What can happen if there is no god?

I don’t think so

And your obstinace and defensiveness also duly noted

You seem to want to lay claim to reasonableness for your attacks.

Sorry, but I don’t buy it.

Your definition of faith is nonsense

What kind of crap post is this? Why is this post even worth hitting the reply button? It is completely devoid of any semblance of contribution to any meaningful exchange. Why post such bland nonsense?

I agree that arguments about 'existence' are futile on the basis of 'evidence' (which ultimately lies in the eye of the beholder) .
The 'affront' that some atheists feel is, in my opinion, valid If arising from the history of social strife centred on, and reified by, differential belief systems.

There is a lot of naive nonsense being produced on these religious threads by posters who are ignorant of how semantics works. Words are (merely) tokens of communicative exchange with shifting contextual value. Typically the word 'order' here is assumed to have existential status independent of 'order seeking' humans. The irony is that 'disorder' (entropy) seems to be the driving force in what we call 'the universe' . At least one philosooher of language (Derrida) has pointed out that the meaning of any assertion is based on the covert presence of its opposite. Humans 'privilege' one side of a dichotomy according to psychological and social need. Assertions are not about an independent 'reality', they are constructive interactions involved in negotiation about human projects.

Apologies for the 'lecture' which I claim is made with the 'A2K Expertise' hat on !

First and formost, so me personally fresco, I feel no affront. So let's get that out of the way from the start. Because someone assigns that emotion to someone especially in an effort to bait them, does not make it true.

Which leads to evidence. Evidence does not lie in the eyes of the beholder. Evidence can be demonstarted, proved, and is not a subjective thing. There is subjective evidence "This pizza is good", as opposed to objective evidence. It's basically an opinion.
"This pizza has 8 oz of cheese, 2 cups of sauce and the crust is salted. Surveys of 10,000 people who buy pizza at least once a week show that 87% prefer pizzas with this amount of ingredients." Is objective evidence.

Making a statement like God = (something comparing the entire universe to the miniscule number of people in the universe) is more or less the equiv of saying God = Chicken Pot Pie. You may with all your heart and sould believe that, but it is a belief based on faith, not evidence.

Which brings us to faith. Faith is absolutely believing in something despite having no proof, no evidence. Faith is different from trust. I trust the earth will keep revolving for the next 24 hours, resulting in what appears to the the sun rising and setting over the horizon. I don't need faith that it will happen, as it has been demonstrated to have happened countless times before.

As far as semantics and words, words are the only way we have to communicate thoughts, facts and ideas and unfounded beliefs. I'm not prepared to discust the philosophy of words, but it is not my issue that some people are better at understanding them, and how they work in a particular language than others.

So far in this thread (as far as I can remember), it's (in my words, I don't have the time right now to go back and quote) been said we don't need evidence to believe in a god (true, we only need faith, which is not based on reason)

When this is presented as a reason to believe, it shows that the speaker wants others to do so "just because", or "I can't think of why not, so must be this" etc etc.

Sorry, I gotta go....work just texted me.

I never before understood how much I agree with chai2's thinking in a matter such as this. Her thoughts are presented in clearly understandable terms and I haven't found flaws in her stated case.

Sorry, but as far as hypothetical entities like 'God' are concerned for a believer , our very existence can count as 'evidence 'from a 'realist' pov.
Indeed, as an atheist I recognise that God does 'exist' for believers but not for me because as a pragmatist I define 'existence' in terms of 'functionality' .
The traditional dichotomy 'subjective - objective' is another dimension which tends to be dismissed by pragmatist who would say that 'objective' amounts to consensus.

I agree that there are valid reasons for atheists and believers alike to find fault with the way humans have applied their religious beliefs to actions taken, but the same thing can be said with regard to any formalized body of thought. Communism is a good example. There are people in the world who try their best to live by the instructions of their religion which most people would have a hard time arguing with. Maybe there are a few Taoist monks living in caves in China who are able to do so without exception, but they would, obviously, be extreme rarities. It may even be that the people who I've described are a significant minority. I can't, without any certainty, say either way, but I don't believe that to be the case.

Generally speaking, the people who act in contradiction with their religious instructions, but still claim to be directed by them are seeking some measure of power over others. This can range from massive warfare to simple harassment. With the possible exception of Islam, forced conversion is a corruption of these instructions, and even in the case of Islam, there are many devout Muslims who will argue that it is the same with their religion.

My position is that what one believes is a personal decision that, really, is nobody else's business...unless one attempts to impose that belief on others. There is, of course, a great wealth of evidence that some believers have attempted such an imposition over human history. It is really only very recently that atheism has approached belief as a socially accepted belief system (Primarily in the West). It would be foolish, I think, to suggest that atheists are somehow uniquely immune to the allure of power, and so as their voices have, increasingly, been heard, I believe we have seen an aggression that was formally limited to the religious. That atheists have been persecuted in the past only increases that aggression.

I couldn't care less whether someone doesn't believe in God's existence, but I do care whether or not they attempt to impose their thinking on others and aggressive arguments made against belief is, I think, an example of the desire to impose. My sense is that few, if any, of them, agree with my thinking here as they seem to feel they are, indeed, immune from the foibles of human nature when it comes to this subject.

The fairly typical response is that their belief system involves no belief and therefore they are somehow special. Communist regimes have demonstrated that atheists can be just as willing as theocracies to force their belief systems on others.

A bit touchy are we?

You posted a response to something I wrote.

I responded that I didn't agree.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Mostly I agree except that 'communist atheism' is a straw man because it is merely an adjunct to the the faith system of communism itself.

Look back on what I wrote.

I am not suggesting that atheism (passive or aggressive) is inherent in the philosophy of communism, but that aggressive atheism was very much a tool of the Communist regimes we have seen.

point taken

Thanks edgar, that really means a lot to me.

The way in which you worded it, made sense to me. For myself, I always make clear, my beliefs are mine, but without actual proof, this is all they are. It isn't possible for me to tell any atheist or agnostic they are wrong - until I'm dead, I won't know and even then I might not (since I have no real proof positive way of knowing there is any form of afterlife).

Kinda moving on from the initial topic, yet not.....

I absolutely don't care if someone has a belief in this area. What I have been getting at, even though it's been seen by some as my arguing the subject, is to invite people to ask themselves why. Specifically to demand of themselves an answer beyond "I just feel that way" and all the similar respones.

Note for those that want to tell me what I said, I said invite others to demand better of themselves, by not being satisfied with believing something because their parents, community and majority of their country believe that way. When asked, I think most people would say they believe what they believe because that what their parents brought them up to believe.

As far as comments such as a skeptic would just take any evidence and out of hand dismiss it, well, no one on this thread has yet to present any, so that's just conjecture. If I didn't think evidence presented added up, I would say why.

My feelings are that having a belief is in large part because it's a feel good type of thing. Something/one that made you, and cares for you. Yet this entity that can do anything for some reason chooses not to ever reveal itself, except in the most questionable ways. As in, well just look at that tree. Who made that? Well, people can think and process, who made us that way? Etc.
If there was such a being, why wouldn't it at least once make its presence known directly. Why create such mystery and occultism around it? That seems like a lot more work than just letting its presence be known. Why all the mystery God? What? Are people showing you they "really" love you by believing because basically, other people have told you to believe?

Anyway...
What I was going to relate is a memory I had from my grade school days. Maybe 4th or 5th grade. Religion class, teacher going over I can't remember what. The circumstances are fuzzy in my memory, but the answser given is crystal clear. Someone must have asked a "why" question, and the answser the teacher gave, well, it was by the book, something that was always answsered that way, but on that particular day it just didn't satisfy whoever asked the question. Don't know if it was the same kid, or someone else, but whoever, stepped it up a notch, again asking why, as in, "that doesn't make sense". I think that was my first moment of questioning, when the teacher (unable to respond because whatever it was she was talking about made no sense) just ended up giving the rote response "You just have to have faith, it's beyond our understanding" Even as kids we all know that put the nail in the coffin for that discussion. I remember at the time thinking the equiv of "That's some lazy ass answer. You don't know, you can't explain, so you just tell someone they need to have faith, that it's beyond understanding? I think if it was explained I very well might understand"

It feels like a futile attempt. An honest request, a simple request. Show proof, show evidence. Let others determine if they can understand. If it's rejected, it's not because of being obstinate, it's because a flaw in the proof is seen, and pointed out. Unfortunately, too many people, when questioned, see that as closing a door, when it's actually the other person saying, "Ok, you showed me a door, I opened it, and the room was empty. Maybe you'll keep showing me empty rooms, and I'll call you on it. Maybe though you'll show me a room with something in it, and I'll gladly accept it."

Fresco, saying it fine to believe in hypothetical things makes me think you don't understand the meaning of that word. When anything is hypothetical it carries with it the responsibility to look at it more deeply to determine if it's true, or if there is not enough information to made a determination. Maybe at some future time more evidence will be produced that will define it as true, but until then, it's undetermined.

At this point, the matter of gods is undetermined, because evidence that can be examined, tested shown to be true has not been presented.

For me, whether there is some god or not would not change my life one iota, so it's not interesting to me to make a search of it myself. Not to say it wouldn't be interesting if someone else presents something they found on their search. It can't be expected though that it will be automatically accepted on faith. Because faith is believing in something without proof, e.g, any good reason.

Things like God=(fill in the blank), isn't anything like evidence. Show the work why one is equal to the other.

If the best that can be done is automatically assuming something negative on the part of the questioner, rather than an open invitation and curiousity, then there's nothing more to say.

It seems unnecessary to me, but let's not discuss it further.

This seems to be exactly your reaction to me too.

Would you care to challenge yourself to present evidence of a god, that isn't just a statement such as "God = (X)", or saying evidence isn't needed, or things like you "Just know"?

Not meaning this in any negative way at all. I am truly interested in what you would present as proof that god exists.

Further to my use of 'hypothetical' I approach most debates from the pov of 'the social construction of reality', (as opposed to 'reality independent of human observers')in which 'hypothetical' equates to 'lacking consensus'. From this pov, words like 'truth' take on different contextual values, such that 'truth' in a courtroom, differs from 'scientific truth' or 'religious truth' (often written with a capital T). My position on 'religious belief' is that many find the concept psychologicslly functional for them, but history shows that such belief is a factor in social discord.
https://able2know.org/topic/1119-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn2F2BWLZ0Q

I had to look up what Social Construction of Reality was.

What a bunch of gobbledygook.

I’m just waiting to see if livinglava cares to respond.

Nah...he's a 'naive realist' like you !

(BTW that's a technical term in philosophy for those who don't understand or commune with Kant's point that noumena i.e. things-in-themselves are inaccessible. The Rorty clip helps give the essence of this. That point is also captured by modern physicists like Bohr who said there are no 'things' only 'interactions'.)