I'm an atheist, ask me anything [Spirituality & Religion]

@harvardDoc yeah... Is that supposed to make sense?

The concept of atheism or my question? I think my question makes sense, yes.

Ah but unicorns do exist within the sense of universal knowledge, e.g. in mythology. So to say you don't believe in unicorns means a) you acquiesce their existence in our set of "all things known" and b) you do not believe they exist in reality.

@harvardDoc Just because the idea of something exists, doesn't mean the thing itself has ever or really does exist.

As @Celine mention of unicorns proves :)

I think Celine's argument is a great one, but I think my view of "belief" is slightly different from what is hinted at here.

@Celine Right, so if you say "I reject the proposal that God exists in reality and is omniscient, omnipotent, etc." I can get behind that statement.

@harvardDoc By your logic, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is exactly as real as Jesus or Allah.

Certainly not. (whether any one of them is "real" is up for debate). By my logic, if you do not want to put faith in the existence of God, you agree that the concept of God exists by default, and your choice is to not believe in it. I think Celine has understood what I'm trying to say, because she replies that she agrees the concept of God exists.

@harvardDoc Of course the concept exists. If there was no concept than neither belief nor disbelief would even exist.

@SW-User Right, right. But that's where things get tricky.. Merriam-Webster defines atheism as: "a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods", now you see where I am going?

In sum, to not believe in the existence of an object [A] no matter what the object is, by default, implies that one acquiesces its existence and yet, paradoxically, chooses not to believe it exists. Whether or not one puts faith in said god/gods or object [A] is, of course, a completely different story.

@harvardDoc So there may be this extremely tiny, technically truth to what you are saying, but what is the practical purpose?

All a person has to do if have a thought of anything to say they don't believe in it. So I don't believe in a one-eyed , one-horned, flying purple people eater, but obviously, to say I don't believe in it, we have to agree the concept of what that could look like.

Acknowledging a concept could exist doesn't have a practical link toward believing in it or not.

@Pherick Ha ha ha ha, you are 100% correct, my friend; I seldom think of the practicality. However, there is, as you correctly infer, a technical difference that is quite tangible: the different between "existence" and "faith". (I'm not using belief instead of faith because things get tricky then). If an atheist says they do not have 'faith' in the concept of a higher being, that is totally A-ok. The bone of contention is when my atheist friends (and they are dear friends) say that they do not think God "exists". If your one-eye, one-horned, etc. thingamajig didn't exist in the set of universal knowledge, there would be no debate about whether it existed or not.

@harvardDoc Yeah. Are you high?

@Celine Exactly. You accept that the idea exists, that's all I'm arguing.

@SW-User Always, my friend, always.

@harvardDoc I just think we are using a very weird interpretation of the word "exists" here.

Do ideas "exist" like a horse "exists"? The idea of a unicorn is just that an idea, but we have created cartoons, movies, etc all kinds of things to represent that idea. We still do not have a unicorn that "exists".

Athiest say they don't believe in god as a quick easy way to say that they don't believe in the idea of god. They understand the idea of god, and all the creations we have made to support it, but we still have no proof god "exists" :)

@Pherick Well phrased, good sir!

Oh I mean arguing as in just debating; no malice involved whatsoever. :)

Yeah although I think my arguments pissed off a certain someone... hee hee