An Untenable Position if Ever there Was One

Atheism, that is. At least for me. I can understand a person's rejection of a particular religion or religious text, because they may have doubts about its authenticity, or the claims made, but to truly believe that our physical realm is all there is and all there could possibly be, is just taking things too far. It's unreasonable to think that reality itself is limited to the extent of our own ability to perceive it with our (very limited and limiting) five senses. That just doesn't make any sense.
Agnosticism is a far more reasonable stance, if only because it's perfectly appropriate to believe there are some things we will simply never know. Knowledge actually does have its limits, there will never be a time when we will fully understand everything there is to understand.

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BlueSkyKing · M

“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?”
― Mark Twain

Bel6EQUJ5

@BlueSkyKing And you believe in books that say the entirety of reality just popped into existence from literally nothing, for no reason, without cause or purpose, that we sprang from fishes in the sea, and that morality is subjective and without a foundation. That life is meaningless, we're all here due to a very long and improbable sequence of "happy accidents", and that there won't be consequences for the way we behave in life.
So. Who is the truly irrational one here? Hmm... ?

BlueSkyKing · M

@Bel6EQUJ5 No, I believe in evidence. My education included science literacy and critical thinking skills. Like it or not, we are all children of The Enlightenment and we can demanding strong evidence before committing to belief.

Bel6EQUJ5

@BlueSkyKing We ALL believe in the value of evidence, so you're not unusual in that respect, but whenever an atheist demands evidence, and I ask, "Okay, so what would convince you, what kind of evidence do you seek?", they can never answer that question.

BlueSkyKing · M

@Bel6EQUJ5 Objective evidence will do.

Bel6EQUJ5

@BlueSkyKing Regarding the first one: why must God do anything at all? Seriously. Who are we to make demands? And what would count as evidence?

BlueSkyKing · M

@Bel6EQUJ5 Your asked what kind of evidence would I accept. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. What kind of evidence would convince you that gods don’t exist?

Bel6EQUJ5

@BlueSkyKing Oh dear, that old Carl Sagan quote. Actually, no, the claims I've made here thus far aren't in any way extraordinary to me. They're actually quite mundane. This is just the first issue with the belief that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence has; what counts as "extraordinary", and why? It's a term that is in no way clearly defined and agreed upon, because it's so inherently subjective.

BlueSkyKing · M

@Bel6EQUJ5 It’s an effective adage based on logic and not nearly as old as the Bible verses. Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World was a big influence on me. Took decades to become a freethinker. I was raised Catholic and when a Sunday school teacher tried to explain limbo, doubt was in my mind. Like I said, objective evidence would be acceptable.

DocSavage · M

@Bel6EQUJ5
Why is it everyone believes god can pop into existence from nothing, but not the universe itself ?
God would have to be far more complex, and unlikely. And what kind of plan could he have, that couldn’t be achieved at the onset of creation ?
Very impractical belief.

DocSavage · M

@Bel6EQUJ5

why must God do anything at all? Seriously. Who are we to make demands?

Humans have been designing gods for centuries. We customize them to do whatever is needed from creation to beyond death.