Why I Don't Believe In God

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Originally Posted by WyattGwyon

The scenario is nonsensical. Your premise is that you are at the bedside of the person closest to you in the world. Obviously, if you communicate at all, this person already knows your deepest beliefs on this matter and would know if you were lying anyway.

As for disproving whether or not god is a delusion: Unbelievers have no burden of proof. One needs no reasons or explanations or proofs to not believe something. Only those making a positive assertion (e.g., god exists) need proof.

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Thanks. Said way better than I would have thought to say it.

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Originally Posted by WyattGwyon

The scenario is nonsensical. Your premise is that you are at the bedside of the person closest to you in the world. Obviously, if you communicate at all, this person already knows your deepest beliefs on this matter and would know if you were lying anyway.

As for disproving whether or not god is a delusion: Unbelievers have no burden of proof. One needs no reasons or explanations or proofs to not believe something. Only those making a positive assertion (e.g., god exists) need proof.

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Wrong! Anyone making an assertion has the explanatory onus insofar as the assertion is concerned. The statement "God is a delusion" is an assertion and, thus, requires logical justification.

Traditionally, "nonsensical" refers to language having no sense or meaning. Since you have understood the content of my post, you cannot mean that it was this variety of nonsense, so I suspect you mean that the situation is inconsequential, which would seem wrong. Also, I think you ignore the fact that a person on his deathbed will necessarily act in accordance with his past behaviors. I think it's also presumptuous that this person will just take your previous beliefs for granted. I think death has the affect of making people reconsider things.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

Okay, you asked for it. Unfortunately, I'm not nearly as nice as Bienvenu.

You make the assertion that "Belief in God can ONLY be delusional in a reality where God is never seen or heard." Please try and, consequently, fail to demonstrate that assertion logically. I would assert that there are any number of things I have never seen or heard that, nonetheless, exist such as the set of real numbers, love, logical absolutes, morality. Perhaps if you didn't subscribe to some 19th Century materialism you wouldn't say such things. Of course, it's fairly common for New Atheists to make sweeping indefensible assertions about the nature of existence. So please, I await your logical justification eagerly. Please also demonstrate how you navigate the treacherously inductive impasse of determining that no one has ever, anywhere, heard or seen God--unless, of course, you admit that it is possible that someone has in fact seen or heard Him, but then one would wonder why you're calling it delusional. Your justifications, if you succeed should be worthy of publication in the academic presses.

By the way, no one believes in a physical or contingent God; therefore, a discussion of identifying physical objects is irrelevant, as is asking who moved the prime mover, which is by definition impossible. That the universe had a beginning isn't simply Christian apologetics but current cosmology. Do you disbelieve the Big Bang theory?

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I don't know who you're talking about at this point, and I don't think you do either. It seems like you are fighting just to fight. Most Christians do believe in a physical God. If a thing created a physical world with physical beings, that thing should continue to be able to interact with the physical world.

Numbers are a system created by humans. Love and morality come from people, they are ideas. They are ideas that are still based on more physical cause and effect than religion is, but they're concepts. No one is claiming love and morality have their own consciousness and created a universe and thinking beings, no one I know of anyway.

The big bang theory is based on something you clearly don't understand. The universe we are familiar with is expanding. It doesn't shrink. It isn't constant. That, and other factors, mean that it used to be smaller. At some point it was probably very condensed, very very minuscule, before things began to grow into our universe. The big bang theory doesn't say what caused the big bang, it doesn't say what happened before, or what existed outside of compressed matter. Scientists and atheists don't use this as theism. It's not an answer to why we are here in a metaphysical sense, it's just another step in a physical timeline.

Man came along late in the game. He tried to insert a lot of different God and myth stories into our void of information (long before Christianity - see ancient China, Egypt, Greece), but we don't know what happened. It's ludicrous to say we do.

I keep forgetting how futile these conversations are.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

I don't know who you're talking about at this point, and I don't think you do either. It seems like you are fighting just to fight. Most Christians do believe in a physical God. If a thing created a physical world with physical beings, that thing should continue to be able to interact with the physical world.

Numbers are a system created by humans. Love and morality come from people, they are ideas. They are ideas that are still based on more physical cause and effect than religion is, but they're concepts. No one is claiming love and morality have their own consciousness and created a universe and thinking beings, no one I know of anyway.

The big bang theory is based on something you clearly don't understand. The universe we are familiar with is expanding. It doesn't shrink. It isn't constant. That, and other factors, mean that it used to be smaller. At some point it was probably very condensed, very very minuscule, before things began to grow into our universe. The big bang theory doesn't say what caused the big bang, it doesn't say what happened before, or what existed outside of compressed matter. Scientists and atheists don't use this as theism. It's not an answer to why we are here in a metaphysical sense, it's just another step in a physical timeline.

Man came along late in the game. He tried to insert a lot of different God and myth stories into our void of information (long before Christianity - see ancient China, Egypt, Greece), but we don't know what happened. It's ludicrous to say we do.

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You're just wrong--and arrogantly so. You don't simply get to avoid the logical justification of a flat assertion by making other flat assertions. Since you are unwilling to offer an argument ending with the conclusion "therefore belief in God can only be a delusion when he cannot be seen or heard," then I am justified in discounting the assertion.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

It seems like you are fighting just to fight.

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Following several pages of persons picking on one guy, I am all of a sudden fighting just to fight. Is it not possible that you are wrong? Being persuadable is the first criterion for engaging in reasonable dialogue.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

Most Christians do believe in a physical God.

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This is factually wrong. At most, Christians believe in a physical manifestation of an aspect of God in the person of Jesus. No Christian believes that Jesus, God or what is called the Holy Spirit ("Spirit" is a clue) is now physical. In fact, from Maimonides to Aquinas, Judeo-Christian theologians are united in the belief of God's immateriality. Just because you have already made the blunder, repeatedly insisting upon it doesn't change its wrongness.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

If a thing created a physical world with physical beings, that thing should continue to be able to interact with the physical world.

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I never stated that God couldn't interact with the physical world. So why the straw man? Is this getting to your argument with the conclusion that God is a delusion? You see, this is how rational conversations go. When you say something and fail to substantiate it, you generally lose the argument.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

Numbers are a system created by humans.

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Care to demonstrate the truth of this one while you're working on the other one? Ever hear of Roger Penrose? He's the guy who was working with Hawking on the blackholes and is considered one of the foremost mathematicians in the world. He thinks human minds are incapable of generating mathematical systems and that numbers are a part of manifest reality. Of course, he's probably deluded too. I'm sure he'd be interested in your logical justification of this bald assertion, as would every mathematician alive.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

Love and morality come from people, they are ideas.

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Morality as simply an idea derived from people is a philosophically rare notion. Most philosophers, regardless of their religion, consider it within the realm of metaphysics. So just out of curiosity, do you believe that morality exists as an idea? If so, does God exist as an idea?

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

No one is claiming love and morality have their own consciousness and created a universe and thinking beings, no one I know of anyway.

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You see, this isn't how logic works. When someone makes an assertion, they imply that the assertion is true. The logical absolute concerning an excluded middle means that any assertion is either true or false with no third option. If one makes the assertion that belief in God can ONLY be a delusion exclusively on the basis that He is not heard or seen, one is also making the implicit assertion that believing in something unheard and unseen qualifies as being delusional. To disprove your assertion, I need only provide one example in which your assertion fails, so if I find one thing unseen and unheard that we both agree isn't a delusion, then it is reasonable to conclude that your assertion is false. Morality is NOT a delusion. Is this statement true or false without qualification? YOU don't get to wander aimlessly through unrelated ideas. The law of excluded middle means it MUST be true or false. Is the set of real numbers a delusion? You see, the vast majority of reasonable persons agree that morality and the set of real numbers are NOT delusions, and it is reasonable to assume that your criteria of judgment based on seeing and hearing are false. It does not matter what you have to say about God's personal attributes because they were not a part of your assertion. So do we agree that your assertion is false? You should be careful because your assertion is necessarily false and to say otherwise is to prove your own irrationality. You see, I have neither seen nor heard you. If I believe in you is it a delusion? I have neither seen nor heard every single automobile on the planet; are the ones I haven't seen delusions?

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

The big bang theory is based on something you clearly don't understand. The universe we are familiar with is expanding. It doesn't shrink. It isn't constant. That, and other factors, mean that it used to be smaller. At some point it was probably very condensed, very very minuscule, before things began to grow into our universe. The big bang theory doesn't say what caused the big bang, it doesn't say what happened before, or what existed outside of compressed matter. Scientists and atheists don't use this as theism. It's not an answer to why we are here in a metaphysical sense, it's just another step in a physical timeline.

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Scientists gave up on eternal matter with the static models of the universe, and they gave up on static mechanisms with the steady-sate model. The orthodox Big Bang theory is, in fact, a theory of the universe's beginning. I never stated that the Big Bang named the cause. You, however, suggested a an eternal and wheellike universe in direct contradiction with the Big Bang. When you do that, you don't get to pretend I don't know anything about the theory. And reproducing here some wiki-style summary is completely irrelevant to justifying your assertion about God being a delusion. I simply want you to logically justify your assertion.

A reasonable response by you to this post can only be a justification of the assertion that belief in God who is unseen and unheard can only be a delusion. Any other response (besides admitting you were wrong) will be obviously irrelevant. If you cannot do this, you must admit to being wrong, which would demonstrate some measure of reason since the assertion is, by the way, evidently wrong.

Stuntpickle many if not most Christians do believe in a physical God. You are taking your own more sophisticated kind of Christianity and projecting it as the norm. And likening God to numbers and morality in that they are all things to believe in despite their being things we cannot see or hear is false. We cannot sense numbers or morality but we can perceive them. Not only can you not see or hear God, but you can find no trace of Him, no indication of His presence, whatsoever. Numbers and morality are apparent. God is not.

And I know very little of physics and cosmology, but I do know that in his most recent book Stephen Hawking came out with the claim that the universe did not need God in order to begin. Considering the esteem in which he is held by the scientific community, I think this ought to mean something.

I think the reason we all argued with Bienvenue is not that he believes in God, but that he believes dinosaurs existed alongside humans and that those fabricated Peruvian stones were evidence of this. I doubt you hold the same belief.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

Stuntpickle many if not most Christians do believe in a physical God. You are taking your own more sophisticated kind of Christianity and projecting it as the norm. And likening God to numbers and morality in that they are all things to believe in despite their being things we cannot see or hear is false. We cannot sense numbers or morality but we can perceive them. Not only can you not see or hear God, but you can find no trace of Him, no indication of His presence, whatsoever. Numbers and morality are apparent. God is not.

And I know very little of physics and cosmology, but I do know that in his most recent book Stephen Hawking came out with the claim that the universe did not need God in order to begin. Considering the esteem in which he is held by the scientific community, I think this ought to mean something.

I think the reason we all argued with Bienvenue is not that he believes in God, but that he believes dinosaurs existed alongside humans and that those fabricated Peruvian stones were evidence of this. I doubt you hold the same belief.

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See, this is the problem. I never "likened" God to numbers or morality. Someone else made a sweeping statement about the nature of existence and I tested the truth of those statements by using numbers and morality. This is how logical arguments are supposed to go: someone makes an assertion and then someone else tests the truth of the assertion in all cases. What happens in these discussions is that the atheists continue to confuse the issues. I'm not making statements of equivalency between God and numbers; I'm simply demonstrating the falsity of someone else's assertion.

I was making no logical arguments about Beinvenu. I was appealing to perhaps a common humanity. Someone then made the wild assertion that belief in God can only be a delusion since He is unseen and unheard. I do not defend Bienvenu's ideas about dinosaurs. And your assumption that my Christianity is somehow a rare breed of sophisticated theism is a little funny since my theological views are fairly mainstream. You do realize that even the Catholic Church accepts evolution, right? The only group of Christians that believe dinosaurs existed alongside humans is a fairly small portion of American Evangelicals.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

You're just wrong--and arrogantly so. You don't simply get to avoid the logical justification of a flat assertion by making other flat assertions. Since you are unwilling to offer an argument ending with the conclusion "therefore belief in God can only be a delusion when he cannot be seen or heard," then I am justified in discounting the assertion.




Following several pages of persons picking on one guy, I am all of a sudden fighting just to fight. Is it not possible that you are wrong? Being persuadable is the first criterion for engaging in reasonable dialogue.



This is factually wrong. At most, Christians believe in a physical manifestation of an aspect of God in the person of Jesus. No Christian believes that Jesus, God or what is called the Holy Spirit ("Spirit" is a clue) is now physical. In fact, from Maimonides to Aquinas, Judeo-Christian theologians are united in the belief of God's immateriality. Just because you have already made the blunder, repeatedly insisting upon it doesn't change its wrongness.



I never stated that God couldn't interact with the physical world. So why the straw man? Is this getting to your argument with the conclusion that God is a delusion? You see, this is how rational conversations go. When you say something and fail to substantiate it, you generally lose the argument.



Care to demonstrate the truth of this one while you're working on the other one? Ever hear of Roger Penrose? He's the guy who was working with Hawking on the blackholes and is considered one of the foremost mathematicians in the world. He thinks human minds are incapable of generating mathematical systems and that numbers are a part of manifest reality. Of course, he's probably deluded too. I'm sure he'd be interested in your logical justification of this bald assertion, as would every mathematician alive.



Morality as simply an idea derived from people is a philosophically rare notion. Most philosophers, regardless of their religion, consider it within the realm of metaphysics. So just out of curiosity, do you believe that morality exists as an idea? If so, does God exist as an idea?



You see, this isn't how logic works. When someone makes an assertion, they imply that the assertion is true. The logical absolute concerning an excluded middle means that any assertion is either true or false with no third option. If one makes the assertion that belief in God can ONLY be a delusion exclusively on the basis that He is not heard or seen, one is also making the implicit assertion that believing in something unheard and unseen qualifies as being delusional. To disprove your assertion, I need only provide one example in which your assertion fails, so if I find one thing unseen and unheard that we both agree isn't a delusion, then it is reasonable to conclude that your assertion is false. Morality is NOT a delusion. Is this statement true or false without qualification? YOU don't get to wander aimlessly through unrelated ideas. The law of excluded middle means it MUST be true or false. Is the set of real numbers a delusion? You see, the vast majority of reasonable persons agree that morality and the set of real numbers are NOT delusions, and it is reasonable to assume that your criteria of judgment based on seeing and hearing are false. It does not matter what you have to say about God's personal attributes because they were not a part of your assertion. So do we agree that your assertion is false? You should be careful because your assertion is necessarily false and to say otherwise is to prove your own irrationality. You see, I have neither seen nor heard you. If I believe in you is it a delusion? I have neither seen nor heard every single automobile on the planet; are the ones I haven't seen delusions?



Scientists gave up on eternal matter with the static models of the universe, and they gave up on static mechanisms with the steady-sate model. The orthodox Big Bang theory is, in fact, a theory of the universe's beginning. I never stated that the Big Bang named the cause. You, however, suggested a an eternal and wheellike universe in direct contradiction with the Big Bang. When you do that, you don't get to pretend I don't know anything about the theory. And reproducing here some wiki-style summary is completely irrelevant to justifying your assertion about God being a delusion. I simply want you to logically justify your assertion.

A reasonable response by you to this post can only be a justification of the assertion that belief in God who is unseen and unheard can only be a delusion. Any other response (besides admitting you were wrong) will be obviously irrelevant. If you cannot do this, you must admit to being wrong, which would demonstrate some measure of reason since the assertion is, by the way, evidently wrong.

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You think you have corrected me on several counts, but you have not. I compared the existence of matter to a wheel rather than an open and shut finite situation like Christianity. What I said in no way contradicts the big bang theory. Until God is proven, God is an idea of man. When a person has an imaginary friend, it's easy for other people to discern that the invisible person isn't there. Do you know what delusion is?

You can call me and cars delusions if you want to, but you're witnessing a physical manifestation of my self in text. The text is being witnessed by other people as well. The text can be replicated (I've posted hundreds). Many undoctored photographs of me exist. Videos and recordings of me too. Pictures I have drawn. Sculptures I have made. I am easily proven. Lots of people have seen and touched cars. They have ridden inside them, built them, repaired them. They appear in undoctored photos and videos. Do I really need to explain this to you? I don't think you are obtuse, I think you are obstinate. I hope you can be more comfortable with your choices (whatever they are) and less threatened by people who disagree with them.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

See, this is the problem. I never "likened" God to numbers or morality. Someone else made a sweeping statement about the nature of existence and I tested the truth of those statements by using numbers and morality. This is how logical arguments are supposed to go: someone makes an assertion and then someone else tests the truth of the assertion in all cases. What happens in these discussions is that the atheists continue to confuse the issues. I'm not making statements of equivalency between God and numbers; I'm simply demonstrating the falsity of someone else's assertion.

I was making no logical arguments about Beinvenu. I was appealing to perhaps a common humanity. Someone then made the wild assertion that belief in God can only be a delusion since He is unseen and unheard. I do not defend Bienvenu's ideas about dinosaurs. And your assumption that my Christianity is somehow a rare breed of sophisticated theism is a little funny since my theological views are fairly mainstream. You do realize that even the Catholic Church accepts evolution, right? The only group of Christians that believe dinosaurs existed alongside humans is a fairly small portion of American Evangelicals.

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The person you are defending is of the mind that Catholicism is a robbery and a mockery of Christianity. He said most Christians are nothing like Catholics. So which sect is mainstream? He would probably also tell you that he doesn't need defending. You're acting like a frequent contributor here is some kind of weakling who can't handle himself in debate. Here's an idea for everyone involved, be nice. :)

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

Stuntpickle many if not most Christians do believe in a physical God. You are taking your own more sophisticated kind of Christianity and projecting it as the norm. And likening God to numbers and morality in that they are all things to believe in despite their being things we cannot see or hear is false. We cannot sense numbers or morality but we can perceive them. Not only can you not see or hear God, but you can find no trace of Him, no indication of His presence, whatsoever. Numbers and morality are apparent. God is not.

And I know very little of physics and cosmology, but I do know that in his most recent book Stephen Hawking came out with the claim that the universe did not need God in order to begin. Considering the esteem in which he is held by the scientific community, I think this ought to mean something.

I think the reason we all argued with Bienvenue is not that he believes in God, but that he believes dinosaurs existed alongside humans and that those fabricated Peruvian stones were evidence of this. I doubt you hold the same belief.

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I'm sorry, Darcy, but you are wrong. You seem to know nothing about God. He is not physical, but He is spirit. There is far more evidence that man existed with dinosaurs than just a stone. There's even Biblical accounts of the dinosaur. There's descriptions of dinosaurs in the book of Job. Not ONLY in the bible, but in many writings in many cultures. I can't help it that you are too narrow minded to accept anything beyond your own belief, but there's truth out there. Truth that you are just unwilling to accept.

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Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin

I keep forgetting how futile these conversations are.

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But you keep going with it.:wave:

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Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC

I'm sorry, Darcy, but you are wrong. You seem to know nothing about God. He is not physical, but He is spirit. There is far more evidence that man existed with dinosaurs than just a stone. There's even Biblical accounts of the dinosaur. There's descriptions of dinosaurs in the book of Job. Not ONLY in the bible, but in many writings in many cultures. I can't help it that you are too narrow minded to accept anything beyond your own belief, but there's truth out there. Truth that you are just unwilling to accept.

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The so called references to dinosaurs in the bible are vague and prove nothing. Only through confirmation bias of the most abject kind can they be taken as definitive descriptions of dinosaurs. I've looked them up before after hearing a similar claim. You essentially have to believe that pretty much all scientists are corrupt in order to uphold this belief that dinosaurs co-existed with mankind. If your beliefs were supported in any meaningful way by the evidence gathered then they would become part of the science. God's intervening in the world would become part of the science if it were empirically demonstrated to have occurred. It has yet to be and I would not hold my breath.

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Originally Posted by cafolini

But you keep going with it.:wave:

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True. :)

I always start in with the intention of sharing why I enjoy being an atheist, and how a person doesn't need a God or a savior to be happy. It's supposed to be comforting, but it gets taken as an attack and I get sucked into someone else's battle. It's really not important though. Mostly I hope people are happy and not using excuses to hurt others.

And about lying on one's death bed and hoping for life after death..... I think I'd prefer that there be the nothingness that I expect. Supposing there is a God, how could I be sure that its not only the Jews or the Muslims or the Mormons who will be saved? Better nothing than the chance of hell.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

There is definitely some truth in what you say here. Being a believer by no means makes one close-minded or unreasoning, not at all. Religion, including Christianity, can be a dynamic, enlightened thing. The difference I think though is that with science EVERYTHING is on the table, nothing is above being potentially discredited. With faith that is not the case. In fact its this constant flux which has been science's greatest strength and claim to legitimacy. Nothing is sacred before the fact. It all depends on what the research shows. Every theory out there could be overturned, every law and every fact disproven, and still, science itself, the process and method, would remain unaltered. Again, with faith this is not the case.

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Change is forever. even science keeps on changing. Check out for history of science.

Yes, with science everything is on the table but also a shaker can turn the table anytime !