@J-Machine My arguments weren’t hyperbole (there literally isn’t any evidence that a god exists), and I’m not trying to “shove atheism down people’s throats.” A person’s beliefs are their prerogative. It sounds like I’m not the one being hyperbolic. I completely agree with you that faith is belief without evidence, but a person who cares whether their beliefs are true cannot hold a belief on the basis of faith, since faith is not an avenue to truth. If a person cares if their beliefs are true, then yes, faith is detrimental.
@MichelRT24 You’re right that scientists haven’t answers all of the questions about the universe. We don’t know, for example, what came before the Big Bang (pretending there was anything before the Big Bang, since it might be nonsensical for there to be something before time). However, it’s a logical fallacy called “God of the Gaps” to say that an absence of an explanation is any reason to think a god exists. “I don’t know” only means “I don’t know.” It doesn’t demonstrate anything else, and it’s not a reason to believe an unsubstantiated claim. We know now that evolution is the explanation for the diversity of life on this planet, but if we weren’t aware of evolution, that wouldn’t be evidence that a god exists. In reality, it would just be that we hadn’t figured out evolution yet.
@tabzer When I’m talking about caring if a belief is “true,” I’m talking about caring if a belief comports with reality. I’m not talking about the sincerity of a belief. That’s a different topic.
I agree with you that people hold onto beliefs for a variety of reasons. My point is that a lot of those reasons are irrational and aren’t demonstrative of the claim being true. Nothing I’ve said is a “word salad,” and I haven’t said anything that’s contradictory. If you re going to claim that there’s something I said that was contradictory, I’d like you to be specific please. Thank you.
Irrationality objectively exists. By definition, it’s when something or someone is without reason or rationale. It’s not a controversial statement to say irrationality exists. You can disagree with my claim that the god belief is irrational, but in order to argue against that claim, you would have to provide evidence that a god exists. Without evidence of a god’s existence, the belief is irrational by definition.
When I’ve “ascribed god with traits and character,” like when I’ve addressed the Biblical God, I’m only addressing a specific god claim. I never claimed that all god claims are the same when I’ve talked about the morality of the Biblical God, for example. I’m also not the one who came up with those traits and characters for that specific god concept; it’s just the one that a lot of people here believe in. However, I have not heard any god claim that has met its burden of proof. It isn’t “contradictory,” and it isn’t “schizophrenia.” If you think I’m unfairly ascribing traits and character to God, without addressing that it’s a specific god concept, I’d like it if you addressed it specifically. I’m not sure why you’re leaping to talk about some hypothetical “unresolved trauma with a real-life patriarch.” I am not the one who believes in an imaginary daddy in the sky, after all.
With regard to anecdotal evidence, I am not going to accept any kind of evidence that isn’t demonstrative of the claim being made. Why should I?
@The Real Jdbye There is no evidence that we are in fact living in a simulation. It’s an unverifiable and unfalsifiable claim, so there’s also no way to assess the probability that we are living in a simulation.
You identify as an agnostic, which is completely your prerogative, but you should know that agnosticism refers to the topic of knowledge about a god’s existence, not belief. For example, I am an atheist because I do not accept the claim that a god exists (purely because its burden of proof has not been met). However, I am also an agnostic, because I do not know that a god does not exist. What are you? Are you an agnostic atheist, or are you an agnostic theist?
@smileyhead The “God” explanation for why the world exists has not met its burden of proof, so I am unsure as to how you can so “there is no better explanation.” When talking about the Earth, if that’s what you mean when you say “world,” we actually know how that came to be. We know that the Earth formed from the Sun’s accretion disc approximately 4.54 billion years ago.
You said you would rather “spend the final moments of your life thinking there is a Heaven,” which is your prerogative, but I know I would feel better knowing that my beliefs were what were likely true, not what would make me happy. A belief is and should be “acceptance of a claim as true,” not “acceptance of a claim as what I want to be true.” I would also argue that the finite nature of our lives is a significant part of what gives our lives meaning.
@linuxares With regard to what created the universe, we don’t know. It could be that the universe created itself. It could be that some outside naturalistic force created the universe. It could be that the universe has always existed in some form. It could be that the formation of the universe was atemporal (e.g. some event in the future caused the formation of the universe in the past). It might also be nonsensical to talk about what caused the universe, when the universe necessarily includes laws of causality. In other words, asking what caused causality might not make sense.
With regard to your question about what caused God (if God hypothetically existed), that is an excellent question. Historically, people have used God as an answer to difficult questions they didn’t know the answer to, but the God answer usually doesn’t answer anything. “What created the universe? God did it.” When someone inevitably asks “Okay, so what created God,” there is no reason why the answer to that question (God is infinite, God doesn’t need a cause, etc.) couldn’t also just apply to the original question of what created the universe.
I love your question “Why is it important to believe in a God?” A lot of people have been conditioned by religion to think that belief in a god is somehow virtuous and that not believing in a god is somehow evil. That’s one of the ways they rope people in. If you didn’t have that kind of conditioning, there would be a lot more atheists and a lot fewer theists.
With regard to where humans came from without a god, we know that humans are the product of billions of years of evolution by natural selection. Different species evolved different traits that suited their environments. Dolphins are the way they are (without human-level sapience) because their traits are sufficient in allowing them to survive and reproduce. One of the many reasons humans evolved human-level sapience is because of the climate change in Africa that caused the trees our non-human ancestors used to dwell in to die off, so we had to quickly adapt to being on the ground level with predators. Hands and arms that had previously been used for tree-climbing were not free to manipulate the environment and use tools, etc.
@ tabzer If you are arguing that the belief in a god is not irrational, but you are suggesting there is only anecdotal “evidence,” then yes, you are asking people to believe in anecdotal evidence. I agree with you that there might only be anecdotal “evidence” for the existence of God. The problem is anecdotal evidence typically isn’t demonstrative of anything. There’s plenty of anecdotal “evidence” for the existence of ghosts, alien abductions, Big Foot, fairies, unicorns, etc., but these things are still irrational because an anecdote demonstrates nothing more than the anecdote itself. To use an example I used previously, a person who has cancer, prays for it to go away, and then goes into remission is merely an example of someone having cancer, praying for it to go away, and then going into remission. It is not evidence for prayer working, a god causing the cancer to go into remission, etc.
I am curious: What is the one experience that best demonstrates to you that a god exists? What was it about the experience that convinced you that a god exists? How is the experience demonstrative of a god’s existence? Whether or not an experience is actually demonstrative of a god’s existence is not subjective; it’s objective. I agree with you that if an experience is actually demonstrative of a god’s existence, it would probably convince me as it has convinced you. However, I am doubtful that the experience is actually demonstrative of a god’s existence. There is nothing restricting you from articulating what it is you have experienced that demonstrates the existence of a god.
“There is no evidence of X” is not a positive claim. It is an acknowledgement that evidence has not been provided for X, and it does not have a burden of proof. If you disagree with the statement that there is no evidence for the existence of a god, then you have two options: concede that we are unaware of any evidence that a god exists, or provide evidence that a god exists. Acknowledging that there is no evidence for something is not an assertion of omniscience. I never claimed that a god absolutely doesn’t exist, and there will never be any evidence provided for a god’s existence. I said no evidence for a god’s existence has been provided in the history of humanity so far as I’m aware, and that’s a fair and accurate statement.
It is completely fair to attribute atrocities, particularly those in the name of a supposed god, to the god they believe in (if the god exists). That god, if it existed, has not stepped in to stop those atrocities.
Those who disbelieve in a god do not have a “fantasy” about what a god is. My disbelief in a particular god claim is in response to someone else’s fantasy. In other words, it is not the fault of the atheist that someone else has an imaginary friend.
Regarding the burden of proof, you are correct that someone saying “God exists” has as much a burden of proof as someone saying “God does not exist.” I did not say “God does not exist.” I said the claim “God exists” has not met its burden of proof, and the default position in that case is to reject the claim. Now, if we were to narrow down the God concept to something specific, such as the God of the Bible, there are arguments to be made (The problem of evil, the argument from divine hiddenness, etc.) that this specific God does not exist, but that’s a separate conversation about very specific god concepts.
@wownmnpare Aliens might exist, but they might not. We know that the diversity of life we see on Earth evolved through naturalistic means, so given the right conditions, it seems more than plausible that something similar could happen on another planet orbiting another star somewhere. Given the vastness of the cosmos (a low estimate is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe, with 100 billion of those stars residing in our galaxy alone), it seems unlikely we are alone in the universe. The problem is we really don’t know what the probability is of life forming naturally. It could be 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, making us the only planet with life in the observable universe, or it could be 1/1, and life inevitably forms when given the right conditions and time.
It might also be that life is common, but intelligent life is uncommon. It could be intelligent life is common, but they usually cause their own extinctions with nuclear war, etc. We just don’t know.