Why You Should Be Atheist

[Dunno]

that quote from britain is what I was disputing. It says that because the human mind is hard wired for faith, then not having any makes you an amputee, and being an atheist makes you not have faith.

I am horribly offended by this. All faith means is complete confidence or trust. I have faith in stuff. I even have completely unreasonable faith in stuff. Is it reasonable to have faith in myself? Probably not, because I'm just a little brat with a knack for getting into trouble. But I have faith in myself, because if I didn't, then no one else would. But more than that, I have faith in the human species. This is also completely unreasonable. The human species, with all that it's done to oppress us and hurt us, why should I continue to have faith in them, why should I have faith that they can change and become better, because years of experience shows that they will always be a hierarchal society that oppresses the lower class. So why do I have faith in humanity? Because I have to. Because I'm a human. It's not perfect faith in the sense of the word. But it is just a word.

Your objections were completely without reason. I was trying to give you hope, and you took my word as if words are more than but a symbol of a human's intention. You have much to learn and understand. If you have no faith then you have nothing, but you don't have to have faith in a religion, because religions are full of lies, to love and trust them completely is stupid, that they ask for it is ridiculous.

Words are an imperfect means of communication. Remember that.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

"For instance, intelligent atheists would recognize that evidence (defined narrowly) is not wholly relevant. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs Boson mathematically before we had a shred of physical evidence. "

And thereby created a scientific hypotheis that later developed into a theory that may become a widely accepted theory as the results from the LHC come in.

God appears to be stuck at the hypothesis stage.

"Do you expect to find physical evidence of a non-physical entity? "

If that non-physical entity is credited with creating all that is physical then yes - we would expect to find evidence of that.

Also - although not really relevant to this thread but your signature:

"Which makes Richard Dawkins the intellectual equivalent of an amputee, furiously waving his stumps in the air, boasting that he has no hands.""

Or it shows evolution in progress. The old hard wiring in the brain is changing as it is evolutionarily advantageous that we stop allocating things we don't understand to magic and start trying to investigate and understand them through scientific method.

Its also not usually a good idea for a theist who believes in a miracle working God to bring up amputee's.

None of the reasoning in this post seems sound.

For example, the length of time a hypothesis remains a hypothesis says nothing about whether the hypothesis is true or false.

One could also have created the physical universe without leaving a calling card, signature or fingerprint. What would this kind of evidence even look like?

You've not done your homework on what you believe, evidently.

---

I'm not looking to convert you. I don't even think I could. Like they say, you can lead an atheist to water, but you can't make him think.

It doesn't matter whether you're looking to convert me or not; evidence would do so if you had it to present. Like most things Ray Comfort says, that line of yours is willfully inaccurate, designed to make theists feel better over the failure of their position, rather than reflecting something accurate about atheists.

If you can't prove yourself right, just attack those who can, right?

But I don't think knowledgeable atheists run around saying there are no reasons or evidence to justify religious belief. I'm sorry, but such a view is not representative of the position of educated atheists who are familiar with the various works and claims. Educated people are much more tentative (see what Carl Sagan believed).

And I shouldn't really need to remind people that when I speak, I'm just doing it on my behalf; I'm a guy, not some atheist meta-consciousness. When I look, I don't find evidence so much as I do rationalizations and circumstantial fragments of data that don't point to anything directly, but are used by theist to confirm the religion they already have.

If you guys want to believe based on that, or on personal revelation or what have you, then great. I don't.

For instance, intelligent atheists would recognize that evidence (defined narrowly) is not wholly relevant. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs Boson mathematically before we had a shred of physical evidence. He used applied logic (theoretical physics, ie the application of mathematics to physics). If Higgs' work justified serious consideration of the hypothesized God particle in the absence of evidence, then theism can rightfully claim the same consideration.

Two key differences; one is that the Higgs Boson wasn't declared to be real by healthy chunks of the population until the experimental evidence confirmed it. The proponents of the Higgs Boson hadn't had thousands of years- since before the advent of the modern day scientific method- to find this evidence, they managed to do so in something like fifty years.

The other key difference is that Higgs went through the scientific community in order to gain acceptance of his theory; he had his papers published, a theoretical framework and experimental standard was set up, complete with falsifiability, which were executed on and found to be accurate. Where are the same for god?

I fully agree; your god hypothesis should be held to the same standards, and if any of the multitude of theists in the world would care to take the same methodology, go through the same channels, and develop a method by which god can be tested, then they should. It should happen, and should merit the same level of scrutiny and thought as any other claim. But are you aware of this happening? Can you think of a single example of god coming under the same microscope the Higgs Boson did?

There are religious organizations with the money to fund things like this, no matter how expensive, they just don't. Instead, they litigate their science in through the back door, or create their own journals instead of going through peer review like any other theory would.

If you've got a problem with the level of honest attention the god hypothesis is receiving, then the people you should be complaining to are the creationists who won't put it up to the same scrutiny.

Of course, speaking of evidence is itself a silly thing. Do you expect to find physical evidence of a non-physical entity? Does a lack of direct physical evidence necessarily justify a lack of belief, such as when your eyes are closed and you lack visual evidence that your girlfriend is lying next to you?

If god interacts with the physical world, the effects can be tested. If they can't, if there's no way to detect him from a human perspective, then how can anyone be justified in believing it?

Philosophy is great for some things, but you can't use it to prove something to exist without corroboration, because on its own its just thoughts. And the works in theoretical mathematics and so on are also worthwhile of thought, but they certainly don't justify the operating assumption that god is real that the religious edifice has.

It's weird; I agree with some of what you're saying, but the spirit behind your thinking and the actual reality that we atheists are experiencing and dealing with on a daily basis reveals the problem with it; you are right that all ideas should be given the same investigative rigor, the weird part is that you're addressing this to the wrong group of people.

I appreciate that you're trying to make a substantial post, but you're trading on too much bad logic here.

I can't dispute that your limited exposure might have led you to conclude the work is all "rationalizations and circumstantial fragments of data" (I'm interested to know what you are referring to specifically).

But I can point out some very bad reasoning with your analysis of a theistic or deistic hypothesis. For instance, your trading on vague wording like "healthy chunks of the population".

And your mistaken impression that the amount of time a claim remains unproven is indicative of it's truth value.

Not to mention the implication that the truth of a claim depends on peer-reviewed scientific publication. I mean, do you disbelieve your memories, or something someone tells you because it isn't peer reviewed? This is simply terrible reasoning.

If there exists a deity, and this deity is immaterial, no physical science is going to be able to "discover" it. Your fallacy here is called the category error.

Moreover you assume testability is the mark of truth. But this view has been rejected by the scientific and philosophical community for about fifty years now (see the thread on brain-mind in which I point this out).

What about the claim that "If physical effects of an agent's intervention cannot be tested, there is no justification for believing that they exist(ed) (I add the -ed because of some interesting Deistic hypotheses I came across that suggest that God existed in the past but not anymore)? I don't think that stands up to rational scrutiny either.

Take a person named John who lived, say, 300 years ago. You can't test this agent's intervention in the world today- they've been dead for years. Does that mean they don't exist? Rubbish.

You're halfway rational in making some of your claims. I get the feeling you're just not scrutinizing them enough, however, to see where they go off the rails and how to correct them.

That being said, you're a mile ahead of most people on this forum, so I can't complain too hard.

---

We're retreading old ground here.

That you think no evidence has been provided is reflective of your own ignorance, not of the work of theistic thinkers.

You need to familiarize yourself with the evidence.

So people are hard wired for faith. Being an atheist doesn't mean I don't have a lot of faith. But I do not express this faith in any organized religion. I have faith in myself and I have faith in the human species. Even though there are people like you, that say that my lack of faith means that I am an amputee, or at least your quote did, who are you to judge me? What do you know of my upbringing? My faith is that people will continue to create and discover more, and my hope is that someday all people will get along, even though at this time of war and oppression, that hope seems futile, I have faith that people will change, and see the wrong they enacted on humanity. So you see, faith is about believing in yourself and others, even though you're nothing, you're useless, you're stupid, you have faith that you're great.

Because being an atheist means having faith in the entire human species, it is actually a far more humanistic way of looking at life than any other religion has ever attempted. Religions disagree and fight over their imaginary beings, while I just have faith in the human species, something real, as one, all the humans that cover the earth, and faith in myself. But we must remember that humans are good and bad, and to encourage the good, so far as we understand, because every person is important.

I'm personally a bit tetchy about the meaning of faith myself. Even theists don't know how to define the word faith given the various ways in which the word is used in everyday locution.

It's more than likely that when two people are talking about faith, they are talking past each other because they don't use the same dictionary definition the other is using.

Sorry, nothing personal in not responding to the content of your post in more detail.

One thing we can agree on, however is that Zazzy's definition is something that religious people don't use. It's a fictional definition, sort of like Christians who react to the word "atheist" as if it means "baby-eater". Just stupid.

[Dunno]

One thing we can agree on, however is that Zazzy's definition is something that religious people don't use. It's a fictional definition,

It's not a fictional definition, it's the second in the dictionary, however it strangely disagrees with mine, which was the first: the definition of faith as having trust or belief in a person, idea, or thing. I need that kind of faith. also, that kind of faith just springs up on me. I have faith that my chair won't fall over, then it starts to tip too far backward. Oops.

[Minimalist]

I have faith that my chair won't fall over

That's not "faith." That's experience. Hopefully, after doing it once or twice you catch on?

[Dunno]

That's not "faith." That's experience. Hopefully, after doing it once or twice you catch on?

Well, I have trust and belief that my chair is a good chair, so I have faith in it, and I believe that it won't tip over, which I believe for no good reason without evidence, so I have faith that it won't tip over. However I can say that it has never tipped over, although once it came very close and I had to stop leaning backward very quickly.

Ah wordplay, will you ever stop amusing me?

[Hey313313]

To me if God does not exist then this life is nothing. One would spend approximately 70 years searching for happiness, trying to accumulate large sums of capital, or trying to better humanity in some way. After which they may leave a legacy, which probably few (compared to the earth's population) would hear of, and as they fade into nothingness would sooner or later be forgotten. This is a fate I do not accept. To me, living only to fade into nothingness is worthless, meaning life without a true God is worthless to me. I believe in God and I also believe in Jesus Christ, and that He is God, and I also believe in the Spirit. Now this is what I ponder, if I'm right, and God does exist, if Jesus Christ truly is our Savior, then when I die, I will be in paradise, enjoying the riches of God's kingdom for eternity. If I'm wrong, I lose nothing, because if God does not exist I consider this life nothing. Now if an atheist is right, and there is no God, he gains 70 years (a tiny blip on the radar of humankind) of being right, and will soon fade like other countless generations. And even if he is remembered, and stands the test of time, can bones or ashes taste satisfaction? Now if he is wrong, and God does exist, when he dies he will pay a price beyond what can be imagined, being consigned to a fiery lake of burning sulfur for not accepting the love and forgiveness of his Father in Heaven. To me, accepting God and following Him is well worth it. I've never been an atheist, so it's hard to contemplate the thought of no life after death, and hard to even think of it. And I know it's hard for a lot of people to believe in God, especially myself at times. There's hypocrisy all around us, and a lot of the time in the Church. It's also hard to explain that if God really loves us, then why would He let such great physical and mental disasters rip through His creation. I can't pretend to understand our God, because if our God could be understood, then He couldn't be God. Because if God is God, then He has all knowledge, all understanding, all wisdom, He's omniscient, knows the future and the past and is beyond our comprehension. I can't answer a lot of questions about God because I don't fully understand Him myself. For how can a creation fully understand its creator. One thing i can say is that this world is full of sinners, of whom i am the worst. And though disaster has ripped through my own life and continues to eat at me, i swear to you it has prepared me, prepared me for the hardships i face and continue to face. My life has been far from what some may consider "perfect," i have often drifted away from God. But i have trusted in God throughout it, and my life has been saved many times from death. i have had many second chances, and I've witnessed incidents that this earthly realm just cannot account for. I'll admit, as Jesus' disciples did thousands of years ago, that living for and walking with God is not easy to the slightest extent, but God never said that it would be easy, He said it would be worth it. Accepting God as God is as simple as a sincere prayer, trust in Him, talk to Him, and the rest will come, this i promise you. It seems beyond me that one could accept that this world is all that we have. As a Christian, sometimes I am "ye of little faith," but all slander, all harsh remarks aside, if you listen to nothing else, truly, truly listen to this, be honest with yourself, i believe almost any logical thinker would not fully rule out a Creator. Even if you believe there's a 1 in 10^70. To me that chance is worth taking, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I refuse to believe that this is it.

[Darwinian]

Oh, how dull

[Lemonvariable72]

That's not "faith." That's experience. Hopefully, after doing it once or twice you catch on?

Well, I have trust and belief that my chair is a good chair, so I have faith in it, and I believe that it won't tip over, which I believe for no good reason without evidence, so I have faith that it won't tip over. However I can say that it has never tipped over, although once it came very close and I had to stop leaning backward very quickly.

Ah wordplay, will you ever stop amusing me?

Thats not faith in so far as how the bible defines it, that is better defined as trust. The bible defines fatih as being assured in what you cannot know. You can know your chair won't break or fall by looking at it.

[Esquilax]

I appreciate that you're trying to make a substantial post, but you're trading on too much bad logic here.

I can't dispute that your limited exposure might have led you to conclude the work is all "rationalizations and circumstantial fragments of data" (I'm interested to know what you are referring to specifically).

Well hell, if you've got proper evidence, then present it. This thread is called "why you should be an atheist," and if you have reasons why one shouldn't be, that's something that would advance the conversation.

But I can point out some very bad reasoning with your analysis of a theistic or deistic hypothesis. For instance, your trading on vague wording like "healthy chunks of the population".

Well, the majority of Americans seems to me like a rather hefty group. More than half of my native Australia is christian, not to mention all the other religions across the world; cumulatively, there are a lot of theists out there, regardless of whether I know the exact numbers or not, and the thing you presented in favor of this is that sometimes theoretical things turn out to be true before there is proof of it.

I agree with that, but I was pointing out that I don't think that's justification for the kind of religious machine the world currently has going on in it.

And your mistaken impression that the amount of time a claim remains unproven is indicative of it's truth value.

I never said that. You made a comparison, and I proceeded to show a kind of metric of how long these theoretical calculations go between being made and being proved. The fact that theistic claims have gone so long without being confirmed says nothing about whether they are true or false, but it is one factor among many that informs my atheism.

Not to mention the implication that the truth of a claim depends on peer-reviewed scientific publication. I mean, do you disbelieve your memories, or something someone tells you because it isn't peer reviewed? This is simply terrible reasoning.

You were the one that made the comparison between theism and the Higgs boson, not me. The fact is, I found that comparison flawed, so I pointed out some of the differences between the two concepts that make them incomparable; this is an entirely context-driven argument. These things aren't my go to arguments, but in terms of what you chose to present, they are my rebuttals.

If there exists a deity, and this deity is immaterial, no physical science is going to be able to "discover" it. Your fallacy here is called the category error.

So maybe stop comparing theistic claims to theoretical physics? Also, if this god is immaterial, how does one justify belief in it? Where is the point of contrast between belief in an immaterial theistic god and a delusional claim?

Moreover you assume testability is the mark of truth.

A mark of truth. These things always exist in a continuum. Do you think you could stop reducing my arguments to their most simplistic form before you respond to them?

Take a person named John who lived, say, 300 years ago. You can't test this agent's intervention in the world today- they've been dead for years. Does that mean they don't exist? Rubbish.

Well, it does depend on the claim, in a number of ways. Are you claiming that your god has been dead for years, or are you rather asserting a god that is still active in the world today, like so many theists do?

Moreover, our theoretical person named John? That's a mundane claim; we know people exist, we know they lived three hundred years ago, and we know that they are sometimes named John. What's the harm in believing this claim? In what way does it violate what we know about the universe?

Now, let's staple a few things onto our John claim: John created the universe. John has miraculous powers, impregnated a virgin via magic, and gave birth to himself. John created a worldwide flood that destroyed most of the population, etc etc...

Would you believe that kind of claim about anything else other than the god you happen to believe in?

You're halfway rational in making some of your claims. I get the feeling you're just not scrutinizing them enough, however, to see where they go off the rails and how to correct them.

Good thing what you responded to wasn't really my arguments, then.

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To me if God does not exist then this life is nothing.

Are you for real, or are you trolling right now?

[max-greece]

"For instance, intelligent atheists would recognize that evidence (defined narrowly) is not wholly relevant. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs Boson mathematically before we had a shred of physical evidence. "

And thereby created a scientific hypotheis that later developed into a theory that may become a widely accepted theory as the results from the LHC come in.

God appears to be stuck at the hypothesis stage.

"Do you expect to find physical evidence of a non-physical entity? "

If that non-physical entity is credited with creating all that is physical then yes - we would expect to find evidence of that.

Also - although not really relevant to this thread but your signature:

"Which makes Richard Dawkins the intellectual equivalent of an amputee, furiously waving his stumps in the air, boasting that he has no hands.""

Or it shows evolution in progress. The old hard wiring in the brain is changing as it is evolutionarily advantageous that we stop allocating things we don't understand to magic and start trying to investigate and understand them through scientific method.

Its also not usually a good idea for a theist who believes in a miracle working God to bring up amputee's.

None of the reasoning in this post seems sound.

Then its probably a good idea to re-read it - if you still don't understand it that's OK - not everyone has to.

For example, the length of time a hypothesis remains a hypothesis says nothing about whether the hypothesis is true or false.

If the hypothesis remains untestable then comparing it to the Higgs field theory wasn't appropriate then was it.

The question then becomes are you going to base your life around an untestable hypothesis?

One could also have created the physical universe without leaving a calling card, signature or fingerprint. What would this kind of evidence even look like?

Well subject to the level of powers you are going to assign to God then yes - God could have created the entire universe 10 minutes ago and implanted all my memories in me at that moment.

The question is - is that a reasonable supposition?

You've not done your homework on what you believe, evidently.

Or you are not capable of thinking through what's in front of you. Which is the more likely I wonder?