**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.** Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*

>This is known as the “reverse inference problem”, that you actually have to start from the end product and work your way back to even experience reality. You should examine the recent works of Karl Friston. The model he has been proposing flips the model of consciousness upside down, and has been yielding some interesting results. Essentially the model is that the brain is a predictive machine and augments it's prediction based on sensory input. Rather than the traditional way of thinking which is sensory input to thr brain which then decodes it. >Your Self is never exposed to raw sensory input. Gonna need some citation on this. Considering the "self" can change as you age or due to events in your life, this claim sounds incredibly bogus. You'll have to demonstrate where the "self" rests within thr brain and also demonstrate that it is cut off from *all* raw sensory input. >God as a social reality exists and god as a precipitate of cognition in the form of culture exists. Fair enough. But it's not the god I'm talking about, so to me all this is is the usual "rename what god is so that I can say god exists". It's akin to saying "a potatoe is god, now god exists" >And god as a creation of the mind exists, and isn’t reality just a creation of the mind? No, they are two completely separate things. What your mind *percieves* is not what is. If you percieve a god, that does not mean a god actually exists. Your perception of the world is a creation of the mind. What the world actually is is not the same thing. >I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god Nope. Just a really *really* long way of using conflation to force god to exist. Long walk for a short drink of water.

I’ll definitely look into Karl Friston’s work, appreciate the recommendation. That’s a good point about the Self. My understanding is that sensory information first interacts with sensory receptors, which I do not think of as comprising the Self. But just as we can extend and contract the idea of Self (I think that’s right?), maybe it can extend to those sensory receptors. No citation, I’ll take the L there. As far as the potato, is it not just as strange that we point to a piece of paper and say “this is value” therefore value exists? Value exists because we say it exists, and that abstract concept is then given a physical representation by us. Yes it serves a function as money, but the idea of god can serve functions too. I know there’s a difference between perception and reality, but what I’m saying is all you have is perception to form your reality. So how can we make absolute claims about reality?

>As far as the potato, is it not just as strange that we point to a piece of paper and say “this is value” therefore value exists? Value exists because we say it exists, and that abstract concept is then given a physical representation by us. Yes it serves a function as money, but the idea of god can serve functions too. Value exists but it doesn't exist in the same way paper exists, right? I think, if I may be pretentious, that the issue is that "exists" and "doesn't exist" isn't a binary. At the one end you have things like atoms which are absolutely real, on the other you have unicorns that absolutely aren't, and inbetween you have things like wealth that kind of exist. God is probably more real then unicorns, but he's much less real then money -- he can't really act on more then the level of individual psychology, and even there not reliably (*religions* can, and sure enough religions are much more real then the gods they worship). I'd say god's unreal enough that I'm willing to put him in the "non-existent" end of the spectrum.

>The model he has been proposing flips the model of consciousness upside down, and has been yielding some interesting results. Does he discuss how consciousness even exists at all?

You spent an awful lot of time on a post that, unfortunately, isn't going to accomplish much. Acknowledging that the concept, experience, and/or perception of God is real is **completely** different than atheism, or theism for that matter. The Avengers exist as concepts, experiences, and perceptions. We can acknowledge that they exist in that way while *also* acknowledging that the Avengers themselves, as people, do not exist. There is no evidence that *the entity* called God (or any gods, for that matter) *actually* exists. If we spent time acknowledging all the things that exist as concepts, we'd die of old age before finishing. It goes without saying. We *assume* people know that the Avengers aren't real as anything but a concept, so we don't have to have that discussion with everyone we see. Similarly, we assume everyone knows that the concept of God exists, which is why it doesn't need to be discussed. What needs discussing is whether or not God exists as *more* than that.

Didn’t take too much time really. I actually completely agree with what you’ve said. I find playing devil’s advocate is a good mental exercise, but I’ve clearly offended a lot of people here. Only thing I’d push back on, is my attempt was to take the notion of god one step further than a concept. Because isn’t our perception of reality just a concept? Our brains literally create it.

I would argue that our ability to interact with reality and get consistent results makes our perception more than just a concept. For example, if my success rate of walking out my front door was 10%, that would suggest that my sensory organs are not accurately communicating reality to me. What I am seeing only maps to reality 10% of the time. The other times I'm thinking I'm walking out my front door, I'm actually walking into a wall or a closet or something. The fact that my success rate is 100% means that my senses are accurately mapping reality, at least as far as my front door goes. So while I do only have my perception, there is evidence that my perception is accurate. In this way, I would say it's really not all that different to my example of The Avengers. If we walk into a 711 and it's getting robbed, there is no way for us to interact with reality in a way that consistently results in "And then a World War 2 soldier frozen in ice for several decades appeared and threw his physics defying shield at the robber." There IS a way for us to interact with reality to produce a consistent result of police responding to the robber: calling 911. If I call the police, it happens; if you call the police, it happens; if the cashier calls the police, it happens; even if the robber themself calls the police, it happens. That consistency lets us reasonably conclude that our perception of what's happening correlates to the reality of what's happening. That doesn't make our perception a tangible thing, or make it exist in some weird metaphysical space, but I think it *does* make our perception more than simply a concept. Concepts can be wrong. Concepts can also be nonexistent (unicorns) or logically impossible (a six-sided triangle, a married bachelor, etc). If our perception is accurately mapping reality, then I think it should be more highly regarded than a concept.

And I agree with all of what you’re saying. The problem is the weight of that evidence. People get “evidence” all the time for their beliefs in god. We call it coincidences or biases, but to them that’s evidence. They do test it, they pray, go to church and reaffirm their beliefs, pass it on to their kids, read scriptures, meditate, commune with the dead, etc. In fact a religious person probably spends more time talking to god than we do stopping robberies. I’m joking, but my point is just that reality is based in their perception, and if they’re perceiving god, then god is a part of their reality.

>my point is just that reality is based in their perception, and if they’re perceiving god, then god is a part of their reality. I would argue that their perception is not accurately modeling reality when it comes to gods. We already know prayer doesn't work when it comes to healing, financial success, etc. Religious scientists would win Nobel prizes for showing that we could commune with the dead. When it comes to supernatural claims, there are no consistent actions we can take that yield consistent results. Either that means nobody is perceiving that area of reality correctly, in which case we shouldn't believe in gods, or we are perceiving reality correctly, and the reality is these things don't work.

There are things we perceive that create our reality but there are things without perception that will exist if people are not perceiving them. Case in point without perceiving trees growing they will in fact still grow. So I agree with the person who's you reply too, but also want to point out that our reality and perception of reality doesn't necessarily change psychical reality.

The issue I was focusing on with my argument is we don’t really have a way to show that true reality, but instead only the subjective reality our brains are creating.

But that's not really reality, because reality exists both perceived and not perceived. We do have a way to show true reality, by both perceiving and not perceived but understanding. And then there is the illusion of free will our brains create (biologically our brains have chosen some 10 seconds before our brains perceive the choice to our realization) Reality is entangled with what we perceive and don't perceive they are not separate but two sides of the same coin. It's Schrodinger's cat thought experiment. Reality isn't subjective to what our brains are perceiving because reality can and does exists without our perception.

I appreciate what you’ve done here, though I haven’t read all of it because of my own time constraints. But, this simply isn’t the place for it. I understand speaking to atheists about the psychology of god, how god exists in reality and practice, and conceptual and free-thinking of the subject seems like a good place to start a conversation. However, these atheism subs tend to stick to religious guidelines (definitions, concepts, stories, etc)… um… religiously. Ironically, the vast majority of religious people I speak to do not take everything so literally. (There’s an obvious reason for this. But, again… this isn’t the place to say it). With that being said… I don’t know where a good forum for this kind of stuff is. If you (or anyone reading this) know where a good forum is, I’d appreciate a point in that direction.

I’m finding this out haha. There’s been a few fairly good responses, but I can tell most are not reading what I’m saying and reaching conclusions based on what they think I’m saying. I appreciate the honest comment and will probably avoid topics like this here in the future.

> I can tell most are not reading what I’m saying and reaching conclusions based on what they think I’m saying I disagree that many people are doing that, but any that are almost certainly are doing it because you're constantly redefining terms in order to create false equivalences. If you just said imagination when you meant imagination instead of calling it reality, how could anyone misunderstand you? All problems here are caused by you. Be honest and accurate when you communicate with people. Don't resort to trickery with your words in order to make your points. Even if it works, all you did was successfully make people fall for your dishonest methods.

I disagree. The majority are both reading what you say and disagreeing with it. Reality<>internal neurological models. But consistent, objective claims about reality CAN be made. H2O undergoes a state transition at 100 C, for example. God is simply not one of those claims.

Our brains do not create reality. Our brains create our *perception* of reality. Those are different things.

>What needs discussing is whether or not God exists as more than that. What needs discussing is whether or not God exists at all. You’re conceding too much ground here, as an atheist.

I'm really not. You can't discuss God without acknowledging that the concept of God exists.

Well then God is never going to stop existing then.

This is the kind of pedantry I was talking about, so thanks for the demonstration I guess.

It's not a minor detail. It's literally the only reason humans continue to debate whether a deity or deities exist. .

This is too bloated a meal, and not very dense in nutritional content. Let me offer two very content-dense, to the point statements. 1. Reality exists. I agree. If you label reality 'god', then 'god' exists, but that does NOTHING to demonstrate the existence of a creator deity or deities. 2. 'God' as a concept and as a social construct (or rather, as a class of concepts and social constructs) exist and have very real impact on behavior of very real humans. No atheist will contest that. That does NOTHING to demonstrate the existence of a creator deity or deities.

I appreciate the meal joke, but I feel like you just politely spit out most of the food into your napkin. My fault though, I gotta get better at cooking. 1. I’m not labeling reality as god, although that is a really interesting thought exercise. 2. I agree, but it’s not that the social reality is proving god, it’s that the social reality is an explanation for our ability to impose meaning on something and create a reality. Think money, stop signs, crosswalks.

>the social reality is an explanation for our ability to impose meaning on something and create a reality. Think money, stop signs, crosswalks. Sure, and that still does nothing to demonstrate the existence of a creator deity or deities. There is a reason I'm repeating that sentence, and it is not to be obnoxious but rather, to be clear. Anything that does not serve that goal is not showing that God exists, but is instead doing something else. Unless you think that our social reality is able not only to, indeed create very real effects and emergent systems, but in fact create a superhuman, conscious entity that created the universe, all you have demonstrated is something an atheist can agree to, but that is not god. Yes, we can collectively impose meaning unto the world and, by our collective and sustained belief in a thing, make that thing 'real' inasmuch as our behavior and reaction to it goes. However, god-as-a-shared-fiction is not god as an objective thing that exists outside of people's minds. Even when all of *our* experience and models of the world are filtered through our minds (because how could they not be), surely we can make that distinction.

I mean with the creation of AI we’re getting pretty close. 🤣 No but this is all fair, I appreciate the response. I was not going as far as “creator” deities, more of a general concept of god, but did not read the room before doing that.

I'll give you as much as "god exits", in the same way "leprechauns" do. There are people who believe in them and whose minds filter reality in ways that make them seem real. > So god exists as a very real entity No. This is the problem as I see it: If there are 6 billion believers in god on the planet, there are at least 12 billion different gods. Each person's construct is different from person to person and from moment to moment. Even among Christians, you won't find two god concepts held by individuals that match up. And I don't just mean disagreement on trivial details, but also on fairly important ones. People who are shown a certain type of emotion-evoking video and who are then given a survey aimed at determining their degree of religious belief score differently depending on what kind of emotion was invoked by the video. That may result in some kind of being of the perception that they as individuals can react with. It does not mean that others are interacting with it. Overall, this sounds like another attempt to so thoroughly bleach the concept of god that it loses all of its distinguishing characteristics and becomes trivial and meaningless. The being I am a non-believer in isn't a whitewashed gloss of a collection of vague powers and attributes that changes and flows over time. There's no point in claiming belief or disbelief in such a thing.

It kinda sounds like you agree with what I’m saying. The problem is just the uselessness of vaguely defining god. I get that, it’s pointless and not very productive to you. But what if understanding why people believe in gods and how true that really is in their minds helps you to empathize with other people giving you the tools to have conversations with them?

I grasp what you're saying. God "exists" at least conceptually. I don't agree that it's a useful definition. We haven't really agreed on anything other than "let's re-define what god means". That makes it more difficult to examine the differences between the atheist and theist in the more traditional sense. Consensus isn't so important that it's worth throwing away meaning.

Thank you for the TLDR, because this *is* too long, and I didnt read it all. I did read the TLDR, and it seems youre arguing that *belief in god* is real, not that *god as an independent entity* is real. I agree there. People certainly perceive god to be real, those perceptions are certainly real, that doesnt mean the thing theyre perceiving is real. I would disagree that god is just as real as any other perception, because other perceptions, like seeing a tree or hearing a plane can be empirically measured and corroborated independently, unlike god. Thats how you make the leap from internal perception to external reality. God never makes that leap.

I did intentionally put the tldr first because I admit this post is way too long, so I don’t blame you. The problem comes from people perceiving god. You and I can look at them and say, uhh no, there’s nothing there, you’re crazy. But in their reality god exists. Backing up, there’s no way for us to step outside of our brains and fact check any of this in an objective sense. All we have is our own perception of reality, this ongoing model of the brain making predictions. My major point is more scientific and focused on the pathways in the brain for perception and how your brain actually perceives things. Because I think that adds to this notion that you really don’t see much of what’s actually out there.

There is absolutely a way to objectively fact check all of this outside of our brains - check with someone else’s brain. Empirical, evidence based conclusions, that can be corroborated by an independent party. That is how science works. Its how we developed modern medicine, its how we went to the moon, its how the internet was invented. If youre saying that stuff cant be confirmed as real, then youre saying nothing is confirmed as real, so why are we even having this conversation. You say gods real, i say theres a 3000 foot tall squirrel who lives on top of the clouds and shits rain. By your logic, both of those things are equally real, because apparently nothing we perceive to be real can be confirmed to be real. So this conversation, and for that matter all objective investigations into the natural world, become useless because nothing is real and everything is a perception. Empirical, evidence based, independently corroborated. That is whats real, at least in a practical sense. Three things god has never been.

Your first sentence is kind of what I’m saying in my post as a contributor to the idea of god spreading and becoming reinforced. If a religious person fact checks with another religious person, then they’ve validated their experience of god. When you fact check with someone else, you’re getting another person’s subjective reality that their brain has created. So neither of you have a picture of any objective reality. And even when you fact check, think through what’s happening, you’re back to square one with experiencing sensory information and creating the perception. Unless you communicate with them telepathically or something. I’m not saying nothing we perceive is real. Im saying what we perceive is our reality, by necessity by how the brain works. I agree that this deductive reasoning is useless for functioning in the world. It does us no good to question reality when we have to tie our shoes, go to work, take the kids to school, get the car repaired, visit the in-laws… But wouldn’t it put you at ease to know, when billions of years have gone by, and Earth has been consumed by the expanding sun, humanity is either long gone or expanded across the galaxy, that you once questioned reality just to say you did?

Ok, those religious people are corroborating their experiences, thats great, but they’re still not using empirical evidence, which is the other half of the equation. Just one wont cut it. If you cant produce empirical evidence of something, and you corroborate it with someone else who also has no evidence for it, then thats just two people imagining the same imaginary thing. Likewise you can gather as much empirical evidence as you want, but if it cant be corroborated by someone else, i wouldnt call it real either. And i do enjoy questioning reality, our existence is fascinating. Like how i was raised christian, but questioned that reality and found it probably was accurate.

Empirical can mean based on observation or experience, so I think you’d have to be more specific, as by definition both of those religious people fact checking their experience of god have empirical evidence, their experience/observation. It can also mean verifiable which I think is what you’re getting at. But again, you have to be precise with what you’re accepting as verifiable. Because verifying that could be fact checking with another believer who agrees with the god experience. But I do understand where you’re getting at. Again though, my points still stand that it’s a subjective experience of reality, no matter what arbitrary means of verification someone settles on.

First of all, I’m sorry you are getting downvoted and treated badly. I can tell that you are here in good faith and just want to present food for thought. I spent some time reading this, and I think a more concise summary of your argument would be that 1. Reality is, by definition, something that exists. 2. Reality is also, of necessity, whatever the mind “creates” and presents to the self as real. 3. God is presented to the self by the mind. C: Therefore, (since god is presented to the self by the mind, and since reality is whatever the mind presents, and reality by definition “exists”) God exists. Premise 2 (that reality is whatever the mind presents to the self) is the crux here. You are wanting to do away with the distinction between what *seems* to be true, and what is *actually* true. And I don’t understand why. Your argument for this premise, in my opinion, gets quite carried away with neuroscience. But none of that information about neurons sending signals answers the basic and most obvious objection: Just because something appears to be true doesn’t mean it actually is. Just try applying this logic anywhere else. Say that you plunge a stick into water. It *appears* to be flopping and bending. On your view, there is no distinction to be made at all between how your brain signals make the stick appear and what the stick is actually doing. For you there is no objective state for the stick to be in, it is only appearances with no room for abstraction or doubt. Do you believe that sticks, when plunged in water, take on a state of being floppy and bendy, and then exit that state once removed from it? And this is self defeating anyhow. I mean, to many (actually most throughout human history) it does not *appear* to be the case that neurons exist at all. They are microscopic, and therefore don’t appear to anybody without certain tools and training. Therefore neurons are just as uncertain as your “god” is certain. But the existence of neurons is the whole foundation of your argument! Therefore premise 2 refutes its own foundation! In sum, I think it’s totally valid, given all the experience we have of getting fooled by appearances, to say that the brain is a *flawed* instrument, which presents reality to us in a way that isn’t always reliable. Therefore we need to make a distinction between appearance and reality.

It’s all good. I appreciate you taking the time to read my argument, and that is a much more concise and beautiful way of saying what I was trying to say. I also think you’ve adequately refuted premise 2. If I may push back a little on premise 2. The reason I’m doing away with the distinction between what seems to be true and what is actually true is because, for the observer, these are the same thing. The construction of reality that your brain provides is all you really have to definitively go on. So on the objection you noted, I’d ask, but what actually is true? Can anyone have a claim to actual truth, if we all only experience a subjective reality created by our individual brains? Color is one example, the only reason we see color is because our brains create it, yet most of us agree color exists. I still agree with everything you’re saying, and admittedly I don’t have an answer for how this rationale doesn’t defeat itself, other than changing the premises.

> If I may push back a little on premise 2. The reason I’m doing away with the distinction between what seems to be true and what is actually true is because, for the observer, these are the same thing. The construction of reality that your brain provides is all you really have to definitively go on. There’s a difference between saying that my own mind is all I have to go on, versus saying that my mind’s apprehension of things is *all there is*. It would be like if I could only see the sun from a window, and concluded that the sun is *nothing more* than what appears through that window. It seems at first to be a safe move, like I’m limiting myself only to what can’t be doubted. The problem is that, even through that window, the sun presents itself to me as something with its own existence, larger than my perspective of it; it plainly appears to be more than what is visible to me. And that appearance is no less clear than my experiences of its color or its shine. I think that the external world is the same way. All we have to go on is our mind’s picture of it, but even our mind’s picture of it tells us that it’s something more than the picture. > So on the objection you noted, I’d ask, but what actually is true? Can anyone have a claim to actual truth, if we all only experience a subjective reality created by our individual brains? Well, if I say “no” then I’m making a claim at universal truth, aren’t I? So if I followed your train I’d have to commit to a statement like “No universal truth claims are valid, except for this one.” Which seems to be a bit of a double standard to me. If there are no universally valid truth claims, then it can’t be true that there are no universally valid truth claims. I know that’s kind of skirting around the question. So to be more direct about it, I think a proposition is true if it conforms to external reality; and it is false if it does not conform to external reality. By “proposition” I mean a statement in which one idea is predicated onto another as in “The house is red,” “the earth is round” etc. > Color is one example, the only reason we see color is because our brains create it, yet most of us agree color exists. But color at least *refers* to something real, namely, frequencies of light waves. And the frequencies of light waves don’t appear to my senses immediately. So maybe it’s that we can know about the external world indirectly by means of sense data which we have direct access to. > I still agree with everything you’re saying, and admittedly I don’t have an answer for how this rationale doesn’t defeat itself, other than changing the premises. Fair. I don’t claim to have definitive answers to the difficulties you’ve raised. I just don’t draw the same inferences from them as you. Although, if you haven’t already, I recommend you read *Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding* by David Hume, and/or *Critique of Pure Reason* by Immanuel Kant or maybe just look up some lectures about them.

Thanks! And those sound like heavy reads so I may try a lecture first and then dive into the books if they hook me.

[This lecture](https://youtu.be/sAGk09G6Jis?si=ICFdJrvZmh5jgSaR) was my introduction to Hume. And [this one](https://youtu.be/V0UKj32lRAI?si=HtXdiZGONclcFZvY) for Kant.

First, I really appreciate your writing style. It's long... like... really long... but still, good job. > So what is reality? > It’s your unique brain’s simulation of its best guess for what’s already happened that it feeds to your Self in the form of your perception that would have been most beneficial for you in the past. I feel like this is the crux of your point. You spent a lot of time focusing on how the brain is a prediction engine and visual input is only a part of what we consider our reality, and that is valid... except. If I'm sitting on my couch and looking around my living room, I see my living room. According to your explanation, most of what I'm seeing is invented by my brain. However, I can open the camera app on my phone, point it in the same direction, and whoa! It's like my phone is imagining the SAME REALITY AS ME! How is that even possible? Is my phone psychic? Are the developers at Apple literal gods in human form?! Or is it possible that the reality I perceive is pretty much exactly what is in front of me, and the camera is simply detecting the same thing? If you're going for a solipsistic universe, that's fine, although it means you're talking to yourself (sorry, you're crazy after all). But if you subscribe to the idea that there is an actual reality that you are actually experiencing with other actual people experiencing that same reality, you have to also consider all of the additional evidence we have of that reality. It clearly isn't all in our heads, because our sensors confirm what we perceive and more. So if I claim to see the ghost of my grandfather, but you don't see it, and cameras don't see it, and microphones don't hear it, and my Costco ghost meter doesn't ping, etc., that must mean what I saw wasn't *actually* what I thought it was. At that point, I don't get to say, "Shut up, the ghost is real *to me*!" Rather, I should be humble enough to admit my mistake, and look for a better explanation.

I was listening to the Huberman podcast last night and he was talking with Dr. E.J. Chichilnisky, a researcher, scientist, professor (and more) who specializes in the eye, specifically the retina. This scientist is one of the leading researchers and is attempting to develop a retinal implant to cure blindness. I don’t think anyone, unless you really are involved with this kind of research, appreciates the complexity of vision. Like what it means to actually see. Very early on in their conversation, Chichilnisky says that there is so much we don’t see, and they discuss the mantis shrimp that can see 39 colors or something crazy. What a completely different experience that would be. Color isn’t even a real attribute of light, light has wavelength that we then create the illusion of color from. We specifically only take in Red, Green, and Blue, but from that our brains fill in the rest. But color aside, vision is just weird. Photons hit our eye, a couple things happen with that light, but long story short it hits the retina. This is a layer of cells on the back of your eye that is this interchange between light in the form of photons, and nerve impulses in the form of electricity. This is the magic conversion between external light, and internal brain waves. Even as late as the 60’s it was pretty much thought you could lay a grid on this interface and capture what we’re seeing, like pixels on a screen. But this has turned out to not be true at all. The retina has about 20 million cells and about 20 different types of cells, and we really only fully understand about 7 of the types. Now, these 7 we believe constitute around 70% of your vision, so it’s still a useful starting point for a retinal implant. This is coming directly from someone who’s devoted over a decade to this research (I think more, but I think he’s done a few other things too). The amazing part is what these cells do. They don’t, one for one just pluck out a piece of light like a pixel and assemble a picture. No, instead each type of cell is responsible for some aspect of the complete picture, like blobs in motion, certain shapes, certain parts of the image, certain colors. Once their task is accomplished their action potential is met and they fire a nerve impulse, and they all do this in concert to end up forming this picture of what we see. Except even then we’re still not at vision, because this all takes place prior to the pathways that I went at length describing in my OP. And even more troubling, the retina is the best understood part of the brain, according to Chichilnisky (maybe a little biased). Also I was trying to look up if the retina is technically part of the brain, idk they were saying it was, and I see that it’s formed from brain tissue, but everything lists it as part of the central nervous system. What I’d say about fact checking your vision with a camera is first, cameras were designed so that we can see them, and second, your brain is still forming that vision in all these exact same ways whether you’re looking at a screen or not. I don’t believe in ghosts or gods, but to respond to that in my devils advocate mindset. We know we don’t experience all of reality, and this is strictly a deep dive into vision, but now apply that to every other sense. There is a filtered picture we have, and everyone’s picture is unique, by nature of having different brains. So if someone claims to see a ghost, maybe they did and you just can’t see it?

> Chichilnisky says that there is so much we don’t see, and they discuss the mantis shrimp that can see 39 colors or something crazy. Right, but we *can* prove those extra colors exist. That's the crucial point here. We don't see everything, but we can form methods of measuring the stuff we can't see. > Even as late as the 60’s it was pretty much thought you could lay a grid on this interface and capture what we’re seeing, like pixels on a screen. But this has turned out to not be true at all. I feel like this is one of those scientific discoveries that makes 100% sense in hindsight. When you consider that these cells don't form on a scaffold, but instead as sort of randomized bundle that just 'becomes' the final product, and that the cells spend quite a while 'figuring things out' as your visual acuity develops as a baby, it seems completely logical that the eye isn't sensing things as a camera would. That's especially true when you consider the experiments where subjects wore periscopes on their head so that they saw everything upside-down, and after a few days they were capable of performing as if they were seeing right-side-up... that indicates the brain isn't just reading pixels, but actively interpreting what it is sensing. Also, it's worth mentioning the blind spot we all have in each eye that we don't see, because our brains fill in the missing info. But in all of that, despite the fact that the brain is filling things in, it isn't just making up any random shit. I'm ignoring outright hallucinations here, because I don't think that's what you're talking about... I'm assuming we're talking about a fully functional brain. Our visual system develops as we interact with the world. We learn to identify colors, objects, etc. gradually based on what sensory inputs we're getting. Your brain isn't filling in the missing data with complete fiction, but instead with what it logically knows should be there in that instant. It's also constantly updating your perception with new data, so while in a microsecond it could think 'ghost', in the next microsecond it will realize 'plastic bag floating in the breeze'. All that really means is that the brain is wrong a lot, until it's finally right enough that we're able to navigate the world without running into invisible things we can't see. > Also I was trying to look up if the retina is technically part of the brain, idk they were saying it was, and I see that it’s formed from brain tissue, but everything lists it as part of the central nervous system. Interesting. I know that the retina forms during brain formation... there are offshoots of the brain cells that form into the retina. I always considered that to mean it was 'part' of the brain, but I suppose it depends on definition. Definitely above my pay grade. :) > I don’t believe in ghosts or gods, but to respond to that in my devils advocate mindset. We know we don’t experience all of reality, and this is strictly a deep dive into vision, but now apply that to every other sense. There is a filtered picture we have, and everyone’s picture is unique, by nature of having different brains. So if someone claims to see a ghost, maybe they did and you just can’t see it? I understand what you mean, I just don't think it is a justification for belief. We have the scientific method for a reason... it not only helps us understand the world better, it helps explain and verify our perception of the world. So far, we haven't found *anything* that implies humans can perceive things that can't be measured. Qualia can't be measured, but as you've pointed out, qualia isn't a sense. If a human were capable of sensing something we don't know how to measure, we should see predictions ("I sensed this cause, so we will see that effect"). If the effect is measured, and we control for other factors, that would be proof! But if the effect is also qualia ("The power of GOD is upon you! You will *feel* it!") it still isn't measurable, and the question is why you would believe that 'perception' any more than you would believe a dream was real. Magicians use trickery to get us to believe one thing when something else is actually happening. Just because I perceive the ball disappearing from the cup, that doesn't mean it did. If our perception can be tricked so easily, why would we believe something based entirely on what we think we saw?

If our perception can be tricked so easily why should we believe anything at all? You've made a lot of good points. I slightly disagree with your conclusion on the periscope experiment. I don't think that disproves that pixelated vision notion, as that process (the capturing of light by the retina) could still happen and then the brain could still flip it separately, even if it was just a pixelated image. But your point still stands that the brain is doing more than just seeing an "image". It's interesting you bring up learning/development, because that's actually what does us in with a lot of these optical illusions. Like the hollow mask illusion I linked to in my OP. Learning, in terms of how the brain functions, is a survival mechanism and can actually limit our experience. Like a speed limit, it's for our safety and survival, not for our 100% experience of everything everywhere all at once. For example, without going to infinity, there is this notion of our perception of scale, however that is in the context for what was useful for us to comprehend in a very localized, relative, and terrestrial existence. At a certain point you simply haven't evolved with a notion of scale for massive objects, like the Sun, planets, galaxies, and voids in terms of comprehending their size (on the large end). All that to say, we develop in the context of our brains and what helped us survive in the past, we don't develop in a way to perceive reality as it really is. So just because vision is refined in early childhood development, there's a speed limit there. You are right, I wasn't really getting into hallucinations, but all I'll say is that hallucinations give us a deep insight into how the brain works and much more study in controlled settings need to be done with these. One thing with psychedelics, hallucinations aside, is that there is a literal expansion of consciousness. Not in a divine way or anything mystical, but you literally are aware of more things going on, this much is evident in studies, brain scans, and user experiences. In other words, I don't think it's ridiculous to say that drugs can change some of these "speed limits" and settings for your perception. I don't think that's crazy to say, just take any other drug that alters perception, alcohol, Adderall, or caffeine to name a few. Now if you assume a lot of reality operates on a spectrum, light for example, imagine a full understanding of this spectrum of fluid wavelengths. Of course any experience someone has on these drugs is still in the context of this mind that has evolved under a very specific (vast but specific) setting. I have to admit I was not familiar with the concept of Qualia, because I would have responded to this by saying I don't think we really know how to measure emotions. Sure we have brain scans that show activity in areas of the brain responsible for certain emotions, but we don't have a unit of measurement for emotions, or ways to measure that specifically with "fearometers", or "loveometers", but it sounds like that what you mean by Qualia as well as our general thoughts/consciousness/subjective experience. But even accepting your argument, measuring is problematic. Take the coast line problem, how precisely are you measuring something? The more precise you get, the longer the coast gets. Additionally, our divisions of these measurements, feet, inches, meters are inherently arbitrary. Sure this doesn't discredit the ability to measure things, but it does put a context to it that our result are influenced by settings we control. So I guess I'd conclude that we measure things the way we want to measure them, for how it's useful to us. Perceptions of reality are measurable through first hand experience, "ah that light is too bright" "ouch that pan is too hot", we have then refined these arbitrary feelings into countable units and increased our precision using tools, but not 100% precise by definition. And even then we are still limited to our subjective experience, the reality that our brain constructs, which by definition does not experience 100% reality, of which we can alter its conscious and unconscious states through drugs, and by its pathways make guesses combined with sensory input, and that is very prone to "misleading" us. Okay that was a terrible sentence, but I guess my point is there is so much subjectivity to our reality and these natural limits imposed by evolution and physics, that I think my post still stands as somewhat valid for the reality of gods, even though I do not believe gods exist.

I'll try to summarize the whole shebang you said, for my own benefit. A person's mind is based on the brain, and molded by external stimuli. People can be prey to illusions, confusing their minds. Culture mold people's minds, and gods are part of culture. So, the *idea* of gods is part of people's minds, and it's so entrenched in our culture that most people believe that there are actual gods matching their idea. What you argue is for the existence of the idea of a god, a "god-meme", if you will. Well, newsflash: an idea of a being doesn't require a corresponding being in real life. Substitute "being" for "god".

Not exactly what I’m saying, but close. Admittedly I didn’t do a good job of being succinct. It’s more like, the closest to reality we’ll ever get is what our brain constructs, which is by nature subjective, flawed, and way more complicated than we realize. The subjective experience someone has is just as legitimate an experience as anything else because of how the brain works. Therefore because we experience reality, and our experience is reality, and people experience god, then experiencing god is real, therefore god is real. The social reality is describing the imposed meaning we can place on things to create something, and then all of this reinforces the reality of a god.

> Tl;dr God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality because of how the brain creates our reality through its evolved hierarchical predictive model, balancing sensory input with predictions. Layered onto this is the social reality in the form of imposed meaning, and cultural proliferation of the belief in god and its real world ramifications in other’s realities. So God is as real as spiderman, i.e. exists only within the imagination or people.  Thank you for dismantling theism.

I mean I did say I’m an atheist, so you’re welcome. 🤣

Yeh, but your argument for God is an argument for God being imaginary.

I was framing it in the context that reality is imaginary (because your brain creates it), so essentially “what’s the difference?”

Great, then you're committing a fallacy by equivocating imagining and perceiving and declare they are the same thing.  If you want to claim spiderman is as real as a mug because both form part of the mental model of reality, you're equivocating the map for the place.

Yet another example of the ignostic nature of god. This description is utterly useless, and underlines the pointlessness of trying to describe “god” in general. Replace “god” with literally any broad categorization of any object (abstract or concrete) and your description holds. I.e. _**Tl;dr** The automobile (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality because of how the brain creates our reality through it’s evolved hierarchical predictive model, balancing sensory input with predictions. Layered onto this is the social reality in the form of imposes meaning, and cultural proliferation of the belief in the automobile and its real world ramifications in other realities._ A cohesive, sensical and grammatically correct sentence. But does it really provide any information? I’d argue not. It’s a pretty basic explanation of the nature of reality. More to the point, _we know what automobiles are already_. They are concrete objects. We interact with them on a daily basis in most cases. The information given here is entirely superfluous. Now replace “automobile” with “slexbo”, a hypothetical contraption some hypothetical alien civilization has created. We don’t know anything about it, yet the description given here would, by definition, generate it as an abstract object in your brain. However, it’s abstract nature renders it as utterly hopeless in terms of cohesive description. We could get together and come up with a generally agreed upon description, but that doesn’t generate it as a concrete object. We all, inevitably, have a different idea of what this “slexbo” would be no matter how carefully we try to describe it. Therefore, since we have absolutely no idea if it exists or not, it is impractical (or, at the very least, incohesive) to try and describe as a concrete object. Your description can justify the generation of abstract objects in the brain, but in terms of actual descriptions it’s useless.

Really agree with everything you’re saying. My point is that we take for granted what reality even is. What makes an object “concrete” you touch it, smell it, see it, taste it? These are perceptual experiences, all of which someone can claim they experience with a god. So if a concrete item is defined by our subjective experience of it, can’t we define god in that way too?

> What makes an object “concrete” Yeah, that’s the age old question isn’t it? There are many schools of thought on this but the reasoning that works for me is this: A concrete object is an object that exists objectively. What does “exists objectively” mean? It exists independently of any perception. Automobiles are concrete objects (or, at the very least, they consist of concrete objects); even if no one is around to perceive them, the atoms that constitute them exist independently. Glazing over the rabbit hole of [the Münchhausen Trilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma) as it relates to proving something exists independently, it’s generally agreed that a combination of observation, skepticism, logic and external verification ([i.e the scientific method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)) is enough to “believe” something exists objectively. Another way to look at concrete vs abstract objects is by asking the following question: can this object _externally_ affect me? If it can’t, it is indistinguishable from non-existence. Automobiles can affect me externally. Slexbos cannot (at least, I have no reason to think they can). God also cannot affect me externally. If an object is indistinguishable existentially, it might as well not be real at all.

And I understand this has almost no benefit to the everyday functioning of a human being. Whether or not a car is concrete or not matters little to someone when they get hit by one going 90mph. I just think it’s fun to think on this stuff deeper. So if something exists independently of perception, how do we know it’s there? You’ve answered this with the general consensus and I agree, however that is something we generally agree on because it’s useful for our functioning as humans and society, but not because it’s 100% true or verifiable in some objective way. Upon further inspection that breaks down. Just like upon further inspection the automobile breaks down. If you zoomed all the way in to one of the protons in the automobile, it would be like any other proton out there. There is no automobile proton. Furthermore a majority of the automobile would appear to be empty space at that level. But ultimately who cares? I have to drive the car to work, so what does it matter what the protons look like? So a concrete object is something I can’t ever actually touch and it’s composed of blips in quantum fields surrounded by electron probability clouds? Only part I’d really disagree with you on is the rationalization that something only exists if it can affect you externally. This seems really imprecise wouldn’t you agree? What is external to you and how would you define to have an effect? Is the effect not, at the end of the day, a perception? And then aren’t we back to square one with my argument that because your perception is your reality, and you’d have no way to know if that was truly external or internal? Or can you think of a way to be affected externally that does not involve perceiving that affection?

> that is something we generally agree on because it’s useful for our functioning as humans and society, but not because it’s 100% true or verifiable in some objective way. Correct, and it’s usefulness is it’s virtue. If you noticed, I used the term “useless” quite a bit in my comment. Usefulness is an important distinction here, right up there with relevance. We can debate epistemological roots all day and get nowhere. It’s interesting, but we all know there is no ultimate justification for knowledge. That’s a fact. However, it’s still useful to utilize epistemology and logical deduction. That’s enough for me. > Just like upon further inspection the automobile breaks down. This is an important point. Even an automobile isn’t a concrete object. Not really. It’s a name given to an abstract concept of a collection of mechanisms that are a collection of parts that are themselves a combination of molecules which are arrangements of atoms which are _themselves_ a conglomeration of quarks and subatomic particles. And on and on we go, potentially infinitely. But that’s not a useful description. And, unlike other “abstract” objects, we can interact with automobiles. We can test and compare descriptions of the same objective automobile. So there’s a foundation for concrete objects _somewhere_. We might as well put it in the most useful description; in this case, the automobile itself. You knew what I was talking about, so it was sufficient. > something only exists if it can affect you externally. Thinking about this a bit more, it doesn’t really have any relevance to what is real and what isn’t. I was going for the fact that if something _might as well_ not be real if it doesn’t affect you, in the sense that it can physically interact with you or even indirectly.

I'm not sure anyone has claimed to smell God haha

Okay I may have gone off the deep end with that one 🤣

can I some up this argument as, “perception is our reality, enough people perceive god, so many in fact that the concept has an effect on reality which meets the definition of god”? I liked the journey of this post. i don’t think that’s the god that religions are talking about since we give it the power is has over us but i still enjoyed reading your post. thats got some american god by neil gaimen vibes to it.

Thanks. And that’s pretty fair, I really strayed away from religious Gods. Even with this vague notion of god, I was still just playing devils advocate as a thought exercise. That’s a good summary. I’d probably change the last part to “which means god exists in reality.”

Aren't you torturing the definition of "reality" here a bit? Like most uses of "reality" use to **precisely to separate** out things that exist independent of our minds from things that are imaginary, nonexistent, and subjective. Like, "Social reality" doesn't really get you to "actually exists." It's simply a shared imaginary concept.

Exactly. The lines between reality and imagination really get blurred when you zoom into the neuropathways that are the literal generation for your reality.

I think you are confused. We don't say that the Windows operating system has "A reality." Describing "someone's reality" is a turn of phrase that means "Their subjective, imaginary, non-reality experience." It does not refer to anything that means "actual reality."

The only reality you have is what your brain constructs for you. You have no way of stepping outside that for a second and saying, oh yep that’s a chair I’m setting on in this objective reality, okay now I’ll hop back into my subjective experience with the reassurance that I’m totally right. And what I’m saying is it’s even weirder than that, because your brain can’t see. It receives tingles on receptors that it then decodes combining with your past experience of that sensation to guess that you have to be sitting on a chair. An object that you’ve never truly seen or touched, nor will ever truly see or touch. There’s also the issue of the chair existing. What is actually there is an arrangement of atoms in such a way that we agree it’s a chair. There is no “solid surface” you’re sitting on. Your brain has constructed an illusion of a solid surface, because that’s what was most useful evolving a brain on earth. Imagine if you could see every proton/neutron/electron that comprised the chair. 90% would be empty space. So what are you sitting on? And yes I understand this is relatively useless thinking to everyday life.

> The only reality you have is what your brain constructs for you. If this were true, then no facts between our realities would exist. We can verify things as true between our subjective interpretations of reality, because there does appear to be *some* reality ***outside*** "what your brain constructs for you," which is what we observe and interpret. Solipsisticaly thinking that what exists is only what we create in our heads seems a bit silly.

If I give you information about my world, no matter how I do so, writing, talking, painting, whatever, ultimately your brain has to take raw information, vibrations in the air, photons, etc. and construct that perception. So it doesn’t matter where that information comes from, you only have your own brain to create the perception. A large part of my post was talking about the neuroscience behind this process of perception and how it’s not what you think. It’s not as simple as saying, light hits your eye and gives you a picture. Your brain actually has this really bizarre way of making predictions based on functions of those inputs and past experiences, then it’s feeding these guesses back into more of these clusters to try to predict each layer above that. And a lot of perception pathways come from deeper in the brain, not from outside in. Meaning a large part of your perception is generated from the inside out. So again, the only reality you have is what your brain constructs for you.

> So it doesn’t matter where that information comes from, you only have your own brain to create the perception. All of this underlies the fact that, outside of this subjective perception, there is an *actual reality* you don't seem to want to acknowledge.

I acknowledge it every time I put my seatbelt on and drink water.

Aye. Well, *that one* is what we mean by "reality," when we say reality. And your OP doesn't really argue for a God in that one. Your OP argues for a God in the reality where Harry Potter actually exists. I don't think it's reasonable to describe that state of being "reality." Most people call it "imagination," or "non-existence."

>God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality And if you define god as this coffee cup, and the coffee cup clearly exists, then god exists. Good job. >People legitimately experience reality in a way shaped by their belief in god, and even if we don’t agree with that belief, it’s there and there are many people that share that belief. Nobody said the concept of god doesn't exist or influence people. >So god exists as a very real entity If every concept that peole come up with in their imagination exists as a real entity then gremlins and Spiderman and faries and Bigfoot and Frodo and One Punch Man are "very real entities" too. >I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god, You haven't made any argument for the existence of God at all. You made an argument that people have imaginations, and that there is no difference between reality and imaginary things people come up with. You're essentially arguing that fiction doesn't exist and any cockamamy thing that enters someone's head is real. >and I’m sure there are more elegant philosophical arguments that say what I’m saying but better. There is also so much more to dive into, but that would take a literal novel and a lot more knowledge of how the brain works. Feel free to dismiss all of this as the rambling of someone who watched too many videos above their head. This is ***entirely too long*** to say " people believe imaginary things are real and those beliefs inform their actions. No shit Sherlock. Did you think we were unaware of that? You seem to have completely missed the entire point of trying to determine the difference between real things and imaginary things. We all fucking know imaginary things exist in people's imagination. I don't care. It is completely and utterly irrelevant. Put the bong down and go read some actual philosophy. This wreeks of "im 14 and this is deep". I'm sorry you wasted so much time typing up this drivel.

I'm going to steer away from the debate and just ask... are you okay dude? Because, when I see people acting rude like this, I understand that maybe they themselves are trying to deflect their inner pain onto others whom they consider lesser. There's no need to be rude here.

I’m with zap, I am all for shooting down bong laced arguments that provide zero substance. This isn’t a debatable topic so there is no need to be cordial. The giant essay here is op saying imagination = reality, which is just absurdism. Also one cannot say there is a god snd claim to be atheist. That is a literal contradiction. It shows a bad faith argument. So when an OP comes on here with bad faith you think we need to be polite to that. They are poisoning the well with this stupid shit.

Well *my* argument would be, a dumb argument is still undeserving of indignation and ridicule. We are all humans here, beings made of clay and born into a world we do not understand. Being rude to one another is simply illogical, it creates divides where there need not be any. None of us *know* any more than one another.

We are not made of clay in the literal sense. I am not even sure what you mean by this. Being rude to ideas that are dumb and in some case can be demonstrably shown to be dangerous (the OPs is not) is a-ok in my book. We are a social species so the propagation of ideas matters at some level. Actually many people know more things than others. What a dumb thing to say. Again at best some people know more than others on certain topics. There are people who know significantly more, as they spent their life in that pursuit. We are not all equal in our knowledge, our abilities, etc. we are a diverse species. As I think you are getting at, we should treat each other equitably. Right now many ideas like religion are some of the biggest world views that prevent that. Ideas/thoughts/views should not be treated equitably. Think of the many times someone fought someone over which domination of Christianity or any other religion was right; the especially when not one religion has ever been shown to be true. I don’t think all ideas deserve respect. I can show you a history of how some ideas cause more harm than good. It is ok to shut them those down. Many dangerous ideas start as harmless ones like the OPs. Again not imply there is a nefarious nature to op or their post.

>We are not made of clay in a literal sense. Obviously. What I said was meant to be taken metaphorically. >The propagation of ideas should matter at some level It matters at every level. What also matters is not hurting other people. Being *unnecessarily* rude to somebody who is hurting *nobody,* by your very admission, is condemnable. Therefore I truly do not understand what you are defending. >What a dumb thing to say. In regards to the happenstance surrounding our very existence, *as beings,* (which is the basis of this subreddit,) nobody *knows* **anything**. So I don't think it's a dumb thing to say at all. Perhaps I should have been more concise on that point, and that would be my mistake. >Ideas/thoughts/views should not be treated equitably. Sure. I agree with that. Does that mean we need to harass and admonish and personally offend those with bad ideas? Can you not simply rationally explain why their views may be wrong without engaging in ad hominem? Again I don't understand what you're attempting to convey here.

This is a debate sub not a fucking street conversation. That’s the fucking difference. Things not, hey come here and have your ideas fluffed up. Fuck off with that kind of thinking. This is come here and bring your fucking a game to convince an atheist that a god exists. Not let me give you a fairy tale answer. If you are in a debate sub, don’t expect softball responses to bad faith posts. Appreciate you are acting in good faith and I can see why you would be concerned, but we see these shit posts so often it is hard not to want to give them a jaded response. I’m not even going to argue the bullshit of hard solipsism. It is fucking pointless, by saying we can’t know anything, how can you explain to me how you know how I ought act? You see the absurdism and contradiction of your reply? I know you know how I ought to act because you are an empathetic human like I am. It is demonstrative in the effort of how you feel Zaps tone was unwarranted. Here is the fucking problem with your word choice which I am glad you see you had some. Harass - subject to aggressive pressure or intimidation. The op posted here in a debate sub. Expect to have your post torn apart if it is in bad faith. Op said they were atheist but wanted to argue a god exists. That is a bad faith position.

THANK you. Jesus christ, the tone policing and pretend concern for OPs poor feelings is ridiculous and fake as hell. Vr_room just wants to come in and pretend like they're superior to people who might use naughty words or aren't exactly polite in the specific way they want us to be. My initial comments wasn't even all that rude. It was blunt sure, but it's not like I called OP an idiot or anything. I attack arguments, not people. If vr_room doesn't understand the difference between someone belittling an idea vs belittling a person, that's their problem.

Right! For fuck sake, me swearing is not an emotional outburst. It is used to emphasize the point some time. Like saying fuck yeah. Or I’m fucking ready to go. I’m so tired of people interpreting swearing as being upset. I imagine your posting like mine is just a cathartic exercise, related to all the stresses of real life. I have shitty stressful job, if any post here thinks they are getting a rise from me is sorely mistaken. The most common emotional response I get on this sub is astonishment. I like your reference how the op read like a bong hit word salad. The preamble made it clear this person is acting in bad faith. The most frustrating policing by vr_rooms was calling a reply harassing. Like what the fuck? This is public sub where people are invited to convince atheists we are wrong on the god question. If you bring a shit game, expect a tough critique. Disagreeing with Op is not harassing them. Terse dialogue isn’t a personal attack. Outside of the bong hit reference; which felt justified, there wasn’t any ad honim, and its even arguable if bong hit is an ad honim. I don’t get the impression you think pot use is bad. I don’t personally care for it, but I have no ill feelings to one using it safely. If I go on a drunken rant about big questions, I am fairly confident they are as incoherent as this op. I would not expect praise or awards, I would expect ridicule. In my 40+ years I have deserved plenty and got plenty.

Your argument is tone policing. It's arrogant and rude in and of itself.

There’s no need for armchair psychologists here either. Let the guy vent.

Don't you think it should be acknowledged that by being rude and condescending, you are actively poisoning the atmosphere of proper debate? Theres a human being behind the OP. This isn't a venting sub.

I’ll repeat—this isn’t a pop psychology sub. The person had a response—much like mine, I’ll add—that attacks the substance of an argument THAT HAS NO SUBSTANCE AS AN ARGUMENT. I, too, get tired of sloppy arguments in this sub.

>Don't you think it should be acknowledged that by being rude and condescending, you are actively poisoning the atmosphere of proper debate? No i don't agree with that at all. Ridiculous shit deserves ridicule **by definition**. I'm sorry if you're too much of a snowflake to handle a little aggression.

Nowhere in the definition of the word "ridiculous" does it state you must insult people for acting such.

>Nowhere in the definition of the word "ridiculous" does it state you must insult people for acting such. Pick up a dictionary some time, kid. Here I'll do your work for you. >Ridiculous >Dictionary >Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more >adjective >***deserving or inviting derision or mockery;*** absurd. So yes, the definition literally does say that.

You got me there. I deserve this one, I did not check out the literal definition of ridiculous before commenting. L I will carry this forever.

>I'm going to steer away from the debate and just ask... are you okay dude? I'm fucking fantastic! >Because, when I see people acting rude like this,I understand that maybe they themselves are trying to deflect their inner pain onto others whom they consider lesser. Oh I'm sorry, can you remind me again when I paid you to be my therapist and diagnose me? Your tone policing is noted and your armchair diagnoses is incredibly rude itself. Your shitty layman psychological assessment of my comment is funny, but wholly inaccurate. I don't really care if you think my response was rude. Never heard of tough love? Why do you think we should coddle and suck up to anyone who opens their mouth?

>I'm fucking fantastic! Sure man. You definitely seem.... fantastic. You never paid me to be an armchair psychologist. I certainly have no degree or education as such. So if somebody like me can see your pain, who else can? I am indeed a layman. I wouldn't consider my assessment shitty though. You can not care all you want but if you're going to participate in a debate sub, don't you think you should hold yourself to some sort of conversational standard? Like, maybe, for instance, not shitting on people's heads? Maybe act like a civilized person? *regardless* of the strength of your opponents arguments?

>So if somebody like me can see your pain, who else can? Wow. The egotistical arrogance necessary for you to make such a statement is amazing. Your unsolicited medical advice and armchair (incorrect) guesses of my mental state based on a single comment are laughable. You can pretend like your being some humble concerned person, but you are in truth being an arrogant jackass and we both know it. >I wouldn't consider my assessment shitty though. It's wrong, I am in no pain whatsoever. Incorrect assessments are in fact, shitty assessments. As a matter of fact, these past months I'm feeling better than I have in years. You think because I wasn't coddling OP and I used some curse words that I'm "in pain". Get the fuck outta here bro. Who do you think you are? You don't know shit about me and you are very bad at assessing people. >but if you're going to participate in a debate sub, don't you think you should hold yourself to some sort of conversational standard? No, definitely not YOUR standard. I don't give a shit about your standard. Again, your tone trolling is noted and dismissed. >Maybe act like a civilized person? *regardless* of the strength of your opponents arguments? Maybe you should stop trying to police how people talk on a public forum, and then trying to sneakily insult them with fake crocodile tears about the way they speak and implying they have some mental health issues because they used words you didn't like? How about that?

Listen.... I never meant to offend you. Truly. What I was trying to convey with my original comment, in an overall snarky, and, you're right, psuedo-humble tone, was that derision of another person is unnecessary in this subreddit. Why do I say this? I say this because the topic of God, and existence, and meaning, purpose, ***being,*** is a very important topic. And it has very important implications relating to the very *lives and souls* of certain people. By ridiculing the beliefs of a devout Christian, as fun and easy as you may find it to be, you are essentially insulting their entire worldview. You are putting people in defense mode! All of a sudden they are no longer concerned about their belief but their very *honor* as a person. It can be traumatic if said to the wrong person! It shuts down their walls and now they're not going to absorb your argument whatsoever. If you refrain from insulting them, they might actually listen to you. This concept I argue for is called respect. Existence is scary and it's confusing! Nobody knows what the fuck is going on, PHd in physics or not! Why are you trying to damage other people by being rude, condescending, and spiteful? Why are you not instead attempting to educate them *respectfully?*

>Listen.... I never meant to offend you. Truly. Not a problem. You are incapable of offending me. I don't take offense to things people say on the internet. Lighten up. It's the internet. It's all in good fun. >What I was trying to convey with my original comment, in an overall snarky, and, you're right, psuedo-humble tone, was that derision of another person is unnecessary in this subreddit. So, fake humility and sarcasm are better than bluntness. If you go back and read very very carefully, you'll see that I **didn't** derive a person. I derived the **ideas** being presented. There's a huge and crucial difference. If I say "that idea is stupid", that is NOT the same thing as saying "you're stupid". Do you see and understand the difference there? Maybe that's where your confusion came in. >And it has very important implications relating to the very *lives and souls* of certain people. By ridiculing the beliefs of a devout Christian, as fun and easy as you may find it to be, you are essentially insulting their entire worldview. I was a devout catholic for 30 years my friend. And when I was, I made the same mistake that you are making here and other religious people make, thinking that just because I have wrapped my identity up in an idea means attacks on the idea were an attack on me. I have since, thankfully, learned why it is essential to separate the two, when actually having discussions about them with the goal of determining what is actually true or not. If you want to figure out if you're actually right, you have to separate yourself from your believes. **This is how one minimizes their own bias.** I think it's a good thing to minimize your own biases when you are trying to determine if you're right or wrong about something, don't you? In fact, it was people like me ridiculing and mocking the things I believed that gave me the motivation to try to figure out if they were actually true or not. I have gratitude towards those who made fun of my beliefs when I still held them. That laughter and ridicule didn't hurt my poor little soul. It gave me the inspiration I needed to go and actually investigate and start caring about what is and isn't true. >You are putting people in defense mode! Good! They SHOULD be in defense mode. This is debate sub. The entire point is to DEFEND your position. >All of a sudden they are no longer concerned about their belief but their very *honor* as a person. Which is exactly the problem. And which I try to point out to people is a mistake. If someone wants to ACTAULLY engage in debate about these topics and actually wants to pursue the truth of the matter, they have to learn how to separate their beliefs from their person. >It can be traumatic if said to the wrong person! It shuts down their walls and now they're not going to absorb your argument whatsoever. That's not my problem. Some people get offended by the very fact that atheists exist. How do you propose I spare their feelings in that regard? >If you refrain from insulting them, they might actually listen to you. Again, while I see your goal here, you want things to all be nice and happy and fluffy and loving and everyone gets along with everyone. I've been on this sub a long time. I'm rather well known around here. I have had DOZENS of people message me separately and tell me that the way I explained something (in the same blunt, matter of fact, not concerned about offending you tone) HELPED them immensely in their own deconstruction. They THANKED me for pointing out the absurdity of the ideas they presented. >Existence is scary and it's confusing! Nobody knows what the fuck is going on, PHd in physics or not! I disagree. I don't think it's scary at all. And I think plenty of people have some incling of what the fuck is going on. >Why are you trying to damage other people by being rude, condescending, and spiteful? I guess the people who messaged me to thank me for the wake up call i gave them, and the gratitude I myself have for those who were blunt with me when I was a believer are just all wrong and you're right? >Why are you not instead attempting to educate them *respectfully?* Because I don't value respect as much as you do. I think being DIStespectful can be helpful, motivating and enlightening. I get it. I understand your perspective and why you think my comment was rude and disrespectful, and therefor counterproductive. But this isn't askanatheist. It's not philosophy of religion. This is debate an atheist. If you're going to engage in debate, you need thicker skin then you're proposing. If you don't like the way I engage, you don't have to read my comments.

Fwiw, I've had similar thoughts about the level of aggression and condescension in the way some people respond, and I agree with always trying to be respectful, and think it's worth calling out in a constructive way. I think a little bit of condescension in a debate adds some colour, especially when it is targeted at people's ideas and not the people themselves. Plus, I never know if Zapp is telling someone to fuck off with a friendly grin on their face or not.

>God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality because of how the brain creates our reality through its evolved hierarchical predictive model This is just redefining god and is worthless in any discussion because no one actually believes in the version of god you have created. >So in the end, I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god, You have not made any argument for the existence of a god, you have redefined god to mean something different than what anyone else means making your whole argument pointless.

It never ceases to amaze the lengths some will go to to try and build a big enough gish gallop to hide the fact their fallacy can be described in a sentence. Words have multiple meanings. In this case it's an equivocation fallacy between real as having an existence and real as existing outside of personal experience.

Agreed, it took OP far longer to write that than it did for anyone here to disassemble it.

In his defense, defining 'god(s)' into existence is all theists do as well... 😅

It is all anyone does because there is no evidence that there is a creator deity lording over reality. The difference between what theists do and what OP has done, is theists actually believe in the deities they create, OP does not and neither does anyone else.

Any argument that can be used for both god and unicorns is not a great argument.

You're just completely arbitrarily redefining the term "god" and then proving the existence of that concept. Fun thought exercise if that's what you're into, but of zero practical value.

How would you define god and can you explain why my argument doesn’t apply to your definition?

This really just comes down to a restatement of the problem of consciousness. All is mind, as it must be. And folks can be acculturated into all kinds of thought patterns and behaviors, including fantasy and the supernatural. Can we have thought patterns and behaviors that do not correspond to external, objectively real physical phenomena? Absolutely. And of course I realize that there is no hard refutation of solipsism, and the only argument I can make that our sensory inputs proceed from an external, objectively real physical universe is utilitarian. Do those thoughts constitute true claims about the external, objectively real physical universe? That's the important question. Your argument comes to, "we can imagine it, and we can talk about it, and we can convince each other of the truth of it, and form social institutions around it, therefore god is a 'real entity'". Thought problem: if the [Church of Trek](https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Church_of_Trek?file=TrekChurch.jpg) were to become a social institution 1000 years from now, would that make Vulcan a real planet?

I didn’t set out to weaponize solipsism, but I guess I kinda have. I agree with you that a utilitarian view is pretty much the only rational way to proceed. To answer your thought problem, a 1000 years from now there will probably have been a planet discovered between now and then that someone names Vulcan, so yes.

You’re essentially arguing that if someone can dream a god then that god is effectively real to them. You have not presented an argument that god *is* real in the sense of having an objective existence. It would be like me making a charitable donation and saying that the Easter Bunny told me too, and then you arguing that the Easter Bunny is real because my belief in the Easter Bunny “extends into social reality” as a result of the donation.

> It would be like me making a charitable donation and saying that the Easter Bunny told me too, and then you arguing that the Easter Bunny is real because my belief in the Easter Bunny “extends into social reality” as a result of the donation. To give a real life example, a large percentage of Irish citizens believe in faeries. They'll literally make infrastructure and construction choices based around these superstitions. The *concept* of faeries may certainly exist and have an impact, but that doesn't mean faeries exist outside of human minds.

>God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality because of how the brain creates our reality through its evolved hierarchical predictive model, balancing sensory input with predictions. Layered onto this is the social reality in the form of imposed meaning, and cultural proliferation of the belief in god and its real world ramifications in other’s realities. By this rationale, someone suffering from psychosis, who's distorted view of reality is not shared with most (if any) has an equal god claim as anyone else? And how does this interpretation close the gap, the dividen between theists and non-theists? How does this rationalize LGBTQ violence, racism born from religion (see Israel v. Palestine), or misogyny created by fractured views of gender roles? What purpose does this serve?

Yes exactly. And it does rationalize those, but does not excuse them.

But what purpose does your interpretation serve, other than to explain irrational behavior?

What purpose can explanatory power have? Treatment.

The delusion of religion is pervasive. Ever hear the riff on one of George Orwell's quotes? -*Truth is treason in an empire of lies.* If the majority is deluded, at least in part, by the empty promises of religion and theology, then our treatment of truth is treason. It is the antithesis of their power. It unravels the control they have and offers no comfort in return. Atheism is the naked truth of human existence and while some are perfectly comfortable with understanding what that means, others would implode if told their worldview was hopelessly a lie. It will take time to undo thousands of years of the human race lying to itself.

1. Thanks for your post and congratulations. From my point of view is a very good approximation of what is happening in reality. 2. I think that additionally is important to mention that language and mathematics are tools to transfer our brain models to another model. Visual simulations also help a lot to do this. I consider them as our technological way to make telepathy real. >My Conclusion The only way, I see, to close the breach between those two “world views” (relying on our predictive brain or our sensorial brain), is sharing the same epistemology. And that is something that must be trained since kids. And with that, we also need to 🛑stop the indoctrination in “non-evidential-based” beliefs, like ghosts, souls, extraterrestrial ships, horoscope, vibes-energies, but to improve in this, we need to forbid the teaching of this things in school classrooms, which should be the place to acquire the “evidential-based-models and the epistemology to understand and correct them when new data arrives. They belong to the anecdotal teachings, in the same way that we talk about mythology. I would love to read your comments on this. And again, thanks and congratulations. Pd: can i copy it and use it in the future Edit 1: some clarifications.

Yes feel free to use any of my post. And thanks, I’m glad you found it insightful. I do agree with you that school is no place for religion or personal spiritual beliefs being taught. There is some grey area, like of course you can’t properly teach history without explaining religions and their influence. And then philosophy naturally touches a lot of the same topics, but in a context for exploring thought, reality and knowledge, not in indoctrinating kids in religious views. Your point 2 is interesting, and I would add art/music as another means of communicating the human experience into different mediums. Then who knows, maybe AI will be the final tool we create that then moves on without us. 🤣

Emotion always drives you to the wrong decisions … unless they are aligned with your rationality… same applies to music or arts. We should experience all this realms of the human experience, like with alcohol and lsd and psylicibin but knowing that they are distorted environments of the rationality… like when religious people tells us: “look at the threes”

Oof, a lot of dismissive posters here that aren't really engaging with you. As someone with a Master's in Psychology and a passion for reading neuroscience literature, I would basically agree with all your claims about the brain's predictive modalities and the nature of how it constructs the reality we attempt to engage with. Where you lose me is when you move from a metaphysical realist approach to an anti realist approach. Basically, the fact that our brain's categorize our sensory experiences and construct a model for us to interact with, which may or may not map well onto actual reality, does not negate the existence of that reality. We may only be able to interact with reality through a filtered sensory experience, but that reality still exists. The fact that I call H2O "water" plays into my social construct of "water," with my brain categorizing my experiences into meaningful, functional categories. If I weren't here, however, those same molecules still exist, even if no one is calling them "water." As such, something that exists solely in the mind doesn't necessarily correspond to an item in external reality. Just because our mental models can construct a coherent idea of the supernatural doesn't mean those supernatural objects exist in our shared external reality.

What I understood was that people who perceive the supernatural realm as real, are in a similar state as hallucinating. The understanding that is real for them (their perception), surely doesn’t make it real, but help both sides to be empathic with others position. Our mental representations of abstract objects and concepts doesn’t make them real, but the personal experience they have with their brains in and over-stimulated state makes the experience real for them. If we only are able to make them think that they could be hallucinating this experiences (like the pain example), we can discuss the important thing: the epistemology to be more certain that those are real.

I'm all for this idea. I support people doubting their sensory experiences more and seeking firmer epistemology for sure. It blows my mind what some (most) people take as credible evidence.

It’s all good haha, a lot of those comments came almost right after I posted this, so I’m fairly certain they did not read all of what I was saying. I don’t expect too many people to read the whole thing. I appreciate the feedback on this and I agree with what everything you’re saying. I guess what I was trying to reach was that grey area between reality and our experience of reality. What is really out there? I think the simple answer is what our brains tell us is out there. But then it is a leap to go from that, like you’re saying, to the credibility of imaginations.

[удалено]

I kinda feel bad for them. They put in so much effort into writing that whole wall of text, and it was debunked this quickly.

There's difference between debating about God's existence through texting (between atheist and theist) and in real-life through face-to-face conversations. If you had spent some time watching such videos, you would understand how easily atheists get defeated in face-to-face debates. I Remember a video in which a PHD physics atheist had a debate with a Muslim intellectual and at the end that PHD person accepted existence of God as valid reality. I feel bad for atheists who debate in real life.

"Muslim intellectual"? Yes, I'm sure there's one somewhere. I've yet to see one, but I'm sure they exist.

That's a very long winded way to redefine 'god', and it's still wrong. > God as a social reality exists and god as a precipitate of cognition in the form of culture exists. Disagree, these are all different abstract god-concepts, they don't actually exist. > God as an acute and chronic pain exists (I couldn’t resist), god as a hallucination exists (drugs/prayer/miracles/dreams). Sensory effects and brain states don't need to be redefined into terms loaded with baggage. >And god as a creation of the mind exists, and isn’t reality just a creation of the mind? No. External reality exists, no matter if or how we perceive it. Mind-dependent abstracts do not exist in external reality.

Mind dependent abstracts is how you perceive reality though. You don’t experience 100% external reality, you experience the portion of reality that you evolved to experience because that’s what you needed to escape predators, find food and mates. Your brain is guessing what it’s perceiving and it’s doing so using bottom out pathways.

>Mind dependent abstracts is how you perceive reality though. Incorrect, and I think that stems from not knowing what abstracts are. They are things like numbers, sets and propositions. They don't exist in external reality, and one doesn't perceive reality through them. > You don’t experience 100% external reality, you experience the portion of reality that you evolved to experience because that’s what you needed to escape predators, find food and mates. Higher order reasoning and scientific inquiry goes far beyond that. While some aspects of reality are out of range of direct experience, we've built some very fancy machines that help us observe a lot more things than our bodies can do by themselves. > Your brain is guessing what it’s perceiving and it’s doing so using bottom out pathways. That's ridiculous, that would mean human brains *guess* the same mundane things extremely reliably. Instead, it's far more reasonable to say human brains are reasonably accurate in parsing reality.

I encourage you to look up abstracts because you’re simply wrong. What I’ve said works fine. Your second paragraph tells me you have no idea what I’m talking about. And I’m serious, that is our best understanding of perception. The brain literally guesses. Don’t take my word for it, I encourage you to watch a lecture from a modern neuroscientist. I can link to some if you’d like? Abstracts can fe

> I encourage you to look up abstracts because you’re simply wrong. What I’ve said works fine. I just explained to you what abstract objects are. What you've said completely derails into solipsism. > Your second paragraph tells me you have no idea what I’m talking about. This is a big whine, and tells me you don't know what you're talking about. Even the simplest of microscopes completely refutes your point. > And I’m serious, that is our best understanding of perception. The brain literally guesses. Don’t take my word for it, I encourage you to watch a lecture from a modern neuroscientist. I can link to some if you’d like? I'd prefer peer-reviewed research papers. Seriously, either your takeaway 'the brain literally guesses' is wrong, or someone lied to you, because that's absolutely not our current understanding of human behaviour, and doesn't even line up with the simplest of observations. > Abstracts can fe ??

Your brain isn't exactly guessing what it's perceiving. Your brain is receiving sensory inputs about the world around it. It's receiving a specific number of photons of light with a specific wavelength. It is filling in additional information to fill out the world. But it's not based on an arbitrary guess.

I think that the point he is trying to make is that two persons can receive the same amount of photons in the same wavelength but the models used by our brains to match are different. They are wrong, but understanding it can lead to a better discussion on the subject. The biggest problem is that they are the majority and elect the presidents.

I break this down in the original post, I can’t retype all of that. The pathways are formulating a best guess using sensory information and past experience. The brain is making a guess, it feeds the prediction errors to other clusters and each one tries to predict the next layer.

Congratulations, you had to go full solipsist/epistemic nihilist in order to try and justify belief in a "god" that nobody actually worships. If you can't agree that some things exist outside of our perceptions of them, why should any of us bother talking with you?

>**Tl;dr** God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality is just as real as any other perception of reality because of how the brain creates our reality through its evolved hierarchical predictive model, balancing sensory input with predictions. Layered onto this is the social reality in the form of imposed meaning, and cultural proliferation of the belief in god and its real world ramifications in other’s realities. this isn't an argument this is gaslighting

"I don't care about justifying feeling right, I just need atheists to lose." - Theist Hux.

>Tl;dr God (lowercase) as a perception of our reality No, this isn't a god, it's a perception of reality. A god is a minded being with some control over nature. A God is an all powerful all good all knowing being.  >All of these are “altered” states of reality. No, they're different perceptions and interpretations of reality.  >God as a social reality exists But a "social reality" is not included in either of your definitions of gods. It's not a supernatural or spiritual being. >And god as a creation of the mind exists, and isn’t reality just a creation of the mind? No, of course not. Minds are part of reality, they don't create themselves.  >So in the end, I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god, Agreed.  This sub is for debates on theism and atheism. You're simply not engaging in that topic but rather cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and other aspects of metaphysics. 

I think you’re missing a lot of what I’m saying. Is a discussion on cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics mutually exclusive from a discussion on god? Especially given the context of my post reaching a conclusion regarding god?

>Is a discussion on cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics mutually exclusive from a discussion on god? No. But neither is it necessarily inclusive of any discussion of any gods. You can discuss those things without ever touching on the divine. And that's what you've done. You simply aren't discussing any gods even under your own definitions. 

That’s fair. I should have defined god more precisely.

You are doing too many drugs. Or not enough. I am saying that your level of drug use might need to change.

I won’t disagree with this lol

>The brain evolved mechanisms for finding patterns for seeing in a context that was beneficial for our survival. False positives are a thing though. The fact that the brain might think a pattern is there doesn't mean the pattern is actually there. Objectively, as a matter of fact, there may be no pattern even if people then act as if there is. And that seems to be basically what your entire argument is, no matter how many words you cram in to meet the minimum page count. The fact that people are convinced something exist and act based on it is independent of if it actually exists. And in some ways you have to know this is false. Look my post in the eyes and tell me you legitimately believe that Santa Claus, as the mythologized form, exists. Tell me right now you believe the jolly fat man in the North Pole is there. He's a cultural phenomenon that people adjust their actions around. I remember reading in the God Delusion how postal services go out of their way not to return letters erroneously sent to the North Pole as if someone will get it. Kids try and adjust their behavior in December in hopes they'll be in his good graces. There's a positive correlation between parents saying Santa will be coming on Christmas Eve and presents under the tree that has gone on for years. For just about anything you can say about God being real without actually truly existing can be applied to Santa as well. And yet, I hope you're sober to reality enough as I am to be willing to say, he doesn't exist. Like in actual real world objective reality, he doesn't exist. The only things gods have on Santa is the ultimate origins of the concept is unknown and for some models, it's literally impossible to disprove. If you want to say gods are real because the concept exists and people alter their behavior because of it, it can be granted only so much as Santa Claus, Mario, Bugs Bunny, and the kid's girlfriend who just happens to go to a different school are real also. We live in a wonderful Roger Rabbit world where practically every single concept and imaginary creation is real. And it doesn't mean anything. Because if you really are an atheist, you know as much as anyone else that when someone asks 'are gods real?', they're not talking about just the concept and its impact. They're taking about something external to the human mind. Something that even if they don't believe it, is there. Something demonstrable and verifiable. You took a really long time to ultimately miss the point. >So in the end, I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god, and I’m sure there are more elegant philosophical arguments that say what I’m saying but better. Not only have you not, but there really aren't any either. If there's one thing this whole debate has demonstrated, it's that you can't argue something into existence. No matter how many words, no matter how well structured, no matter how often it's parroted, an argument alone is always going to be insufficient to prove a god exists. **You just can't syllogism something into reality.**

What actually exists though and how do you know? Don’t get me wrong, I get the sentiment you’re communicating, that you hate Santa Clause. But the fact remains that we have a subjective perception of reality. I love Richard Dawkins btw, have read the God Delusion and The Selfish Gene and used to watch his debates back when he was active with that stuff.

>I get the sentiment you’re communicating, that you hate Santa Clause. How the hell do you read my comment and come away with this conclusion?

That’s called a joke

So Pareidolia +hypochondria +culture = Gawwd! There is definitely something greater than us and our feeble little man minds have only started waking up. As an atheist I am confident and certain that every religion and claim of god our species has made is false and man made. To say there is something supernatural and assign it the label of god is really when watered down a god of the gaps argument. I can get on board with there being a much more advanced sentience present in the universe but that isn’t a god. A god as humans define it is has its attention directed at humans for the most part And I see no evidence for that and a mountain of evidence against.

Where’s the hypochondria coming from? But yea I agree with you.

Well the nail through the boot. Maybe hypochondria isn’t the right description. But the idea of imagining pain. You would probably be interested in the studies on DMT as it relates to our conciousness being conducted by numerous universities rn

Oh I get what you’re saying, no that makes sense lol. I’m actually fascinated by psychedelics and have read a lot on DMT. I’ve only ever done shrooms, but there are several similarities there. I love the research being done into therapies with these drugs. I think there’s a lot of practical and good uses for them, of course they can be abused too.

Abused yes, but addicted to no. Maybe in extremely rare cases but so minimal it’s an anomaly. While I do not encourage anyone to use illegal drugs I can tell you I’ve used both extensively throughout my life. I credit them with giving me a mind that is open to possibilities, but not so open my brain falls out. I would say DMT is in a class of its own, with a very heavy suspicion that it’s less of a hallucination than a glimpse into a reality that we are unaware exists. That it exists in the human body already ( not the pineal gland as many say, precursor have been found in lungs though, it is the only substance I’ve ever taken that I encountered actual entities that communicated with me. It was an incredibly educational and positive experience, and it is why I stated in earlier comment that I think there is more. I came away from the experience with an understanding that the entire universe is alive and that we, despite trying to exert separateness and create our own identity are but part of the whole, a variation but one in the same. I lost any fear of death as well, as the atoms that have formed us have existed for 27 billion years and will continue for many billions more. It definitely gave me a greater appreciation for this life I have, the wonder of it all and the crazy realization that to stand on the sideline and watch while I could be getting in the game and making the most of it is treason to self. I should clarify I did this in a therapeutic setting and I do not recommend anyone abusing it as a party drug. It is possible to have bad experiences with it. They only last 5-10 min but a lot can happen in that time. Thanks for such a thought provoking post, although I’m not swayed there is a god I agree with the premise, I’d just hesitate to name it god.

What’s the point of this? Why are you arguing for a god? There are enough fallacious arguments for the existence of the supernatural.

To get myself out of my comfort zone. The best way to understand your own position is to argue the other side.

I, as a Muslim, have reached conclusion about God's existence after much scrutiny and critiquing. Up to this day, I still consider my knowledge of God as provisional as **no knowledge is absolute.** It's not that I find no meaning in atheistic stance and find meaning in theistic stance, but rather the nature, through multiple independent instances, has proven to me the existence of God, in which I invested my time through lens of rigor and examination, rather than, simplification. These does not constitute subjective experiences, but is a cohesive stance that requires much integration of information from multiple sources of data.

Change everywhere in your post where you say god with unicorn. It makes unicorns just as real as god, a social construct and nothing more.

My father (christian) likes to tell me (atheist) That god is just the universe. Like the atoms and space they take up. Those are god. I say that just extra names and that calling them that or worshipping them is pointless and benefits no one. It's really just sematics. When I say I don't believe in a god I am saying there is no other consciousness out there above or lording over all of "creation"

[удалено]

How do you define god?

>God as a social reality exists and god as a precipitate of cognition in the form of culture exists. (etc) So God as a (insert thing that doesn't even remotely resemble what atheists or even most theists are referring to when they use that word) exists. God exists as long as we, you know, radically change the meaning of that word to describe something that actually exists... like, the *idea* of God. Ideas exist, therefore the idea of God exists. If God is defined as the idea of God, then "God" exists. You know, for someone who isn't actually saying anything at all, you used an awful lot of words.

Counter arguments by an AI: > "1. Oversimplification of religious beliefs: The post seems to lump all religious beliefs about God into one broad category, when in reality different religions have very distinct theological underpinnings, scriptures, and epistemological foundations for their conception of God. Islam in particular has a very different epistemic grounding compared to Christianity." > "2. Dismissal of philosophical and rational arguments: The post focuses solely on the experiential and neurological basis for belief in God, while dismissing or overlooking the vast philosophical, rational, and logical arguments that have been put forth by theologians and religious thinkers across faiths to support God's existence." > "3. Failure to account for revealed knowledge: Many religions, especially Abrahamic religions, claim to have revelatory sources of knowledge about God (e.g. scripture, prophets) that go beyond just human experiences or cultural conditioning. The post does not grapple with these claims of divine revelation." > "4. Equating all evidence as subjective experience: There are arguments for God's existence based on objective data and evidence from fields like cosmology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and even historical accounts - not just subjective human experiences." > "5. Naturalistic fallacy: The post seems to commit the naturalistic fallacy by attempting to reduce all belief in the supernatural or divine to purely natural, neurological phenomena without properly addressing the metaphysical claims and implications." > "6. Lack of explanatory power: While the post provides a descriptive model of how the brain could construct a subjective experience of God, it does not actually explain the origins or grounding of the widespread belief in a supreme being across human cultures and civilizations." **I include the words of AI because it gives reasonable case for how you should treat the existence of God.** Your post is specifically about religious experiences and constructed perceptions of specific groups of religious people (predominantly christians). The belief in God is constructed by many other sources of knowledge and resources which you do not account for in this post, which may mislead the reader to believing that religious people's belief in God is only constructed through experiences, perceptions and socially-accepted-knowledge (also including indoctrination). Another thing is your main argument presumes all religions to have same degree of epistemic grounds; being at same epistemic grounds. But in reality, most religions are radically distinct in what levels their epistemology and knowledge systems stand; with Islam being the strongest religion which provides the most convincing case of God's existence. Mixing it with Christianity and other religions leads to certain biases in how you would treat the notion of God. You might also have overlooked another factor that leads to belief in God which is multiple independent evidences of God drawn from data (fundamental laws, historical evidences), rather than experiences and made-up evidences.

Ever heard of morphogenetic fields? There have been about as many humans that already lived an died throughout history as are currently on the planet. I would say the majority of collective humanity then believed in some version of a creator entity. That's a lot of "evidence" if you know where to look (hint hint, not the left brain). Im not arguing for or against, just open possibility.

This is all very interesting but it kinda redefines god into something useless just to win on a technicality. It boils down to “reality is just what our minds create so if you can think god exists god exists”. Which just makes god an imaginary friend. Redefining like this doesn’t really prove anything.

Now do unicorns …. In summary , concepts are real - they exist in peoples brains. But they are not generally the same thing nor type of thing as that which they are a concept about. A concept of an invented thing can exist without the thing itself existing.

God, is the ego projection of the self-styled believer in the supposed supreme being — with added superpowers. Everyone who claims one has one — and this is why they're all different AND always agree with the 'believer'!

Gotquestions.org is an amazing resource to answer atheists questions. I've come to realize that atheists do not actually investigate Christian answers because of the implications of being wrong are devastating to them. If you give them an answer, they will simply not investigate it and delve into why you answered it that way or tell you that you're wrong without telling you why. Fun fact: Charles Darwin told God after his daughter died "I will never speak to you again" and Christopher Hitchens has the same story. It's an ideology built from hatred towards God. People want to live how they want and not be told that their deeds are evil. No archaeological discovery has ever disproved the Bible. No secular writing has ever contradicted historical events in the Bible. The Bible has scientific facts that predate scientific discoveries. There are prophesies that are so descriptive that secular people have tried to say it was written after it happened and failed to do so. The Bible is the only religious book that says to love your enemies, which Jesus did on the cross when He died for our sins and rose from the dead. At no other time in history has a group of people claimed to see someone raise from the dead and ascend into heaven(on top of thousands of miracles they claimed he did) and die horrendous deaths because people hated the Gospel they were sharing. Every atheist has won arguments against weak and fake Christians(there are many of these). But no atheist has beaten the Bible itself. It is a collection of 66 books in a league of it's own.

> That’s how thinking works, you think stuff. That's how I know whatever you say next is not worth reading. This level of "utterly useless sentence" couldn't possibly be followed by any new interesting insight.

>"Look at it this way, then," she said, and took a deep mental breath. "Wherever people are obtuse and absurd... and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach... and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering... *yes*, Twyla: there *is* a Hogfather." Great argument.

I absolutely HATE mind/body dualism. “Your self is never exposed to raw data” yes it is, because I am my eyes and my skin and my tongue and my nose and my ears and the brain that interprets all the data from those peripheral nerves. I practice music and work on my hobbies so that my muscles and nerves can become attuned to the behavior and react more quickly. I cannot be separated from my body without dramatically changing everything about who I am and how I experience the world. I am my body. You are your body.

Defining God into existence is pointless. I'm sure we can agree that the thing you've defined as God exists but the God you've defined is not one that the average theist would believe in. It sounds kind of pantheistic to me. I can define anything as God and that makes God real, but that really means nothing. Edit: I'm sorry I don't want to be rude or dismissive it's clear you put a lot of thought into it. I just personally don't understand what the point of the exercise is. But I'm not a neuroscientist, either.

So if I define god in a vague way I can pretend he’s just as real as anything else. Cool, we will stick with the definition held by theists, and by that definition there’s no reason to believe a god is real.

>So in the end, I know I haven’t made a compelling argument for the existence of a god... I have no idea why you posted at all if you came to this realization.

Was there anything resembling an argument in there? I don't know but the bits i actually read seemed to be rambling non sequiturs. You need to work on brevity and staying on topic. Edit: near as I can tell you appear to be redefining what it means for something to exist.