What requires a greater leap of faith, a belief in God or a belief in no God?

Question

I guess I just don't have enough faith to believe that you can start with a universe that is nothing more than a dusty cloud of big bang debris. Tell all gods to leave it alone. And somehow you end up with sperm whales eating giant squids, or bats flying around with radar or hairless killer apes figuring out how to blow each other up with A-bombs.

At the very least the laws of physics and chemistry are suspiciously ideal for all this order, for living thinking creatures to just spring up.

Answer 1

Yes, to completely assume any set of beliefs that explains how we got here requires faith. But atheism takes into account uncertainty - it's not a belief, it's just non-belief that God is the end-all solution. From that point on, atheists differ in their opinions of how we got here. But, you have to start theorizing SOMEwhere - and don't the logical, ever-evolving routes of science seem more based in reality?

Answer 2

Good question! I think it takes as much "faith" to believe in either.

It takes a LOT of faith to believe that if I stacked a bunch of lumber, sheet-rock, bricks, paint, shingles into a pile and blew it up with dynamite - that it would it automatically turn into a house. Science has never been able to prove that Order can be created out of complete Randomness- certainly not by explosive means(pun intended). Perhaps an Intelligent Being/God created the Big Bang??

Mathematics and Physics are the most exacting sciences. The most significant physicists and mathematicians in history believed there was a God because supposedly their research and experience indicated so: Nicholas Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Max Planck (quantum physics), Gregory Mendel ('father' of genetics). That's just a few...

Even Stephen Hawking thinks 'God' - is found in Nature. Obviously there are scientists on the other side of the fence too.

Can you think of anything in your own life that has happened accidentally or incidentally that was as extremely complex, detailed and intricate as all of nature, physics, mathematics and chemistry? It takes just as much faith either way. Ever see the movie "Contact" (Jodie Foster + Matthew McConnaughy). It asks this question too.

Answer 3

You have no understanding of the way evolution actually works. Egocentric that you are, you think we humans are the end all be all purpose of the universe, and all the laws were specifically set up for us. If conditions had been different, we wouldn't be here typing this. We have billions of amazing varieties of life and quasi-life on this planet alone due to evolution winding and wending based on condition. In fact, most varieties that ever lived are extinct. The ones that adapted, survived. Your answer is to say "if I can't understand it, god must have done it!" and that's good enough. It's good enough in church, but has no place in science and shouldn't be good enough for anyone with access to the internet. God used to pull the sun across the sky in a chariot. God used to make the sun and stars revolve around us. Demons were what made people ill, not germs. People used to say, you expect us to believe otherwise? You're crazy! Blasphemy! Don't question God! Fortunately, science continues to pursue truth, proof, and is self-correcting (unlike religion). I'm so glad the Pope finally came around to admitting for the Catholic church that the earth revolves around the sun. This was only 20 years ago. Science, not faith, continues with these discoveries. Your religion still insists on an invisible, jealous, supernatural being creating the rainbow as a sign he will never destroy us in a worldwide flood again. No different than the poetic myths of any culture throughout history. People trying to make sense of their world without knowledge. Worlds on turtles. Zeus at Mount Olympus. Set of the underworld. The goddess Hel (where we get the word "Hell" from). We tend to believe in the myths of the culture we are raised in, and believe they are the one true faith. Everyone else is damned. Faith is belief without evidence by definition. Science insists on evidence and relentlessly pursues it. Science grows and develops as we gain new methods and knowledge. Science has provided monumental amounts of evidence in favor of evolution. Scientists would be *thrilled* to find evidence of the supernatural, a god, any god. What a discovery!!

Evolution is not an isolated belief apart from other sciences. Chemistry, astronomy, physics, medicine, biology, geology..all different branches and independant studies converge to the same conclusion: evolution. If you want to insist that God created woman out of man's rib 5,000 years ago, go for it. Or sorry, that may have changed. Some of you now believe in an old universe, young earth. Or wait! Those of you who can no longer swallow that say the scientific timeline is right, but it's all intelligent design. But by which god? A benevolent one? Nature is brutal, and one would think an intelligent designer would have done a little better than some of the things we see. But sorry, you believe saying "a miracle occured!" is supposed to convince us that your ideas have equal weight. Sorry, but it doesn't. If you like to believe sperm whales eating giant squids is part of god's plan for us because you can't comprehend otherwise, have at it. Forgive me for wanting better evidence than "I don't understand it, therefore it must be god that did it." Or, "show me just one transitional fossil!" (shows one) "Ok, now there are two gaps!" And irreducible complexity? Just another God of the Gaps. "I don't get how that could function, so it means god designed it."

Evolution is only a theory, you may say? So is gravity.

Answer 4

I guess I just don't have enough faith to believe that there can possibly exist some great omniscient, all-powerful being. I mean, what?

If you learned anything about physics and chemistry, you would know how very much is possible that you never would have realized.

As for believing in evolution, well, we may not have actual evidence for the big bang as of yet, but we have clear evidence of life forming from inorganic matter, and we have clear evidence of evolution both on a molecular and species level. Evidence, for me, is self-explanatory and logical (evidence is by definition logical and self-explanatory). No faith required.

Answer 5

I think to believe that there is no God would take a greater leap of faith. Once you have factored in the protective element of animals when it comes to their young. If you consider the need to mate and reproduce in all forms of animal life.

Humans are known for Loving their friends and family and most certainly their children. If you don't believe in a higher power, how do you explain your love for others?

Now consider this....Jesus taught us to love also....our enemies. My point is...Allah / Nature's God / Higher Power,....whatever label you give the energy source of creation, it would prefer that we not use bombs and hatred as a way of living. We could do much more as a human race if we could respect and tolerate each others differences.

Answer 6

In the terms you have framed the question, a belief in NO God takes the greatest leap of faith. It also is the less broader perspective.

Answer 7

Belief in God.

All the indications are that everything happened without a designer -- where they are perfect, they're too perfect, where they're imperfect, they're pretty danged convincingly imperfect.

Either way, perfect or not, everything we know can be boiled down to mathematical laws. If there was a deity, all those mathematical laws would be out the window and we could never know anything about the universe.

Answer 8

Who do you think gives us the ability to discover and then explain the laws of physics and chemistry? Everything that was and is and is to come was made by God. It takes great faith to believe that. It takes absolutely nothing to belive in absolutely nothing.

Answer 9

Definitely - a belief in no God takes a bigger leap of faith.

Answer 10

According to how you were brought up by your family whatever the opposite of their influence on you would be a greater leap whether it be belief in one god many gods or no god.