I grew up in a very fundamentalist religious upbringing, and having undergone a great deal of change in political beliefs over the last decade, I couldn’t avoid questioning most of my religious assumptions as well (I know, how original). A great many things have been thrown into flux of late.
I would like to ask religious and atheist Dopers what exactly makes you so sure that your viewpoint is the correct one - not as a challenge, but rather, just want to hear what it is that gives you the certainty you have.
I am putting this thread in IMHO rather than Great Debates because I would prefer that it not turn into a debate argument where people start quarreling and re-hashing those age-old debates about Pascal’s Wager and the age of the universe and all that but rather more of a drive-by posting thread where people can share what exactly it was that led them down the path to where they are now eventually, where they say “Yes, I am certain that God exists (or doesn’t exist,) and here’s why and how I got here.”
In other words, I’d like to ask people to share their thought process and experience, without challenging other people’s.
Agnostics are welcome to post as well, but I’d really prefer that this thread be mainly about people who are sure and certain of their beliefs (i.e., diehard religious or atheistic people) - not people who are straddling the fence and unsure of things.
I don’t believe in an all powerful God who must be appeased, prayed to, who will make all things right if you just get some mysterious combination of words and actions right. There is so much horror in the world, would a loving god allow that? If there is a devil I think it’s the one urging people to embrace religion, and sow discord and insanity among essentially sane people.
I do think there may be small, localized spirits who can have small influences; give things a shove, as it were, in a certain direction if they feel like it. I’m thinking of things lie a massive storm tearing through a town and a tree just shaving the side of a house and not crushing the kids bedroom. Or even stupid things like finding a dropped ring in the middle of a field, or a tire going flat when you REALLY need to be on time for something.
Essentially though I think religions are a crock and a waste of time and resources.
I wouldn’t say I’m sure in my atheism. Surety requires faith, which is where I part with religious believers. I look at the evidence and I feel that the evidence that God doesn’t exist far outweighs any evidence that God does exist. Especially because virtually all of the evidence in support of god’s existence is hearsay.
I am paradoxically sure that nobody can be sure. That uncertainty is fundamental to the human conditon. You can’t know you’re not in the matrix. You can’t know that anything you’ve received as sensory input since the day you were born is actually connected to an external reality. You therefore can’t know that any consciousness other than your own actually exists. Or that life has any meaning.
What one does in the face of uncertainty is to act provisionally — to act AS IF the best available data to you is accurate and totally trustworthy, and that your best efforts to make sense of it have resulted in a correct interpretation — but to retain, nonetheless, an awareness that you might be wrong.
In interacting with others, your awareness that you might be wrong puts a damper on what otherwise might be a tendency to judge them wrong or evil or criminal or sinful. It may not completely keep you from making that kind of value judgment but it will lead you to give people the benefit of the doubt in a much wider latitude of cases. It also keeps you from being quite as inclined to build an edifice of beliefs that you refuse to question lest your entire edifice come tumbling down. Perhaps you’ll question your own precepts and notions as you go, knowing that any point you could have seen things from only one of many possible viewing angles.
There’s some parable or whatnot about the builder who picked up a stone that had been discarded by all the other builders and said it would be the cornerstone of the new structure. If I were building a theology or a philosophy, I’d select uncertainty and build on it. You can’t pave over it, you can’t make it go away, and you can’t get away from it, so why not make it your cornerstone?
If you are looking for the views of what are sometimes called “hard” or "positive’ atheists – those who have a positive belief that there are no gods – you might find them hard to find around here. Most atheists I know merely don’t have any theistic beliefs.
Technically, I’m an ignostic and theological non-cognitivist - I have never been given a definition of what a “god” is sufficient to be able to decide whether any exist or not and don’t really think the concept has any specific or concluded meaning. This makes me a particular sub-category of atheist since it naturally follows that I don’t have any theistic beliefs.
Why so sure? Well, the loose, ill defined, and self-contradictory concepts communicated by believers about the supernatural things they believe to exist are ludicrous, unevidenced, and exactly the type of concepts that people fabricate for admitted fiction. Consequently it is inherently implausible that such things exist (except as vague mental constructs), and inherently plausible that they are vague mental constructs. In my experience, theists agree except with respect to their own particular supernatural beliefs.
From one angle, your question “What makes you so sure?” doesn’t entirely make sense in the context of my position. I don’t have any positive position about which to be “sure”. I’m as “sure” in my position as anyone is who has no belief about something and no reason to have any such belief. See “Russell’s teapot”.
I am sure that no actual evidence that supports the existence of any particular god has been brought forward, so I am an atheist much in the same way that I am an aeasterbunnyist. I bring up being an atheist more often than I bring up being an aeasterbunnyist because no one is condemning those who don’t believe in their particular Bunny to an eternity in Mr. Fox’s Stewpot.
I used to say I was an apathetic agnostic (“I don’t know and I don’t care”), but I now call myself an atheist. I have never seen any evidence that any gods exist.
I consider myself a born-again agnostic. I don’t believe there is a God up in the sky, or that someone can, or ever has been able to perform miracles, or that a loving spiritual being would wipe out everyone on the planet except for one family, but I don’t rule out the possibility. It’s just that nobody has proven it to be scientifically true, and truth matters. It’s based on believing it’s true without any real evidence. And no, the Bible is not real evidence of anything except that some people can make up wild stories to prove a point.
If someone can honestly show me they can resurrect the dead I might start believing in the supernatural, but I don’t know anyone who performs miracles that haven’t been proven to be fake.
Believe me, it’s easier to believe in an invisible being watching over and protecting us than to believe we are on our own and can’t rely on anyone else but ourselves to survive in a cold, heartless Universe.
I believe in God just as much as I believe in unicorns, ghosts, martians, astrology, or Scientology. If anyone can prove he exists I am always willing to listen.
I’m an atheist in that I don’t have a belief in any god or gods that I’ve heard about. I’m also agnostic about many gods that have been put forward as their inherent unfalsifiability and/or incoherence means that any knowledge about them seems unattainable.
I reserve the right to change my mind whenever sufficient evidence is put to me.
So I’m not sure and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. I suspect you’ll find a lot more certainty on the religious side.
I am sure there is no god, in the same sense that I’m sure there’s no Santa Claus. Their existence contradicts everything I know about reality. If you were suddenly convinced that Santa Claus actually existed, that he had flying reindeer and could deliver billions of gifts in a single night by coming down people’s chimneys… how many twists of logic would it take for you to accept all of that? How much disbelief would you need to suspend, to believe that such a thing is possible?
Mostly the First Law of Thermodynamics - the existence of an everlasting heaven and hell, as well as the concept of all-powerful god, would imply a source of infinite energy, akin to perpetual motion, which stands in direct opposition to the First Law.
Also, like other Dopers have already mentioned, religious people have never provided any evidence of truly supernatural phenomena. All those tall-tales such as Moses parting the sea and god destroying Sodom and Gomorrah - how come these otherworldly feats all seem to happen in an era before cameras and video archival became a thing? Yeah, I thought so. Besides, most of the stuff people attribute to “divine intervention” have perfectly rational real-world explanations.
I have no idea if god(s) exist. What I know with 100% certainty is that the god(s) people believe in do not exist.
Why? Their gods are as small as the promoter’s imagination and don’t reflect the vastness of the universe as we know it today. No god who created the universe gives a shit if you eat fish on a Friday. So, all that stuff written in ‘holy’ books is entirely written by people.
Atheist here. I’m sure that I’m an atheist using the correct definition of not having any god beliefs. As for believing that there is no god, it depends on the god. The tri-omni gog is logically inconsistent, so I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t exist. The god of the inerrant Bible goes against so much evidence that I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist. But I just lack belief in a deistic god, mostly due to Occam’s Razor, which is a heuristic, not a method of proof.
I’ve been an atheist for over 50 years and have been debating atheism online for about 45 years, and am open to arguments for a god. Just haven’t heard any good ones yet.
Belief that no gods exist - provisional belief - is justifiable in that we’ve been exposed to n gods, none of which seem to exist, and so it is reasonable to believe that none exist - until we find evidence otherwise. I’ve met tons of people like this. I’m one.
On the other hand a claim to knowledge that no gods exist is not justified. Different thing. In over 40 years online I’ve run into one person in this category, and the atheists in alt.atheism pretty much thought he was an idiot.
I’m not sure there isn’t a God. I’m fairly certain. Primarily because there is no evidence that any God exists.
Now, I am sure that the God of the Christian bible isn’t real, considering that He’s a jumbled mess of incoherent nonsense. But if you ignore enough of what’s actually written in the bible, there’s space for something that could maybe exist, but almost certainly doesn’t.
For me, it’s perfectly logical that humans in general want to believe in a God and just as logical that one does not exist. So much so that I thank God every day that he doesn’t exist and pray to him to protect me from those who believe he is real.
I don’t like that way of putting it because to me it’s like describing disease as a particularly disadvantageous form of good health. It’s nitpickery on my part, I would agree.
I can recall one on the SDMB clearly and he was highly abrasive. There may have been more but they are rare beasts.
IME hard or positive atheists exist mostly as a strawman in the mind of theists desperate to try to shift the onus of proof.
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I’m not sure that there is no God at all. But I am positive there is no God as described by chirstians. Their only cases for him existing are insultingly fucking stupid.
First, I don’t feel any need for what organised religion, or the belief in a greater power, provides. I don’t feel any need for the world to “make sense” or for there to be a “greater purpose to life”. I don’t feel a need for the support and community that being part of a religious group may provide. So that’s for starters, the whole religion thing, whether in terms of organised religion or just a belief system doesn’t fill any kind of psychological hole or need.
Second, I find any concept of god that we can think up, to be highly unlikely. I am convinced that we invented god to explain away gaps in our knowledge and as our knowledge increased, the place for god diminished. Why am I convinced of this? Because just on a day to day basis, the less knowledge we have of an event or topic, either as an individual or as a group, the more likely we are to literally make stuff up to fit the pieces together.