Why do people believe God doesn't exist?

Question

No offence intended, but If God didn't exist, how exactly do you think this world came into being? I'm not thinking about this being a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu or whatever, for now I'm just a human being who has a brain and who can think logically. So what do you think how come the sun and the moon have been coming up at almost the same time every day for centuries? Scientists have agreed on human body being a tremendous machine that works systematically, how come do you think it was created? just like that ? don't you think there had to be someone to create something so complicated and systematic?

No controversies. I am truly not trying to tell what I believe is the only truth, I don't want anyone, ANYONE, to be hurt. I just want to know what people who don't believe on God think. I just need to know their explanations of how are things the way they are.

I guess laws of physics and mathematics were made by a man, these laws didn't just pop out of the sky telling us about them. So doesn't it make any sense to you that laws of nature, too, must have been made by someone,a superpower?

Nadine P, i guess I did mention before that for now let's just forget who we are, it doesn't matter if I am a muslim or a jew or a christian or whatever as long as I have a brain and can think. We are just sharing our thoughts and opinions here, not fighting over religious issues. And by God I don't particularly mean my Allah or Bhagwan or whatever. I am just talking about a single superpower. and I'm not trying to impose anything on anyone, I am just telling why I believe what I believe and I wish to know why you believe what you believe. I hope you people aren't thinking I'm committing some serious crime here wanting to know about your thoughts on the origin of this world and God.

Answer 1

Think about what you are saying for a second. You said "don't you think there had to be someone to create something so complicated and systematic" So you are trying to expain the seemingly complex with a greater complexity. Can't you see the obvious absurdity to that argument? You don't explain complexity with greater complexity.

Personally I believe reality is ultimately mathematics (necessary logical truth) . It only looks like space and time because we see so little of it. Nothing is ever really created. The key here is a powerful selection effect (our existence ) which selects the portion of reality we find ourselves in. Only in very interesting portions (ones that appear as rapidly expanding space-time) of this vast infinite reality could we evolve.

Our understanding of reality is layered. You see the world in terms of large physical objects. But you are aware that those are illusions made up of atoms, and atoms in turn are made of smaller particles. Many believe that these so called "fundamental" particles are not fundamental but are built on a layer of mathematical objects called strings. My belief is that all reality including space-time itself is built upon mathematics and mathematics is what is truly fundamental.

The reason why we see top layers instead of lower layers is due to our inability to see all of the the details in the lower layers.

The reasons for my belief are way too involved to cover here so I will just post a link to something simple enough that you might understand it. I fear my actual reasons are likely to be well beyond your comprehension unless you have a very advanced gaduate physics background.


http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0646v1.pdf


As mathematics ( necessary logical truth ) is fundamental and necessary it is not created. Existence simply equals necessary truth. Mathematics "just is" because it is necessary and tautologically simple ( Zero complexity ). But Mathematics does not create reality. Mathematics is reality.

The problem with the design hypothesis is your god needs to be more complex and hence more unlikely than the reality you are attempting to explain. Saying your god just is, still leaves a much bigger question than you had to begin with.

--- Mathematical laws are not created they are discovered. Math consists of necessary tautological statements of the form "if X then Y". They are necessarily true. No one including any imaginary gods would have any ability to make them other than they are. We can choose to discover different mathematics but neither god nor man can make the sum in arithmetic 2+2 anything other than 4.

Answer 2

>No offence intended, but If God didn't exist, how exactly do you think this world came into being?

It may not have ever 'come into being'. It may always have existed, that is to say there may not ever have been a time when it did not exist (whether through it existing eternally or through time starting at the same time as it, it hardly matters). It is also possible that it came into existence through natural processes outside the known Universe, or that it was created by powerful beings which are nevertheless not God.

>So what do you think how come the sun and the moon have been coming up at almost the same time every day for centuries?

This is based on relatively simple planetary mechanics and the law of conservation of angular momentum. The Earth is floating in space with essentially no friction to slow it down, so the net angular force is almost zero, which allows the Earth to go on spinning at almost exactly the same rate for millions of years. As for the Moon, it has to have a relatively stable orbit because if it didn't, it probably would already have escaped into interplanetary space millions of years ago (as a matter of fact it is slowly getting farther away, but only at a very small rate). There is simply no force acting upon the Earth to make the Sun rise at different times.

>Scientists have agreed on human body being a tremendous machine that works systematically, how come do you think it was created? just like that ?

No, of course not. It evolved over about 3.7 billion years from the first life on Earth, through the processes of genetic recombination and natural selection. You can read more about that here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Answer 3

I don't believe that any god/s exist because there's no evidence for them.

I assume that the world came into being via the big bang, but we don't know every iota of information about it. The sun and the moon don't "come up at the same time every day," but the fact that they appear to rise at all is due to the planet's rotation around them. Gravity has quite a lot to do with that, I think. I don't think that the human body was "created." Like all life, it evolved from simpler organisms. I don't really understand the beginnings of life, but I know that's something that we're still working on figuring out.

No, I don't think that there has to be someone to create anything. The concept of the "invisible watchmaker" is faulty. Basically, there's no reason to assume a magical step in the order of the universe. Everything works perfectly well without it.

Answer 4

how does invoking a god explain anything? surely, a god can do anything, so it can trivially explain any occurrence at all, in the real world or any other. but i think that it cannot explain why this world is as it is, and not some other way. it is a useless hypothesis.

meanwhile natural laws are sufficient to account for most natural phenomena. some things cannot be explained yet, but i can see no reason to think that invoking a god will explain them.

you suppose that god is the author of nature, and god just exists. i say cut out the middle man, it is nature that just exists. god is superfluous, unless you're looking for some comfort from the idea that a big sky man is looking out for you, but then i would say you've left the realm of trying to explain nature and i no longer care what you think.

Answer 5

I believe God doesn't exist because I was born without believing in him. Let me explain. Our sperm and egg pass along something called chromosomes which carry the genetic traits from our fathers and mothers to make babies. Before the fetus has developed the brain, do we believe in God? Yeah it sounds stupid right.... thats the point. Religion is not inscribed in our DNA. And with that being said, I have come to the conclusion that God was invented by humans and passed down the generations as tradition. Ever heard of Horus? yep thats the Egyptian God who was heard of ever before Christianity existed. This is why I don't believe in God, but not only that, I would prefer to have a liberated mindset, than to follow the rules of the God which sends people to hell for not believing in him when he doesn't even show proof that he exists in the first place. Good day

Answer 6

Natural law. There is nothing mysterious about it, simply the laws of physics and how matter and energy interact.

You say "no controversies," but what you say is very controversial. Things are the way they are because of natural law. That's as much of an over-simplification as "because God made them so," but it is the truth. Maybe your response is "God made those natural laws," and I won't argue with that.

The real answers are in the details, and that would take a physicist, an astronomer and a biologist, at the very minimum, and a great deal of time to explain.

Answer 7

"Why do people believe God doesn't exist?"
Because there is ZERO evidence of God.

"how exactly do you think this world came into being?"
Big Bang - and even if not, why assume God of the gaps argument? Don't know = Gawdidit? How did God come into BEING then?

"how come do you think it was created"
I DON'T think it was created - that's the whole point. It is through EVOLUTION that it BECAME complicated. Whereas you want to explain its complexity with something even MORE complex!!

^ Ashot, atheists don't believe in the devil either!

Knight, "They like to thing we came from nothing. and have no purpose in life" - atheists don't think life is purposeless. And abiogenesis has NOTHING to do with the quality of life *and* it has nothing to do with atheism.

Answer 8

Even if I believed in god, it still begs the question of "what created god?" The answer that he always has existed is just as acceptable as the universe has always existed (in some sort or another...as in something before the big bang). So why pick the sky fairy when no one really knows?

Answer 9

The sun and moon don't actually "come up." Their regular pattern can be explained by their orbits, which are explained by gravity.

I don't think the human body was created "just like that." It took several million small steps to evolve from single-celled organisms to humans.

I think that claiming that something so complex requires a creator needlessly anthropomorphizes the beauty of nature.

Answer 10

I am a scientist as well as an atheist. The short answer is that the universe makes much more sense to me without a god than it does with a god.