Unpopular Opinion
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No, you're religious because you are drawing conclusions that are not supported by evidence.
Sorry I'm slow and not following. Because there is not real evidence of something not existing, you must be religious to say it does not exist? I thought the burden of proof is on the person making the claim of existence.
I can claim I'm Jesus, son of God, and anyone who disagrees with me is automatically religious. There's not a soul on this earth that can prove I am not Jesus who happens to go by a different name today.
It is. Religious people don’t like this for some reason, though.
I think to rephrase what they are saying, that the adamant belief that there is no religion is a belief system.
Because it can't be disproved or proved with any non-supernatural intervention, you must grapple with the divine to address the issue.
My difficulty with that though is someone had to come up with the idea of God. It is someone else's belief long ago that brought it into existence. To my knowledge humans are not born with the knowledge God might exist.
To put it differently, I have never seen a dog or cat praying.
It is a question that occurs to all who are sufficiently curious. It is a corollary of the question "Why does anything exist?".
Prove it..
You can not. That is the difference. I know you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into but come on. This is yet another circle, round we go. You feel superior because you asked yourself that question and you came to your logical conclusion. Guess what buttercup, that doesn't mean it's the logical conclusion.
We're just talking circles I believe, so I appreciate the civil conversation (minus my low blows above) but I'm afraid we will be forced to agree to disagree. And if I'm wrong, you may have the chance to witness me give God a huge piece of my mind before he casts me off to hell. :)
I haven't even stated my conclusions. I am only trying to help y'all understand that it is not reasonable to jump from an absence of evidence to a conclusion of non-existence. It has nothing to do with me. It is a fact of formal logic.
Here, let me rephrase what's written above:
Because an invisible pink sky elephant cannot be disproved or proved with any non-supernatural intervention, you must grapple with the imaginary to address the issue.
...
That's not how the world works. We don't spend any time grappling with things for which there is no evidence.
There are many, many things that were imaginary, until they existed. In fact all of Human invention started as nothing but belief. And yet we have the physical object once it is made.
What remains imaginary?
Everything is imaginary. Feel free to prove otherwise to yourself with whatever belief you choose.
While in the womb, there was no evidence (that you could understand) of a world outside the womb.
But, it turns out, there is.
What evidence?
It turns out there is a world outside of the womb.
If you re-read what I wrote, you'll find that I did not claim to know what anyone believes inside the womb.
I'm saying that we all have prior experience of transitioning from situations where we had no evidence for something into ones where we had definite evidence. The implication is that we should remain open rather than forcing conclusions of non-existence.
What you wrote doesn't even pass the mildest smell test: there is ample evidence that forming babies hear and react to stimuli from outside the womb, for just one example.
But even if there were no evidence of a world outside the womb, I wouldn't expect a baby to think one existed. Nor would I threaten that baby with damnation were they not to believe me without evidence.
But, you might, metaphorically speaking, encourage that baby to remain open-minded about the existence of an outside world as opposed to dismissing the possibility out-of-hand.
The burden of proof is on whoever is making a claim. You are making a claim (God does not exist). If you want to think logically, the correct conclusion, in the absence of proof, is "I don't know".
For example. Let's say I have 100 opaque cups set upside down on a table and ask you the question "Is a ball under one of these cups?". It would be logically inappropriate to conclude that there is not until you have looked under every cup. Even if you looked under 99 and found nothing, it would not be proper to extrapolate that there is no ball. Do you understand?
That is the issue though. You spoke the ball into existence, not me. It is simply 100 cups upside down on a table until you asked if there was a ball under one of them.
The idea of God doesn't exist without someone saying it does. Do you understand?
Sure. And, you're free to leave the table. You have the freedom to decide the question is uninteresting or contrived or whatever and never think about it again. Others, however, think the question is interesting enough to pursue. Some of those people go on to report discovering evidence for God through first-hand experience. Those people might all be morons or delusional. The only way you have any chance of knowing for sure is to keep an open mind and try to find the evidence yourself. But, again, no one's forcing you.
So to come back full circle, your claim is I'm religious for walking away from the table?
No, my claim is that you are religious for asserting that there definitely isn't a ball while at the table.
Am I religious if I say there isn't a marble at the table? Or a walnut? I don't see one, I have no reason to believe one is there, based on how the world works elsewhere there isn't anything there.
But you're telling me I need to faith to avoid these beliefs in small generally round objects. I say it is you who is using faith to assume the existence of one particular type of thing there and you're claiming I am the person operating without any evidence.
It's ridiculous.
Yes.
A rational person would say "I don't know if there is a ball, marble, or walnut". If you have experience with other tables with upside-down cups, you might go further and say something like "If this table with cups is like the other tables with cups that I've experienced... (fill in whatever your experience re:balls, marbles, walnuts, etc)". To say more requires a leap of faith.
And, unlike tables, cups, balls, and walnuts, the existence of the universe is apparently quite singular. Thus, if you haven't had direct experience with it, it is unlikely that you'll have had sufficient parallel experiences to make any meaningful statements like "If this universe is like the other universes I've characterized...". Therefore, lacking any direct experience, the reasonable position would be "I don't know".
And my claim is what you say is bull shit. If everything you don't believe in is religious then religion loses all meaning. I don't think that is what you are going for.
You're missing the point. What makes your view "religious" (or, as someone else pointed out, perhaps "faith-based" would be the better term) is your definite rejection of things (a la "my claim is what you say is bull shit"). You could respond with "That could be. I don't have any evidence to support or refute it". That would be a rational position, in the absence of evidence. You, however, go further. You say it's bullshit.
By that logic I can't say unreasonable claims coming out of the Qanon movement are bull shit because the claims are so far out there they cannot be "disproved", without being religious.
It's irrational for me to say antisemitism is wrong because I can't "disprove" the existence of a super secret group of jews that actually controls everything.
I cannot rationally tell a sexist they are a piece of shit because I cannot prove God didn't intend for the world to work as a sexist might think it should.
I fail to see how being against any of the above is religious without religion losing all meaning. If being against an idea is inherently religious then what's the point? Now we have elevated sexism, antisemitism ect. to the same level as loving thy neighbor. According to your logic, I cannot rationally say one is better than another.
It looks like the following comment was deleted for some reason, so I'll post it again:
By that logic I can't say unreasonable claims coming out of the Qanon movement are bull shit because the claims are so far out there they cannot be "disproved", without being religious.
It's irrational for me to say antisemitism is wrong because I can't "disprove" the existence of a super secret group of jews that actually controls everything.
I cannot rationally tell a sexist they are a piece of shit because I cannot prove God didn't intend for the world to work as a sexist might think it should.
I fail to see how being against any of the above is religious without religion losing all meaning. If being against an idea is inherently religious then what's the point? Now we have elevated sexism, antisemitism ect. to the same level as loving thy neighbor. According to your logic, I cannot rationally say one is better than another.
Wrong, that is denying the claim of "God does exist".
The concept of God did not even exist until someone started claiming they did. "God exists" is inherently the initial unfounded claim, and they've continuously failed to present evidence for literally thousands of years now.
No, the rejection of the claim "God exists" leads to "I don't know whether or not God exists", not "God does not exists". "God does not exist" is a claim in its own right.
As for your historical comment, perhaps it would be better to precede your claims with "As far as I understand..." to allow yourself room for growth in the future.
Listen to yourself. Someone needs to leave themselves room to grow because they say monopoly money is not interchangeable with the USD?