Question for the Atheists.

[_mentalgymnast]

I have a belief that God doesn’t exist, and I feel it’s justified. If it is true or not, I don’t really know.

OK. Thanks.

Would you be willing to give some reasons why you feel your belief is justified?

Regards,
MG

[_beastie]

You may find it evasive, but I don't know a single atheist who says they "know for a fact" that God doesn't exist. Perhaps there are a few somewhere, but I haven't met them.

I lack belief in any godbeing, or anything supernatural, for that matter. Hume expressed an idea similar to my own:

"That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

Throughout the history of mankind, human beings have endeavored to find proof of the miraculous, or the supernatural. All they've been able to come up with is anecdotal stories that always lack hard evidence, despite their fascination and determination. Therefore I conclude that any supernatural claim, including the existence of a godbeing, is an extraordinary, miraculous claim. While believers always have reasons and justifications for their beliefs, I find that the falsehood of their testimony - that God exists - is hardly more miraculous than the far more mundane and ordinary alternative, non-supernatural explanations. The mundane, non-supernatural explanations are more than adequate.

Now, perhaps some God exists, and It choose to hide itself so perfectly that the universe looks just like a universe without a God would look. I have no way of falsifying that claim. But I can hardly be faulted for lacking belief in God if It has chosen to hide Itself so effectively.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Where do you allow for some wiggle room?

I’m a realist when it comes to Universals, so I think things like properties and sets exist as abstracta. I’m also a Platonist about numbers as well, and believe in possible worlds too.

None of the above relies on empiricism. I believe we can know things that are synthetic a priori and such.

[_mentalgymnast]

How do I prove for a fact that an invisible pink elephant is not living in my garage?

Atheism doesn't assert that they know for a fact that a god does not exist. It is a lack of belief in any god.

So you lack belief in a creator/god responsible for human beings here on this earth? I'm assuming this is so since you're participating on this thread.

Do you think that the five senses tell us all we would need to know in regards to answering this question?

Regards,
MG

[_Sophocles]

Knowing that we are limited to our five senses in determining what is real and what is not, what is true and what is not, what we can know and what we cannot, and so forth, how can you know for a fact that a God doesn't exist? The evidence that you rely on is restricted/limited by the filtering system of your five senses.

I would go even further and say that there is much we don't understand at all. You might say there are gaps in our understanding of the universe and its origins.

Could the answer to all these gaps be a god? Certainly. Do I think that very likely? Past experience seems to suggest otherwise.

That's my somewhat flippant answer. My honest personal opinion is that each new scientific discovery we make as a species blows away any bronze age myth about a man in the sky. When we do manage to overcome the limitations of our senses and deduce how things work, it's often surprising and beautiful in such astounding ways that it sometimes takes a generation or more to take hold in our minds. Just look at how subatomic particles behave. It's like nothing we ever could have imagined had we not "seen" it with our own experiments.

A sentient creator is something our cave dwelling ancestors came up with. It's too clumsy and obvious, just like the ideas that the sun and moon and stars were living beings. I think that if and when we do finally figure out the origins of the universe, it will be something sublime and nearly incomprehensible to us.

Something else we've discovered is that, as a species, we are naturally inclined to see patterns and agency where there are none. We're wired to think that a god must have created it all. Knowing about that natural bias makes me inclined to correct against it. It makes me a little more skeptical of the god hypothesis than I might otherwise be, because I realize that we're inclined to favor it for reasons other than good evidence pointing toward it.

[_Mad Viking]

Which god are we talking about?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15950&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=how+atheism+works

A creator responsible for human life on earth.

Regards,
MG

The god you've described has chosen to not make their existence apparent in any way. Their assumed existence looks exactly like their non-existence. It begs the question of why anyone would posit this god's existence in the first place?

[_Tchild]

Knowing that we are limited to our five senses in determining what is real and what is not, what is true and what is not, what we can know and what we cannot, and so forth, how can you know for a fact that a God doesn't exist? The evidence that you rely on is restricted/limited by the filtering system of your five senses.

How can you be so sure?

Regards,
MG

I think most atheists are open to new information if it were forthcoming. What I do know is that other failing and fallable human beings DO NOT know what God is, so I am surely not going to accept their anthropormorphic ideas of God with their externalized projections as how I define whether God does or does not exist.

I am quite open to something, what that is I do not know. I do know that the LDS version of God does not exist in any way shape or form.

[_Mad Viking]

Knowing that we are limited to our five senses in determining what is real and what is not, what is true and what is not, what we can know and what we cannot, and so forth, how can you know for a fact that a God doesn't exist? The evidence that you rely on is restricted/limited by the filtering system of your five senses.

How can you be so sure?

Regards,
MG

I apologize for responding again before you got a chance to respond to my first post. However, I am struck by the irony of your question. You say that the only tools we have for determining truth are our five senses. Can ANY god be detected with any of these?

It doesn't appear as we look at the general course of things that this is the case. Or at least not reliable. So back to my original question...

So if our 5 senses are the only thing we have for determining truth AND we cannot reliably perceive a god with these 5 sense, why would we be justified in positing that an unperceived god exists?

[_Mad Viking]

I'd really be interested in a thoughtful answer or two. So far, I'm seeing some evasiveness. C'mon, there's got to be some simple, straightforward reasons for lack of belief in a creator/God responsible for human beings on earth.

Regards,
MG

The problem is that the term god is vague. You seem to be positing a creator that sets things in motion, but is completely divorced from the whole scene there after. Sure, that's possible. But, this god's existence looks an awful lot like their non-existence. So why not just assume they don't exist since there is no evidence to suggest that they did set things in motion.

[_Some Schmo]

If someone gives me a phone number and tells me to call it for all kinds of awesomeness, and I call it repetitively and get no answer, I'm going to think there's nobody there and figure it was too good to be true. If I tell them later that the number's no good and they insist they just called last night and it was awesome, but I continue to get no answer, I'm going to maintain that nobody is at that number until I get some confirmation that someone is.

After a while, there doesn't seem to be a point to calling the number any more.