So you think the answers to theological questions can be found within the physical world?
If so, where and how would we set about gathering evidence for an answer? If not, how are you not a hammer seeing only nails?
That dichotomy is bullshit of the highest order. The old testament talks about God
creating the universe and warehouses with hailstones. These are bold physical assertions. Greek polytheism is an even more blatant example.
Any discussion of the existence of God that does not begin with the statement that God is fundamentally unknowable is not worth seriously entertaining.
Of course, otherwise it would end after "prove it."
PS: there exist rational and internally consistent theistic belief systems
That's nice? I saw reincarnation and "spiritual union", which are experiences and thus empirically testable. However, the details are so vague that any experiment is impossible and explains
nothing. It fails a simple falsification and should not be seriously included in how a person thinks the world works.
And now I get to defend Sora.
Joy.
The argument that God doesn't exist if you can't provide tangible evidence assumes that God is not only knowable, but fully perceivable and quantifiable by human understanding. If you really think that then maybe you would feel better railing against the simps 2500 years ago, all grovelling before Mt. Olympus and shit.
Bonus points for assuming I believe in God just because I don't casually dismiss religion as a whole, though. You're really striking a blow for Reason on this one.
How are these unreasonable assumptions? It's easily dismissible with the simple fact the human brain is Turing machine and can process any algorithm i.e.
the ability to know everything.
Just because theologians can put more words on paper than ever before doesn't make them better than Egyptian priests. Just because they constrain the debate to
their terms to declare victory over those childish materialists doesn't mean I have to.
If you think understanding religions on their terms is neat, fine. But that has nothing to do with the existence of anything and I don't see why I need to play along.
at any rate, the original point of this is that atheism is belief as much as theism, because you are drawing conclusions about the unknowable via human understanding that is not equipped to deal with it.
Oh that is just ridiculous. If "lack of a belief" is a belief somehow, than I have an infinite number of beliefs at this very moment about every conceivable thing in the universe that I have not encountered and thought "oh, that's true."
This is typical agnostic hair-splitting that only applies to God and nothing else. The miracles in the Bible clearly contradict modern science and there is no way of getting around that. But Western culture has been constantly diluting the entire concept of God in a desperate race to not look stupid. Constantly molding so he has enough space to be relevant and also unfalsifiable.
"God made man from clay? Don't be silly, he just guided evolution! It's all in the Bible if you interpret in an absurdly vague manner that makes it say anything you want." Other examples are easily found. The "modern" Christian God only exists among more liberal circles anyway, conservatives are much more specific about what their version does and as such look dumb repeatedly, as opposed to just a few times.
Atheism is not a belief system as things can't be absences (i.e. words mean things), but I suppose the way
modern atheists arrives at the conclusion is typically based on the scientific method, empiricism, falsification, etc. These are beliefs.
Anyway, Absolute certainty is impossible but a 50% for heads on a coin toss is not the same as 0.0000000000000...01% chance of God/unicorns/whatever fiction humanity events next exists. This is probably the key difference between an honest atheist and agnostic, one says "good enough" and the other is philosophically required to put the existence of God on the same level as a coin toss and act accordingly.
EDIT: SO MANY OF THEM