The Atheist Thread (Long Time Coming)

Quote: 1nickelmiracle

When I try learning about physics, my mind can barely comprehend it. Nobody's mind can interpret and understand higher dimensions intuitively. Things we cannot perceive at all, nobody gets pitch forks out. I don't understand how others can be so sure about God's non-existence when we are so insignificant. I understand how it doesn't do anybody any good wondering when on this Earth you don't need to know if God exists, but being somewhat open isn't so bad since the odds of God's existence cannot be 0. I don't really see how evolution made believing in God a capability or where in the world the idea of a God came from(since minds cannot formulate original ideas which do not start from perception. I have a really low opinion of the human mind and all it is incapable of, too much error and blindness to be satisfied by my tastes. We're able to survive and not perceive the world for what it really is after all. It makes no difference for survival if you believe in God, but if God exists as people imagine, you cannot perceive God with your senses unless this same God let you somehow. It is almost as if people expect God to actually be living across the street or to think they could trap him somehow and if these kinds of cases cannot be true, then God doesn't exist. Regardless any kind of process of elimination cannot be done ever, it will be eternally impossible to ever chart the entire universe and account for every atom, then say God cannot exist because everything has been accounted for. Time across the universe is not standard anyway, the universe cannot be ever just be pinned down, how can it ever even be thought of as any single thing for one moment, I don't get this. A globe for the universe and all the data about it cannot be made, I would expect this to have to be possible to solve the God problem at all with all eternity.

Why does it have to be God or something else? Why can't there be more than a couple possibilities? Perhaps it's something else we have no concept of at all. No words for. Nothing to describe it. Like an unknown property.

It feels like an infinite rabbit hole to me no matter the direction we go.

There is a certain argument out there to just go ahead and pick a religion and stick with it, even if you don't buy into it all that much. Otherwise, the argument goes, you will find yourself trying to figure it out yourself and get into that rabbit hole you mentioned. Don't be out there Wandering in a Wilderness ... some of the best advice I've ever gotten, though I didn't immediately buy into it.

Naturally many agnostics just stay with the one they grew up with, which to some degree is where I've wound up.

I finished the book about the Old Testament stories for adults. I guess different people get different reactions, but to me it largely was a story about one god amongst many becoming first the dominant god to this one group of people, to finally God in a monotheistic religion. Today I think Jews say without reservation that it's the God of the universe, not just their god.

The angle that's sort of interesting to me is knowing the role having a written language played. This time around I could really follow it, since, you know, the ones who were literate were the priests, probably something close to exclusively so. For the reader, it is a constant cycle of these priests writing a history from their perspective. We think of the Hebrews as clinging exclusively to this one god, but outside of the priests, the Levites, other gods sometimes came into the picture. Naturally, sometimes the Hebrews were doing well, then something happens like defeat in war, or famine, whatever. The written record becomes: "hey, we told you those other priests and their gods were going to make our god punish everybody, see! And it is written here, look, our god is supposed to be the only god we worship, get back to your roots, people!" This is just repeated over and over again, and I believe it is true that the other priests did not have a written language for the most part. When this becomes such a tome of writing, it's going to prevail, that's just a fact.

In these written histories designed to emphasize their interests, they would sometimes take a shot at some venerated people. King David is portrayed as a great man, beloved. But they stick in there a 'but' ... surely written down only after he was dead. Yep, apparently he had his faults and if I remember right, those times he dallied with some other gods and their priests were firmly noted with great disapproval.

The prominent men had a lot of wives and concubines and this seemed to be one big way they would wander off into examining these other ways, as such women often were not Hebrews and would want to keep hold of that, bring the children up in it, etc.

Interestingly, monotheism became regarded in the Western world and the Islamic world as a profound revelation. To a degree it has been internalized in almost all of us raised even tangentially in those traditions.

People don't ask the right questions. The question shouldn't be, if there is a God. The questions should be what is God, where is God, when is God, how is God, why is God. It gets a little tricky once again with language limitations to the point it seems to be excuses. Process of elimination doesn't work because we cannot pin down all of reality or even really know what exists beyond the Earth, let alone the universe, let alone beyond the universe. Right now the universe itself we mostly believe it came from nothing and will return to nothing. We will be left without an observer, which is necessary for existence, because if something is not observable, it does not exist. This sounds fallacious but it might not be.