this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024

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My problem with atheism (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by platypus_plumba@lemmy.world to c/atheism@lemmy.world

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First of all, I have more in common with atheists than religious people, so my intention isn't to come here and attack, I just want to hear your opinions. Maybe I'm wrong, I'd like to hear from you if I am. I'm just expressing here my perception of the movement and not actually what I consider to be facts.

My issue with atheism is that I think it establishes the lack of a God or gods as the truth. I do agree that the concept of a God is hard to believe logically, specially with all the incoherent arguments that religions have had in the past. But saying that there's no god with certainty is something I'm just not comfortable with. Science has taught us that being wrong is part of the process of progress. We're constantly learning things we didn't know about, confirming theories that seemed insane in their time. I feel like being open to the possibilities is a healthier mindset, as we barely understand reality.

In general, atheism feels too close minded, too attached to the current facts, which will probably be obsolete in a few centuries. I do agree with logical and rational thinking, but part of that is accepting how little we really know about reality, how what we considered truth in the past was wrong or more complex than we expected

I usually don't believe there is a god when the argument comes from religious people, because they have no evidence, but they could be right by chance.

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[–] Halasham@dormi.zone 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My last paragraph was aimed towards religious people and atheists that have a solid opinion.

Alright. Was thinking about this prior to seeing your reply and meant to apologize as on thinking about it your statement could be meant that way and now with the clarification doubt has further been removed. Sorry.

I don't think accepting ignorance is something bad, I advice to do it whenever possible.

I agree that it's not bad to accept legitimate ignorance however I don't think it's best practice to accept ignorance just because it's one of the possibilities. Rather, I feel that ignorance should be the fallback position, over baseless speculation, when hard facts on a subject are insufficient in number and/or scope to paint a reasonably clear picture.

Where sufficient facts on a matter exist to show a clear picture exist I don't believe it proper to accept an assertion of ignorance. Firstly because it's false, we know at least some things on the topic, and secondly because it can be harmful, shysters leveraging 'we don't know' to insert a baseless speculation paired with hawking a product or marketing themselves as a problem solver.

[–] platypus_plumba@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah I totally agree. Accepting ignorance about things we actually understand would be impractical. Even if philosophically we can't truly know if we actually know anything, practically we need to establish truths that work as tools to build more complex systems.

What I'm trying to say is that we don't really understand much about the origin of the universe, so saying "I don't believe there is a god because of lack of evidence" seems too harsh. Like, ok, we don't really understand much about this topic, we don't have evidence, how can lack of evidence help you make up your mind then? The humble thing would be to say "I don't really know much about this because we don't really understand this subject, so I can't form opinions".

I guess it's just a matter of linguistics, I'm just realizing that "I don't believe" means something different for different people. Personally I thought it meant "I think chances are there is no creator". But for some people it means "I don't believe in the religious ideas, even if I don't believe the opposite". For others it is "I have no belief one way or the other".

So yeah, this is the problem with language. Sometimes ideas are more complex than words.

[–] Halasham@dormi.zone 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What I'm trying to say is that we don't really understand much about the origin of the universe, so saying "I don't believe there is a god because of lack of evidence" seems too harsh.

I don't think many Atheists come to the conclusion based off of arguments about the origin of the universe. It appears to be more common that logical or ethical contradictions within theistic doctrine lead to its rejection.

For me personally it began with the divine hiddenness problem. Being raised in a faith that states its god wants a relationship with me and yet is wholly imperceivable to me. From there building with additional arguments such as the abhorrent ethics of their mythical figures when viewed from a frame of reference other than 'they're the good guys because their god said so'.

[–] platypus_plumba@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I also have that in common with them. I was very religious as a child and then started changing because of the nonsense of religions. I'm trying to go a bit deeper here though, I think we can assume religions are just human ideas with no basis, so these are already discarded for me. I'm talking about an actual creator, not about our interpretation of it. I don't think we have the tools, knowledge or experience to actually tell. The only thing we have is ignorance.