Why does atheism even exist ?

[axiom]

@EternalForest True, but in a way, any spiritual seeker is just as bad.

The metaphysical ego (the self) can only feel separate by definition, so it will never stop looking for ways to feel whole.

It is all seen to be an excuse in the end. 

[r0ckyreed]

31 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 

@OnePointTwo @r0ckyreed i will try to simplify the issue for you...

 

You make it more complex. The simplest explanation is that consciousness does not have a cause. There is no first cause because consciousness exists absolutely. If you try to find the origin of consciousness, you will be looking forever (like an infinite regress, except there is no regress). Our mind is creating “causes” and stories to construct the dream reality. Notice this.

37 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 We exist and we are contingent beings. We are part of a series of contingent beings. Then we come to the first being. Is that being contingent or necessary? If someone or something created the first being, then it is not the first being. By simple analysis, the first being must be a necessary and non-contingent being.

All of that is a story to construct reality. 

You aren’t a contingent being, you are absolute. God is absolute Being.

There is no first God creating 2nd God and 3rd God creating a first being, necessary being A and contingent being.

God is too powerful, infinite, and one to create all of these “causes.” 

God just is. God isn’t a being. God is Pure Being.

[Roy]

Atheism seems like a natural cultural evolution and reaction to religion. You have to realize historically almost 100% of people had to believe (or pretend) in the religion of their society in order not to be completely outcast. Imagine being socially outcast in the year 1486, your survival would be near crippled or impossible. You would probably die on your own, if you're lucky to get away from hanging or beheading from everyone else.

It's really only the past 200 years(ish) that we've seen a larger diversity (and most importantly acceptance) of beliefs and identities.

Atheism to me, while representing another ideology and framework in it's own way, is basically the step after traditional religion and gives more autonomy to the individual and their mind. It takes all the chains and weight off from archaic bullshit so one is free to search for something else.

[Someone here]

13 minutes ago, Adamq8 said:

God is infinitely actual, Being as such, fullness of Being, we exists as particular beings with potentiality and actuality, but God as the fullness of Being has no potentiality, in all the great theistic traditions they speak of God as the source and origin and end of all reality.

God's essence and existence coincides which makes Him infinitely Actual without limitations, He is simplicity itself so to speak.

He is an infinite act of understanding, in him Being and Knowledge is ONE.

INFINITE BEING and Infinite Conciousness are one in God, thats why we have intelligibility at all.

Pure infinite Mind so to speak.

Atheism is irrational, and they need many miracles like existence and conciousness  and intelligibility and miracles they do deny..

 

Well said ?. 

10 minutes ago, Adamq8 said:

@Someone here I want to dearly recommend an extremely impressive author in these topics, David Bentley Hart, he is one of the best philosophers alive today IMO.

His book, the experience of God is amazing!

 

Thanks. Will check out. Is it available for free online as a PDF?

[Someone here]

10 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

You make it more complex. The simplest explanation is that consciousness does not have a cause. There is no first cause because consciousness exists absolutely. If you try to find the origin of consciousness, you will be looking forever (like an infinite regress, except there is no regress). Our mind is creating “causes” and stories to construct the dream reality. Notice this.

All of that is a story to construct reality. 

You aren’t a contingent being, you are absolute. God is absolute Being.

There is no first God creating 2nd God and 3rd God creating a first being, necessary being A and contingent being.

God is too powerful, infinite, and one to create all of these “causes.” 

God just is. God isn’t a being. God is Pure Being.

I think you are not grasping the infinite regress problem.  You cannot say that this present moment is caused by an infinite chain of previous causes. Because it would take infinite time to reach this moment. Therefore never really reach it .

Example:

Q: If something can’t come from nothingness, who created God?

A: An earlier divine being.

Q: Who created the earlier divine being?

A: An even earlier divine being.

Q: And who created that divine being?

A: An even earlier divine being.

Q: And who created that divine being?

A: An even earlier divine being.

Q: And who created that divine being?

…and so on forever..

[Someone here]

10 minutes ago, Roy said:

Atheism seems like a natural cultural evolution and reaction to religion. You have to realize historically almost 100% of people had to believe (or pretend) in the religion of their society in order not to be completely outcast. Imagine being socially outcast in the year 1486, your survival would be near crippled or impossible. You would probably die on your own, if you're lucky to get away from hanging or beheading from everyone else.

It's really only the past 200 years(ish) that we've seen a larger diversity (and most importantly acceptance) of beliefs and identities.

Atheism to me, while representing another ideology and framework in it's own way, is basically the step after traditional religion and gives more autonomy to the individual and their mind. It takes all the chains and weight off from archaic bullshit so one is free to search for something else.

What about the flaws of atheism? 

My main issue with atheism is that it's a statement of unbelief, not one of belief, which leads theists astray, they've only ever had to invent better stories than rival religions, or exterminate them, so they don't know how to dispell unbelief, except with the tactics that lead to unbelief in the first place.

The other issue, is that because atheism isn't a belief, it only deals with a single aspect of a person's personality, which again, confuses theists, who assume that because theism dominates their lives, that by analogy atheism dominates the lives of atheists

Most atheists are buying into the materialist paradigm. Which was oroen to be completely false by quantum mechanics in the last century. But scientists nowadays are afraid of discussing the radical ramifications of quantum mechanics which completely debunk the materialist paradigm and therefore atheism. 

[r0ckyreed]

16 minutes ago, Someone here said:

You cannot say that this present moment is caused by an infinite chain of previous causes.

I am not saying that. 

I am saying that the present moment is uncaused. Past and future are dependent on the present moment not the other way around. The past and What you call “causes” is a collection of stories happening now to explain the Now.

The way you framed the whole thing seems like you are implying the past is where the present moment “comes from,” suggesting that the present moment originated from somewhere in the past. Past doesn’t exist but as an idea in the Now. The Now is eternal, which means it is uncaused, not a first cause and not a second cause, just uncaused. Remember, cause and effect implies time (past and future) which doesn’t exist but in the Now

As such, if the present moment is eternal and uncaused, and if you are trying to find the “first cause” of the Now, then naturally you will be searching forever for a causes that never existed. That infinite search is what I call infinite “regress” because that’s basically what it is - an endless search for an origin that doesn’t exist.

Edited September 4, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

29 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Because it would take infinite time to reach this moment. Therefore never really reach it .

This moment is an infinite amount of time. This moment is never out of reach.

29 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Example:

Q: If something can’t come from nothingness, who created God?

A: An earlier divine being.

Q: Who created the earlier divine being?

A: An even earlier divine being.

Q: And who created that divine being?

A: An even earlier divine being.

Q: And who created that divine being?

A: An even earlier divine being.

Q: And who created that divine being?

…and so on forever..

Christians can use that same logic right?

Q: If something can’t come from nothingness, who created God?

A: An earlier uncaused divine being, known as the first cause.

There problem solved. Or is it? See this first cause stuff is foolish. This moment right now is absolute and uncaused. We don’t need to create gods, big bangs, and first causes or infinite regresses to explain it. If we try to explain this moment, then it is an infinite search because this moment is infinite. Whatever you think is The Cause of this Moment is a dream inside of This Moment. 

Edited September 4, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[Someone here]

@r0ckyreed so your position is that there is no cause for the present moment?..but that's only true if we assume that the present moment all that exists . But even then ..how Do you explain the existence of the present moment if its uncaused as you claim ?

I am surprised as, to why, the problem persists.

If one asks, what is the cause of the universe?

And then...What is the cause of the cause which caused the universe? And then What is the cause of the cause of the cause which caused the universe ad infinitum You encounter a strange problem That cannot be solved unless you posit a first cause /aka God. 

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, Someone here said:

How ?they both were Christians/believers in God. 

The Cartesian-Newtonian worldview reduces the world down to atoms and physical laws, and it splits the mind/soul away from the physical and makes it secondary and unimportant. When the scientists became the new priestly class, this became the prevailing metaphysics in the mind of the modern man, and so even the atheists who pretend to only reject the claims of theism, uses their unconscious metaphysical assumptions as arguments against theism.

[r0ckyreed]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

so your position is that there is no cause for the present moment?

Precisely. Look around you. That is God. God isn’t a being that created your experience. God is your experience. 

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

but that's only true if we assume that the present moment all that exists .

What else is there but the present moment? What is your post here about then? You clearly affirm “present moment is all there is” in your post here. This makes me question whether you know what you are talking about or are just playing games. Do you really know or are you pretending to know? 

 

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

But even then ..how Do you explain the existence of the present moment if its uncaused as you claim ?

I am surprised as, to why, the problem persists.

If one asks, what is the cause of the universe?

And then...What is the cause of the cause which caused the universe? And then What is the cause of the cause of the cause which caused the universe ad infinitum You encounter a strange problem That cannot be solved unless you posit a first cause /aka God. 

The present moment is here and now always. It is Absolute. There is nothing behind it to explain it. Being is prior to knowing and explanations. You can’t conceptualize Being, which is a problem you are falling into. All conceptualizations occur within Being but can never explain Being.

It seems like you just want to model reality and create stories to sustain your dream rather than deconstruct it. The last thing you want is for your bubble to pop, so you spend time creating your bubble using spiritual concepts to trick yourself into thinking you have popped it. But really you are preserving it. See how tricky the mind is? The biggest deception is thinking you have awakened or figured stuff out when you really haven’t. But hey, that is the mass hypnosis that 99% of people are under.

What you are really asking me in “how do you explain the present moment” is to create a narrative for you in how the Dream exists, which is just another way to dig yourself deeper into the dream. 

Whatever you think is the cause of your Dream is a dream within your Dream. 

As you can see, all of this is the opposite of awakening. What we are doing here is finding ways to keep ourselves asleep.

You are inside of a Dream, wake up!  

Edited September 4, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[OnePointTwo]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

@r0ckyreed so your position is that there is no cause for the present moment?..but that's only true if we assume that the present moment all that exists . But even then ..how Do you explain the existence of the present moment if its uncaused as you claim ?

I am surprised as, to why, the problem persists.

If one asks, what is the cause of the universe?

And then...What is the cause of the cause which caused the universe? And then What is the cause of the cause of the cause which caused the universe ad infinitum You encounter a strange problem That cannot be solved unless you posit a first cause /aka God. 

Did you read my four paragraph explanation? What part didn't you agree with? I provided a cause for the universe.

Edited September 4, 2022 by OnePointTwo

[Someone here]

12 hours ago, OnePointTwo said:

Did you read my four paragraph explanation? What part didn't you agree with? I provided a cause for the universe.

I glossed over it but I didn't understand most of it.  So if you can give a brief explanation to it again would be appreciated.

However  I understand that nonduality  means Not two. The moment you know you exist duality has begun to impress perception. You begin to count ‘I am’. ‘I am’ spontaneously creates the illusory world with the concept of separation being impressed through the ‘I am a body’ idea.

Prior to knowing you are, you are. The sensation ‘I am’ or ‘I exist’ has appeared to you.

Without knowing you are, you of course are. This is the essence of non-duality.

Once you realize your total aloneness, there is no mind .the mind is your past, the mind is the other. Ordinarily, when you are alone your mind continues talking, it becomes the other; there is dialogue between your mind and yourself. But when you are totally alone, you are alone. Now there is no mind and there is no God; yoe divine.

So I cannot say you become one with God because to say so presupposes duality: it presupposes that God is one and you are the other. Even to say that existence is divine is to divide it; there can be no nondivine existence. It is divineness or it is existence; there is no need to use two terms. To say it is existence is enough; to say it is divineness is enough. The moment we say divine existence we create a division; then existence is divine and something else is not divine. But that is not the case: there is nothing that is not part of existence, nothing that is not divine.

[Someone here]

15 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

The Cartesian-Newtonian worldview reduces the world down to atoms and physical laws, and it splits the mind/soul away from the physical and makes it secondary and unimportant. When the scientists became the new priestly class, this became the prevailing metaphysics in the mind of the modern man, and so even the atheists who pretend to only reject the claims of theism, uses their unconscious metaphysical assumptions as arguments against theism.

 

I do not care if 1, 10, or 100 scientists are or were atheists or theists. I simply do not need their approval or permission to determine what is rational or not.

Newton was a very strange guy. I think he would be most accurately described as a mystic. He didn't really go in for organised religion. I'm not sure what his views were on deities specifically ..he was more into mystical universal energies than a personal god. While undoubtedly a genius, he was certainly not a rational individual.

 And Descartes was believer in the Christian god.  Like I said given that his entire argument for why he trusts his senses relies on the benevolence of god.

[Someone here]

15 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

The present moment is here and now always. It is Absolute. There is nothing behind it to explain it. Being is prior to knowing and explanations. You can’t conceptualize Being, which is a problem you are falling into. All conceptualizations occur within Being but can never explain Being.

Reality is subjective. From our subjective inputs we deduce the existence of an objective world. The goal of science is to understand (explain, predict) the latter. There’s no particular limit on how well we can do that but there are practical limits. The universe is just too big to hope to figure out everything. So although science will never explain everything about objective reality, there’s no ‘mystery’, unexplainable in principle.

It is not the goal of science to "explain everything." It is the goal of science to create models that allow us to understand processes in and make predictions about the natural world. That's it.

The complexity of reality could be infinite with each layer being explained only to reveal yet a deeper unexplained underlying layer.
We also may have fundamental limits as to what we can observe directly and indirectly that would preclude full and complete knowledge of existence.

[Adamq8]

@Someone here

[Someone here]

@Adamq8

Newton talked about Spinoza's God  a a lot.  I don't think he believed in the Christian God (the bearded man in the clouds who judges you ).

Spinoza’s “god”, however, can be interpreted a couple different ways:

a) an actual “god” being is everything.

Or

 b) everything is “god” without that referring to a being, “god” and “everything” are just synonyms.

 

[Razard86]

13 hours ago, Someone here said:

Reality is subjective. From our subjective inputs we deduce the existence of an objective world. The goal of science is to understand (explain, predict) the latter. There’s no particular limit on how well we can do that but there are practical limits. The universe is just too big to hope to figure out everything. So although science will never explain everything about objective reality, there’s no ‘mystery’, unexplainable in principle.

It is not the goal of science to "explain everything." It is the goal of science to create models that allow us to understand processes in and make predictions about the natural world. That's it.

The complexity of reality could be infinite with each layer being explained only to reveal yet a deeper unexplained underlying layer.
We also may have fundamental limits as to what we can observe directly and indirectly that would preclude full and complete knowledge of existence.

Science as currently constructed will never understand reality. Why? Because reality created science. So science is studying the rules of reality....and reality doesn't really have rules. It can be...however it wants to be. Until Science acknowledges this....it won't for a long time because that is not logical.

Reality doesn't follow beginning middle, and end. Reality is eternal and infinite. That means there are no distinctions, there are no labels, there is no logic. All those things are being dreamed up. 

Thinking Science can study reality is like thinking Spider Man can study Stan Lee. He can't...he has to realize....he is Stan Lee the same way Harry Potter has to realize he is J. K. Rowling.

Until this is realized....Science is just playing a Science game. A game of pretend.

[petar8p]

On 9/4/2022 at 1:01 PM, Someone here said:

Let's forget for a moment the fact that YOU are God..and just speak about God as the creator of the universe.  Surely this whole grand fine tuned universe must have a creator or a cause .it just didn't jump into existence out of pure coincidence. you don't walk on the street  and suddenly find a computer device or a smart phone and then assume they have no creator.

Even if you can accept that the universe could exist without a creator, the other choice would be Agnostic Atheism (that there may well be a creator, but we cannot possibly know what they are or were and so all organised religion is lies)

Cause you realize Religion just doesn't cut through with its explanations and Science seems like a good substitute for it, introducing Bing Bang Theory not needing a creator for everything to exist. It is a point of view, a perspective. More legit than believing in Religous God. 

 

Not experiencing God, not seeing it, not believing in it, it can only leave sceptics hang onto Atheism and I don't see anything odd with it, kind of makes sense.

Edited September 6, 2022 by petar8p

[r0ckyreed]

Creation needs no creator. There is no ground. There is no first cause. There is no god. Creation is God.

Why else do we say “Oh my God!!” when we look up at the stars? That is our natural reaction of our recognition of Divinity.

 

Edited September 6, 2022 by r0ckyreed