Atheism (page 2)

OnTheWayOut

J.D., that's great. When people ask you to prove the negative, that there is no god, tell them you cannot do such a thing to their level of acceptance but you have proved completely that their god does not exist.

truthseeker100

I remain an agnostic although I tend towards atheism. I keep an open and logical mind, something all scientists should do.

Village Idiot

Congratulations JD. I don't agree with your cosmology but the nature of the Universe does point in the direction of a godless reality. You might want to check out the original Cosmos series by Carl Sagan. That series helped put the Universe into perspective for me.

fulltimestudent

Jonathon, welcome to reality.

Thoughtful people have left records of similar journeys. Somewhere in my messy hard disc (or, was it the last one ?-grin) I have some information on Indian thinkers arriving at this same conclusion. I cant find that talk about it, but I can expound on a Chinese thinker's journey (a little further on in this post).

During our long intellectual imprisonment within the grim gray walls of the giant watchtower, there were clearly defined limits to out thinking capacity, but paradoxically it was a certain Watchtower issue that led me to eventual freedom. That long forgotten issue discussed the hebrew word mezimbah, which the WT translated as 'thinking ability'. I came to prize that ability - a very dangerous thing in a totalitarian organisation, though I suggest that in practise, the WTS was not quite as totalitarian as we may think. Private thoughts were one thing, it seems, but what they feared was public discussion and probable ensuing dissension.

So anyway, I also escaped.

But back to my Chinese friends. In the first century CE, Wang Chong, for example, resisted orthodoxy and the sanctification of texts. He advocated developing a strong sense of scepticism, and maybe helped (along with others) free Chinese minds from dogma and tradition. Yang Zhu asked, "what is life for?" And, thought only two things were worth seeking - music and sex! And, since both good and bad men all die, he wrote, " Let us hasten to enjoy our present life. Why bother about what comes after death?"

And, by the fourth century CE, while western thinking was wrapping itself in theocracy, Guo Xiang realised, " ... everything creates itself without the direction of any creator."

Of course, there were other schools of thought in East Asian thinking, and some tendencies were toward mental enslavement, but the great tradition from the time of Kongzi and Mencius was toward scepticism.

As a student of China, it's quite fascinating to see how Chinese political affairs are organised pragmatically, whereas western political thinking is organised on dogma.

Clambake

I find going from Jehovah Witness to atheist really isn’t that big a jump. Both are incredibly arrogant. Both rely on incredibly complex explanations to prove their books without fully understanding the literature they are promoting. Both never miss an opportunity to preach their belief systems and mock anyone who doesn’t belief in exactly what they do. Both in the super duper complex explanations generally seem to miss the greater point.

I prefer to look at the wonders of the universe with humility and amazement knowing the mathematical probability of it all forming without any intelligence behind it pretty unrealistic.

Who cares, be humble, be kind.

Marvin Shilmer

the only logical and acceptable conclusion: there is no God.

As a lover of rational thought I'm compelled to assert the above is an unsound conclusion, logically speaking.

Religionists can assert the existence of god, and we can accordingly ask religionists to prove their assertion true. If they fail to offer verifiable evidence we can conclude their assertion is unsound. But lack of evidence there is a god does not mean there is no god, and lack of evidence there is a god is not evidence affirming there is no god. Lack of evidence there is a god only means the existence of god is unproven.

There is so much we don't know about our own universe, not to mention whatever extra-universe there could be.