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stewstew03
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Relevance?
As he explained in another post: “Unchanged Changer would be a less troublesome and more apt term.”
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Helpful_Atheist
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Actually given your statements I would say it is more rational to not believe because as you said God cannot be proven to exist. Not believing in God because there is not enough evidence does not require faith because there would be no good reason to believe in God.
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Tomdstone
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The UnMoved has moved.
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stewstew03
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In what way?
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tonyrey
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Welcome to the forum.
In that case there is no reason to believe you exist because there is not enough evidence that a rational being has posted a message!
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tonyrey
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But quite a few underestimate the significance of leaps, Charlie.
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Helpful_Atheist
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I actually can refute Pascal’s wager, which for those who are not familiar with it states that “It is better to believe in God and be wrong(where nothing would happen to you) than to not believe and be wrong(where you would go to hell”. First off the issue with this is that it can only apply to one religion at a time or in other words which religion’s version of hell should you be avoiding? Should you believe in Islam to avoid their hell or what about specific forms of Christianity that denounce other sects as false. Secondly Pascal’s wager doesn’t influence belief because I could apply the same logic to Santa Claus but I wouldn’t actually start believing in Santa Claus because of it, it would simply seem more beneficial to believe in Santa Claus. So fearing hell doesn’t change whether or not you believe in hell. Pascal’s Wager while interesting means almost nothing to any non-believers(especially because they aren’t afraid of hell and aren’t concerned with avoiding it)
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Helpful_Atheist
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Well actually there is, because you can read this message and if either of us cared enough you could call me on a cell phone and I could attest that I indeed wrote this message. With God however you can’t do that you can see a book written by people who claimed it was from God but you can’t talk to God directly to confirm that it is indeed his message nor can we even determine if there was a God to have left the message. We have plenty of experience with humans and the idea that a person left a message on an internet forum(exactly like you did) is not uncommon at all and it is plenty reasonable to assume that these messages were left by people whereas with God we have no experience with beings such as him and we have no definite proof that beings such as him do or even can exist. So there is reason to believe I exist while there is still no reason to believe a God exists.Welcome to the forum.
In that case there is no reason to believe you exist because there is not enough evidence that a rational being has posted a message!
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tonyrey
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You underestimate its significance:
wikipedia
Nor is the wager purely negative. It is based on the possibility of eternal joy with all those we love. All religions are based on belief in spiritual reality, the distinction between good and evil, moral responsibility for our behaviour and cosmic justice. Non-believers opt for nothing whereas believers have a positive attitude to existence.
As Lear said, nothing shall come of nothing…
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Helpful_Atheist
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And while it is not entirely negative I was simply commenting that, to me, the idea of Pascal’s Wager while interesting philosophically in terms of actual belief it doesn’t do much or for example telling a non-believer “what if you’re wrong” which is what I was commenting on. And I would also like to add Non Believers do have a positive attitude about existence as well as moral responsibility and justice, we just don’t think this involves an afterlife
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Peter_Plato
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The change is to the bread, not to God - fits just fine with the idea of Unchanged Changer.
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Helpful_Atheist
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My question of change would arise with the changing of laws from the old to the new testament, which has been explained to me as a new covenant, but even so wouldn’t still be a form of change?
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Peter_Plato
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The Unmoved is ever-present, so didn’t change “location."
The bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ while retaining the appearances of bread and wine. It is the bread and wine that has changed.
It is not true to say the Body and Blood of Christ becomes bread and wine.
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Peter_Plato
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The covenant changed. Why would that imply that God necessarily has? Humans change. Laws that pertain to humans change. Historical circumstances change. The social order changes. Etc. Etc. None of that implies an essential change in God.
At the most basic level, imagine an absolutely impregnable wall. If you run into that wall with a vehicle, your vehicle may turn into a mangled mess and it would be true to say the wall destroyed your vehicle, but that does not logically imply that the wall ‘changed,’ even though it changed your vehicle into a tangled wreck.
It might even be possible to formulate “laws” regarding what will happen if you ‘mess’ with the wall and those “laws” may change depending upon the circumstances - walking, riding a bike, flying a jet, etc.
It might be morally permissible to bump the wall while walking or rest by leaning on the wall because nothing untoward will happen, but at the same time clearly evil to try to run your car into it because passengers will be hurt or killed.
The “laws” regarding your relationship with the impregnable wall might be called a “covenant” with the wall. A recognizable relationship that you have with the wall. The covenant might change for you if you change from a walking human to a jet pilot. Different covenants for different situations. The wall, however, has not changed, you ses?
Perhaps the “covenants” changed from the Old to the New Testaments, not BECAUSE God changed, but because humans or the human situation did.
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Helpful_Atheist
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But isn’t the Covenant about how we should act and how we should interact with God because while I agree that humans change but why would our changing affect how God wants us to act or interact with him?
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Peter_Plato
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If you are a vicious wall adversary it is you who needs to change in a different way than an empathetic wall hugger - who already has an agreeable relationship with the wall - would need to.
In a sense, your “relationship” or “covenant agreement” with the wall would be different for you as a wall antagonist than for you as a protagonist. Different expectations (laws that dictate how you behave) would exist for you as antagonist than for you as protagonist. The antagonist would have a lot of “cease and desist” kinds of expectations for them to overcome before they could enter into a “friendly covenant” with the wall. Since the protagonist already has a friendly covenant, those cease and desist expectations (Thou Shalt Not laws) would not exist because they would be unnecessary. The wall, however, remains unchanged.
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RGCheek
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More people believe the lunar landings were faked than believe that there is no God, so are we, when discussing atheism, not discussing a fringe concept that has lost severely in the market place of ideas (2% atheist vrs 6% believing the moon landings faked)?Welcome to the forum.
In that case there is no reason to believe you exist because there is not enough evidence that a rational being has posted a message!
experts123.com/q/how-many-americans-believe-the-moon-landings-were-a-hoax.html
There is strong evidence for the existence of God and also AGAINST the idea that the lunar landings were faked.
Few take discussions of faked moon landings seriously, why should we take claims for atheism seriously? Is atheism rational? Are the claims the moon landings faked rational? But more believe the latter than that God does not exist.
God has been modeled mathematically by Cantor, at least he thought his transfinite numbering system did that.
So if God can be modeled, how can the concept of God itself be irrational?
If Plato and Aristotle arrived at a concept of a Creator centuries before Jesus was born, and all done without revelation or Christian influence but only by the use of reason, how can it seriously be claimed that the idea of God is irrational?
No, I think atheism irrational, not the concept of a Creator.
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Peter_Plato
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RGCheek
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A prophet of Reason?..
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Peter_Plato
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Certainly, but “Reason” meaning of the kind which seeks to understand truth not merely to USE truth to advantage.
Thus: “…the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust…”
A “user” of truth is an altogether different kind of beast than a “seeker" of truth is.
It is entirely possible to seek the truth in order to use it to advantage (clinging closely to it,) but precisely because of a recognition that truth reflects reality and, therefore, to uncover the truth means having real power to effect change on reality.
So seeking truth in order to use it for advantage (unjust man) is quite a different matter from seeking the truth in order to understand the nature and order inherent in reality (just man).
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