Knowing There's No God Vs. Believing There's No God

Ya can't know anythin' if ya don't know nothin' which tends to confuse every atheist I've ever met and explains why they even sometimes call themselves "agnostic atheists" and argue over the definition of stupid and who is the better example. It also explains why long avowed atheists in China are now converting to Christianity in record numbers. Habits are the end of honesty and compassion, the beginning of total confusion with anger and hatred being among the worst of all habits. What comes around goes around and around and around and where she stops on religion or atheism can become confusing!

 

What about it?

 

I don't know I just wish someone on these forums promoted it. I wonder if anyone ever has on here?

 

In response to the original thought.

"One who knows does not speak, one who speaks does not know." Lao Tzu

In thinking of reality is not reality understood? Let it be asked then which understanding of reality is correct? The conceptualization of the atheist or of the theist? If as Lao Tzu would suggest speaking is not knowing would it not be both? Can a conceptualization be right or wrong? If the only thing to determine such is speaking then it would stand to reason, within this context, that the conceptualization of both would be neither.

 

I don't know why anyone wants me to say that there isn't a god.
What I know is that no one knows anything about it,
and that the same things are important, whether there is or are, any or not:
that the dominance of aggressveness is still tyranny
and consideration is still what morality is.

(also that a universally wonderful strangeness is a very real thing,
that cannot be known, can only be experienced,
and the more we pretend to know about it,
the less often we do.)

 

what is the problem there, is that the question itself, is a smoke screen away from what really matters. so whether or not they are both right about anything or even everything else, they are both wrong about this.

one who does not speak, being absolutely right not to, offends everyone who believes they have a right to demand attention.
in the real world, so many do, that it is often as dangerous to hold silence, as to risk saying the wrong thing.
i side with the right to remain silent. unfortunately we live in a world dominated by those who call doing so autism and a disease.

 

Your thread title is contradictory. How can you know there is not something yet compare it with believing there is nothing? God is a subjective point of view, not a theory that can be verified.

 

If you do not speak: how can we know what it is you do know?

 

What do you guys think about this? It's basically about a well-known and respected Scientist arguing for a mathematical proof of God. https://www.energytherapy.biz/2016/11/23/one-of-the-most-respected-scientists-of-today-claims-he-has-found-definitive-proof-that-god-exists/

 

Clickbait?

A tachyon /ˈtæki.ɒn/ or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always moves faster than light.

 

To my mind gods are manifestations of the singular into the plural. The concept giving breath to the context. Myriad concepts give breath to the context of a deity. So innumerable are they that I dare not attempt such context without deep study. I will provide a couple of examples of concepts pertaining to the Judeo-christian deiific context and others however. Insofar as I have studied there are three concepts in reference to the manifestation of Yahweh. The first would refer to the context that this deity sprang from the concept of the Egyptian god Ra after a pharaoh determined Ra to be the singular god and was later dethroned. This of course leading to his exile and the beginning of new context. The next would refer to the context of its people's need. Yahweh manifested the way it did to answer the needs of its conceptual forebears. We need law therefore we need context for the law. We need strength in these harsh times therfore we raise up the strong. We are alone therefore we need an everlasting all encompassing companion. The simple beauty of the conceptualization of deity is enough for me. Sorry rambling momentarily. The third is the context that this deity is all there is and all that is needed and the context is enough for serenity. Sadly this context is the one we seem to forget the most. It is the context of Truth, determination, Right, Wrong.....so many beautiful things. Beautiful in their sadness, their joy, their rigid frailty....

I sympathize with your acceptance of right and wrong. To me the determination of Right and Wrong is only meant to be a context to the momentary Self however I certainly get where you're coming from.

Honestly brother you only need know what you determine to know. If our understanding is mutually filled by the context words provide so be it. Knowing is momentary unknowing is limitless.

 

Words mean whatever people agree that they mean, so I try not to focus too much on any given word or phrase (and I find myself using the word 'atheist' less and less). However I refer to myself as an atheist because I don't believe in any gods. I do not claim to know that there are no gods, but I don't believe in any god I've ever heard of (and my default position any time I hear about a god I've never heard of before is to not believe in that god until someone can demonstrate why I should believe in that god). Some people get really mad about this. They say that being an atheist means you claim to know that no gods exist. I just look at it simply: If I don't believe in any gods then I am not a theist and therefor I am an atheist.

I do claim to know that specific gods or religions are bogus, but only when the religion makes a claim that is demonstrably false, or when the doctrines of a religion are logically inconsistent.

 

i see nothing to stop something completely non-physical, that leaves no physical trace, from having an objective and independent existence.

what i don't find compelling, is the 'need' for any such thing, to be infallible, at war with anything, or have the slightest desire to be feared.

religions aren't really about gods, any more then they're about sciences or anything more real, than how people treat each other.

it is how people treat each other that is the one thing they really are about. gods may also exist, or not if they choose not to.

people just like to conflate these different things to imagine they know things no one really does.

 

I'm a devout card carrying Atheist.

On par with the likes of your Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

That said, none of us types can for absolute certainty and 100% know for sure there is no God. Even those two gentlemen admit that.

Well, that is, they, and I as well, admit the very slim chance of some sort of impersonal, Deist, Creative Intelligence sort of entity. A universal Mind, if you would. But one who is non caring and doesn't intervene in human affairs and uses only known laws of physics. Not even a who, but more of an It.

But as far as a Yahweh Bible sort of personal, caring, bullying, jealous God?

No way. Not in a billion years. Pure Hebrew Bronze Age mythology.

As real as Thor or Zeus.

Sure...immune to absolute disproving due to the Carl Sagan Dragon in my garage, dynamic. But certainly not existing. On this I'd bey my life. And the lives of all whom I hold dear. That's how sure I am. LOL

Cheers.

 

I know that you watch over me. Father of all the lands.
And all that I will ever be, you were the first and the last.
The watcher of all that lives. The guarder of all that who've died.
The one eyed God way up high, who rules thy world and the sky..

Northern winds take my song up hiiigghhh
To the hall of Glory in the sky
So that it shall greet me open wide
When my time has come to diieee

 

I think it's pointless to assert that there's no God or, as I think of it, no universal intelligence or vague, ineffable, spiritual force. I can't know. The universe is so infinitely complex that the thought that it's purely random - purely accidental doesn't make intuitive sense to me. Conversely, I don't believe in the patriarchal God, framed in the Old Testament. I think a lot of that old testament stuff is just extra-terrestrials - bioforms which aren't outside the laws of physics (incl. the ones we haven't discovered yet.

I think militant atheism is too harsh; too militant; too ideological. However, I can understand a certain ridicule directed toward the more destructive of the established religions, particularly if it turns out that fundamentalism results from damage to the pre-frontal cortex; rendering its victims ignorant of their illness.

 

Some religions, or religious sects, do little or no damage to society (United Church of Canada e.g. sort of liberal-humanist; philosophic rather than theosophic - a general sense of being a gathering place for the community, particularly when one or more of its members are suffering - so, an aspect of community psychiatry.

Conversely, jihadists not only hurt people directly but make them permanently fearful. The Westboro Church vilifies people in an apparently insane manner - their picket lines appear weird and demented. Catholicism burdens its followers with unrealistic taboos, while Plymouth Brethren/Extreme Brethren, on the Protestant/fundamentalist side, drive some people to suicide.

So, there are relatively benign groups which profess to believe in a higher power but don't scare the horses and other religious groups which DO scare the horses

 

I want to go to Valhalla. Some of my friends think that death just means falling asleep forever. What a waste of a fertile poster that would be

 

The human mind cannot comprehend nothingness.

And in fact, the very thought is disturbing, even frightening to many.

So, what to do?

Ahhh.....invent gods.

And heavens.

And Valhalla.

Opioid thoughts for the fragile homo sapien mind.

Cheers.

 

just because you think you know something doesn't mean it is truth. Your single perspective blinds you.