I don't understand how anyone can be an atheist.
Agnostic, yes, but to say you are absolutely sure that something doesn't exist when you still have time in your life to find out otherwise seems like they are just shutting a door, not applying any kind of "reason."
@ceejaedevine I can’t speak for all atheists, but you seem to be using a definition of atheism that a many of us wouldn’t agree with. I identify with atheism because I don’t believe in any god, not because I’m “absolutely sure” that none exist. I simply don’t hold a belief that any gods exist.
I also identify with agnostic as a modifier to my atheism because while I don’t believe in any gods, I also don’t know that there are no gods (depending on your definition of “know”, but you mentioned certainty so I’m fine going with that).
I’m assuming you’d consider yourself a theist (please correct me if I’m wrong), someone who holds a belief in a god or gods. If so, You must obviously consider yourself an agnostic theist, right? After all, you have time left in your life to find out that your personal experiences may have mislead you. Shutting the door to that possibility doesn’t sound like an application of reason to me.
Hoping I can try again to explain why I don't believe that I would include "agnostic" as part of my POV.
I attribute the term God to the kinds of events I am experiencing, that I have researched, and that I have become aware that other people are experiencing.
No one knows what the force I have been experiencing is capable of, i.e. like did the same force create the universe, but I am okay with that.
Carl Jung says it well here >
@ceejaedevine Just to get this out of the way, Saying “I don’t need to believe… I know” misunderstands what knowledge is; a subset of belief. You can’t know something without also believing it. (I know I’m nitpicking his rhetoric, but I think it’s pretty important in these conversations)
That said, I don’t think that really clarifies anything for me. Jung’s definition of God just seems to be a name for the aggregate mysteries in the world and his experience.
I also experience things that I don’t understand and often attribute meaning or agency to patterns and coincidences I notice around me. However, it seems that those responses on my part are fairly reasonably explained by psychology, evolution, etc.. Wherever there are gaps in understanding, I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge those gaps and hope to have an answer one day. If I wanted to, I could refer to those gaps as God and everything that Jung says in that quote could apply to me without issue, even though I don’t believe in a being external to my mind that I call God.
It seems like you believe in an actual being that you call God though, right? Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how what you said justifies that.
I believe that Jung recognized a force that was acting on his life. I have, as well.
The force amplified words in my mind in one event. It pushed me to move in a number of others. It held me in place, as well. As those forces occurred, profound events resulted. So I have before and afters. Not just randomly occurring coincidence.
To me, that force can't be anything other than God. I believe that is what Jung is referring to.
Right, but that’s kind of my point. Your “recognition” of a unified force doesn’t mean anything. Humans are wrong about things like this all the time.
Is it possible that the events in my life (and yours) are caused by some God? Potentially, and I’m open to that provided that there is some demonstration of that God existing and doing the things you say they do, none of which you have given here. You’ve just continually asserted “these things happened and it couldn’t be anything else”. On the other hand, at least some if not most/all of those experiences you (and I) have had contained subjective, psychological aspects that act as potential explanations. If I were to adopt your way of thinking, I’d be just as justified in saying “I know those things were coincidence + psychology, it couldn’t be anything else” because I have personal experience of being wrong about the meaning behind some events in my life. Personally, I think both of those positions are unjustified, but one of them posits an entirely ad hoc, mysterious ontology to appeal to while the other tries to use things we know exist (brains/minds) to explain the phenomena. It seems more reasonable to me to go the second route, but I’m still open to the first should new information come to me.
I started responding to you because you were saying that it is unreasonable to “shut the door” on the possibility of God. But as far as I can tell, you’ve said nothing to justify shutting the door to the possibilities _other_ than God, but you’ve done just that.
I’m not saying those things are all “random coincidence” either. Humans are pattern recognition machines, combine that with cultural biases, confirmation bias, and other various psychological/physiological responses and it becomes impossible to distinguish between events upon which you have imparted significance and events that are actually significant, let alone caused by some God.
Do you have a way of differentiating those things? Or would you argue coincidence simply does not happen?
If you are talking about things like two royal blue Porsche Boxsters pulling into my driveway at the same time, yes, I would regard that as coincidence.
If that morning, there was something that aroused some aspect of my mind regarding royal blue Porsche Boxsters, then when I heard a noise outside and found out there were two in my driveway, and they whisked me off to a position as an adjunct professor at Cambridge, I wouldn't regard that as a coincidence.
How about when there are seven people involved? Each one part of the event, not just observers?
How does that make a difference? Are you saying that that somehow makes it more unlikely, therefore it MUST be God?
How did you determine it couldn’t have been random? How did you determine it couldn’t have been some person using advanced psychological tricks to mess with you? How did you determine it wasn’t the adjunct fairies who also happen to like porches? How did you determine it wasn’t some evil spirit manipulating you to not follow the trinitarian God of the Bible?
I can think of an infinite number of mutually exclusive explanations that are fully parsimonious with the facts of your experience. We use demonstration as a way of determining which of those hypotheses are even possible. Until the content of the hypothesis is demonstrated to exist, it will always be more reasonable to believe that it is probably some combination of known causes (coincidence + psychology + culture + social factors for example) than a class of thing that has never been demonstrated to exist. But we can also just say “I don’t know what caused it, It’s mysterious to me, but I’m glad to have had this experience that felt meaningful!”. How would it be unreasonable to have that response?
I think you already understand this as demonstrated by your aliens comment earlier. It seems to me like you use the word “God” because it’s a malleable concept that feels comfortable because of cultural biases and the very human desire for meaning given to us by something greater than ourselves. We as a species call that thing God and then imbue it with human characteristics like consciousness and empathy.
All that said, my only contention with you is that you say you “know” God while calling atheists unreasonable. I have no problem with people who hold a personal belief in a God. If that helps you make sense of the world, by all means consider yourself an agnostic theist! However, to claim to “know” that a conscious, cosmic force exists that intervenes specifically in your life simply because you can’t fathom how some series of seemingly connected events happened, despite the fact that each on their own would be utterly explicable if not banal, seems like the height of anthropocentric arrogance to me.
Why didn't I realize I would eventually be walking into an ad hominem attack?
Then to have you turn around and say..."Maybe someday I'LL experience something that will change MY mind, but your mind is clearly too impressionable."
No one has the ability to cause what has happened but God. The number and kind of events have gone far beyond random. I will continue to say I know God exists.
Have a great day!
@ceejaedevine Ah, the classic “I’m not going to respond to what you said and you implied I’m arrogant for believing that the creator of the universe would get me an adjunct teaching position so obviously I win”
Sorry if I insulted you, I genuinely didn’t mean to, but it sure seems like you don’t care to engage with anything I said considering my whole previous message was talking about how randomness isn’t the only other explanation. 🤷♂️
Also, when did I say anything about you being impressionable? All I said was that I wouldn’t use my personal experience as a reason to call Atheists unreasonable for not believing the same thing as me.
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Ceejae Devine
Breadless Norseman