So when did you grew out from athesim?

I wish i could adopt this attitude, however i am aware that there is a good chance that there are things in this universe that we cannot substantiate through "evidence". As such "evidence' most likely requires some kind of observation. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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You went from being an arrogant atheist to being an agnostic, which is basically a watered down version of atheism imbued with an insufferable holier-than-thou attitude.
"omg can't be atheist cuz there could be something there" makes as much sense as defending the belief that there may be 20 planets on our solar system, we just can't see them yet.
Believe in what exists and is measurable. You can be an atheist and not be an arrogant asshole.

>to believe in something without evidence it exists

Words of user who replied to you makes sense

>there is a good chance that there are things in this universe that we cannot substantiate through "evidence".

Exactly my pont! Compared to the great size of our universe, we are just tiny insignificant and very very limited beings, probably there is something way more than our tiny little brain with tiny sensory input can comprehend.

purely a personality kink i believe. Nothing inherent to atheism. Just a lot of edgy low iq niggas trying to act superior make atheists looks bad.

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>You went from being an arrogant atheist to being an agnostic,

Yes, and that arrogance is gone along with prejudices, judgment. Because you can't really know, so you just go along.

All I know is I don't know shit. And at least being nice to others won't do any bad.

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>prim and proper christian girl.
>she decided to have a one night stand

That doesn't look like a proper christian girl though.

> came on her face and said "Where's your god now?"

Thats a kek.

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> evidence of absence
The scientific method does not have a mechanism to prove absence. And before you say that's a limitation, let me make this clear: it is not a limitation, it is simply unnecessary.
The whole system is based on the assumption of nothing. The assumption of things and processes not existing. If by carrying out an experiment you prove a thing is real, that thing is then classified as real.
With the knowledge we've accumulated through the generations, we have a huge catalogue of things we know to be real. But the default position is that things don't exist until you prove them.
This means that nothing falls through the cracks, because things that exist can be tested and evaluated.

The very few things that can't be measured yet due to tech limitations, like the exact topography of an exoplanet hundreds of thousands of light years away, are also things that have no influence whatsoever on our daily life, PRECISELY because of how remote they are.
If there were supernatural forces or events affecting our existence, they would be quantifiable and measurable. But there are none. The yearly miracle rate took a nosedive over the past few centuries and it's no coincidence, it becomes very hard to claim that sort of bullshit in the age of science.

>All I know is I don't know shit.

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Isn't that the study of parapsychology

>grew out of atheism
>by doing hard drugs
>therefore jesus loves me
u rly showed us how well documented gods existence is

the chad agnosticism vs the virgin faith

Dude says he's agnostic, retard.

He may be a fence-sitting pussy, but at least he's not an illiterate moron.

PSEUDO
S
E
U
D
O

amazing - what a difference

My point is that if you assume everything you cannot prove to be not real, you will come to the point where some phenomenon exists but cannot be proven. It is a limitation of our existence, in the end science is a construct to understand what we can observe and catalog. It cannot disprove the existence of a higher power. Science is the wrong tool to apply here, assumptions made on a faulty basis are no better than the squabble in the streets.

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ITT

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I'll still call myself an atheist. even if I believe there has to be something fucky going on above our comprehension.

All I know is everyone who claims to know what's actually true, about some higher power, is full of shit.

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Just a troll. Maybe if we don't move, he won't see us and walk pass.

Couldnt have said it half as well myself.

No. The most fundamental thing is that I think therefore I am

Yeh, and if we are in a simulation, then you can't actually really know for sure if apples grow on trees or if it's just a 3D render of it.

you dont seem to comprehend the kind of questions we are talking here. Much more complicated than things we can readily observe

> you will come to the point where some phenomenon exists but cannot be proven
no you won't, phenomena are by definition things that manifest themselves in some way, and therefore they can be observed

> It cannot disprove the existence of a higher power.
again: it does not need to disprove. Nothing needs to be disproved, because by default everything is assumed to be bullshit. Things need to be proved, not the other way around.

you sound like a stoned 16 year old throwing around empty platitudes to feel smart

Describe the process of your thinking. It is no realer than anything else you can perceive.

>that miniscule chance rly makes u think
>therefore we cant not noncider it

In some way un-observable to human beings is what i was saying.

I feel you OP. I was similar at 17. Watching TheAmazingAtheist and Thunderf00t on youtube. I still have my old youtube account and reading my comments is so cringe, I was such an arrogant little shit.

After having out of body experiences and also experiences on Mushrooms like you did, I consider myself "spiritual" I guess. There's clearly so much more to reality than meets the eye, but I dont have as much passion to explore it as I used to.

And your assumption may be incorrect, there is no merit in your scientific dogma beyond your ability to observe.

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>Much more complicated than things we can readily observe
>we have to just feel or just know it instead

see, there goes the empty whooshy whooshy pseudo spiritual crap again

>it is beyond comprehension bro
>we cannot observe these things bro

it's the most annoying version of "moving the goalpost", you take the goalpost and try to throw it out of our plane of existence
if you want to ignore what's around you and live life believing in "the beyond" go ahead, just don't expect others to adhere to your arbitrary definitions of human limitation

u dont percieve it - there needs to be an agent to perform the doubting to begin with. Did u skip school, that u dont know this famous,philosophical fundament?

human beings can't see infrared like some snakes do, therefore we built infrared cameras
human beings can't hear frequencies above 20 kHz, therefore we built electronic devices that can measure sound waves in those ranges

any real phenomena that exists can be observed or measured through tech, even those beyond our biological limitations

When I started reading about logic and burden of proof. Especially reading about false dichotomy and later on ignosticism. I realised that any conclusion would demand evidence, and there wasn't enough to either support the conclusion that Gods exist, or that Gods do not exist.

>miniscule chance
Why is so miniscule if with todays technology we can almost replicate photorealistic 3D renditions of anything, 40 years ago there was only dot bouncing at two bars on the screen, and in the next 20 years with greatly evolving quantum computers and AI, we could simulate things in even more realistic manner. Don't you think humans won't create digital humans in computers when technology is availabe? Because that where it's going right now.

I was never religious. It strikes me that mostly people that were raised in some kind of dogmatic religion have experiences like this:
>>Become 15years old, realize that I can believe whatever I want.
>>Over the years I evolve into hardcore atheist
Is this the story of every Reddit Yank ever?

I have yet to meet a god.

I was a believer until I was 10 years old, there my atheist stage began, it lasted until I was about 15 years old, I became agnostic since then, I'm 20 now about to be 21.

It really isnt you fucking potato. We as humans are designed to perceive what we need to in order to survive. We cannot see the truth, we can only build probabilistic models to describe. We are like blind men attempting to describe the three dimensional characteristics of objects, we may be able to utilize our sense of feeling to build a mental image of an object. However, we cannot directly observe the said object to know fully, we can only create models.

anything that can affect your existence can be observed
if things exist outside our ability to observe they also exist outside their own ability to influence our existence

if a god exists, the only way we'd not be able to observe that to be true would be if that god had zero influence on our existence, and at that point the existence of that god becomes moot

>I still have my old youtube account and reading my comments is so cringe, I was such an arrogant little shit.

Just delete that shit. I did it. It's not worth keeping that digital footprint.

>experiences on Mushrooms like you did, I consider myself "spiritual"

For me it's not spiritual, just the great unknown.

based false equivalence

So when did you grew out from autism?

Where do you draw the line? There are limits to these things, such as our inability to observe subatomic particles. Universal limitations.

creating ai isnt being god, is why. If the tech today is so good, why didnt it detect god yet? Why havent any tech detected any god in the last thousand of years? Thats why its miniscule - cuz everything we discovered wasnt god, nor did it require it to happen. We have a very good grasp of the most fundamental thingsand if the fundament isnt god,why is it needed for anything more complex to function?

>concider
>talking about apples

not sure if tryna be funny or justatypo

>Is this the story of every Reddit Yank ever?
Dunno, I don't have a reddit account. I think it's just a natural think to do, to start think for yourself. don't you think that user?

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>if things exist outside our ability to observe they also exist outside their own ability to influence our existence

Isn't that logic a little bit flawed? For example, untill we discovered bacteria, we couldn't observe it, yet it influenced our existence.

How can we be sure it is something resulting from divine influence and not some force of the universe itself?

>justatypo
i wouldnt know, especially,since i also wrote "Noncider". U figured it out anyway,right? Therefore rulesof language r pointless, yeah?

>If the tech today is so good, why didnt it detect god yet

Wow user thats a really really nice observation, I m just gonna put it on my fridge.

The whole questions contains so many problems. First off: what is a God? Are the greek gods gods? How about shintoism? Is a house a god? Can it be? Can you be a god? The concept of a god is broken, and there exists too many definitions of it. The same is true for the concept of a soul. And, even if we did agree on a concept, it is either impossible a priori, or we have too small sample size a posteriori. Regardless, being a die hard supporter of either side seems dysfunctional.

>Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

Logic would follow that you should also believe in bigfoot and aliens. Where does it stop when evidence isn't required?

>It really isnt you fucking potato.
Insults always work, don't they?
>We as humans are designed
[citation needed]
>to perceive what we need to in order to survive.
[citation needed]
>We cannot see the truth, we can only build probabilistic models to describe.
Starting to smell like post modernism in here, and I don't like that smell.
>We are like blind men attempting to describe the three dimensional characteristics of objects, we may be able to utilize our sense of feeling to build a mental image of an object. However, we cannot directly observe the said object to know fully, we can only create models.
>utilize our sense of feeling

Nigga, blind people can feel geometrical shapes just fine, as long as they are actually physically manifested before them.

that's where you're wrong kiddo. Even things that aren't real are real.

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6 years old

Who cares, who's the girl, that's what's important. Sauce now!

doesnt mean you have any argument to believe in any of those things. It just simply means that there is no evidence to the contrary.

great non-argument

I feel you dont need a fucking citation to understand that our perceptions are the result of an evolutionary requirement to fucking survive. Look around you, look at the different biological functions of the many species of your planet.

>Insults always work, don't they?
yes, against strawmen.Thats what he did. If only u took a course in logical fallacies

The name's Yvette Nolot (Zishy)

>I think it's just a natural think to do, to start think for yourself. don't you think that user?

I've always thought for myself, and I have trouble wrapping my head around dogmatic beliefs in general.. It just strikes me as weird to go full dogmatic on any religion at all, only to then flip to the other side trying to attack (a, or all) dogmatic religion from every angle.

I don't know the answers to the universe, and the truth is that I don't even are all that much. The philosophical how's and why's are largely irrelevant to my existence, so I just don't bother at all.. I've got a mortgage to pay, a child to raise and friends to not neglect. Who the fuck cares where we came from, or where it'll end? Life moves pretty fast..

I have seen little evidence of the existence of any god or gods and ample evidence that they either don't exist or are evil and deserve no worship.

It sucks and I wish it weren't true, but it is. I'm 44

good question.

big IQ up above and correct answer.

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So when did you grew out from athesim?

Cred Forums

>I feel you dont need a fucking citation to understand that our perceptions are the result of an evolutionary requirement to fucking survive.
Could be random. Also, that's something different entirely than being 'designed'.
>Look around you, look at the different biological functions of the many species of your planet.
Some random, some designed (like bananas, carrots and corgies), some just really fucking weird..

Fallacy-fallacy.

Expain WHY it is a fallacy, or just leave it be.

Some kind of modernist ey?
I see where we dont agree.
Scientific truths are constructs of science, they are not the truth. A theory can be scientifically "true" but not actually correct. Our theories are based on evidence and scientific reasoning, but in the end they are merely theories. Yes, very good ones, but only for such as ourselves. We probably dont have the correct model yet, the current model for the composition of the universe is flawed and we still cant unite the forces. There is a discrepancy between the laws of the very small and the "ordinary"

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Eh, this kind of shit just makes me roll my eyes.

Any actual atheist will absolutely believe in some higher power or meaning, if we can find proof.

oh i didnt mean designed by some creator, i meant forged through the process of evolutionary elimination i guess.

its not an education session - its your problem u dont know it
u misrepresented his statements and he told u thats not what he said. Its not an ad hominem, if its not just the insult

by this logic the flying spaghetti monster might also exists

>Yeh, my point exactly. We're too small and our sensory input is very limited

>by this logic the flying spaghetti monster might also exists

It might. You can never actually know for sure.

basically yeah

That's the problem with it. Atheism is a definition that encompasses so much, that it doesn't describe anything at all. It suggests that the die hard atheist who says he absolutely KNOWS there are no Gods, belongs to the same category as the person who says they don't know if there are Gods. You don't need to establish any ontological shenanigans to understand those two do not belong in the same category. Hence why concepts such as agnosticism and ignosticism were invented.

not all of them. some people, mainly atheists are so stubborn that even if god sticks a dick in their ass as proof they wouldn't believe still

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>oh i didnt mean designed by some creator, i meant forged through the process of evolutionary elimination i guess.

Which is, again, something entirely different than 'designed'.. But given that caveat, I understand what you mean and I tend to agree.

More like an empiricist. If we cannot prove or measure it in some way, theories are rather useless imo.. Note that you do not need to see something to measure or detect it btw. To stick with the 'blind man' example, it doesn't matter much if you can see or are blind when it comes to detecting the wind on your face, for instance.

Yes. It's as valid as the idea of the hebrew God, or any god for that matter. The only difference between them is that we know the origin on the Spaghetti monster to a larger degree.

That was merely an analogy, i mean that we cannot directly observe the truth, like a blind man cant observe the world through sight. We however have the ability to construct an understanding of the truth like a blind of the world.

The question of god existence is irrelevant.

Even if a god exists and has created the universe, that doesn't mean any of the religions are true.

I'm an atheist, not because I'm a genius that can proove what happened at the Big Bang, but because it's obvious that all the religions were made up by men...

Until a god shows himself and proove his power to us I'll stick to the scientific method of knowing things.

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the god(s) being evil and undeserving of worship is actually a pretty reasonable hypothesis.

Umm i think most religions are pretty far fetched and too interwoven with the desires of men. But the existence of a higher power does not necessarily have to correlate with any known religion of humanity. For things that can be observed the scientific method shall work wonders.

Calling someone a potato is still an insult, and rather friendly
>But muh fallacies, muh strawmen, muh education

m8, just be polite.

>Atheism is a definition that encompasses so much

Really just a lack of religious belief, though. That's it. I don't know why people on either side of this divide want to tack on all kinds of other shit, like the origins of the universe, our planet and evolution. All of those things, like interesting, are completely seperate issues from a non-religious point of view. Just because most Abrahamic faiths (and dogmatic faiths in general) propagate these all-encompassing origin stories, that attempt to explain everything and often also paint a finish line (apolocypse, paradise, whatever), doesn't mean atheism claims the same. In fact, all it claims is a lack of belief.

>It suggests that the die hard atheist who says he absolutely KNOWS there are no Gods, belongs to the same category as the person who says they don't know if there are Gods.

Does it really matter if you believe/know very strongly that there isn't one, or 'just' assume that there isn't one because there is no reason to assume otherwise? I'd say those 2 ideas are fairly similar, philosophically speaking and downright identical in a practical sense.

>You don't need to establish any ontological shenanigans to understand those two do not belong in the same category. Hence why concepts such as agnosticism and ignosticism were invented.

What does it actually matter, beyond giving people some reasons to shitpost and make smug YT vids about?

"atheist" and "agnostic" describe different things, that's like saying "I used to be a vegan but now I eat spinach"

You can be an agnostic atheist, you can be an agnostic Christian. Tbh i don't trust anyone who isn't an agnostic

>and rather friendly
*unfriendly

my bad

come on this is fucking Cred Forums, im not here to make you feel like a child.

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You say that atheists "wouldn't" believe still, because you're referring to a hypothetical scenario. You're not referring to that one time that atheists WERE presented with irrefutable proof of God's existence and still denied it. Instead, you imagined a made-up situation in which you were right and your detractors just couldn't see the light, and then worked backwards from there.

This is the way you have to think as a religious person

But if a god can't be observe, neither any of its supposed powers, does it really exist ?

If there is a god, but its doesn't have any power and/or don't care or interact with us, what's the point in believing it exists ?

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Yes, this is Cred Forums. Still no reason to not be polite, user.. Politeness almost never hurts.

You cannot divorce science from imagination completely. Pondering the universe requires (seems to me) a desire to not only understand, but to dream and conceptualize. Its the job of science to prove or disprove,but the thirst of knowledge starts with the quintessential "what if". Its up to us to seperate between them correctly.

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Such things may have an impact on our universe. Such as infrared lasers, they may not be visible to us but they certainly can have their impact observed. And we can construct mechanisms to directly observe and describe such energies. There may be a power capable of creating and designing our universe. This does not mean that it interferes with its creation. Like an experiment where you set the scene and allow things to happen. I do not believe there is much weight to religion, but I am willing to believe there is some kind of greater power beyond our universe. I just dont have any evidence or reason to believe that there is or isnt.

Science only works for what which can be observed and cataloged through direct or indirect means.

>Really just a lack of religious belief, though.

Yes, but the cause of the lack of belief is as important as the lack thereof. The reaction to new information is dependent on that outlook. If a fire starts, it's important to know if it was some asshole igniting gasoline, or if it was just a random lightning strike.

>Does it really matter if you believe/know very strongly that there isn't one, or 'just' assume that there isn't one because there is no reason to assume otherwise?

That's like taking a math test and going "if I guess the answers and get it right, isn't that the same as solving the problem?" The answer is no, it's not the same. The method by which you come by an answer is as important as the answer.

>What does it actually matter, beyond giving people some reasons to shitpost and make smug YT vids about?

That depends entirely on how you define "things that matter."

>This does not mean that it interferes with its creation

So, again, what's the point ?

As I wrote already, if something can't be observed and as zero effect on our universe, can we even consider it exists at all ?
Further, does it even matter ?

Different person answering, but I agree with the idea that if a god exists, then that gods influence can be measured. The problem is that we can measure very little in the universe. 95% of it is basically outside of our ability to measure.

I never said it didnt have any effect on our universe. No, this whole conversation is a complete waste of time, this argument is long tired and destructive. We shall get nowhere, we cannot grapple with such concepts. It really makes difference if a higher power exist.

ewwww, you guys are arguing with logic and respect. What happened to the den of imbecility we used to have here. damn reddit users ruining everythin

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Yeah, I feel like the farthest you can take this premise is, "but what if like we all lived in the Matrix bro". It's etymology 101, how can we truly know what we think we know? Kinda interesting when you first consider it but then you move on with your life

The more interesting situation to consider is that according to some mathematicians, it's almost a certainty that we ARE currently living in a simulation. How can we tell? Does it ultimately matter?

I think you're referring to dark matter, which more refers to the mass of the universe, and doesn't really have much of an impact on our daily lives

Besides, that's not what anybody is referring to when they talk about God. People bring up God when they want to know why there's a rainbow in the sky or if they want to speak to their parents again or because they want to justify their country being at war. Not because of some physics problem.

28 now, I'm still atheist, our inherent inability to be certain about reality doesn't means there's any reason, or need, for a "conscious entity" who rules your reality...

theos - god/deitiy
atheist = disbelief on a god/deity
atheist != knowing everything about the universe

Umm if this dark matter did not exist, I believe our universe would be torn apart. So im pretty sure it has quite the bearing on our daily lives my guy.

Started out pentecostal, baptist, presbyterian(mom couldn't make up her fucking mind). When I got older, and went through some shit with my mom's husband, I went full atheist. Why would God allow this shit to happen? Went to prison for trying kill him with a machete because of abuse. Spent 2 years in county jail, and would watch the deacon every Wednesday and Sunday through the little window in the cell door, but was too proud to take part. That's when I went agnostic. Spent years riding that train until I met my husband, who is catholic. Went to a few holiday masses, and I loved it. Decided that there was no harm in believing. Converted, and I'm feeling soooooo much better than I ever have. Bash me if you like, but I found more peace than I ever did as an atheist, and I'd never tell anyone else that their belief is wrong, simply because it's a personal journey that only the person themself can go through.

My point wasn't that precise, what I mean is that none of us is LaPlace's demon. We cannot have information of everything, so we cannot measure if some outside force is manipulating anything.

Also I'm ignostic. I don't know what a God is. Everyone has their own definition and it's entirely impossible to create a falsifiable test on something undefined.

When I started bio class. The hunan body seems too complex and intricate to have arisen spontaneously. So someone designed us. Who (god, aliens, FSM) is anyone’s guess.

umm also isnt it crazy the kind of shit that happen in our universe? It certainly is plausible but very difficult to truly understand the mechanisms of our evolution. Essentially, just the process of elimination over a very very long time.

>human body is complex

have you ever tried to study about octopuses and other types of them. That's complex. The human body is simple

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Agnostic just means you don't know. When people use it in terms of religion, it becomes very unclear. It could mean they think there's a higher power but don't claim to know for sure, or it could mean they think there isn't a higher power but don't know for sure.
So you can be an agnostic atheist. It means you don't think there's any kind of god, but you aren't claiming 100% certainty. My only issue is, how do you know anything with 100% certainty? How do you disprove solipsism, or that you're just a brain in a jar, or anything else like that? Those things aren't falsifiable so you can never disprove them, but for some reason there's a lot less people wondering if they're the only actual person in a world of dreams than if a higher power dictated what food could be eaten.
But yeah, if you don't believe in a god but you don't claim with 100% certainty there is no god, you're an agnostic atheist.

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That's not a very strong argument for a design.

None of those things are simple. Try understanding the roots of the conscious, the human nervous system is an artisan work.

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no dude i'm just saying that atheists don't even try to listen cuz they have this sense of superiority and pride idk why and cuz of that they don't care for anything you try to present them.

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Snowflakes look beautiful and intricate and have patterns that seem like they couldn't have just come from falling out of the sky. But then as we learned more, we discovered that the snowflake pattern comes from the shape of frozen water molecules, and that there's actually a perfectly natural explanation for the complicated patterns of snowflakes

I mean sure "it's anyone's guess", but you don't use that excuse to stop looking for better answers

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it's abstract so there's no way to understand nor I have interest to. btw stop that Joker crap and revere the true savior.

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>A nurse once said there are no atheist in hospice.
Don't know about your country, but the unofficial reality here is that in most confessional hospitals you simply won't get a job if you don't have a registered religion and pay the curch tax.

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The problem with most christians (one of the problems, anyway), is that they never stop to consider that maybe, just MAYBE, it's not pride / a sense of superiority that makes them dismiss your claims, but the fact that your claims simply do not match with their view of the world. As in, even if they wanted to believe your claims, they could not because their fundamentals simply don't allow those things to be a thing.

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>atheists don't even try to listen cuz they have this sense of superiority and pride
I mean, I'd say the exact same thing about Christians lol
When's the last time a Christian has ever said "actually, why don't you tell me your beliefs before I jump to conclusions"? Christians act like people only pretend to be atheist because they're angry at God, like a toddler throwing a tantrum at their parents. I'd ask them to justify their beliefs and they'd tell me that the answers are in the Bible, then I'd question them about the Bible and it would turn out that they hadn't even read it

So yeah, I'm sick and tired of hearing Christians tell me that the reason I don't share their beliefs is because I'm lacking information, when it turns out that I'm usually more knowledgeable about their own religion than they are. I'm tired of Christians telling me that i just HAVE to listen to a certain pastor to fully get it. I'm tired of Christians saying that I just have to "feel it", and only once when i've TRULY accepted Jesus Christ as my savior then I'll understand. Those are bad arguments and I'm going to treat them with the respect they deserve

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I think they meant the same thing as the old quote "There are no atheists in foxholes." The idea being when people are scared they are about to die, they suddenly become much more open to the idea of an afterlife.

Not that you can't work there if you're irreligious.

Never did. Until we solve that self-contradiction thing of "existing outside existence" or we get actual proof, I won't either.

So what is a god, more specifically? We know religions don't agree with one another about the specifics, so perhaps we should just cut them out of it. Shintoism have house gods, some African religions deem large crocodiles to be Gods. Abrahamitic religions claim there can only be one god. Greek and old Norse religions deem gods similar to humans, but outside of us. Can we see a pattern?

It seems to me that a God as a concept doesn't necessarily entail omnipotence or similar functions. It merely seems to be an entity who can achieve things in a way that is unknown to us. But from that, we have to ask things like: is the idea of Chtulhu a god? If an alien entered the solar system, wielding technology that we could not understand, would that be a God? if there is magic, a natural force underpinning all of reality - and one is able to manipulate it, does one become a god then? If reality is a simulation, and we are all programs, is a God the creator of the program, or the systems that keep the program running?

Unless we can agree on what a God is, it becomes nigh pointless debating if they exist or not.

We're all just figments of each others imagination user. We are an hologram there's no other way to explain it. If there was an invisible man in the sky which invisible man is the right one? What makes one fantasy story true and the other one false? You're probably best off having an hallucigenic trip every weekend and opening your mind in search of reality. It will help make you become a superior human being just like myself.

I've been in this situation. I prayed. But not because I was convinced that there was a higher power, but because - what would I lose by praying? Nothing. It literally costs me nothing, and if it influences the outcome even the slightest, even as a placebo effect making me more confident, then why wouldn't I do it? What possible downside is there to praying? I saw none, so I prayed.

this is about shit tier egocentric/human centric as the multiverse might exist and it's magically tied to human decision making

i get it. i hate christians because of that but atheists are starting to be the same and that makes me mad. all the ppl I discuss those things are really open minded and they all got different beliefs and that's really cool to see and compare them

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If you're in trouble and you want to pray because it makes you feel better, go for it. I was just trying to clarify a point that the original quote wasn't about nurses not being allowed to work, it was about an old-standing belief that about people getting scared of going to a hell and doing a deathbed conversion.

There's an argument to be made that if you prayed instead of got help like medicine or something, there's a downside. But it's your life, I'm not here to tell you how to live it when it's only really affecting you.

Yeah, "god" (much less "God") is 100% culturally defined

Its probably best to just think about gods as a subset of the supernatural. Talking about what a "god" is like shouldn't carry any more weight than what a "Sagittarius" is like, because who the fuck knows what that's supposed to mean

I wasn't in a position where I could get help, to be honest. I get your point, I just don't think people are converted because of it. I think they think like me - there's no downside to the praying. If there is a God, and the god does listen, then why not? If there isn't one, then nothing happens. I've heard this before, there are no atheists in a trench and similar things. But I don't think it's true that the people in the trench, or foxhole or whatever, become religious. They becomes desperate, that's all. Willing to try everything, even the things they don't believe in. It'd be like getting terminal cancer, and some homeopath comes up and says "would you try my medicine?" I mean you and I both know it's basically just water. But why wouldn't you try it? On the off chance that we're wrong about homeopaths, or that your placebo reaction makes a difference, why not?

That's where my praying came from. And if you find an atheist in a foxhole, I'm pretty sure that's where their praying will come from too.

lol stfu

Because the concept means something. I would never agree that a Pharaoh is a God. I have a clear idea of what it might be. It's the same as the dumb free will debate. It's been completely hijacked by philosophers so now we don't even recognise the concept of free will. It's been trampled for so long so it's becomes absurd.

The same is true for a Godhood. I believe, for an example, that a God must be defined so that no version of events means you can kill it. That's what a god is, because that is what 100% of all Gods in religions have in common. Gods are unkillable. You can defeat them, but not slay them.

>I would never agree that a Pharaoh is a God
yeah but you don't agree that Vishnu or Thor is a god either, you presumably believe in the One True God™ Yahweh. You'd also say that Gods don't have elephant trunks or hold hammers, instead they get crucified by the Romans because that's what all real gods do.

Whether or not YOU recognize personally recognize Egyptian deities as real is irrelevant to the fact that they are culturally defined as gods

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
"Ignosticism or igtheism is the idea that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because the word "God" has no coherent and unambiguous definition."

Yeah, that's pretty much all I was getting at, clarifying for that other user.Since it kind of seemed like they thought it was about hiring practices, not deathbed conversions.
I personally don't believe in any kind of god or gods, but if praying helped you in your case, even only to make you feel better, than it's a good thing you did it.

Slightly off subject, that's how people get scammed by psychics and con artists and whatnot. A loved one gets cancer or sick or something, and when science and medicine don't seem to be working fast enough they turn to alternatives. Then, when the cancer goes into remission because or the immune system gets on top of the infection, the person who is only trying to do what they can for a loved one gets tricked into thinking water or seances or anything else that they can be overcharged for is going to save them and it becomes a sad story on the news.
If praying makes you feel better, go for it. But there are inherent downsides to things like homeopathy or alternative medicines sometimes. There's been no science to show homeopathy works. But if someone in a desperate situation tries it and then attributes their loved one feeling better because of it and starts throwing money at that person, that's just scamming someone who's in a terrible place.

That's supposed to come off as less of a religious thing and more of a con artist thing. There are downsides. Sometimes herbal supplements are cut with filler that could harm people, since they're not regulated. There are plenty of cases of people giving their kids homeopathy water instead of antibiotics. While it might seem harmless enough to try some things like that, there are risks involved with them. Maybe not for you in your case, but still.

I believe in no gods, so your claims about my beliefs are imprecise. My point is that gods do have common traits, and in order to define what a god is, it's the common traits that must be focused on.

You’re literally still atheist.

>gods do have common traits
Yeah, and "being unkillable" ain't one of them lmao

Christians say that Jesus is God
Christians say that Jesus died on the cross

A con is a con. The perspective of an outsider is that correlation does not equal causation, and it's a valid observation. But from the perspective of the diseased, it's a valid method. First pay the probable ways to cure your disease - cancer treatment. Then, if that does not work, spend resources on make believe solutions. Because if the tried and true method isn't working, doing something may be better than doing nothing.

I am not arguing that homeopathy is as good as chemo or something like that. Merely arguing that all attempts to game probability in your favour is valid. I mean, ever played a video game with an RNG and went "come come on, please hit [enemy]!" You don't actually believe your pleas are heard by the LCG, but you do them anyway. Because there is no cost to do so.

>a prim and proper christian girl
They seem to become the biggest sl00ts - why is that?

Huh, i hadn't heard of that concept or definition but it makes sense. Like, by even talking about a "god" you're making a ton of assumptions already

And yeah, the hardest part about battling faith and belief isn't the theologians and religious philosophers, it's the grieving parents and kind-hearted grandmas.

That's a gross simplification of Jesus/God dichotomy though. God remained afterwards and Jesus wasn't destroyed by it. Lots of Gods have their physical representations destroyed, and none of them are then left out of the story. So your idea of killing a God is a bit... Simple.

Oldfag here. Went to “Catholic” schools. Raised non-strick Catholic. Had to go to church. Grew up believing that “God is watching you.” Can make one paranoid. Power of prayer, etc. All kinds of life shit experienced. Parents divorced. Older, wiser, life experiences. Read a lot, talked with people. “Faith” isn’t too solid for me. Superstition, magical thinking, placebo-effect. Not going to self-identity as an atheist, especially now a days as it has become a cringey meme. Also don’t want that or any labels. Whatever works, just don’t negatively effect other people. Supportive, caring community matters. Whether there is a “higher power”, who knows.

Hey man, I'm just working off of your definitions here.

>"a God must be defined so that no version of events means you can kill it. That's what a god is"

so Jesus supposedly walked on this earth, was captured and crucified by the Romans (ie killed), but then he rose from the grave and took on a more supernatural form so he gets to count as a god

Meanwhile Osiris was supposedly ruler of Egypt, he was betrayed by his brother Set (ie killed), and then Isis has sex with his corpse and wraps him in mummy cloth and then Osiris gets to hang out in the afterlife. And according to you, Osiris doesn't get to be a god. Because.... why again?

Because the definition is complete, obviously. I didn't start this line of questions with "I have all the answers" I started it with "obviously we need a definition to work with" then proposed one.

Interesting is it not, how "faith" contrasts with actual life experience?
My own departure was less dramatic, but arrived at the same result;
which is that "faith" is hopeful bullshit.

You didn't "propose" a definition so much as you said "any god that doesn't share the characteristics of the One True God™ is a false pretender" lmao

Whatever, you have a clear vision of what god is like and I don't. Maybe that's because I don't believe in god.

I do not have a clear view of what a God is, that's the whole point. Your strawman is drunk, and falling over. You're contributing nothing, so you are of no use to me.

The definition needs to be upgraded to destroyed, instead of killed. As in: a god cannot be destroyed. Going to see if I can find any examples of gods being destroyed permanently.

Didn't take long. Basically all the Gods in old Norse mythology gets killed. So the definition "cannot be destroyed" isn't functional either.

You have at least some idea of what a god is, you won't accept a definition of a god that includes a being that can be killed. That's you placing some standards of what you'll accept as a true deity.

Me? Personally I'm impartial. A god can be mortal, or be striped, or whatever. I don't have a clear view of what a god is so i wouldn't have anything to say to someone claiming that a god can be killed

ps, non-christians don't use capital G "God"

I'm ignostic, I'm trying to define the concept so it can be falsified. You are ascribing me traits I don't have. So you have no function to me.

>I'm trying to define the concept so it can be falsified
oh well then that's easy

God is when you travel faster than light
since you can't travel faster than light, God doesn't exist
QED

If the definition includes destruction only working in one direction, which means non-deities cannot destroy deities, then that is a valid definition. It's also included in all examples I can find. There may be more commonalities. Unfortunately, this would mean a pretty fucked up way to try and find out if some entity is a God. You'd have to try to destroy it permanently in order to establish that it's a God. Mm. So not falsifiable, because if you do destroy it, it wasn't a god, and if you don't, you can't know if it's a god because it cannot be destroyed, or because we simply lack the means to prove it.

I agree that doing what you can to raise your odds of success is a good thing. I think the only place we differ is what we consider has an actual chance of increasing our odds, and what the implicit costs are.

I personally don't believe in things like lucky rituals, things like touching a doorframe or wearing lucky socks or anything. Asking a game for a good proc isn't going to change anything, and to me neither would homeopathy treatments or herbal supplements. So immediately I don't see things like alternative medicines as an actual way to increase my odds.
Then there are the costs associated with those odds. First, most of them aren't free. Herbal supplements, homeopathy, healing crystals, all those things cost money. Sure prayer doesn't, but prayer has been shown to have no effect better than chance, and in fact people that are being told they're being prayed for tend to heal slower than people that aren't, regardless of whether or not anyone was actually praying. I don't know about self-prayer though.
Back onto the resource costing ones, that's all money that could be better spent. If someone told me they could get rid of the pain in my stubbed toe by burning a straw doll and it would only cost me $20, I'd tell them to leave. On top of that, some of these things can be harmful. Herbal supplements for instance aren't regulated and can interact with medicine. They can actively hurt you, but have no real chance of help. To me, alternative medicines aren't a free way to raise my odds. They're an expensive way to lower them.

Sometimes things seem harmless, but they aren't. Not many people would think twice about telling someone to eat more fruit to a sick person, but when you forget or don't know that the person is on blood pressure medication and they start eating grapefruit, things get bad.

So for me, there are costs. Costs for something that has no reasonable chance of happening.

There is scientific evidence that the placebo-effect is a real phenomenon. PET scans have shown chemical reactions in the brain when subjects believe that something works. “Faith”. Again, whatever works for someone.

This. Mind over matter. Walking on coals, etc. Everything is in psychological.

Yes, but the possibility of a cost doesn't mean it's inevitable that there is one. One thing being acceptable (taking some homeopathic medicine is basically just drinking a glass of water), does not mean another is (let's chug belladonna!). Some practices are clearly harmful, but that doesn't mean that from the "nothing works, I'm dying" person perspective, it's a loss to try things. This is true for the foxhole person too. Yes, doing a raindance in the open while under machine gun fire is obviously harmful. Don't do that. But saying a quiet prayer while under the barrage of artillery is not, so you might as well.

>Herbal supplements for instance aren't regulated and can interact with medicine.

One reason is that they don’t generate the tax revenue for the government/FDA like prescribed medicine. The FDA does “protect” consumers but it is also a business arrangement between big pharma and the FDA.

now, I identify as agnostic.
Sounds good
I indentify as agnistic since 20, am 24 now
I believe that all theistic religions are bullshit, especially if organized by a church, but i cant know
Non theistic religions are more like a philosophy, also not as much shit tends to spew out of them
Let people believe what they want as long as they do the same
They may get something good out of bullshit
>religion has to fuck off out of politics tho

>restrict your feelings because of fear of higher being
>realize its bullshit at some point
>overcompensate
>act like you still believe for the people you know

Agnostic around 10. Same time as the easter bunny, tooth fairy and santa became fiction.

"Smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to know".

very Christian throughout my teens. never cussed, drank, smoked weed. the most I did was beat off and even then I tried not to.

now mid 30s and while I still believe in a creator and in intelligent design, I'm not sure about what we've been taught through the years. how much man has destroyed his relationship and history with said creator.

I find peace in the thought of love, creation and the afterlife. but if I'm wrong, oh well, nothing that can change it. I'll be gone anyway.

>I still believe in a creator
Who created the creator?