to atheist...can you prove that God doesn't exist?

Answer 1

yeah if there was God you wouldn't pose this question

Answer 2

Yes, I can.

A square-circle does not exist because the traits of "square" and "circle" are logical contradictions, and therefore this object cannot exist. Ditto for a married bachelor, a brightly lit shadow, etc... etc...

The Christian God is supposed to be all-loving, all-merciful, all-just, all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, yet these traits logically conflict with each other.

For example, to be just is to treat a crime with a punishment exactly propotionate to the offense.
To be merciful is to treat a crime with a punishment that is less than proportionate to the offense.
It is logically impossible to be completely just and completely merciful at the same time in the same respect to the same crime. Therefore, a being said to be all-just and all-merciful is the same as saying a being is all-square and all-circle. It is a logical contradiction, and cannot exist.

Ditto that for all-good, all-powerful, and the existence of evil in the world.
Ditto for all-powerful, all-knowing, and the existence of free will.

I could go on for quite some time...

On top of this argument, if you are saying that people should accept all things that they cannot disprove, then you too must accept the existence of all other versions of god, such as Allah, Yahweh, the Hindu god, the Greek gods, the Chinese gods, the Mayan gods, the Celtic gods, the Babylonian gods, etc...
Also, you must accept the existence of all mythical creatures that you cannot disprove, such as unicorns, dragons, Loch-ness, Bigfoot, Leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy, etc...

If you are able to simultaneously hold all those beliefs, I am amazed.

Perhaps you should read a few books on the history of theological debates and philosophy, and then try again.

Answer 3

If something cannot be proven to be false, then it cannot be proven to be true. (the wording is not the best on this, but it is hard to phrase it better, think about for awhile it took me some time to grasp this completely.) No one can prove that God exists or does not exist. Also does it matter, would you want it to be proven that God exists? We (I am Christian and assume that you are also.) have faith that God exists, we have faith in His word and love, what else is needed? Is it also a good idea to confront people with this, I can see asking thought provoking questions, however this just seems to provoke. Often people will not change their perspective because someone tells them of another perspective, they have to experiance it, this is part of what the living by example is about.

Answer 4

To suggest that the one who claims the existence of something has the burden or proof to show that it truly does exist seems to me a faulty argument. I cannot see a fundamental reason for beginning the analysis from a standpoint of “nothing-->proof-->some things” as opposed to “everything-->disprove-->some things.”

Also, I don't buy all of the contradiction arguments posted by Michael. To address them individually:

The argument which relates to Justice<-->Merciful contradiction makes an assumption about the definition of Justice, a definition that within Christianity could be interpreted somewhat differently when contrasting the old testament with the gospels, (of course this differentiation should cast doubt on the absoluteness of said book).

The argument which relates to all-good and all-powerful, i.e. If God is all-good and has the power to do anything, why would he fashion a world lacking in goodness, i.e. evil? One possible answer is that though he has this ability, he simply chooses not to exercise it. It is possible to argue a lack of action as being something good, and in this case the preservation of free will is the most common go to answer. Such a circumstance would thus not necessarily create a contradiction. We must be careful about how we assign our own thoughts and values to the definition of "good". One cannot claim an absolute understanding of this thing.

As for all-knowing<-->all-powerful, I think this one gets very tricky. The basic argument I think goes that if God knows everything, then he knows the future, and that would mean that you as a person have no ability to make a choice that contradicts his vision of it, as he is all-powerful. This would lead one to believe that Free Will does not exist, even though the Christian God has supposedly graced this to mankind. If one were to bring in a little modern physics here, the best way out of this hole might be to argue that Time is shown not to flow in any particular direction, (quite possibly it doesn't even exist at all), and that the concept of future is in many ways an illusion of our minds. It's not that time goes on forever, but rather that there is no such thing as forever, at least in the way we think about it in relation to time. Rather the universe is, when viewed as a whole, both infinite and static, and thus every non-zero possibility is actually true (though square-circles have zero possibility). Free will it seems to me might have some room to exist in this realm, if and only if our perception influences the collapse of the probability function, i.e. our perception is what makes the possibility a reality, and not before. This is a tall, tall order, but not ruled out and ultimately cannot be ruled out because we rely on our own perception for the disproof. If this questionable scenario were true, a being could be all-powerful and all-knowing, and the flaw would be in our belief that the universe is separate from our own perception, when in reality science cannot disprove that these are not, in a sense, the same thing. Of course we cannot prove that our perception impacts reality either, because again we cannot step outside of our perception.

In fact, the whole idea of proof and disproof is faulty. Life can only be broken down into probabilities, not certainties. This applies to everything, including Science.

I myself am an atheist and I do not believe in free will. I do not have proof for these two beliefs; I take them on faith.

Answer 5

No, but you can't ever prove things don't exist. Can you prove martians don't exist? You can't deal in what you don't know...other then to say we don't know or we can hypothesize that martians exist or God exist. But rather we should always deal in what is known...and even that seems to change over time. You can believe in God's existence and that's okay. But when you insist he exist, and judge and condemn others then the belief in God or a religion becomes harmful....and I have to believe that if God does exist then he should be the ultimate judge of his children...

Answer 6

Can you prove that God does exist any better? I haven't heard a convincing argument in my 50 years. However, I do believe in a higher power and call it God. I just think that arguments over 'proof' are dumb. Neither side can prove a damned thing except they know how to make a lot of people angry.

Answer 7

atheists don't have to prove whether God exists or not because they are not saying there is no God, they are saying they don't believe in one in the first place--- so why would they have to prove anything?

Answer 8

I've never asserted that God doesn't exist. Atheism is the lack of belief in God. Only a subgroup of atheism, strong atheism, asserts that no god exists. Before you make ignorant assumptions about atheism, try researching the subject. And use a source other than Kent Hovind.

Answer 9

atheists can't prove God doesn't exist, but Christians don't have absolute proof that God does exist - can't rely on a possibly fictitious book as evidence

Answer 10

If you can actually prove that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny...and the list goes on...don't exist, then I'll tell you why your 'god' doesn't exist.

Answer 11

LOL. I bet you thought you were being clever when you posted this question, didn't you? Maybe next time you'll read up on a topic before you start in with this kind of nonsense. Look at how many respondents nailed you to the wall on this, beginning with Phoenix (whose answer is of course the correct one, as you'd have discovered if you'd bothered to read at all before opening your mouth).

Now, my bet is that you're either not going to even look back at the responses you got, and if you do, that you're going to ignore the fact that your question simply revealed your own ignorance. In fact, I'll bet that you ask the same question again in the future. I'll bet you're that clueless.