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)

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

But you can make that argument just as easily about the idea of a god-less universe:

What created this universe? The energy from a previous universe (possibly)
What created that universe? Er...

Physics has answers on one level - we understand a lot about how energy generated matter after the Big Bang. But, still, at some point, something has come from nothing. That is the fundamental mystery.

I just don't believe in the supernatural.

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.

If there are natural causes for everything that has ever happened, then it is a very strange leap indeed to assign a supernatural source to those natural causes. An illogical, unnecessary leap.

It seems like you are very interested in the scientific understanding of how the universe came to be. There are lots of great books about this. You'll find the current state of knowledge is a lot more advanced than you realise.

Well there could be many reasons why the majority of scientists don’t believe in God. I thought one of the rules of science is that correlation doesn’t equal causation. Maybe atheists are more drawn to science looking for meaning. I guess the question I would ask is why all scientists aren’t atheists if the two things cannot be reconciled.

Regarding the Big Bang, how do we know it’s “fact”, it’s actually the most widely accepted model of the origins of this universe (although there is much uncertainty going back beyond a certain point). Of course there are a number of scientists who disagree with it. I do find it incredibly interesting that this theory is effectively mirrored in the Kabbalist story of the shattering of the vessels which obviously predates the Big Bang scientific theory by centuries.

You can’t prove a negative so I don’t think anyone can categorically say there is no god. But everything is just so unlikely and everything around religions so human that it makes no sense to me.

I do wish there were humanist services to go to though. A weekly get together, community and reflection on life, atonement for wrong doings seems a healthy way to spend an hour. I’ve tried to believe for the sake of the art, songs, well-being that goes with it, but no dice!

Also I like the faith in science. It might explain some of how things happen but goodness knows there’s a lot missing (dark matter?) but science doesn’t explain why something should happen. Why is there a universe at all. It’s mad!

Because it's just plain silly. Unicorns are more feasible.

Oh I’ve read lots on it, watched lots of videos on it, but inevitably I’m left with more questions than answers.

is there a book that sets out why the universe was created and where the initial energy came from? I know there’s lots of theories but we’re talking incontrovertible facts

You see this is where I always get to, science has huge missing gaps that just seem to be ignored (not by actual scientists- but by those who just believe science has all the answers)

Incontrovertible facts! :0 faith in science! ;)

I think this creates a separate discussion do humans have a need for ritual? There’s plenty of groups that aren’t religious, yet you seem to like some of the smells and bells of religious services.

Science is full of disputes though isn’t it? It has seemingly conflicting models of Einsteins relativity and quantum theory. Some agree on string theory, others don’t.

You think sending out a load of vessels filled with light that shattered and produced the stars mirrors the big bang theory? Read some real science books. Obviously science updates if it is proved wrong, that's what it's for, but finding a cosmetologist who doesn't believe in the big bang is VERY rare.

You are right that scientists may have gone into science as they were atheists not became them afterwards. I'm not sure if anyone has ever surveyed that. And all scientists aren't atheists because they're still human and not all of them study parts of science that disagree with gods! I could just as well ask, if religion is true, why are all scholars of religious studies religious?

Most scientists agree on the origins of the universe, most deists can't even agree on what a god is.

Say there have been 3000 gods worshipped by humanity so far. OP, you are an atheist about 2999 of them, I am just about one more. It's very simple.

Yes, blind faith in science is just religion in another form. Physics observes, explains and illuminates, but there is no reason to believe it will necessarily answer the question of why the universe (and any other/previous universes) exist.

Physics isn’t seamlessly proceeding towards more clarity and a neat set of ‘laws of nature’ either: on the contrary, the more scientists understand about subatomic physics and energy, the weirder and more inexplicable everything gets.

Oops! why AREN'T all scholars of religious studies religious?

You sound like a neoplatonist, op- is that right, or something like that?

But why is it illogical? Surely it’s a possibility, given that for much of the history of mankind creator gods have existed it would be illogical to exclude the possibility. The step is only unnecessary if you have proof that there is no divine source.

Is this thread here to convince the atheists that there is a God?

Do you want to ask Atheists questions or convince us you're beliefs are right?

yes some of the concepts of Neoplatonist form part of my belief system (although there are many other things that feed into them). I’m really a perenialist but find some concepts better explained in one belief system than another. But the language I’ve been using is prob most heavily borrowed from what we now call Neoplatonism.

From your OP:

and further is capable and willing to stop all bad things

If there IS a god, and he* is not capable or stopping all bad things - then he is not a god. If there is a god, and he is capable but not willing to stop all bad things - then he is cruel and not a god I want to worship.

That's why, for me.

*or she.

I think the source of the universe is random chance.

People struggle with that because they say how, how could the random chance have just happened to get everything right and now I'm here living in it? Because there has been eternity. Think about the infinite monkeys with typewriters idea. There are infinite possible universes starting at any time. But only a tiny tiny tiny percentage smaller than we can probably even understand continue into livable planets. However no matter how small a chance, if you have enough iterations it will eventually happen. If you played the lottery enough times, you'll eventually win (it's just that the amount of times you need to play to guarantee winning the lottery is many more than the number of weeks in a person's life). But somebody wins it pretty much every week. Out of all the millions of tickets sold, some of them are successful.

So why this one, why us? Well just because this is the planet where all the chances successfully lined up. I couldn't have been born on Mars because currently nobody lives on Mars. I happened to be born on the most likely place for life to exist. It feels to me like my life revolves around me because that's my experience, but really if something else had happened at the creation of earth, I wouldn't exist, I would never have been born. Or if you believe in the concept of unattached souls floating around waiting to download into bodies then I would have been born on a different planet where the chances had perfectly lined up.

It's like if you're watching a film and everything conveniently happens to the main character - yes, that's a created story, but also, you wouldn't have read the book of Susan Bones and the famous schoolmate Harry Potter, would you? You read Harry's story because everything happens to him. It doesn't happen to him because he's the main character. But the story is told from his perspective because he experiences all the action. (This is probably a bad example because it is a fictional story. But hopefully it makes sense what I mean.)

I don’t want to convince anybody of anything. I don’t really care whether people have the same perspective as me. I asked the question, if anything, to challenge my own beliefs, asking others questions about theirs and seeing if there is anything to convince you against your own currently held beliefs is healthy.

It’s called debate- challenging a hypothesis if you like. We live in echo chambers. It’s good to wander into the next village, it helps evolution .

Science, largely.

There is no empirical evidence of God/s, it is all based on faith in something unproven. I don’t really understand why something made up a long time ago to try to make sense of things we didn’t yet understand (evolution, the Big Bang, natural disasters, diseases etc) is still being held in such high esteem. Not to mention the obvious huge problems caused by religion over the centuries (wars, child abuse, terrorism, genocide). It’s just not my bag.

Why believe in gods when we can clearly see the first thing we worshipped as a god every day; the sun. It is vital for almost life on our planet, except a few rare deep sea vent based ecosystems, and definitely exists!