Why no one can prove there is a God?

Question

First off I do not believe in God or any god. I think the main reason why no one who believes in God can prove there is a God is because of the reasons they give. They will say "faith" proves it. No it does not. If you have faith in something, you believe in it. So prove it. Don't bother saying, "waking up each day, childbirth, a beautiful sunset" are all proof of God. They are not. That is life and not a life that was granted by a god. Life is something that started billions of years ago and just keeps moving along. God believers state that life can not come from non-life and want us to believe that means only God can prove why we are here. Why can't you believe something that may have happened just like you want us to believe that every unexplainable thing must be an act of God. Proof is proof and needs to be backed up by facts; facts than can be proven...hence proof. Until there is real proof I will continue to not believe in a God...Let the bashing begin. :)

I am not looking for a fight..just expressing my opinion.

I believe life started a long time ago because there is a lot of proof supporting it. I do not believ what people who believe in God say because they point to the bible which was written by man with no data backing it up.

Answer 1

Like you, I too am an atheist. I have been ever since I began giving any serious thought to theological issues in my teen years, and my atheism has only grown stronger with the more life experience and knowledge I acquire.

It sounds like you've mostly answered your own question. However, just because theists are so bad at giving reasons (I agree that most don't have a real idea of what "proof" and "evidence" mean), does not in itself count as a disproof of a god or gods. At most, it just means that they subscribe to a dogma that is lacking in intellectual firmness.

They say you can't prove a negative, but I think there are a number of proofs which discount any notion of a god, at least one having the qualities most humans ascribe to it.

Omniscience: On one hand theists say god gave us free will to choose good vs. evil, on the other hand they also say god knows everything. The two are fundamentally incompatible. The only way free will can exist is if we and only we make our choices, and by definition that involves more than one choice that can not be known with certainty in advance. Similarly, quantum mechanics has proven that real, genuine randomness does exist in nature. It is a logical impossibility to know a completely random outcome in advance.

Omnipresence: Again, physics (this time with the Pauli exclusion principle) has proven that two things can not occupy the same space at the same time. The only way that could happen would be if god were in some alternate dimension physically separate from our universe, but then that runs into the problem below.

Interference/intervention in our world: For a god to do anything or have any effect in our world, he has to interact with it. And if that's the case, then a god (or his effects) should be physically measurable and verifiable. There should be an abundance of pre-existing and easily obtainable verifiable physical evidence that meets scientific standards of proof. And yet, there is not.

Omnipotence: People ask questions like "can god create a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it?" These are actually very good questions to ask, and I have yet to see any answer that doesn't prove the logical impossibility of omnipotence.

One can construct similar arguments against god or gods on a number of other grounds, including moral, historical, psychological, biological, supposedly being all-good, etc. I think it's case closed that gods are indeed nothing more than the products of the human imagination and our fervent desire to believe.

Answer 2

I don't even try to be accurate on the is there or isn't there a god, because no one is right. There is no way of knowing whether there is or not. People believe in god because that is how they were brought up or that is a way to do something healthy with their life. In my opinion I believe that the creation of god was just to keep people on a less destructive path. If you had to worry about someone watching you everyday and judging you for being out of line then you probably would abide by the rules a little more. But when you come down to it. Everyone needs to believe in something because it is pretty depressing to think that when we die that is all there was to our life and no one seems to remember most of us when we are gone. It is easier to believe in a wonderful place with all our lost family and friends to spend eternity with. So really what is proving or disproving this really accomplish? Not a whole lot, because everyone is still going to believe in what they believe.

Answer 3

The fact is that you know one thing only. You exist. Everything else in human affairs is just a belief. Your girlfriend, wife, whatever loves you. Really? Can you be sure? What does she say when you ask why do you love me? Does that mean she loves you, or the things you do? Are you just the closet thing she has found so far, to what she is search ever forward.
You children love you? Really? You sure? Some people believe in G-d. Others don't. Some may be said that you don't believe in G-d. So what?
You are fishing. You want a fight. There is no bashing. This life is relative. You live your's as it suits you. Enjoy.

Answer 4

Actually, you can never "prove" the non-existence of anything. It can be used as a sophism to make the most spurious of claims.
For example, I believe in invisible unicorns. They can't be seen, heard, sensed by any kind of equipment, touched, or otherwise detected.
You can't actually prove they don't exist, although their existence is not something reasonable to believe in.

As for the idea of God, it is a much more persistent one. It gives a lot of people comfort. I think the theists who have given more thought to the question are aware of the fact they can't prove His existence. Belief in God is a question of faith. Rationality has its limits. (And that is true whether you believe in God or not. I am yet to meet an entirely rational person. In fact, such a person would tend to spook me out a little.)

Answer 5

I agree that no one is going to prove to you that there is a God. The religions are certainly not going to prove it because they can't settle on answers amoung themselves and they are so egotistical in their own beliefs. The only thing is that you can not prove that there isn't a God. And there is enough reasoning and hope that there is something beyond this life to make others accept the possibility. I guess sometime at the end of this lifetime, we will both know the answer.

Answer 6

Omniscience and free will have been shown to be compible. Augustines conception of God as a timeless entity to whom the entire human timeline is but one everlasting instant would mean that divine foreknowledge collapses into personal observation. A timeless God doesn't need divine foreknowledge, as he can directly see everything occuring in every second ever. He doesn't need to know the future because he can see it directly from the past and present, and vice versa. Our actions are free, and he can see them right now, for every instant that is right now.

Intervention: Even with the omnipresence above, it is not contradictory for God to posess a full awareness of the infinite possiblities of cause and effect, and to have set up the whole thing to run according to plan from day one. His intervention could be pre-planned. Or it could be in such a mundane way that nobody has noticed it. Or it could be manifest in the very physical laws of our world. Intervention doesn't have to be all "I shall come down from on high and smite thee with thunderbolts". It can be a constant underlying movement or system. In theory......

Omnipresence: Well, although no 2 things can occupy the same space at the same time, how would you define extension? The simple 3d space upon which everything we observe has to occur? If God is posed as extension rather then matter then he can be omnipresent without any conflict at all.
Also, although quantum has proven randomness, it also proves that items can co-exist in the same space by dint of not being realized in any particular position at any time. On the small scale there is constant quantum overlap.

Omnipotence is where you hit the snag, should you happen to be religious. The problem with most religions is that they try to give God "necessary" characteristics, which of course instantly limits his power as he can't stop being them. Example:
Catholicism: God is necessarily benevolent and omniscient
So he lacks the power to be bad, and he can't be ignorant.
Most clashes occur here, and the example of God being able to make a stone he can't lift offers an even more intrigueing paradox: How can an omnipotent being create something that limits it, whilst retaining omnipotence?
You could just say God's not that stupid, but that has always struck me as a cop out.

Deistic God's are far easier to prove, and this is generally done by matching up the various impersonal qualities associated with God with another conceptual construct. An example would be Leibniz's monad based conception of the world, maintained by God.
Most religious people would probably counter, as has been done above, that the whole point of God is that you can't prove him. He depends on faith, and to prove God would be just as bad as disproving him, which has also yet to be done.
Religion isn't about proof, it's about faith. Also, the God's mind requiring a designer argument only works if they don't understand the patterns formed by entropic energy, and if you ignore the following:
Our minds are so complex that only God could have created them.
Therefore God's mind must be even more complex, and must have been created too.
(and heres where it goes wrong)
But if our minds could evolve naturally, then so could Gods......
So proponents of evolution have to admit that God's mind, complicated enough to design us, could evolve naturally. If he exists. Winning the point destroys your premise.....
Personally I am an agnostic, but the argument surrounding theology are too fascinating to ignore, and despite my agnosticism I still think that faith itself is an absolutely incredible aspect of humanity.


Sorry if I irked you with the response Archailect, but devils advocate (oh the irony) is a fun game....and my thesis was on the compatibility of omniscience and free will. It usually boils down to which definition of God you choose...there are so many.

Answer 7

They cannot prove the existence of God any more or less than you can prove there is no God. We all have ideas and beliefs and decide what makes sense to us, and when you boil it down, it doesn't make any one more or less correct than the others.

You point to evolution and science to support your beliefs, and they point to their holy books and faith to support theirs. neither KNOWS any more than the other. You believe life started millions of years ago because the evidence that was presented to you convinces you more than what religion has presented to you. You were not there to witness the creation of life. You don't KNOW. You just believe it because of X, Y, and Z. Religious people believe in God because of A, B, C.

You have no way to prove either is correct.

Answer 8

i guess it just comes down to ones opinion.
i believe in a higher power, a god if you will, but cannot explain it within the bounds of explaining the more "tangible" things like what one can see, touch, smell, taste.
i do not like how people use the word "faith" so freely, so blindly. i have enough trust in my own deep feelings.
it is like when you get the feeling that something bad is going to happen, one cannot truly explain that, but it is there.

i cannot help you prove the existence, or NONEXISTENCE of a god. all i can say is try to keep an open mind when coming across things that are harder to explain, like for say "deja vu". that is hard to explain. people have their theories, but no sure answer. so is with God.

Answer 9

Religious people form an opinion (ie. God exists) then prop it up with evidance and ignore everything else- denouncing any evidance against there opinion as a lie or false.

Science takes a theory- equipped with evidance and then batters this theory with evidance to disprove it. If it still stands up it;s accepted until someone does disprove it then it's abanmdonned and the world moves on.

This is why no one can prove god.

Answer 10

i'm purely a man or woman with constrained perceptions, basically like all human beings else. I have confidence God does exist, yet no longer in any anthropomorphic sense that should have the potential to be shown or measured scientifically. This being the main in all probability rationalization for the a protracted time previous debate, I end that i would be unable to offer any gratifying answer that should convince you the two way.