Why don't you believe in God?

[Award Winning Boss]

I'm not throwing TOK words at you. Don't go on saying that "You're just throwing language at me" because we "need" language to make an argument, share ideas etc,

The point i was making is that "evidence" isn't needed everywhere for everything. Agreed? "Evidence" is something that "we" have invented to help understand different ideas and help us agree on something. It's like saying that "I will use e=mc^2 in order to find the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle" really.

But really, this may go on forever and we may not be able to come to an agreement. This is the very thing which forces me to think more and more about this.

Let me pose a question. You said "I don't agree with the idea that religious assertions don't need evidence or justified arguments just because they're religious assertions." Why don't you agree and why do you think that only evidence can satisfy you, when surely in mathematics you are satisfied with reasoning and so you use theorems based on reasoning solely?

'you're just throwing language at me' that's so far from anything I've ever claimed. All the terms you used were baseless assertions to me.

No, evidence isn't needed for everything. However, I haven't said that only evidence would satisfy me in this situation. Just the lack of evidence is still a reason for me to withhold belief in God. Religion isn't exempt from the evidence based demands or rational argument.

Maths is fundamentally based on reason. It can't be compared to religion because they don't work on the same premises and axioms in any way shape or form. Maths forms its basis on self evident axioms that are later developed on to form theorems and proofs for various things. Yet, I'd find it ridiculous for one to say 'God exists' and me to accept it straight away. There's nothing special about religion that gives it this authority or ability. Mathematical arguments are justified whereas religious arguments require evidence to support the premises they offer in support of their position. Without it, they're just making a bunch of statements that are not certainly true and may even commit multiple fallacies under further examination.

[Nabz]

I'm not throwing TOK words at you. Don't go on saying that "You're just throwing language at me" because we "need" language to make an argument, share ideas etc,

The point i was making is that "evidence" isn't needed everywhere for everything. Agreed? "Evidence" is something that "we" have invented to help understand different ideas and help us agree on something. It's like saying that "I will use e=mc^2 in order to find the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle" really.

But really, this may go on forever and we may not be able to come to an agreement. This is the very thing which forces me to think more and more about this.

Let me pose a question. You said "I don't agree with the idea that religious assertions don't need evidence or justified arguments just because they're religious assertions." Why don't you agree and why do you think that only evidence can satisfy you, when surely in mathematics you are satisfied with reasoning and so you use theorems based on reasoning solely?

'you're just throwing language at me' that's so far from anything I've ever claimed. All the terms you used were baseless assertions to me.

No, evidence isn't needed for everything. However, I haven't said that only evidence would satisfy me in this situation. Just the lack of evidence is still a reason for me to withhold belief in God. Religion isn't exempt from the evidence based demands or rational argument.

Maths is fundamentally based on reason. It can't be compared to religion because they don't work on the same premises and axioms in any way shape or form. Maths forms its basis on self evident axioms that are later developed on to form theorems and proofs for various things. Yet, I'd find it ridiculous for one to say 'God exists' and me to accept it straight away. There's nothing special about religion that gives it this authority or ability. Mathematical arguments are justified whereas religious arguments require evidence to support the premises they offer in support of their position. Without it, they're just making a bunch of statements that are not certainly true and may even commit multiple fallacies under further examination.

Maybe my links weren't justifiable but one can neither provide "evidence" for God's existence nor can deny it. Now if you think about the past, you had theories where they said that sun revolves around earth, which made sense as you would see sun move across the sky everyday and not notice the movement of earth on its axis but it was later disapproved. Why don't you think the same way in this case?

[Award Winning Boss]

Maybe my links weren't justifiable but one can neither provide "evidence" for God's existence nor can deny it. Now if you think about the past, you had theories where they said that sun revolves around earth, which made sense as you would see sun move across the sky everyday and not notice the movement of earth on its axis but it was later disapproved. Why don't you think the same way in this case?

Firstly, why do you think you can't provide evidence for God's existence? And why can't one deny his existence?

I don't understand how the second part is relevant.

[Nabz]

Maybe my links weren't justifiable but one can neither provide "evidence" for God's existence nor can deny it. Now if you think about the past, you had theories where they said that sun revolves around earth, which made sense as you would see sun move across the sky everyday and not notice the movement of earth on its axis but it was later disapproved. Why don't you think the same way in this case?

Firstly, why do you think you can't provide evidence for God's existence? And why can't one deny his existence?

I don't understand how the second part is relevant.

If one could provide the evidence, we wouldn't have been arguing right now, just like any other person in the world. One cannot deny because one needs evidence for non existence of God as well. Can you provide evidence for non existence of God?

[Award Winning Boss]

If one could provide the evidence, we wouldn't have been arguing right now, just like any other person in the world. One cannot deny because one needs evidence for non existence of God as well. Can you provide evidence for non existence of God?

That isn't true. Evidence can be provided for it, it just hasn't.

I can deny the existence of God because no convincing evidence (to me) has been put forward for the existence of it. Secondly, I have not once said God doesn't exist. How can you provide evidence for the complete non existence of something that's supposedly in out universe and outside it. It isn't falsifiable. I don't need evidence to withhold belief in something. Perhaps justification through argument but not evidence. It's impossible to request anyway.

[Nabz]

If one could provide the evidence, we wouldn't have been arguing right now, just like any other person in the world. One cannot deny because one needs evidence for non existence of God as well. Can you provide evidence for non existence of God?

That isn't true. Evidence can be provided for it, it just hasn't.

I can deny the existence of God because no convincing evidence (to me) has been put forward for the existence of it. Secondly, I have not once said God doesn't exist. How can you provide evidence for the complete non existence of something that's supposedly in out universe and outside it. It isn't falsifiable. I don't need evidence to withhold belief in something. Perhaps justification through argument but not evidence. It's impossible to request anyway.

lol, there are only two situations here anyways. Either you agree with God's existence or you don't. You seem to be just playing with words or maybe satisfying yourself with the fact that there's no factual evidence available for God's existence thus you don't believe in it.

[Award Winning Boss]

lol, there are only two situations here anyways. Either you agree with God's existence or you don't. You seem to be just playing with words or maybe satisfying yourself with the fact that there's no factual evidence available for God's existence thus you don't believe in it.

I'm not playing with words. Not believing in God is not the same as saying he doesn't exist. How difficult is that to understand? The former is a belief claim the latter is a knowledge claim.

The lack of evidence for God's existence is a reason to not believe in God, yes.

[Nabz]

lol, there are only two situations here anyways. Either you agree with God's existence or you don't. You seem to be just playing with words or maybe satisfying yourself with the fact that there's no factual evidence available for God's existence thus you don't believe in it.

I'm not playing with words. Not believing in God is not the same as saying he doesn't exist. How difficult is that to understand? The former is a belief claim the latter is a knowledge claim.

The lack of evidence for God's existence is a reason to not believe in God, yes.

So you're saying that the burden of proof is on me while you get away with with your faith? Not fair

Anyways I'm done with the thread, although if I may conclude by saying that there are many educated people in the world who choose to stay religious. While I was reading your reply yesterday my teacher was glaring at the screen and that is what he said

[Luka Petrovic]

The burden is on both. It is a great responsibility for both believers and non-believers to respect and co-operate with the other group, something both sides are rather good at failing with. Some atheist call for the dismemberment of religion from all society( what ever happened to freedom of speech?) and then you have evangelical christians taking the bible so literally they are ready to stone homosexuals and people who cook lamb's meat in it's mothers milk (what ever happened to love the sinner?)

All in all both are more similar than they think... We're all sinners in the same boat and we're all humans on the same planet.

[Sandwich]

So you're saying that the burden of proof is on me while you get away with with your faith? Not fair

Anyways I'm done with the thread, although if I may conclude by saying that there are many educated people in the world who choose to stay religious. While I was reading your reply yesterday my teacher was glaring at the screen and that is what he said

Atheism is to not have faith in anything. The burden of proof falls on those who DO have faith in something, which is hardly unfair. You don't need to prove to me why I think my cat creeps into my dreams at night and controls my actions (particularly when I also can tell you that nobody can see the cat doing this). It's not really 'unfair' to say that it's up to me to prove to you that my cat is indeed doing this, rather than me asking you to justify why you think my cat isn't doing this. It's common sense. I'm the person making up a fact, so it's up to me to say why I believe the fact to be true. Otherwise you'd literally be an insane person if you thought that everything which can't be proven is automatically true and the fundamental basis of my beliefs and actions in life. Can't prove unicorns don't exist? Then they're definitely there. Can't prove pixies don't build houses in the forest? Then there's a pixie civilisation in the woods and I shall worship them and pray to them and do the pixie dance every morning whilst casting pollen from a basket. The onus of proof is on the person making an outlandish claim, not on the person being told about it. As regards religion and the whole "god is invisible, unknowable and unprovable" thing, the person being told about it can't come up with 'anti-proof' of an invisible thing that exists only in a secretive other universe - but then if nobody can come up with any positive proofs either, there's literally no difference between god and the wood pixies in terms of reasons why we should believe them real. God and the pixies have the same level of evidence and the same ability to be disproved on evidence - that is, none. You can't prove that something which doesn't exist... doesn't exist. Only that it does exist. Which, in the case of religion, nobody ever has done.

You can't have a situation where everything and every situation you can possibly imagine is default true until somebody can show you that it's not. It's a massive logical fallacy - the whole "all swans are white" ...until you see a black swan in Australia thing. The way to resolve that is for somebody to find a black swan and go "right, now all swans are no longer white and therefore that's why I've said this", i.e. the person claiming there are black swans to prove that this is the case. Not for somebody to find all the swans they possibly can and go "white, white, white, white, white ad infinitum" - you can never ensure you've found every single swan, so the whole exercise is boring, pointless and it's safe to assume all swans ARE white in the absence of a black one or any reason why you'd suspect there might be swans of any other colour. You can be open to the possibility that one day somebody will find the black swan, but until then it's pretty illogical to join the Black Swan Society. Just like we have yet to find the elusive Rainbow Swan, but I'm not about to claim they're swimming in a pond somewhere.

[Luka Petrovic]

Although not really true in practice, in theory the "all swans are white, until you see a black one in australia" applies to science too. You cannot promise that after 100 controlled tests that the 100 in the future will be the same. You can only state that the ones in the past have been consistent.

[Sandwich]

Although not really true in practice, in theory the "all swans are white, until you see a black one in australia" applies to science too. You cannot promise that after 100 controlled tests that the 100 in the future will be the same. You can only state that the ones in the past have been consistent.

Exactly, that's the whole idea behind the scientific method - test for the black swan. If somebody can come along with a black swan then everything changes. Until there's a black swan, if a theory can be reliably repeated and tested for all possible 'black swan' moments, but no black swan is found - then it's logical to assume there are only white swans. Essentially, it is logical thinking. To leap directly to the black swan prior to ever finding one, from the perspective of logic, is absurd. Just like the rainbow swan, the pixies and to be frank, from the perspective of this thought process, god.

[Luka Petrovic]

I still think science and materialism still fail to fill this void humans have tried to fill for thousands of years. The fact is, without our beliefs we live meaningless lives in a meaningless universe. We belong no more now with science, than we did with religion, maybe even less. I haven't a clue...

[Sandwich]

I still think science and materialism still fail to fill this void humans have tried to fill for thousands of years. The fact is, without our beliefs we live meaningless lives in a meaningless universe. We belong no more now with science, than we did with religion, maybe even less. I haven't a clue...

Science isn't a replacement for religion. Science is essentially just that we now understand the world sufficiently to know that religion makes no sense. It's never claimed to be more than just the study of the world and the universe, and it's not meant or to be honest really ever going to fill any kind of emotional void. Religion has claimed to be or explain a lot of things which we now understand a lot better via the study of science (...the creation of the earth, the reasons for an awful lot of biological and physical things), but science has never claimed to be any of the extra stuff religion has beyond its attempts to explain what we see around us.

I suppose the question really is whether you're happy to live a life where the thing which gives you meaning appears under all scrutiny and examination to be false and you've got no real reason besides sort-of hoping it might to think that it's true. Or whether you are going to say "well, religion doesn't make any sense, there's no real reason for it besides the fact it makes me feel better" and then come to terms with the fact there's in all probability and on all current evidence, not a man in the sky who gives our lives meaning. If the latter, then you've got to face up to the consequences of that - namely that without the man in the sky to give us meaning, all options are open. More fundamentally - do we need meaning in our lives that's conferred on us by somebody else? Do we make our own meaning? Do the relationships we have with other people, our achievements, doing good things and so on in the world not give us meaning? In short, by rejecting religion, at this moment in time and probably forever, you either have to live with a degree of uncertainty or find an internal way to generate meaning for your life rather than constantly seeking some external force to determine what you are.

You either have to live with the mental contradiction that you're getting meaning from something which you have no real reason to suspect exists for reasons of personal emotional security, or say you're not happy with contradictions, and you'd rather believe in nothing than believe in something you feel is false. There's no real reason why on an individual basis you should go for one or the other, to be honest. I don't see how it's fulfilling to believe something is giving you meaning unless you have a really firm belief in that 'something'. I think it's difficult to be a rational thinker yet sustain the contradiction required in order to genuinely hold such a belief - personally, that's how I feel about it. To believe in god for the sake of finding 'meaning' would just be to lie to myself - and if I feel like it's a lie, then what kind of real meaning would that achieve? It would just be delusional, and as I'd be aware of that, for me it feels more honest and truthful to live with no meaning than a web of fabrications. However, clearly some people find it preferable and manage to sustain both logical and illogical beliefs simultaneously. You could just say we've drawn different conclusions from the same evidence, and that's fine by me, each to their own. It's just when people dispute the evidence (and lack of such evidence) that I find it incomprehensible and for that reason, despite feeling ambivalent about people's own personal preferences, I think it's worth talking about.

[Luka Petrovic]

But its a fallacy to put humans to numbers, there are just some things you cannot count, there is a whole school of economics (the austrian school) devoted to not use complex calculations simply because human behaviour is falsely understood with number, they are a simple, easy to understand comfort which gives us confidence that we are doing something correct. Also to say that all religions claim accurately depict the formation of the universe, etc is false. that comes from literalists who are too silly to realize the bible cannot be taken literally as the word "light" is mentioned before any formation of the sun, which comes on the fourth day, if I'm not mistaken. But anyway both empiricism and faith can be cop outs...

[Sandwich]

But its a fallacy to put humans to numbers, there are just some things you cannot count, there is a whole school of economics (the austrian school) devoted to not use complex calculations simply because human behaviour is falsely understood with number, they are a simple, easy to understand comfort which gives us confidence that we are doing something correct. Also to say that all religions claim accurately depict the formation of the universe, etc is false. that comes from literalists who are too silly to realize the bible cannot be taken literally as the word "light" is mentioned before any formation of the sun, which comes on the fourth day, if I'm not mistaken. But anyway both empiricism and faith can be cop outs...

I don't really understand your points. Who's putting humans to numbers?

As for literal versus non-literal, I don't really care to be honest. It's extreme versus less extreme but both are still views which make no sense to me. I find the thought processes of non-literalists somewhat more rational, but still not rational for the same fundamental reasons - believing in things for no apparent reason. We stick people in mental hospitals for precisely that, so what about religion makes it different.

EDIT: you're replying too quickly and I'm editing my replies to add in things more slowly than you reply! Sorry about that.

[Luka Petrovic]

statistics and similar measures of humans and their behaviours.

[Sandwich]

statistics and similar measures of humans and their behaviours.

Which are relevant to the topic how?

[Luka Petrovic]

Because its embarrassing on the part of science and math, that have found such amazing things regarding our universe and world around, yet we can't fully capture ourselves in this so-called perfect or in-fallible method of answering questions. Its an escape from the abyss we call humanity (not trying to be negative or anything).

[Sandwich]

Because its embarrassing on the part of science and math, that have found such amazing things regarding our universe and world around, yet we can't fully capture ourselves in this so-called perfect or in-fallible method of answering questions. Its an escape from the abyss we call humanity (not trying to be negative or anything).

Surely it's more embarrassing to say that if we've not yet discovered something then a big man in the sky did it - and when we DO discover new things, we just move that thing off the big man in the sky list and onto the "okay, we know why now" list. I don't care whether or not we completely understand the human brain or not - 100 years ago we understood less than 5% of what we now know about the human body, for example, and we know a hell of a lot more now than we did then. It's not embarrassing to still not know things, it's just honest.

For me, to be dishonest is to fill the gaps with any story we can think of - on the basis of... what? That we have to have an answer for 100% of things even if that answer is literally just any old interim BS? I guess that's more or less what I'm trying to say. I'd rather be clueless than make something up.