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IS EVERYBODY 100% POSITIVE THERE IS NO GOD?
I wanted to put this question out there to see how strongly everyone feels on this subject. Being that most of us trust in scientific fact and reasoning, I was wondering if everyone is absolutely, undeniably, 100% sure that a god doesn't exist. I personally take into account that there is no proof of any cosmic creator so therefore I am about 99.9999% sure that there is no god. However we all agree that science is an ever evolving field and I don't think that there will ever be any proof to support the existence of a supreme being, but I can't be 100% sure until there is concrete proof against one. I would like to know what all of your thoughts on this.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Johan Fruh on -
Hypothetically. If I present you with a two-sided coin. One side as a T the other an F. I flip it once and it lands with the T facing up. I promptly destroy the coin and ask what is the probably that the a T would have landed face up on the next flip what would you say?
Well in this simple situation, it seems to me that almost everyone will admit that they just don't know. They can tell you what they think... based on what they know about you... but no one will claim that their answer is the one true answer. It would be ridiculous in this context.
It's easy to let go of ego when all that is at play is a coin.
The ego will only come in when you start talking about things that give a meaning to your life.
We've all experienced it... not wanting to admit something could be true, because we would then have to rebuild our life foundations, and admit our past comittements were useless and wasted time.
I don't believe faith is a requirement for existence. It's very easy to get by just fine when you're admitting that everything you know about your surroundings are suppositions, and that you can be surprised at all times.
It actually makes life a lot easier in my opinion... it'll just weaken your rethoric when faced by someone who has faith (faith being blind certitude basically...)...
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Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on -
Belief can be derived from evidence, but belief does not require evidence. I believe in the tooth fairy.
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Permalink Reply by Asa Watcher on -
Actually, it's your tooth in which you have "belief".
At this point you have expressed "faith" in the existence of the tooth fairy.
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Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on
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Faith? When does a belief become faith?
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Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on
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We do not say; "I have faith that God exists!"
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Permalink Reply by clivephoto on -
Ah, but what is evidence?
I have been reliably informed on many occasions how the fact we, the universe and everything else exist is undeniable evidence that god created it all. I have been unable to figure out where to go from there except away, quickly.
It also appears to be widely accepted that quantum mechanics "scientifically proves" all kinds of things including the "fact" that an observer influences the physical world simply by the act of observing.
Ego quickly becomes a subject of those types of discussion too since athiests, being godless, can only be driven by ego. Glad to see it making an appearance here.
My only concern is that Hitler seems to be late arriving in these proceedings and I wondered if anyone wanted to open a book on when he would? Dammit, I suppose I've already ruined that one by mentioning his name. Not that he was an atheist but it seems a catholic is pretty much the same thing to most fundamentalists.
Okay, seconds out, next round!
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Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on
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Fact today can be folly tomorrow (according the the history of science).
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Permalink Reply by leveni on -
Fact today can be folly tomorrow (according the the history of science).
Science is about understanding the way things work and why they are the way they are.
Just because scientific knowledge constantly increases, and therefore constantly changes, doesn't mean it is continuously folly, which is what you are suggesting.
If you can do better, in any field of science, there are millions of people waiting and wanting to hear what it is you have to say. If you can improve on that which has already been studied, again, there are millions of people out there who want to listen to you.
The reason why people will want to listen to you is because they want to improve their own knowledge in regards to the many aspects of science. They want to improve there own understanding of the way things are and the way things work.
Limiting science to just 'facts' and 'follies' is limiting your own understanding of what science is about.
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Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on
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There is an art. Take the words of another and add meaning to them, then twist that meaning into whatever you want, and behold you have refuted the original words. There are two names to this art: Philosophy and Religion
What I was trying to convey with "Fact today CAN be folly tomorrow" is that something we learn tomorrow may be a better description of reality than what we know today.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on -
Sure, but ever since Darwin and Copernicus, science has largely been refining our understanding of reality, not turning it upside down. People used to think the value of pi was 3.14. Then they found out it was closer to 3.14159. Is 3.14 folly as a value for pi, or just not as precise as it could be?
The bottom line is that we have looked for gods, any gods, for thousands of years and come up empty. Inductively, that seems unlikely to change. Logically, the gods we've been looking for don't make any sense, so there's no point looking because they can't exist. Cognitively, we know why people persist in looking. Except some of us have clued in that it's a dangerous waste of time. It's not a statement of faith to say that science won't uncover a god under the next rock it turns over; it's a statement of fact.
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Permalink Reply by AtheistTech on
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I agree somewhat. There are people who contend that they have found a god, son of god, etc. Do we discount their belief? Or do we try to understand it? If we had a repeatable experiment to prove that the belief in a god comes from a certain chemical , electrical, and/or magnetic configuration of the brain, we can prove that their belief is a manifestation of that configuration. But that knowledge may not change their belief at which point becomes a delusion.
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Permalink Reply by MCT on -
All thoughts are certain patterns of electroneurochemical transmission in the brain. How these patterns are stored during the construction of a knowledge base is what is responsible for a certain belief. It has a lot to do with identity and self-esteem, since, by our structure as humans, we have autonomic nervous systems which guarantee an emotional reaction of some sort with each thought. A completely rational person, obviously, would not believe in god. Our emotions have served us in the past to bring us where we are, but now we can learn to control our emotions and use only reason for knowledge, well those of us that haven't attached our self-esteem to invalid concepts.
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