I don’t believe this is so. I believe we are in the “no-believer camp” by default just as we are all in the camp of not believing in Invisible Pink Unicorns or anything else until we have some proof or even a scrap of evidence of its existence.
It’s not “guessing” to not believe in the existence of God. It’s where we all naturally start out.
I don’t know if I “exist” either, for sure. But there certainly is a lot of reason to believe I do; and none whatsoever to believe it the equally unlikely existence of God, Thor, IPUs or a race of undersea, fire-breathing otters that rig all the world’s lotteries for their personal benefit.
It wouldn’t, necessarily. However, precognition would be a pretty big blow to my skeptical atheism. If precognition is possible, then the basic structure of causality on which the scientific method is based is no longer particularly workable.
If the precognition were dictated to me in the form of: “I, the Lord your God, will now revealt to you what will happen tomorrow…”, I’d believe. Either there is a God with true omniscience, or there is an entity sufficiently powerful and advanced that I can’t tell the difference.
I don’t specifically disbelieve in invisible pink unicorns. I have no reason to think that they do exist, and no reason to think that they don’t. I assume that they don’t exist, because there is no question beyond “do they exist?” to which they could be a possible answer.
But the decision to believe in God is triggered by the question of why the universe exists. “For no reason” is not a default answer. It is a choice. The default answer is “I don’t know.” But to emphatically say that the universe exists for no external reason requires some gut feeling. The idea of God just doesn’t click with the nonbeliever. Which is fine – but it isn’t some superlogical natural state.
Because, there are allot of people who claim I should believe in a god. Supposedly, this god did lots of impossible things, all of which were seen by many, many witnesses. The question of why he has stopped doing such things recently has never been answered to my satisfaction.
To ask the question “why does the universe exist” assumes there has to be a reason. That’s an assumption with no support. There is no reason to believe the universe must exist for a reason. Until it can be shown that there HAS to be a reason, the logical default is not to presume one.
It does not assume that there is a reason. It merely assumes that there might be one. “For no reason” is just one of the myriad possible answers to the question “Why?”
Where in the rules of logic is the default answer the null set? The default answer is not to presume that there is a reason, but also not to presume that there is no reason.
If you are shown a box, to you always presume that it is empty until shown otherwise? If someone asks you what is in the box, do you say “Nothing” or do you say “I don’t know”?
Where did that come from? I never said there must be a reason. My point is simply that the question of Why exists whether or not there is a reason. I don’t think there has to be a reason.
I do think that the question is out there regardless, and it is human nature to ask it. A nonbeliever makes the educated guess that the answer is “For no reason.” The agnostic answers “I don’t know.” The theist makes the educated guess that there is a reason. If there is a default zone, it is with the agnostic.
Without misery and war maybe people wouldn’t need to venerate or pray to God ? So I think he preferes to keep his monopoly on theism by keeping 'em scared and miserable.
Actually any evidence that isn’t solely in my mind would suffice… simple miracles might be enough. I have said a few times that if the Vatican implodes or dissapears that I will convert to Christianity the very next hour. If Bush gets zapped by lightning indoors in a very public and overt way… too.
Waht I’m trying to suggest is that there is no reason to even ask the question. I (an agnostic) don’t say “I don’t know” to the question, I just don’t ask the question at all.
Well, apathy to the question is certainly an option. But doesn’t that jive with my original point that, agnosticism and not atheism is the default position? You say you ignore the question, and you also classify yourself as an agnostic.
Do we agree that, agnosticism aside, in order to be an atheist, you have to ask the question and answer it with “For no reason”?
I don’t know about Diogenes, but I disagree. I call myself an atheist, because if I’m asked the question, I answer “no”. If no-one ever asked, I wouldn’t say “no” either.
It’s not a question of being apathetic to the question, I’m saying the question itself is presumptuous. I’m saying that the default presumption is that there IS no question. I would need to see a reason why the question should be asked at all.
That’s a little ironic. You are cognizant of the possibility that we all may exist for no reason, but you refuse to ask a question unless there is a reason to ask it. What ever happened to curiosity?
What’s presumptuous about the question “Why”? And please don’t tell me that asking it presumes that there is an answer, because that sounds an awful lot like you’re presuming that there is no answer.
And what’s the difference between arguing that the default presumption is that there is no question, and the default presumption that the answer is “For no reason”?
I’m honestly confused by all this. I can see the possibility of the answer to that question being “for no reason.” But I can’t for the life of me understand how the question might not exist.
Asking “why does the universe exist?” presupposes the universe exists for a reason. The question preceding this one would be “does the universe exist for a reason?” Can you answer it?
I still don’t see why this presupposition exists, but fine.
Go through my reasoning, replacing the question “Why” with the question “Is there a reason,” replace the answers “For a reason” with yes and “For no reason” with no.
The results:
I don’t specifically disbelieve in invisible pink unicorns. I have no reason to think that they do exist, and no reason to think that they don’t. I assume that they don’t exist, because there is no question beyond “do they exist?” to which they could be a possible answer.
But the decision to believe in God is triggered by the question of whether there is a reason for the universe’s existence. “No” is not a default answer. It is a choice. The default answer is “I don’t know.” But to emphatically say that the universe exists for no external reason requires some gut feeling. The idea of God just doesn’t click with the nonbeliever. Which is fine – but it isn’t some superlogical natural state.
If you are shown a box, to you always presume that it is empty until shown otherwise? If someone asks you what is in the box, do you say “Nothing” or do you say “I don’t know”? I think lack of info leads to the logical default answer: “I don’t know.”
Similarly, assuming that the universe exists for no reason is just as logically inconsistant as assuming that the universe has a reason to exist.
Therefore, picking your atheist/agnostic/believer camp is nothing more than guesswork and gut feelings.
