God Does Not Exist (Strong Atheism)

i've though a bit and this is a "new" thought i have been having.

more specifically i haven't seen a difference in atheists that claim they:
- believe that God doesn't exist
and those that
- don't believe in God

what do you think?
(i promise this is not a troll)

 

God does exist all u have 2 do is look @ the wonder around u every day. the miracle of a sun rise in all it's radiant slender . the birth of a child perfectly formed in the womb. the magic of a summer breeze blowing across the beach. God's hand is in all these things & more. without God nothing is possible but with God all things r possible. Jesus is the gr8 redeemer the sanctifier & savior. believe in Him & u will be saved!!!

 

I think both bolded sentences essentially mean the same. If not, can you explain the differences?

 

Not believing in god doesn't necessarily mean you believe it doesn't exist.

 

Maybe when you never thought about it before but when you claim to not believe that person obviously has thought about it and so in that way made a conscious conclusion he does not believe in God. Which basicly is the same thing as believing god doesn't exist at all. If not, please explain why?

 

Feels like a semantics issue to me

 

It's the difference between Weak Atheism and Strong Atheism. It's not just semantics.

Weak Atheism: The absence of belief in any Gods. Every human being born is born a weak atheist; we have not been taught any doctrines about any gods, and so we lack the ability to have a belief in any god, until it is introduced to us from outside.

Strong Atheism: The claim that there is, for sure, under no circumstances, any Gods. This position usually argues that Gods are impossible for some reasons, logical, ontological, metaphysical, etc.

Notice that Strong Atheism has a burden of proof on it; it is making a definite statement about a state of affairs in nature: "There is no X". Weak atheism has no burden of proof, all it's saying is "I am unconvinced of the existence of X" and usually also "belief in X when there is no proof of X is intellectually bankrupt".



OP you probably haven't heard much discussion on this particular distinction because it is a subtle philosophical difference and most people are not well trained in subtle philosophy.

 

I think that's exactly right--especially the part about burden of proof. I think of it as a continuum, with hard atheists on one end, True Believers on the other, and agnostics in the middle. On the atheist Forum, Relaxx is a good example of the hard atheist, although he would say it's 99.9% probable that God doesn't exist. The Four Horsemen of atheism (Dawins, Dennett, Harris and HItchens) occupy the same space on the spectrum . But I know a good many atheists who will say they just haven't seem antything that would convince them that there is a God, and presume naturalistic explanations for phenomena unless they see convincing evidence to the contrary.

 

Yup. Fucking semantics. They're everywhere. [sharedmedia=gallery:images:70378]

 

actually i've heard these discussions many times:

the some atheist trying to make clear that he does not believe in God and that he never claimed that he believes God exists.

but it just doesn't do it for me, because the atheist then goes on his merry way, making the same decisions, as someone who believes that God does not exists.

i've been thinking about a "black and white" world. to me it seems that atheists can actually disprove God by presenting a better idea, and that there is always such a better idea. and that the existences of these better ideas support atheism.

and believing that God does not exist, still means one can change his mind

 

it sure does. definitions start to lose their meaning when you can distinguish them from other definitions

 

because i mentioned that strong and weak atheist seem the same, i'm also starting to think that the burden of proof is a bit silly. extraordinary claims requires extraordinaryevidence may result in a subjective discussion about what is and isn't extraordinary. and the atheist is then lucky that religion usually considers itself extraordinary.

yes and i consider this as implicitly providing a proof. this proof consists of presenting a simpler idea (a la Occam's Razor)

 

I think it's also an issue of what one "means" when they refer to god ... like what is one's "definition" of god? Just because someone says they believe or (or don't believe) doesn't mean they are in agreement at all ... or even talking about the same "concept" of what god is to them.

 

But there is only so much that a person can be to fulfill who He is in his lifetime personality? Being a person has some justification by being within the content required to be a human being (like ISIS people are human, somehow aren't they?) people will be war weary eventually, people will determine that their appreciation for their Art is some historical wish at being what art was meant to be. The concept for a Personality I IS is somehow prepared by the notion of communicated expression and that definition. God thus is the higher order in the explanation of say: lifetime achievement, OR the limited number of living people to understand these personalities.

 

If I understand correctly, you are confused about why both hard and weak atheists seem to have essentially the same beliefs? I think it's because the positions are, in the end, extremely close, and for the intents and purposes of behaviors, indistinguishable.

Saying that there is definitely no God out there requires an extraordinary amount of proof; in fact such a proof would be impossible. Of course the same is true to prove that God DOES exist. I mean, imagine a heavenly robed figure floated down from the sky in times square and boomed in a voice that shook the earth, "I AM YAWEH, I FINALLY SHOW MYSELF TO YOU". We could be hallucinating, he could be a trickster with technology, or he could even be a supernatural being who is still not god; some kind of demiurge or demon. He could be an alien doing an experiment. You see because the idea of God contains such absolutes as omnipresence, omnipotence, etc, so many "infinities", it's impossible to ever know either way.

That's why I believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is actually our creator; he makes mistakes, he's not perfect, but the signs of His Noodly Appendage are everywhere to those willing to look.

 

In practice god is that which we invoke.

 

yes that's exactly what i'm confused about (indistinguishable things).

to me it seemed that "knowledge" isn't something that is 100% certain by definition. we live in a world where nothing is certain, but it does not mean that there is no knowledge. it's like the other guys suggested, this might be a semantic issue. we say we know things all the time.

example: i know there is no pink pony in my room because that is a simpler explanation (through Occam's Razor).

and it seems that, if nothing can be known (which is also what agnostics suggests), then knowing becomes a word that applies to nothing, and words that apply to nothing are meaningless. which does not seem right.

distinguishing things seems to create meaning

 

i was kind of hoping for more opposition against positive atheism

 

So-called "soft" atheism is an acknowledgement that our senses can deceive us, and that general relativity and Quantum Mechanics have made reality a bit less comprehensible than we previously thought. Science is always tentative, and a fully rational person admits that. Occam's razor is just a rule of thumb. Why couldn't the more complicated answer be the right one? Yet I, like you, am willing to say there's no pink pony in my room either, without a second thought--because intuitively I "know" it's true, based on judgment rooted in my own past experiences and reasoning. But to be completely honest with myself, I'd have to admit that sometimes I'm wrong. It gets more complicated when other seemingly well-informed, intelligent people disagree with me. The hard atheist has to contend with the hard theist who can produce reasons for believing in God that would make your head spin. I "know" that Sara Palin would have made a terrible President, but she still has her fans. And I do think Occam's razor is a useful guide. I don't stay up nights wondering whether or not this is all a Matrix-like virtual reality program run by aliens, evil robots, or whatever. This is what Santayana called "animal faith", the intuitive sense that there is a reality "out there" that we're really interacting with and that we can ordianrily trust our senses. Is it being resolute or ignorant to deny we could be wrong, but proceed on the basis of our best judgment? That's what I do every time I go to the ballot box. BTW, I'm a Christian.

 

To me the greatest knowledge is to distinguish the difference between my own imagination and the presence of existence itself. When God is looked at in this way s/he is actually the only one that can be trusted with 100% certainty, because s/he has always been present 100% of the time throughout my entire life. Everything else becomes a crapshoot.