Atheists I have a question for you-Why do you believe there is no God?

Question

I'm reconsidering my whole belief system as of very recently and my whole life I was told there was a God and to pray to him. But...I'm not sure anymore. Why do you believe there is no GOd? are most of you atheists evolutionists? Otherwise, how can you explain how we got here? and the incredible element of design in EVERYTHING-especially the intricacies of the human body....just curious what y'all atheists think-not here to start an argument, I'm here to try to find out what you believe and how you arrived at your current decision.

Answer 1

I'm agnostic but ... based on scientific facts that aren't even remotely mentioned in the bibles account of mankind, I have a strong leaning for NOT believing in God simply because I trust what I can feel, see, hear, smell and touch.

Answer 2

There are some really excellent answers above me here and I can't really improve on them.
Suffice to say that all religion is an accident - an accident of birth.
If you were born to muslim parents, you would be a muslim. There would be no choice in the matter. If you were born to parents in India, you would probably be a Sikkh, etc, etc. So your current religion, if you have one, would simply be a matter of geography and the influences placed upon you by your parents and your teachers. Thus, the myth of a current god is perpetuated.
Subject to a decent education, free from compulsory religious education interferences, most intelligent humans begin to question the stories told to them as impressionable children. Those with any sense of reason begin to reach the decision that there is no such thing as a god and that the whole thing is invented - for a number of reasons.
There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that a god exists, other than in the imagination of the deluded, for it is delusion that is at the heart of any religious system.
Living in a fantasy-world of one's own choice is fine. Go ahead. Just don't allow such far-fetched ideas of a supernatural being somewhere out there being in control of MY life. I am in control of my life. There is no pre-ordained destiny at work for any one of us. Our future is down to our own actions.
There is no after-life. That's just a lie to make you more comfortable with the loss of relatives/friends and to ease your worries about your own death.
There is no soul. That's another lie to explain to the foolish and gullible how you travel from your dead body to the fictitious heaven. Isn't it so convenient for the story-tellers that god is invisible, that your soul is invisible. It's all 'magic'.
Reality beckons. Do give it a try? You would be amazed just how free you would feel.
I began the journey into athesism at age 12. I stepped over that line and 'came out' at the age of 15. I am now 65. Like some muslims, I have had four wives - but one at a time! I live a very civilised life, obeying all the civil laws that society has set up and have nothing at all to do with any laws fabricated by a religion. Adultery? I enjoyed it immensely. Still do.
I am kind and generous and tolerant and do not waste my time and effort praising any imaginary entity. Also, I do not destroy, I create.
Surely, anyone with a generous portion of intelligence MUST realise that any current god is man-made, is non-existent other than in the minds of the gullible, just as all the former gods are. Yet, through indoctrination of even more gullible (better say 'impressionable') young children, the myth is perpetuated. What a pity.
Religion is a disease. Atheism is the cure.

Answer 3

First, you have to define the term "God." The problem with most
theists is that this term is a moving target.

In addition, because there is no evidence either for or against the
existence of God, you cannot use deductive logic (a+b=c; therefore c-b=a). You can only reach a conclusion by inductive reasoning using the balance of evidence (90% of A is also B; C is B, so the chances are 90% that C is also A).

So to begin with, I will assert (and others may shoot this down) that the only RELEVANT definition of God states that he intervenes to circumvent natural laws.

If God circumvents natural laws, then it is impossible to understand natural laws. All scientific findings would have to include the stipulation, "it is also possible that these results are an act of God, a miracle, thereby making our research meaningless."

However, since we have been able to expand our knowledge of natural laws (evidenced by every appliance in your kitchen), the scientific method works in this discovery. And the likely conclusion is that God, at least the intervening kind, does not exist.

Additionally, if God is defined as all loving, all powerful, and all knowing, then it is impossible to explain suffering. Either God is not all loving (he acts sadistically), not all powerful (he cannot prevent suffering), or not all knowing (he created suffering by mistake because he didn't know the consequences of his actions).

If God is less than these and/or does not intervene in our existence, then he is either non-existent or irrelevant. The classic Bertrand Russell argument is that I cannot prove that a china teapot is orbiting the sun between the earth's orbit and Mars. But while I cannot prove this is not true, the evidence against it is compelling.

The evidence against God is equally compelling, and while it is not possible to prove beyond any doubt, it makes enormously more sense to live your life as if there were no God.

It is more compelling to me that humans have invented God (a) to help people deal with the pain and fear associated with death and loss, and (b) to reflect the thoughts of the ruling powers in a particular time. Because humans are always looking for reasons, when none were found, it was the natural inclination to declare the cause to be "God" (or gods). As the faith grew, miracles (coincidences) and laws were ascribed to this Divinity, and an orthodoxy grew up around it.

Now it seems unhelpful to believe in such superstition. The only matters that aid in our ongoing well-being are work, location, health, sustenance, and pure, blind luck.

So no, I don't believe God exists. I hope it makes sense to you.

Answer 4

Sorry if this gets a little long, but it's something that's not all that easy to describe in short terms.
I was raised a Christian, and had a very strong faith growing up. It just, over the years, started to seem more and more ridiculous to me to think that there's some sort of "being" out there. It's like the way most people think now when they're taught about Greek Myths in school. We know that those gods were invented because humans started to look for ways to explain things that they couldn't understand--like the sun rising and setting, the weather, life, disease, etc. They thought that something--some "being" had to be making things happen, because they didn't understand WHAT the sun was, or WHERE the rain came from. Now we know and understand those things, but we haven't really been able to let go of the idea of gods. (Or A God.) I started to feel that we were stuck in a sort of primitive mind-set, and I started wondering why the ancients' beliefs were considered silly and ours weren't. They believed in gods, we believed in “a” God. We had no more proof that our belief was correct then they had that theirs was correct.
I also started to think about all the other religions out there. Even in todays world, there are thousands of gods spread out over the worlds religions. Everyone is born an atheist; we need to be TAUGHT to believe in a God. What God we believe is based simply on two things: who we were born to, and who is teaching us. We are taught as children, when we are vulnerable, and will believe ANYTHING a trusted adult tells us. Then the fear of damnation is put in to scare us out of even THINKING of questioning what we're told. It's classic brainwashing tactics. The MORE I thought about religion and the beliefs, the more absurd I realized they were. I guess the best way to explain how I came to my beliefs, is to take a look at a website--
http://www.godisimaginary.com
It basically tells you all the things that go through a typical atheist's mind.

Answer 5

I guess I'm probably more of an agnostic than anything, or a very weak atheist. There are times when I feel that God might exist, that he couldn't possibly exist, and when I hope that He does.

I don't know how we got here, evolution does seem to be too coincidental. But creation doesn't seem plausible. So I question everything and after 43 years I haven't reached any solid conclusions.

There's nothing wrong with questioning, forming opinions, changing your mind. It's perfectly alright to admit that you don't have the answers, that you have no explanations, that nothing really makes a lot of sense.

You don't have to decide anything at this moment, just take your time and do what feels right for you.

Answer 6

Um...Frankly Joshua? Ever heard of the Dover Case? "Intelligent Design" and the ToE went head to head in a court of law in front of a conservative Christian judge...and ID lost. Big.

As for the OP: There is no "element of design". The ToE predicts that biological developments will be just good enough to survive and not much more. Thus our less-than "perfect" eyesight, back problems, and vestigal appendix. There is no evidence that any designer exists at all. No copyright stamps on the atoms, no mountain formations spelling out "HERE I AM". No verifiable miracles.

The Christian God, despite all the noise CHristians make on his behalf, behaves exactly like a being that does not exist.

Answer 7

My answer is quite simple: There is no God, because I can't see him. I have not seen any evidence he is there.

"If there was no God, how did we get here?" - this is #'th time I've heard this question. To me, the Big Bang Theory sounds far more obvious.

How did we get here? It's quite obvious too. We are the part of that energy from the Big Bang. If you ever studied Physics, it says there that: "Energy in this world is not being added, nor subtracted. It is just being transformed from one state into another state." - that's also easy for me to understand.

But there is no way I will understand how some supernatural being snapped his fingers and created everything. Oh, does it not say he actually snapped his fingers? My mistake.

Oh, well. You'd ask me: "If there was no God, how did we get here?" - then let me ask you this: "Who has seen how everything happened? Who has seen what Adam was like and what Eve was like?" - wasn't someone supposed to be there to take notes? Yet, that someone was smart enough to actually take notes.

There's no way I can believe what it says. Sorry.

Answer 8

Short answer: the Holy Spirit stood me up.

Longer answer: I tried to find God, ASSuming that He was out there and i just didn't "get it." I longed to be able to distinguish my desires from God's will that He planted within me. For an unrelated reason, i got into logic and skepticism. Skepticism took the wind out of theism for me. When i dropped the God ASSumption, the reason i couldn't differentiate between my will and God's became clear: The latter wasn't there.

- Every "miracle," including near death experiences, could be explained w/o resorting to the supernatural. As a hypothesis, God was unnecessary. My faith took a major hit from this bit of skepticism.

- I saw no evidence that Christians are better behaved than anyone else, or that the sacraments helped me resist temptation. This is what triggered my final slide.

- The heaven and hell thing just wasn't making any sense.
1. The resurrection of the body, as taught in the Apostle's creed, is at odds with the findings of modern physics. (Not a big problem.)
2. I could not reconcile the idea of an infinite hell with a loving God--or with the picayune "sins" that the Catholic Church considered mortal. (Somewhat of a problem.)
3. I could not be happy if any of my friends and family were in hell. Thus, *by definition*, heaven is impossible. (Oops!)

- Massive tragedies such as the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina were better accounted for without a god than with one. By all appearances, if God exists, then He has *precisely* the properties of a god who doesn't exist. This was the nail in the coffin.

- Having found the very idea of God to be implausible, i saw no point in looking for another religion, Protestant or otherwise.

As for origins, yes, i accept evolution. It makes sense, and also (though this is not relevant) gives me a sense of connectedness with all life. The intricacies of life are well explained by evolution; those that cry "Paley's watch," "specified complexity," or "irreducible complexity" haven't done their homework. Those that cry "tornado in a junkyard" don't know what evolution is to begin with.

P.S. on how you phrased your question. To actively believe that there is no God is known as "strong atheism," but not all non-theists hold that position. Also, because "god" is all semantics, one can be a strong atheist in one sense but not in another. For example, i assert that Yahweh and all his anthropomophic colleagues (Zeus, Thor, etc.) do not exist, but i for the deist and pantheist gods, i merely refrain from believing. That makes me a strong atheist with respect to Yahweh, but a weak atheist with respect to the gods of deism and pantheism. The distinction is important in order not to misrepresent non-believers. You should never ASSume that a non-believer is a strong atheist.

(To take the semantic problem to an extreme, one can say that Christians are all "strong atheists" with respect to Thor, Apollo, Isis, Athena, and every other god except Yahweh/Jesus. I just don't make that last exception.)

Answer 9

I believe there is no god because the notion of a god or gods adds nothing to existence. Therefore applying Occam's razor there is no god.

Evolution is a fact not a belief. It may have some problems, however there are so many independent pointers to it that it cannot be anything but true. It does add a great deal to our understanding of most everything.

Answer 10

Because there is no evidence whatsoever that a god exists.
Yes, from my experience the vast majority of atheists are evolutionists.
There is no element of 'design' in the intricacies of the human body. The fact that these intricacies help us survive is a reasonable explanation for their existence based on the theory of evolution by natural selection.