You mean that same “nothingness” outside the universe where some religionists would have us believe God resides?
Making it less than infinite guarantees there is an “outside” to it, whereas infinity suggests that is all there is, and trying to look beyond it is a telescopic waste of time.
AFAIK, none of that is true.
So, God would be like a universal, incorporeal, sentient membrane surrounding the whole kaboodle?
That would still presuppose that there would have to have been “something” to form from and form into, or we are back to “it popped out of nowhere.”, which is entirely unsatisfying from a philosophical pov.
Why are you assuming that there is “something” surrounding the universe?
This isn’t a necessary assumption as far as I can tell - Neither is the supposition that the universe popped out of nowhere. The evidence (inflationary universe) does not necessitate this interpretation.
Sorry, I should have added “imo”. I’d have to be as arrogant as a religionist to believe I knew for sure.
It doesn’t necessitate anything. It is all just word-salad, and scientist’s best guesses.
Or are you going to point me to an “authority” on “When The Universe Began!”, now?
I don’t think the universe ‘began’, really, so no and I’m certainly not an authority.
Sure. Just to explain a bit as far as I understand it: if the universe is “inside” something else, it might be extremely small on the “outside” while still possibly infinite on the inside - meaning it’s possible that you can’t get “out”. The universe may also be curved in on itself, which would mean it might not be infinite, but you still can’t get out of it from the inside regardless of whether there’s anything outside of it.
And I bet you can’t point me to one either. I’m not claiming my guess is as good as that of the person who has dedicated his life to exploring this shit, but it seems that today’s scientists search for the TOE, is like the alchemist’s search for the Philosopher’s Stone, something that only exists in the minds of men.
You’ve been watching too much Dr Who.
Well, as Neil deGrasse Tyson likes to remark; “theoretical physics is cheap”.
What constitutes an ‘authority’? I can point you to some philosophers who have spent their lives dealing with this issue, but what good would that do if you don’t accept them as an authority?
My point is that there are concepts out there that do not require ultimate beginnings or cosmologies where there is a ‘something’ that exists outside of the universe. In short, they are simpler and make sense of the data.
Are they true?
I don’t know and I’m not sure how we can really know whether they are true or not. I would say that we can have reasonable confidence in them.
If certainty is what you are after, you are probably going to be disappointed.
In this case, there is no “authority” - there are just intelligent people who have spent a lot of time thinking about it.
The data is subject to human interpretation.
If you mean confidence in them having a better idea than their predecessors, I’d agree.
If energy can never be destroyed, only transformed, even the death of consciousness is uncertain, but I’m not going to attribute a Grand Design to it.
Isn’t that practically the case with almost everything?
Obviously.
I’m not sure I see a meaningful distinction here.
For what reason? Seems like S&Gs to me.
I once was where you are. I was raised a Christian but asked a lot of questions about the things I was told and I tried out a few different Christian sects. In my experience, whenever the light of inquiry shines on religion it retreats into the shadows. When no-one questions it, it makes bold claims. When pressed it weakens on those claims until only a vague “there might be something” is left. This is always where religious debates seem to end up - There might be something supernatural out there that I’ve never seen and can’t make claims about. If that is the boldest claim that religion can make then you are welcome to your religion.
The moment I went from an agnostic to an atheist was when I allowed the thought to enter my conscience: “Maybe there isn’t anything god-like out there.” Very scary and very freeing moment. A lot of stuff snaps into place but it is a real downer because it does mean that 90% of humans are just being silly and we don’t get to live forever in a happy place. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Thanks. Seriously. That is more than this nontheist is used to getting from believers.
Sure, a “higher power of some kind” is possible. But isn’t just about anything possible if we allow exceptions to what we understand to be “universal” laws, and consider fallible all of our senses and thinking processes? I mean, it is possible that we all exist in the Matrix, the Lathe of Heaven, or somesuch, no? But if we can’t even trust our senses and thoughts, then what use is there in even asking what is or is not possible?
I think that many “possible” things are so highly improbable that I am happy to lead my life treating them as tho they are impossible. You placing any bets on which direction the sun is going to rise from tomorrow? Cause you never can completely rule out the possibility that some all-powerful rink guard in the sky isn’t going to come over the PA and announce “Opposite skate”! 
[nitpick] It’s Joseph Smith. [/nitpick]
To answer the OP, I claim no evidence of absence. I am a nearly 100% confident atheist, simply because nothing has persuaded me to believe otherwise. If a person claims to have received some sort of spiritual manifestation that had persuaded him to believe, I simply tell him that I have had no such experience and until I do I will not believe.
As is common around here, you are confusing knowledge with belief. You can believe that there are no dinosaurs still living without being 100% sure of it.
We’ve got lots of good evidence for our belief that no gods exist - at least not any defined by humans so far. There is the great diversity in the kind of gods believed in over time and over place, there are failed prophecies, there is the fact that any statements about the physical world made in supposedly inspired books turn out to be wrong, there is the success of science in filling in the gaps in our knowledge that religion has never been able to fill.
It is also perfectly possible to be an atheist and believe in some sort of godless afterlife - like Farmer’s Riverworld. But most atheists come to their conclusions from evidence and reason, and the lack of evidence of an afterlife - plus the lack of evidence for a soul - tends to make us not believe in this either.
As far as absence of evidence, etc., I started a thread a while ago which went on for pages and pages on this very subject.
In my view, the more one goes around and around, the vaguer the posited god becomes. Eventually it becomes so devoid of characteristics that it is essentially meaningless.
So does anyone have a more specific idea of a god that can be debated?
For example, it seems to me impossible for there to exist a creator god that is simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and good. That really kills any Western notion of a god worthy of worship.
Last week, god smote Touchdown Jesus.
There’s infinite and there’s infinite. In a truly infinite universe, these things have to happen.
Given sufficient time, the improbable becomes inevitable.