How I know there is no God

[Plecto]

How about you guys? Any books you like to read or science you like to study, or philosophy you like to learn?

I'm reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

 

[DailyBlessings]

I'm reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

Oh, you poor thing... good luck.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I'm reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

Hey, me too I'm only on chapter 3 ('Arguments for the existance of God'), but it's a fascinating read.

 

[drifter5]

Hey, me too I'm only on chapter 3 ('Arguments for the existance of God'), but it's a fascinating read.

God DOES exist. That IS The Truth. God is so gracious. PRAISE HIS NAME ! I do not think that God approves of that book ! - (that is , the God delusion, by Richard Dawkins).

 

[Wiccan_Child]

.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

God DOES exist. That IS The Truth.

Why? Because you say so? drifter5, why should we believe you?

God is so gracious. PRAISE HIS NAME !

I'll pass.

I do not think that God approves of that book ! - (that is , the God delusion, by Richard Dawkins).

Why not? Nothing in the book is a lie, as far as I can tell. The book does not conclude that there is no God , but rather that there almost certainly is no God. If you have any actual criticism of the book, let us discuss it.

 

[phsyxx]

Why not? Nothing in the book is a lie, as far as I can tell. The book does not conclude that there is no God , but rather that there almost certainly is no God. If you have any actual criticism of the book, let us discuss it.

And anyway - Richard Dawkins continually stresses throughout the work that this is what "he thinks" - not "this is the truth".

He makes a continuous conscious effort to objectively verify and back up, with reasons and logic, his opinions on the matter.

Where's your reasoning?

 

[DailyBlessings]

And anyway - Richard Dawkins continually stresses throughout the work that this is what "he thinks" - not "this is the truth".

He makes a continuous conscious effort to objectively verify and back up, with reasons and logic, his opinions on the matter.

Where's your reasoning?

Richard Dawkins writing on religion is a bit like reading Lee Strobel on biology- heavy on rhetoric (not bad rhetoric exactly, but rhetoric) and not so much on actual research; his analysis of non-Christian theists in particular is about as thorough as your average fundie polemicist could produce. I wrote a thorough dismantling of the first two chapters of The God Delusion at one point, I can try and hunt that down if you're curious. But this is probably a topic for another thread. Suffice it to say that, like Strobel, Richard Dawkins is most convincing to those who already agree with him, and to those who know little about the topic. Most educated theologians don't even bother to comment, so you won't find many refutations floating around, except from the conservative crowd.

 

[ArchaicTruth]

I approve of that book, and anyone around here can tell you how tight me and Jesus are..

 

[NavyGuy7]

Why? Because you say so? drifter5, why should we believe you?


I'll pass.


Why not? Nothing in the book is a lie, as far as I can tell. The book does not conclude that there is no God , but rather that there almost certainly is no God. If you have any actual criticism of the book, let us discuss it.

And yet the book is not the "Be All, End All" of arguments, is it? One could write the opposite of what that book argues and make a very convincing argument that proves God "almost certainly" exists, correct? This is possible, wouldn't you agree? It is merely the opinion of the author, I would think.

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

I feel that a person maybe able to argue very conviencingly for the existance of God, but really, what struck Dawkins so profoundly after writing his book is that, not one person came forward with any evidence for a God.

You see we are all looking for the truth and it just hurts sometimes to realize there is no empirical evidence for God. The closest I think anyone gets for arguing for the existance of God, is when they say they experienced God in their life, when realy if you look at what they are saying, there is another explanation all the time.

I don't believe psychic detectives, psychics, or fortune tellers. I think they're all frauds, and if anybody was psychic they would be pretty rich from winning the lottery, or solving crimes for police departments. So I hate to break it to you but if you look at the arguments for God from a skeptical eye, if you think criticaly about the existance of God, for me, I always wind up an atheist. I mean it is the only thing that holds strong to the evidence, and like Dawkins has so clearly pointed out; no one has come forward with evidence for the existance of God, not one. So what does that tell you? There just isn't any really. There is no evidence.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

And yet the book is not the "Be All, End All" of arguments, is it?

Correct. That is why I am asking drifter5 for her critique.

One could write the opposite of what that book argues and make a very convincing argument that proves God "almost certainly" exists, correct? This is possible, wouldn't you agree?

You could write the opposite, but it would not be convincing, for the reasons detailed in Dawkins' The God Delusion.

 

[Forest]

I feel that we can know apostori there is no God, all though we can't rule him out all together.

That makes no logical sense because if we can know such a thing a priori then by definition we can rule it out altogether.

I feel that a person can't believe religion is man mad and still believe there is a God. There maybe a remote chance that there is a creator, but really a God would have to be one we could have a personal relationship with and he would have to be all loving and all powerful, which obviously isn't the case when you look at the evidence.

This is how I know there is no God, I look at all the religions that have ever existed, and I know all those religions were just stories that people were making up. I don't see how christianity isn't just a different story, given the fact we can't prove God exists and therefore we can't prove any of Jesus miracles actually happened. So God and the Leprchan fall into the same category, we can't prove Leprchans exist and we can't prove God exist, so there you go the two are one in the same, just about. There is not much difference between the two.

That also makes no logical sense, to rephrase what you said.....

1. There are lots of religions.
2. I know people just made these up.
3. Therefore, all religions are made up.

Sorry, but that doesn't work either.

So, if we know Mohammed din't listen to an angle in a cave, and we also know that christianity was an oppressed cult for over two hundred years, which does mean we have no good reason to believe Jesus came back from the dead. Then there is half of the believing world right there rejected, the other half pretty much is just made up too, in my opinion.

So there you go if you know religion is man made, then you know God does not exist, the one follows the other.
We know this apostori by looking at religious claims and all those religions and denominations that are out there.

Well the one doesn't follow the other, but since you admitted that it is only your opinion, then ok, you can have your opinion, even though your opinion is wrong.

So what are your thoughts?

I am just basically looking for a philosophical debate where we can agree to disagree, but still have a little fun performing mental exercises about how do we know things, either apostori or apriori about the claim of the existance of God, and how do we know different things too. So if you want to jump in and tell me why you don't believe Islam, or why you don't believe Hinduism then we could talk about that too. The debate should be fun for everybody, try not to get offended. Religious beliefes should be just an opinion pretty much.

If someone wanted to believe their dog made the universe, what is wrong with that? Nothing not a thing, obviously we couldn't take him seriously the way we have to with people who are hindu or muslim, but still it is okay to have weird belief like that. If you wanted to think a Leperchan made the universe and he lives in the woods somewhere, there is nothing wrong with that. It is weird, but there is nothing wrong with it.

So what are your thoughts on all this?

My thought is that the font is all messed up.

 

[RyanLeeParis]

God would have to be one we could have a personal relationship with

Who says we don't?

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

Dear Forest,

I feel that we can know apostori there is no God subjectively speaking, not apriori. We can't know something like that Apriori in our life time, but I do believe that one day the human race will get so advanced that accross all disciplines of philosophy and science we will know Apriori how everything works and how all of life started on the Earth.

So I didn't say Apriori I said Apostori, there is a difference.

About "There are a lot of religions, I know people just made these up therefore all religions are made up."

Well allow me to keep it simple about what we know and what assumptions we can make. I feel that to me atheism is something to be held as true until otherwise disproven, which honestly will never happen, because to do that you have to prove God exists which will never happen in my opinion. So to me weak atheism definitely stands on solid ground.

Like I know we can't rule the possibility of a God out all together, but when you look at the mountain of evidence against the existance of God, then really, we do just say that "there is so much evidence for the non-existance of God and our souls are not immortal that really, we just rule him out to like a degree of certainity, that is very rational to have." It is rational to say there is no good reason to believe in a God, that is described by the world's major religions.


Here I'll borrow an idea from statistics it is like this: you have a null hypothesis which is God exists = H0 you have an alternative hypothesis God does not exist = HA. In other words HA = H0 is not true.


You cannot build a statistic and then compare it to a critical value off of a certain probability distribution. However we can make a statement that given the evidence, we reject H0 at significance level alpha = The fact we can't prove he exists;
And conclude there is no God.

Now statistically speaking we can't rule out the possibility all together in fact we cannot even build a statistic and say we are statistically significant to reject the existance of God, because you can't put a number on how improbable the existance of a God is, but I assure you the probability is really in the low numbers.

However you can't really quantify something like this. You can only go about it qualitatively and describe how unlikely it is that there is a God.

Richard Dawkins said it best, in his latest book. "If the universe did have a creator, then where did the creator come from?" It is a serious question. Because look at how everything gets made, on our Earth, it is made by natural processes. You can see the birds mating to produce more birds, and plants reproduce sexually too, and some asexually, and bacteria multiples by cell division.

If some deity fined tuned the atoms to not fall apart then he is a very sophisticated being, so powerful he made the strong nuclear forces just strong enough to keep the atom together but not so strong that the atom is crushed. If he can really do that, then how did he get like that?


Also, look at the fact, that Richard Dawkins wrote his book and no one has come forward with any evidence for a God. What does that tell you? There is no evidence for a God. Really that is what we are seeing here.

At the end of the day it is just an opinion, but really I think it is a good rational opinion.