@tabzer Skepticism is about requiring evidence for your beliefs. If you care if your beliefs are true, then you require evidence for those beliefs. If you don’t have evidence for those beliefs, then you cannot hold them. If you believe something despite not having evidence, then you care more about holding the belief than whether or not it is true, and that means you don’t actually care if your beliefs are true. It’s pretty silly to say that I have embraced irrationality, because I have not expressed any beliefs that are irrational. I’ve only acknowledged what it takes to be rational. It’s pretty lazy to respond to my points about irrationality by saying “I know you are but what am I?”
I have not suggested I was omnipotent or an authority, so I guess I wasn’t being disrespectful after all. I assume you will be apologizing for calling me disrespectful in your next post. I have not seen anyone in this thread attempt to provide evidence for the existence of a god, and as far as I am aware, no evidence for the existence of a god has ever been provided by anyone on this planet. It’s not disrespectful, pretentious, etc. to acknowledge the fact that there’s no evidence for a god’s existence. If you disagree with me, it would probably be a better use of your time to just provide the evidence rather than pussyfoot around it.
If a person cares if their beliefs are true, but there is no evidence that a god exists, then they are logically incapable of believing a god exists. If they believe in a god despite there being no evidence they’re aware of, then that person has inconsistent and arbitrary standards for their beliefs, and it means that person doesn’t actually care if their beliefs are true; it means they care more about the god claim being true than whether or not it’s actually true.
I agree with you that my position should be “I don’t know that a god doesn’t exist.” However, knowledge and belief are not the same thing, and knowledge is a subsection of belief. It is possible to believe a god exists and to claim to know a god exists. It is possible to believe a god exists but not know that a god exists. It is possible to not believe a god exists, and to claim to know that a god does not exist. It is possible to not believe a god exists, but to not know that a god doesn’t exist. I do not believe a god exists, but broadly speaking, I don’t know that a god doesn’t exist. I can say the same thing about leprechauns, unicorns, etc., and it’s how everyone should feel about things that have not yet met their burdens of proof. I do not have a burden of proof that I have to meet, since (as far as I’m aware) I have not made any positive claims about anything in this thread.
I am not going to accept anecdotal evidence of a god’s existence if it isn’t actually demonstrative of a god’s existence. I am not going to accept any evidence of a god’s existence if it’s not actually demonstrative of a god’s existence. Why should I? Why should anybody?
I have written god off as “irrational,” yes. That is purely because no god claim has met its burden of proof. If one were to provide evidence for a god, then I wouldn’t be able to call it irrational, and I’d have to believe a god exists.
@smf I am not making any assumptions about God, since I don’t believe gods exist. I was addressing an example of a god claim that a lot of people believe in. I already acknowledged earlier in this thread that a god could exist but is just a jerk.
@Tri-Z The claim that a god came down already to prove his existence is another claim that requires evidence to be believed, so that doesn’t help us.
I can’t tell you how the first lifeform began on this planet, since most/all of the evidence from that time has been destroyed, but there are several really good hypotheses that attempt to solve the abiogenesis question, and they’ve been demonstrated to be physically plausible with parts that have been replicated in laboratory settings. However, I could say I have no idea where the first lifeform came from, and that wouldn’t discredit evolution one bit.
The idea that a god doesn’t appear and make himself known because it would make us all automatically believe, do good, and worship him is pretty silly. If a god were to somehow prove his own existence to us, then yes, I would have to believe because my beliefs are based solely on the evidence. However, just because someone believed in a god doesn’t mean they will automatically do good. There are plenty of people with sincere religious beliefs who believe in God but commit bad deeds or even atrocities. Finally, just because someone had proof of a god’s existence does not mean they would worship that god. Even if I had proof of God’s existence and believed that god existed doesn’t mean I would worship him. I wouldn’t worship that god. According to the Bible, Satan was a being who had 100% proof that a god existed, but he did not worship him, and he did not do good.
Faith is belief without good reason or evidence, and it’s not a virtuous thing. Faith is nearly synonymous with gullibility if we are defining it as belief without evidence. If faith is required for a belief, then it’s probably not a belief one should hold if they care if their beliefs are true.
As a side note, the idea that one should ever “pay for the sins of the father” is an atrocious concept, and it’s morally reprehensible. A person is not responsible for the actions of their father or ancestors, and that’s why there are not “sins of the father laws” in the United States nor most other countries.
@BlaceMasterBM It doesn’t make free will pointless if one intervenes to stop a physical action, like an atrocity, from taking place. By your logic, all physical limitations are a violation of free will. The fact that I can’t travel faster than light or change the gravitational constant is a violation of my will to do these things, per your logic. Having the opportunity to commit an atrocity and succeeding in an atrocity are also two very different things. According to your own Bible, Abraham was instructed to kill his son, Abraham (through is free will) decided to do it, but God stopped him from doing it at the last second. Your own Bible is filled with examples of God stopping atrocities (and committing them).
If you never said someone had to be killed to grow, great. Let’s actually address what I said then. What is the purpose of natural disasters where people die if they’re not to create obstacles for people to overcome? What is the purpose, for example, of a tornado that kills a family of six? In reality, atrocities and natural disasters are not needed for life to be worth living, they are not needed for free will to exist, and they are not needed in order for a person to be able to grow.
With regard to your comments on yin/yang, not only are they not a compelling case for atrocities being required in order for good to exist (a child doesn’t have to be raped for his life to have good in it or have meaning, for example), but you just created a good argument for why Heaven cannot exist.
You say you made the conscious decision to be religious, but that shouldn’t be the case. Beliefs should not be something you can choose; they are the result of being convinced of something. For example, if I wanted to believe my computer monitor was actually a ham sandwich, I couldn’t physically do that, even if I wanted to. I would have to be convinced of it with evidence. Second, you seem to have missed the point of my analogy involving the government making decisions for you. Whether or not you believe in God, you probably believe God has a plan for you and knows your future. That would mean, arguably, that your life doesn’t really have a lot of meaning at all; it has already been written for you, and you are just a pawn in God’s plan, just as a government choosing your major and your life after college would reduce the meaning in your life.
You say that following your religion has been a good thing, but you’ve had to give up skepticism and reason in order to have it, and that’s not a good thing. I’m not saying there aren’t other things that are good that you couldn’t have gotten from religion (hope, etc.), but they come at a steep price. Feeling like you’ve benefited from the religious belief also isn’t evidence that the religious belief is true, which means it’s entirely possible that the good things you got from religion (hope, etc.) are all things that came from yourself, not the religion. I say keep the good parts of your religion while throwing away the bad or irrational parts. I would benefit emotionally from believing I had 1 billion dollars, for example, but just because I would get some good things from that belief doesn’t mean the belief is a good thing to have. If I don’t actually have any reason to think I’m a billionaire, it could be detrimental to my life to believe it.