love this discussion!!
But here's a small question directed at atheists:doesn't it take faith to be an atheist? It seems that faith is derided by most atheists, but it takes faith to believe that all that is real can be fully perceived and known by humans. Unless you acknowledge that there could be some higher spiritual reality, I don't see how it can't be faith to be assured in oneself without proof.
I'm not trying to insult atheists, I just wanna see what their take on this would be.
Well, I'd like to thank the member for Forks for their question, let me firstly begin by saying:
If you read through the last two pages, even Iron has agreed faith has an irrational basis. Atheist's pride themselves purely on rationality- so your argument then becomes, is it irrational to believe in pure rationality? A whole new philosophical debate regarding 'what is rationality' arises, which I need to think well upon. I would say this though- if we are going to make the assumption that there is no 'full' amount of rationality, then we are saying there is degrees of rationality and so forth it follows that it is
more rational for the atheist to believe in no-god then it is to do so (as kindly expressed by the poster above me).
As Iron also said- "faith...is a leap beyond reason". If reason is explained fully to the Atheist by what they observe and 'prove' through the logical, scientific method then why would they have any motivation to take that ‘leap’? For some reason- I think what your saying is- does it take faith in your self to reject religion, because of the
fear that you may be wrong? Well, I would say that 'fear' is simply the theist's fear- as the true atheist would not be able to comprehend having such fear, just as most mature, rational humans have no fear after hearing a scary story, as they simply rationalise- "It's not true, go to sleep". By definition, if what you were saying was correct wouldn't all theists’ then 'fear' that they have chosen the right path to have 'faith' in? As under each major religion, the 'punishment' to "non-believers" (which includes Christian's/Jews/Eastern Religions and Atheist's in the same boat, if we are taking for e.g. an Islamic perspective) is no eternal afterlife.
Lastly, any atheist can perfectly rationalise that they choose not to believe because there is no evidence in front of them to prove the hypothesis proposed. If the hypothesis that God exists is actually correct, and within our life time, science never gets to answer that for us, then we can be comfortable with the fact that the God who might be discovered might also have nothing to do with the God proposed by all current religions, putting theists in the same boat anyway.
Also don’t theistic beliefs teach that God is an all-loving and forgiving entity anyway and hence if he gave us free-will, we technically should be able to exercise that to our best ability and even if we don't reach the correct conclusion about him, we should still be let into this "heaven" concept. A god that knows the future, creates a human (whom he knows is not going to believe or who will be ostracized based on their sexuality) and punishes them for it (even though it’s his fault, not their there’s from a logical standpoint) sounds like an ultimately cruel and sadistic entity. In fact, how can you guarantee he would not have more respect for atheist's for being individuals as opposed to the millions of theist's who simply "believe" out of selfish fear anyway whilst concurrently "sinning", quite often more then most atheists?
Overall, an admirable but easily dismissed question.