To Atheists and Agnostics: please elaborate?

Question

I have a question that I'm curious about.... Many people who's work I've read and friends of mine who are atheist or agnostic say that the existence of God is "impossible to prove."

Can someone elaborate this to me? I certainly understand keeping an open mind, and looking for real proof. I understand that as humans, we cannot know everything. But the question of God's existence is something I see as a simple question, that can be answered. But what do people mean by "there can be no answer?" And why would someone say that proof cannot exist?

Answer 1

We tend to rely on the burden of proof to show the existence of something. You can neither prove or disprove God exist. That conclusion is based on realism. I am confident God does not exist by basing my opinion on realty. Proof for the supernatural is impossible to prove or disprove because it is beyond reason.

Answer 2

I think that it would certainly be possible to prove God exists. All you would have to do is present viable evidence, like his stepping down from heaven and chatting with us.

However, this proof does not seem to exist. If it does, we have yet to find it. While you can point to certain things that you FEEL prove God exists, this evidence would not hold up under scientific scrutiny (ex. saying the beauty of nature proves God exists might work for you, but you could not prove that view over my view that the beauty of nature is a matter of our perception).

Thus, the only evidence that would be convincing enough appears to be that which we can only access after death. So, unless you come up with some new evidence, so far there is nothing to prove God exists.

But it wouldn't be impossible to do so.

Answer 3

Gnosticism/Agnosticism has to do with expertise. Theism/Atheism has to do with conception. i'm an agnostic atheist. i do no longer *trust* there's a god, and that i also imagine presently that it really is *unknowable* no matter if there's a god. yet base on a lack of info, I lack conception. no longer all atheists declare there is no god. sturdy/effective atheism does, yet there is also weak/adverse atheism, which basically states that one does no longer trust, or rejects the undeniable fact that there is a god. there's a distinction. you are able to already be an atheist your self. think someone asks you "do you've faith there's a god?" in case your answer is something except "definite", then you definately are an atheist. many human beings mistake agnosticism as a step on a thanks to atheism. this is not. some human beings also imagine that agnostics are open-minded to the threat that there is a god, and that atheists are not to any extent further. it really is likewise a mistake. Atheists are always open to new info. The time to count number on something is even as there is info for it.

Answer 4

Anyone who says that the existence of God is impossible to prove is just plain wrong.

The problem is that the proof would require YHWH Himself to come, demonstrate that He is capable of doing the things attributed to Him, and answer questions that would establish conclusively continuity with The Lord of the Old Testament.

Answer 5

One of the very few questions i see on here aimed at Atheists and Ag's... and its STILL about God!! I give up!!

Listen carefully... cos im only gonna say this once...

If i asked a Christian "Show me God" they would most likely say "God is all around us"

If i asked a Christian "Show me an egg" they would simply... show me an egg...

If i wrote a book, that was entirely fictional, but i proclaimed it as a non-fiction, entirely fact-based book... people would easily believe me... UNLESS i added a few flying pigs, that purple moose someone was on about in here the other day, and a fluffy pink moon beast... then people would laugh in my face... why? because everyone knows the fluffy pink moon beasts became extinct hundreds of years ago! Thats why!

Now, if i went from place to place ramming it down peoples ears that this book is the Truth and that everyone will go to Hell for not believing me... i would annoy alot (and i mean ALOT) of people!

Answer 6

Hey, if you can prove it, more power to you. You'll suddenly have a LOT fewer atheists and agnostics on the planet.

Sometimes it's just easier to say something isn't possible than to spend an hour elucidating on the nature of logic and proof.

Answer 7

I contend strong agnostocism is ridiculous, while weak agnostocism is philosophically unassailable stating that only God could show up and reveal itself to the human race.

That idea that strong agnostics have that a human can't know while on Earth is ridiculous because it has a religious property to it, that is - that "God is unknowable" and that is something they must think without proof.

The weak agnostic position - God if it exists could reveal itself, now that is sensible.

Answer 8

proof means you can produce the object in question - no one has ever done that where god is concerned. God could clear everything up by appearing - he supposedly micro-managed things in OT times but then vanished without a trace never to be seen again. So, where's the proof?

Answer 9

Because any demonstration you can give me can be explained in other ways. Even if you had God stop the earth's rotation cold, I could be imagining it, or it could be advanced aliens, or it could be Zeus. You still would not be able to say it was God.

[To Jim Darwin: Strong agnosticism in my mind is not ridiculous as long as you limit it to "supernatural-only gods which are not logically inconsistent". Now the concept of "supernatural-only" may be logically inconsistent. I don't know. If it's not, I could say God is supernatural, but NOT omnipotent and NOT omniscient and you could not prove that true or false]

Answer 10

They say "there is no proof" because...there isn't any! ANy "proof" you have of a god (look at the sunset. It's beautiful. There must be a god) also has natural explanations.

Forgive how long this is, but it will explain in a more eloquent way than I ever could:

The Dragon In My Garage
by
Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.

Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative-- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing about invisible ones--you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages--but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.