for everyone. a question concerning God?

Question

Those that say they do not believe in God because they have not seen, felt, tasted, or even smelled God why is it that you can claim for sure there is no God?

Think about this for a second or two;
We are limited to our five senses, but can you 100% trust those senses?
seriously think about how much you rely on your sense of sight. Can you be 100% certain that what your own eyes are seeing is the exact same image that someone elses eyes are seeing? Science has not proved 100% that what you see and what another sees is exactly the same thing, what about people who are color blind?

I am not asking this in any way to discredit anyones belief system, I think that what each of us believe is personal, so I would never attack your faith in God or your non Faith in God.

I just thought I would put this out for non-believers who seem to ridicule others who happen to believe in something different than you happen to believe.

And please let's be serious and respectful.
Just curious.

As you all probably guessed, I do believe in God, but still the fact remains that there is no 100% proof of Gods existence or non existence. Only Faith. And I do believe in not forcing my beliefs on anyone, so this is all my own opinion.

Answer 1

No educated atheist claims what you just said. I am an atheist because I am mentally unable to believe in a higher power. I didn't just examine the evidence and decide that atheism is logical, I cannot sense or reach god, although all religions that I have ever heard of claim that if you seek god, you will find god. I did not find god, no evidence supports the existence of god, and the idea is just completely ludicrous to me. It really does matter what proof you may put in front on me, it is simply impossible for me to believe something my mind declares non-existent. You can email me if you want more info.

Answer 2

If there is no evidence or reason to believe that something exists, then it makes no sense to me to believe it exists just because other people tell me it does.

The burden of proof is on those who claim its existence.

Furthermore, to me, the whole story just doesn't hang together. It finally comes down to "God made everything in this really horrible way for reasons of his own that are beyond human understanding." That just sounds like a scam to me, a support for something that is insupportable.

Whereas the story without god hangs together well, and makes sense of things, and doesn't have strings attached (all kinds of other things I'm supposed to believe that I believe to be harmful).

So it isn't just the complete lack of evidence, though that's an important part, it's which of these views makes sense, as well.

Hope that helped. I, for one, am happy to try to explain this stuff politely when the question is polite, as, it seems are many of the others who responded. I've noticed that when people specifically ask for serious and non-bashing responses, for some reason, they get them -- even when the same topic is generally inflammatory.

Funny, I wouldn't have thought it would work.

but I digress.... [time to shut down the computer, I think]

Answer 3

No. The issue about believing in God is more complex than just depending on our senses. Humans also have a mind that deals with abstract concepts that do not come from the world of sense but are an inate aspect of our brain, of what it means to be a human.

First of all you need to separate the idea of BELIEVING in anything from the idea of God and deal with them separately.

Believing is a wicked word as it appears to say things that it is really not saying. It seems to imply that it is some sort of "knowing". That it is equal to knowing something. It is not any form of knowing. You can easily tell this because if someone knows something they say they know, and if they just believe it they say they believe. So BELIEVING is really NOT knowing something. You are actually not saying something about knowledge when you say you believe.

In fact when people say they believe what is really happening is that they are declaring their membership in a group of people who use beliefs as a form of membership. You are dividing the world into people who believe like you and everyone else.

So belief is really not about God at all, or anything else, whether it can be proven to exist or not. It is just about membership in the First Church of Tribalism.

Now the issue with God is actually a bit simpler. The problem with God is that there is NO acceptable proof or verification that there IS a God. As there is no proof or verification everything that follows is utter nonsense. You cannot say anything about something you cannot determine exists and truthfully say you are not speaking nonsense. As there is no proof of God there is no reason to honor any belief as having any validity.

If religions want respect, then they need to prove that God exists.

But they attempt to counter that you cannot also prove God doesn't exist. True. The same can be said about Unicorns or the Tooth Fairy. You also cannot prove they don't exist. You cannot prove anything that doesn't exist that it doesn't exist! So why should God receive any more respect than the Tooth Fairy? Because people have been taught to fear God for all of their lives? That seems to be a pretty dishonest reason.

I personally think that belief system just set up antagonistic groups that become pitted against each other. Human history bears good evidence that religions, the formal forms of beliefs, are the source or tool of much hate, brutality, murder, war, and every thing evil that humanity has done. They are just the opposite of what they all claim to be. They all claim that if everyone just believed as they do there would be peace. Well, that is not about to happen. So they continue to create hatred.

Because of that, I think that we should NOT be respectful of religions, beliefs, and dogmas. Beliefs should be exposed for the nonsense they are and not protected by some silly social prohibition of exposing them for their follies, hate, and shallow mindlessness.

The hope is that humans freed from some traditional but arbitrary belief system will move to a more realistic stage of their development and realize the ONLY justification for religion is its inate concern and caring for those who need help. Hopefully that can be continued after people realize that believing in nonsense does not make them more ethical or moral. All beliefs ultimately are destructive to humanity.

Answer 4

Your question contains a number of logical problems. You use the lack of evidence and then ask us if we can be sure there is no God. This line of reasoning can be used both ways and is therefore logically fragile. Within religion we approach the divine primarily as "mystery," Eastern Orthodox Christianity has a wonderful exposition in its divine liturgy of the ascent to the mysterious divinity. Our beleif in G-d is always on a balance between hope and dispair, knowledge and ignorance. We know and believe in the mystery that is Creator while living in darkness. Much like a romance, our movement toward the divine is always a matter of the heart and we will not all fall in love with the same person. Some will gravitate to G-d and others not. We must respect their hearts' desires.

Answer 5

Unfortunately there is a semantic difficulty with your question: which God are you referring to? Most of the time, when people say "God" they are referring to the God of the Hebrew Bible, and three major religions are derived from that book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But even so, those religions disagree in some very signficant ways.

I personally am atheist with respect the God of the Hebrew Bible. The only hypothesis about the Hebrew Bible that I can reconcile with the rest of my knowledge of history and science is that the Hebrew Bible is just the myths and beliefs from about 3000 years ago (or more) that were handed down orally and then written down when written language and semipermanent means of recording text became available.

However, if we set aside the Hebrew Bible, and consider just the question of whether there is a supernatural being that created the universe, then I can only say I am agnostic. I admit I have no better hypothesis for how the universe came to exist. But if we postulate the existence of God just to be able to explain the creation of the universe then I think we have fooled ourselves, since we have no explanation for how God came to exist in the first place. Saying that God always existed is a cop out, because you could just instead say that the Universe always existed and have a simpler answer.

Some people here claim that they "feel God's presence." In fact, there are lots of people who make that claim, and they testify to each other of it. But what they are really claiming is that they have some wonderful feeling, and then they attribute that feeling to God's presence. I suspect that they are feeling a kind of self-induced euphoria. I've felt euphoric at times, but I never thought my euphoria was due to "God".

Answer 6

I say god doesn't exist, because I know the history of how the concept formed. This is not a proof in formal logic, it's just normal everyday inductive reasoning. I don't recall saying anything about absolute certainty. That's not a reasonable standard.

If I know how the Santa myth formed, then I know Santa isn't real no matter what other arguments someon may use.

Answer 7

Atheism means without god belief. Not a person who says they can prove there is no god. You can't disprove anything that hasn't been proved in the first place.

Can you disprove Santa Claus? But you don't believe in him right?

*****
It is not up to us to disprove the existence of something. It is up to the person making a claim that something exists to prove that it exists. Until they do belief isn't warranted.

Answer 8

I see the issue differently. Talking to an atheist who doesn't believe that religious experiences exist is a bit like talking to a couch potato who doesn't believe that a "runner's high" exists.

Here's a book written by a famous jogger.

"That doesn't prove anything. He already believes in it so he writes about it."

Here's a book by an exercise physiologist which discusses runner's high.

"I don't need to read that book because it doesn't have anything in it I didn't already know ten years ago. Besides its probably biased. And it costs too much."

So you could always become a runner. We could train you up to run ten miles at a time.

"Why are you always trying to cram running down my throat?"

Uh, because you wanted to know why i think a runner's high exists.

Answer 9

i visit offer this my maximum proper shot with the most objective on the desire for a blood sacrifice. even as Adam and Eve disobeyed God interior the backyard of Eden (unique sin), with the information of the Serpent (devil) they succumbed to both a actual demise and a non secular demise. It change into devil, the serpent that first bridged the divide between non secular to the actual, accordingly the sin ended in both a non secular and actual demise. for this reason, with a view to fix this hollow, a divine being ought to take actual variety and this modification into Jesus Christ. Christ, a divine being in human variety, served as this blood sacrifice conquering demise and providing those that trust with eternal life. the answer to Why did he attempt it really is recent in John 3:16 "For God so loved the international that he gave his in worry-free words begotten Son". we are God's advent, and that i do no longer study you yet you want and seem after those issues that you created.

Answer 10

Good question.

I tend to disbelieve because of the implied "reality" of religion: that otherwise hard-headed politicians etc will talk about a deity when it has not been proved, yet insist on factual information etc for every other aspect of their job.