Do you have the right to be an atheist?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Please read the complete thing so you get the whole idea,don't half-arse it and the come ahead and critisize me (please!)


Hi,

Here is a quick overview of my life story.
I used to go to church when i was very little.I was a firm believer in god.I don't remember exactly how but i eventually gave up on the idea of a god,my father may have had an influence on my decision,i don't really remember.Since then i was looking for a proof or evidence or logic to back up my decision,i came up(or came across,i don't exactly remember.)with the logic that if such a God did exist i'd have seen/heard or had some kind of experience with it.Well i didn't have any experience or really any proof of existence with any of those God stuff,so i gave up on the idea of a god.I became an atheist(until a few years back(bear with me)).

So here's what happened:

I was looking at some facebook pages on Atheism and i liked a few pages and i regularly looked at their (hilarious)posts which often made fun of religious people and their beliefs.So here's the deal,i'm the type of person which would argue from both sides of an argument just so that i can say to myself with confidence that whatever i'm believing in is what any logical person would believe in.(I was still a firm atheist then)So seeing how other atheists made fun of religious people kind of pissed me off(I don't know why i just thought it was wrong).So i decided to argue with the existence of a God with the people that were on the page.Here's the thing,arguing about the non-existence of a god with a religious person is easy,they are usually in majority not a lot of bright bulbs and their arguments are full of holes but i wanted to see if i can provide real logical points if i was in the shoes of a religious person,i guess you could say i did it for the sake of the argument and for my own personal satisfaction.

I saw yet another post opposing religious behavior in which people again made fun of religious people,so i decided to comment something that apparently pissed the atheists on the post(which was stupid on my part).I was publicly made fun of/bashed for my apparently terribly stupid comment.I got scared,i mean arguing for the fun of the argument is one thing,but going 1 vs millions of atheists on a public post was another thing,so i quickly apologized and withdrew from the post.BUT i decided to not entirely give up,so i sent a message to the page that i wanted to clarify my doubts about the existence of a god.They replied(some admin) and said that they were always open for any discussion.
Sadly the discussion with them didn't go very well,i ended up being called stupid,dumb or something like that,i was also accused of being a religious person who was there to force his beliefs onto others,which hurt me because a lot of them were just swearing at me without clearing my doubt,however there was this ONE guy which was very calm and decided that he'd actually lend a ear to what i had to say.He explained to me how its not possible to prove a negative(which was very helpful),however as the discussion progressed i came up with more strong logical arguments(i thought they were strong)which would contradict atheism.

I went into that discussion as a strong atheist but i came out as a not-so-strong atheist which was a resultant of my own argument against myself and atheism. *sigh* There are so many terms like Atheism i don't even know what they all mean.I believe in logic.

If you were reading this from the beginning you'd probably be wondering what made me a not-so-strong atheist.
The argument that i came up by myself for fun which in turn contradicted my own beliefs on atheism is this :

Picture yourself sitting in front of yourself computer/mobile/tablet right now reading this post.
How strong is your knowledge about the device you are handling?I'm talking about the hardware,electric pulses kind of knowledge,not windows xp,windows 7 kind of knowledge.Well,we can't all be engineers so its okay to not have a wide area of knowledge on whatever device you're handling.How about the house that you are living in?Do you know the orgin of the design of your house,or what it takes to build a house?No?Its fine too who cares about the design of buildings that's what we have Architects for.
Well we all go out to beach at least once,how much knowledge do you have about the sand you're walking on?The chemical composition of a sand grain?Probably not too much.Me too.I mean if everything there was to know about a sand grain were to be written into a book,my knowledge about a sand grain would probably amount to about 1%(or possibly less)and i'm saying about the things that i know that i don't know,what about the things about a sand grain that i don't even know that i don't even know?Probably a lot.
To summarize if you were to consider a random ground on earth and drew a circle around it,take a step back and look at it,i mean REALLY look at it,you actually don't even know everything about that tiny place.I'd probably go as far as to say that it'd be impossible to know everything about something as little as that.

So i want you to imagine this scenario,like REALLY picture it inside your head.Imagine a person living on earth-in a country-in a state-in a neighborhood.This person doesn't even know everything there is to know about the community he lives in(everyone's name,their interests i'm talking about information in general).So a person with no clue about what is going around him(we all like to believe we have a good idea of what is happening around us,we don't,i'm talking about nature not politics or those kind of crap)who is merely a 1 in the billions of people on planet earth(and earth is probably like a single pixel on the screen you are looking at right now and the whole screen would only probably amount to our galaxy and there are countless galaxies)are you imagining it? Ok,so this person decides to believe that there is no supernatural being such as god.

I just don't see the logic in it.
How can a being such as humans,a very insignificant life form on a very average planet with a average star deny the existence of a supernatural being in the whole of the universe?Do we really have the right or the power to believe in that logic?
We are all familiar with people that can calculate numbers as fast or faster than calculators,right?Years ago people thought it was impossible for a human being to be that smart and one day this dude shows up.We like to define as what we see "normally"as "natural".We see humans with 2 eyes and 1 mouth - its natural,its normal.Many years ago this person that could calculate as fast as a calculator would've been pictured as a supernatural being.
We see such diverse cases on planet earth itself.Just today i saw in facebook that this toad had its eyes inside its mouth so everytime it had to see it had to open its mouth(i'm not sure if its legitimate,a quick google search would probably tell you).
*My point is,we see what we see up until today as normal,we categorize something unique which we may or may not see tomorrow as - supernatural.
If we do see it tomorrow,it becomes normal for us,i've read somewhere that the lack of knowledge about something often confuses humans into categorizing them as "Supernatural" or "God" and that's exactly what we are doing.
Toad with eyes in its mouth,humans that can calculate numbers as fast as calculators the list goes on,we probably don't know the half of it!These many unique things happening in our very own planet earth!
Do you believe in aliens?I do.
So what if an alien exists in some distant planet that can read minds or teleport or use telepathy or do something really supernatural.That being would be categorized as supernatural by us,right?What if that being is "God"?
I know what you are thinking,its a lot of what if's and just a lot of imagination.But think about it,i mean like REALLY think about it.We have so many unique occurencess in our very own planet earth(remember the pixel anology i mentioned above?)and we don't even know everything about the lang we step on.We are claiming that the existence of a supernatural being such as "God" or a similar supernatural being with similar attributes are impossible.Now when we deny the existence of this being,we are denying the existence of this being in the whole of the universe and Einstein said the universe is infinite?(Holy cow,right?!).
Think about the probability!If probability has any logic to it then i'd say that the probability of the existence of such a being is pretty high.Why? Because of the mere size of the universe.If i have a handful of sand in my hand the probability of finding gold ores in it would be very low but if i had the whole of the sand on earth to account for the probability would increase significantly,right?
Atheists ask me why i think there is a god i say probability.I am willing to acknowledge my insignificance and i know that i'm no one to downright deny the existence of a being such as "God".Why?Because its plain stupid!Its like living inside a room your entire life and you see only humans your entire life and then one day you go out and you see birds and you go Holy f**k i can't believe they're real!
The probability of the existence of a supernatural being such as "God" in our universe is not 0 and therefore it is possible but it is also not possible.So that's why i think i'm an agnostic or whatever i don't even know what they all mean as of now.But wouldn't that make Atheism pointless?Are you guys seeing the logic in this?I'd agree that its okay to believe in a god or believe in the non-existence of a god but doesn't that kind of put us at the extreme?Shouldn't we be more like "i'm not sure" rather "i'm sure theres a god" or "i'm sure there isnt a god"? Then you ask me why i think there's a god? Because i think that the mere size of the universe is so vast that the probability of the existence of a supernatural being such as "god" or a supernatural being with similar attributes such as a "god" is slightly higher,that's why.
So according to my logic only a person with infinity knowledge have the right to be an atheist because only then would that person actually know and that contrary to popular belief atheism isn't the actual logical desicion between the two(the other being believing in the existence of a god).

I know i'm probably not even as half as smart as you guys here and i'm really new here so please if i said something stupid please please don't just insult me and go away,i urge you to insult me and explain to me clearly why i'm wrong or just explain to me clearly why i'm wrong.

Thank you for reading this awfully long post!

[Faith No More]

Firstly, welcome to the forum.

Being an atheist doesn't mean saying there is no God. Being an atheist means not believing in God, but not necessarily saying God doesn't exist. Some do say there is no God, and those are gnostic atheists. Some say they don't believe in God but aren't certain it doesn't exist, and those are agnostic atheists.

What you have here is basically an argument from ignorance, which is saying that something is unknown so a certain answer must be true. The problem with God is we have no evidence for it beyond human beings claiming it to exist, but the evidence they offer in defense is highly flawed. Because of the lack of evidence for God, I reject the claim that God exists. Thus, I am an atheist. As a skeptic and an empiricist, I have to reject claims that cannot meet the burden of proof. That is where the God claim.oes.

[ignoramus]

Firstly, welcome to our forum.
I can understand why you feel the way you do.

Firstly, you need to realise the majority of us do not believe that a "god" does not exist.
That would make us arrogant like theists who "just know" that God exists.

Yes, we don't know many things. There are lots of weird and wonderful things  nature.
The brain can and does do amazing things.
Let's not confuse amazing things from this natural universe with "supernatural" things which defy the laws of the universe. The single most important things which brings people to religion is the concept of hell and an afterlife.
To us, it is blatantly obvious that the divine texts were written in this way to scare people into "believing".
This doesn't sound very "divine" does it. There may be a god, but we're pretty sure it's not the one as described in this sacred books.(And if it wasn't for these "sacred texts", where would religion be?

Basically, the concept of a god is for the philosophers, but man cannot control or make money from philosophy, so they invented religions! It doesn't get any more simple than that.
Catch.

[KevinM1]

What does any of that have to do with your poll question, which asks about the right to be an atheist?

And, like others have said, you had a misconception of atheism from the start. While there are gnostic/strong atheists who assert there are no gods at all, period, end of story, the majority of atheists are agnostic/weak. What that means is simple:

We can't believe in something that doesn't have credible evidence pointing to its existence.

That's it. Nothing more.

We tend to dismiss existing religions because they're built upon nonsensical assertions and self-contradiction. At this moment, there is no credible evidence for divinity. None. But that doesn't mean a god/creator entity doesn't exist. It just means we haven't found actual evidence for it. And, as human progress has shown, the answers to many of life's biggest questions have been entirely natural rather than supernatural. Given that trend, many of us lean towards probably not, with the right to change our minds in light of new, credible evidence.

Put another way, theists keep claiming there's a god. We keep asking them to prove it, since they're the ones making the claim, so the burden of proof lies with them. They invariably reply with bible passages, "mysterious ways," and "it's a deep, personal relationship," none of which is actually credible evidence for a variety of reasons. We remain unmoved. That's about the sum of it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Brevity is the soul of wit, kid. 2nd draft = rough draft - 10%.

Seriously, thinking is best done in the shower.

[The Inquisition]

This is an argument from ignorance, I don't know everything so god must be a viable explanation for existence.

Why would god be an explanation? How many explanations are there for existence?

Out of all of these explanations, why would a deity be the answer?

If a deity is the answer, how could we know anything about it?

Why would you believe any ancient scriptures making claims about said deity or deities?

I could say a deity might be the answer to why we are here, but that doesn't even tell us anything about it or even if the deity didn't self-immolate in the creation of the universe.

How would we know that this deity didn't annihilate itself and no longer exists due to the enormous energies present in the first second of the big bang?

Perhaps the only way we could know would be to gather evidence from the physical universe that uses scientific methodology.

There are a few things science has observed that narrow some of the plausible choices, we know it took longer than a day to create the Earth and the cosmos, so we have an idea which theories are less plausible compared to other explanations.

[Jenny A]

First of all I hate your thread title. How is it ever necessary to have the right to believe something? People are capable of believing at least three impossible things before breakfast. And they will do so with or without rights.

Second, there are very few atheists who think they have proven there are no gods.

[vorlon13]

Does anyone have the right to practice any of the 39,999 demonstrably false religions ??

[Esquilax]

Ah, the old stalwart argument from ignorance: "You don't know everything, therefore god."

It's a non-starter for one simple reason: it assumes possibility.

The OP talks about grains of sand, about computers, and communities and so on, but those are all things that we know are possible, because they are demonstrable. Nobody has been able to ascertain the same about god, and this is a problem because even the set of everything unknown to us only contains things that are possible. Impossible things don't exist, that's just a tautology.

Why does the OP believe in god? "Probability!" he says, and he expects that we'll find this sufficient, but no: for something to be probable, it first has to be possible, and appealing to our lack of knowledge to establish probability without first having a firmly justified notion that the idea if even possible in the first place is skipping the first step. It's a non-starter until possibility can be established.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Wow i didn't expect that.Usually people just swear at me..you guys are wierd but wierd in a good way!
I always thought atheists where in the extreme end of the scale thank you for letting me know that most of you are as clueless as me!

@KevinM1,Poll question is "This make sense"? The title of my thread is "Do you have the right to be an atheist" different things right?I'm new here..

@Jenny A ,I think i meant if someone have the right to be a "pure" atheist.Of course you don't really need to have a right,but according to me its about doing what's most logically true,i think that's what i must've meant.I think i meant "Do you really have a sound logical explanation to be a pure atheist"

@The Inquisition, "This is an argument from ignorance, I don't know everything so god must be a viable explanation for existence."

I actually didn't mean that " since i don't know everything god is a viable explanation ".
What i meant was that if there were a scale from 1 to 10,1 being that god doesn't exist and 10 being that god does exist,a logical person should fall somewhere in between 6 - 10.Why not 5-10?As i've said even the existence of unicorns are probable(as stupid as it may seem) simply because of the vast size of our universe and the infinity amount of possibilities of life forms.Its like Schrödinger's cat well actually its not because in that case the probability would be 50-50.According to me there is a slightly higher probability of the existence of a god because the universe is vast and the possibilities of different forms of life forms are endless.And some being just may have the characteristics we think a "god" would have then it'd fair to categorize that being as a "god",wouldn't it?
We think that teleportation and telepathy is "supernatural" now,in my opinion nothing is supernatural,i mean if a guy that lived in the mammoth ages were brought to our present time he'd think we are some kind of "gods",because back then what seemed impossible is possible now.Anything is possible,so "God" must be possible too.This is what i think.

P.S Don't introduce religion into the equation its not very smart really everybody knows religion is stupid and its used to scare children into being "good" which to a certain extend backfired in my opinion.I'm talking about a god,a god that is not chained to the descriptions of any religion.I'm talking about the probability of existence of such a being not "jesus" or the other 100,000 gods hindu's have..

Edit: @ Esquilax , i'm not expecting you to believe my beliefs and its not my intention,my intention is to seek help from this community members in helping me solve this argument i have against the non-existence of a god.I want people to tell me if i'm right or wrong and provide me with sufficient data to prove their point.That's all i want,i don't want anything more.

You said that i must establish possibility before i talk about the probability of a "God".What about the probability of the possibility?According to me the possibility is existent.Why?I would agree that it is impossible if:

*Every life form in earth(an eg being humans)had a "standard".
As in,every humans would have a fixed amount of IQ and other human qualities.Which is not the case a person can be retarded and another person can be a genius.A person can be short and another person can be tall.We see such diversity even in humans(we are more different than same?).Furthermore we see animals that have eyes in their mouth??A human with extraordinary memory but average in other aspects,a person that can calculate faster than a calculator??I think that this diversity is proof enough that further diversities are possible.And considering the fact that there are countless other planets and countless possibilities of life across the universe these diversities can be further "diverse".And if a being can have atleast 1 diversity which is atleast 1 of the characteristics of "God" then another being can have atleast 2 diversities which are the same diversities a supernatural power such as "God" may exibit.Doesn't that make it possible for the existence of a god?