Question for the Atheists.

[_Tarski]

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

You are not getting evasive answers. You are getting answers that show that your question is not all that thoughtful. It is a stupid cliché.

You want a simple reason. OK.

Because evolution explains perfectly the existence of complex life forms, the notion of a conscious personal creator is a gratuitous unnecessary hypothesis.
Since there is scant evidence of any kind for the existence of such a God, it seems fairly irrational to adopt the belief.

As far as a priori proofs such as Godel's ontological argument, well I want only to say that

1) I generally find at least one of the premises or definitions to be either incomprehensible or just as dubious as what is supposed to be proved. Thus it is unsurprising that an atheist or agnostic would remain unconvinced by such an argument. They/we are atheistic about some of the premises also.

2) The "God" we seem to end up with-if indeed we do end up with anything at all- seems to be an incomprehensible abstraction that we would hardly know how to worship. Does the ground of being love us? Does the first principle or first cause give us our salvation?? Does a logically necessary being create fish? Perhaps no more than the the set of all sets does.

[_mentalgymnast]

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.

OK. Thanks. That clears up a misconception that I had. So I'm guessing then that when we hear an atheist say, "God wasn't needed to create the Universe", that's not the same as saying that they know for a fact that God doesn't exist. So apparently they're willing to leave the door open as to a creator/God being responsible for human beings here on this earth when they make a statement similar to this.

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.

So if God wasn't needed then that is primary evidence that God doesn't exist, right?

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.

That's the reason I'm referring to the tools of inquiry that most of us have, the five senses. Does God remain hidden from us by default if we rely on these filters of perception? And the more interesting question, at least to me, is why would God hide himself behind a veil that cannot be penetrated through the normal means of perceiving the world. The fact is, those that disbelieve in God, in most cases I would guess, have relied primarily upon the five senses to obtain information concerning "god". What if that method is basically useless?

Anyway, yes, I agree with you Beastie, on the assumption that there is a God, he has chosen to make a world in which he is hidden through the observational means of our five senses. And I would also agree that there seems to be a problem with getting the story straight/same among those that have made claims to experiencing the numinous.

But is that reason enough to disbelieve in a creator/god who is responsible for human beings on this earth?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

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.

Ok. I'm not in any real disagreement with the major thrust of what you're saying, but why not default to there being a god/creator that is responsible for human beings on earth rather than defaulting to disbelief? It seems as though there are enough reasons to believe in a creator to make the belief default reasonable. Why choose disbelief? Simply because there have been what appear to be some "whacko" god beliefs in the past?

Regards,
MG

[_Tarski]

Ok. I'm not in any real disagreement with the major thrust of what you're saying, but why not default to there being a god/creator that is responsible for human beings on earth rather than defaulting to disbelief? It seems as though there are enough reasons to believe in a creator to make the belief default reasonable. Why choose disbelief? Simply because there have been what appear to be some "whacko" god beliefs in the past?

Regards,
MG

OK, like what?

[_mentalgymnast]

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?

But what if that is "his" design? And to make this design operable/functional he has constructed a world in which he can only be known through the use of some other means of perception other than the five senses? If this is so and we are not amenable to this possibility, we will not "know" God while living on this earth. Of course, I know, we (speaking in the collective) can often beat our heads against the wall, so to speak, trying to figure out how the heck this purported "extra" sense works...and often doesn't seem to work depending on different variables. Brain chemistry, environment, relationships, etc.

So we come away thinking that the five senses are the only means by which a "fair" and just god would make himself known since there are so many problems with getting any kind of extra sense to "kick in" in any uniform/predictable kind of way from person to person.

But is this sufficient reason to disbelieve in a god/creator that is responsible for human beings on this earth?

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

I do know that the LDS version of God does not exist in any way shape or form.

For me it's the opposite. It would make sense for human beings to be patterned (shape and form) after a creator/god that was directly responsible for them being on the earth. Why would this not make more sense than looking for a god that is of a different species/nature than us?

Regards,
MG

[_Fence Sitter]

I do know that the LDS version of God does not exist in any way shape or form.

For me it's the opposite. It would make sense for human beings to be patterned (shape and form) after a creator/god that was directly responsible for them being on the earth. Why would this not make more sense than looking for a god that is of a different species/nature than us?

Regards,
MG

So if we found intelligent life on another planet would you expect them to be in human form?

[_mentalgymnast]

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?

I suppose that it would come down to a basic gut feeling/hope that the universe is not simply a cold place with no ongoing/eternal purpose for sentient beings/entities. It's a sense of the ineffable, the sublime, the LOVE that has meaning beyond the here and now. Yep, it's wishful thinking. But as I've already asked, why not default to this position rather than the opposite position of disbelief in a god/creator? It seems to me that this is a position that opens up opportunities rather than closing doors.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

You seem to be positing a creator that sets things in motion, but is completely divorced from the whole scene there after.

Well, no. If God has a plan of one kind or another for humanity it would be ludicrous for him to divorce himself from the comings and goings of the human family. There would, by necessity, need to be ways and means by which God identifies his nature and goodness/caring to the human family. Of course that then becomes the human dilemma, trying to identify the hand of God in the course of human affairs. From the perspective of the LDS system of belief this "hand of God" among the latter day saints is manifest through prophets and personal inspiration/revelation.

Something that occurs beyond the use of the natural five senses.

Regards,
MG

[_Sophocles]

Ok. I'm not in any real disagreement with the major thrust of what you're saying, but why not default to there being a god/creator that is responsible for human beings on earth rather than defaulting to disbelief? It seems as though there are enough reasons to believe in a creator to make the belief default reasonable. Why choose disbelief?

(Just so I understand, are you invoking Pascal's Wager here?)

I believe I already gave several reasons why I'm inclined not to "default" toward believing in a god given no physical evidence either way, but I'll respond anyway because I just remembered another one. Defaulting towards belief causes us to quit searching for the real answer. If everyone is satisfied that diseases are caused by demonic possession, then we never discover germs. Likewise, if we all just accept on faith that the origin of the universe is a sentient being that created it out of nothing, through supernatural means, then nothing will drive us to keep researching to either confirm or disprove that hypothesis.