Is Atheism Logical?

[infide]

As some of you know my faith in the Bible is pretty much gone.

Welcome to reality :-D

But I do think there might be a God. I cannot get over the complications of the Universe and all that is in it.

Complications in the Universe, as far as I am concerned, aren't really good reasons to believe in a God, unless you are committed to some kind of principle that at a certain level of complexity there is, in theory, no naturalistic explanation for that phenomenon.

After all, there are many things in science that up until they were discovered or understood seemed nothing short of the hand of God. Now, they just kind of seem mundane.

Remember, complexity and a lack of understanding of the natural world is not evidence for a supernatural being.

So my question is:

How does an atheist know there is no God?

Is Agnosticism more logical? I think it might be.

Thanks for your time.

Knowing that something doesn't exist is kind of tricky. After all, we cannot explore the entire Universe and look for a god or gods. But we can look around us and ask ourselves if the world we find ourselves seems to have a god or gods in it or not.

It always amazes me how easily the religious latch onto "evidence" for God's hand in their lives, never questioning it, never wondering if there are other explanations. The problem with the human mind is we are pattern seeking beings, and we tend not to be very good at remembering all the evidence. So the average religious person already has a belief in a god that takes care of them, well ingrained since their childhood. They get sick and pray to a god or gods and 3 days later they get better. The religious person now concludes that due to 3 days of prayer, god has healed them. But they forget that they were sick for 3 days and even worse that god did not protect them from getting sick in the first place.

Why do religious people never question that their god does not simply become an apparition, fly around the world and appear to everyone and speak to them in their own languages and tell them the truth about him or herself. What would prevent a god from doing this, and why would a God not want to do such a thing? The most common thing I've heard in response is that God wants you to have faith, not be forced to believe. Well thats convenient, isn't it? This god or gods hides mysteriously not providing any evidence for their own existence, so that you will better believe? Isn't that just trickery? Why not really reveal themselves, tell everyone of your existence and do some freaking good in the world.

The problem of evil and suffering was the nail in the coffin for me. This god or gods is in charge of the Universe, but can't manage to steer a hurricane away from people, prevent a plague from spreading, or stop a birth defect? If there were a being governing the Universe, they could only be characterized as heartless and cruel, with all the power of divinity to prevent such terrible suffering and no will to do it.

Peace,
JD

[Griggsy]

infide, Google lamberth's naturalistic arguments about God. They would flesh out what you find true. Then again, my threads here do that also.
I do fine without any God! I can find truth without His making it happen. I have hope without resorting to Him as He's be no more than a rabbit's foot. He functions no more than demons and gremlins, and that is no category mistake but instead the simple recognition that natural causes depend on themselves.
If one defines agnosticism as no one is able to find or not find Him,then that is arrogance!
The facts illuminate no God, thus, why be arrogant?
infide, how along the naturalistic path are you?

[ST Mannew]

Complications in the Universe, as far as I am concerned, aren't really good reasons to believe in a God, unless you are committed to some kind of principle that at a certain level of complexity there is, in theory, no naturalistic explanation for that phenomenon.

If man sees complexity it usually means they looking at it the wrong way, akin to when even scientists believed the earth to be flat. You see “Complications”, I see order.

After all, there are many things in science that up until they were discovered or understood seemed nothing short of the hand of God. Now, they just kind of seem mundane.

I do not know of any time when Christians thought as a group that science was some kind of magic.

Remember, complexity and a lack of understanding of the natural world is not evidence for a supernatural being.

That is exactly why it is seen as complexity, because it is misunderstood, they are one in the same.

Knowing that something doesn't exist is kind of tricky. After all, we cannot explore the entire Universe and look for a god or gods. But we can look around us and ask ourselves if the world we find ourselves seems to have a god or gods in it or not.

There is no possible way for you to know something from a negation, the most self-deceptive thing of this is that (a)theists think that they still are being unbiased and if something is seen that there would indicate a God existing, they think they can change their mind. Absolute bunk, the decision to not believe has been made in advance, so there is no possible way for them to believe, they are sealed in self-deception of their own making. The only evidence for anything actually existing is truth itself, it is called having substantial form.

It always amazes me how easily the religious latch onto "evidence" for God's hand in their lives, never questioning it, never wondering if there are other explanations. The problem with the human mind is we are pattern seeking beings, and we tend not to be very good at remembering all the evidence. So the average religious person already has a belief in a god that takes care of them, well ingrained since their childhood. They get sick and pray to a god or gods and 3 days later they get better. The religious person now concludes that due to 3 days of prayer, god has healed them. But they forget that they were sick for 3 days and even worse that god did not protect them from getting sick in the first place.

Why do religious people never question that their god does not simply become an apparition, fly around the world and appear to everyone and speak to them in their own languages and tell them the truth about him or herself. What would prevent a god from doing this, and why would a God not want to do such a thing? The most common thing I've heard in response is that God wants you to have faith, not be forced to believe. Well thats convenient, isn't it? This god or gods hides mysteriously not providing any evidence for their own existence, so that you will better believe? Isn't that just trickery? Why not really reveal themselves, tell everyone of your existence and do some freaking good in the world.

But He does, He is in the world and everything that comes to existence is all done through Him, it is called truth, God is truth itself.

The truth always speaks to us in our own languages and tells us the truth about Himself, believing the truth is how God is realized in the person believing. And He does this all the time. And having faith just means having belief in the truth, and the truth never forces anyone to believe. God does not hide from you; you hide from Him, in your own self-deceptions, atheism for example, a belief from negation. The truth always does good, actually it is the only thing that we have that is capable of doing good.

The problem of evil and suffering was the nail in the coffin for me. This god or gods is in charge of the Universe, but can't manage to steer a hurricane away from people, prevent a plague from spreading, or stop a birth defect? If there were a being governing the Universe, they could only be characterized as heartless and cruel, with all the power of divinity to prevent such terrible suffering and no will to do it.

Actually evil and suffering is solely caused of man, no one forces people to build cities on flood plains that are smack dab in the center of hurricane alley, that not evil, that’s just plain dumb. And living with animals when we were warned against it, that’s just dumber. And man making all kinds of new chemicals and exposing themselves to these chemical in the name of money, that is just the dumbest. I don’t see anything here to blame on God, I just see stubborn man trying to do it his way, and suffering the consequence of it. The problem is not God’s will; God’s will as always the truth for us so we can have real life. You just don’t want to take responsibility for your own actions and want to have a sky-daddy to blame it on. God gives us the ability to prevent all of these things; all we have to do is to start listening and believe the truth.

[FLovell]

If man sees complexity it usually means they looking at it the wrong way, akin to when even scientists believed the earth to be flat. You see “Complications”, I see order.

I (an atheist) see order too. Have you studied physics? If so, you know that order arises from disorder in nature in myriad ways (especially in far-from-equilibrium conditions), and that while many (perhaps most) physical events are chance/random, very few (if any, really) physical processes are chance-random processes.

I do not know of any time when Christians thought as a group that science was some kind of magic.

That is exactly why it is seen as complexity, because it is misunderstood, they are one in the same.

There is no possible way for you to know something from a negation, the most self-deceptive thing of this is that (a)theists think that they still are being unbiased and if something is seen that there would indicate a God existing, they think they can change their mind. Absolute bunk, the decision to not believe has been made in advance, so there is no possible way for them to believe, they are sealed in self-deception of their own making. The only evidence for anything actually existing is truth itself, it is called having substantial form.

But He does, He is in the world and everything that comes to existence is all done through Him, it is called truth, God is truth itself.

The truth always speaks to us in our own languages and tells us the truth about Himself, believing the truth is how God is realized in the person believing. And He does this all the time. And having faith just means having belief in the truth, and the truth never forces anyone to believe. God does not hide from you; you hide from Him, in your own self-deceptions, atheism for example, a belief from negation. The truth always does good, actually it is the only thing that we have that is capable of doing good.

Actually evil and suffering is solely caused of man, no one forces people to build cities on flood plains that are smack dab in the center of hurricane alley, that not evil, that’s just plain dumb. And living with animals when we were warned against it, that’s just dumber. And man making all kinds of new chemicals and exposing themselves to these chemical in the name of money, that is just the dumbest. I don’t see anything here to blame on God, I just see stubborn man trying to do it his way, and suffering the consequence of it. The problem is not God’s will; God’s will as always the truth for us so we can have real life. You just don’t want to take responsibility for your own actions and want to have a sky-daddy to blame it on. God gives us the ability to prevent all of these things; all we have to do is to start listening and believe the truth.

I could be wrong, "ST Mannew," but I'm gathering that you are a relatively young person who has very little experience dialoguing with atheists. I suspect almost everything you (think you) know about atheists -- what we think and don't think, what we believe and don't believe, and why we think and believe or don't think and believe what we think and believe or don't think and believe) you heard or read NOT from things we atheists have said or written but rather from other theists in whom you have misplaced your trust to supply you with accurate information about what we atheists do and don't think or believe and why.

One tip-off to that effect is that for some reason you seem to think bald assertions should exert persuasive influence on us.

But bald assertions should not influence anyone, and they most assuredly do not influence we atheists.

We require objective evidence and reason. And to believe extraordinary claims, we first need extraordinary objective evidence which crucially support the truth of those claims.

We atheists -- each and every one of us -- take full responsibility for our own actions, we neither have nor want a "sky daddy" to blame anything on or spare us from our own inequities.

In any event, if what you said above makes genuine good sense to you, you are welcome to it; but it makes no genuine good sense to me, so I'm gonna pass.

Come back again when you learn and really understand what you wish to speak to us atheists about. -- Frank

[FLovell]

As some of you know my faith in the Bible is pretty much gone....

That is quite understandable! I was raised as a Bible-believer; about age 18 I tried something evidently most Bible-believers never try; namely, I read the Bible the way Bible-believers would read any other book -- and pretty soon, I tossed it aside and searched for a better book (and I have since found countless many better books!).

...But I do think there might be a God. I cannot get over the complications of the Universe and all that is in it....

Interesting. I grant the possibility that there exists a supernatural creator God of some sort about whom I presently simply have no objective (nor even any personal-purely-subjective-of-my-own) knowledge, but presently I do not think it very probable that any God exists -- and so I do not believe any God exists -- but if you think it particularly probable that a supernatural creator God exists, I'm interested in why you think that.

...So my question is:

How does an atheist know there is no God?

I do not think anyone KNOWS there is no God. There may be atheists who claim to KNOW that no God exists, but I am not one of those, I am an atheist (one who lacks theistic belief in the existence of any supernatural creator God) who does not deny the possibility that a God of some sort exists about whom I simply presently have no objective (nor even any personal-purely-subjective-of-my-own) knowledge.

Said another way, while some atheists may claim to KNOW that no God exists, by no means do all atheists (nor even most atheists) claim to KNOW that no God exists, most atheists simply do not believe any God exists (without denying the possibility that a God of some sort may exist about which we've simply not found any hide nor hair).

Said yet another way, on the Dawkins' Scale of 1-7, I am (like Dawkins himself) a 6 in that I do not BELIEVE any God exists but I stop short of claiming to KNOW for sure that no supernatural creator God of any sort exists.

Is Agnosticism more logical? I think it might be.

Theism/atheism is about BELIEF/LACK OF BELIEF in the existence of a supernatural creator God.

Gnosticism/agnosticism is about KNOWLEDGE/LACK OF KNOWLEDGE about the existence of a supernatural creator God.

(Look up the etiologies of these terms if you dispute what I just said.)

Thus agnosticism and atheism are actually NOT alternatives to each other, and neither are gnosticism and theism. Rather, gnosticism/agnosticism are MODIFIERS (adjectives) of theism or atheism.

One can be a gnostic theist who says: "I KNOW that God exists (and thus I also BELIEVE that God exists)."
...or...
One can be an agnostic theist who says: "I lack KNOWLEDGE that God exists, but I (nonetheless) BELIEVE (on 'faith') that God exists."
...or...
One can be an agnostic atheist who says: "I lack KNOWLEDGE that no God exists, but I also lack BELIEF that any God exists.
...or...
One can be a gnostic atheist who says: "I KNOW that no God exists (and thus I also lack BELIEF that any God exists)."

Me, I am an agnostic atheist (agnostic because I lack KNOWLEDGE of [alleged] God's existence or nonexistence, and atheist because I lack theistic belief in the existence of any supernatural creator God).

I hope that clears that up for you -- but if it doesn't, don't feel too bad, for alas (most but) not all atheists have come to understand that gnosticism/agnosticism are modifiers of (not alternatives to) theism/atheism, so strong and long has been the general public misunderstanding of these subtly but vitally different states of knowledge and belief (all of us believe all manner of things whose truths we do not KNOW).

Bottom line, truth and knowledge of truth are NOT the same things (truth is whatever is actually true whether we know it or not and even if we cannot ever know it, while knowledge of truth is forever fallible -- think about it, and if you get the time and have the interest, read Karl Popper's book, OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE -- that is the book I am holding in my avatar photo).

-- Frank

[zorathruster]

I see the rational position as one of qualities. First off, who gets to define what a God is? A bunch of middle eastern goat herders two millinium past? The qualities they attribute to being "godly" are significantly different than what can pass muster today. At that time Gods shook the earth - today...earthquakes. At that time Gods brought pestilence - today disease and virmin. At that time Gods brought marauding armies - today that is done by the Department of State and Congress. The understanding of the qualities attributed to a God in previous eras are today known to be caused by natural events and causes. When you get into the actions of humans it becomes both easier to understand why they act and likewise more difficult to understand why they act in specific ways. You will know the motivations of the majority and understandably it lies within the confines of a bell curve. Then once you get out to the 1% on both ends, you have no idea what they are thinking.

[Eudaimonist]

How does an atheist know there is no God?

An atheist isn't someone who claims to know that a God doesn't exist. An atheist says that they don't have a belief that a God exists.

Atheists are "godless" in the sense that they don't believe in the existence of any god. Their worldviews are absent that belief.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Griggsy]

Check out my ignostic-Ockham arguments about God threads to see why we anti-theists can declare no God can possibly exist, by way of analysis, not by dogma, and so, we hav e neither to traverse the Cosmos nor have omniscience ourselves.
Study what Victor Stenger maintains in his books. Google Lamberth's naturalist arguments about God and skeptic griggsy.

http://fathergriggs.wordpress.com
http://skepticgriggsy.blogspot.com

[FLovell]

I see the rational position as one of qualities. First off, who gets to define what a God is? A bunch of middle eastern goat herders two millinium past? ...

I could be wrong of course, but it seems to me clear that each individual person who believes a "God" exists is utterly free to define the "God " that that individual believes exists.

And each person who hears another person's definition of the "God" they believe exists is utterly free to EITHER also believe that particularly-described "God" exists, OR to withhold from believing that that particularly-described "God" exists.

I have read the descriptions of the "God" ancient middle-eastern goat-herders believed to exist, and I do NOT believe that "God" actually exists, but I do think those ancient middle-eastern goat-herders were perfectly entitled to define the "God" they believed to exist.

So far I have found no reason to think ANY supernatural creator God of ANY description I've yet heard or read exists, and so presently I don't.

But I do think the answer to the question "who gets to define what a God is" is: any person who believes a "God" exists gets to define that "God" in which he or she believes, and the rest of us get to join in that person's belief or to withhold from believing that that person's described "God" exists.

-- Frank [And may the FSM rule supreme, please pass the Alfredo sauce...]

[SatanTheAlien]

Atheists don't necessarily claim to know there is no God. I do claim to know, and until someone of a superior mind can answer my reasons as to why God cannot exist, then I cannot believe in the impossible.

But, why impossible you ask?

Suppose I said there exist a 2D shape in 2D space that simultaneously has 3 sides and 4 sides, would you believe it is possible? If you are logical, you would say it is impossible, because in 2D space an object cannot have both 3 sides and 4 sides. It must three or four, but not both. The universe clearly works in this logical way.

So God is part of reality. If God doesn't work logically, then God can be anything all the time. Good and evil, male and female, existing and not existing. God might exists today, but not tomorrow. Yes, I think if God is real, we want God to be a logical thing. But is God a logical thing?

No matter how complex the universe or reality is, doesn't mean an eternal mind is necessary. Let us consider what is necessary. Something cannot come from absolute nothingness, can it? Most would agree it cannot happen because nothingness is nothingness, no info, no data, no space, no time, no energy, not anything. If there is not anything, then there is absolutely nothing to take place, nothing to interact, nothing to do nothing. How would we get something from that? Not logical. The universe is logical.

Heck, how would even an eternal mind make something from nothingness? If this being were truly omnipresent, how would nothingness even exist? Any place or moment God tried to create, God is there, in every place, every moment.

If God is timeless, how does God create time? The act of creating time takes time, unless God created without movement. As long as things are moving in any sequential order, we have a type of time. If God is timeless and is able to create time, how does God then step into time, thus destroying his intrinsic attribute of being timeless?

If dimensions didn't exist before God created space and time, then God must be dimensionless. If God is dimensionless, how would God exist inside dimensions after he created them? Can God make a place God ceases to exist in, if God is omnipresent?

The problems go on and on. God isn't logical, so why believe in it? Perhaps we can think up a logical God to believe in.

[ST Mannew]

Agnostic atheism is the way to go. We can't know everything therefore some god might exist but we can know somethings and the all knowing, loving, and powerful god of the bible can't logically exist in the world in which we live. We can know that the Bible is a bunch of stories passed down through generations that has been modified by each writer and teller to the point that it is nothing but the most popular myth in the western world.

So I don't claim to know that absolutely no god exists whatsoever because no one can know that either way. But it is logical to look at the fables presented to us and reject them as nonsense.

You say you don’t claim to know if god absolutely does exist or does not exist;

“So I don't claim to know that absolutely no god exists whatsoever because no one can know that either way. But it is logical to look at the fables presented to us and reject them as nonsense.”

But before you make this claim you say;

“Agnostic atheism is the way to go. We can't know everything therefore some god might exist but we can know somethings and the all knowing, loving, and powerful god of the bible can't logically exist in the world in which we live. We can know that the Bible is a bunch of stories passed down through generations that has been modified by each writer and teller to the point that it is nothing but the most popular myth in the western world.”

What do you think, if you make your claims before you state, “So I don't claim to know that absolutely no god exists”, do you then think this does not count as claims?

And of course you don’t believe in God, because that is what it is to self label yourself an “atheist”, it is the preconceived rejection of evidence before hand. You just don’t realize this because you are trapped in the lie (delusion) of atheism, you can only see it when you escape it.

Your entire post contradicts itself. That is what you get when you “think” you can unbelieve truth itself.

[joshhuntnm]

I love the title of the book: I Don't Have Enough Faith to Become an Athiest

[lao tzu]

I love having a subforum where only the non-believers can post.

*sigh*