Why atheists don't believe in God?

Debate Room
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Hello. I’m new to this group. I was wondering why atheists disbelieve in God? Is there one reason that outweighs the others? I’m doing this for a survey. No hate here. Thx.

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Which god are you claiming exists? Be very specific, as there are 40,000 variants of the christian claims alone, before we get to the rest of the god claims.

Once you let me know I can tell you why, or if, I disbelieve in your specific claimed god.

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God of the Holy Bible.

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“god of the holy bible” is not specific.
Which version, which sect/ cult subsect do you identify as ?

Each sect of Christianity claims a god with particular characteristics, and rejects all other interpretations. So I ask again, which godofchoice and BE SPECIFIC

Then I am happy to answer you.

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There’s not a Baptist God or an Episcopalian God. God as in God of all Christian religions.

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Aren’t there christian gods who are three-in-one and christian gods who aren’t?

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All of them are, yes. From Catholic to Protestant and all the denominations in them. That is a core belief.

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Well, you have put your finger on the main flaw that for me is the deal breaker about believing the claims for your particular god.

The original ‘followers of the way’ insisted that the Jesus figure was fully human and adopted by god after his death. Adopted because he was a perfect Jew and insisted that the Law applied in eternity. No gentiles or Samaritans need apply.

Tertullian, the author of the Trinity nonsense was never sainted because, yes, he was a Montanist. An heretical sect according to the Roman Church.
There are so many sects, sub cults and subsects of Christianity from Keralians to JWs all declaring the others from misguided to heretic.

There are so many versions of bibles all declaring themselves either God’s word or inspired by a particular sects god of choice it is impossible to believe in a particular one. That doesn’t include all the lost, hidden, destroyed texts that either didn’t make into or were removed from any particular collection.

As you were too reticent to identify yourself as anything but a Protestant, but not brave enough to tell us which exact flavour I can’t help you more unless you identify, then I can be clear why I disbelieve the claims for your particular deityofchoice.

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JWs , Unitarians, LDS…not trinitarian. @davidc.guthrie, are you asserting they are not christian?

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I am a Southern Baptist.

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Not in the way I interpret the Bible, no.

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Hey David, how’s it going.
Let’s see what you have here in addition to the “Why don’t atheists believe” stuff.

Okay, it looks like the main reason is a lack of good evidence. Now, you will hear some atheists assenting that there is 'no evidence. ‘This is not true.’ The evidence you do have is just very, very, bad.

You have a collection of books thrown together in the 5th century from hundreds of books that were floating around at the time. No one in these books ever met Jesus. The authors of the books are unknown. Many of the books are forgeries. We have no original documents. We know chapters and verses have been altered, added to, and taken away over thousands of years. There is no reason to take seriously this book of stories. It is not what it is held up to be.

You have personal testimony and revelation. By definition personal testimony may be a symptom of mental problems, but when it qualifies for some sort of evidence, it is only evidence for the person experiencing it. Personal testimony is by its very nature, first person. It is not a reason for me to believe and more often than not, it is not measurable or verifiable in any way. It is, very poor evidence.

We can follow this up with the scientific failings of theistic claims. This includes everything from the Exodus from Egypt, humans being created by a pair in a garden, talking animals, spitting on some mud and smearing it in eyes to cure blindness, calling bats birds, and so much more.

Lastly, there are over 2000 years of failed apologetics (arguments for the existence of God).

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Without getting into the mire that is Biblical Apologetics, it is sufficient to say, all of these are built upon fallacies of logic. Not one of the arguments for the existence of God can stand against critical inquiry. “There is no good evidence for the existence of God or gods.”

If you think you have some good evidence, we would love to hear about it.

Cheers!

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Respectfully, other than mathematics and science
(Which man created) non- theists have no more proof of how our existence came into being any more than theists claim they have. Is it safe to say we all put our Faith in something?

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Well, I tend to trust data and the explanations that come from the study of them.

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Yeah, it’s not safe to say. Just because someone doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t mean another answer is correct. All it means is that the person doesn’t have an answer.

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Hmm, ok, but when your “faith in something” has been proven to be less than reliable, as I gave examples of various forms of christianity that precede the “Southern Baptist” version…why do you hold to something that is less than reliable?

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I can only speak for myself, but here goes: If God created the Universe, then where does God come from? If God has always existed, then why not skip a step and claim that the Universe has always existed?

Or if we decide that the origin of God is an unanswerable question, then why not skip a step and decide that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question?

Also, if God exists, then it seems that He has taken so many steps to remove any evidence of His existence, that we might reasonably conclude that He doesn’t want us to believe in Him . . . perhaps so that we can solve our own problems and be autonomous and stand on our own two feet like any parent wants their child to do when they grow up.

As another point, while God may or may not exist, we can demonstrate that a belief in God is often quite harmful. Just look at the violence in the Middle East, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, American slavery, the genocide of the Native Americans, and so forth.

I have seen huge amounts of harm done to humanity by religion, as I work in the medical field, so rejecting God is a way of distancing myself from this horrible and toxic stuff.

An atheistic perspective is–paradoxically–an affirmation of life . . . because we have to make the most of the life we have now. As for those people who say that removing God removes any meaning to life (ie: “We’re just blobs of meat.”), I say that meaning to life is what we give it.

The Universe may eventually die from entropy in several trillion years in the future, so why not do good (in however we define the term) simply for its own sake? Why not reduce suffering simply because we can? How is this ultimately meaningless if there is no God?

And we’re wrong and God does exist, then how does this outlook displease Him?

This idea is rather like Pasqual’s Wager in reverse.

Please consider these issues even if you disagree with my position.

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No idea is credible because we may lack an alternative, this is called an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. As for “only having science” I would take the objective facts it has helped us understand over unevidenced archaic superstition every single time, I can see no reason why anyone would do otherwise beyond bias and a closed mind.

Only if you are talking about non-religious faith, as they are defined very differently.

Faith
noun

  1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
  2. strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.

My “faith” in science is based on overwhelming objective evidence, and the fact it is the best method we have for understanding reality, as is manifest in it’s remarkable results in a very short space of time. I have no use for religious faith.

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha …
Aside from 2000 years of scientific advancements, (Your problem is that you are stuck on ‘proof.’) there is no ‘proof’ in life or in science. Proof is a word used in math. There is evidence. There are facts and evidence. When we follow the facts and evidence it leads us to abiogenesis (The most popular theory.) and not to ‘MAGIC MAN IN THE SKY.’

We have no evidence at all for 'Magic Man in the sky did it." And we have hundreds of years of scientific inquiry supporting abiogenesis. 'Life forming from inorganic material." Now, does that mean life formed from inorganic material? No. It means this is where all the evidence leads. In the one hand, we have a tone of evidence leading us to think abiogenesis is a thing. In the other hand, we have an old book and a fairy tale of magic mud babies being created with the breath of life by a magical flying sky daddy. Even if we reduce both stories down to mud. One of them needs a magical flying sky daddy and the other does not. We don’t need to complicate things beyond the evidence. When you can provide evidence for the existence of your god, then it can be considered as a possibility. Until then, there is no reason to go there. You are just making up a story.

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Of course, but many times humans are not aware of it; atheists are not immune to this, and they truly believe they are following reality when they are only following an image they have created. They forget that they are following a specific interpretation of the evidence, and this interpretation is based on a representation of reality grounded in mathematics and various conceptual models.

In other words, they mistake the map for the territory. This delusion grows stronger as the map becomes more precise. However, the map has nothing to do with the territory, even if they appear identical.

Science simplifies reality to make it comprehensible. As a result, we come to understand a caricature of reality, and we assume that this caricature is all that exists.

This is similar to an ant believing that the ultimate reality of the universe consists of paths marked with pheromones. In the same way, humans tend to believe that the ultimate knowledge of reality consists of ideas and thoughts.

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