[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Ascaloth

DonQuigleone has a son?

Thankfully, no. It was a hypothetical .

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

DonQuigleone, I think you are simplifying things by equating pondering the existence of God compared to wondering if onions are really onions or if your son is really your son, etc.

Perhaps, but what I was referring to is how one deals with uncertainty. Gods are, of course, a more cosmic kind of uncertainty. But I think we should have similar ideas towards the cosmic as the mundane. IE we should take the most simple explanation as fact until proven otherwise. In the case of god, we have no evidence of his existence, and so the most simple explanation is that he doesn't exist.

Was this universe born (and all sorts of scientific laws displaying order came with it) just because reality just does things and sometimes things work out, or is there much more to reality than just chaotic, soulless, swirling randomness. That is stuff worth pondering deeply about.

Perhaps so, but I think we can ponder if there's a higher order without bringing god into it. To me, the idea of god as most people present it is patently absurd. There might be some kind of abstract thing controlling the universe, but I think if it exists it would be so alien that we couldn't really call it "God". It would not fit any of our ideas of god. And even this abstract entity is something I think is very unlikely, unless there's some real evidence of it, it's a nice thought experiment, but ultimately with no basis for being true.

I am an atheist until proven otherwise, and I think this is the position the vast majority of atheists take, we're not "Flat Earth Atheists". If I received a revelation from God, I'd change my mind pretty quickly.

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

That's where belief comes in. Not just religion, just...belief in something, anything. You can always choose to adhere to anything you like to give some sort of security and certainty.

You can take things to a logical extreme and say everything is just a belief. I believe that god exists in the same way that I believe my onion is an onion, no giant cheese is floating in the atlantic, and that any child I might sire might be my own. These are all parts of reality, as I see it. If I can't speak a sure statement of god, then how can I make a sure statement about anything?

There's agnostic atheism. There's also agnostic theism. You can still be in either camp if you want to. Because as I said, what you choose to believe is your own personal right. But the point of agnosticism is not asserting your belief as fact. As I say, a half-assed cop-out choice in the whole matter, but it's also the most logically acceptable.

If that's how you want to phrase it, then I'd say the vast majority of atheists are agnostic atheists. I have no met an atheist who would continue to be an atheist if they were to receive a clear proof of god's existence. However, I believe that will never happen.

I apologize. Let me get this straight, I went along with that Cheese example to provide a picture, but Agnosticism is really only valid when there is no adequately presentable proof to either side of the argument to conclusively decide the matter. When there IS presentable evidence, then you can't be agnostic, because you CAN know, and reachable within human means (in which case "ignorance" would probably be a better term, but that's beside the point). Unlike the existence of onions and DNA (with collective-subjectivity to help give more objective certainty to it), there is still no way to submit adequate proof whether God exists or not, and that's why Agnosticism tends to not leave the theological and philosophical boundary because there are few issue in the practical world that has such a massive lack of conclusive evidence on either side. Agnosticism isn't really questioning or doubting the value of existence (that's whole different branch of -isms), but rather asserting that there is yet sufficient data to make a conclusion.

I use the cheese example for a reason. Both the Cheese and God are superlative claims, that have the possibility of existing. But most would view that Cheese as being absurd, and if I was to say "There's a cheese floating in the Atlantic ocean! It's there, voices have told me it is so!", you won't even entertain the possibility of it being true, I'm just a crazy guy, and you would be right to do so. If I brought you physical evidence of it, say I got a boat and brought you to see it, then you'd believe it's true.

There is no evidence in favour of god's existence. You can say there's no evidence that he doesn't exist, but you can't really prove a negative (as you can see with the cheese). The burden of proof always lies with the person making the claim. It is natural for the rest of us to disbelieve until that evidence is given.

There are many crazy superstitious things out there that people are trying to persuade me to believe, from the existence of thetans, to triangle power, to the power of star formations in the sky to predict the future(if only we could exactly figure out how!). There's no evidence of any of these things being true, but they all might be true. Sure, god might exist, but so might the cheese in the Atlantic ocean. Those things are so absurd that I'm going to assume the negative unless you show me something really amazing.

Btw, while it's been a pleasure discussing this, are we perhaps bordering on oot? Perhaps we should stop before the mods came in and sweep us?

I think it's on topic. I will disbelieve this is offtopic until proven otherwise .