truth. So my question to you is, does truth need to be scientifically proven to be true ?.
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