Do atheists have any evidence to support their beliefs?

Gabe7 said:

I've never heard of anyone looking up into the Heavens and walking away with the conclusion that there is no God. I've heard the opposite happens quite often. You would appear to be the exception to the rule.

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well conversely you don't usually hear anyone who studies the sky say they believe in God. So be careful with that, you're making points for atheists.

jonsun80 said:

see my thread here. which just goes to illustrate my point. not from ubisoft from gabe7.

belief and knowledge are two completely and utterly different things.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7550747/#post57189680

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Ubisoft sell computer games....

Anyway, I don't think that agnosticism can't be classified as a belief. Yes, it claims something about the knowledge, but that claim itself is a belief.

do you go to church on a regular basis and accept Jesus Christ as your savior?

Gabe7 said:

As for proof of God, that is truly vast. Its everything. It would be like an animal in the future walking into a deserted human city. Would they know people existed or would they write that off as preposterous since none were left walking around? If God created the universe his fingerprints are all over the place and scientists are measuring them and taking notice.

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So, an animal walks from the sand dunes of the desert into a deserted human city... The animal can look back and see desert. It can look forward and see non-desert. The animal can compare them.

You however claim that everything is made by God. You can't look around and see the desert, you only can see the city. How do you know it is a city and not a desert then?

jonsun80 said:

do you go to church on a regular basis and accept Jesus Christ as your savior?

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If you ask me, no, I don't. People can believe things without going to church and accept Jesus Christ as their savior.

Gabe7 said:

The point still stands that there is as much proof for Atheism, or less, as there is for Christianity. Which makes their belief less solid than they initially give it credit for.

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Point? You have no point. All you have is a strawman of your own making. I’m an atheist. I lack belief in your God or any other gods. My lack of belief in your God is the same as your lack of belief in Santa Claus. There is no sound evidence supporting the belief that your God is real. Consequently, believing it is real is unreasonable.

As for proof of God, that is truly vast. Its everything. It would be like an animal in the future walking into a deserted human city. Would they know people existed or would they write that off as preposterous since none were left walking around? If God created the universe his fingerprints are all over the place and scientists are measuring them and taking notice.

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What you interpret as evidence for your God is probably nothing more than errors, fallacies and misapprehensions on your part.

Gabe7 said:

The ones I know do. They tend to be deists based on my anecdotal experience. Even the ancient philosophers were. God(s) was/were obvious to them and they wrote all about it.

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What was obvious to them was their gap in knowledge.

right, but the point is not that you don't know if you're a practicing Christian, you are or you aren't. thats a bit of a false dichotomy I know but it's meant to illustrate practical differences between position of belief versus positions of knowledge. Richard Dawkins said, and I agree (gasp), that agnosticism is usually weak atheism in that an agnostic doesn't take a stance on worship or belief in God because he cannot be sure if it is true, but generally he is not practicing or taking any particular religion seriously. now agnosticism for answer becomes a false dichotomy. As I said in my thread you can believe or not and still not know if its true either way. When a theist like me asks you if you believe in God we generally mean the God of the Bible, not some undefined concept of general deity existing without defined nature or role. If you're not a Christian you're not a Christian, and thats really the question being asked. even though you admit the Christian doctrine cannot or is not known to be true objectively it says nothing about your state of faith or lack thereof.

Gabe7 said:

What is the definition of an atheist?

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Someone who doesn´t believe that gods exist.

To believe there is no God requires faith.

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1. Atheism doesn´t require me to believe that.
2. "Faith" in what exactly?
3. I just lack belief in one more deity than you do.

If you said you were agnostic then you would be on firmer ground as far as evidence goes.

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Well, I am an agnostic atheist.

But to say there is no God when you have no evidence of such suggests faith.

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You should know how it is: You lack belief in countless deities yourself - without any evidence.

Faith without proof.

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As soon as you give a definition of "god" that renders this concept falsifiable I might try to consider it. Until then, if you demand for "proof" is ridiculous.

If you take your position as default without any evidence then you are basically doing what Christians do when they say its obvious that God is real.

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That may be true for my positive beliefs (which you do not know anything about). It is not true about my lacking beliefs.

Gabe7 said:

The ones I know do. They tend to be deists based on my anecdotal experience. Even the ancient philosophers were. God(s) was/were obvious to them and they wrote all about it.

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Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God)

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Leading Scientists Still Reject God

jonsun80 said:

right, but the point is not that you don't know if you're a practicing Christian, you are or you aren't.

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There are many people that say they are practicing Christian. Some of them consider others as non-Christians, despite the fact they do think they are Christian.
So, to be a Christian is not well defined thing. By some definitions I am a Christian, as I was baptized when I was 7 years old.

jonsun80 said:

thats a bit of a false dichotomy I know but it's meant to illustrate practical differences between position of belief versus positions of knowledge. Richard Dawkins said, and I agree (gasp), that agnosticism is usually weak atheism in that an agnostic doesn't take a stance on worship or belief in God because he cannot be sure if it is true, but generally he is not practicing or taking any particular religion seriously. now agnosticism for answer becomes a false dichotomy.

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I don't see how agnosticism can become a false dichotomy. It is a belief that it is impossible to gain knowledge about God.

jonsun80 said:

If you're not a Christian you're not a Christian, and thats really the question being asked.

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That's not entirely true. If the bold part was true, then no one will be a Christian, as you can find another who calls himself a Christian and denies you are a Christian.

Gabe7 said:

The ones I know do. They tend to be deists based on my anecdotal experience. Even the ancient philosophers were. God(s) was/were obvious to them and they wrote all about it.

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If you look at the members of the National Academy of Science, the area of science most likely to have atheist members is Physics and Cosmology (and Biology apparently).

Upisoft said:

There are many people that say they are practicing Christian. Some of them consider others as non-Christians, despite the fact they do think they are Christian.
So, to be a Christian is not well defined thing. By some definitions I am a Christian, as I was baptized when I was 7 years old.


I don't see how agnosticism can become a false dichotomy. It is a belief that it is impossible to gain knowledge about God.

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fair enough, for the sake of the argument we'll just go with mine. or we could just get specific and say RCC or Pentecostal. Doesn't really matter here.

again its a false dichotomy in that you can believe and worship God or a god and still not know if it exists. knowledge is perfectly independent of belief. as I noted before faith itself is defined as belief without knowing.

Gabe7 said:

What is the definition of an atheist?

To believe there is no God requires faith. Without evidence that faith is akin to the blind faith many Christians have. If you said you were agnostic then you would be on firmer ground as far as evidence goes. But to say there is no God when you have no evidence of such suggests faith. Faith without proof.

If you take your position as default without any evidence then you are basically doing what Christians do when they say its obvious that God is real.

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D'aaaawww, you completely ignored my post and didn't watch any of my nice youtube videos, did you? For shame!

If I told you I had a Magical Invisible Elephant in my closet who granted wishes, would it require faith for you to doubt its existence? Doubt is the opposite of faith, and doubt and skepticism are pretty much the only things all atheists have in common.

Now, there may be no solid evidence that your god doesn't exist (as there cannot be solid evidence that my invisible elephant doesn't exist) but there are many reasons to doubt it. There's the locality of the religion, for starters. Assuming a god did create everybody, it was awfully discriminatory of it to reveal its existence ONLY to a small group of people in the middle of a desert. We call the Middle East the cradle of civilization, but that is nonsense. China was already a well-established empire, the Celts were faffing about in Europe, and natives of the Philippines were crossing oceans in small canoes as they steered by the stars when your god 'revealed' itself to this small group of goat herders. Raw deal for the rest of the world, eh?

Now, you could say my elephant doesn't exist because I don't get my wishes granted. Not true! It's just that the elephant only grants the wishes it wants to. I wished for a hundred dollars, but the elephant had a plan and it didn't include a hundred dollars. But then I wished for strength to get through a hard time, and behold! I felt stronger and I got through. Ergo, elephant.

In other words, the only measurable effect of prayer is that it makes the prayer (and sometimes the prayee) feel a little better. Which is fine, whatever floats your boat, but it's not proof of a god or an elephant.

Now, you might get on to the logistics. How can an elephant fit in my closet? (How can a god that is said to be all good and all powerful let evil exist?) Well, I say, the elephant can be as big or as small as it wants to be. (God has 'a plan') If the elephant is there, why can't it be felt? (Why doesn't god seem to have any measurable effect on reality?) Well, I feel the elephant. If you don't feel the elephant, it must be because you don't want to. (I feel god's love, god did everything so of course you can't measure its effect.)

And then there's the bible, which a lot of believers hold as solid, certain fact in book form. Ah! Here's something quantifiable, falsifiable, testable! A flood covered the whole earth, they say. Well, we know that's not true, we've figured out the movement of the continents and Pangaea and frankly, there's not enough water on earth to cover all the continents (and again, where did all those people on other continents come from?) It's less than 6000 years old, some say. Well, you can look at what an old book says about geology, or you can look at what actual rocks say about geology, which is that it's much, much older than that. And then on top of all that there are the sheer number of contradictions in the bible. While we cannot definitively prove that something in the bible is untrue, a text that contradicts itself cannot be assumed to be true.

YouTube - Quiz Show (Bible Contradictions)

So, yeah. No solid proof, but PLENTY of reason to doubt and no reason to believe besides what other humans say.

Skaloop said:

Well, I'd say there's the same amount of data. What that data serves as evidence for is different.

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OK. Not sure I understand the distinction you are making?

Gabe7 said:

The point still stands that there is as much proof for Atheism, or less, as there is for Christianity. Which makes their belief less solid than they initially give it credit for.

As for proof of God, that is truly vast. Its everything. It would be like an animal in the future walking into a deserted human city. Would they know people existed or would they write that off as preposterous since none were left walking around? If God created the universe his fingerprints are all over the place and scientists are measuring them and taking notice.

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So you make a claim. As evidence of this claim you point to everything and say it backs up your claim. I look at your evidence and don't believe that it supports your claim. You then tell me that my lack of belief in your claim has no supporting evidence and is therefore faith in your not claim.

Not seeing that as a terribly compelling argument, sorry.

Atheism has an appeal to science. And frankly, science has kicked faith's butt in the "how does the universe work?" category.

Gabe7 said:

What is the definition of an atheist?

To believe there is no God requires faith. Without evidence that faith is akin to the blind faith many Christians have. If you said you were agnostic then you would be on firmer ground as far as evidence goes. But to say there is no God when you have no evidence of such suggests faith. Faith without proof.

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Most atheists are also agnostic. So are most theists, but they're generally not willing to admit it.

you don't need any proof to default to the null hypothesis. that's what atheism is -- null. first time i see jesus comin' down with a choir of angels singin' amazing grace, BAM i is converted!