How does an athiest know there is no God?

Question

Don't you have to be a god to know there is no God?

Answer 1

Because every time I ask a theist to get god on the phone, they say he's busy washing his hair.

Seriously, theists could convert all the atheists in one fell swoop by simply producing some EVIDENCE. Get god to perform a miracle. Have him show up on Letterman. Move a few stars around so they spell a limerick.

God is a creation of old, frightened, superstitious human beings, and since I am a modern, educated human being, it's relatively easy to see the mechanism at work.

Answer 2

It's not about knowing. Just as the theist cannot "know" there is a god and still believes, an atheist just does not believe.

I also don't know that there's not a planet five billion light years away that's made of cheese and has six foot talls ants dressed in lace as inhabitants. But I can be reasonably sure, and I can most definitely not believe that there is.

Love of Truth... "Intellectually honest" people don't use other people's thoughts to make other people's points having never checked the validity of those thoughts and points. Had you done so in this case, you would have found that an atheist can also be an agnostic without compromising either. Agnosticism is a philosophy about knowledge. It says that it is impossible to know for sure whether there are gods. An atheist can say, "It is impossible to know for sure, but I do not believe." A theist can do the same, and hence, any "intellectually honest" theist would likewise be agnostic. Stop listening to men with a penchant for bananas.

Answer 3

I don't know that there is no God. I'm just convinced that the God of Abraham is no more believable than many other god myths from around the time the Hebrew Bible was written.

If you leave the Bible out of it, and just say that "the universe might have been willfully created by a supreme being", then I'll respond with "yes, I suppose that's possible", and would be happy to sit and discuss that possibility with you.

But if you tell me that the jealous and petty god known as YHWH is the supreme being who created the universe, then we're not likely to have any useful discussion. YHWH is no more believable to me than Zeus.

**edit**
"Love of Truth" says that "if atheists were intellectually honest, they would admit they are agnostic". Hey guy, please read what I said above. I am agnostic about the possiblity of a supreme being. But that doesn't prevent me from being totally convinced that the God of the Bible is a myth, and therefore an atheist with respect to that particular god.

Answer 4

No, we don't have to be gods. We can, however, look at the world around us and look at evidence. So far there isn't any evidence of a god of any kind. Personal incredulity about the complexity of the universe is not evidence for anything.

I spent my life searching for some kind of divinity, something that would touch me in some undefinable "spiritual" manner. I found nothing. I found no trace of evidence for Biblical claims...evidence that should have been present but wasn't (such as proof of a worldwide flood, the sun stopping for a day, or a mass-migration from Egypt to Canaan. Guess what...nothing.). I shopped around for a religion that could somehow "reach" me, but nothing did. The deeper I searched, the more nonsensical answers I got until...after every other argument was shot down...I was just told to "have faith".

Right. Have faith in swomething not even slightly in evidence, in some magical phantom that demands worship yet won;t even meet its own believers halfway. In an entity whose actions (if the Bible, the Quar'an, or any of the other Abrahamic books are to be believed) are murderous and primitively barbaric, and yet demands to be thought of as merciful and compassionate. Have faith in something that acts exactly like something that isn't there at all. No proof, no trace.

And somehow my equally undetectable "soul" hinges on believing in this thing I can't percieve or even find vaguely believable. Right.

I'll sooner believe in Santa Claus. There wasn't any good evidence of his existence...but at least there was evidence. God doesn't even bother to offer that much.

Answer 5

In order to know absolutely that there is no God, you would have to know everything there is to know, and you would then be able to say there is no God, based on His absence from your knowledge. Oops, that would make you omniscient, that would mean that *you* are god.

I think the best an unbeliever can say is that they don't know if there is a God, that is, rather than athiest they may be agnostic. Such an ignorance of God would mean that they either have not looked for God, or are still searching. Agnosticism means you can't quit looking.

Answer 6

I've never said I know there isn't a God. It's called being a "non-believer." Just as "believers" are called such because they believe. They don't know either. I personally don't see much evidence that leads me to believe that a God exists. It doesn't mean that I concede that there is one. There's certainly a possibility. Acknowledging that possibility doesn't make me any less athiest. It does make me just a little bit more open-minded than your average run-of-the-mill believer, though.

The second part of your question attempts to be clever, but ends up just sounding retarded. That's like saying you'd have to be a Tommy to know that there's no Tommy, or be an apple to know that there is no apple. Makes no damn sense.

Answer 7

Absence of belief in supernatural beings is not quite the same thing as "knowing" they do not exist, but my absence of belief is rooted in absence of evidence. We have books that claim gods exist. We also have books that claim the Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch, the Yeti, Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, Angels, Faeries, Ascended Masters, and visitors from outer space exist. In the absence of verifiable evidence supporting these assertions, I can safely conclude they either are not valid or are not worthy of attention. This is what I have concluded about claims of divine beings. It does not require divinity, simply common sense, to reject unfounded and unverifiable claims. We do this all the time. We reject the claims of religions that compete with our own, all the time. I suspect you believe a specific religion is true and others false. I also believe all those religions are false. I just add one more religion to your list.

Answer 8

It's simple. Atheists have accepted that there are things that we do not yet understand. Your god is among these things.

Those that believe in Gods have simply turned around and decided to defy logic and reasoning by putting their faith in the hands of immaginary beings in order to explain what they do not understand.

Atheists understand that there is no soul, and that other people are unwilling to accpet that what you see is what you get. There is no all-powerful God who decides what happens in the universe. Instead, this "god" was merely created by desert nomads that created him in order to help control people and propigate their own religions. They livedi n dark times, and the religious zealots and non-thinkers of ourtimes have decided to choose to believe the same goofy myths, even in the face of enlightenment and intelligence.

I'm not trying to convert a single christian. You can believe whatever you want, it's just funny to the rest of us.

Answer 9

Computer Automated response!!!

Can I put this question to bed..
You cannot prove that "something doesn't exist".
I cannot prove that invisible aliens are 7000 meters under the sea.
If I couldn't find them, you would just say "ahhhh, that is proof that the aliens are invisible".

The thing is (and this is the stand out thing for me here folks) is - Christianity has to reduce itself - to using the oldest logical chalatain trick in the book..
Everything based on this stuff is complete rubbish.

Why should Christianity be any different?

Answer 10

Is God an independent 'being'?

If no then...

He is *dependant* on other things and not really God.

If yes then...

He is *independent* and by the very nature of independence does not care about you, me or anything else.


There is the proof that God does not exist.