Did you ever believe in God and later become an atheist? If you’ve always been an atheist, I’d like to hear why you rejected belief in God.
I am a Muslim, and I am genuinely open to changing my mind on this. I am posting this as a philosophical challenge, not as a rhetorical attack on religion.
My current position is that arguments from contingency or sufficient reason do not, by themselves, establish that reality must ultimately have an independent or necessary foundation.
I understand the argument:
Contingent things depend on something else.
A chain of contingent explanations does not seem to provide an ultimate explanation.
Therefore, there must ultimately be something independent or necessary.
My difficulty is with step 3.
Human beings appear to have a strong tendency to search for causes, patterns and explanations when there is an explanatory gap. I am not arguing that this psychological tendency disproves God. Rather, I am asking whether we have independently established that reality itself must satisfy our demand for a final explanation.
It seems possible to me that:
> “A contingent reality exists, and there is no further explanation for why it exists.”
I don't see an explicit logical contradiction in that statement.
If someone responds that this is merely a “brute fact,” I agree. But calling something a brute fact does not by itself show that it is impossible.
Likewise, saying that a necessary being would provide a better explanation does not seem sufficient to establish that such a being actually exists.
There is also an epistemological problem.
How do we know that our conclusion that there must be something independent is actually true rather than simply the most satisfying explanation available to us?
Even if someone has a very strong philosophical argument for a necessary being, they could still be mistaken.
What if reality turns out to be brute?
What if there is no necessary being?
What if there is no God?
I am not claiming that these possibilities are true. I am saying that I have not yet seen an argument that eliminates them.
So my challenge is:
What argument establishes that a contingent reality without a final explanation is not merely unsatisfying, but rationally unacceptable?
And if the answer ultimately depends on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, what is the justification for that principle itself?
I am genuinely willing to change my position if someone can provide a compelling argument. I am not looking for a debate victory; I am trying to determine whether I am missing a necessary step in the argument for God.
AI (ChatGPT and Claude) told me that Nietzsche’s goal with the “deep chastity” he mentions in Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra is to control your passion and transform it into another form, for example art.
When I asked whether that means I could have sex with prostitutes 7 times a month, but as long as I limit the number to 7 and never go over it, the AI said that this could be okay. But if I am a person who spends the whole month eagerly waiting for that day to come, constantly looking forward to it, and even wanting to extend it, then that would be wrong. In that case, I am supposedly not mastering the passion; the passion is mastering me.
Honestly, this really damages my opinion of Nietzsche if that is actually what he meant. I mean, it’s true that an AI can make mistakes, but let’s push the same AI further and ask it to say what Nietzsche actually meant: was Nietzsche saying that lust for sexual intercourse is itself something one should abstain from, no matter how well one controls it?
I’m trying to understand whether this is really Nietzsche’s position, or whether the AI is simply imposing a modern idea of self-control/sublimation onto Nietzsche.