"Atheism" can be interpreted in two ways: "I don't believe in God" and "There is no God". These are different statements, the former a declaration of lack of belief, the latter a statement on the existence of God. As the concept of God is a fundamentally transcendent one that per definitionem cannot be proven or disproven within the constraints of this universe, the statement "There is no God" cannot be fully based on a foundation of logic and observation. As there is no way to look beyond the veil, God can always be hidden further ahead. In fact, any revelation of God makes God less transcendent, and thus God must remain completely out of reach to the understanding of mere mortals.
But the statement "I do not believe in God" is a weaker one and, while still sort of a statement of belief, is more a statement that from logic and observation there is no strong enough evidence to justify a belief in something as far beyond reason and logic as God, and for most people stating it, more narrowly a statement that they do not believe in the God of Scripture who actively created the world and man in His image, and who intervened with mankind in the past.
Given causality, logic and observation, the biblical God isn't directly necessary to explain anything. Physics breaks down at the extreme ends of it, such as "what was before the Big Bang" or "What is beyond the Planck scale", but we already know that our understanding of physics is insufficient and likely wrong in some ways. Here we have to understand that physics is mainly mathematical models based on observations and used to predict behaviours, and our current physical models are "right enough" for our purposes. But I don't doubt that just like Newtonian physics was expanded by Einsteinian Relativity, our current models will be expanded and supplanted by a deeper model wherein the limits of the Planck scale or mathematical singularities are erased. Doesn't mean that our current understanding is "wrong", it does make predictions that are good enough. Like how Newtonian physics are not wrong within the limits of low energy and spacetime distortions.
But the biblical God, as a supernatural entity that created the universe and the Earth and mankind in its image, that God goes against what is observable. One could make the argument that the Bible or any other scripture is supposed to be metaphorical, but then what remains? Just faith in some being beyond our reach, but close enough that it will sometimes help some? What makes the being of that scripture more valid than the beings of other scripture? In the end it is a matter of faith, and it is in the individual to have or have not this faith. I don't think it is an actual choice, but that is more an argument of free will and the lack thereof.
The truly transcendent God, the Monad (I'm using the gnostic term here because it fits what I want to say with it), the ur spark of existence, that God however cannot be proven or disproven per definitionem. But that God is also too far out of reach to have any meaning to humans. One could argue that the emanations of the Monad would, as they're less transcendent, be able to reveal themselves and interact with the universe in place of God, but the more they reveal themselves the less of God they become. They would become understandable, and thus mundane. There isn't any evidence for them to be found, so faith in them is just that, faith, and a matter of personal inclination.
As such, I think the faith in God, or gods, doesn't really matter beyond your own personal mental wellbeing. The supreme God cannot be proven or disproven or even thought of in any meaningful way. Faith or trust in this God is meaningless as it is abstract beyond abstract. Faith or trust in lesser gods has no strong enough base in reason for me personally.
That's my argument for my own view that somewhat aligns with what people have called apatheism. Otherwise I'd call it agnosticism, as I cannot fully discard the existence of God, or some other form of atheism as I do not believe in any scriptural gods.
I try to avoid the atheist label, though, as I don't discard the possibility of this universe being created by an intelligent being. However, that's more of a "the universe is a simulation of sorts" view that I entertain as a possibility. The universe-creator in this case would be a being that is on principle possible to understand as it is a mundane being in a higher or previous universe, and while in principle kind of a like a god, wouldn't be a true God. But then again, where did the universe of that creator come from? The possibility of the true Monad can't be discarded.
Other possibilities in that vein are cyclical universes that expand and contract, possible under guidance, or maybe not. Consider virtual particles. Quantum fluctuations allow for a very short time the creation of a particle-antiparticle pair that annihilate practically immediately. This concept has some implications in quantum mechanics, and is theoretically observable in extreme cases such as vacuum birefringence. The observable universe is practically all regular matter. This is odd since one would except equal amounts of antimatter to exist (just far away from regular matter), but the universe is all matter, apart from antimatter created in certain processes. But it is possible that there's an antimatter universe going backwards in time from the Big Bang (note that antimatter was predicted by the Dirac equation and can be interpreted as going backwards in time), making the entirety of existence an enormous vacuum fluctuation that at some point would collapse and annihilate and eventually (well, "eventually". Time would lose meaning at that point) form new universes. There's still the desire to ask "but how did this cycle start", of course. Maybe there'll be an answer, maybe the answer is again the Monad.
Long story short
@Brightstar777 is a faggot for starting low effort topics that still somehow get me to effortpost.
“) a bit MEH. It’s a little fallacious (edit: facile?) imo but I can’t be bothered teasing out why I think that.
