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I agree with everything you wrote here (this is indeed how I live my life) but I think your examples have something in common - they are cases where you are cap

I agree with everything you wrote here (this is indeed how I live my life) but I think your examples have something in common - they are cases where you are capable of recognizing the truth. EG: you know what shit looks like and you know what apples look like, and you can be confident in your ability to tell them apart. The upstream topic has to do with religion which deals with things that don't have that property (by definition, I would say.) One religious argument can go like this: Religion: all things that we know about, have a creator. Why wouldn't the universe have a creator? Why would the most sophisticated thing of all be random? Atheism replies: I am unable to see the creator therefore he doesn't exist. It's random. There's a difference between saying "I know what an apple is and I've seen thousands of apples, and this pile of shit isn't an apple" and saying "I assume I would be able to perceive and understand the creation/creator of the universe with my monkey meat-brain, so the fact that I don't see it means for sure there's not one" I feel like the logical approach is to say "I am a limited monkey meat-brain, I have no reason to expect to recognize the creator. But I can chose to use probability to expect that there might be a creator of the universe - since all else has a creator, and not get too hung up on my own limitation" Hope this elaboration makes sense, this is what I was trying to convey.

michaelmrose 3y ago
Properly atheism replies that we observe a multitude of things which according to our best understanding don't require supernatural intervention to come into being and literally thousands of examples of prospective gods which are all complete bullshit. The fact that the concept is probably without merit is a probabilistic statement like most of the "facts" you know. There are no tigers in my house and there is no creator of the universe. I'm an atheist not because I have absolute proof of a negative but because surety crossed a threshold from probably not to definitely not because that is how human beings work. Most statements that you "know" work exactly the same. There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean. A star, a slime mold and you are a natural consequence of the configuration of matter that preceded the existence of matter we are labeling our sun, that ugly stain on the wall, and you. There is no reason to believe that your mom has conscious control over individual cells that became you for instance any more than the lose clump of dust consciously created the sun. As we move to the moment where the inception of our universe this of course breaks down not because we need to paper over our lack of understanding with a symbol we invented but because as you noted reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Thank you for responding. This is very crisp and well written -- it makes it very clear to see where we disagree. Which is of course totally fine and an age-old debate. But it gives me a chance to state my view in a crisp way as well as a reaction: // There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean... I believe you're expressing a faith here. As you and I both agreed "reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand" - the implications of this is that on questions like "where did the laws of physics come from" we have no hope of observation / understanding that can lead to an answer. Perhaps the only honest answer would be "as a human being, I am too limited to engage with this topic at all." But both religious people and atheists make a stronger assertion than that. An atheist says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about randomly." A religious person says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about purposefully." They are both equally (un)justified in their belief, but one or the other resonates with them deeply enough to operate as a matter of faith.

michaelmrose 3y ago

Properly atheism replies that we observe a multitude of things which according to our best understanding don't require supernatural intervention to come into being and literally thousands of examples of prospective gods which are all complete bullshit. The fact that the concept is probably without merit is a probabilistic statement like most of the "facts" you know. There are no tigers in my house and there is no creator of the universe. I'm an atheist not because I have absolute proof of a negative but because surety crossed a threshold from probably not to definitely not because that is how human beings work. Most statements that you "know" work exactly the same. There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean. A star, a slime mold and you are a natural consequence of the configuration of matter that preceded the existence of matter we are labeling our sun, that ugly stain on the wall, and you. There is no reason to believe that your mom has conscious control over individual cells that became you for instance any more than the lose clump of dust consciously created the sun. As we move to the moment where the inception of our universe this of course breaks down not because we need to paper over our lack of understanding with a symbol we invented but because as you noted reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand.

xyzelement 3y ago
Thank you for responding. This is very crisp and well written -- it makes it very clear to see where we disagree. Which is of course totally fine and an age-old debate. But it gives me a chance to state my view in a crisp way as well as a reaction: // There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean... I believe you're expressing a faith here. As you and I both agreed "reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand" - the implications of this is that on questions like "where did the laws of physics come from" we have no hope of observation / understanding that can lead to an answer. Perhaps the only honest answer would be "as a human being, I am too limited to engage with this topic at all." But both religious people and atheists make a stronger assertion than that. An atheist says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about randomly." A religious person says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about purposefully." They are both equally (un)justified in their belief, but one or the other resonates with them deeply enough to operate as a matter of faith.