Atheist please answer?

Question

I am not trying to be arrogant, I want some real answers

I dont understand how anyone can see how our world was made without a "higher being". It's huge and has trillions of parts that all work together. Please tell me why you dont believe in God

I am interested dont blow this off give me all your information

My dad is a biologoist i've been around it all my life

Answer 1

I think this is a good question. Also a fair one. And you ask it respectfully. As such, I will answer with that same respect.

That is an appeal to incredulity. As such, it is a logical fallacy and is useless as a convincing argument.

I can't speak for all atheists, but the reason I don't believe in God is because all "proofs" for the existance of God revolve around some sort of fallacious argument.

Other fallacies used by theists are appeal to consequence, appeal to authority, straw man attacks, appeal to ignorance, circular reasoning, and slothful induction. Just to name a few.

I used to believe in God, and when I did, I always argued that if God wanted us to believe based on any evidence, He would have given us that evidence. I would have told you that God simply wants us to have faith. I simply lost that faith. It wasn't a decision.

A better explanation as to why I don't believe in God anymore is to examine the reasons that I did. I believed in God for the exact same reasons I believed in Santa Claus. I was told he existed. I was presented with an entire culture that supported the idea that a fat man in a red suit climbed down chimneys to leave presents and candy. I was indoctrinated from an early age to sing praises for Santa. I was scared into believing in Santa (Be a good boy, El Chistoso, or Santa won't bring you any toys -vs- Believe in God, or He won't let you into Heaven). The only real difference between my indoctrination to believe in Santa and my indoctrination to believe in God is that, eventually, everyone that perpetrated the Santa Hoax came clean about it.

Some people are fine with not having proof that God exists at all, not to mention not having proof of WHICH God or Gods exist. They have faith despite all of that. I simply can't have faith in something without evidence, even though I'd like to.

I leave you with the wise words of Bertand Russell and Richard Dawkins, respectively...

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Bertrand Russell

"The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell's teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don't exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don't stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don't warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don't kneecap those who put the tea in first."
Richard Dawkins

El Chistoso

Answer 2

For me personally, I do believe in a "higher being", but I do not believe in one that is -separate- from me or anything else. The (for lack of a better term) "typical" religious version of some invisible guy that controls everything and keeps getting angry at everything, and yet is supposed to be love, is just foolish in my mind. The whole idea is a contradiction to itself.

When you learn about the physical laws, and learn about how and -why- things happen, you'll get a view of the fact that things could not have happened any other way. Things are the way they are because there is no other way for them to be.

The trillions of things you refer to came about, and are the way they are because of the natural physical laws. ALL the parts work together, and if you look closely, they work together with a very distinct pattern. The pattern is bound by the laws of physics, and any variance (the possibility of something different) can only fall within the parameters of these laws. There's no other way.

I'm sure that somewhere out in the universe there is a planet (or perhaps tons of them) with features and conditions very similar to those on Earth. Life on the planet(s) will form, grow, and evolve under the exact same laws that affect life on Earth, and the creatures there will have many similarities to those here.

The physical laws are the same everywhere in the universe and they affect everything equally. All that is needed for Earth-like complexity is the right balance of all these forces, and given the size of the universe, the "right balance" has probably occurred (and is still occurring) more than once.

Answer 3

Read "Atheist Universe" by David Mills. Very good, answers just about every question Christians has, and isn't nearly as egotistical or harsh as Richard Dawkin's work.

What exactly "works"? Earth is actually pretty much in the middle of chaos and goodness. Yeah, we have sunsets and mountains, and we also have hurricanes and disease. Humans may seem to "work" miraculously, especially parts like the eye, but that's because of natural selection. The book I recommended touches on that, also "The Blind Watchmaker" is an excellent book on evolution. Evolution is a fact. No halfway credible scientist "doesn't believe" in evolution. Not believing in evolution is like not believing in gravity. It doesn't make any sense.

Please read the book I recommended, you won't get all your questions answered unless you do, and I definitely can't go through all the specific arguments here. If you don't want to read it, you can email me questions, I'd be happy to answer any confusions as a former Christian whose read many books on atheism and evolution and would love to clear things up. Seriously, the more you read, the clearer things become. I'm much more confident as an atheist than I was a Christian, and it's relieving to be able to "see the light".

Answer 4

I'll summarize my main thoughts on this idea.
1. There are certain principles that govern the universe.
a.Gravity
b.Time
c.Etc....(none of which I can explain properly so I'll not attempt it)
2. As far as I know everything is made (essentially) of energy. Or at least comprised of something closely related to it (maybe something we don't know). The principles that govern energy make the universe work as it does. If any of the principles were different then everything would be different. This is why everything works together so perfectly (in a way). Like the way water freezes so that it floats and so on...This creates a cause and effect effect which means that everything is connected. In the way that air is the source of most all music (air-sound-music), to look at it very narrowly. Or the instinct to survive caused, at least in part I think, religion itself (that's just what I think). Must survive-pain(sense I suppose was intended to warn us of bodily harm)-fear of pain (and possible bodily harm from it)-fear of unkown (and possible pain from it)
3. These principles are explainable, I hope, but to the people before us ,who understood so little of the vast mystery of things, wanted answers (fear/curosity part of it). These people probably thought on these problems for some time. That's when the birth of religion/mythology was born (I currently believe).
4.If we look at Greek Mythology we will see that it was probably used to give their people a moral standard (and one that had absolute power) to the people alongside with answers for these questions. Then science (another form of reasoning and a more concrete one I think) came about and solved some of the problems. Science gave them the knowledge to understand things and advance where stories didn't (basic things like building a shelter)
5. Religious ideas seem to me to be constantly developing to meet our needs. I don't know the timeline (Hinduism lead to Judaism- which is probably wrong- lead to etc.....) but one developed with help from the other. This I think would be impossible if there actually was a higher power(s) talking to these people.
6. I think religion is needed for some people. Without it they would have holes (emotionally). Like :"what is my propose?" to achieve god's grace and go to heaven, "what is wrong or right?" whatever god says is," how are we here?" genesis, " why should I comply" because if you don't the worst possible fate imaginable will be your eternal punishment(hell),etc.... This is all tied into the human needs pryamid which is formed because of the principals of the universe/our existence.
7. Also why in all religious text leave so much error (scientifically) and so much room for mis-interpertation; which. can cause the endless wars between people and so on.
8. Why can't we all live peacefully in heaven. Because it's your choice some would say, god encourages free will. Is free will really free if a higher power already knows the outcome?
I think we created god for our own needs. I sorry it's a little sporatic and hard to follow my thoughts at times(I tend to jump from one idea to another without warning in this.)

Answer 5

We are here, having this discussion, because by a lucky happenstance all of the right conditions existed which gave rise to us. It works because it works. If it didn't, we would never know that it hadn't :p

To suggest that it could not all come together as it did without a higher power is to rely on a "god of the gaps". I don't believe in god because: one, I don't see any evidence of any; and two, I lack the need to fill in what I don't know with a deity.

Answer 6

It's atheistS there's more than one of us...

I don't believe in a higher power because I truly have no reason to.

My moral compass is strong. I do not fear death, when my time comes I'll know I'll have lived a good, full life. I also take responsability for who I am and my actions. I don't believe in being punished for 'sins'- I believe those who really, truly are wicked will reap what they sow in this life, sooner or later.
I don't have all the answers, but it's so much more gratifying to seek and question and scrap the whole thing only to start over and seek and question some more... it's just too easy to sit back on my laurels and say "God did it."

Answer 7

Why does the world need a higher being to exist? I just don't get the mindset of someone who needs a god or some creator being to explain the makings of this world and universe. If you can imagine a god always existing, why can't you imagine a universe always existing, in one fashion or another?

This planet is 4 billion years old. A lot can happen in that timeframe.

I don't believe in god because I don't need a safety blanket to explain away what we don't know yet. Not to mention the lack of proof for a creator being.

Answer 8

As a Mormon, I do believe in God (in millions of Gods actually) but I do not believe that any God created the universe.

Existence simply exists. I don't know how anyone can look at Nature and think that it has a beginning.

What evidence can one give for the belief in a creation or a beginning of EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS? There is no evidence for a beginning of EXISTENCE ITSELF.

Yes, we can look at the natural world and see an order to things; but what is the alternative? That there is a natural world in which there is NO oder?

To exist, is to have a given nature; to have a given nature, is to have limits; to be one thing, means that something cannot be at the same time something else.

What existence is not, is static. Everything in the natural world evolves, decays or changes with time. Nothing stays the same. But eixstence itself--the sum total of everything--is without beginning and without end. There is no creator as many monotheistic religions teach.

www.reformmormonism.org

Answer 9

I don't believe because there is no evidence.

You say, "Look, the universe is complex!" But what you fail to see is that under the visible complexity are actually a handful of fairly simple equations. Indeed, the entire set of physical laws as we know them can be expressed with 20 or so numbers -- 20 fundamental constants. Some recent advances in string theory even suggest 11 of these are redundant and determined by the other 9.

Imagine that -- every physical law in our universe could very well boil down to 9 simple numbers.

Where you see design and irreducible complexity, I see simplicity and emergent processes.

Answer 10

Wow, this is such a loaded question... Let me preface this by saying I hold nothing against people who believe that the universe was created by a higher power, I just happen to believe in science.

I agree with you that the universe is incredibly complex and out of the realm of comprehension for many people (including myself). However, it doesn't make sense to me that it was just magically created by God. The existence of a God is not something concrete that can be proven. While not all aspects of science (i.e. the Big Bang) can be proven, there are many parts that can be, and those proofs lead to a much more believable beginning for people like myself.

Answer 11

God rocks, screw you biznatches.
JUST KIDDING
okay.... I'm not into the whole, God doesn't exist, since I am a christian, but yes, the earth was created by a higher being.
How do I know this?
Simply because I AM GOD. [Just kidding again, for you idiots who have no sense of humor]
but, there have been a series of events that have happened in my life that can not purely be a coincidence. I believe in a God, so SUE ME! What can you do about it? Absolutely nothing, of course! So why did I answer this question?
Simple [yet again] answer.
I want to spread this message:
We have our views and you have yours. I'd really rather not clash our views. You can call me a complete idiot for believing in what I believe, but I won't care, because you, my friends shall be burning in hell. Now if you want to argue with me then go shove a tootsie pop up your a**
Love,
The biznatch with the attitude
[Please excuse the asterisks. Yahoo refuses to let me curse]