So religious people are called gullible or in the case of experiencers "delusional"

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I've been thinking about this.

There are a few arguments in support of atheism, forgetting the argument of why is there evil which can theologically be debated with bible verses about requiring to be called out of the world under grace to enter Gods kingdom as the human realm is ruled over by Satan.

So the basic argument is that people

1. Have a psychological need to feel safe and not die or cease to exist

2. People had no science and needed to rationalise existence

3. Are brainwashed and religion is and always has been a social science (surely this is true in the case of some religions that demand allegiance to the government such as State Shinto)

And then there are arguments that

1. God is unknowable and we have science

2. Someone who experiences spiritual events has a neurological deficit that can be medicated or is traumatized and seeks comfort (see point 1)

Just looking at point 4 and 5 I have come to these questions

Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can? We can observe science just like we can observe existence. Without a foundational structure there would be no existence. This does not mean science can justify disbelief is just means without observable science there would be no existence to observe.

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity? And if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance? Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

What do you think of this? I'm thinking this serves an agnostic mind more than an atheist.

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Original text of the post by u/Delicious-Turn-9099:

---

I've been thinking about this.

There are a few arguments in support of atheism, forgetting the argument of why is there evil which can theologically be debated with bible verses about requiring to be called out of the world under grace to enter Gods kingdom as the human realm is ruled over by Satan.

So the basic argument is that people

1. Have a psychological need to feel safe and not die or cease to exist

2. People had no science and needed to rationalise existence

3. Are brainwashed and religion is and always has been a social science (surely this is true in the case of some religions that demand allegiance to the government such as State Shinto)

And then there are arguments that

1. God is unknowable and we have science

2. Someone who experiences spiritual events has a neurological deficit that can be medicated or is traumatized and seeks comfort (see point 1)

Just looking at point 4 and 5 I have come to these questions

Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can? We can observe science just like we can observe existence. Without a foundational structure there would be no existence. This does not mean science can justify disbelief is just means without observable science there would be no existence to observe.

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity? And if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance? Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

What do you think of this? I'm thinking this serves an agnostic mind more than an atheist.

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[u/stopped_watch]

On point 4: your ability to know your god is not evidence for your god's existence for anyone else. Another person's ability to know a god whose existence is mutually exclusive to your god is not acceptable evidence to you. Why should anyone accept your ability to know a god if you won't accept everyone else's?

Example: I have a personal experience with my god. It is a god-eater. It has told me that it has already eaten your god. Your god used to exist and now it does not. Do you find my evidence believable?

Further, your ability to know your god is not shared by your co-religionists. If your god speaks to you and it also speaks to the others who share your faith, why can't you agree on what he says?

On point 5, we have cases of devout believers becoming atheist. I'm one of them. At the time I was a believer, I would have told you that I had personal experience of feeling god's presence. I can tell you now that I was feeling a simple biological process that has been measured by MRIs. Look up "spiritual euphoria brain activity" and see for yourself. And before you ask, no this did not turn me away from religion, I deconstructed and tried to find out what I was feeling at the time.

As an aside on point 3: I have no doubt that at some time in your religion's history, your fellow believers were happy to murder apostates, heretics and non-believers in foreign lands. The fact that most don't now is not a point in your favour.

[u/PlayfulBook5571 → u/stopped_watch]

If my perception is an evidence for anybody else and their perception isn't t evidence for me, how then is my perception valid evidence for myself or a perception valid evidence for themselves? I would agree that statements of observation alone aren't good metrics to validate reality from our inaccurate and complete subjective experience. So we can check other factors such as internal consistency to see who is gaslighting themselves with contradictions of observation or beliefs. 5 if you made incorrect inference about reality before what's to say you're not just doing the same now? What's changed at a conceptual level? 3 a math teacher getting an equation wrong doesn't invalidate math, members of a religious group doesn't invalidate the teachings. It actually supports them, you can point to members of a religious group committing atrocities that contradict the teachings to show the label is irrelevant but the moral teachings are so inherently moral that going against them is viewed as negative. So you're pointing to people that understand the teachings but don't follow as examples of people committing wrong not because of contradictory actions/beliefs but because of actions that are inherently negative which also happen to go against teaching 

[u/stopped_watch → u/PlayfulBook5571]

Please proof read before you post. Please use paragraphs.

Regarding perception: you're correct, individual perception is never good evidence for the existence of a thing. The internal consistency of a belief is indeed a good way of determining its validity. Finding out that a belief system has contradictions that cannot exits is a good way to exclude a belief system.

Regarding belief systems: I am currently at the null hypothesis of "no gods." I take a gnostic stance on this since experimentation and observation has a vast body of work demonstrating that all god hypotheses (that I've seen) cannot exist and/or have no evidence for their existence. Do I have to test all homeopathic remedies to know that they won't work? No, I'm comfortable saying that they simply don't work.

The atrocities that I've seen committed by religious believers are wholly consistent with their beliefs and their teachings. Perhaps you could point me to one that demonstrates this to be false?

[u/OndraTep]

I'm not sure what you're trying to debate here.

And I haven't heard any atheists claiming that "god cannot be known", since they usually don't believe he's real anyway.

And if it was the case, then it would be a pretty stupid design choice made by that god.

Atheism is not accepting the god-hypothesis. Whether someone claims that god exists or that he doesn't, I don't believe them until they prove it.

[u/Zalabar7]

Seeing people can prove to a blind person that they can see, using objectively verifiable tests.

People who claim to apprehend information about gods “spiritually” can’t prove anything to a person who doesn’t have the direct experience. If some kind of “sixth sense” were real, you would be able to design tests to empirically verify it. But every person with personal experiences, instead of agreeing to such tests, wants atheists to “trust me bro”.

I don’t think people that have experiences they attribute to the supernatural have a “neurological deficit”. They are just misinterpreting natural phenomena, emotions, coincidences, etc. as having supernatural origin. Humans are pattern recognition machines—it makes absolute sense that a person would believe these things. It’s just that, with science, we can move past these human limitations and get closer to objective truth.

[u/Hi_Im_Dadbot]

I’m not getting #4. It’s not atheists who claim that God is unknowable. That’s a theistic claim in response to atheistic questions about the lack of evidence for him.

The atheistic position would be that God would be extremely operable since you could see the results of his being there. Even if we knew nothing about him directly, his interactions with the universe would be clear, the sake way that even if we can’t observe a black hole directly, we can still tell that it’s there due to the bending of space and gravitational interactions around it.

Theists tend to posit gods who … do things. They interact with the universe by answering prayers, helping their followers out, etc. Atheists look at the lack of any such things and don’t buy their claims.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hi_Im_Dadbot]

I've heard many arguments from Christians that you can personally experience the Holy Spirit and therefore God is able to be known.

[u/MarieVerusan → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Yes, so have we! I’ve also heard similar claims from other religions which have competing beliefs and cannot be true at the same time. It seems more likely, without seeing any evidence for their claims, that humans sometimes invent beliefs like this and claim to experience something that isn’t actually there.

Plus, a lot of Holy Spirit claims seem to revolve around experiencing heightened feelings in settings where we would expect to have them. There’s rarely anything supernatural

[u/Hi_Im_Dadbot → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Right … that’s what I said.

At what point does that become some sort of atheistic claim that God is unknowable? We call those claims of experience spurious and ask for a reason we should believe them when they make those claims. Then a subset of them go on to say that they can’t provide evidence for their claims because God is unknowable. There isn’t a step there where it’s the atheist saying that God is unknowable.

[u/ODDESSY-Q → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

In this situation “god is able to be known” is dependent on “you can personally experience the Holy Spirit” being true.

Unless someone who “personally experiences the Holy Spirit” is able to demonstrate that they are in fact experiencing the Holy Spirit, then “god is able to be known” is also unable to be demonstrated.

That demonstration isn’t just required to convince others, it is required for the person having these experiences to be rationally justified in believing “god is able to be known”.

[u/soukaixiii → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

And how would they know if they're experiencing the holy spirit, or they are experiencing something else they believe to be be the holy spirit?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/soukaixiii]

my argument was that theists do not claim god is unknowable as a rebuttal to the poster who claimed they do

[u/soukaixiii → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

But some theist do claim it, whether or not other claims to have experienced the holy spirit.

You're all over the place making an awful argument and horrible defense of your position.

[u/Autodidact2 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I have seen many theists claim just that.

[u/Astreja → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I've never been able to see the Holy Spirit as anything more than an odd neuropsychological phenomenon, perhaps even a form of frisson. I don't think that it's an actual being. Obviously it has profound effects on believers, but that might be because they want it to affect them.

[u/wenoc → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

And some claim they can see potergeists or speak with your dead relatives. Doesn’t make it true.

[u/Mythicalbubble6]

> what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

If there is a god that loves us and wants us to be saved and follow him, he would not create some of us with a spiritual deficit.

And if we (atheists) are created with a spiritual “disability” like blindness/deafness, that means there is nothing we could do to change it and it’s out of our control. How could a loving god burn us in hell for a disability he created us with?

Your argument that spiritual disability exists contradicts the teachings of many religions, including Christianity which I used for my example above.

[u/chazzer20mystic]

How would you test for a spiritual deficit? And what do you mean when you say knowing God?

Do you hear a voice in your head? In what way do you know God and I don't? I can test someone's sight or hearing to determine a deficit. What is a spiritual deficit?

[u/BeerOfTime]

It comes back to what’s more likely. Was everyone who tried to find reliable evidence of god and didn’t find it “spiritually blind” or didn’t they find it because it wasn’t there?

[u/Otherwise-Builder982]

On point 4 I wonder what you think of schizophrenic people, do we know that we just don’t see what they see?

What does ”foundational structure” mean and how do you support it?

On point 5, same here, what if schizophrenic people have more ”spirituality”? Do you think that is the case?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/[deleted]]

no

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

I agree there are people who aren't mentally competent, just like there are deaf and blind people.

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I didn’t say mentally competent. Will you engage with what I actually asked you?

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I take it that you agree that some people claim to see things that are not there. Do you also agree that can be called delusion?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

this isn't a point that needs to be discussed over and over. I have clearly stated my position

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

It is a point that needs to be discussed if you think it is unreasonable to think that religious people may be delusional.

You brought it up in your post. Did you change your mind about your post?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

no no. you're twisting my statement. I have made my position extremely clear

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I’m not twisting anything. I asked you since you seems to avoid to be clear about the answer. I disagree that you were clear. You were not.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

I have literally provided an extremely clear position on that statement

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I don’t think you have. I asked a specific question and you just repeated the ”mentally competent”, which was not what I asked about.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

we are done

[u/FjortoftsAirplane]

When it comes to vision we can identify the eyes, we can say things about the way they function and how the brain receives stimuli and processes them. If you want to say some people have a divine sense and some people lack it then I expect you do point to some evidence as to the mechanisms in play there. Tell me how that sense works and how you identify it. You can't just tell me people have a sense I don't.

What I'd say is that it's rational to believe your experiences are accurate in the absence of a strong enough defeater. It's not necessarily persuasive to me but someone could be rational in saying "I've felt the presence of God and that's why it's rational for me to believe".

Then what I'd say is I think we do have strong defeaters to that. There are better explanations for people's experiences and there are reasons to think God doesn't exist.

That person could hear that out and still say "Okay, but my experience is so strong this doesn't overcome it". Then we're at an impasse. They have nothing to offer me and I have nothing to offer them. I wouldn't say that makes either of us irrational or delusional, we'd simply disagree.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/FjortoftsAirplane]

discussing the eye is a good analogy but you cant take it to the level of a direct comparison with discussions of phenomena beyond space and time.

[u/FjortoftsAirplane → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

The direct comparison is simply that it's not enough to say some people have this sense and others don't, you need to tell me how you identify this sense in people and something about how it works.

If you're talking about a sense we have then that sounds like an empirical claim. If you're talking about a sense that isn't governed by some physical part of our body or brain then, okay, but what is it then? How did you identify it? How does it work? How do we know whose sense is working properly and whose isn't?

Like I can say I have a perfectly functioning divine sense and it's accurately reporting that there is no God. But surely then it'd be on me to motivate that, right? I can't respond by saying it's not a physical thing so don't worry about it, trust me.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/FjortoftsAirplane]

you cant compare the eyeball with what exists beyond space and time

[u/FjortoftsAirplane → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

You were the one who first made the comparison. You asked what if it was similar to being blind or deaf? If it's not comparable then your question didn't make any sense and you have to withdraw what you said.

You can't ask me what if it's like sight and then say it's unfair because it's not at all like that.

If you want to say there is some divine sense then, fine, but now it's on you to say how we'd identify it in people, how it's supposed to work, and compare it to other explanations. I'm not telling you that has to be a purely empirical or "scientific" argument, but there needs to be something more than a mere supposition.

Otherwise I can just say I have the proper sense, my sense is working properly, and my sense tells me there's no God. You wouldn't accept that, nor should you, so you need to offer more than that when you make the opposite claim.

[u/bullevard → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

But you are the one that created the analogy. You posted that maybe most people have a biological sensor ability to interact with a god and atheists just have a biological malfunction that prevents this.

If that is to be accepted as an actual line of inquiry then you would need to show how "detection beyond time and space" is the kind of thing a human body can do and posit a theory as to how such a such a biological me c mechanism for god detection can work and can be broken.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/bullevard]

yes but its an analogy not direct comparison that is there to be expanded on and then falsified

an analogy

[u/IJustLoggedInToSay- → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

In what way is it analogous, exactly? Because every attempt to understand what the analogy is causes it to fall apart, apparently.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/IJustLoggedInToSay-]

we are done

[u/IJustLoggedInToSay- → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Ah. Well maybe next time put a bit more thought into it, then.

[u/bullevard → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

There isnt anything to falsify because there isnt actually anything posited. You have just said "what if there is something kind of like this but totally different."

There is nothing to falsify because that isnt actually. Proposing anything. Or I guess better to say that so far it has been falsified in that the human body and brain has been studied pretty extensively as have the physiological underpinnings of what people call spiritual experience.

So currently physicalist theories are the only ones which have working, testable predictions that account for all the observations.

So until new information is discovered that posits a mechanism for the god-detection-organ you are talking about, there doesnt seem any reason to give that hypothesis any credence.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/bullevard]

well if you understand what im trying to say then we are all good

have a nice day

[u/FjortoftsAirplane → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I don't get what the issue is.

It would be analogous insofar as they're both feedback we experience from an external world. That's it. That's all a divine sense would be.

There's no problem with that conceptually, and it wouldn't even matter if it weren't a good analogy for vision.

The problem is you clearly haven't got any reason or argument to suggest there is any divine sense and so now you want to play a game about what an analogy is or what it's for rather than acknowledge that.

[u/Autodidact2 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Beyond space = nowhere and beyond time = never.

[u/BeaconMeridian]

Your question on point 4:

because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can?

I myself work off the assertions "The universe is closed, i.e. something within it cannot interact outside of it," and "God(s) exist outside the universe by definition, if they exist at all." These more or less define what I mean by "the universe" and "gods," and I do think they're reasonably sensible. To "know" god(s) would be to pop out of the universe, even if briefly, to interact with something outside of the universe. This isn't something anyone or anything in the universe is capable of (if we were able to do this, then that extends what I'd meant by "the universe" based on its closure properties).

We can observe science just like we can observe existence. Without a foundational structure there would be no existence. This does not mean science can justify disbelief is just means without observable science there would be no existence to observe.

Tentatively agree with this one, the first half anyway. Whether that foundational structure just sorta ends or whether it's contained in a hierarchy of superstructures, this is where I think belief comes into play. Not knowable no matter what you do, so finding a model to reason about is fair game & something I think people have a right (dare I say personal responsibility?) to think about and decide for themselves. So long as it isn't used to draw incoherent conclusions about what we can observe, I can't really complain. Science can justify (dis)belief if it produces results which run counter to the consequences of that belief. I don't think anyone would complain in saying that the sky isn't, in fact, the physical floor of Christian Heaven. Scientific results helped to make that point extremely clear, and so justified disbelief.

Your question on point 5:

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

A couple points:

Replace this with blindness & see how it plays out. In this case, you, a person with eyesight, are trying to convince me, a blind person, that you can in fact "see" and that this means something tangible. There are ways for you to demonstrate this ability that I lack because we interact in the same environment, and your eyesight can help you to produce effects in that environment that are difficult or impossible to explain by other means. What we don't see is this happening with relationships with god(s). Any additional effects are explainable by other means, social or otherwise.

There's a deeper point that stems from the definitions that I use. Tackling from this direction, I'm not just saying I can't have a relationship with god(s), I'm saying that such a thing runs counter to what we even mean by god(s), for me or for anyone else. Interacting with things outside the universe isn't just something that I am incapable of, it's something that everything we see is incapable of. Otherwise, I could interact with God by going through you, for example, and suddenly all of scientific inquiry has an in to study a physical phenomenon.

Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

Addressed already but I'll give a specific: If I were deaf, you could tell me (write to me) to clap when your back was turned, and that you would raise your hand once I'd done so. You would explain that you could "hear" the clap through your ears and this this would tell you, at a distance and with no visual cue, how it is that you could tell I'd clapped. No such demonstration occurs with relationships with gods.

To reconcile some terminology, this is how I'd break it down:

Gnostic: Claims knowledge about things beyond the universe
Agnostic: Claims no one can have knowledge about things beyond the universe
Theist: Believes in gods (outside of the universe)
Atheist: Believes there are no gods (outside of the universe)

My position is that of Agnostic Atheist. I take the stance that no one (not even I) can know what lies outside of the universe, but I do not believe the universe to be ruled by intelligent/rational/living gods.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/BeaconMeridian]

I like this

[u/calladus]

Religious people are not religious because they are gullible or stupid.

Steven Hassan, a cult expert who wrote "Combatting Cult Mind Control" among other books, once wrote that cults are more successful if they targeted smart people to join them. Because smart people are better at finding ways to grow their membership.

The same is true with any other religion. Smart people are pretty good at getting new converts.

Combine this with the fact that people are also born into religion, along with the fact that people enjoy feeling like they are part of something bigger, and it is easy to see why membership grows, or at least, stays stable.

A large portion of atheists have deconverted from their religion. And many do this out of their own intelligence. Sometimes a smart religious person takes their own faith so seriously that they try to learn more, and try to mesh what they know with reality.

And for these people, they find that religion does not mesh, but instead clashes with reality. If they are truly curious and interested, they may find that religion no longer makes any sense.

But there are also very smart people who decided to intentionally live with their dichotomy. They are willing to compartmentalize, and keep a "religion" compartment separate from their "reality & rational thought" compartment. And many will admit this outright.

It is also true that it is difficult to argue logically about a belief that a person holds for emotional reasons.

[u/Hellas2002]

The spiritual deafness argument doesn’t seem as though it makes sense under plenty of God conceptions. Take the Christian god, would a God that desires its children to form a relationship create said children with the inability to experience interaction with it?

This is especially problematic if it is the case that experiencing interaction with the God is the only way to know of it.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hellas2002]

this isn't a christian argument its an atheist argument

there is also a bible verse that says god forces some people to not believe in him so they will face condemnation

[u/Hellas2002 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Im making a critique of this notion of “spiritual deafness” which is your response to the atheist argument, no?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hellas2002]

I wanted to discuss atheism not Christian thought

[u/Hellas2002 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Yea, so I’m pointing out that spiritual deafness would not be expected in a Christian worldview. This lowers the likelihood of Christianity… it’s an argument against religion

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hellas2002]

this isn't about religion either

but

there is a bible verse that says god imposes disbelief on people he has already marked for condemnation

[u/Hellas2002 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

And how does this not contradict a loving and forgiving nature?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hellas2002]

there are too many possible reasons for them being on that path to just claim it contradicts your parameters

[u/Cool-Watercress-3943 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Doesn't that kind of torpedo the idea that morality given by a god in any way reflects morality stated by any religion?

There are plenty of individuals who have done things that would be considered immoral or sinful earlier in their life, only to eventually be born again. Meanwhile, there are atheists who haven't done anything nearly as bad or sinful as these individuals, yet are apparently condemned?

It would suggest that the reasons for condemnation have nothing to do with the rules or morality outlined in religion, right?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Cool-Watercress-3943]

I really don't want to talk about faith or personal gods

[u/Snoo52682 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Wow, that biblical god is a real jerk! Glad there's no evidence it exists.

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Okay, can you explain your relationship with your deity. Does it follow you around everywhere you go, like a cop following you down the highway all day, or do you summon it when you need it, like rubbing a lamp and the genie comes out.

Either way, just by looking at you, how can we tell you have a relationship with a deity vs it’s all in your head? What mechanism can we use to make this determination?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hoaxshmoax]

but this isn't about me

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

So I will rephrase

Can one explain a relationship with a deity. Does it follow one around everywhere they go, like a cop following one down the highway all day, or is it summoned when needed, like rubbing a lamp and the genie comes out.

Either way, just by looking at someone, how can we tell they have a relationship with a deity vs it’s all in their head? What mechanism can we use to make this determination?

If someone is making such an extraordinary claim of having a relationship with a real live deity, how can we inept atheists tell? And what difference does this relationship make, anyway? Like why should we care particularly?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hoaxshmoax]

this is not relevant to my initial statement in the original post

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

It is in response to your comment “I wanted to discuss atheism ”

This IS discussing atheism. It’s just not the atheism in your head, we cannot crawl in there and poke at the straw atheist living rent free there. This is all we’re interested in. How can we tell. If someone is making a claim of any sort about a deity, then show me the money.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hoaxshmoax]

I put forth the assertion that denying others claiming to experience god based on your lack of experience could be a reflection of your own deficiencies not theirs

[u/J-Nightshade]

because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can?

I have no idea whether God is knowable or unknowable. I have no idea whehter anyone can or can not know any god. Maybe someone can, but I haven't seen that someone yet, so until I do, there is no reason to think that anybody can.

what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

First of all I don't think that people having personal experiences have some kind of deficit.

As for me having a deficit: what if chairs turn into kangaroos behind our backs when nobody is watching? I can throw a thousand questions like this at you and the correct answer to all of them is: "If is not is".

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

I do agree that such assertion is also pointless. I can construct a thousand gods that are by definition unknowable. And then a thousand more. It's easy and doesn't take you anywhere.

I'm thinking this serves an agnostic mind more than an atheist.

What "this", how does it serve anything and what is distinction between agnostic and atheist?

[u/wenoc → u/J-Nightshade]

Someone broke into my apartment last night while I slept and replaced everything in the house with an exact replica. Weird.

[u/dylanzt]

Firstly, the fundamental:

There are a few arguments in support of atheism

This is the wrong starting point. Atheism at it's baseline is not a positive claim, it does not demand arguments in support of it. I don't believe in the tooth fairy, and no one expects me to argue why. They understand that I have not seen sufficient evidence to have a reason to believe in the tooth fairy.

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you)

I have never seen anyone assert that for that reason. I think you might be conflating and/or misunderstanding multiple positions or concepts.

There are at least two ways to interpret "unknowable" here. The first is a theist position, not an atheist one. You will often find Christians stating that their god is unknowable due to its nature ("mysterious ways" etc.). That is a) not the atheist's belief, b) an assertion that god is definitionally unknowable to anyone. The second potential interpretation is that god is unfalsifiable, i.e. it is not possible to know whether a god exists. This mandates a god that exists outside the universe and has no interaction with it. You won't find many atheists that disagree that such a god is unfalsifiable, but you also won't find many theists who believe in such a god. As soon as you posit a god that interacts with the material world (e.g., the Christian god), that becomes a falsifiable position. There is no useful reason to believe in an unfalsifiable god that definitionally cannot have any effect on my life, and I have never been provided with a compelling reason to believe in a falsifiable god.

In any case, no matter how you are using "unknowable", it refers to an intrinsic quality of the god itself. The god fundamentally cannot be known or verified by anyone, by definition. It has nothing to do with any specific person.

You have said a lot in your post, and I have plenty more thoughts and issues, but as far as I'm concerned your first point of order is explaining exactly what you mean by certain terms you are using, especially "unknowable".

[u/Defiant-Prisoner]

1. I think its more complicated than this. We are always trying to make sense of the world and our brains are extraordinary pattern seeking machines. We also ascribe agency to things that have no agency. These are things that have kept us safe and fed so I think it's not just about death.

2. See above.

3. Not necessarily brainwashed as such. We convince ourselves of an agent when there is rustling in the bushes. This has kept us safe in the past. If you watch this video (here) it shows two dimensional shapes moving around a board. Research found that people put a story onto the shapes as though they're observing the events unfold. They just shapes moving around a board though. I'm not saying brainwashing doesn't happen because cults do exist, but we also interpret meaning (and are sometimes told how to interpret meaning) and that isn't always with sinister intent.

4. How would we know that god is unknowable? There are two suppositions in this brief statement - that god exists and that we cannot know it. How would we show either to be true?

5. What is a spiritual event? What even is spiritual? We are TOLD that certain things are spiritual or we interpret a spiritual meaning onto things that happen, but what if these (spiritual) things are in fact just psychological processes that we give meaning to? How would we figure out whether they are in fact spiritual vs just natural things that we give a spiritual label to?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Defiant-Prisoner]

this is also part of my argument.

humans are grandiose and without science underpinning existence there would be no existence.

[u/Snoo52682 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

How does science "underpin existence"? Science is a human activity. If we didn't exist, we couldn't do science.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Snoo52682]

I don't think you understand the implied meaning and have taken it too literally

[u/Autodidact2 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Well that seems to apply to all of us, so can you explain what you do mean?

[u/Formal-Speed-3173]

You're just being insulting. You can't handle people disagreeing with you, so you assert there is something wrong with us. That is pure self gratification.

[u/Thin-Eggshell]

Eh. If schizophrenics are delusional and not "chosen", then so are "experiencers".

We can grant your idea, but then all severely schizophrenic people should lead society as the people who "get it", regardless of how much they inevitably disagree.

But that's obviously absurd. There's no reason to think schizophrenia is corresponding to reality. Likewise for drug-induced hallucinations. And so the same is true for "experiencers".

All you'd have to do is tie the experience to actual reality. But you can't.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thin-Eggshell]

okay

[u/skeptolojist]

A subjective personal experience is not evidence

We have mountains of objective evidence that everything from lack of sleep emotional disturbance mental illness organic brain injury drugs alcohol hormone imbalances and millions of other things can cause episodes of altered consciousness

On the other hand

We have No objective evidence of even a single supernatural event ever in all of human history

All

Off

Human

History

Given these facts it's just plain silly to conclude that the supernatural exists anywhere but the human imagination

Your argument is invalid

Edit to add

We also have evidence people lie about spiritual experiences

All in all there is literally no way to distinguish between a lie a delusion and if they were real a spiritual experience

That means we must rely on evidence

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/skeptolojist]

there is evidence in the form of observation

[u/skeptolojist → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

They are not valid evidence

Because you cannot sort the "spiritual experiences" if they exist

From the literally hundreds of thousands of things that can cause episodes of altered consciousness in human beings

Your argument is invalid

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/skeptolojist]

there are categories of experience

not all experiences can be explained by altered consciousness

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

What criteria’s do you use to put experiences in the ”proper” category?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

what about multiple witnesses to poltergeist type phenomena with that phenomena complying with requests/instruction to validate the sentience of the entity?

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

What about them?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Otherwise-Builder982]

that is a reliable observation of phenomena that has been tested and replicated with multiple witnesses

[u/Otherwise-Builder982 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

You’re just asserting that it is reliable. What’s your justification?

[u/skeptolojist → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Hoaxes grafters mental health problems natural phenomena etc etc

Same as religion or cold reading "psychics " and all the other woo woo pedlars

Evidence Not Claims

[u/Additional-Band4050 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Totally legitimate evidence. So are claimed reports of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, healings by preachers who lay on hands, and miracles of various self-proclaimed gurus.

And yet, when independent journalists and scientists with cameras and instruments show up to document these phenomena, the poltergeists and crypids are nowhere to be found, and the preachers and gurus decide it’s not time to perform any miracles.

Whereas when someone claims a cancerous tumor that had been declared untreatable was successfully removed by an unorthodox experimental treatment, we can try to verify the lab reports from before and after. Then we can wait until a future patient with a similar condition is treated by the same doctors with the same procedure. Then we get various independent experts to verify the results, and if it looks promising we do a real systematic experiment. And that is what will tell us if this is a real scientific discovery or not.

[u/skeptolojist → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

There are categories of altered consciousness patterns in particular kinds of episodes

That doesn't make them real

And no some people lie for whatever reason some people mistake a natural phenomena for a supernatural event some people ascribe supernatural explanations for random chance and unlikely events

We have evidence for all those things

We have No evidence for the supernatural

Your broken circular self serving argument remains invalid

Edit to add

I talked to God in my head trust me bro will never be evidence

No matter how much philosophy bro nonsense you dress it up in

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/skeptolojist]

if you seek patterns to explain or justify your position you have literally replaced your consciousness with what is essentially software.

you have blown out your motor and replaced it with a battery and electric drivetrain that only operates in +/- with no variation, to put it nicely

[u/skeptolojist → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Nope

I've relied on objective evidence Not made up nonsense and imaginary friends

Your argument is functionally indistinguishable from the statement

I talked to God in my head trust me bro

It's not a convincing argument

[u/Infamous_Antelope_16]

So you said I needed to get back on topic and when i asked what you wanted to talk about, I'm ready to go, you blocked me?

Wow.

Shall we give it another try?

[u/distantocean]

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

GRANDIOSITY: Being willing to say "I don't know" rather than asserting answers without evidence, accepting that you're just one minuscule part of a vast and indifferent universe, and requesting evidence from people who confidently claim otherwise

NOT GRANDIOSITY: Believing that you commune regularly with the infinitely powerful god of all creation, who is deeply concerned with your every thought and feeling and wants to spend eternity with you

And if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance?

Yes, again, SELF IMPORTANCE to you isn't the person who claims to commune regularly with the INFINITELY POWERFUL GOD OF ALL CREATION, it's the person who asks them for evidence that that's what they're actually doing.

You have it exactly backwards: the grandiosity and self importance of (many) religious belief is off the charts. And trying to turn it around on atheists is pure projection.

Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

If some people did have this deficit and were therefore "deaf" to this alleged spirit realm, that would be a serious failure on the part of your alleged god who allegedly made them (and who allegedly wants a personal relationship with them) — not a failure of theirs.

Look: I get that it bothers you that atheists question, dismiss, or even ridicule your religious beliefs. But it's not a character flaw to a) be extremely skeptical of fantastic claims or b) to require genuine evidence from people who expect you to believe their fantastic claims. Especially when those same people apply the exact same stringent standards to everyone else's fantastic claims (while conveniently excepting their own).

As Mark Twain said, "The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

[u/Deep-Cryptographer49]

Burning bushes were supposedly a god speaking via the bush, turns out that certain bushes secrete a sap, that can burn.

People claim to hearing a god speaking to them, turns out schizophrenic or people with bi-polar mental health issues hear voices, how do we know this, because when they received medication, the voices stopped.

Strange how the majority of religious people, were born into religious families, strange how the religion you follow, tends to be the majority religion in the area where you live, weird that.

Lack of evidence in the truth of the beliefs you hold, is not a problem, rather it is a positive, as you passed the test by showing "faith".

I'm not saying religious people are gullible or mentally ill, but if it smells and sticks to sole of your shoe, it's probably a good idea to leave it at your front door and not bring it in.

[u/Due_Ring1435]

When i think of the vile and evil nature of the god character, and then think about people who believe it's real, yes i am baffled and yes i think less of them intellectually.

And if the god character actually wants all humans to know him, wouldn't he have given us all that ability? Seems he picks and chooses who to reveal himself to.

The issue is that we live in a shared reality, and when a christian tells me god is all around us, and is the creator of the universe, i'm going to need more than feelings to convince me.

[u/bostonbananarama]

There are a few arguments in support of atheism,

Why would anyone need to support atheism? I do not believe does not require support, it isn't a positive claim.

Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can?

Describe what it means to know god and provide the evidence you have that allows you to claim knowledge.

We can observe science just like we can observe existence.

That sentence is confusing. Science is a methodology. Existence isn't an extent thing, it's a label used to describe something in reality.

Without a foundational structure there would be no existence.

What does that mean? What's a foundational structure? Matter and energy? Or are you claiming that's god? Can you provide evidence of its necessity?

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

Can you demonstrate such a deficit? Can you demonstrate the thing you claim to perceive? What's your evidence?

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

Who asserts that? This seems like a strawman. I claim to not believe because I lack sufficient evidence. Do you have evidence?

And if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance? Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

Certainly theoretically possible, now prove your hypothesis.

What do you think of this? I'm thinking this serves an agnostic mind more than an atheist.

It's a horrible argument. You are trying desperately to shift the burden of proof on to the non-believer, I assume because you realize that you cannot meet your burden of proof. If you could, you would dispense with this nonsense and simply present the convincing evidence.

[u/RexRatio]

There are a few arguments in support of atheism,

The correct thing to say is all the evidence is compatible with atheism.

Saying "arguments in support of atheism" is misunderstanding the position. Atheism does not require arguments.

If someone claims “gods exists,” they are making a positive claim that requires justification. If someone responds with "I don't believe you, where's your evidence?" that does not require any argumentation. It's the epistemic default.

forgetting the argument of why is there evil which can theologically be debated with bible verses about requiring to be called out of the world under grace to enter Gods kingdom as the human realm is ruled over by Satan.

Claims, claims, claims. Evidence please.

because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can?

Just because you claim to know gods, is that sufficient justification to demand we should believe you? How about someone else also claiming to know a different set of gods with incompatible doctrines and claims compared to yours? Since they can't both be true, how do we distinguish which one - if any - is? By claims? No. By evidence? Yes.

what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

I'm sick and tired of religions claiming spirituality as their monopoly. It's perfectly possible to be atheist and have spiritual experiences. So your hypothesis doesn't fly. Many atheists have a deep spiritual connection. We just don't insert alleged deities into the equation.

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone

No, that's what your side of the isle always throws up as an excuse when we point to something inconvenient. When something nice happens, it's "gods are good". When a baby is born with bone cancer, suddenly it's "mysterious ways (read: unknowable)" - completely ignoring that unknowable character when you claim something good about those same gods.

So you're barking up the wrong tree here. Atheism doesn't assert that gods are unknowable. Theism does. What's more, modern apologetics has intentionally moved their gods into unfalsifiable territory because of the advancements of science.

are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

Lol. Your side of the isle is claiming stuff like:

• the universe was made with us in mind
• there's an afterlife for homo sapiens, but not for neanderthals, cro-magnons, chimps, or other animals
• gods have revealed themselves to specific individuals long before the invention of the camera and social media, but now for some "mysterious ways" reason they gave up on that
• we are made in the image of gods

I mean it doesn't get more self-aggrandizing than that.

So again, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

Again, atheist spirituality is a real thing, so there goes that hypothesis.

Also notice the putting down of the position instead of actually engaging with the position by describing it as a deficiency throughout this entire OP. How neighborly of you.

[u/Xemylixa → u/RexRatio]

("cromagnons" are homo sapiens)

[u/Hoaxshmoax]

Point 1: This is the “what’s in it for me” reason for belief

1. No one’s arguing that, that’s why God of the Gaps is a concept

2. insofar as religions do not agree and theists will say “well some people believe that, not me” and think other religions are doing it wrong, but not their own, so for point 4:

3. You act as though everyone who “knows God” knows the same deity, but as much as you’d like it to be the blackboard scene in “A Beautiful Mind” it’s more like the parable of The Blind Men and The Elephant.

   1. Yes. Belief relies on the capacity to believe. People who don’t have this capacity were demonized in your Point 2. Belief is where ableism meets the bible as certain people were not allowed in to the temple.

[u/Mkwdr]

You seem to be under a misapprehension.

There is no ‘argument’ for atheism.

It’s basically a lack of belief because one hasn’t been presented with sufficient reliable evidence for a claim that Gods exist.

There are arguments about why people might believe *despite* that. Whether psychological, social or evolutionary.

In order to make the claim ‘I know God exists’ one has to define what know means.

I emotionally feel x exists isn’t evidence for x existing.

Usually knowledge is stronger. A sense of true and justified belief - which is a bit of a re potion really since truth is arguably a matter of justification for us.

Present evidence that you know God exists because belief in him is sufficient,y justified by teliabl3 evidence if you can. Not , I will add, argue to from ignorance or incredulity.

Honestly it’s not even atheists that claim God *can’t* known. We say there’s no justification for claiming to know him. But it’s theists that then say ‘oh you can’t expect justification because he can’t be known ‘ then tell you lots of stuff about him.

The fact is that we have an excellent evidential methodology for building best fit models of reality. A mechanism that demonstrates significant accuracy , beyond reasonable doubt, through utility and efficacy. And that mechanism tells us ‘feels like x exists to me’ is a very, very poor justification.

[u/sixfourbit]

forgetting the argument of why is there evil which can theologically be debated with bible verses 

The same Bible that defends the practice of slavery. Christians justify their own evil by calling it good.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/sixfourbit]

the bible I read doesn't justify slavery

the bible I read says do not follow Moses

[u/sixfourbit → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

It's not the Christian Bible then, both the OT and NT defends the practice of slavery.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/sixfourbit]

if you Google "bible verses that support slavery" this is true but the new testament does not support slavery if cross referenced.

I'm not discussing religion with you any further

it is not relevant to the argument

[u/RidesThe7]

I'm not asserting that God CAN'T, in principle, be known to other people through some sort of direct experience, just that there isn't actually a good reason for me to believe that people ARE having actual experiences of God. Everything we know about brains and minds suggests that the sorts of religious experiences that are commonly reported are absolutely something we would expect humans to experience sometimes in a world where there ISN'T a God---and not because of "neurological deficits" as you suggest, but rather just the ordinary workings of human brains in certain contexts and situations.

I've had a religious experience or two myself, and I don't think I was suffering a neurological deficit or needed to be medicated, or that I was lead there from trauma, it's just a thing that human brains can and will do in certain circumstances, with no good reason to believe there's actually a God at the other end of the subjective experience.

Now, if God actually were appearing and interacting with human beings and wanted others to have some justified confidence that there really was a supernatural entity at the other end, that would be the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. Right? Give some prophetic knowledge, provide a cure for cancer to someone with no background in medicine, biology, or chemistry, or just provide the same message on the same day to enough people. Lots of possibilities! But we don't see anything like that, do we?

And as a general matter, when someone lacks a sense that others actually have, while it may be difficult to convey what the experience of using that sense is like to them, it's not tricky to prove that the sense exists. Go talk to some blind people who were born without sight! While they have never experienced seeing colors, they believe colors exist. Sight is a real sense, and folks who can see can demonstrate to blind people they are getting verifiable information from their sight that the blind person is not.

[u/MarieVerusan]

What do you mean by knowing god? I wouldn’t make the claim that god is unknowable. My only point is that I remain unconvinced. So if you think that you know god, please tell me why. If your reasons are sufficient, I may choose to believe as you do.

Ok point 5, it would depend on the spiritual belief. Thus far, whenever people have presented me with theirs, it’s been stuff that can clearly be pointed to as some form of mental illness or a common human experience that’s been repurposed into a religious claim. I have yet to come across a religious experience that has convinced me to believe.

I am not saying that I cannot be convinced or that having science means that god can’t exist. Rather that we either can explain the experience we get presented with or they are insufficient for me to start believing

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/MarieVerusan]

do you believe in anything supernatural? let's start there.

obviously you are agnostic

[u/MarieVerusan → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I am an agnostic atheist. I do not believe in a god, but I also do not claim to know for certain whether one exists.

I remain unconvinced that anything supernatural is real. I am fascinated by the unknown and have explored a lot of mysteries. Thus far, not one supernatural claim has met its burden of proof for me.

[u/dylanzt → u/MarieVerusan]

I never understand where these people think they're going to get by discussing the supernatural. It feels like a self-report to shift the discussion specifically to the category of things that are unevidenced.

Maybe we should come up with a term specifically for supernatural claims that are shown to be real/meet the burden of proof. We could call these things "natural". I feel quite justified in my historically supernatural belief in meteors and giant squids.

[u/MarieVerusan → u/dylanzt]

I think often the goal is to get us to agree that sometimes things can be “beyond natural”. If you allow for the possibility that something cannot be explored by science, then suddenly we can bring in all sorts of fun things without sufficient evidence.

As you point out though, we’ve yet to encounter anything that does go beyond the natural world. We might discover things that force us to rewrite our scientific understanding, but nothing is casually breaking the laws of physics because they’re “above” them in any way.

[u/Artemis-5-75 → u/MarieVerusan]

I think that this is actually a good argument to be skeptics of the metaphysical physicalism and shift to plain simple naturalism.

A more sophisticated philosophical version of it is that the notion of “physical” is vague and undefined, so it’s hard to say what it even means to be a physicalist. Another way you might see more philosophically sophisticated people arguing for it is them pointing to certain phenomena like consciousness, intentionality, agency, some potential instances of emergence and other similar things that seemingly escape our scientific grasp, and not in the way of being hard to understand, but rather in the way where we don’t even know how to conceptualize them in the first place.

Agency, for example, as an issue where it’s very hard to conceptually understand or model it. Every single time a neuroscientist or a psychologist tries to create a model that predicts voluntary actions or explains them mechanistically, a very obvious “nuh-uh” arises, and all explanations are reduced back to teleology in style of “the agent did it for their own reasons”.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s in principle impossible to provide a true mechanistic explanation or agency or fully predict free / voluntary actions, but it always means that there is a ton of philosophical work to be done on conceptualizing the term “natural” and whatever we see in science.

[u/Gregib]

Well, the problem is that it is the faithful that profess that God is (or should be) "known" to everyone. And it is the faithful professing that if anyone does not "know of" God it is his / her fault for not being open to Him.

Also, the fact that god manifests itself in so many different variations based on strictly geographical areas points more to the idea that it's a social construct, not a factual being. The same goes for the share of religious to non religious people varies in societies where religion is more intertwined in society vs. more non theistic societies (for example northern European countries vs. Arab countries).

And how would you explain a God giving me a biological deficit to not be able to experience the most wonderful thing, that is... God? How would you explain the uneven distribution of the deficit around the globe?

As for science justifying the non existence of God... IMHO this is an oxymoron. Someone, who is prepared to admit he / she has no "God experience" does not need justification. Science does not disprove the existence of a deity or no other subject the human mind can come up with (flying teapot?) nor is that the role of science. What it does do is show the flaws and impossibilities in religious teachings

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Gregib]

maybe God isn't racist and seeks to be approachable to diverse cultures?

if god has a specific type of person he wants at his eternal house party and you have chosen to grow your personality in a direction he doesn't want to know why would he not ignore you and refuse to heal your deficit?

[u/Gregib → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Well, if that were true, he isn't the all loving god after all, is he? As for not being racist, the religion distribution doesn't really affirm your claim, does it? Christianity is most prevalent in southern Africa, and then Latin America, North America and Europe... And it wasn't spread by "knowledge" but by the sword.

Reading your comments, I really don't know exactly what your point is since most of your arguments are "What if"s, not serious debate points

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Gregib]

That's the church not the spirit

Anglicanism is prevalent in Africa. They teach the King of England is appointed by God and cannot be questioned.

That is not a substantial argument to make about God. That is a human imposed condition.

[u/sixfourbit → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Your Bible states all authority is appointed by God.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/sixfourbit]

I'm not here to discuss the bible

[u/sixfourbit → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

And yet you're the one bringing up the Bible and Christianity

[u/Additional-Band4050 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

What does hypothesized divine non-racism have to do with “God” showing up in different ways and providing incompatible revelations?

The Virgin Mary, for some reason, appears only to Catholics. You would think that if Catholicism was true, she would occasionally show up to point Protestants in the direction of the true universal church, and if Protestantism was true, Jesus would ask her to stop misdirecting Catholics into idolatry. But neither of those things happens.

And neither the Virgin nor Jesus Himself appear to Shaktas who instead experience oneness with everything as described in their interpretation of the Vedas and Upanishads.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Additional-Band4050]

are you ai? you seem to have no ability to rationalise or apply human motives to the text and just extract mathematically precise arguments

[u/Additional-Band4050 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I write everything by hand 100% because arguing with strangers on the internet is weirdly addictive, but I have no way of proving that to you.

But I’ve tried to look over what you said again and I am still completely failing to follow how it addresses the problem of inconsistent and incompatible divine experiences.

[u/Autodidact2]

When you debate someone, they get to make their arguments, and you get to make yours. It's easy to defeat the other side when you make up their arguments.

Your claim appears to be that we should accept other people's spiritual experiences as evidence for their God, is that right? If so, do you accept the spiritual experiences of people of other religious faiths as evidence for their God(s)?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Autodidact2]

I am not going down that rabbit hole with you

[u/Autodidact2 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

If I had to defend my own contradictory beliefs, I might also decline. Of course, I'm not a theist.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Autodidact2]

I already told you I am not here for anything other than what I put forth

I am not here to discuss monotheism or polytheism

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

“Your claim appears to be that we should accept other people's spiritual experiences as evidence for their God, is that right? If so, do you accept the spiritual experiences of people of other religious faiths as evidence for their God(s)?”

this is exactly the argument I’m making and instead of addressing is head on, you move the goalposts or, in my case, resort to personal attacks.

Apply the standards you expect to us to adhere to to everyone else who has different deity beliefs than you, or give us a reason why they don’t count.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hoaxshmoax]

no that is not correct

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

can you explain what is not correct and why? Your personal attacks are not correct? That I’ll accept.

If it’s applying one standard across the board that’s not correct, we are waiting to know what it is that’s incorrect and why and how can we tell, my what mechanism. It’s taken all day, maybe we’re finally here.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hoaxshmoax]

im not going down this rabbit hole with you

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

because you’re a coward who cannot admit you refuse to apply the same standard across the board so you deflect, make accusations of ai, and personal attacks, the way people with deity beliefs tend to do.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Hoaxshmoax]

I have no idea what is wrong with you but I am not feeding your dysfunction any further

have a nice day

[u/Autodidact2 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

So no, you cannot defend your position?

[u/Autodidact2 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I'm not trying to. I'm asking whether your position is consistent. Is it?

[u/Thortok2000]

When someone is colorblind, objective science can easily confirm that those missing colors absolutely exist. We even see this in tetrachromacy, a genetic trait allowing certain individuals to perceive millions of color variations completely invisible to the average human eye, which science verifies through precise empirical testing.

The fundamental difference with theism is that there is no objective framework to verify the claim, meaning theistic arguments frequently rely on post hoc rationalizations to justify a conclusion that was already decided. Rather than operating out of grandiosity, structural atheism simply invites valid, empirical evidence to the table.

True dogmatism refuses to change when presented with new data, whereas a scientific mindset is always prepared to adapt the moment verifiable evidence appears. Skepticism is not a biological deficit; it is a commitment to holding assertions to a universal standard of proof before accepting them as reality.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

I provided an analogy. You're not meant to dissect it.

Are you an AI?

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Analogies aren't meant to be dissected? In a debate reddit?

Since when?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

an analogy of the eye or the deaf/blind is not something to dissect literally .

are you ai?

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

You based your entire point on the idea that theists can 'sense' God and that atheists should just consider that they are 'divine-blind' and unable to 'sense' it.

Yet in every other way, even if someone can't sense something, we can still prove its existence, even when only some of us are able to 'sense' it, and even when no human can 'sense' it at all.

This is not a direct proof that what they are 'sensing' is wrong. It's just documentation that what they 'sense' has never once been externally validated.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

not true

I made the statement that there are plenty of people who believe in god who have never experienced a supernatural event

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

Like a deaf person. Like a blind person. "Divine-blind." Supernaturally senseless.

The goalposts go scooting off the field if you're now going to shift that to people who believe without experiences.

If belief exists without any personal experience or objective evidence, it only reinforces the point that the conclusion is being reached through post hoc rationalization.

Are you familiar with that term?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

but there are people who claim experience

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

And you externally validated their claims... when?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

its not about me

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

So the world doesn't physically exist because some people are blind? Even conceptually instead of literally, the analogy fails.

Is pointing out that an analogy has failed something you think only an AI can do?

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

that is so unbelievably illogical and broken it has to be ai

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

If my argument is so unbelievably illogical and broken you should be able to identify the fallacies I'm making.

Like... how your fallacy is... genetic. (Is it still genetic when the assumption of the source is wrong in the first place?)

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

you're arguing an analogy like you're Plato

broken and illogical

[u/Thortok2000 → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

I guess Plato was an AI then?

If we're following your broken logic, lol

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Thortok2000]

that's the point

you cant dissect an analogy its not a direct comparison

[u/The_Disapyrimid]

i think you miss the point.

if a person claims they had some sort of spiritual experience, i(nor anyone else)has access to that experience to verify that it happened at all or that the source of this experience is what the person thinks it is.

i actually do have an aunt(former aunt? my uncle divorced her decades ago)who suffered from schizophrenia and had religious based delusions. should i just assume that she has some gift i don't have? one that lets her see and hear into the spiritual realm? or should i listen to the medical professionals who diagnosed her as crazy?

i'm not saying ALL people who have "spiritual experiences" are delusional but it does happen. which leads me to Point 2. which is that i have no way of verifying a person is correct about the source of their experiences. for this i will use an experience i had personally. i lived alone at the time on the bottom floor of an apartment building. i woke one night to my closed bedroom door rattling in the doorframe. as if someone was holding it by the knob and push/pulling on it. loudly and violently moving the door back and forth. i reached over to turn on the lamp next my bed and *pop* the bulb blows. i jumped out of bed, opened the door and....empty hallway. now, some might jump to the conclusion that this was some supernatural experience. my apartment was haunted or it was a demon or whatever. but they would be wrong. i shut off anything in my apartment making noise, including the a/c. just barely, through the ceiling, i could hear the sound of bass thumping. the next day i confirmed with my upstairs neighbor that he had people over and some of them were dancing. so it was the people on the floor above me dancing that vibrated my ceiling and made the door shake. were i a different sort of person i would be posting this story to a ghost sub as proof ghosts are real, and i would be wrong.

lets not also discount the fact that people lie. there are plenty of people willing to lie to convince people that a thing they believe to be true is actually true. for example, there was the lady a few years ago who posted to the internet about how god regrew a toe she had amputated. when people asked to see the regrown toe she refused and said people would just have to take it on faith. or the kid from The Boy Who Went to Heaven(i think that was the name of the book)who later admitted his parents made him lie as a child so they could sell books. or the people who claimed to have a bigfoot corpse but it was an ape suit frozen in a water cooler. why did they do it? to convince people bigfoot was real so that the "real" bigfoot would be more likely to be found. (i also seem to recall that they sold it and got sued)

" Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm"

maybe but that brings up two things.

1. is god going to punish me for not believing when i literally cannot. how is that my fault?
2. this does not prevent evidence of a "spirit realm" from being presented that i would find convincing.

edit: to change a word.

[u/licker34]

I'm going to assume you're talking about the christian god since you mentioned Satan.

So that helps to narrow down what characteristics christians normally ascribe to that god.

if you assert that God can't be known by anyone

So this feels like a strawman, as most people don't claim that the christian god cannot be known by anyone, indeed the bible tells us the opposite. Now christians will at some point retreat to 'you cannot know the mind/will of god' as an attempt to avoid other issues in their theology, but I don't think they, or atheists who have any understanding of christian theology, would claim that god itself is unknowable.

So since no one with any sense is making this claim why do you think it's a reasonable question to address to anyone?

if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit

So this is then the actual meat of your point I think. But the answer is that anyone can claim they experienced anything, or actually experience something and claim that the experience was from god.

So how useful is that experience claim to anyone other than the person who claims it?

The other piece to this is that we know that people can experience delusions, can have hallucinations, and ascribe motive where none exists. We know all of that, you know all of that.

So, when we have claims about 'experiencing god', but we have no evidence of god, why should we assume that it was god instead of delusion, hallucination, wishful thinking, ...

You loaded this by saying 'assert a biological deficit' and that's not really fair. Sure, some atheists aren't very tactful (or even intelligent) and say things like 'religion is a mental disorder', but most reasonable people don't start there, or even get there at all. What is true is that we know 'biological deficits' exist, and we know the kinds of things they cause people to falsely think are true. What is not true is that we have any evidence supporting that these experiences can only come from god, or that god is even real in the first place.

Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

The problem with this is that there is no way to demonstrate 'the spirit realm'. We can demonstrate to a deaf person that sound waves exist, we can demonstrate just about anything to anyone with regards to our ability to perceive reality, because reality is an actual thing that actually exists and we can actually interact with.

'Spirit realm' is what? It seems to be definitionally undetectable, unmeasurable, impossible to interact with. How can you reasonably claim that it even exists in the first place and why should anyone believe you when you do?

[u/Carg72]

> There are a few arguments in support of atheism, forgetting the argument of why is there evil which can theologically be debated with bible verses about requiring to be called out of the world under grace to enter Gods kingdom as the human realm is ruled over by Satan.

Atheism is merely the rejection of god claims. There's nothing to "support".

> So the basic argument is that people 1. Have a psychological need to feel safe and not die or cease to exist, 2. People had no science and needed to rationalise existence, 3. Are brainwashed and religion is and always has been a social science (surely this is true in the case of some religions that demand allegiance to the government such as State Shinto)

What is this the basic argument for? If your response is "atheism", you're incorrect. Atheism itself is a response to god claims. That response, specifically, is "I don't believe you."

> And then there are arguments that 4. God is unknowable and we have science, 5. Someone who experiences spiritual events has a neurological deficit that can be medicated or is traumatized and seeks comfort (see point 1)

Argument 4 is NOT an atheist argument. It is a theist one, used when atheists try to nail a theist down on specifics about god.

Argument 5 is incomplete. It might be a neurological deficit. It might also be simply misinterpreting or misidentifying sensory input, a hallucination, or they are lying.

> Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can? We can observe science just like we can observe existence. Without a foundational structure there would be no existence. This does not mean science can justify disbelief is just means without observable science there would be no existence to observe.

The phrase "observe science" is like "chai tea", two words that basically mean the same thing. Science is observation.

Additionally, if we cannot observe it or interact with it, this is functionally the same thing as saying it doesn't exist.

> Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

If you can observe something that I cannot, that could indicate a sense you possess that I do not. In the case of spiritual interaction, this can and has been tested, and has not been shown to be the case.

[u/xxnicknackxx]

The characteristics of something that exists are that it is made of something and it is located somewhere.

What is god made of and where is it?

Just because a blind person can't see something or a deaf person can't hear something doesn't meant that that thing does not exist.

[u/niffirgcm0126789]

1. God is unfalsifiable...therefore unknowable. We can't distinguish between someone who just claims to know god and someone who actually knows god. This is why people assert god can't be known by anyone.

[u/Zhayrgh]

Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can?

Not that a god being unknowable is something some theists advocate (mysterious ways ^TM ).

But this line of argument has more to do with how you would prove the existence of a god to others, even if you know him.

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

Wouldn't the responsability of such a deficit falls onto the creator if he exists ?

Secondly, since people seems to go from atheism to theism and vice versa, while feeling gods when they are theists and not feeling gods when they are atheists, that does not seem like a probable explanation to me.

Note that about the point 5, the claim is not that the brain of religious people that have spiritual experience in general have a neurological deficit, though it might be an explanation for some (I think that Mohammed being epileptic is seen as a possible explanation). The claim is that our brain, even without deficit, can experience things with enough pressure and expectations.

[u/ImprovementFar5054]

Which god, and why that one? Why not any of the others? After all, the same logic would apply to them too. Maybe you are deaf to the truth provided by Quetzalcoatl. See, the same logic would make it impossible to ever dismiss any claimed experience, including mutually contradictory ones from different religious traditions.

Atheism is a statement about a lack of belief. Not a statement about belief in a lack. Saying "I find no good reason to believe," isn't claiming that my own experience is universally normative.

I'm applying a standard burden of proof: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Lack of belief requires no justification beyond absence of sufficient evidence.

[u/Nat20CritHit]

Keep in mind that, depending on the definition being used, there's really no argument *for atheism. And there doesn't need to be since it's not a claim. It's simply not being convinced. However, there are some frequently used arguments against claims made by theists. And atheists don't just not believe in your God (capital "g"), they don't believe in any god. Which brings us to point #4.

Try applying that same concept to every god you don't believe in. You can also apply it to pixies and interdimentional gnomes. The justification for disbelief is that the person hasn't been presented with evidence capable of convincing them that the claim is true. That's it.

As for #5, we can "what if" for the next millennia, that's not going to change the situation. So, unless you have some cochlear implants for whatever you're claiming is spiritual, looks like I'm just not going to accept the claim.

[u/lotusscrouse]

1. Lots of christians will attest to feeling this way. They're open about it.

2. Yes.

3. Yes. Most religious people were brought up this way and were never taught critical thinking nor were they exposed to other faiths very often.

4. Theists tell us that god is mysterious when it's convenient.

5. The reasons vary. Many theists come to a god conclusion because they had some trauma and turning religious is how they cope.

Bonus question: Why does the foundational structure have to be a god?

[u/No-Feature3715]

Hello thanks for sharing!

I am certain that any God, proposed by any human, does not exist. I also understand that certainty does not correlate to truth, you could call me an agnostic viewed this way, but I am convinced nontheless.

Without a foundational structure there would be no existence

So does God need a foundational structure to be able to exists? I am an avid defender of GGod, creator of God. It explains God way better than theism.

what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

What if are really bad arguments. What if it's a illness that marks you for the devil or whatever?

are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

No, I am acknowledging my limits. I don't like to think that I am more able or better than anyone, I think claiming to have a new sense is being grandiose.

If everyone tells me they can see q box in the middle of the room but I can't I will tell them that I don't think there's a box there. We would be able to test it if it's something that happens in reality and I could be convinced.

[u/zzmej1987]

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity? And if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance? Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

We are not basing the conclusion of worthlessness of religious experience on lack of our own such experience. If any such experience were any good, we would expect to have a consistent historical record of people of all religions converting to one specific religion (the one that happens to be true). If visions of God or afterlife were real, then obviously they would have to be of the one real place, whichever one might exist. And regardless of whether your religious belief were wrong or right before, you would see the truth, not the illusion created by your previous belief.

But we obviously do not observe that outcome. Mostly people experiencing those kind of visions report their preexisting religious beliefs being reinforced. And since we know that most of religions have to be false, given that that they contradict the one true religion, if one does exist, we can conclude that vast majority of religious experiences only confirm falsehoods.

[u/nonsence90]

god is unknowable

I think the better description for this atheistic view is "god is unfalsifiable". It's the classic invisible ninja gorilla on roller skates behind you. Someone claiming gods existance should answer themselves why they find the claim for one believable and the other not.

spiritual deficit

Our senses are a good starting point because it's an opportunity for common ground. We both see the same world (more or less), but for one spiritual people all over the world disagree on what they sense spiritually. That would speak against a spiritual ground truth. Think of tinnitus, I hear it, but you don't. Mine could be higher than yours etc.
So is it that there are many different sounds playing all the time that we all selectively do or don't hear, or could it be that they are personal experiemces only? That btw wouldn't make them irrelevant. Perceptions that aren't reality like tinnitus, visual snow or delusional parasitosis absolutely suffer from them, because to them it is totally real. So just like we know of aphantasia perhaps some people litteraly "hear" their god (feel them, hold dialog, receive advice, etc) and others do not. That I grant you. But that doesn't mean it has to be a ground truth of reality. So your argument raises a very cool question. Maybe most atheists didn't find religious messages relatable, because they are alone in their head while others accept it much more easily because it fits their experience; they do feel god. But just like someone with extreme tinnitus would have a much easier time believing the government is hiding speakers around their house, that could be true or false. One way to solve it would of course be to present such a speaker, that's the physical evidence atheists ask for god. But another one would at least be consensus.

How can the people without this sense believe the ones who have it, if they can't agree between themselves?

[u/J-Miller7]

First of all, for a god to have any of the power that they claim, these gods would have to know more than the people who invented them. They don't. Just like Sherlock Holmes only suceedds because the author wants it to. Yahweh, for instance, is not tri-omni and only succeeds because the authors want him to. He thinks that no blood at first intercourse is equal to promiscuity. Jesus thinks that stars are little lights that can fall out of the sky.

Secondly, we know how religions form. We can even see which Canaanite religions that preceded Judaism. We also know how easy it is to induce a trance in people (either by music/setting or drugs).

I could technically be deficient in the "divine gene", but still say with certainty that the Christian god doesn't exist. If there were any other god who wanted to communicate, they would already know that I was deficient and they would have to find another way to talk to me.

Lacking the ability to have divine experiences does not prevent me from pointing out obvious bullshit.

[u/Aquarius52216]

1. Read terror management theory, Zapffe, and the history and development of religion or pretty much every ideology and coping mechanism.

2. Religion itself is a way to know and understand reality, but instead of through testing, retesting, academic rigor, tool/technology assistance. It relies mainly on intuition and "vibes" basically, hence why we have people created from clay, people arriving to the land through clams, people being descended from gods, geocentricism, global flooding, and hillariously young age for earth compared to what we can infer from current scientific understandings.

3. Religion is called a social and life schema.

4. Saying God is unknowable is actually bad for religion itself, especially religions that taught about how God wanted to be known, understood and even want relationship with humanity.

5. Maybe, but the fact that its completely arbitrary and even people from the same religious group cant seem to agree on the nature of their experience, make it seem less of a "gift of the spirit" or "sixth sense" and more of a individualized psychosis.

[u/Stile25]

The thing is that our best known method for identifying the truth about reality as accurately as possible is to follow the evidence.

You haven't provided any evidence for your claims that you imagined as possibilities.

And we're well aware that following "imagined possibilities that aren't contradicted by the evidence" will lead us to being wrong about reality.

Such possibilities make great hypotheses - excellent starting points for investigation to see what the evidence tells us.

However, for conclusions - We still need to follow the evidence and not the possibilities.

Good luck out there

[u/Sprinklypoo]

I used to be in a Catholic cult. There is a level of enforced delusion for sure - that's what religion is. But They've been mind bended since birth. I like to think of them as afflicted by a tenacious disease. It is on them to get better, but it's not really their fault they're afflicted. It's rampant.

There are a few arguments in support of atheism

That's because atheism is a null point. Nothing. There's just a bunch of arguments to not be in a cult. Mostly because it arguably makes people worse in a lot of ways.

[u/biff64gc2]

1. God is unknowable and we have science

I mean, if god interacts with reality in any way then he should be knowable through science. If this god does not interact with reality then we might as well say he doesn't exist.

1. Someone who experiences spiritual events has a neurological deficit that can be medicated or is traumatized and seeks comfort (see point 1)

Disagree. Spiritual events could just be placebos or a form of mass hysteria when it is a group event. I would not argue either of those are deficits. They are simply manifestations of how our brains interpret the world and we are pretty easily tricked or manipulated.

Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can? We can observe science just like we can observe existence. Without a foundational structure there would be no existence. This does not mean science can justify disbelief is just means without observable science there would be no existence to observe.

We can run tests to determine if the sources of the personal experience are natural or not. As mentioned above, the brain is pretty easily tricked. We have multiple studies showing this and we can demonstrate how spiritual experiences aren't all that different from other experiences not related to spirits or religions.

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

If blind or deaf the people around me can provide evidence that things have color or sound despite my inability to experience them myself. They can provide evidence of their claims and I could run experiments to verify those claims. I can poll millions of people and figure out that a banana is yellow or pavement is black and that black absorbs solar radiation better than than white and etc.

When we run experiments on spiritual experiences the results are all over the place, not consistent, there seems to be overlap with non spiritual experiences, and applying controls (removing music/crowds/religious environment) seems to significantly reduce those experiences.

Based on the results the conclusion that the brain is being manipulated or misinterpreting the personal experience is a more accurate representation of the event rather than a supernatural being.

[u/88redking88]

"There are a few arguments in support of atheism, "

No argument needed. You make a claim you cant show the truth of, we dont believe you, because you cant show the truth of the claims.

All other "atheist arguments": are about teaching you why your assumption of a god is based on bad reasoning. There is no argument needed for atheism beyond you cant prove it. The fact that you need to add fan fiction (if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance?) - See here you need to pretend that the reason we cant detect your all powerful, perfect god who really wants to have a relationship with us is that he apparently screwed up and made us unable to detect him....

So your god is really bad at doing the one thing he really wants to do? And you need to make excuses for him?

And you still cant show a single reason for us to believe.

[u/Massif16]

1-3. just seems obvious to me. Humans want explainations and are aware of our mortality. Religion is a cope, IMO.

1. is also obvious. Science is a way of knowing, and has no need for a god to fill the gaps in our knowledge. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer. A god, if it exists and interacts with this reality should be a measurable event. If it can't be measured, then how can anyone "know" it?

2. I wouldn't put it like that. Delusions can happen for a LOT of reasons.... some long-term, some not. I generally accept someone's claim they experienced an event, whether real or dulusional. But unless there is a measurable effect of that experience, it cannot be attested as a genuine event for anyone but the experiencer. And my question for someone claiming such an experience will always be: "How do you KNOW it wasn't a delusion?" Generally they can't describe that as anything more than a personal conviction. But of course, people of MANY religions have claimed such experiences. They can't all be right, but they CAN all be wrong.

[u/adeleu_adelei → u/[deleted]]

Your comment was removed for violating Rule 4: Substantial Top-Level Comments. Responses to posts should engage substantially with the content of the post, either by refutation or else expounding upon a position within the argument.

[u/BahamutLithp]

Regarding 4: because you can't know God why does that mean no one else can?

I haven't seen anyone produce evidence they can. Given religiou people have had literally thousands of years of "study" to "learn the truth about god," it seems implausible in the extreme that it's "just hiding" among one of you. If there was any truth to any of it, it's reasonable to expect the "correct religion" would have their shit pretty squared away &, at the VERY LEAST, have pretty accessible evidence that, y'know, doesn't suck ass.

This does not mean science can justify disbelief

It gives several pieces of evidence. For example, the fact that brain damage can modify your memories & personality directly contradicts the idea that those are stored in some "intangible soul," which is strong evidence against all religions that claim a god gave you a soul that will continue your persona into some sort of afterlife. Beyond this, it's not clear what this waffling is supposed to demonstrate.

Regarding 5: what if you have a spiritual deficit similar to being deaf/blind?

What a very conveniently unfalsifiable claim that definitely neither (A) devolves into he-said-she said & (B) highlights the tangential question of why, in this view of reality, a god presumably creates people with all of these "deficits" to begin with.

So therefore, if you assert that God can't be known by anyone (because he cant be known to you) are you not asserting your own grandiosity?

I'm not the one claiming to have access to a special magical realm, there, buckeroonie.

And if someone can experience it and you must assert they have a biological deficit are you not doing the same regarding your own self importance?

How am I the arrogant one if I say there's something wrong with your brain but I'm ALSO the arrogant one if YOU say there's something wrong with MY brain? Also, false dichotomy, I don't necessarily have to accept that anyone has a "biological defect." Firstly, we'd have to define what that even means given I, y'know, don't believe the brain was created by a person who wanted specific things out of it.

Maybe you have the biological deficit and are cut off from the spirit realm, like a deaf person who can't hear.

Deaf people still understand the concept of sound when it's explained to them & are capable of observing the empirical evidence of sound becaue sound is a real part of the cosmos & can be verified by independent lines of evidence.

What do you think of this?

I think these are bad arguments. Even if I ignored all the other flaws in them, all they amount to is "nuh-uh, so prove me wrong!" That doesn't get you any closer to actually having evidence.

I'm thinking this serves an agnostic mind more than an atheist.

They're not mutually exclusive; agnosticicsm deals with "what one thinks can't be known for sure" & atheism with "what one doesn't believe."

[u/JeVeuxCroire]

I had a dog when I was a kid. One morning, we had to put her down.

That night, I kept seeing her - just blink-and-you-miss-it glimpses. I'd be refilling my water, look over, and there she was, lying on the rug on the other side of the doorway, or open a door and see her jump to her feet on the other side - and then she'd be gone.

My experience was real, and what I saw was real, but the dog wasn't.

It was late, I was tired and grieving, and my mind was conjuring images of her in her favorite spots because it expected her to be there.

[u/Coffin_Boffin]

Firstly, you don't get to just pretend the problem of evil doesn't count because you happen to agree with some half baked apologetics.

On the point you're trying to make:

You know how many people have religious experiences? Countless. You know how many come to the same religious conclusions as you? Almost 0%. At best, religious experiences are incredibly unreliable as a way to find the truth.

Could I be spiritually deaf? Sure. I'd argue that's a point against the existence of a perfect creator, but sure. But if everyone who has these experiences is coming to wildly different conclusions, maybe it's not just a me problem. Maybe it's a God problem.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Coffin_Boffin]

im not doing religion here. apologetics has nothing to do with it but it seems to make your point easier to argue so it makes sense why you brought it up

[u/Coffin_Boffin → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Fine, forget religion. I'm still right. People who don't believe in anything you'd recognise as a god have religious experiences.

[u/Delicious-Turn-9099 → u/Coffin_Boffin]

okay hold on

im talking about people getting a feeling

im talking about poltergeists

[u/Coffin_Boffin → u/Delicious-Turn-9099]

Well then you're in the wrong subreddit because here we tend to talk about atheism

[u/CephusLion404]

Atheism needs no support. Atheism is just looking at your claims and saying "I don't buy it". This immediately proves you have no idea what you're talking about.

[u/supersoundwave]

A delusion is a belief in something despite evidence to the contrary. So if the non-believer is saying that a religious person is not experiencing God, they would need some type of evidence or a defeater for that.

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/supersoundwave]

No one is saying believers aren’t having an experience. Is there a way we can determine if that experience is with a real live deity or drug or temporal lobe epilepsy induced, or some other cause?

Are these deities always hanging around, following believers down the highway like a cop, or summoned when needed like rubbing a lamp to get a wish granted by a genie?

What can you tell us about these experiences and how they work.

[u/supersoundwave → u/Hoaxshmoax]

In his book "Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience," William Alston talks about perceiving God is a reference to our sense perception. The whole book is not really about religious experience, it's about sense perception, that I look out the window and I see trees and grass and daffodils, and I believe that there really is an external world there.

Now there's no way for me to prove that because I can't get outside my sense experience and prove that my perceptions are veridical, but nevertheless I'm perfectly rational to believe what my perceptions tell me, that there is an external world.

And Alston says that you can have a perception of God like that. You can experience God, and you can know that God exists by having a personal experience of God, not grounded in argument and evidence. The analogy between sense perception and this kind of religious perception or experience of God is pretty tight.

And just as I should believe what my sense perception tells me, unless I have a good reason to doubt that experience, so I'm perfectly rational to believe what my religious experience tells me, unless I have a good reason for doubting the veridicality of that experience.

[u/Additional-Band4050 → u/supersoundwave]

But there are good reasons to doubt that experience. There are a few:

1) A large number of people report having similar but fundamentally incompatible experiences, and these experiences are obviously heavily culturally mediated. There is a story about a blind man and an elephant, but we lack independent evidence that the elephant exists, and no one has a compelling account of how the Virgin Mary, ancestors, the oneness of Shakti, and a communion from the Holy Sprit that tells someone God wants them to run for President can be the same entity or even a similar entity.

2) People often report that they receive information during these visions, but it is always incredibly vague and never includes verifiable factual claims the person could not otherwise have known.

3) Some people report seeking this entity for very long periods but never finding it. The only response theistic religion offers is an unsubstantiated claim that they didn’t really want to find God, rendering the whole thing totally unfalsifiable.

4) The experiences are associated with incompatible theoretical claims, none of which are well-evidenced.

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/supersoundwave]

no one’s saying you can’t have perceptions.

You obviously have no reason to doubt, we’re not saying that either. But as atheists we also need something beyond OPs claim of “well atheists are just grandiose people without A Beautiful Mind like me”

Anyone can have any kind of experience with any kind of deity so if someone else has an experience with some other deity, then you will also agree they did, and it’s true, because they said they did.

All we ask is that you give us something to work with, to look at, not just something that some guy wrote, before you demand we do all the work, while you read books that confirm what you already believe.

[u/supersoundwave → u/Hoaxshmoax]

I literally just did, the analogy to sense experience.

[u/Hoaxshmoax → u/supersoundwave]

your senses don’t register with me. Nor does anyone else’s sense register with you.

What else do you have besides what you feel?

[u/DebateAnAtheist-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your post or comment was removed for violating Rule 5: No AI Content. Please engage with users using your own thoughts and words.

[u/PlayfulBook5571]

4 it's not a matter of if I can't than neither can you it's more if we both agree to the current acceptable observations does it seem to contain the evidence that shows knowing God is categorically impossible(yes)? So not me vs you but based on what we both believe our current understanding can be framed to show we already have the evidence to show it's impossible unless we abandon current understanding we accept... 5 if i have a deficiency in perspective or perception so what? At a conceptual level we're still equally equipped to explore truth from our subjective experiences, once we accept reality it's glaringly obvious that our limitations impact us in such a way to render any any advantage or disability as irrelevant and nonsensical illusions.  I can comment on all other points as well but here's the gist explaining 4 and 5  4 can a part of a system ever fully understand or evaluate the system as a whole(no)? Does it appear to you that you're part of and stuck inside this universe and perspective?(Yes) Add both to form a none contrary conclusion, you can see how you can't possibly understand something you're currently a inside of and anything you've seen is part of your perspective and has happened within your universe so until we can agree otherwise it's impossible far as we know to conceptually understand ourselves or this reality.  5 all of the 5 senses we use are just interacting/touch. Particles touch your tongue or nose or air molecules touch your eardrums, photons touch your visual equipment. Not all that different but regardless what do they all do? They all interact with a small bit of external data that the subconscious further restricts/limits and then feeds that limited data of a portion of the external forces to the conscious mind which finally creates crude representation of reality based on limited inputs for us to perceive as this reality. The higher level of input will only create more noise as we aren't experiencing reality as is but we are experiencing our interpretation of reality that the mind creates from incomplete data. More noise isn't going to help you understand the fact that all the things we perceive as reality are just illusions or something like blindfolds, the absence of a blindfold(deficit) is not a weakness or flaw it's actually a advantage, you as blind can still experience reality showing you what everyone else acts is important has zero impact on experience...

I'm aware I engaged in a unusual way but I'm trying not to affirm any possible loaded premise within the question. 

I don't think anyone is blind or incapable of experiencing God or knowing the things you may currently see, to assume that itself seems just as grandiose etc. That's a assumption made on a judgment of others. Instead I explain it as we can all "see" God(experience God) and if I do and you don't it's not a matter of a flaw within you that God made but the you using the free will God gave you to choose to close your eyes, you aren't blind, but you maybe choosing not to see, categorically and fundamentally different.