# Atheists: Why are you so sure of your non-belief? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 19, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777 "2010-06-19T15:24:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/141 "2010-06-20T23:25:37Z")
> [@Blackberry](#): > > Well, yeah, if there’s an afterlife I would think it would be for everyone. > And it wouldn’t need a “god” exactly…but if there’s an afterlife then that must mean there is some supernatural stuff going on, which would be a type of higher power, I think? I wasn’t thinking of it as some personified God, necessarily. This is a problem with “supernatural”. That’s why I put quotes around “natural” in my original post. Once it applies to everyone, I’ve got a hard time classifying it as supernatural. AFAICS it becomes just “unknown”. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/142 "2010-06-20T23:30:05Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > You can imagine one, but in a truly infinite universe, how would you prevent planets covered in chocolate from forming? It’s not my business to prevent anything; I’m not responsible for the design of the universe. I’m just saying, it’s certainly possible for an infinite universe to lack planets covered in chocolate, the same way it’s certainly possible to have an infinite string of letters that never contains my name; lots of infinite universes are filled with planets covered in chocolate, and lots of infinite strings of letters contain infinitely many instances of my name, but some don’t have any. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/143 "2010-06-20T23:37:07Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > It’s not my business to prevent anything; I’m not responsible for the design of the universe. I’m just saying, it’s certainly possible for an infinite universe to lack planets covered in chocolate, the same way it’s certainly possible to have an infinite string of letters that never contains my name; lots of infinite universes are filled with planets covered in chocolate, and lots of infinite strings of letters contain infinitely many instances of my name, but some don’t have any. I understand the argument, but as far as I can see, the universe isn’t ordered enough to prevent chocolate covered planets. An infinite string of “really random (oh dear)” characters will certainly contain your name. And all of Shakespeare’s plays. Etc. Infinity is creapy that way. It does depend on the assumptions you’d make on the universe (including the amount of time available), that’s true. ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/144 "2010-06-20T23:50:26Z")
> [@whorfin](#): > > Well, I’d disagree that infinity is particularly incomprehensible to “us”. To you, to many people, sure, but I’m not willing to generalize about humanity based on your own experience–especially as mine differs. To me, infinity–something that goes on forever is not particularly complicated. Weird, sure, but conceptually complicated, I disagree. How many numbers are there on a number line? Sixth-graders can understand that. > > If you want examples, how about general relativity, quantum mechanics, the workings of the cell, as things that were incomprehensible on a basic level, but are now understood. I just don’t see that as being the same. Then again, I don’t know much about physics. > [@](#): > > But beyond that, surely you agree that incomprehensible to you just plain doesn’t mean incomprehensible to anyone, everywhere. Maybe you just don’t understand it. And unless infinity is incomprehensible to anyone, everywhere, it’s just not evidence of a higher being. I do agree that it would have to be imcomprehensible to everyone to be evidence of a higher being. There’s really nothing about the idea of time having no beginning and going on forever and ever that you can’t quite grasp? I mean, stuff has to come from somewhere! What the hell is the universe? Even if it all came from the Big Bang, where did that come from? We can’t know that. Once the universe was established, nothing else that I’m aware of seems unknowable to me, but the origin and extent of it? But I’m not saying that “God did it” answers those questions, because obviously it doesn’t since God would have to come from somewhere too. > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > From what I understand (and I’m not a scientist either, just a layman interested in physics) is that nobody knows if the universe is infinite, and actually, many if not most physicists are quite ready to state that they don’t like the idea of an infinite universe. Not just because it makes the maths more or less impossible to deal with, but also because a truly infinite universe would make _everything_ that’s possible not just plausible but _certain_ to exist. And that includes planets covered in chocolate. > > What we know is that, given the age of the universe, we can’t “see” the edge - we can see as far back as it’s possible to see. And there might not even be an edge, even if the universe is finite (the universe might “wrap around”, though it seems unlikely on any scale we can measure, IIRC, again, I’m not a physicist). But if it’s finite, what’s outside it? And if THAT is finite, then what’s outside of that, and so on? I don’t see how this can make sense to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2010, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/145 "2010-06-20T23:53:29Z")
The universe is an island surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/146 "2010-06-21T00:01:23Z")
> [@Blackberry](#): > > But if it’s finite, what’s outside it? And if THAT is finite, then what’s outside of that, and so on? I don’t see how this can make sense to anyone. We don’t know. It’s quite possible that we _can’t_ know. Gonzomax is right. > [@gonzomax](#): > > The universe is an island surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes. And I note that it’s perfectly possible for the universe to be infinite AND there to be “something” outside it. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/147 "2010-06-21T00:13:08Z")
> [@Blackberry](#): > > There’s really nothing about the idea of time having no beginning and going on forever and ever that you can’t quite grasp? Speaking for myself, I find the idea that time has a start _at least_ as hard to grasp as the idea that it hasn’t. And the current consensus seems to be that time did start at the big bang (but this is “just” the consensus). > [@](#): > > I mean, stuff has to come from somewhere! What the hell is the universe? Even if it all came from the Big Bang, where did that come from? We don’t know. > [@](#): > > We can’t know that. Says you 🙂 Sixty-odd years ago, the thinking was that the universe didn’t _have_ a start. Or an end. We’ve gone a long way to finding ever more interesting questions. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/148 "2010-06-21T01:20:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Poppycock. Wrong. Trite. And unmitigated bullshit. Absence of evidence is, indeed, evidence of absence - \*\*when evidence _should be present._ As there should be for any deity put forward by the world’s religions. Besides, wasn’t there already a LONG thread about this concept already? ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/149 "2010-06-21T02:38:27Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I see many on the board who are proud atheists; there is no God/gods, afterlife or souls. […]I can understand agnosticism, but I can’t grasp how one could say definitively that there is nothing beyond our mortal existence. While there are hard atheists, who believe affirmatively in a lack of God or the afterlife or whatever, I think most atheists are soft atheists, effectively agnostic - while they will acknowledge that intellectual rigor demands that they respect the notion that theoretically something that is unprovable could exist, they also realize that they are under no obligation to give the notion any likelihood. More likely they are not proud per se of being atheist, but more strictly they have pride that they are _not theists_, since theism is silly and for the most part easily debunked. There are a million silly unprovable notions in the world, and most of them contradict many of the other millions of silly ideas. And hey, every once in a blue moon one of them turns out to be correct and provable. But none of them deserve the attention of anyone besides enthusiasts and fiction writers until such time as they get demonstrated. OTOH I do think research of odd things is worthwhile. But the research should be from the viewpoint of explaining something that is known to have occurred, rather than trying to find things you wish were true, or fanwanking increasingly ridiculous stories to explain away the mountains of hard evidence that contradict your pet story. To answer the question another way, it’s not so much that people are so sure of their non-belief as that they are so _unsure_ about your pet belief. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/150 "2010-06-21T04:04:20Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Well, perhaps my understanding will never be good enough by somebody else’s standards, but it’s all I’ve got. Once we admit “Eh, who knows. This reasoning looks sound, but I could be wrong about it. I could be wrong about everything. Why bother thinking?”, all reasoning goes out the window (“Is 25 \* 32 equal to 800? Eh, it looks like it is, but perhaps I’ll just never understand the subtle flaw in my argument.”). So, fine, you can consider such a possibility, if you like, but moving past it is not defective reasoning; it’s the only reasoning there is… Yeah, I understand the athiests position and it is perfectly reasonable. I am even willing to admit that it is more reasonable than having faith. I don’t think any religion has got it perfectly correct and I suspect that despite thousands of years of human creativity and imagination, none of them are much closer to the truth than the pink unicorns but I also suspect that there is something. Perhaps, my vision was simply my conscience talking to me through a proxy. Perhaps my brain conjures a God when I need to talk to a God. Perhaps we will discover that there is a little part of the brain that is different between those who have faith and those who do not. Perhaps it is genetic and perhaps there is an evolutionary advantage to having faith (perhaps it is linked to the same gene that gives us immunity to some disease that killed off anyone without that resistance, perhaps faith makes you more likely to conceive), but there must be something more than “God simply doesn’t exist and 90% of humans are just being silly”. > [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Then you should try harder. Not really how faith works. If you believe the Christians, then faith is a gift of God, you can’t attain it through good works or endless hours of praying unless God grants it. And I would add that it is equally difficult to get rid of just by trying. > [@Digital\_Stimulus](#): > > Yes, all believers agreeing with those terms are suffering a psychosis… > If, on the other hand, one claims that one’s religious belief **is** grounded in fact (but of a special kind, e.g., revelation, special insight, emotional truth, etc.), then that changes things, becoming an argument about what qualifies as “fact” and/or the facts themselves. OK so because my faith in grounded in this vision I had one time 20 years ago when I thought I saw God (or at least felt his presence very vividly) I am not psychotic, I am merely delusional? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Well, in that case why should the “2 dimensional blind men” care about this particular elephant? At best, such an argument means we should be indifferent to “God” even if it existed. That is a good point and perhaps God is useless to us if we are incapable of understanding God or understanding his morality but if you believe he exists why wouldn’t you strive to understand him to what little extent you could. > [@](#): > > Yes. The majority of humanity is insane, and the name of that insanity is religion. You yourself, right there are describing a compulsion; an irrational need to believe. That is a pretty grim prospect, most of humanity is insane. > [@](#): > > And for that matter, people haven’t had any particular religious belief “since we could think”. No but there has been a pretty consistent belief in a spiritual world. > [@](#): > > And when you see someone dying in agony from something like cancer, do you start talking about how there must be a higher order to explain the existence of cancer? Or does your god only get the credit for warm and fuzzy things? Yeah the whole “why do bad things happen to good people and why does evil prosper?” is hard to explain. > [@MeanOldLady](#): > > I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are you saying that gods are more plausible than unicorns or Space Ninjas because a greater number of people believe in them? Yes, I think that is what I am saying. How does 90% of humanity come to believe in higher power. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > It would be difficult for them to comprehend, but there must be some evidence that they’re witnessing that 3d elephant, right? Otherwise why create a belief to explain it? There is no equivelant evidence about god. Well some people have visions and stuff. [quote] Of course. The fact that we equate popularity with plausibility is one of the big reasons religions exist. It’s also one of the reasons that pretty much every culture has sprung up with their own religion. You would expect, in the absense of an actual god, that people would form religion - and how does that look any different from our real world where even believers think there are 100 false religions and one real one? > [@](#): > > People need religion. Death is unsettling. Not understanding how the world works is unsettling. In the old days when we didn’t understand how our solar system works, it was comforting to think of a sun god travelling across the sky. Now that we can explain that little mystery, it has dissapeared from religion. > > But we’ll never have a satisfactory answer about death. “Uh, yep, you’re dead, sorry” will always be unsettling to most people and hence there will probably always be a need to find a way to alleviate it. Religion can still exist for that basic reason. So you think that the movie “the invention of lying” basically has it right? Is it really all just a reflex to prevent ourselves from going crazy about the prospect of death? > [@](#): > > The fact that people have all the motivations in the world to create religions even if god doesn’t exist is further evidence of the case. Or, more accurately, it’s a way to argue against the premise of "billions of people are religious, and they can’t all be wrong!’ I think it is entirely possible that they are all wrong on the particulars, my question is why so many people believe in religions. I was not on deaths door or afraid of death when I experienced something (whether you think it was a phsychotic break a hallucination or God) that made be a believer for the next 20 years. I suspect that a lot of people’s faith is not driven by the concept of an afterlife, its sort of the reason why I still fear death despite having faith in the existence of God.. > [@](#): > > Why wouldn’t we be hostile to religion? Because it is so singular in its persistence over time and across cultures and so prevalent that it is something that might deserve a bit more discussion than “you might as well believe in pink unicorns” > [@](#): > > You can make specific claims about the world. God does this, God did that. We can test those things. Can i say God triggered the Big bang? > [@](#): > > Even if we didn’t understand how god worked, we could see his work in action. Some people see it all around them every day. If you are asking why priests can’t read minds and shoot laser beams from their eyes i guess i’d have to say that God works in mysterious ways. > [@](#): > > Unless you are advocating for a non-interventional god that has never interacted with our planet, then god does violate the laws of earth physics. When he parts the red sea. Or when he talks to people using a booming voice out of thin air - what is generating those sound waves? When he performs all the various miracles - that’s interacting with our world in a way that would violate the laws of physics on earth. That’s what makes them miracles > [@](#): > > If you are supposing a non-interventional god that lives in another dimension that never has an effect on us on earth, of what possible use is that belief? What do we gain by believing in such an entity? > > I really wish that religious people believed in this hypothetical non-intervenionist vague deist God that they always bring to these arguments. If they did, there’d be no “god orders you to do this” or “god wants you to kill these infidels because…” or “god thinks women should shut up and be your property” stuff, because this vague god they create for the pedantic, rhetorical sake doesn’t demand anything from his believers. He couldn’t. Some religions don’t really have Gods. > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > Please tell my why all claims of cause and effect are in the one direction where we can’t test any of it? For all the stuff in the Bible about god speaking to people in burning bushes and stuff like that, he’s been awfully quiet last couple of thousand years. Well, tell that to Mohammed and the Muslims or to John Smith and the Mormons or to Tom Cruise and the L. Ron Hubbardians. > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > Just curious: why would an afterlife involve some kind of higher being? I don’t believe in either, but I suppose that if there’s an afterlife, I imagine it as something “natural”. There are plenty of religions that have afterlives without a God. Buddhism or Huna are two examples. > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > What we know is that, given the age of the universe, we can’t “see” the edge - we can see as far back as it’s possible to see. And there might not even be an edge, even if the universe is finite (the universe might “wrap around”, though it seems unlikely on any scale we can measure, IIRC, again, I’m not a physicist). > > ETA: if you mean “end” as in “end in time”, there appears to quite probably be one. There once was a time when people believed in a static and infinite universe. As we learn more, as our understanding changes, our belief changes. Perhaps the evolution of religion is like this. As prophets enlighten us, our understanding of God changes too. > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > I understand the argument, but as far as I can see, the universe isn’t ordered enough to prevent chocolate covered planets. An infinite string of “really random (oh dear)” characters will certainly contain your name. And all of Shakespeare’s plays. Etc. Infinity is creapy that way. Infinity only mean that anything that is possible will exist somewhere. For example, pi is supposed to go on forever with no discernable rhythm or pattern but none of the digits is every going to be an ampersand. In positing God, we are not saying something about the digits of pi we are saying that someone drew that circle. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/151 "2010-06-21T04:31:59Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Yeah, I understand the athiests position and it is perfectly reasonable. I am even willing to admit that it is more reasonable than having faith. I don’t think any religion has got it perfectly correct and I suspect that despite thousands of years of human creativity and imagination, none of them are much closer to the truth than the pink unicorns but I also suspect that there is something. And there’s no reason at all for you to “suspect” any such thing. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Perhaps it is genetic and perhaps there is an evolutionary advantage to having faith (perhaps it is linked to the same gene that gives us immunity to some disease that killed off anyone without that resistance, perhaps faith makes you more likely to conceive), but there must be something more than “God simply doesn’t exist and 90% of humans are just being silly”. My opinion; “faith” probably became a survival advantage due to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years of believers systematically killing anyone who didn’t praise religion loud enough. Selective breeding in action; we’ve bred ourselves to be insane in a specific way just as we’ve bred some dogs to have long fur or specific behaviors. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/152 "2010-06-21T04:54:38Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Nevermind about other dimensions and all that; we can illustrate the point more mundanely. > > How sure are you that I’m not a dog? After all, it is conceptually possible that, in fact, I am a most unusual dog who is conversant in English, able to type, and with access to an Internet connection, even if no one has ever actually witnessed such a thing. > > So how can you be certain that I’m not a dog? > > As I see it, you can be certain that something isn’t the case, and still acknowledge that it is conceptually possible for that thing to turn out to surprisingly be the case after all. Though you may object, I am willing to consider this “certainty”. Indeed, I am hardly inclined to postulate any other kind of certainty; at any rate, this is, in fact, the kind of certainty that pervades almost all of our daily life… This. It’s conceivable that a fire-breathing magical dragon is living in my garage, but it’s just hiding whenever I go out to look for it. It’s conceivable that there is a Supreme Being which created the universe. It’s hard to measure relative probabilities on statements like this, but at a rough guess, I’d estimate the dragon theory to be at least one thousand times more probable. In any case, I would be perfectly happy to say that I’m ‘certain’ that both of these theories are false. If someone wishes to say that my unwillingness to assent to the statement that the probabilities of either of these statements being true is exactly 0, means that I’m ‘really’ agnostic about the possibilities, they should feel free. But I can’t imagine what things they _would_ consider someone to be certain about. Personally, I’d rather reserve the word ‘certain’ for some meaning that allows it to occasionally be used in a positive sense. In this case, I’m confident enough that I’m willing to bet–and apparently am, in fact, betting–my life and immortal soul that I’m correct. That level of confidence = certainty, by any definition that’s reasonable to me. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/153 "2010-06-21T08:53:21Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Perhaps, my vision was simply my conscience talking to me through a proxy. Perhaps my brain conjures a God when I need to talk to a God. Perhaps we will discover that there is a little part of the brain that is different between those who have faith and those who do not. Perhaps it is genetic and perhaps there is an evolutionary advantage to having faith (perhaps it is linked to the same gene that gives us immunity to some disease that killed off anyone without that resistance, perhaps faith makes you more likely to conceive), but there must be something more than “God simply doesn’t exist and 90% of humans are just being silly”. AFAICS part of a built-in mechanism for belief in invisible actors is quite easy to understand. If you’re walking around on the savanna and you hear a creaking branch and you think it’s something (possibly unseen) stalking you, you’re more likely to survive than if you think that it was probably just the wind. Humans have an enormous preference for seeing and stating actions in terms of intentional beings - even when it’s completely clear there isn’t any intent or being. When people want to be clear that there isn’t any intent, the language becomes a lot clunkier when describing actions. Listen to any programmer explain her code, or a physicist explain the attractions of electromagnetism and you’ll usually hear examples of both. Dawkins has suggested that another part is that young children are necessarily gullible. They need to believe what other people tell them or they’ll quite probably die quickly. This gives a possible mechanism whereby children are very likely to accept their parent’s beliefs as their own (which is what we see everywhere) and also might be a reason there is a widespread acceptance of mythological parent-figures that will tell us what to do and punish those who “fail”, even if that parent figure appears completely psychotic and unreasonable. ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/154 "2010-06-21T09:18:17Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#): > > I don’t believe in religion(s) because they’re so mundane and predictable. It’s painfully obvious that religious stories are made up based on the knowledge of the people who made them up at that time. > > The evidence for reality and how the universe really works is so much more amazing and complex. There is no need for religion. This is one of the key’s to the whole thing for me. Religions in general are _so clearly_ the product of ancient humans attempting to understand and give meaning to their lives that it’s just incomprehensible to me that someone could actually believe the stories to be true. How can you be a human living in a modern society, with all of our science on the one hand and countless examples of the human storytelling on the other and not come to that conclusion? It’s like believing Ulysses to be factually correct or Harry Potter to a true-to-life account of a boy’s youth at a school for the magically gifted. The second issue is one of philosophy - I don’t believe something termed ‘God’ could exist from a conceptual standpoint. Science is based on the fact that the universe operates in predictable ways, and if ‘God’ exists it would have to be explainable in some fashion. OTOH, if it’s an explainable phenomena then it can’t be ‘God’ - Christianity in particular has a definition of ‘God’ that _by definition_ cannot exist, perhaps this is deliberate? So once again you have the entire history of mankind’s scientific achievements on the one hand and on the other you have some stories. I would happily believe (given evidence) that a god-like entity existed, but it would have to be explainable (since it exists in the first place) and it wouldn’t be the ‘God’ that man has imagined for himself. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/155 "2010-06-21T11:07:00Z")
So, some physicists are strongly opposed to the idea of an infinite universe? Would they prefer us to be in an enclosed universe suspended in nothingness? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/156 "2010-06-21T11:31:45Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Because it is so singular in its persistence over time and across cultures and so prevalent that it is something that might deserve a bit more discussion than “you might as well believe in pink unicorns” And then, later in that post: [QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi] Some religions don’t really have Gods. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Damari Ajashi] There are plenty of religions that have afterlives without a God. [/QUOTE] So _ **what,** _ exactly, is the particular feature that’s “singular in its persistence over time and across cultures”? [QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi] I think it is entirely possible that they are all wrong on the particulars, my question is why so many people believe in religions. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/157 "2010-06-21T11:44:29Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > So _ **what,** _ exactly, is the particular feature that’s “singular in its persistence over time and across cultures”? A belief in the unfathomable? Or, even more arrogant, or pig-headed, a belief that the unfathomable is understandable by mere humans, animals that only just recently invented toilet-paper. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/158 "2010-06-21T11:51:48Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I guess this is a question, but it will quickly turn into a GD, so I’ll just start it here. > > I see many on the board who are proud atheists; there is no God/gods, afterlife or souls. I wonder how you are so sure. My first guess would be that since you have seen no evidence of such a thing, then you don’t believe. Fair enough. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. > > Would you not have to concede that if there were something supernatural “out there” that your human mind would not know of such a thing? I can understand agnosticism, but I can’t grasp how one could say definitively that there is nothing beyond our mortal existence. As I’m sure has already been pointed out many times, agnosticism and atheism are not exclusive positions. As to my confidence, I’m as confident that your god doesn’t exist as I am that zeus doesn’t exist. Does that mean I’m certain of this? No, but I’m not losing sleep over it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/159 "2010-06-21T11:54:50Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > A belief in the unfathomable? I’m not quite sure what you mean by “unfathomable”. Some religions posit unfathomable gods; others posit downright fathomable ones. (The gods of ancient Greece, for example, come across like comic-book characters IMHO: they have recognizably human personalities and use impressive but straightforward powers: throwing lightning around, wearing a helmet of invisibility, causing earthquakes, changing into a bull or a swan at will, that sort of thing – and they plainly spell out what sort of propitiation will keep you in their good graces, sure as they go around committing adultery or competing in the occasional beauty contest or whatever.) > [@](#): > > Or, even more arrogant, or pig-headed, a belief that the unfathomable is understandable by mere humans If you think religion is a belief that the unfathomable is understandable, then I have little to add. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2010, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777/160 "2010-06-21T11:57:15Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > So, some physicists are strongly opposed to the idea of an infinite universe? Would they prefer us to be in an enclosed universe suspended in nothingness? Well, there are no (other) infinities in nature. And I don’t know if we can even in theory tell the difference between an infinite universe and one that’s just larger than the observable part. And as I said above, making the universe infinite doesn’t answer the question of what (if anything) is “outside” it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-why-are-you-so-sure-of-your-non-belief/543777.md?page=9)