Atheist Forum

ATHEISM: THE DENIAL IN THEORY AND/OR PRACTICE THAT GOD EXISTS.

Absence of belief, lack of belief or absence of belief in God are standard experienced phenomenon by every person in a monastery or convent, the saints, or even according to the evangelist experienced by Jesus himself hanging on the cross.

To belief or not believe is neither here nor there.
One either knows God exists or one does not know whether God exists.

If one knows God exists one is not an atheist.

To be a true atheist one must prove God does not exist and provide and possess such proof denying the existence of God.

To be a true theist one must prove God does exist and provide and possess such proof proving the existence of God.

If it can be shown that being a true atheist is impossible while at the same time showing the possibility and potentiality of being a true theist then being a theist is the only option. Not knowing whether God exists is normal and natural but with maturity a raional person should seek to know.

An analogy

Gravity exists. We know this indirectly by observing an object falling to the ground.

Nobody knows what gravity is and what really causes it and nobody has discovered the theoretical graviton, if it even exists.

It is impossible to deny gravity or to disbelieve it, therefore we believe and know gravity exists but have never totally proved it by providing proof of everything that can be proved about gravity. We know that the potentiality and possibility of gravity existing and us learning everything there is about it to be a fact.

Take a few MINUTES to shut your eyes and imagine these two situations.

Situation A) Imagine earth 4.5 billion years ago or even the universe and beyond 1 second after the big bang if we wish to speculate.

Situation B) Imagine the earth today with its millions of life forms and especially the life of the human person and the rich inner life incommunicable to another and deeply personal.

During situation A) despite there being no life on earth or in the universe (we assume) and therefore no living spiritual being with free will (in terms of our human eyes and understanding), nevertheless because situation B) came about eventually we KNOW that a living spiritual being with free will is a property of, always a possibility of and always a potentiality of, the universe and beyond. Because of this fact the POTENTIAL and POSSIBILITY for GOD to exist as a living spiritual being with free will is a rational position.

To deny this potentiality and possibility related to the existence of God in a mature, developed human being is to be illogical and is akin to not believing or not knowing gravity exists. Any sense of freedom that comes from this position is a false freedom based on delusion no matter how good it feels.

Even the drug addict spiking himself up with heroin is looking for God.
So it is with atheists their atheism in escaping from God is actually a search for God, because they seek the best Good for themselves in whatever way they do. But the definition of God is that he is love. In other words God is the fullfilment of every individuals inner life.

God seeks the human person so that he may find in them himself. One finds God when one decides to become like God, in other words to become more like love.

Hmmmm.....So you believe it is impossible to be a theist or an atheist?

Or was the subsequent text in your post supposed to be your proof of a god?

I'm not even going to bother replying to any of your posts enzo.

Your just a waste of time and energy. Your just to ignorant and arrogant to listen and understand.

You just don't understand. So believe what you want.

I'm not going to waste any more time on you.

Ace

From your first reply and now your second I have noted a serious amount of aggression and pride. You have freely attacked me on a personal level. I sit there and think whats wrong with you. We are just having a discussion. You need to chill out a bit. I am not taking your food or your water or your shelter am I?

All I did was posted the definition of atheism in its second oldest form and how serious classical philosophers still define it today. The earliest greek form meant "godless". I know there are varitations on the theme.
But this is the correct one. ATHEISM: THE DENIAL IN THEORY AND/OR PRACTICE THAT GOD EXISTS.

Where is this arrogance you speak of?
Where have I not attempted to listen and understand you?
What have you presented for me to understand?

Have you understood what Potentiality and Possibility means?

The amount of times in the past I've been threatened hell and such causes me to become more aggressive in my posts. Also when no one listens.

I had already told you that the facts you speak of are not facts at all. It's your personal belief, Nothing more. Atheism isn't denial, It's dis-belief. We truly do not believe in god or the devil. It's not denial, It's fact. Can't you understand that? God does not need to be dis-proved for us to be atheists. As longs as religion exists, so will atheism. Because atheism is the opposite to theism. That's why there's an A.

It's simple to understand. What you speak of is just your personal beliefs.

I do not believe in god or the devil. That makes me an atheist.

Sorry for the aggression but I have little toleration for those who fail to listen and understand basic questions and answers.

I'm also known to be extremely unforgiving. It's part of my personality I'm afraid.

But once again - Atheists are not deniers and you can be an atheist without having to dis-prove god.

Incorrect.

The widely accepted definition of Atheism is "The lack of belief in a god(s)"

Gnostasim deals with what you know or claim to know, this is different from theism which deals with what you believe, not all Atheists are agnostic. That is to say you can lack belief in a god(s) but also you can claim to not know for sure.

You seem to have trouble differentiating between these 2 ideas, they're not mutually exclusive, which means all possibly combinations of (a)theism and (a)gnostasim are permitted.

Atheist Agnostic (does not believe and also claims they do not exist)
Atheist Gnostic (does not believe and does not know for sure)
Theist Agnostic (believes in a god(s) and claims they exist)
Theist Gnostic (believes in god(s) but does not know for sure)

Incorrect, as you can see from the above, the only criteria an Atheist needs to meet is a lack of belief in a god(s)

Again incorrect, theism is just defined as belief, you don't need to proove something exists to believe in it, young children tend to believe in father christmas without clear proof.

Again, based on your bad definition of atheim, this simply is not true. I wont bother covering your gravity analogy, it's based of a false understanding belief/knowledge.

Strictly defined as "a living spiritual being, with free will" I think I'd have to agree with you, I see what you're getting at here, which is essentially a vastly advanced being which evolved in the natural universe over a significantly long enough period of time.

I think most rational atheists would agree here, but I'd also say, so what? God(s) by most real world defintion are proposed to have many more properties than that, such as being omnipotent, omnipresent etc, being able to do miricles. Not only that you're talking about a possibility, not an actual fact, currently as it stands today there is no decent evidence to point to any such being existing in the known universe, so to believe in it is illogical and irrational.

No, we have proof gravity exists, we can design and execute experiments to test gravity and record the results to compare, we build up enough results and we can create rules for exactly how it behaves and use those rules to accurate predict future outcomes.

We have no such proof of any god(s)

This is where we run into problems with the definition of god, a junky may very well be "looking for god" when he shoots up, depending on your exact definition of god. If when you say "god" you mean a nice warm fuzzy feeling and escapism from the real world, I'd have to agree.

But by any common definition of god such as the Christian god, or the Muslim God, I would disagree, these gods are claimed to have very distinct properties which simply do not make sense in this context.

Be careful with definitions because there's a lot of Atheists who may agree god exists depending on exactly how you define god. Some people claim that god is just the tree's and the rocks and the earth and that god has no other properties than that. Some Atheists may not disagree with that and simply argue that lending the trees and rocks the label of "god" has no real meaning, it doesn't define them any more accurately.

I dont bellieve, I know.

I know that it is impossible to be an atheist without breaking a logical rule and therefore being irrational.

I know that God exists.
I know this on the basis of logic (which is not a true knowing because it is theoretical) and also on the basis of personal experience (which is a true knowing on the personal level and that is incommunicable to another person).

The one of several proofs I have, is that the potentiality and possibility for God to exist is a rational position versus the alternative, given what we know about existential reality.

The peculiar thing about many people is that they think only in the horizontal dimension of begining and end and a time line and fail to see the vertical dimension. For instance: How is it that anything even exists at all? How is it that in this mystery there is such a thing as the human person, with such traits as creativity, free will, love?

People will get amazed at the existence of a new planet, a material aglomeration of matter and totally ignore something like free will. How is it that something totally abstract and immaterial such as free will even exists at all in this universe? Think about that. If you do this properly you will fall off your chair :-)

Being an atheist is convenient on this planet in fact I once was one for a while. Then I began to think seriously and read serious books. This lead me to find God. I studied geology, philosophies ancient and new, agreed with evolution, discarded Intelligent Design and even meet some fanatics on the way that tried to convince me the earth was 6500 years old, etc etc. At the end of it all I wish I hadn't and just stayed as simple as a child. Finding God is a real thing once its done, and it is a growth leap akin to like when a child begins to become aware of itself. It is a personal decision to decide to go on that mission. One finds God when one searches to find God as He wants to be found. If one looks for God to find him as a scientific curiosity one is wasting ones time. God is not the plaything of foolish men.

Dont even get me started on the several afterlife experiences I have heard from very sane and rational people. Let me just say this. We as human persons dont even know, what we dont know about what there is to know about existence. We know very little. Too little to go being foolish and labelling ourselves atheists or even theists to be honest.

These days people go quoting from the Bible willy nilly as if they understand what it means or are ready for it. If anyone wants to truly just understand the first two chapters of the book of Genesis please go do a full degree in Jewish/Hebrew studies and then another 5 in theology and spend 2 years living like a hermit in a desert before you even open your mouth too much on the matter.

life is no joke one cannot play the fool with it. People have done so and the world is in the state it is because of the faults of humans.

Frosty I really appreciate your response. I have the sense that I am talking with a very balanced person. Let me clarify some of my points though (possibly in a later thread).

In early Ancient Greek, the adjective atheos (ἄθεος, from the privative ἀ- + θεός "god") meant "godless". The word began to indicate more-intentional, active godlessness in the 5th century BCE, acquiring definitions of "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods, ungodly" instead of the earlier meaning of ἀσεβής (asebēs) or "impious". In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as simply "disbelief in God".[24] Most recently, there has been a push in certain philosophical circles to redefine atheism as the "absence of belief in deities", rather than as a belief in its own right; this definition has become popular in atheist communities, though its mainstream usage has been limited.[24][25][26]

The best place to study atheism is on the shoulders of Giants. The definitions from the oldest universities in the world should be the ones used. I therefore remain with the definition I gave. ATHEISM: THE DENIAL IN THEORY AND/OR PRACTICE THAT GOD EXISTS.

Agnosticism eventually results in atheism.

What happened to the the first thread? Because I'm crushed, enzo, you didn't reply to any of what I said there!

This is entirely a semantic argument, there is a lot of problems with the definition of Atheism, many dictionarys disagree on the exact meaning which causes these kind of problems.

If you want to argue that so called Atheists are using the term Atheism incorrectly then thats one thing, even if you were to win such an argument, it would simply mean that people who are currently Atheists would have to invent another term to describe their position.

This is entirely semantics, it has no real value as an argument for or agaist whether god really exists.

For the record I still think you're wrong, the most relevant definition of Atheism should be how we define it in modern day. Language is revised constantly and evolves so a modern dictionary will always be more accurate and more relevant.

Probably the most respected dictionary in the english language is the oxford english dictionary which defines Atheism as:

atheism
/aythi-iz’m/
• noun the belief that God does not exist.
— DERIVATIVES atheist noun atheistic adjective atheistical adjective.
— ORIGIN from Greek a- ‘without’ + theos ‘god’.

Source - http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/atheism?view=uk

This is how most GOOD dictionarys define Atheism, they may use the term "disbelieve" which has a passive and an active meaning, the passive is to lack belief, essentially the same thing.

I don't really want to debate semantics because as I mentioned above, all it would do, should you win your argument, would force atheists to invent another word for their position, but the fundamental arguments between belief/no-belief and knowledge/no-knowledge would remain the same.