Dear Curious Ji,
Finally I've got some time to respond to your intriguing post.
Atheism means without God, it does not mean you KNOW that we are without God. You cannot KNOW we are without God
You are absolutely correct. We cannot KNOW that something does not exist, and god falls into this category. It would be unscientific to simply say that we are 100% positive there is no god. At the same time, however, we cannot KNOW that the pink unicorn does not exist, right? We cannot prove negatives like that. We can prove positives (I can prove that some apples are green), disprove positives (I can disprove the claim that all apples are red), disprove negatives (I can disprove the claim that green apples don't exist), but when it comes to proving negatives, things get much more tricky. Proving that god does not exist is impossible. But, proving that the unicorn does not exist is equally impossible.
So, technically ALL OF US are AGNOSTIC in terms of the unicorn right? Because we cannot disprove the unicorn's existence. But in practice, we are all a-unicornists. You don't waste time or energy trying to disprove the existence of the unicorn even though there is an extremely small chance it exists. So, in practice, you are an a-unicornist. Similarly I am technically agnostic with respect to god, but for me the likelihood of god existing is equal to the likelihood of the unicorn existing - very low and close to but not equal to 0. So in practice I am an a-unicornist and an atheist to the same extent.
Thus being without physical proof we humans all, atheist, agnostics and theists, must function by evidentiary systems of -proof- but these are not absolute , and we end up with possibilities , probabilities , opinions and, whether you like it or not, beliefs. So in the end yours is a belief system, You believe that there is nothing outside the physical and thus no God , or a lot other things, but the point is that when you say you do not belief, that atheism is not a belief, you mean that you do not believe in God, but you do belie in materialsm so yoiurs is a belief system.
Right - it would be a belief if I told you "There is 100% no chance that god exists" - where is my proof of that claim? I have none. Now I can't regurgitate the entire chapter, but Richard Dawkins, in his book in chapter 4, explains "why there almost certainly is no god." Again, not 100% proof, but again we can't disprove the cookie monster either. Suppose N% is the percentage chance that I will give the cookie monster of existing (very very VERY low but not 0%). The likelihood of god existing is also N%.
I cannot prove God physically, you cannot disprove Her/Him physically.
Agreed.
to say you do not need to prove what you do not believe in does not deny the fact that your opinion , i.e. that God does not exist, cannot be proven.
Lots of negatives in that one, let me see if I get it right. You are saying that: if I claim I do not need to prove the thing I don't believe in, it still means that my opinion can be proven. Is that what you're saying? But it cannot be proven, as above, we cannot prove that something doesn't exist, and that includes the cookie monster, unicorns, and tooth fairies.
You must hold opinions that to you make the possibility of a creator implausible.
Not implausible, but highly unlikely. Again, just as unlikely as the cookie monster or leprechauns.
But you see the Theists , at least some theists, have proof of the existence of a Creator that, to them, leaves no doubt and that proof is a personal and earth shaking experience with the Creator.
Yes that's true, and originally this is why I believed in god too. But some people have similar experiences with unicorns and for them that is no doubt proof and they may see it as an earth shaking experience with the unicorn. But that is not very likely to impress you (at least I hope it doesn't). The argument from personal experience only goes as far as the person who is having the experience. If we give too much credit to that, then anyone with a personal experience in leprechauns would then suggest that leprechauns exist.
It is very hard when you are man centered, to even consider the possibility of a Creator with an open mind. I know this very well as I used to be an atheist , and in fact used many of your own arguments and logic. But if you keep your mind open and do not prejudge , you will with an impartial study of all the evidence get to a point where you will have to concede the POSSIBILITY of a Creator.
I can be equally woman centered too. Women after all have the ability to give birth (unless you're a seahorse). Is there a possibility of a Creator? Sure...just not a very high one. I do not prejudice, in fact in another post I am trying to show people that the SRM is prejudiced against disabled people, claiming that their laws are more "practical" - as if the point of living is being practical. Like I said there, life is not about being practical, it's about doing the right thing - but that's a separate forum.
I would like to think that I do have an open mind. So if there is some good evidence, I am totally willing to see it. After all, if the mormons are right, I want in.
If the Creator is then possible, that is, he is no longer in the realm of the Pink Unicorn, or the all present Cookie Monster, you can then suspend judgment and seek personal experiential proof .
The creator is possible, but the pink unicorn and cookie monster are equally possible. I am open to personal and experiential proof, and am curious to know what other people's proofs are, which is why I started the forum.
You must do this with a totally open mind and in total sincere honesty. Just take the Mool Mantra and the Jap ji and realize that in order to first experience the spiritual you must suspend the self by putting your will under the Hukam of God's will, Surrender your will to the Creator's command, put yourself under Orders, recognize Our Superior. Then ask the Creator to show you His Grace and Presence . If you are able to do this in sincerity it is my belief, and certainly my own personal experience, that you will have a meeting of the God kind, a meeting that will change your life
I am open to it, I have done "paath" (however you spell it) before. I have performed kirtan, played the tabla, and immersed myself in the kirtan of Ragis or even my mom or the community. There is no better poetry than Guru Gobind Singh's "Tav Parsad Saveya" (forgive my spelling). It is so eloquently written and Bhai Dya Singh sung it as if Guru Gobind Singh Ji himself were to sing it. And it carries such an amazing message - if it were true. I have spent many hours of my life contemplating this and trying to immerse myself in the deep spiritual realm of Sikhi. But so far...an empty well.
Will it physically prove God exists? No You will, however, KNOW that S/He exists and you will not need proof for His existence , any more than you need to prove yourself that there is a sun , or an ocen or flowers or any other thing that is, because you will KNOW HE IS and IS in every thing
So is god to you a personal god, a pantheistic god, both of those, or something totally different?
Be true to yourself and try it, with all sincerity and humility, you have nothing to loose and everything to gain
I am still open to it. If god reveals himself to me, you will be one of the first to know. As a pseudo-scientist I try to be open-minded to all possibilities, because our puny little brains know very little, so we have no choice but to be open minded to the vastness of the universe, because you never know what you might find. So far though, I have not found god, tooth fairies, or cookie monsters.
Atheist Ji
Well now is my time to apologize for he delay, I had a lot of work done to my apartment and a result I lost my PC and phone for nearly 3 weeks although I was able to post to SPN , (I am addicted
) using my daughter's PC when I was able togo to her place and she was not using it.
anyway I am back and very happy to see that you did answr me. Frankly, however, I am not too happy with ceratin things in your post. First my frien, the usual Pink unicoirns, yada, yada yada, references are unbecoming a serious discussion. Why is it that Atheists are always attempting to put down Theists? Oh well!
Lets get down to he issues. The PINK UNICORN , the SPAGHETTI MONSTER, the COOKIE MONSTER And all he utterly ridiculous attempts at put downs you guys use, are designed to offend. However, they just make you sound silly and ridiculous as you try to seriously make the case for cartoon characters and caricatures being equivalent. IN ANY WAY, to the MAKER of the COSMOS and, laughably, try to address as possibly being real. NUMBER ONE None of this have billions of believers. No one is willing to die for their belief in them, and certainly NO ONE has EVER had a religious experience with any of them , no matter how much you insist otherwise. Experiences with the Creator span the realm of belief and number in the billions, experiences with the Spaghetti Monster and its ilk are non-existent outside the overheated and want to be sarcastic imaginations of atheists that end up making themselves look silly and ridiculous by using such 'analogies'
Then I will like to point out that whether or not you care unable to disprove something a 100 % or 1 % (The % does not matter) the fact IS that if you posit something that X does not exist and that statement is something you cannot proof, then you are holding onto a belief not a fact , its an opinion and you, my friend, are a believer
As to the Unicorn or whatever would be put down you attempt to use. No I am NOT agnostic vis a vis them in this context. For I am a convinced Theist Convinced , because to me God is a FACT , just as sure as milky way, electricity and that sea waves crash on the shore. While the flying Spaghetti Monsters et al, are just a lame attempt at a put down. Besides, you cannot equate the two as I demonstrated above. They are not equivalent on the amount of circumstantial evidence alone. To quote Hawkins is meaningless. Has he ever open his mind enough to consider that he might be wrong? NO. Has he ever experience his heart melt at the overwhelming presence of God? No.
Has he ever been enveloped by love so other wordly and deep that he has fallen down and been physically unable to get up for hours. Crying for joy until he had no more tears? No. I am no physicist and my supposed IQ would be no match to Genius Dawkins , but not only have I had these experiences with my maker I have personally seen people barely able to read and write undergo similar experiences and have seen, and give witness to their changed lives, let alone mine.
Also I am sorry if you do not understand my negatives, but what I am saying is that even if you try to say that a negative cannot be proven, you still are holding to a belief and the fact that you acknowledge that you cannot disprove it, just confirms that you hold your position ON FAITH not fact
As a matter of fact , Atheist have Greater Faith than believers. You hold on to a belief that what we see has no creator that is no cause when EVERYTHING that we can see, hear, smell, etc AND TEST has a cause! You hold to your belief in causeless chance evolution even though it would need for it to be true the self creating of everything , the self arrangement of that self creations by laws that were not created yet and thus could not have existed, or must have formed, a priori of the chemical, physical and biological reactions necessary to have them come into being . You would further posit, as other atheists do, that living matter sprang out of dead inert matter (Abiogenesis) when there is no scintilla of scientific evidence that this ever occurred or could occur, and you would need to belief that all these chance random occurrences all fortuitously resulted in an ordered cosmos ruled by laws of physics, chemistry and biology.
You lost me at Causation!! Yes your atheistic faith is much greater than mine, for I believed only that God was possible. The rest of my conviction comes from very tangible internal evidence and from the changed lives of believers, in other words from what I feel and what I see. And by the way, implausible means highly unlikely and plausible highly likely so implausible does mean highly unlikely. Which is precisely where atheist, it seems to me, go wrong since it seems that you are positing the existence of a whole reality without a cause and from the evidence of causation we have in every thing we can experience and test, it would seem to me that the probabilities of there being a cause is are so overwheming as to render the opposite view astronomically unlikely, but go figure.
No , 'some people' don't have experiences with non-existent monsters and unicorns , mainly because , if they are sane, have no evidence, or experiences with cartoon charcters and make believe monsters. While the believers have evidences, the experiences with deity, the changes in their lives and and others and answered prayer. The day I see the Spaghetti Monster changing lives that is the day I could grant an equivalency between a cartoon character and God, needless to say I am not waiting standing up for that day. NO MY DEAR aTHEIST JI , THE DAY SOME ONE CLAIMS A SPIRITUAL LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE WITH LEPRECHAUNS YOU AND ME BOTH WILL CALL THE PADDY WAGON AND SEND HIM OR HER TO THE FUNNY FARM But you cannot send Billions of people to the funny farm and their lives are indeed changed.
Man centered refers manmukh (yeah I know is not the best translation of the term) and as you very well know it does not reffer to man the sex but to man as the race of man, which includes women whom, as you also very well know, were treated as equals by all the Gurus and are treated the same way in the SGGS. True others might not be quite so illumined, but hey that is why Sik Dharma is the best
You want good evidence? Is there any better evidence than the one you can experience, by yourself? That was my proposal to you. Put away the put downs, recognize the possibility of God, suspend judgment and seek Him out, honestly, sincerely with a mind free of pre-judgments and stereo types (that is what I mean by open mind)
You say that you are an empty well. I said to you what a Jewish Rabbi said many years ago: ''God has springs of water in the dessert!'' You have to give up your God given free will, put it under the Hukam of God's Perfect Will, like a soldier puts himself under the command of his general . Seek not your will but His. submerge yourself in it. THAT IS WHY A MANMUKH CANNOT DO IT, THAT IS WHY IASKED YOU TO BE HONEST AND SINCERE WITH YOURSELF . ONLY YOU CAN KNOW WHAT YOU TRULY TREASURE IN YOUR HEART. ALL I AM ASKING YOU IS TO DO AN EXPERIMENT AND TO DO IT THE RIGHT WAY. IF YOU DO IT THE RIGHT WAY WITHOUT LYING TO YOURSELF, AND GOD DOES NOT COME TO YOU, THEN YOU WILL KNOW IT IN YOUR HEART AND THAT IS IT. OF COURSE, I WILL NEVER BELIEVE IT. BUT YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND, WILL NOT NEED MY APPROVAL YOU WILL KNOW , ABSOLUTELY KNOW, THERE IS NO GOD
So what about it? I mean I am not going to keep answering you point by point, It does not matter what matters is that you are a son of the living God, the Wahe Guru, or you are not and there is only one way YOU , not me BUT YOU can find out for yourself.
May you be true to yourself!
Curious
