are athiests illogical?

Question

My sunday school teacher, Mr. Hooper, says that athiests (bless their souls in the name of the one and only all mighty Lord) say that Christians are deluded because they can't prove that God exists but really they are deluded because they can't prove that God doesn't... then I asked my Uncle Jimmy about it and he said that Athiests and Christians are equally deluded because neither of them can conclusively prove or disprove any of the involved premises... he says that the only logical stance on the subject is agnosticism...

I think Uncle Jimmy is going to hell because he doesn't believe in God. I'm not going to buy him a christmas present this year.

Answer 1

your uncle jimmy is a smart man.
However, I would have to say that atheists are more logical than Christians when it comes to their faith (or lack there of). Atheists do not believe in god because they see no proof of him, whereas Christians believe in all sorts of supernatural crap that could not possibly be true or accurate (and in fact much of the bible has been disproven yet people still believe)....AND FOR THE 80000000TH TIME, IT IS NOT UP TO ATHEISTS TO DISPROVE GOD, YOU CAN NOT PROVE THE NONEXISTENCE OF SOMETHING. For example, I believe in invisible pink flying unicorns. And until their existence is disproven, I am going to believe in them...sounds stupid right???? Feel free to extrapolate this argument to the concept of god

Answer 2

to be honest many atheists just simply don't believe there can be a god and don't go about trying to prove the nonexistance because that would be futile. our real concern is actually not god but christians being blindly faithful to their religion. we ask for proof of god and the scriptures because we feel that when you can't do it you will realize that it is the word of other men that sustains your faith. ask yourself how much you would even know about god had you not gone to sunday school or church. certainly not much from the twisted and confusing language of the bible. so you put your faith wholly in what some man says and follow their teachings like sheep (and i'm talking about your pastor here, not jesus... you weren't there when jesus spoke so you have NO way of knowing what he actually said... only that which your pastor tells you he said...) and that is what we are talking about when we say christians are deluded. often times, at least haha... some atheists really do want proof of god.

Answer 3

Only the illogical athiests are. Athiests are logical because they can agree at times that they may be wrong about the afterlife. Christians on the other hand down right agrue that there right no matter what, so a stance on agnosticism is logical and either are athiests or christians are.

Answer 4

Here's the thing. If I make a ridiculous claim (there's a dragon in my livingroom, I just won the presidental election you didn't hear about, there's a omnipotent being watching your every move), there's no reason for you to believe me without proof. You don't have to prove me wrong, because I'm the one making the claim. I need to prove that I'm right. If I claimed to have a cure to all cancer that cost a million bucks but I have no proof, would anyone buy it? I really hope not.

You make a claim, you prove it. I don't have to prove you wrong; I can't. You can't prove a negative. But your claim should have no value if you can't prove it to be correct. And no one can prove there is a god.

Answer 5

Tell me if this is logical or not:

Consider an empty box. If someone put a statue in a box and closed it up, there are several ways you can tell that the statue is in the box: you can weigh it; you can x-ray it; you can shake it. You can acquire evidence to indicate that there is a statue in the box. Now, remove the statue from the box and close it back up. Now, give it to someone to prove that there is nothing in the box and partner him or her with someone who believes there is something in the box, but it’s feature are unknown. If they weight it, the believer can say that it is something incredibly light; if they x-ray it, the believer can say that it is invisible to x-rays; if they shake it, the believer can say it doesn't move. You know there's nothing in the box because you removed the statue, but the believer can come up with an infinite number of ways to say the other person is wrong. One could even cross-reference all the tests to show that all the signs that there is something in the box don't indicate that anything is in there now, but the believer can keep coming up with ridiculous ideas because he or she isn’t limited by evidence.

This is similar to humanity's experience with God. The more we come to understand about the universe through science the more tests we put on the box, and the more tests show us that there is nothing there. The history of science is the deconstruction of what we used to assume was God's role in the universe. Some of the basic scientific beliefs you probably hold today were considered heresy back only a few hundred years ago. Everything that people said were indications that God was in the box: the sun revolving around the earth, the earth as the center of the universe, divine right of kings, disease, famine, complexity, etc. have been proven time and again to correspond to the basic physical laws. God went from directing the Sun across the sky, to not even being in control of the weather. All God seems to do today is maybe randomly answering some people’s prayers, but not all people and certainly not all of the time—certainly, not enough to give up one’s health insurance. All of our provable repeatable data points to nothing being in the box. That's your evidence. And like the box, someone keeps trying to come up with ways to say the tests don't tell us everything, but those critics don't come up with a way to show us with evidence that there is anything in the box. We've done our tests and shown our data, we're waiting for someone else to come up with the evidence that we're wrong.

Answer 6

What is Uncle Jimmy's stance on Santa Claus or fairies or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Is he agnostic about all of those things? I'd venture to guess that he isn't and that he doesn't believe in them. It's the same way with all the gods humanity comes up with.

Answer 7

Your last paragraph made me laugh. Thank you :)

Atheist's base their beliefs on logic. God, however, is very illogical. There's no denying that.
Atheist's also tend to base their beliefs on scientific facts. Once again, they are taking the more logical side of it all.

I'm not sure where I am going with this to be quite honest. It's 1:10 a.m. and I'm tired.

Answer 8

Go uncle Jimmy!

Answer 9

Bear in mind it is possible to be an Atheist who "doesn't believe in God" but who sees the existence of God as self evident.

Answer 10

Can I have your Uncle Jimmy's present?