Atheists -what makes you so sure?

[OMG12]

I often wonder what makes atheists so sure that there isn’t a god. I’m not talking a particular iteration of the Divine, eg it’s easy to say I can’t believe there is a God because of childhood cancer, but that is predicated on the concept of a God who is only good and considers childhood cancer as bad and further is capable and willing to stop all bad things. I’m talking gods not religions here which a very different things.

Most cultures throughout time have have gods so it’s somewhat of an anomaly to not believe. I just wonder why people don’t believe. (And can we try and keep this a decent debate rather than any of the sky fairy shit those with an inability to debate a point beyond regurgitated social media soundbites seem limited to)

Take 9/11 for example

A couple of thousand innocent lives were lost

Why would god allow that to happen if they existed?

Next you'll tell me it's because they take the one's they love the most first

It's a load of shit

Brainwashing from a very young age

It was more this poster’s inability to read the original question. It was a joke (apparently lost on you) about the inability to debate a point- never mind.

How would you answer the points made op ?

I think belief in god is a construct.

Astronomy had taught us the science behind beliefs of the ancients, and so on.

Wonderful thought, imagination, creative thinking and philosophy behind most of the world religions’ creation stories.

Science gives us tested theory and empirical evidence.

It doesn’t give us moral frameworks or support our conscience but then anthropologists and sociologists can tell us how humans at their best work together for the common good.

We shouldn’t need to believe in an unseen non- communicating god to behave ourselves.

She literally answered the question you asked in your OP.

The religious people who are close to me were all raised within their religions. It makes them part of a community. It gives them a routine. It gives them comfort. It feels familiar. It makes them feel important. It gives their lives purpose. It supports their families.

many, many years ago humans believed in gods as a way to stay alive. They thought that if they followed certain rules, behaviours, sacrifices, that the rains would come, their crops would grow well and their families wouldn’t starve to death.

some people used these beliefs/stories to get what they want and control others and that’s never changed.

The thing is, with the progress of science and the better understanding of human nature, I understand why people choose to believe but it’s not something I could do. I sometimes wish I was religious because I think there’s a lot of benefits to it, but I’m a realist and I don’t believe we have a reasonable basis to believe in a deity. It’s not the logical answer.

The normal state of affairs is to not believe in something unless there is evidence of it.

There is no evidence of God therefore I don't believe. Simple.

You are an atheist in relation to the hundreds of gods others in the world believe in. I'm guessing you don't believe in Zeus or Thor? Shiva? Ganesh? The Tooth Fairy? Is it possibly because there is no evidence? There you go. You are an atheist about one less god than me.

Why are Christians so sure that the tooth fairy, Medusa, Santa don't exist? Because there's no proof for them and plenty against, they're clearly myths and to believe in them would be a little silly and childish. I see all gods the same way, whether they be Yahweh, Thor, Horus or any other millions of other gods that have ever been believed in.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

I think people generally believe in a concept of God because the idea of randomness is scary and so the idea that somebody is actively making decisions that cause things to go a certain way is comforting, even if it sometimes seems arbitrarily cruel or hard to understand. And I think people find it hard to understand probability and God is a nice explainer for that as well. Basically the universe is very complicated and confusing and for many people the idea of God makes sense of all the.

It doesn't to me. I'm Okay with randomness. I much prefer it to some random person's whims. I know that a god isn't a person, and wouldn't be flawed in decision making like a person, but that just seems a little too convenient and unlikely to me. Everything else in life is flawed, why wouldn't a god be?

It's also comforting to have the idea that somebody is always looking out for you. In my most spiritual moments I tend to think of passed loved ones as doing this, even though I know in all likelihood that isn't true.

Do you believe in fairies? Do you believe in Father Christmas? In my opinion those make believe things are in the same category as gods.

I am often left really surprised that sensible, intelligent people believe in entities that cannot be seen and are not proven.

Personally, I prefer science.

Either all religions and deities are real or none of them are. It makes no sense for one god to be real but another god isn't. So ultimately, in my opinion, there cannot be any such thing as gods.

But really, I just don’t believe. Nor do I want to. It's not something I debate within myself at all. I've never felt any differently. Having a religion is an alien concept to me.

Thanks for alll your replies. Leaving aside the comments on religion and the “bad things happen to good people” posts which, I think, were dealt with in the OP, the most common reason seems to be lack
of evidence or logic.

its interesting to me. I’m what is generally called a perennialist, it really doesn’t matter to me which gods we
are talking about, to me, Ricky Getvais’s comments about “I just happen to believe in one less God than you” is irrelevant to me as I believe in all gods and none. I believe in divinity as source of everything, good and bad, I don’t believe in a god controlling everything. I believe in a god that created the laws that science now observes, I believe that science doesn’t have the answers to how and why at a deep enough level, eventually you will get to a lack of knowledge- you could follow Arthur C Clarke and assume that eventually science will provide the answer, but that’s based on a belief system the same as my understanding- but I might well be wrong in those beliefs, I have reasons that lead me to believe they’re right but would always be open to being wrong.

The “big bang” is an interesting theory, in Jewish Kabbalah there’s almost exactly the same story but with reasoning as to why. Most of science at that level seems an educated guess rather than logic.

I guess what I’m kind of asking is why does a belief in the natural laws explained by science exclude the possibility of a divine source for people, what do people understand to be the source of the universe and why can’t that be divine? It seems no more logical to exclude that possibility than to include it. I can understand an agnostic point of view but struggle with people being certain there isn’t any divine source (although atheists might, of course be right, but could also easily be wrong)

Atheism is just as much a belief as any other.

No it isn’t. It is simply the absence of belief in a god / deity / gods. The absence of faith.

Belief in god / gods/ a god depends on faith. Religion makes much of the notion of faith. Faith without proof is considered the ultimate in faith. The whole point of religious faith is that there need not be proof.

I am an atheist.

However if suddenly god was proven to exist in some form I would acknowledge that existence, just as I acknowledge the existence of other galaxies, neutrinos, magnetism, etc.

Belief in god and it faith seem to reach parts of human imagination and emotion that we have a need to stimulate. I find what is often called ‘spiritual’ fulfilment in art, music, the beauty of the natural world, fellowship, stories of great kindness and selflessness amongst my fellow humans.

We are complex creatures.

I’m technically an agnostic because it can’t be proved that there isn’t a God. But I’m 99.999% sure there isn’t one.

All sorts of things can’t be proved, especially negatives. It can’t be proved that there isn’t a giant invisible orangutan floating in the sky. It can’t be proved that the centre of the moon isn’t made of chocolate. It can’t be proved that mermaids and unicorns don’t exist somewhere.

But all of these things seem very unlikely to me. Hence I am 99.999% certain they are not true. Same applies to God.

I believe that there was a man called St Nicholas on whom the story of Father Christmas was based, so I believe an element of Father Christmas is real yes. I believe the “entity” of Father Christmas is an embodiment of a certain spirit. do I believe in Fairies - yes but not in the way you would understand.

Why do you think having a religion is necessary for believing in a divine source?

I have a sense of spirituality - but I don’t believe in an individual religion. I think all religions reflect the same human urge towards believing in something bigger than ourselves. Not sure what that thing is though - maybe Gaia, maybe a higher intelligence.I’d describe myself as an agnostic rather than an atheist though.

OP: so you arrive at ‘who made the divinity’. Er… a greater divinity…

It is likely that we are not even close to being able to understand our universe. We probably don’t even have the right brain. We are probably like pet Guinea pigs being expected to be able to do physics.

But that doesn’t mean the physics isn’t there.

To those who do believe in God… how did you decide which God to believe in?

There are many religious scientists but the majority are not, ask yourself why. The people that understand the fundamentals of the universe and who's life's work is to discover how and why it exists and does what it does tend not to believe in gods, that's a good of an argument against gods as any other!

Study science, study the big bang theory and how we know it is a fact. Logic and educated guesses do not come into it.

Op you believe in father christmas and fairies?

It’s a good question, who created the divinity. I like the Kabbalistic explanation of the eventual reality being nothing
with everything emanating from that nothing.

I’m sure the physics are there, but where did the laws of physics come from? In part they were created by man as soon as he tried to explain them using words and numbers.

One thing we probably agree on is the inability of msn to comprehend it all.

I have answered that above.

I guess what I’m kind of asking is why does a belief in the natural laws explained by science exclude the possibility of a divine source for people, what do people understand to be the source of the universe and why can’t that be divine?

I agree that there is so much we don’t understand about the universe. So much we haven't discovered. So many questions we can't answer about why the universe exists, what happens when we die, what does any of it mean?

But I don't think there is anyone, in any form, in control of all this. It just doesn't make sense to me. No gods.

Maybe there is no greater meaning behind it all. Maybe it doesn't really matter.

In the end, I truly couldn't make myself believe in a a religion if I tried. It's just not me.

Because I have absolutely no sense of spirituality at all. I have no inner feeling that deep down, there’s more to life. No nebulous sense of a higher plane. I don’t think there’s any higher meaning and that doesn’t worry me at all.

Yes I saw that. It was quite surprising.

Each to their own though OP.

As long as you're not harming anybody you can believe in what you want.