Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.
Personally, I’m open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.
Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.
What evidence is there supporting a god? Because there is plenty of evidence that the universe runs just fine without a god based on physics as we understand it. There’s no place for a god to fit into it.
Again, I did not specify that I believe in a god. I said I believe in things outside our observable 3 spatial dimensions, things unknowable to us. I’d prefer if you’re going to argue with me on this, you at least argue my views, not some arbitrary ones that you seem to have superimposed over mine.
In absence of any specific evidence pointing one way or another, all of these beliefs are equally valid as just that - beliefs. As long as they’re not making you act in such bizarre ways as condemning people based on those unprovable beliefs, there’s no issue.
As for my specific beliefs, I’m drawn to a lot of the eastern religions worldviews a lot more. That we, are in some way, reincarnated into this world again and again. That we have a concept of karma, in a sense - there’s an underlying “baseline” level of the world we’re all born into, and our duty is to raise that baseline as high as possible so that anyone regardless of status is born into a world with the most chance to succeed. And we have that duty not just to others, but to our eventual future “selves”. I don’t believe we have any concept or knowledge of these past lives, but the concept of rebirth, conservation, cycling is all too prevalent in all too many beliefs, and within physics itself - matter/energy not being created or destroyed, just changed.
Except that “I see no evidence for this” is not a belief, it’s the lack of belief. You are the one with the belief. A belief without any evidence to back it up.
I’m done. Clearly you don’t want to engage in this conversation with any kind of good faith. You can only engage on the gotchas, the easy talking points. Enjoy your life, friend.
“There is no evidence for your claims” is not a gotcha. “Lack of belief is not a belief” is also not a gotcha. They are just simple facts.
And no one here is asking to be converted. I don’t seek to make anyone believe anything, and I’d like the same respect - not trying to ALTER my worldview, simply understand it. I never claimed to not have a belief. I never claimed they were based on facts. I simply claimed that there are things that we cannot know, we are not equipped to know. Given that, we HAVE to take some things on faith alone, without evidence. In that regard, these are the conclusions I have personally arrived at. Anyone else will arrive at a different conclusion, because these things are inherently ambiguous, unable to be quantified, and reached through introspection. If you cannot see how simply saying “there’s no evidence” is pointless, frustrating, and outright rude, I don’t know what else to say.
Edit to add: earlier you replied to a couple paragraphs, quoting only the first sentence. Did you bother to read the rest of the post? It seems like it pretty well clears up what I mean when I say I see no reason not to. Is that all you’re stuck on? That I don’t see a reason right now to definitively believe or not believe in anything wrt God, spirituality, supernatural, etc?