Atheists: disbelief in the biblical God...?

Question

= disbelief in all possibility of god? How does that make sense? Please read on (I usually get a lot of responses immediately stating, "see: agnostic". Believe it or not, an agnostic can be an atheist, and vise versa.)

"I don`t believe there is anything at all. I came to this conclusion many years ago through reading, reasoning eg: the fossil record, carbon 14 dating evidence, astronomical observations, the list goes on. Virtually everything in the bible can be disproved. If you believe in a God you may as well believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster."

Here's how this argument looks...

Premise 1: Virtually everything in the bible can be disproved.
Conclusion: God doesn't exist.

Alright... if we revised the conclusion to say,

Conclusion: The biblical, Abrahamic God is a fictional character,

I would be much more comfortable with this argument. But the truth is, inductive reasoning in saying that the Bible being disproved, disproves all possibilities, is fallacious.

Explain?

I am, by the way, an agnostic leaning toward strong atheism.

I'm not referring to any "known" god when I refer to the possibility of god.

r a: Sure, I see your electricity analogy, but not your sense in faith. Logically, if my lights were all off, I'd rely on reason to have faith in the fact that I payed my electric bill that month. Reason before faith.

Answer 1

I don't believe that disbelief in the Biblical god implies disbelief in any gods.

It's the utter lack of evidence for any gods that makes me disbelieve in any of them.

I also think it's only a minority of atheists at most who would say that if the Biblical God doesn't exist, that implies that no gods exist: quite a few times I've seen atheists here say things that disagree with that, such as "I think there's a chance that there is some god, but there's no chance that the God of the Bible exists".

Answer 2

I don't see how you can say most of the Bible can be disproved. If you ever read it, the vast majority of it is history. The nations and wars certainly did happen.

Consider Jesus. He was real. Remember, the Romans were massive record keepers. There is independent evidence of His birth, His ministry, and His execution. The debatable point is whether He was the Son of God or an insane person. But He did exist.

As for the fossil record, there is no way to know how many years passes between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. It could be a billion years. According to the Bible, fixed time did not exist until Day 3 with the formation of the starts and fixed planets. This dovetails very well with Einstein's concept of time an matter being linked.

Was the parting of the Red Sea a myth, a miracle, or just low tide? How can we know? If we are told it can't happen, we can choose to believe that. If we are told that it did, we can chose to believe that. We did not see the event so we most choose.

Trying to use Science to prove or disprove the existence of God is like trying to use a leg-hold trap to find a wife. It's just the wrong tool for the job.

You have to make that choice with your heart, not your head. Nothing anyway says can prove God exists or make someone believe.

Great question!

Joe

Answer 3

I was raised strict roman catholic. I believed in god. When I started thinking about how the church behaved towards non believers it all unraveled. The bible is full of contradictions. The god of the old testament and the god of the new testament are obviously completely different characters. Jesus was a horse thief. (Luke 19, verses 29 - 36). The spreading of clothes in the way of the horse was a usual technique to make the tracks less visible. Native americans used this technique when stealing horses in the so called wild west. The concept of an all loving and omnipotent god was not in line with my observation of reality. There was way too much suffering in the world. So either the god was not all loving or not omnipotent. Once it occurred to me that there might be something wrong with my religion I questioned every bit I saw, and the overall evidence pointed to the whole thing being a scam. The promise of an afterlife in exchange for good behaviour is a wonderful thing from the viewpoint of the church. The church defines 'good behaviour' and never delivers the promised afterlife. There is not even a way to prove that they do or do not deliver.

Answer 4

A point of view is none of what is in the Bible cannot be proved, not disproved. Victor Stenger uses primarily, the lack of evidence in his book. "God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" (2007)
His generic argument:

1. Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe.
2. Assume that God has specific attibutes that shoud provide objective evidence for his existence.
3. Look for such evidence with an open mind.
4. If such evidence is found, conclude that God MAY exist.
5. If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does NOT exist.

Answer 5

Sweetie, you're reading way too much into all this! Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or deity. There is no need to disprove anything in the bible.

Many things in the bible, such as the accurracy of historical timelines have been brought into question by archaeologists, and historians who study the middle-east and surrounding Medditeranean countries, but that is of more interest to scientists in those fields of study, where those mistaken biblical referrences would, if taken at face value deter them from understanding much of the evidence that they often find to the contrary.

Answer 6

First the argument is based on false logic. Not everything in the Bible can be proved or disproved. Hence the existence of God based on such cannot be proved or disproved. Second, the absence of something doesn't prove it doesn't exist. If all electrical appliances and lights are turned off in your home, does this mean you do not have electricity (the same basic argument used to prove/disprove God's existence)?
Finally, faith is what religions are based on, something logic has no way to factor in (btw I love logic exercises).

Answer 7

I actually hear you on this one. And it's not only about fallacies in religious texts, it's about God knowing that such verses will be misinterpreted. Surely a Supreme Being knows better than that, right? That's how I got to reject the concept of Abrahamic God. But then again, the concept of any God makes no sense to me. It is my personal beleif that humans are of weak nature and it is easier for them to ''toss the guilt and baggage of everyday life'' onto someone else, i.e. God. We are also very selfish beings and beleif in eternal life only proves my point. We are not able to come to terms with our mortality - period.

But I do hear you on that agnostic part. There IS something. There is energy we spread (I think I slightly beleive in the concept of karma to be honest), the energy we give and take ... we are connected and indeed do influence each other's lives even without knowing it. But still, that is not God.

Answer 8

The fact that the bible is full of errors and contradictions does not necessarily exclude the possibility that a god may exist. It just means that the bible is a book like any other. I am an atheist, but my non-belief in god has nothing to do with the fact that I can discredit the bible.

Answer 9

personally I have found that most Atheists have grievances with the bible itself and not God as a whole
they see the bible as incorrect and assume that if the bible is , then so must God be
they go on further to think that if the Abrahamic God is not true , it invalidates the possibility of other/any God/Gods/Goddesses
I do have a problem with this type of thinking also

however I will say that not every Atheist thinks this way , I have seen a few who have studied other belief systems to arrive at their conclusion ... which is fair enough

Answer 10

I agree with what you are saying. I believe in no god/gods. I do notice that some say they don't believe in god because the Bible is wrong. I think they are just using that as a prime example, and not simply their only reason for being atheist/agnostic.