IS EVERYBODY 100% POSITIVE THERE IS NO GOD?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 16, 2010 at 7:08pm

Define god. Do you mean a personal god, Christian, Greek, Egyptian, watchmaker? Each answer has varying degrees of likeliness. Is it more likely that a watchmaker god exists than a personal Christian god? Absolutely.

I read that given the potential increases in computational power it is likely that more universes will (do) exist in some sort of computer simulation than actual universes. But even if that were so that doesn't indicate the existence of an infallible god that cares about each and every one of us.

Hell, I can't be sure what I think is reality is actually reality; I may be in a software simulation, coma, dream or on a crazy drug trip. But at the same time I don't recommend walking around thinking "wake up, wake up, wake up". You got to draw the line somewhere and decide what drives your existence.

Kurt Cobain said it best: "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are".

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Permalink Reply by Chris G on June 17, 2010 at 9:35pm

You are going to Hell.
Hell - death with no god.
No afterlife.
..._ _ _...

So what?

The fear of eternal damnation drives the Christian Myth.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 18, 2010 at 11:11am

Not all religions believe in a hell so regardless of hell's existence, the idea should either lend or take away from the likeliness of said religion.

Since we can not prove many of these factors conclusively one way or other then the sway they hold is infinitesimally small. However, the more complexity you add to a religion the more things one would have to prove and thus would make that religion not only harder to defend logically but also less likely statistically.

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Permalink Reply by FCoNicaea325 on June 17, 2010 at 11:32pm

I think all of those gods have the same degree of likeliness... that's just me

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 18, 2010 at 10:53am

I think it is mentally lazy to be 100% sure about anything. It seems the only thing we can prove with any certainty is based in mathematics.

The reason I say a watchmaker god is more probable than say a Christian god is because when you look at evolution you would expect changes to be naturally driven without any divine intervention or with some design in mind and that is exactly what we see. There are some very stupid things that have been brought about due to one thing evolving into another just enough to be sufficient for survival. Since the deistic god is not considered to have an active hand in the way the universe rolls out then by this logic the deistic god is more likely than the divine creator god(s).

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 18, 2010 at 10:45am

Yea, he wasn't the strongest person to hold that quote up but I still like it despite him.

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Permalink Reply by FCoNicaea325 on June 17, 2010 at 11:29pm

fact is the burden of proof falls on the believers. We cannot disprove the existence of god. You cannot disprove the existence of something that doesn't exist. That's like remembering something you never knew

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Permalink Reply by Radu on June 18, 2010 at 11:04am

I'm 100% sure that there are no gods! Science is evolving so along with it the chances of finding any proof are dropping.

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Permalink Reply by Ouroboros on June 18, 2010 at 3:22pm

It depends on the definition of what a "god" is.

I don't believe there's any evidence for the Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Theistic god, but I can't say for sure if there could exist beings that are extremely powerful or even perhaps be outside our time and space.

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Permalink Reply by Ally on June 18, 2010 at 10:02pm

I am 99.9- ad infinitum ...
that there is no god
I am 100% Certain that god is irrelevant.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Terence Meaden on June 19, 2010 at 5:50am

I agree with many recent correspondents. In my case my views arise not only from common sense, but also because I recognise that physics has fully come of age. Modern physics seems capable of explaining the deepest mysteries. Therefore I am repeating here part of an earlier post because I was in any case lengthening and redrafting that post for a personal blog to put on 'My Page'. Hence:

100% is my level of positivity that the Universe had no creator god. This is largely because the Universe’s ‘origins’, at their currently-debatable scientific level, lie within the realm of explanation by physics. Although one can never be absolutely sure of anything in matters of this kind, the base position is that no one needs to allow for, or hypothesise, a supernatural creator god because physics has already shown that it can produce credible scientific answers of its own. Instead, we further accept that in coming decades and centuries science will guide us ever nearer to the details of the likely truths about the 'origins' of the Universe.

In commenting on the theme of this discussion Atheist Nexus members have provided an interesting array of rational opinions for which there is great virtue, but I go further than most and follow the fully-scientific, strong-atheist approach which considers more deeply where the laws of physics and quantum mechanics lead us.

To start with, true atheists agree that all the gods named by humans were invented by humans and are 100% fake. Nothing less than 100% will do for these fictions.

Beyond this, as regards the origin of the known Universe, many atheists seem to proffer a degree of caution that leads them to posit something like 99.9999999+++….% positivity instead of 100% just in case there is something ‘divine’ out there behind the workings of the Universe about which we have no knowledge. In that case, we need to ask what could it be? A creator god? Well, I say not. I side with those scientists and others who say we can dispense with any notion that there might have been any kind of creator god as a supernatural entity that set it all going.

Firstly, if there was some kind of creator god, we spiral into the problem of the creator of the creator of the creator and so on to infinity (see older discussion topics in the "Origins" group, like “What happened before the Big Bang”). And if anyone were to say that some sort of creator god could have been there, or was always there, and still might be there (but where is ‘there’?), then one does far better to propound instead that the Universe has always been there. Thus, no creator god needs to be proposed, and in any case scientifically-satisfying explanations arise from within the domain of the theoretical quantum physics of cosmology.

Specifically, for the origin of the Universe I go along with the physics of Professor Vic Stenger's analysis which is based on the virtual quantum properties of an unstable void (see "Origins" group discussions) for which the fundamental physics is above reproach. Using the test bed of quantum mechanics a reasonable theory is that the Universe was instantly self-created, uncaused, from an unstable void or ‘false vacuum’—which is a timeless quantum void—with the property that incipient, virtual particles are everywhere present.

The consequence is that in REAL TIME universes are all there can be. They are eternally present, forever existing, because their absence would imply an unstable state of the void that cannot exist in time. In brief, either "a Universe is present" or its alter ego "the unstable void” is present. However, a quantum void, because of its virtual particles and instability, would immediately get replaced by a Big Bang and new Universe.

Thus, our Universe simply IS . . .
. . . . because at least one universe is always necessarily present.

Therefore, because time cannot exist prior to universes, universes cannot have a first cause. Everything is ongoing. With no first cause, there is no primary origin, no creation. Therefore postulations of the supernatural are superfluous, dispensable, worthless, and non-atheistic. Theism and doubt result from inadequate knowledge and incomplete teaching of science. People’s gods, including creator gods, exist only inside their heads. Instead, godless atheism is the natural condition of the Universe into which all animal life is initiated. On Earth single-cellular life led, by evolution over billions of years, to ourselves, Homo sapiens---thinking humans, who contemplate our origins. And atheism is the answer evaluated by unbiased freethinkers. Indeed, human life innocently proceeds with a sublime atheistic vision of the world until, for so many unfortunate people, cerebral indoctrination into some fiction called ‘faith’ is pressured by arrogant, supernatural believers upon trusting defenceless children and vulnerable, credulous adults.

Although, like the stars, the proposed quantum void is not humanly approachable, its physics is within human understanding, because (as with the stars) it is entrenched in the theory of cosmological inflation [a result of the merging of quantum physics and high-energy particle physics with cosmology and astrophysics] which has abundant empirical evidence supporting it.

What is more, some theoretical physicists, who are working at the frontiers of research in these topics, suggest that our universe may be only one of a possibly infinite set of "evolving" universes—hence the concept of the "Multiverse" or what I have termed the “Infiniverse”.

Thus, as a 100% true atheist, I support the 100% positive statement that “there is no god”. Any critics of the 100% stance expose themselves to a possible charge that a residue of the supernatural lurks within them.

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/originsuniverselifehumankindandda... (for additional discussion)

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Permalink Reply by Jaume on June 19, 2010 at 7:09am

many atheists seem to proffer a degree of caution that leads them to posit something like 99.9999999+++….% positivity instead of 100% just in case

I just wonder if these atheists are ready to admit the corollary: "I'm 0.000...001% positive there is a god." I bet not ;-)

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