Quote:
Originally Posted by ulnevrwalkalone
Well considering this is the atheist thread I guess I assumed you understood I meant believe as in have a faith/religion. So...
Correction: "Why don't you believe in a divine being/deity/religion??"
Better??  |
Well, no, it is not better. It still leaves me having to explain why I don't believe in tons of possibilities, and for each one I have arguments and evidence why I don't believe in them.
I know you didn't want us to have links, but being that you are not asking about a specific supreme being/deity (i.e., the Christian God, a generic creator god, a god that intervenes in human affairs, Ra, Thor, cosmic mind, etc), I may have to include a few. If you are really after arguments you may not have heard before, then you'd get better answers if you limited your question to a specific god.
Heck, I could reference all kinds of evidence that shows that life was not intelligently designed and the role chance played in the origin of today's species. If I were addressing why I don't believe in a creator of the universe type god, I'd talk about the evidence showing how the laws of nature organize matter (all by themselves) into greater levels of complexity and how this does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
If, on the other hand, we were talking about a god that is all-powerful and all-loving, I'd refer you to my logical proof that such a god cannot exist:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/relig...erful-all.html
And I musn't forget, you also asked me why I don't believe in religion. Well, if you want to know why I don't believe in Mormonism, read here:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/relig...mormonism.html
And if you want to know just a few of my doctrinal issues with Christianity, which of course there is no ONE Christianity, you can read here:
Easy to be Entreated: My Doctrinal Issues With Christianity
In short, pick a specific type of god or religion, and I may be able to provide you with some evidence or arguments you have never heard before, but your generic question is bound to lead to generic answers which I am sure you probably have heard before.
But, here is my most generic answer to your generic question:
I am a nontheist in that I do not have a belief in god. I am an epistemological agnostic in that I do not believe we can either prove or disprove the existence of god. I am an atheist in that I estimate the probability of the existence of any type of god existing as extremely low. I am atheist not only because I believe that there is no convincing evidence of god's existence, but because I believe there is evidence that discredits many of the things typically cited as evidence for god's existence, such as the Bible, Quran, fulfilled prophecies, answered prayers, spiritual promptings, near-death experiences, visions, etc.
I am a naturalist in that I do not believe in the supernatural and believe that we are fully part of the physical universe. I am a spiritual naturalist in that I still enjoy feeling the feelings I formerly believed came from the "Spirit" which I now believe are psychologically caused. I study the rules and conditions that govern when those feelings will be present.
My atheism came about through intense study of both apologetic and critical information mainly about the Bible, Christianity, and Judaism, but then about god in general as a Creator or beneficient power, and near-death-experiences, and the psychology of religion, etc. And that is why I think my atheism sticks. I don't second guess myself because I can point at the exact evidence and arguments that convince me that the probability of a god existing is extremely low, and the probability of specific gods existing such as the Jewish god is even lower than that.
I have my ways of incorporating all of the events and evidence and arguments that theists use to support the idea that god exists into my naturalistic (god empty) worldview. I don't understand why god is the default explanation for some people when individuals encounter phenomenon that they do not have an explanation for. For one, the concept of god doesn't explain the unexplainable as no mechanism is ever offered on how god supposedly does these miraculous feats and without a mechanism there is no explanation. It is a double-standard. We expect naturalists to offer an explanation with a mechanism (it is not sufficient to say in response to a miracle that "nature did it"), but we are somehow satisfied with the explanation "god did it". If naturalists have to provide the mechanism, then by golly, theists do too.
Two, many things that theists want to give god credit for, we already have naturalistic explanations for that they just don't know about or understand, evolution being a big one, but also many things about mental and emotional processes.
I understand that there are people who have studied Biblical criticism and still come away from it believing in Christ. I also understand that there are people who realize the natural processes, but prefer to believe that there is something godly also happening behind the scenes. To me that seems unnecessary and most likely false, but to each his or her own. I disagree, but I can see the perspective that they are taking. I acknowledge the evidence on both sides, but I believe the naturalistic perspective has the better potential of explaining both sets of evidence than the theistic perspective, especially with the many pieces of evidence that show that which we used to trust came from god does not.
We can't falsify every experience, but we have demonstrated that enough of religion is false to make me be very skeptical of that which is inaccessible for testing. And the naturalistic model has explained many things which were previously a mystery and continues to do so, so judging by previous performance, I think the naturalistic perspective is much closer to reality than the theistic one, and in any case much more useful and predictable.
I find that far too many people are too inexperienced with spiritual things or too uninformed about science and the history of religion to form an informed opinion on the matter. Personally, I think you can come to what I believe is the "right" conclusion about the likelihood of a god without having spiritual experiences, but I think you would be handicapped as you would never really know what those who have had those experiences are talking about or how you might feel about the subject if you could experience them, too.
Theists often seem to think that atheists would believe in god if only they had those special experiences in which you feel like you are conversing with god and that he cherishes you, or other such experiences. Well, I have had those experiences and I don't believe because I believe they are completely psychological in nature and an unreliable way to discern what is true.
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Why don't you believe??
