Atheists and proof cont….

[Kdtym10]

A carry on from the previous thread

Do you know where that feeling comes from?

Infants experience their caregivers as gods: gigantic beings with absolute power over the child's world. Adults can make things disappear, reappear, provide sustenance, love, comfort, rest, entertainment, education, guidance. The child depends wholly on the caregivers for protection, nourishment and survival. An infant cries when it wants something from its adults.

The child doesn't have a conceptual framework to call its crying "prayer" or its caregivers "gods". As it grows and learns these terms, it may be encouraged to migrate those feelings of dependency to an even larger being, with all the magical powers it once attributed to its adults.

I was a kid who retained some of those feelings, putting assorted interpretations on them, until my neuron pruning was finished some time in my twenties. I think I'm pretty average in this. Maybe some children, like @dimllaishebiaith, lose that sense as soon as they realise their parents are just people. Maybe some never do.

Research on a 'god spot' or 'spirituality centres' in the brain has yielded nothing conclusive. It might yet turn out that there is some neural configuration associated with being more, or less, inclined to spiritual beliefs: all brains work differently!

Religion is the way our consciousness interprets instinct. For many people they feel it so there’s no point in denying it. Whatever made the universe just call that God. The difference is whether you think this force has control over your life. Religious people can believe what they like but when they think what they believe gives them the right to tell me how to live my life then I have a problem with it and would demand proof.

To me there is no difference - others are entitled to their opinion but I have mine which is equally valid.

Arguing the semantics of belief seems to be so heavily influenced by whether you have ever believed. I can see you find there is an enormous difference between the two, whereas for some of us there is none, and that seems to come from the fact that you do have belief.

I have no belief in God (for shorthand) because I do not believe there is one. I have no ‘feelings’ re the presence of God, because I don’t believe there is one.

I'm conscious this is very difficult to get into words because we’re coming from very different positions re what we have believed in life. But the two are essentially the same for me. I have not “lost” belief at any point; I have never had it, never felt it, and never seen, heard, read or felt anything which has even vaguely shown me that God exists. Therefore I both do not believe in the God other people believe in, and I have no belief in that God.

It comes back again to the idea in language that theism is the default and people need to define themselves against that. I wouldn’t actually refer to myself as an atheist. It’s not a definition that means anything to me, my belief or lack thereof in God isn’t part of my personality.

To go back to what Garlicking says better,
it’s just not a feature in my life.

So what is it that you want from this thread then. Verification / validation of your beliefs from others? Why do you need that. I'm an atheist. It isn't scientific for me. It's an absence of faith. I just don't believe in god. It's in the same bucket as Santa and the tooth fairy. Something made up by humans for culture reasons.

I'm speaking for me not for "peoples ability to believe" though, I couldn't answer for anyone other than me as to what belief is or isn't.

Yes I’m aware of your views that the is no God. From your previous post I was just trying to ascertain whether you see this as opinion or fact?

That difference between opinion or fact is an interesting one.

Facts, as we regard them, may of course change if new evidence comes to light.

Given that caveat, I regard it as a fact that the tooth fairy does not exist, that gravity exists and that god does not exist.

Why @Kdtym10 are you so focused on this aspect of opinion vs fact?

I do believe in God as it happens but I accept there is no definitive proof. However I have much more respect for any of the atheists on this thread than for OP's patronising sophistry.

I can see the difference between not believing there is a God and believing there is no God. I can also see how the difference would be relevant for some people while not others.

I don't believe there is a God. I also have a strong opinion that it is vanishingly unlikely that God exists. I don't feel like I have a belief system about that - it's just one of the factual assumptions that I base my life around. I accept that I could be wrong about that. But it's the reason I don't have a belief in God.

I don't feel a strong belief that there's no God. I just don't think there is one.

I'm clearly not as clever as many on this thread. I instinctively don't believe in God - I don't have faith and I don't see evidence that he exists.

However, my primary school level understanding of the Bible suggests that, if it is too be believed, God made himself known in a number of ways:

Sending his son to earth
Said son performing miracles
Hosts of angels
A star leading to a particular place on Earth
Flooding the whole earth

If more of this type of thing were to happen now, as opposed to 2000 years ago, then I'd be inclined to take that as evidence. Ideally I'd probably want to see them for myself, but would probably accept documentary evidence from trusted sources - you have to be careful in these days of fake news, AI, charlatans etc.

Why could that not happen? Or are we not meant to believe those bits of the bible?

Where does that thought come from?

I agree with you and this was the basis of my question towards the start of the thread that never got answered

Atheists were asked what would make them believe in God. Many of them answered giving examples and some were told those examples were not possible

If its not possible for God to prove himself in every given way imaginable (not that he doesn't want to, but that its impossible) then he can't be the all-knowing, all-powerful diety that some religions at least believe him to be.

I think there is a disconnect between the question and the answers. I'm starting to think the question should have been "what proof could religious people give that would make atheists believe", in which case all of the "that's not possible" answers make a lot more sense

Everyone can believe what they want - thank goodness! I don’t believe any of your list happened. The bible is a selection of stories, written by different people, written, not by eye witnesses or at the time the events were purported to have happened. Some of the bible may be true, other parts are definitely not true.

Well the flooding thing is quite close at hand!

Sorry, I can’t remember your question-but he has done those things (if you believe the bible) are those things to happen every generation?

Im not sure why you think the question you suggest is any better. Or are you saying god could provide physical evidence of himself? Well most religious people would say physical evidence is all around, we have created a system which is rather circular called science which explains the physical world in terms we have created to exclude the divinity. It’s really no different to any other explanation in history apart from the words being used.

That's why I don't believe them either. Presumably if you saw those things now, with your own eyes you might be inclined to believe them though? And maybe attribute them to a God?

Most of the Bible is allegorical or encoded rather than literal. Many of the stories came from other religions. Many of the characters were also appropriated- it’s just another way of cultures showing their understanding of a divine force. It should be remembered the bible, esp the Old Testament was largely written for kings and the wise advisors, it wasn’t meant for Joe Public

I asked at the start of the thread, it's fine there is no burden to respond to every question.

My point is a very simple one, people have given examples of what they personally would need as proof and some have been told that that proof isn't possible.

So that implies that it's okay for religious people to define the limits of God's abilities.

However if the question is "what can people who are religious do to prove God's existence" it makes much more sense for there to be things that aren't possible, because they are people, not God's.

Or are you saying god could provide physical evidence of himself?

I'm saying that your original question made it sound like you were asking this. What physical proof could God give. And I think that's where there has been a disconnect between this question and then some of the responses to answers atheists have provided.

I’m agnostic and have never believed in a god, and I’m a very sciency and evidence-based thinker, in the main. As I’ve got older though, I find I have much less confidence in anything I believe, and much more understanding of people being religious. Though I think many religions are problematic and have silly rules and are sexist and cause other harms, religion itself I now see as an understandable reaction to the mysteriousness of everything, as is scientific investigation.

i think that’s a v interesting point about science being designed to fit the divine evidence. I wouldn’t agree with that but I do think there is a huge amount of mysteriousness and unsolvability at the heart of science, and ultimately we can’t (so far) make it make sense.

Also in the “post-truth” world when governments blatantly push obvious lies (I'm not suggesting the powerful haven’t always lied, but not so openly, at least in supposedly democratic societies) - I now have more respect for religious beliefs that can’t be disproven. I do know that for example you (currently) can’t change sex, and that extracting fossil fuels is not good for the environment, whatever lies are spouted and laws are passed. I don’t know what happens after you die or if there are invisible powers in control.

What do you mean? What do you want people to say to this? I doubt you’re going to accept any answer. Thoughts and opinions come from wherever the hell they come from amidst neurons and the brain. Some things are just a feeling, not every decision has been made with a deep thought through feeling.

Common sense tells me that we aren’t going to see things like that now or whenever

Most of the Bible is not true.

The localised flooding we have around the world is manmade.