Why do you not believe in God?
July 6, 2012 at 12:58 am
(This post was last modified: July 6, 2012 at 1:06 am by jerNYC.)
This is my first post here. I’m an "atheist" and I’ve gotten renewed interest in the subject after I saw an interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson recently, where he basically gave the same reasons for his disbelief that I have. I’m interested in finding out the reasons and arguments that other atheists have for their disbelief. Hopefully, it will inform my own reasoning. Here are three reasons for why I "don't believe in God":
Reason 1. God is an unverifiable idea: There’s no concise definition of god, so a god can be anything that believers want it to be. This means that the definition of god can change to evade falsification. For example, when Darwin discovered that species are created by natural selection, rather than the God of Genesis, the definition of the Biblical God changed. No one today worships natural selection, even though it’s the actual mechanism responsible for the creation of new species. However, people do continue to believe in the Biblical God. The fact that the definition of god can change prevents us from ever verifying a god's existence.
Reason 2. The evidence is illogical: Believers provide no explanation for how their gods work, so there’s no testable mechanism to demonstrate that their gods exist. For example, when Christians point to Creation as evidence of their god’s existence, they’re making an illogical connection between their god and that evidence. The rest of us can’t verify that their god actually created anything, unless we know exactly how their god creates things. Only then can we rationally weigh their explanation against their observations and potential evidence. For example, intelligent design advocates believe that an intelligent god created the bacterial flagellum because it is irreducibly complex (they argue that it takes intelligence to produce complexity), but they have never explained how a god creates this kind of complexity. Thus, we cannot verify that the bacterial flagellum is the product of their god’s handiwork, instead of some other mechanism. We just have to accept their "evidence" on faith alone.
Reason 3. God lives in the gaps: The belief in gods has never provided the correct explanation for the phenomena believers try to explain, so gods end up being the personification of our ignorance. These supernatural explanations are merely place holders until science can find the real cause of the phenomena. As Neil Tyson said, “God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
That basically sums up my disbelief in god(s). So, is there still a chance that I can be saved?
Reason 1. God is an unverifiable idea: There’s no concise definition of god, so a god can be anything that believers want it to be. This means that the definition of god can change to evade falsification. For example, when Darwin discovered that species are created by natural selection, rather than the God of Genesis, the definition of the Biblical God changed. No one today worships natural selection, even though it’s the actual mechanism responsible for the creation of new species. However, people do continue to believe in the Biblical God. The fact that the definition of god can change prevents us from ever verifying a god's existence.
Reason 2. The evidence is illogical: Believers provide no explanation for how their gods work, so there’s no testable mechanism to demonstrate that their gods exist. For example, when Christians point to Creation as evidence of their god’s existence, they’re making an illogical connection between their god and that evidence. The rest of us can’t verify that their god actually created anything, unless we know exactly how their god creates things. Only then can we rationally weigh their explanation against their observations and potential evidence. For example, intelligent design advocates believe that an intelligent god created the bacterial flagellum because it is irreducibly complex (they argue that it takes intelligence to produce complexity), but they have never explained how a god creates this kind of complexity. Thus, we cannot verify that the bacterial flagellum is the product of their god’s handiwork, instead of some other mechanism. We just have to accept their "evidence" on faith alone.
Reason 3. God lives in the gaps: The belief in gods has never provided the correct explanation for the phenomena believers try to explain, so gods end up being the personification of our ignorance. These supernatural explanations are merely place holders until science can find the real cause of the phenomena. As Neil Tyson said, “God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
That basically sums up my disbelief in god(s). So, is there still a chance that I can be saved?
