Why in God's name are you an atheist?

[Buttercup]

I wouldn't describe it exactly that way. I think the statement "I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God" makes just as much sense as, for example, "I'm a libertarian because I believe in limited government".

I agree. I've heard one person I know tell me they are an atheist simply because they don't care enough to give any credence to a possible god....They don't believe out of sheer apathy.

 

[sandandfoam]

I really don't want to discuss your beliefs, as I'm quite sure I'm not going to convince you on believing something else.

Fair enough regarding the specifics of what I believe. However my religious views like my scientific views are all provisional, if they weren't I would still be an atheist

but what you are describing still is a subjective experience that is dependent on your education and surroundings; somebody else could have read the same books you did and still be an atheist, or pagan, or what else, once again if you take yourself out of the picture you are left with nothing..

Agreed it is subjective however I still don't agree with your earlier statement that "The god theory? Is just cultural, there is no data supporting it other than tales and ancient books."

I think you aren't understanding what a subjective experience means, I'm not saying it's wrong (it works for you), all I'm saying is that it doesn't work for me, and I'm giving my reasons as that is what this thread is about...

I wasn't disagreeing that either your views or mine are subjective, I was and am disagreeing with your dismissing them as 'just cultural'.

I get this feeling you are not very familiar with scientific theories; the universe is expanding, and it has a center, so the first logical conclusion driven from the data that supported the Big-Bang is that if the universe is expanding and it has a center then long ago everything must have been condensed in this center, and since breaking this huge gravity and electrical forces to start a expand would require an equal huge amount of energy, then a big explosion was proposed.

But our modern telescopes, like the Hubble, gave us a new opportunity to collect data and this data supports the theory; since light has speed if we look far into the cosmos we are really looking at the past of the cosmos, the past of the universe, and this picture of the ancient universe (that can be taken anywhere by anybody) shows clear signs of a hot radiant system full of starts that most probably were the result of a huge explosion.

But the theory has its flaws, and other theories are trying to beat the Big-Bang, so far the Big-Bang is the one with the most data that supports it, but it may be just a matter of time until we drop it for something better... Don't you love science? I bet you can't do the same to an aspect of your religion.

Yes I love science, yes I am familiar with the Big bang theory and cosmic background radiation.
Stephen Hawking said "As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences and so should not form part of a scientific model of the universe. We should therefore cut them out of the model and say that the big bang was the beginning of time. This means that questions such as who set up the conditions for the big bang are not questions that science addresses"
Science may not address the question. I am entitled to. How is my questioning in conflict with science?

I don't think I'm dismissing your view lightly, I'm just expressing my opinion.

And that's fair enough.

 

[Random]

Sounds like you're off-topic to me.

OK, fair comment. Sorry for that.

 

[YmirGF]

At risk of getting a well earned barb from you Jay, I am inclined to say that I am firmly in BOTH camps. I simply do not subscribe to the various garden variety god-concepts. What I believe bears little to no resembelance to accepted thinking on the subject. In those terms, as I am not supportive of those schools of thought, in the slightest, I could be deemed an atheist.

I guess the bottom line is that my world view does not require a "god" to make reality what it is and is not dependant on such a being existing.

*Assumes the position to get paddled by Jay*

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

... my world view does not require a "god" to make reality what it is and is not dependant on such a being existing.

Perhaps this is because you make no such demands upon your world view, i.e., your world view does not require a "god" to make reality what it is because your world view does not require anything to make reality what it is.

 

[YmirGF]

Perhaps this is because you make no such demands upon your world view, i.e., your world view does not require a "god" to make reality what it is because your world view does not require anything to make reality what it is.

Agreed Jay. To my stunted understanding, reality just is and I have no desire or need to label the "unknown" as "god". For example, I most definitely detect "something" on the fringes of my awareness, however I am quite reluctant to label that "unknown" as being "god". I'm afraid that I just do not like "pat answers" and am simply content observing reality. Why make a fuss about it? In my deranged view of reality it is quite ok to say, "I don't know", where others may be inclined to leap to rather wild conclusions before all the data is in.

 

[logician]

I am an atheist because I think god concepts are vastly overrated.

 

[Jistyr]

I am an atheist because...

Life is a bit too short, and a bit too precious to spend a ceaseless amount of time attempting to satisfy my curosities about why the world exists and any spiritual laws governing it.

Although it may seem to be somewhat of ignorance, I would rather just enjoy life as it lays out before me than trying one of infinite guesses concerning how the world came about. I suppose I feel that we can't know, which explains to some degree why I am an agnostic as much as I am an atheist.

 

[MdmSzdWhtGuy]

I am an athiest because I had what others would describe as a "religious experience" which brought to a point some nagging problems I had in my head for several years. Freshman year of college, I was sitting in Early Western Civilizations class, and the Prof. was discussing one dynasty or another of the Egyptians, during the time of the building of the pyramids. She then explained why the pyramids were built (to transport Pharoah's soul to heaven, apparently) and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. . . "There was not one single Christian on the planet Earth when those pyramids were built." After that, I started having one thing after another just wash over me. Things that had bothered me since I was a child. Dinosaurs. Noah's Flood happening about the time those aforementioned Pyramids were being built. No Egyptian records of an Exodus event. . . . and so forth and so on. To be honest it was an overwhelming experience.

I guess I had an athiestic epiphany. Of course I was very unhappy that I felt like I had been lied to by preachers and my parents and family my whole life, so I started studying more and more about history, and religion, and it is difficult to study the first without learning a great deal about the second. I studied to try to make what I heard in Sunday School class match what I was being told in History, and Science classes, and the more I studied to make it all match up, the more and more convinced I became that they would never mesh, and that it would never mesh because what I had heard on Sunday's just wasn't the way things really are. They are, at best, the way people wished things to be.

I don't claim to be the most learned of men, and certainly I am not so learned as many of the posters we have on this board, but I must admit, even tho I did not find the answers I hoped to find, I did in fact find a topic that becomes more fascinating the more I find out about it, and that is a rare find, in my experience, anyway. I say this because I would imagine there are some reading this who find themselves thinking, why is an athiest so interested in religion? So this last paragraph was an attempt to answer the unasked, but expected, question. Carry on.

B.

 

[Willamena]

Life is a bit too short, and a bit too precious to spend a ceaseless amount of time attempting to satisfy my curosities about why the world exists and any spiritual laws governing it.

Although it may seem to be somewhat of ignorance, I would rather just enjoy life as it lays out before me than trying one of infinite guesses concerning how the world came about. I suppose I feel that we can't know, which explains to some degree why I am an agnostic as much as I am an atheist.

Have you considered what you consider to be "life"? Perhaps the split is there. Perhaps what you consider to be "life" isn't what those who believe in eternal life to be "life."

Perhaps you can enjoy "life as it lays out before you" while engaging an infinite guess.

 

[Jistyr]

Have you considered what you consider to be "life"? Perhaps the split is there. Perhaps what you consider to be "life" isn't what those who believe in eternal life to be "life."

Perhaps you can enjoy "life as it lays out before you" while engaging an infinite guess.

True enough.

I guess it would be helpful to know that I do not believe in eternal life; however, I do not disbelieve in it. I'm willing to accept that there may be life after death, I just feel I ought to wait to discover until, well... death.

I do beleive it is more likely that there is no afterlife, which is why I suppose I always attempt to truly cherish what short time I now have.

As for your second statement, I really cannot saying anything except you are correct. I just already do not believe in any religion, and that is certainly why I am biased when I suppose that it is useless to make guesses, and further, I suppose that a whole-hearted acceptance of an incorrect guess could be detrimental to one's enjoying of life if they live it by faulty standards.

I cannot account for everyone, just myself in this case, as it is certainly laced with my own personal beliefs.

Excellent points though, and I thank you for bringing them up.

 

[rojse]

If you're an atheist, let me know why.

There are several reasons
- Belief in a God doesn't add anything to my understanding of the world
- I don't agree with the "god loves everyone" philosophy that is so often espoused by those of the faith
- There are too many logical inconsistencies in the religions that I have examined so far.

 

[mingmty]

So people have to believe whatever transient doctrine Science comes up with that is considered orthodox just for the moment, until it gets changed into something else? And if they don't, they're "irrational" or somthing? Sounds like a con-game to me.

No, you are not getting it. Some scientists believe in the theory of dark energy, some in the theory of the electric universe; some believe a zero-point energy system can be constructed, some believe that it can't since it jeopardize the conservation of energy.

Yet most of them will agree in the thermodynamic laws, and in the electro-magnetic laws. Is all facts, the theories that are hardly questioned have a huge, really huge, amount of data supporting them, other theories like dark-energy have some but isn't enough to be out of question. Some scientists believe that dark energy is true, so they work really hard to find the data to prove it, some scientists believe in other equally not proven theory and they work hard in getting data to support it. And whatever gets accepted in the future, it will be based on the empirical data collected over years, and nothing else.

Why is so difficult for religious people to understand this basic principle? Scientific rationality comes with connecting the dots in the data acquired, and then describing the process sucefully. You have been teach theist theories that claim to be the absolute and non questionable truth, and seems you can no longer understand what leaves the room open for the evolution of knowledge. Your theories are fixed, and so you try to fix everything else as well.

Your comment is a clear misunderstanding of the scientific process of acquiring knowledge.

So people have to believe whatever transient doctrine Science comes up with that is considered orthodox just for the moment

No no no, we believe in what is most likely, not whatever comes up, and this believe is backed with empirical evidence. Is a bit surprising for me that you can't get this straight.

Actually, I do love real science. And my religion, Dolorosa, is highly adaptive within the context of its logical constants.

Something smells fishy when someone attacks the very principles of science, and the scientific method, and then talks about "real science".

 

[mingmty]

Yes I love science, yes I am familiar with the Big bang theory and cosmic background radiation.
Stephen Hawking said "As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences and so should not form part of a scientific model of the universe. We should therefore cut them out of the model and say that the big bang was the beginning of time. This means that questions such as who set up the conditions for the big bang are not questions that science addresses"
Science may not address the question. I am entitled to. How is my questioning in conflict with science?

The scientific thought is based on empirical data and the scientific method, you have to peer-review a theory to confirm it, any other belief do not conform to this principles.

As I'm a scientist, if I can't get data and the evidence necessary to know scientifically what happened before the Big-Bang, then I just don't know what happened before the Big-Bang, I don't invent answers to myself, maybe in the future humanity will know; a thousand years before nobody knew how to see the beginning of the universe, yet we have done so, I keep my hopes high.

PS: Stephen Hawking isn't the best source of all, he is highly overrated, there are scientists that are giving much more to science and have a lot more to say.

 

[sandandfoam]

The scientific thought is based on empirical data and the scientific method, you have to peer-review a theory to confirm it, any other belief do not conform to this principles.

As I'm a scientist, if I can't get data and the evidence necessary to know scientifically what happened before the Big-Bang, then I just don't know what happened before the Big-Bang, I don't invent answers to myself, maybe in the future humanity will know; a thousand years before nobody knew how to see the beginning of the universe, yet we have done so, I keep my hopes high.

PS: Stephen Hawking isn't the best source of all, he is highly overrated, there are scientists that are giving much more to science and have a lot more to say.

I understand you as saying that current scientific thought and method are not equipped to address what happened before the big bang and therefore why it happened. That's fair enough. But we may not be alive by the time science develops those tools. In the meantime we have to try and figure it out as best we can, I can't just not think about it because "I just don't know what happened before the Big-Bang".

Regarding alternatives to Stephen Hawking if you would post some names I'd appreciate it.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

PS: Stephen Hawking isn't the best source of all, he is highly overrated, there are scientists that are giving much more to science and have a lot more to say.

PS: That he's highly underrated by you is highly underwhelming.

 

[Willamena]

True enough.

I guess it would be helpful to know that I do not believe in eternal life; however, I do not disbelieve in it. I'm willing to accept that there may be life after death, I just feel I ought to wait to discover until, well... death.

I do beleive it is more likely that there is no afterlife, which is why I suppose I always attempt to truly cherish what short time I now have.

As for your second statement, I really cannot saying anything except you are correct. I just already do not believe in any religion, and that is certainly why I am biased when I suppose that it is useless to make guesses, and further, I suppose that a whole-hearted acceptance of an incorrect guess could be detrimental to one's enjoying of life if they live it by faulty standards.

I cannot account for everyone, just myself in this case, as it is certainly laced with my own personal beliefs.

Excellent points though, and I thank you for bringing them up.

Fair enough. I only asked because since coming to this forum I acquired some understanding of "eternal life" that I didn't have before (in terms of "unity" and monism). But I understand your position, too.

 

[LongGe123]

I'm an atheist because:
1. I think that the very idea of God is a man-made creation - Allah, Thor, Zeus, Apollo etc - they were all made up to explain the un-explainable.
2. Science has helped explain some of these previously un-explainable things, eg how the earth was created, what the sun is, what lightning is.
3. I think that all the holy scriptures in the world are the work of men, not Gods. For example, I think the Bible to be the work of man, shown by its mistakes/contradications, absurdities (ie Jesus' miracles, Noah's ark, Adam and Eve etc) fatual errors and absurd laws (all in my opinion mind you).

In a way i wish i did believe in a God like when I was younger, as its nice/conforting/cool to think that there's someone watching over you. However, I just can't believe this as the evidence against a God, in my eyes, is just too overwealming.

 

[Willamena]

Some scientists believe that dark energy is true, so they work really hard to find the data to prove it...

You misunderstand science. Ideas about dark matter are based on information; all of science is based on information. "Proof" is irrelevant, evidence much more useful.

 

[mingmty]

PS: That he's highly underrated by you is highly underwhelming.

Why? You haven't heard my reasons... Quite quickly to underwhelm you are.

He is a celebrity and cultural phenomena, and one of the reasons for this is how he self promotes, how he speaks about himself as the successor of Einstein and, the worst one, how he speaks too much about god in his scientific papers.

He constantly states that god doesn't exist, for example in a brief history of time he says that a the universe is self-contained, with no beginning or end, and ask where is the place, then, for a creator? And the answer is implied by himself, there is not. And there are many more god references in his papers, his work is filled with challenges to god when a good scientist should only work in theories using the scientific method, god has no place in scientific literature.

He also never gives a hint of needing more experimental data, he speaks as giving the answers of the universe and always assume his theories will have a great impact in human history.

Regarding alternatives to Stephen Hawking if you would post some names I'd appreciate it.

You won't find "one man who knows it all" for the same reasons I just posted above, scientific progress is a collaboration, everyone loves the idea of having a wise-all-knowing-man that says how the universe works (sounds familiar? the church of science?) but science doesn't work that way, is a peer-review process.

The guys you can really learn from are giving lectures in Universities, working in their laboratories, and actually building scientific equipment to acquire more data. If you are interested search for the theories, not the person, for example dark energy, zero-point systems, electrical model of the universe, etc. There are many videos of lectures in Universities uploaded to Google videos (not YouTube), and you can find some pretty nice theories with the data, equations and theorems that support them.