6 ms·

> Is being an atheist hard to say, argue, or back up with fact? Since I've never heard a compelling argument for it, I would say so.

shadowgovt 6y ago
I've heard several. The simplest one is the question of obligation to deliver evidence. Stories of deities are not reproducibleand modern observation does not align with what's recorded in religious texts regarding the cosmology of the universe. We don't accept evidence Spider-Man is real because his exploits were recorded in a comic book without physical evidence of a web swinging vigilante protecting New York City, but we accept evidence of various gods from various textbooks. gods are held to a different standard than comic book characters, and it's a less stringent standard.
- ConceptJunkie 6y ago
  There's compelling evidence that you can't prove supernatural beings exist. However, it similarly impossible to prove they don't exist. In our experience, everything that exists comes from something else that exists. There is nothing that comes into existence from nothing. The Universe exists, therefore it must have come from something. It's a dodge to suggest that progression goes on forever. Something created everything, which was not itself created. We can't prove it is God Who did this, but there is no more reason to believe it "just happened" either. Atheism is as much an act of faith as is belief in the supernatural. You can no more give me physical proof that God does not exist than I can give you proof that He does. If you do not have faith and want to claim true objectivity and empiricism on your side, you admit that agnosticism is the only acceptable position.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    As I noted, generally if you're going to conjure an explanation into being, the burden of proof is on the conjurer, not the listener. The response to "prove God doesn't exist" isn't "I can't, therefore God must exist;" it's "Happy to consider it if you can bring some evidence that the existence is necessary." > there is nothing that comes into existence from nothing This aligns with our observations by analogy, though not directly (as there is a singularity at the limit of the Big Bang, where our observational power is limited). And I respond to the assertion that it's a dodge to assume an infinite chain of causality with "It's a dodge to assert by analogy that an infinite chain cannot be the answer," because we are aware from study of mathematics of the possibility of infinities. But even if we assume the prime mover hypothesis is true, we don't arrive at a place that most religions do. For we also observe plenty of causes that fundamentally mutate or destroy themselves in the causation, and plenty of intelligent designers that create things and then walk away from them, content to let them operate under their own rules. At the very least, it seems that present-tense atheism (the assertion that there is no god right now, agnostic to the question of whether there was a god to set things in motion) matches observation and the Occam's Razor of assuming no additional, unnecessary unobservables. Occam's Razor is, itself, a bit of an act of faith---The trick to Russell's teapot is without the technology to probe it, we can't actually prove that there is no teapot in orbit around Jupiter---but it invites us to take the leap but there need be no unobservable magic in the universe If a simpler explanation can fit the observables. Even if an invisible purple dragon created the universe, I'm not obligated to assume it's still around.

shadowgovt 6y ago

I've heard several. The simplest one is the question of obligation to deliver evidence. Stories of deities are not reproducibleand modern observation does not align with what's recorded in religious texts regarding the cosmology of the universe. We don't accept evidence Spider-Man is real because his exploits were recorded in a comic book without physical evidence of a web swinging vigilante protecting New York City, but we accept evidence of various gods from various textbooks. gods are held to a different standard than comic book characters, and it's a less stringent standard.

ConceptJunkie 6y ago
There's compelling evidence that you can't prove supernatural beings exist. However, it similarly impossible to prove they don't exist. In our experience, everything that exists comes from something else that exists. There is nothing that comes into existence from nothing. The Universe exists, therefore it must have come from something. It's a dodge to suggest that progression goes on forever. Something created everything, which was not itself created. We can't prove it is God Who did this, but there is no more reason to believe it "just happened" either. Atheism is as much an act of faith as is belief in the supernatural. You can no more give me physical proof that God does not exist than I can give you proof that He does. If you do not have faith and want to claim true objectivity and empiricism on your side, you admit that agnosticism is the only acceptable position.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  As I noted, generally if you're going to conjure an explanation into being, the burden of proof is on the conjurer, not the listener. The response to "prove God doesn't exist" isn't "I can't, therefore God must exist;" it's "Happy to consider it if you can bring some evidence that the existence is necessary." > there is nothing that comes into existence from nothing This aligns with our observations by analogy, though not directly (as there is a singularity at the limit of the Big Bang, where our observational power is limited). And I respond to the assertion that it's a dodge to assume an infinite chain of causality with "It's a dodge to assert by analogy that an infinite chain cannot be the answer," because we are aware from study of mathematics of the possibility of infinities. But even if we assume the prime mover hypothesis is true, we don't arrive at a place that most religions do. For we also observe plenty of causes that fundamentally mutate or destroy themselves in the causation, and plenty of intelligent designers that create things and then walk away from them, content to let them operate under their own rules. At the very least, it seems that present-tense atheism (the assertion that there is no god right now, agnostic to the question of whether there was a god to set things in motion) matches observation and the Occam's Razor of assuming no additional, unnecessary unobservables. Occam's Razor is, itself, a bit of an act of faith---The trick to Russell's teapot is without the technology to probe it, we can't actually prove that there is no teapot in orbit around Jupiter---but it invites us to take the leap but there need be no unobservable magic in the universe If a simpler explanation can fit the observables. Even if an invisible purple dragon created the universe, I'm not obligated to assume it's still around.