I feel that although there already is a topic about the "Proof of God", That there can be a whole different debate about Atheism.



So, I would like to see a rational, calm debate, about why a person can believe that there is no God or any other force that governs us.


I created this topic because I feel like there are too many people making the "proof of God" topic into a flame fest saying either "God is real so there!" Or "No There is no God stfu!". Which seems a bit offtopic. Although I agree that you could combine them, I'm rather tired of seeing people just cite atheism and that there is nothing, therefore God isn't real, into a topic that is about the proof of God.

So, let's debate about no God existing, instead of God existing. Why do you believe that there isn't a spiritual being that guides us?

Religion is based on faith. Some people find it hard to believe in something they cannot see or touch.
So it's a lot easier to just believe nothing.

G-d is metaphysical. He has no basis in the material world. As such he is beyond all empirical methods of verification. And so to is He beyond all empirical methods of disproof. People have so far only tried to disprove the things that "have been written" about Him.

There is no evidence for God... I can't disprove it either, though. But I can't disprove the tooth fairy, or Santa by that matter... Does that believe that I should believe in them ?
The probability for God's existence is very, very low.
I also find, on a personal level though, that religion can be a blockade to knowledge in general, and I'd rather stay away from any type of dogma.

There is no evidence of god, and no evidence that there is no god.

I doubt god's existence, but there's no way to be sure. What if he's a deistic god who created the universe and let it be? The existence of god is something we will never know, which is why I see no point in concerning it.

But are the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus metaphysical entities? Or do they have a basis in the material world?
Blinding yourself to the possibilities of G-d's existence is only another form of dogma. And as we look back upon the intellectual history of the world, I think we will see that religion has been one of the primary keepers and pursuers of knowledge. It's only in our modern times that organized religion has begun to rear it's ugly head towards science and the humanities.

I'm not blinded by it. I didn't say God was impossible. I admit he can be possible... I just say he's very, very improbable.
I don't think religion has been that... Humanism, the biggest awakening in human intelligentsia, was precisely a reaction against a Church that was too controlling... and the dark ages, too, repressed human intellect as well.

Aquinas, St. Augustus, Duns Scotus, Anselm, and thousands of others monks and priests preserved and wrote down Roman, Greek, and Arabic texts so as we could have the ability to read them today. Not to mention the Scholastic method itself! While most of their methods and analysis might have been flawed, it's arguably one of the most important epochs in the intellectual progress of the entire world.
And the dark ages wasn't some plot concocted by the Church, it was the natural outgrowth of the decline of an Empire. And even the Crusades, what did all those crusading soldiers bring back with them? Books, medical literature, and countless other gems of knowledge from the Muslim scholars. Quite a successful trip.
I'm not even going to begin my impassioned tirade against Humanism, since that would get us nowhere.

]

Not that it much matters and i will post something a little more on-topic in a couple minutes but whats the spelling for?

Tirade against Humanism? Why would you be against it? It was the awakening of humanity, you had Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo discovering in the scientific domain, Michael Angelo, Da Vinci doing a revolution in the plastic arts, Montaigne, Rabelais, Cervantes, de la Mirandole, Erasmus... doing a literary, theological and philosophical discovery.
The scholastic method? You mean when the Truth was a monopole possessed by the Church?
This is the very spirit of the renaissance, and it was clearly marked by a decline in a truth-controlling Church, nearly nobody read those authors you're citing before the renaissance, nobody cared about the mathematical and astronomical discoveries of the arabians. There is no such thing as a famous medieval mathematician, nor physicist... Just a few writers here and there (Alighieri, de Troyes... ).
Knowledge, in itself, has nearly always been an inverse proportion to religion.
I think, I'm not sure though, I'm not an avid reader of Greek philosophers, that Socrates was forced to suicide because he didn't believe in the greek gods... And there were certainly many great Thinkers that were condemned by a Church that didn't apologize until the last century (if apologies of this kind do mean anything...) just for contradicting the well established beliefs... Just because they challenged established knowledge: just because they pursued scientific knowledge and the scientific way of thinking. Where would we be without this people, whom the Church so vehemently condemned, as other churches do condemn thinkers in our day, now?
I think that the philosophical and theological works that were made during the renaissance are extremely outshone by the brilliant and rich thought that was made during the Renaissance and the Modern Times.


PS: I never quite got the G-d thing either.

That is my exact viewpoint on the existence or nonexistence of a God, there is no proof against it, and there is no viable proof for the evidence of a God.
So I could be considered an Agnostic Atheist. My viewpoint on this is something similar to this, "I can't be sure of the existence/nonexistence of a God, and neither can you." No offence to anyone that believes in a God or some other metaphysical entity.
To be frank, I personally think the existence of a God is very, very low; but not impossible. We just can't be sure of it.

From a post a long time ago, I remember it's something like that since God is eternal, you shouldn't put his name on something that isn't. At least that's the best I can think of putting it right now.

But 'God' is a title... not a name...

It's the english name that we mostly use to describe the God of Abraham. The Jews were commanded by God to destroy all the places where they worshipped other gods, and to wipe out their names. Jewish people don't spell out the full name of God so that it cannot be erased ever. Synapsi is also correct. I don't do it myself, but I respect that some people observe that.

The "G-d" thing is a tradition commonly practiced among Jews, and it's also why you don't see "Yahweh" or "God" in the bible a lot, but instead, "The LORD". The idea is that God's name should not be damaged, and physical things like paper can be. You've got a point with the use of "God" as his name, which is something I've questioned as well. The use of "God" as his name is symbolic, because Christianity and Judaism both emerged from polytheistic societies. By saying "god", it's a way to imply that there is one god.

If there's not one single bit of proof for the existence of anything at all, why should I 'believe' in it? Sorry, but I am not willing to dumb down my common sense to 'Well, you can't prove he doesn't exist'. It's the single worst piece of logic I've ever heard.

If you can't see it, touch it, feel it, don't have proof of it, it doesn't exist. A book with metaphorical life lessons used to make people shut up and steal their money 2000 years ago does not count as proof. I personally just hate religion and the whole commercial scam that comes with it.

In response to the first post:
A person can believe there is/are no God(s) or other sentient governing power(s) should that person find the belief irrational or illogical, it's as simple as that really.

i see three major reasons

1/ because there isn't even the slightest piece of potential proof for the existence of gods around, not even a theory that isn't based on a "thing you just have to take in faith"


2/ because all the major religions defend things which are blatantly stupid. (No gay marriage, no euthanasia, no sex for "fun", flat earth, ...)


3/ monotheism: if you believe in the (potential) existence of gods fine, but to believe in one "God" only and denounce all other is just silly. If you believe in the existence of God(s) the existence of a flying spaghetti monster as creator is just as likely as that of any other "god".



nice example of reason 2/



i rather see it the opposite

not believing in a higher power means you are responsible for your own actions, you can't blame a higher power for something that goes wrong
you can't hide behind a higher power to justify something

if there is no higher power there is only you and that is a lot of responsibility for some to people to wear

Surely it's 50%. He either does exist or he doesn't.

As for any other mythical creature, so relying on that theoritical 50% isn't very smart.

Well it depends whether the mythical creature is metaphysical.

First off... if we are all born equal, and God wants atheists to exist... why are Atheists threatened with Hell and eternal damnation?

Say if God exists, can he create a rock he cannot lift? If he cannot create it then he is not all powerful, and if he can create it then he cannot carry it, proving that he is not all powerful.

And i've seen a few arguments as to why suffering exists, and that God chose to be transcendent, but... it still doesn't make sense to me. An omnibenevolent being... choosing not to help his people? With so many different religions and denominations which each have their different ideas about interpretation of God and his teachings... it can get confusing at the best of times.


I have no problems with people believing in God, but I doubt I will ever believe in a deity. I would struggle to have faith in a being that has left so many loopholes in his 'perfect design'.

Religion is full of paradoxes.

Paradoxes? I dunno. More like contradictions.

That's like saying that you have a 50% chance to win by betting on a single number on the roulette, because (say) the number 24 either does come out or doesn't. That's one rather large logic fault...

The philosophy of probability is a harsh mistress.

Humanism originated rather dually with Protestantism. The Catholic Church was trying to prevent the spread of religious knowledge and freedom as well as political, social, and economic freedom (and now I feel like I'm writing a history essay, huzzah ) - what you speak of wasn't exactly a counter-progressive restriction originating from the actual precepts of what we know today to be what the Bible encourages, but a restriction stemming from the Papal politics that had stagnated in the Middle Ages and grown to dominate Europe beyond all rationality and in direct contradiction to the words that the Papal seat in Rome actually based itself around.

As Jack Nicholson already said, you can hardly blame the Dark Ages on religion, and for the longest time religious orders played a greater part in keeping the scholastic tradition alive than any other part of society. (This was even true well into the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, when ministers and other college-bred theological minds were some of the leading academic explorers of the age.) It is true that the Bible does not devote many passages to the pursuit of knowledge, specifically, merely "wisdom" - and that in some of its less-read sections. Naturally, the uncorrupted, mentally energetic clergy who were raised - quite understandably from any fair-minded standpoint - to treat the Bible as the basis for their rational thought were typically more apt to seek the less academic and more worldly, immediate and/or practical goals outlined in the Bible to treat as their own. But, as history plainly shows, proportionately and individually, the Renaissance clergy, in particular the Protestant sects, certainly displayed more intellectual impetus than most other populations of a similar size.



Commercial scam? I keep hearing this idea that the Bible is a commercial scam, but I never hear any decent reasons as to why that is so.

Was the Old Testament developed by the Jews as a get-rich-quick scheme, or by the Hebrew bourgeoisie in their Babylonian exile as a way to get some cash, somehow? I guess this is conceivable, but there isn't a shred of evidence for it.

Did the apostles in the first century AD make it all up to get rich? Well, okay, a lot of them probably became famous because of it. But unless they edited what "actually" happened out of their accounts and replaced it with a pack of lies that seem a lot more historically sound than any other plausible conclusion, they weren't exactly popular with the government for spreading Christianity around. If they did it for personal gain, it was pretty idiotic of them as that's exactly what they didn't get.

Did the Catholic Church, once it became mainstream, make it up for personal gain? Yeah, they could actually make a profit from that. The trouble with this theory is, there are complete records of virtually all the New Testament books from before the mid-300s, when it became a mainstream religion. So maybe it was to their economic advantage, eventually, to keep the Bible in circulation. Yay, I guess that proves... nothing. Every government ever formed has conferred some sort of benefit on the founders. Doesn't mean we'd be better off in complete anarchy, or that the government is a figment of our imaginations and that we can clearly not choose the Obama in front of us. (Sorry, mixed metaphor there.)

A huge, huge amount of the money raised by religious organizations goes to humanitarian relief. I'd cite how many billions of dollars are raised by religious organizations to help ...everything, pretty much... but there are probably too many of them to be concentrated in any single source with any degree of reliability, and I'm lazy anyway, so I won't. But I'd much rather donate $10,000 to help one of my favorite relief organizations, say, stop human trafficking in the Nepalese mountains than to support Harvard University's $29 billion (old figure, I know) endowment. And yeah, I know both are important, and I'm not knocking secular education in the least... I'm just sayin'. All this junk about Christianity being a scam to trick you out of your money is rubbish.



I'll address this below, but not even a THEORY based on something "you just have to take in faith?" WTH?! No offense, but if you're going to be stating opinions about this sort of thing in an actual debate, you have to spend less than 99% of whatever time you take to be informed on this stuff hanging out with people with exactly the same opinion as you. And I'm not counting being proximate to religious people and listening in on their conversations as "informing yourself," because most of us really have few things lower on our to-do list than chat about exactly why, logically, we believe what we do. We tend to prefer actually applying what we believe to our lives to perpetually reassuring ourselves that we're right by repeating redundant facts. Facts are our roots, not our goals.



Yay for irrelevant stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with logic, merely subjective opinion. (And morality, of course, although apparently those seem to be exactly the same in theory to many atheists, except when it's something they care about.) Except the Flat Earth, but in the only video produced by the Flat Earth Society I've ever watched, the speaker is condemning the backwards religious stuff or whatever embraced by those brainwashed idiots who actually believe the world is a sphere. Whatever he is, a religious nut is not one of them. He's a hardcore hater.

So I could just as easily condemn secularism for letting stupidity like that arise. But really, who cares? They're only hurting their own careers.



This, of course, assumes the false theory that there is no evidence in existence for or against God. This is a cop-out by the academic community at large - and scientific-minded people with all different types of beliefs are at fault - to fool themselves into thinking there's no intellectual puzzle to be related to Theism vs. Atheism, and that it's all a matter of personal choice. While it's rather comfortable to reflect either that everybody has an equal chance of being right, or that because nobody can prove whether you're right or wrong, you must be right, neither are remotely true.

Here are three basic pieces of evidence for Christianity, slapped down without a thesis, concluding argument or accompanying argument. I'd hate for this to turn into a clone of the other thread, so I hope this will be perceived as civil and replied with in like manner. (I probably won't reply soon in any case... it'll be another heck of a courseload this week. I actually meant it to be five, but it is EXTREMELY late and my homework remains incomplete, and I hate putting down evidence without any elaboration whatsoever.)

1. Chariots, authentically dated (i.e. c. 1300 BC, the rough date the Israelites escaped from Egypt), have been found at the bottom of the Red Sea.
2. Current medical knowledge is sometimes wholly at a loss to explain how some healing proceeds, which prayer, in these cases, does admirably. For example, on one occasion a very small baby was suffering - in a midwestern American hospital, mind you - from an extremely rare disease which had already caused his penis to almost completely dissolve/rot. The disease was so far advanced that it was extending to his legs and his midsection, and all the doctors there agreed that he would most likely die that night. His parents, praying with another couple, begged God that he would survive. By morning, the rotting was 100% gone, as were all traces of the boy's illness. He was absolutely fine. Never has another recovery from this extremely rare disease been recorded, and such an acute affliction would, by all "sensible" medical knowledge, take weeks to thoroughly recover from, while it left this boy in hours. (I have several other stories of this nature, some much more personal and relating to people I know, but none so impressive to those with little to no other background information, or as easy to accept as fact.)
3. Prophecies. Using the system of numerology widely accepted as fact in c. 450 BC, the book of Daniel, for instance, accurately predicts the year of over half a dozen events pertaining to Israel. (Note: I am not saying astrology, numerology or anything like it is remotely legitimate in itself, but God speaks to people through the tools of their time. To think otherwise would be more narrow-minded than anything else.) Starting from the year of the Persian King Artaxerxes specified by Daniel (obviously not in BC years, but independent sources have obviously determined when Artaxerxes reigned), among other things Daniel predicts the year of Christ's death, of his birth, and from that the year Jerusalem was founded. It also, staggeringly if you're an atheist, predicts the year Jerusalem was re-established, 2,450 years after the 8th year of the reign of the king who succeeded Nehemiah. (This is 1950, rather than 1948, because Jerusalem wasn't the capital of Israel until then.)
Copies of the book of Daniel, with this same information, have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which predate any of these prophecies' completion. (Theoretically, the mention of the completion of Jerusalem's first restoration in 436 BC could have been a prophecy as well, but I will grant you that this, at least, could have been tampered with, and it may not have been a prophecy at all - the tone, if not the context, implies that it wasn't.)
And even though an elaborate but secularly sound verification of the year Christ was born exists elsewhere on the Internet, you don't have to take my word for it, because the dates also rely on the existence on objective information such as the reigns of the various kings.



I hate to break it to you, but that's not exactly how it works. Sure, we crazy religious people can "blame a higher power for something that goes wrong," even though the Bible tells us not to ( ), but we're also constantly exhorted to attempt to be perfect in everything we do, even though, of course, that is impossible. God is never all "Go ahead, if you do something wrong it's okay... All the Presbyterians are doing it!"

Instead, we are told that we'll be held accountable for what we did during life, and will be rewarded according to our actions, but that we'll be forgiven for our wrongdoings in any case. Isn't that pretty much the perfect parental shtick?

The main improvement over the mentality of many others is that, should we ever do something really, really, really bad, we know there's such a thing as redemption. And no, redemption obviously isn't just a religious concept, everyone feels the need for it at some point. No matter how bad you are, there's always a way back.

Why cant everyone just belive what they belive and don't have everyone commenting on it. (BTW i'm not religious.)

I don't know if this is what Jose meant, but the probability that any religion got it right is very, very low.

ok long post so i put the quote in spoiler tags


about your response on point 2/ it is by far the most relevant one
in case you haven't noticed such actions like the condemning of the use of condoms to prevent aids in Africa by the Vatican is one of the major reasons for people here in Belgium to take a stance against the church.


About your proof for a possibility for the existence of god
it indeed is likely that something big happened Egypt about that time
and other historical facts too
all religions are based on myths and most myths are based on truth however vaguely

what does it prove?
absolutely nothing
does it explain a God?
does it prove the existence of one?

no it just states historic facts which were at sometime explained by "divine intervention"

who knows what they will make off 9/11 in a few millenia
it's much the same




And the point about (medical) science not being able to explain everything

well duh
did you really expect us to understand everything?
people have been discovering how everything works since the day they were self aware

maybe one time we will know everything
or maybe not

but i fail to see how one can see a proof for a higher being in it...

it just means we still have much to learn and research



and yes it read your whole post

Well, I don't believe in a god because there has been no proof of one. There is always a logical answer.

Yes, of course prayer always works.

It's an illusion. People say 'God answers prayer in *yes*, *no* and *maybe*'.

Do you see the illusion yet? Say, you're praying for $1000 to a stone brick. The stone brick will seemingly ALWAYS answer it. If you receive a cheque of $1000 in a week or so, the brick answered with *yes*.

If you don't receive that cheque, the brick has answered with *no*.

If you do receive the cheque, after maybe a couple of months (so the brick had some thinking time), the brick has answered with *maybe*, followed by *yes*.

Now, we both know the brick doesn't answer prayers. All these scenarios are coincidences. The *yes*, *no* and *maybe* assumption makes it seem that the brick answers ALL your prayers. But he doesn't, everybody knows that. It's all a coincidence, the brick had no intervention with anything.

Also, why doesn't god do his magic miracles on amputees? There are an estimated amount of 10 million amputees worldwide. In the UK, for example, there are about 62,000 amputees. Not one amputee has ever been healed. Amputees don't get miracles.

It would almost seem that miracles don't exist and that prayers don't actually work, don't you think? I have no problem accepting that medical science does not know everything yet.

I will never be satisfied with not understanding the world, which is what religion does.

Please do check out this website: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

prayers do occasionally "work", just like any other placebo...

Maybe in some medical situations, but that's only logical. Placebo can heal things, but not amputees. That's why prayer doesn't actually work and there isn't actually a god answering those prayers.

Desire for God: Man Is Religious by Nature

This does not mean that everyone is personally religious. Rather it means that man is a finite being with a heart that desires the infinite (even if this is not always understood as a religious seeking). As a consequence, religion in some form is universal and present in every society and culture and historical period. So we can say that religion is a constant in human history. (It is always there.)

By reason it is possible to make philosophical arguments for God’s existence. These arguments have two starting points:

1. The World. When we look at the finite world and its movement, its state of becoming, its beauty and order, then we can conclude that these must have a proportionate cause and source. This first cause and source of being is God.

2. The Human Person: Man is longing for the infinite. This also implies that this longing must have a source and a purpose.

Limitations of these approaches: this natural knowledge of God (based on reason alone) in insufficient to attain a deep knowledge of God or union with God. Don't think I'm canceling out faith.

How can we speak of God, who is pure spirit? Two ways:

1. Kataphatic Way is the way of affirmation. It affirms God’s attributes by analogy with the perfections of God’s creation. So we can say that then attribute (unity, goodness, truth, beauty) are applicable to God. So the perfections of God’s creation are present in God per eminentiam. (Per eminentiam – to an ultimate degree)

2. Apophatic Way – The way of negation. The apophatic way tells us what God is not. The apophatic way presents us from falling into anthropomorphism (making God in our own image). The apophatic way purifies our theological language of anything that is limited or imperfect or image-bound. The apophatic way reminds us that our human language and words and images always fall short of the reality of God. St. Thomas Aquinas says that “between creator and creature no similitude [likeness] can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude [unlikeness].” St. Thomas also said that “concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him.”

The Revelation of God is through Salvation History, the story of God's plan for the salvation of mankind. This plan of salvation is realized by both words and deeds which are bound together. God reveals himself by stages. St. Irenaeus uses the image of God and man getting used to each other. (CCC 53) Each stage of development in our relationship with him builds on the previous, without negating or undoing what went before.



One key factor that has been obvious throughout history is the value of faith. If God came down right now and proclaimed his existence to humanity, faith would not only be impossible but useless. If every amputee in the entire world asked for a healing when they prayed and then got it, the existence of God would be proved. God doesn't want it to be proved in that manner at all, where it is not of your will that you believe, know, love, and serve him, but because he has proven it so. God at anytime in history could have destroyed faith and destroyed figuring out who truly believes in him and loves him, why would he start now? Also this leads into another topic of "free will". This would eliminate our free will of whether or not to believe in him. If the amputees being healed happened, we would have no choice (unless we were insane) but to believe, all of us, no matter what background or religion. No choice. This would eliminate hell and heaven. Basically, the healing of amputees would completely destroy everything God has worked for since the creation of humanity. Need any other explanation?

I don't quite get what you're trying to prove here and what side you're debating on.

I gave the reasonable ways as to how God exists, which not alone are enough to be in a true relationship which is aided by faith as a supplement for the full value. I answered your other post in an edit though.

or how circle "logic" can even make the biggest pile of camel dung look believable

The beauty and order 'perfect design' argument is kinda shot down by Natural Disasters, famine and the like.

It's not circle logic. It simply destroys the "God not healing amputees" idea as a way to disprove God.

Which doesn't raise the question of "he hadn't created time itself until Genesis 1:1, so why did he do it at that time?", nevermind the fact that Noah's story is *exactly* an account of that "anytime".

Not so. Disasters can bring climates back into sync, for example, events like Krakatoa, bringing an end to a 400-year warming period. Forest fires burn down old, decrepit forests, and replace them with new forests, which give lodging and food to animals.

I think you're being too simplistic.

I don't believe that there is a god in a physical sense, nor religious sense. In my honest opinion, religions are started in order to control societies and unify them. Look at Rome. After having 26 dictators with no unification or order, Constatine unites the empire under Christianity. Further back, the 10 commandments supposedly given to Moses while the Jews are wandering in the desert. In order to keep them believing that they'll reach the promised land, Moses says that God gave him the commandments as a sign that he was with them. Another example, Islam and the Arabic people. Before Islam, the Arabic people were mostly separate tribes.

it is a piece of circle logic using unprovable assumptions as facts to turn again the the begining
you use the base assumption of a god existing also as the final conclusion
that is what circle logic is
and circle logic is false logic

base point:

after which you create a lot of blabla
to get back to

looks like some fine circle "logic" to me


since the fact that amputees aren't healed by God can be even easier explained by God not existing well...


someone has been reading Isaac Asimov's foundation trilogy me thinks

and i agree aside from the fact that the Sun god (Solis if i'm not mistaken) was used to unify the roman empire before Christianity

So, how does God-ordained genocide and/or war rape fall into the "beauty" or "perfect design" category?

I mean,

(and nevermind the fact that in Jeremiah 52 the Israelites are repelled - so much for omniscience!)

(...and I don't think they specifically requested virgins to play Scrabble.)

Honestly, never heard of Isaac Asimov.
But yes, the pagan gods were used before Christianity.

Yes it is. You're creating yet another 'vicious circle' also called 'circle logic', just like in the prayer example. It does not prove anything, and it is false. Circle logic does not exist, it cannot be applied to any form of reality.

Now you're gonna come up with some bla bla that claims God stands higher than reality, so I must once again say: vicious circle. Just to define this term: "a complex of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop toward greater instability". Your whole argument is instable because it goes back to the last loop of feedback. However, what you're making here is more of a 'virtuous circle', which means you're ignoring negative feedback.

You cannot break a vicious circle if you keep out all other feedback.

It's circle logic if you're assuming my point was to prove that God exists. My point was to answer the question "Why won't God heal amputees?".

EDIT: I put it in context of if God exists, which according to religious doctrine, there is a reason. If you don't believe God exists, there, that's it. Either way, you're not getting any regeneration.

so i can conclude that there is no difference between God existing and God not existing?