How can you be sure that God doesn't exist?

[BryanS]

 Why do you believe that God doesn't exist?
 How can you be sure that God's existence is not real, for certain?
 Humanity has still not uncovered a great deal about our own existence, or what's on the other side of the universe.

For your first question, the reason is that I have not seen any evidence justifying the existence of god. For one thing, there are so many gods that humans have worshiped over history, that there is no agreement on what this god is to go looking for it. And in the case of the Judeo Christian god, it is defined in such a way as to be unobservable.  In fact, there have been so many human invented gods that to take on the task of disproving each and everyone of them would be an impossible thing to humanly do. Which leads naturally to your second question.
Your second question conveniently shifts the burden of proof to the atheist. You almost certainly agree that any of thousands of other gods ever conceived of --other than the Judeo Christian one--had to have been human inventions. Since human have such a proclivity to invent gods, and since the concept of a god is itself a human invention, I will not accept the proposition that a god exists without some positive evidence for it. That is not the same thing as absolute proof of the non-existence of god, but the position I take is logically no different than refusing to accept the existence of Santa Clause or the Toothfairy as they are likewise inventions of the human imagination. So I do not put the level of certainty at 100%, but I do put it at very unlikely that any god exists. I would be open to changing my mind on the existence of god if presented with evidence, but I do not expect to see such evidence. Which leads naturally to your third question.
For much of human history, god was the explanation for the inexplicable, a "god of the gaps" as atheists are wont to call this idea. Since humanity has developed the scientific method of investigating the natural world, the gaps have only diminished. We have not to date required a god hypothesis to explain the natural world around us. In fact, phenomena attributed to god has continued to find alternate, scientific explanations. The god of the gaps is a diminishing entity and will only continue to diminish.  We may, at some point, discover evidence for this god. But so far any evidence for an existence of god has proven illusive.

[Rahn127]

How do we know for certain that a giant black hole doesn't exist on the dark side of the moon ?

We know what a black is and we know what effect it has on the natural world.

Do we know what a god is ?
Do we know what effect it has on the natural world ?

We know black holes exist. We have evidence of their existence.

We don't know if a god exists. We have no evidence of it's existence.

Because there is no evidence, I don't believe a giant black hole exists on the dark side of the moon.

Because there is no evidence, I don't believe a god exists.

[Mister Agenda]

Atheism isn’t a claim that gods don’t exist.

It is a rejection of theistic claims, however.

I’m not going to claim that there are no gods, nor am I going to accept the claims of people who say there are and that these gods speak through them, or the claims of books that show that the authors had little or no understanding of how the world works.

If a deity wabts me to believe in it then it can come and introduce itself in person.

Notice I said “believe” and not “worship”

I hate the suffix of any "ism" being attached any position.

All an an "ism" means is that the person believing it claims it.

An 'ism' can also indicate a state of condition, like albinism or metabolism. The 'ism' of atheism and theism is like that: theism is the state of holding a belief that at least one god is real, atheism is not being in that state.

---

As to the OP, I do not need to know with utter certainty that Bigfoots don't exist to not believe that Bigfoots exist. I AM utterly certain that the God of Abraham who flooded the world to the mountaintops, stopped the sun in the sky to facilitate a battle, and afflicted Egypt with plagues is not real because those things did not happen.

[Aegon]

Shalom

 Why do you believe that God doesn't exist?
 How can you be sure that God's existence is not real, for certain?
 Humanity has still not uncovered a great deal about our own existence, or what's on the other side of the universe.
 
 If anything, one can only be agnostic, rather than an atheist.
 The logic I am going by is that atheism states that only hard evidence should be used to prove or disprove something; that is after all, the scientific way. Given that there is no evidence to prove or disprove God, you can only be agnostic rather than an atheist.
 For those who don't know what an agnostic is, agnostics are neutral towards the idea; they don't know if God exists or doesn't, and so are open to both possibilites, but conclude that at a human level, is impossible to know the truth.
 
 So anyway, I would like to know why you believe that God doesn't exist?

Everybody has already covered the "Why is God different from anything else in terms of evidence" argument, so I'll go a different route.

The concept of God, especially an Abrahamic one, is incredibly egotistical. The fact that we as humans have such a narrow view of reality as it is, funny enough, I see to be proof against God. Things are far more complex than we could ever dream, and our brains have evolved to survive not discover the true nature of things. Even as a layperson, everything I've learned about the absolutely insane breadth of our universe - from the billions and billions of stars throughout the galaxies to the constant movement of particles on the quantum level - shows that the Judeo-Christian concept of a God is far too simplistic.

A god who just so happens to mirror our behavior, and a hierarchy between man and god that just so happens to mirror our societies... it just all seems very clear to me that this concept of a deity is a primitive concept. The Bible is just Jewish mythology, a story a society created based on its experience in order to explain how things are. It has its merit, and the stories have had their use, but in terms of trying to describe reality...it's on Level 2 or 3, whereas reality as it really is is about Level 40,000. Judaism, Islam, Christianity, they don't even scratch the surface. Does that make sense? It's just not something worth being agnostic about. We're just not that important in the grand scheme of space-time, and Judeo-Christian philosophy pretends we are.

The only religious philosophy that I've studied that has made any sense in regards to reality as we're coming to know it would be Buddhism, for denying the existence of the self, dismissing a supreme deity, and acknowledging the transfer of energy in a closed system as well as emphasizing how our thoughts and actions impact things for generations. All of which make perfect sense... in my humble opinion.

[tackattack]

@Aegon Christianity, for denying the importance of the self, acknowledging a supreme deity outside of a closed system, and acknowledging and stressing the importance of the relationships between people in a closed system as well as emphasizing how our thoughts and actions impact things for generations. All of which make perfect sense to me too Aegon, plus those saffron robes are awesome for staying cool in Summer months, IMO.

[Aegon]

@Aegon Christianity, for denying the importance of the self, acknowledging a supreme deity outside of a closed system, and acknowledging and stressing the importance of the relationships between people in a closed system as well as emphasizing how our thoughts and actions impact things for generations. All of which make perfect sense to me too Aegon, plus those saffron robes are awesome for staying cool in Summer months, IMO.

I find it very interesting you interpret it as denying the importance of the self. I don't see how Christianity could be any further from that if it tried.

[tackattack]

@Aegon The very act of subjugating yourself to a creator God, I mean there's not much more of a way to interpret "If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me continuously" Christians can be pretty far from it at times, I'm certain you and I both have seen first hand. But denying the natural self is pretty fundamental to Christianity, IMO. We could start a thread on it if you're interested, I don't want to derail whatever this thread was about.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

I do think Tackattack was trying for levity within their post to you Aegon.

Sadly the written word in English is oft times not upto the task.

Cheers.

[Aegon]

@Aegon The very act of subjugating yourself to a creator God, I mean there's not much more of a way to interpret "If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me continuously" Christians can be pretty far from it at times, I'm certain you and I both have seen first hand. But denying the natural self is pretty fundamental to Christianity, IMO. We could start a thread on it if you're interested, I don't want to derail whatever this thread was about.

I can tell we have very different ideas of "denying the self." It is important to note I do not mean ego in the sense of vanity, but the ego in terms of the *you*. When you think to yourself, that thing. The "I". The sense of self you possess. Christianity takes ego for granted, and there isn't much dialogue on whether the sensation of having an ego ought to be questioned - in fact, it embraces it, and accepts a permanent soul that is separate from the physical body and continues upon death. Additionally, I find that the concept of God that Christians inflates our importance so much that there is an even a creator God to subject yourself to. From your point of view we have directly interacted with a supreme deity and are a significant component to the overall picture, which by definition inflates our importance to an incredible level. That, to me, is awfully egotistical - in both senses of the word.

To expand, I see myself, and you, and everything else as manifestations of energy in a closed universe. (As far as we know) 13 billion years of constant change and evolution led to this point - where we are now sentient creatures with a brain powerful enough to grant us the ability to think of ourselves in a way that (as far as we know) is unrivaled. And now we struggle to make sense of it all, but "it all" is under no obligation to make sense because it wasn't created for us to make sense of it. It's an inherently purposeless excistence because the mere concept of a "purpose" is something we've made up. I'm trying to find the words to convey to you how far removed I am from any concept of God that is so... human-like.

Perhaps this old TED talk from Dawkins can help paint my perspective a bit better to you (I know, I know... but he is focused solely on science and the nature of reality here, no Christian-bashing.) What he talks about are things that I consistently think about. Things are just... so much more than we can perceive, and there's action happening on levels we don't even dream of. Even language can be limiting, the "true nature of reality," to stick with consistent language, is something that ultimately can't even be described (something that both Buddhism and Taoism acknowledged long ago.)





(I suppose we could take this to another topic, but this topic is pretty general. It still has to do with why I don't believe in God)

[The Grand Nudger]

Seeking out redemption and perpetual life is hardly an act of denying the natural self. It’s an exhortation to temporary inconvenience for eternal reward.

I get that there’s a difference between the ad copy and the reality, but which are we supposed to be discussing when we discuss a religion? Do you believe Islam’s ad copy, lol?