this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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I fully believe there's ~something~ beyond our 3 spatial dimensions we call reality. What that is, I don't know. Does it have sentience, I doubt. I also think these things fall into unknowables, things each individual will develop a different feel for, and should be deeply personal.
Why do you fully believe this? What do you base this firm conviction on?
I don't see any reason not to, at present. I don't necessarily believe in, say, supernatural entities, but I'm more concerned with origin, what exists beyond our universe, the nature of consciousness, etc. I believe a lot of that is simply outside of our abilities to fully understand as humans.
Take a 4th spatial dimension as a simple example. We can do all the work on understanding how one would work mathematically. We can even get something approaching an intuition about how things would move and work in a 4th dimension, but we're simply not equipped to see, experience, interact with this 4th dimension. Another easy example of an unknowable is the thoughts and mental state of another. We can make inferences, we can ask, and we can trust that the information we get from those sources is accurate, but there's no way to verify.
This same thing, the fundamentally unknowable, exists pretty much everywhere if you dig deep enough. I like to think of this relationship with unknowables as "spirituality". Understanding that there are simply things that I cannot grasp, and being okay with that forms the basis for my spiritual worldview.
As stated before, as well, I believe this is all DEEPLY personal. I doubt any two people will ever arrive at the exact same conclusions. The thing with unknowables is there's no way to really be "right" short of following your intuition, so as long as your personal beliefs don't start impacting the will and agency of others, you do you.
The reason not to would be that there is literally no evidence for it whatsoever. We do not have to be able to detect it ourselves to get evidence of it. We can't see atoms but we can build things to detect atoms.
Your "I don't see any reason not to" can also be applied to the belief in many gods.
Exactly. I don't find atheism itself as attractive as agnosticism. There's as much evidence supporting a god as there is else. I don't claim to know either way, it's largely unknowable, and so you gotta kinda just go on faith one way or another. This is also a part of why I keep insisting this is all a VERY personal set of beliefs.
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?
I guess that was a lie.
Since I assume you can see you're in an atheism community, I don't know what else you expected. A warm welcome for your faith-based beliefs?
Buddy, we're literally in a thread where someone asked what beliefs one might consider supernatural we have. I came here expecting a discussion, not someone trying to beat me with logic when it was never a competition.
First you lie about ending the discussion and now you are lying to me about my own motivations. I don’t even know what you expect to happen when lying to me about me, but it is not a good look for you. It seems you have a lot of difficulty telling the truth.