God cannot be proved or disproved, so how is Atheism not based on faith?

Question

You can feel something is certain but if you cannot back it up with facts its just faith.

I was certain the Mavericks would beat the Warriors this year, but it turned out I just had faith.

Its even better when you ask an atheist this face to face and you get to watch them squirm.

Answer 1

you do not have to PROVE that you do not belive something.

QUESTION: Do you belive that green alians have taken you every night for anal probes?

by your logic, if you do NOT belive that, then you have some kind of faith in aliens and anal probes? thats silly.

Answer 2

So you admit then that your faith is wrong?


How come you do not have faith in all the other gods that mankind has invented over the years?

If they are all in equal standing (no proof for any, just faith that you picked the right one) should you not pick the oldest faith? Should that not be the closest to the true faith?


Atheism is based on the lack of faith. We do not have faith that any of those gods and goddesses are real. Or that unicorns dragons mermaids or celestial teapots are real. Why is it you have such a hard time with the concept of no faith?

Hypothetically, if I were to prove to you that your belief in your god is wrong what would you do? Would you have to start immediately believing in a different god? One that you previously had dismissed as fantasy. Or would you lose all faith and become an atheist.? Or something else?

I know that I can not prove a negative, but you really need to think honestly about the answer to this question because it will tell you a lot about yourself and the basis and reasons for your faith.


Edit:
"Its even better when you ask an atheist this face to face and you get to watch them squirm."

Well aren't we prideful and boastful. Come over and ask me face to face - I like watching theists squirm as they try to justify their belief.

Answer 3

Consider that theism is the definite belief that god exists and atheism is the definite belief that god doesn't exist. If you create a continuum where theism is 1 and atheism is 10 and you plot people based on their beliefs, you will find absolutely no people on either 1 or 10. That is because "god" is unprovable and unfalsifiable.

Most theists who say they are positively certain that god exists aren't on 1 because god can not be proved. They may be close, but they aren't. Same thing with atheists. Despite the complete lack of evidence or reason to believe is supernatural creatures, no atheist will fall on 10 because god can not be disproved.

Since theists can't prove god and atheists can't disprove god, they both live their lives by operating under the assumption that they can.

I call myself an atheist but really I'm an agnostic sitting on number 9 on the continuum. I can't disprove god. I can give you a laundry list of why I think the idea of a supernatural arbiter is extremely improbable and preposterous, but at the end of the day I have no solid evidence that such a deity doesn't exist. So, although I can't *prove* god doesn't exist, I am perfectly comfortable operating under the assumption that it doesn't.

The commentary above is just the semantical, theoretical end of things. Ultimately, the argument comes down to the fact that theists have made a fantastical *positive* assertion that something exists for which they have offered no supporting evidence. So I think it's fair to say the default position universally is to *not* believe in something until you've been given compelling evidence to the contrary. In this case, the burden of proof is on the theists.

Answer 4

Neither can werhods or thosmots. In fact I don't even know what the hell they are, but does that mean we all have faith that they do not exist?

I am only an atheist in regards to the "known" gods. Your stories are absurd and I have disregarded your god. If there is a god it will come from the deist position and in that case it really doesn't matter, now does it?

Being certain the Mavericks would beat the Warriors is not faith, it is emotional idiocy. Although, thanks Judy, it is just as correct.

Answer 5

You may call it a faith if you also believe that not believing in the Easter bunny, Santa, unicorns, leprechauns, fairies, etc., etc., is also faith, because by your statement, disbelief in those things constitutes faith- they also cannot be proved or disproved. Believing in spite of absolute absence of evidence is faith. Not believing when there is no evidence is not faith, it is simply what the word says, disbelief- it is not-faith.
I do not understand why people who have faith cannot accept their faith AS faith. No theologian has ever proven the existence of god, and I doubt if any of the smart ones would even attempt it anymore. If you believe, believe- just understand there are other people in the world with different beliefs and there is no logical ground on which you can say your beliefs are better than theirs. It just so happens that what you believe works for you whether because that's what you were taught as a child or because it gives you acceptance among a group of people with whom you enjoy being, whatever. If your belief system is not giving what you need, and you need to "prove" its validity to either yourself or anyone else, then obviously you need to make a change in your life. I am myself an atheist but I have all my adult life been interested in religion and after reading some of Joseph Campbell's books, I finally understood why. The mythic content of religions has a universal psychic value that has nothing to do with whether any of the gods or goddesses actually exist or whether any of the occurences mentioned were actual events. The moral, in my opinion, is use religion for whatever it can do for you as a person- but do not let it use you. Televangelists are a prime example of what I mean by that last statement.
I do not believe in prophecy as divine revelation, obviously, but I do believe in prophecy as intuitive revelation. Thus, I think that it was about just such people that Jesus was speaking in chapter six of Matthew.

Answer 6

I disagree about the basketball example. Faith is believing in something that has no evidence. In the case of the Mavs and the Warriors, Dallas had a better regular season record and much more playoff experience. That's not faith; you had PLENTY of evidence to come to the conclusion that they should've won that series.

And I still don't understand how you can use the word 'faith' when it comes to not believing in a deity... there are billions and billions of potential things that can't be proven nor disproven, but I don't think you would say that you have 'faith' that, say, leprechauns don't exist, or 'faith' that fairies don't exist.

Answer 7

True, the existence of god as a Kantian noumenon is not provable or disprovable. Scientific knowledge is limited to Kantian phenomena.

Amazing but true, atheists like Dawkins are as completely confident as believers are.

However, most atheists are atheists because we are scientifically skeptical of the claims the faithful make (particularly miracles in a world of strict conservation) and we do not assert atheism as a truism or a faith, abuse those who disagree with us, or even try to convert others to atheism, as the passionate Dawkins does.

My own approach is the most unique. I tentatively make the "nihilistic conjecture" ("Mrs. Darwin's Dilemma") as the simplest explanation of the existence of the world without god and challenge others to find a simpler and equally comprehensive explanation. Current theistic explanations fail the simplicity test, as introduction of "the god hypothesis" entails the introduction of many other inexplicables.

If someone can give me such, I will not only abandon "happy nihilism" and its consequence, atheism, but defend his/her position as the most reasonable, even if it should prove to be theistic. That is atheism without firm faith. A Jew, Christian, or Muslim cannot be true to his religion and possess this level of scientific skepticism and objectivity.

Answer 8

Atheism is not based on faith for me because I don't believe that God exists or that he doesn't. I have a theory that he doesn't based on the evidence I am aware of but I will need more facts before I can take a firm stance.

Answer 9

Atheism is not based on faith. There is no logical reason to believe there is a god. There is no logical reason to believe there is a flying unicorn. There is no reason to believe those things, so faith is not involved. Faith is believing in something based on nothing (the opposite of intelligence).

god doesn't exist. And the probability of god existing is literally zero.

Answer 10

Absolute proof is not necessary. Vanishingly unlikely is enough.

How confident are you that the Tooth Fairy and Santa aren't real? That takes little faith on your part, because they're both obviously impossibly unlikely, based on evidence you can find.

God is also vanishingly unlikely. Adding up all the evidence that he isn't there shows that the chances are so minute that they are insignificant. There's no need to treat either God or Santa as possible.

CD

Answer 11

I think we should go back to Russel's celestial teapot. There is no evidence against floating space dishes, but is faith required to believe they do not exists?

I do not believe that reason, logic, and trust of our sensory perceptions requires faith. But it is an interesting debate. We can discuss it.

Honestly the questions can't get off the ground much without defining faith, atheism, and god.