Atheist, are you one??

[billybunter]

I am. Wasn't christened. And I champion the cause to this day.

Short USA clip: http://documentarystorm.com/anything-but-an-atheist/

keep it nice. No flaming people's faith. Or the mods with remove the thread.

[monogroover]

Yes, I'm an atheist. Have never heard a convincing reason to believe that any of the various gods are real.

[Mal Hombre]

I expect that it would come as a surprise to few regulars here that I'm also a committed Atheist,I saw through the light in Junior School and My lack of faith has not wavered since..

[Roger Allott]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

I expect that it would come as a surprise to few regulars here that I'm also a committed Atheist,I saw through the light in Junior School and My lack of faith has not wavered since..

Is your capitalisation of 'my' somewhat Freudian, bearing in mind the context?

.

[Faceman675]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

I expect that it would come as a surprise to few regulars here that I'm also a committed Atheist,I saw through the light in Junior School and My lack of faith has not wavered since..

Faith is a belief not based on proof. Your belief that there is no god is no more provable than my belief there is a god. So like it or not Mal your'e a man of faith

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by Faceman675

Faith is a belief not based on proof. Your belief that there is no god is no more provable than my belief there is a god. So like it or not Mal your'e a man of faith

It's all semantics when it gets down to that level however on more simple terms belief in an omniscient all powerful being that has turned from a flood creating enemy smiting Odin type figure to a couch potato who has done nothing of note for most of the last two thousand years of recorded history is hard to grasp.
I'll ignore any nonsense about God allowing freewill as that's just a lazy argument abused by God-botherers.
If we are so special why did God bother creating so many billions of other stars and planetary systems? So it looks romantic at night?
How did this one God become so bad at getting his point across?; so much so that the main monotheistic religions are all so different and often antagonistic?
I'm a 100% totally convinced atheist with regards to there being an all powerful all knowing sentient presence watching over us however I do accept there could be an unknown as of yet creative force out there but it would no more be aware of us than I am of an individual grain of sand in the Sahara.

As Thomas Aquinas said "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible" that pretty much sums it up.

[vinceprince]

Originally Posted by Faceman675

Faith is a belief not based on proof. Your belief that there is no god is no more provable than my belief there is a god. So like it or not Mal your'e a man of faith

The difference between you and me is that I'm willing to believe something if there is evidence.

You on the other hand are willing to believe even if there is no evidence.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by vinceprince

The difference between you and me is that I'm willing to believe something if there is evidence.

You on the other hand are willing to believe even if there is no evidence.

What evidence can you cite to prove that God does not exist?

I know it is an unfair question, given that it is very hard to prove a negative. Nevertheless, I see no evidence that God does not exist; merely that God does not neatly conform to human constructs or to the tenets of organised religions, which certainly are human constructs. To doubt the existence of God is a reasoning position. To be certain in your own mind that there is no God requires faith.

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

What evidence can you cite to prove that God does not exist?

I know it is an unfair question, given that it is very hard to prove a negative. Nevertheless, I see no evidence that God does not exist; merely that God does not neatly conform to human constructs or to the tenets of organised religions, which certainly are human constructs. To doubt the existence of God is a reasoning position. To be certain in your own mind that there is no God requires faith.

Au contraire mon ami
The Christian God confirms to many human constructs.
Consider the 10 Commandments
The first 4 of which are to do with him being the big "I AM", he is jealous of other Gods (what other Gods) No craven images

...... sorry could not resist.

We are talking about the ultimate creative force being insecure here

Honour thy father and thy mother is just sheer nonsense as it depends on individual circumstances, what if your parents were evil bastards?

It's only the latter part where the most quoted parts come about not killing, stealing, coveting, committing adultery appear.

These are allegedly the true words of God but to me they sound more like human constructs designed to control the general population.

[beutelwolf]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

... To doubt the existence of God is a reasoning position. To be certain in your own mind that there is no God requires faith.

It depends what you mean by "to be certain".

As a scientist I am used to the principle that essentially all knowledge, all theories, all perceptions of reality come equipped with a non-zero probability that they are wrong. That not only extends to the issue of the existence of a god, but even stretch to such thorny issues such as the existence of this very forum.

Thing is: some of these wrongness-probabilities are so close to 0 that there is no point wasting your life pursuing a contradiction. This then becomes the pragmatic replacement of certainty, being fully aware of that there is no clear dividing line between certainty and uncertainty.

"Existence of a concept" does not usually derive from hard physical evidence, because concepts do not usually allow for that. However, concepts have a place in explaining the world (or your computer's operating system) as part of a theory. Hard evidence is then used to test the theory by testing its predictions.

With this there are two problems: (i) rivalling theories often make very similar predictions and it becomes hard to tell which (if any) is correct; (ii) theories without testable consequences we have to discard. For reasons that lie somewhere between a random desire for elegance and general properties of mathematical model theory (or information theory, and you may throw in: lessons learned from the history of science too), theories are also judged by their brevity - and the shorter theory wins.

Thus, if the existence of a deity has no testable consequences then it is from this perspective a non-theory. If it has a testable consequences, but a simpler theory explains them just as well then the simpler theory wins.

To give one mathematical reason for this "the simpler theory wins" principle. If you measure a physical phenomenon in n points and try to derive a generalisation from it, i.e. a function that goes through these n points (to predict the behaviour of the stock exchange or how many eggs your chicken will lay next month), well... In principle you can, you can even find a polynomial function going precisely through these points. Problem is: this will in general explain nothing at all, it will be a polynomial of degree n, and that means: as an explanation it is just as complex as all the data you put in, and therefore it is no explanation at all, and if you ask this model how many eggs your two hens will lay next month you may get the worrying answer -12728.345.