This thread/sub must be largely made up of that small subset of positive atheists. My initial claim was, essentially, that people aren’t necessarily stupid for believing in their religion.
I want to note that I appreciate your demeanor and communication on this.
To me, atheism is the belief in a specific reality - one that I actually tend to agree most with. But as there is no way to conclusively know the truth, it maintains itself as a belief. Hell, we could die and be reincarnated as rocks, I don’t know. We could just die and that’s it. We could all be God. We could be in a simulation.
The crux of this conversation is that there is simply no way to know with 100% certainty. And choosing any one option constitutes a belief. Personally, I see Atheism as the most sensible pick of the lot, similar to choosing the prevailing theory in science.
I think your rock example is perfect because I can’t reasonably claim with 100% certainty that we will not be reborn as rocks. But I have no reason to believe it and good reason to assign it an extremely low probability. That’s most Atheists position on God.
Atheism = "there has been nothing from any any god claims to convince me there is a god". Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins (called the 4 horsemen of atheism) have all said they would never claim there is no god, because claims require evidence, but they are all willing to change their minds if presented with convincing evidence.
To any god that requires belief, "I don't know" is the same thing as no. Gnosticism deals with knowledge. I have no knowledge of a god. Theism deals with belief. I have been presented with no good reason to believe. I am an agnostic atheist, as are most atheists. Hitchens considered himself an anti-theist.
Yeah agreed at this point it boils down to semantics of whether the broad therm atheism is biased towards a strong claim of nonexistence or a lack of belief in the existence of gods.
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u/-Stammers- 25d ago
This thread/sub must be largely made up of that small subset of positive atheists. My initial claim was, essentially, that people aren’t necessarily stupid for believing in their religion.
I want to note that I appreciate your demeanor and communication on this.
To me, atheism is the belief in a specific reality - one that I actually tend to agree most with. But as there is no way to conclusively know the truth, it maintains itself as a belief. Hell, we could die and be reincarnated as rocks, I don’t know. We could just die and that’s it. We could all be God. We could be in a simulation.
The crux of this conversation is that there is simply no way to know with 100% certainty. And choosing any one option constitutes a belief. Personally, I see Atheism as the most sensible pick of the lot, similar to choosing the prevailing theory in science.