Thread: Is there a possibility that there is no God?

Originally Posted by Giftedone

I am very tolerant of other peoples beliefs just as long as they do not try to force them on others.

I would be extremely happy if I could find someone who could talk to God and have God answer back.

Imagine the wonderous things we could learn.

The problem is not that I am not tolerant. The problem is that I simply do not believe the people who make these claims but can not back them up.

I have many many people throughout my life who claim that God/Holy Spirit talks to them.

"Just ask God and God will answer" is something we often here.

I have asked each of these people to ask God a few simple questions and get back to me with the answers.

None of these people have been able to do this. .. Why ?, because they really can not get answers from God.

So, if God exists...... What prevents us from asking the questions? What prevents us from discovering the answers?
What if when we ask a question and there is no definable answer; that IS the answer, and we are simply asking the wrong question?

The correct question would be:

Is there a possibility that there is God?

These arguments generally reach a kind of epistemological wall. When a religious person claims "I know there is a God" he's demonstrated that his understanding of "knowledge" is very different from that of an atheist. And until this gets sorted out very little communication can happen, but too often I'll read threads where this most basic requirement - agreeing to terms - hasn't taken place. But the conversations go on and on and around and around.

My position is that while it's possible there is a god (or more than one god) nothing differentiates any of the gods people currently believe in from the much larger number of gods history has retired. They differ in the specifics but many had rich theologies and complex narratives equal to any we see today. And while most people are quite comfortable dismissing all the ancient gods there's no good reason to draw the a line in the sand between defunct and currently active religions. The others didn't fail because of some fatal flaw in their theology, a flaw not present in Christianity or Islam. They didn't even fail because they were wrong, if in fact they were. And the people who went to their graves back then believed just as fervently in their god as Christians do today. Knowing all this it's much easier to dismiss Christianity et al along with all the other defunct religions because they are all much similar than they are different.

But this has little to do with whether or not there is a god. There might be a god who is not at all like the god Christians worship. And it might even be the case that Christianity, alone among all the other defunct variations and permutations, actually are the people who got it right. I would never claim anything like knowledge that this is true. It's just possible, although statistically unlikely.

But having taken the time to look into a few of the current religions, and having been raised a Christian (with all the biblical study that implies) I can honestly say that none of them appeal to me. I don't like the messages or the things they say about many, many things. And because I think it's so unlikely any of them are true I've just decided to sit this one.

So yes, I think it's entirely possible there isn't a god. I would go so far as to say it's likely. But I'm completely open to evidence to the contrary. And if there is a god I really hope he's not the Christian one, but that's just because based on his description in the bible I think he sounds like a sociopath. Others differ, I know. But I'm not making claims about how he is, or that he is. Just how he seems.

(duplicate post removed)

For me personally, I think it's likely that there is no higher power. I honestly just can't believe it. And I've tried.

I lost my faith when I was 21. Richard Dawkins's book "The God Delusion" (the one I think you're referring to here, John) did play a role. But to say that this book is devoid of any real arguments against the idea of God would be an understatement. I do like Richard Dawkins (his book "The Greatest Show on Earth" is a must-read if you need a compendium on the evidence for evolution [I honestly believe that Darwin himself would be impressed by this book], and nothing beats "Unweaving the Rainbow", IMO), but Natural Selection comes dangerously close to being his god. He says that Darwinian evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Seeing as the Theory of Evolution says absolutely nothing about the origin of life, and even less about the origin of existence, Dawkins is wrong. Darwinian evolution does close a gap God was previously filling (why do you think Creationists hate it so much?), but why can't a god have created life that could evolve (life self-replicating RNA molecules), and then let Natural Selection and everything else that drives evolution take over? And even when we discover how life itself originated (I have to admit, I do actually expect this in my lifetime), while it will pretty much destroy the idea of a personal god, it would only make Deism intellectually fulfilling (and I think it's already happening... I harbor suspicions that Deism is on the wrong and faith in a person god is on the decline... "Nones" are NOT, by default, atheists... they are just not religious... there is a difference)

Only a certified Theory of Everything, explaining the origin of universe itself via natural causes, can make one an "intellectually fulfilled" atheist. As long as there are still gaps, the God Hypothesis will still persist. We must close all the gaps before the phrase "God is dead" can be objectively true.

I would suggest that you broaden your horizons beyond Dawkins. Bertrand Russel is good. So is A.C. Grayling. And Daniel Dennet. You want to read books by atheist philosophers... not atheist scientists.

Originally Posted by fishmatter

And if there is a god I really hope he's not the Christian one, but that's just because based on his description in the bible I think he sounds like a sociopath. Others differ, I know. But I'm not making claims about how he is, or that he is. Just how he seems.

I think that this speaks volumes as to why people do or do not believe. You hate the Christian God Jesus as where I fell in love with him and became a Christian. As the good book says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. As Jesus once indicated as to the key of faith, it all has to do with the condition of ones heart.

Originally Posted by NateHevens

I lost my faith when I was 21. Richard Dawkins's book "The God Delusion" (the one I think you're referring to here, John) did play a role. But to say that this book is devoid of any real arguments against the idea of God would be an understatement. I do like Richard Dawkins (his book "The Greatest Show on Earth" is a must-read if you need a compendium on the evidence for evolution [I honestly believe that Darwin himself would be impressed by this book], and nothing beats "Unweaving the Rainbow", IMO), but Natural Selection comes dangerously close to being his god. He says that Darwinian evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

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Just out of curiosity, before you "lost" your faith, what did it consist of? Was it just a belief that God existed and going to church now and again, or did you have a practicing faith? My guess is not the latter.

Originally Posted by montra

Just out of curiosity, before you "lost" your faith, what did it consist of? Was it just a belief that God existed and going to church now and again, or did you have a practicing faith? My guess is not the latter.

My Mom's side of the family is Roman Catholic. Her dad is a Deacon. My dad's side of the family is Jewish. My dad is a Conservative Jewish Hazzan.

When I was a kid, I was baptized and even had my first communion. I was a happy Catholic until we moved to Georgia. After a year or two of floundering, my mom converted to Judaism. 1 year later, I had my Bar Mitzvah. I became a happy Jew. Near Orthodox at one point, in fact.

Then I turned 16 and, due to personal depression (I was suicidal at some points before this, in fact), became a cynic. I also became an antitheist, but retained my belief in a higher power. To me, God was a personal god, whose name was Love, and would talk directly to you. You didn't need the Bible or dogma or tradition or any of that utter crap that could only hurt you in the long run. You just needed god.

I also believed that we were, as the late, great comedian Bill Hicks put it, a virus in shoes.

Then I became obsessed with Led Zeppelin, discovered an "article" about how Led Zeppelin was evil, found other things on the same site about how evolution is a hoax and so on, jumped down the rabbit hole, got into the debates, decided to read the God Delusion out of curiosity...

Then, one day, I was asked why I believed in a higher power. I literally had no answer beyond "because everyone else I know does". And that was the end of any faith I ever had, if I ever had any at all.

No, I wasn't a "Born-Again Christian". I never "heard God's voice". I didn't feel Jesus carrying me through every single day. So maybe I was always an atheist, and it just took me until I was 21 to admit it.

BTW... since recognizing that I was an atheist, I've also pretty much lost my depression, I'm no longer as bad a cynic as I used to be (I prefer the phrase "realistic optimist" to describe my outlook), and my view of humanity has gone from Hicks's "we're a virus with shoes" to Tim Minchin's "we're just f***ing monkeys in shoes". And I finally myself absolutely awestruck by the natural wonder that is our universe. I find that introducing "cheap, man-made myths and monsters" is an insult to everything we've learned about our world and universe for the last 2000 years. This universe, this world, this life... is more than enough for me. I don't need Heaven, or Hell, or gods, or angels, or demons, or ghosts, or souls, or spirits, or any of that man-made crap.

Give me wolves, or geysers, or clouds, or rainbows, or the ocean, or lightning, or Saturn, or the Cat's Eye Nebula, or the Pillars of Creation, of the Big Bang itself over gods any day. Give me the fact that we are made out of stars, and I am content with life.

Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson are greater luminaries than Platinga, CS Lewis, and William Lane Craig could ever hope to be.

Originally Posted by Ostap Bender

God exist, do not believe books written by devil!

Can you prove that God exists?

Of course it's possible that there is no God, or any gods.