Does God exist?

[AlbinoClock]

Atheism is the belief that a theistic God does not exist.

Agnostics can not believe God exists (such as based on a perceived lack of evidence to support it) and still be agnostic.

Actually, atheism is the position that it does not make sense to posit the existence of a god due to lack of evidence. It's not necessarily a hard claim about nonexistence, any more than Pascal's wager is hard claim about the existence of god. There may be some overlap between atheism and agnosticism, though.

[Pube Glenn Beck]

Philosophy eh, here's some philosophy for ya. Atheists assume. Christians know.

[Thor]

yeah god exists, here's proof
http://www.clockcrew.cc/talk/member.php?120

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

yeah god exists, here's proof
http://www.clockcrew.cc/talk/member.php?120

well I'm converted

[Sombra]

I once held this same position but I've changed my mind. Let me explain why.

While it may be true that there is no real evidence for or against god, this does not mean that each is equally probable. It doesn't make sense to believe in something without any evidence, which is a blow against the side of theism, so atheism has a higher probability.

Yeah this is why a lot of intellectuals define themselves as agnostic atheists. I can't prove the existence of god, but due to observation, scientific data etc it seems unlikely. I guess Pascal would be defined as a agnostic theist, or maybe more specifically an agnostic Christian.

[AMPEEEM]

All will be revealed.

[PirateClock]

Nope. And trying to explain why he doesn't exist is like trying to explain why there aren't any flying fluorescent turtles hovering above Phoenix Arizona. Cause you know.. they aren't there.

I don't think people who believe in God are dumb though, makes sense that people believe in a God and a hereafter. Death, unknowing, no sense of purpose etc. can be scary things. That and years and years of indoctrination by people trying to exploit the weakest, aka the Church. As Voltaire said: ââ,¬Å"The first priest was the first rogue who met the first foolââ,¬Â.

[SpongeClock SquarePants]

No i don't think god exists. Why : probability near certainty. But i he does exist I'd like to punch him in the dick.

[Topcatyo]

Actually, atheism is the position that it does not make sense to posit the existence of a god due to lack of evidence. It's not necessarily a hard claim about nonexistence, any more than Pascal's wager is hard claim about the existence of god. There may be some overlap between atheism and agnosticism, though.

As far as I know there are two classifications of Aethiesm.

Positive Atheism
Non-Positive Atheism. I don't know the actual proper terms but fuck it.

Positive Atheism = There is definitely no god. None.
Non-Positive Atheism = Fuck if I know

[buttplug]

As far as I know there are two classifications of Aethiesm.

Positive Atheism
Non-Positive Atheism. I don't know the actual proper terms but fuck it.

Positive Atheism = There is definitely no god. None.
Non-Positive Atheism = Fuck if I know

you can replace Positive with Gnostic and Non-positive with Agnostic

[Topcatyo]

This is why I wanted the debate forum back.  I learn things.

Learning is fun.

[buttplug]

but didn't want to defend the position of proving a negative rationally.

Isn't it on the person making the positive claim to prove something

[AlbinoClock]

That's entirely irrelevant. If you do not see enough evidence to reach a conclusion, you do not reach a conclusion, and a suspicion is not the same as a conclusion. "There might be a god but I see no evidence to suggest that" would be agnostic, because your position is one of a lack of a conclusion.

Not reaching a definitive conclusion doesn't mean that both options are equally probable. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm absolutely certain that there are no gods, but I don't believe in any and I consider myself an atheist. I'm not absolutely certain that Russell's Teapot is imaginary.

[HookshotClock]

God exists like good Canadian internet service providers exist.

[AlbinoClock]

Sure, but if I'm as agnostic about God as I am about Russell's Teapot, I'm an atheist. It is quite a different state of belief from having some legitimate ambiguity as to whether or not a god exists. I'm not on the fence. I was in the past, but I've come down on one side.

Not being a metaphysical solipsist, I'm not concerned that you exist solely in my imagination. It may be that I can come up with a convoluted enough definition of mind, self, or imagination to make it appear to be so, but then we're just playing with words, as we're doing here. I am as certain as makes any difference that you are not simply a hallucination and equally certain that God is.

[cast]

God is the Sun.

[Silly Putty Clock]

Fuck it all.

Whether God exists or not isn't a matter of belief vs. disbelief. It's a matter of which narrative you subscribe to. We live in a universe of vast and sanity-rending complexity, and thus we construct narratives to frame the raw chaos of existence in a more convenient package for our minds to work with. Every narrative is built, to some degree, on the basic framework of physical reality, but none can truly allow you to see reality for what it actually is. To do so would be to defeat the whole purpose of these narratives and render your mind incapable of functioning. The best we can get is glimpses, and glimpses of different parts from different angles, coloured by various assumptions and oversimplistic tropes. The existence or non-existence of God in your mind is simply a byproduct of how you happen to process reality.
Verily, reality is the ultimate Rorschach! So much for all that.

[Silly Putty Clock]

Besides, everyone knows that "Bob" is our one true lord and savior.

[AlbinoClock]

Fuck it all.

Whether God exists or not isn't a matter of belief vs. disbelief. It's a matter of which narrative you subscribe to. We live in a universe of vast and sanity-rending complexity, and thus we construct narratives to frame the raw chaos of existence in a more convenient package for our minds to work with. Every narrative is built, to some degree, on the basic framework of physical reality, but none can truly allow you to see reality for what it actually is. To do so would be to defeat the whole purpose of these narratives and render your mind incapable of functioning. The best we can get is glimpses, and glimpses of different parts from different angles, coloured by various assumptions and oversimplistic tropes. The existence or non-existence of God in your mind is simply a byproduct of how you happen to process reality.
Verily, reality is the ultimate Rorschach! So much for all that.

In a way this is true, but that doesn't make all models equally true. Is it true that our sensory organs are limited and our access to the information obtained from them further limited? Yes. Is it true that we can't ever really know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether we're perceiving things completely accurately? Sure. Does that mean that the model of a geocentric solar system is on equal standing with the model of a heliocentric solar system? Fuck no.

We have this thing, I like to call it science, and it allows us to make meaningful headway in the world, to the point that we can do things like transmit information from one side of the planet to the other in a blink of an eye. Most of us are surrounded on all sides by the fruits of the practical knowledge about the universe that scientific investigation has given us. Whether light is really waves or photons or both is totally irrelevant as long as our models make us able to understand it well enough to do stuff using the rules we think we've discovered.

I don't have a God-powered cellphone or laptop, which is strange, because we've spent a lot more time as a species playing with deities than we have playing with rational thought. Maybe God doesn't play like that, but then what are we even talking about when we say God?

If you asked me what God meant to me a year ago I would have said it was the connection between free will and determinism, the point at which individual action exists harmoniously with the totality of the universe itself. Now that's very pretty, but why the hell would I attribute that to God? When most people talk about God they're referring to some magical world-creating parent figure that makes physical laws just to break them and intervenes with his creation all the time even though he supposedly built the whole thing and is all-knowing. There are other ideas about the same thing, but that's my point. Why use a word that means 10 million different things? The problem with the word God is that it really doesn't mean anything specific, it means whatever it means to the person you're talking to. That's not a word we can use meaningfully. There are plenty of other things we can talk meaningfully about.

[Silly Putty Clock]

The thing about God is that when people attribute things to God, they're thinking too small. We're not talking entities here, we're talking metaphysical forces. Like Murphy's Law. Which is totally vaster and in possession of more awesome might than God.

Silly Putty Clock,
drunkposting ITT and wants you to know it.