existence-of-god, strong-atheism, weak-atheismIf someone asks you if there is a 100 foot tall man in Kansas, do you feel uncomfortable in saying “No”? How about if they ask you if you have a dead body in your closet? Do you say “We can never be sure, so in probability no, but one can never say”?
Why not say “There is no God”, without qualification? Are you afraid that you might be wrong? Well, haven’t you ever been wrong?
Do you ever make affirmative, positive, unambiguous denials? If you do, and you call yourself an atheist, why not say “There is no God”. Everyone understands that if you are shown to be wrong, you’ll accept it.
What’s the point of being a weak atheist? Shows that you are open-minded? Are you open-minded about fornicating with a dead cat if someone said that there are therapeutic effects to doing so? Or do you simply say “No, I do not believe that there are therapeutic effects of fucking a cat, but one can never say never”?
Learned wisdom, my dear. By answering the question outright, you are leaving yourself open to a well-known theist tactic of bait-and-switch, particularly if you let them get away with asking the question without defining the god of whom they speak. What they will do is define “god” as something so ephemeral that it’s hard to disagree with them: “god is existance” is one I’ve seen recently. The train of this person’s arguement then leapt to claiming that accepting “god as existance” meant accepting the deist position, and from there with barely a blink claimed that in a deistic universe the existance of Jesus was at least a possibility, and so ALAKAZAM!!! the whole xian mythology was somehow proven. Unless I have several hours to laboriously track back and try to get them to unpack these claims and explain to me very clearly the steps by which they leapt from A to B - only to find that their closing arguement is “well, I just beleive it, so there” - I prefer to hedge a little.
Besides, I don’t know for sure that we’re not all living in the Matrix after all.
I just think it’s kind of prickish. I don’t know for certain, and, unlike some theists (and some atheists), I don’t pretend to know for certain. So I’m not going to play that game and get in someone’s face, and try to force my unsupported opinion down their throat.
I simply say, “I don’t believe in god,” because that’s a factually accurate statement.
The reason most atheists are reluctant to say “No” to “is there a god” is because it is a poor question. The question I could ask back is “what kind of god”? If it is about the predominantly christian view of an “all-powerful super-natural” kind of god my answer would most definitely be “No”. Then there is the example of some random tribe who calls a certain tree or the sun or the moon their god and I would say “yes”, I can see the tree/sun/moon. But when they attach certain super-natural things to their gods, as in “our tree makes it rain if we sacrifice a goat at its roots” I’d again have to say “No”.
The question “Is there a god” should always be followed with “what kind of god are we talking about?” before answering.
I wouldn’t call it “concessions.” I’d call it “speaking precisely.” I can assert without blinking that “there is no evidence for a deity or deities,” because that’s true until and unless such evidence is presented and repeatedly tested for veracity. It’s not my problem if the theist who asked the question doesn’t understand how the scientific method works.
If you do, and you call yourself an atheist, why not say "There is no God".
I think because the Theory of concise creation is not falsifiable: scientists usually works with systems which has constraints, but the universe has no limits and there's always possibility that something may be found, e. g. a god hiding behind the star or planet (who on earth needs that imperceptible god which doesn't even answer your prayers?); however, there may be much evidences (and they appear every day) that the universe was not created by conscious creator though, so you may say "There 99.99999999999(9)% no God" and every new day with a bit of knowledge you get another trailing 9.
The onus of proof is on the believer. Atheists accept that you can’t prove a negative, it is the irrationally thinking theists that ignore this little fact.
I am quite happy to say I don’t believe in a god because I have not seen any evidence to support the existence of one.
For those that qualify their answers on the existance of god it is not a matter of being scared they are wrong but a perfectly rational way of saying there is no evidence for it.
As Richard Dawkins has said, if he was to ever meet god(no matter how unlikely). “Why did you work so hard to hide yourself?”
As far as fucking cats as a medicinal cure, show me the evidence of clinical trials and peer reviewed papers and I’ll believe it too.
score: 4
How gullible would you have to be to give even the slightest credence to the Tooth Fairy’s existence? Why would an adult human being ever be prepared to say “I can’t be 100% sure that the Bogeyman is not hiding under my bed - because maybe he is.”
I’m not that gullible - God does not exist. Which god? All of them. Trot them out one by one, name them, describe them, and I’ll tick them off as non-existent.
There is no BENEFIT in making an absolute claim that “There is no God.” and there is a regular and proven negative effect: Believers use such claims to say, “See… the atheist is acting on faith in things that can’t be proven just as much as I am, so atheism is a religion and they’re in no position to judge what WE believe.”
Further, an atheist is cautious about making positive truth claims/assertions. “I see no evidence for the existence of the God you propose, and will not take any actions in the belief that it does.”
It’s the “take action” part that is important. You don’t REALLY, TRULY believe something unless you act on said belief, establishing that you truly believe the action to be “worthwhile” or in your best interest. So it is “good enough” and in no way “weak” for an atheist to say, “I see no value in your claim and I will not incorporate it into the criteria upon which I take action.”
When asked this question, I always follow up with “What is God?”. This is because by answering this question without being given a coherent definition of “God” the atheist has already made a concession - that God is a rational, definable concept. It is not. No theist is ever able to give a coherent definition of what God actually is - some will readily admit that God is undefinable or unknowable. In this case the conversation must stop, because the theist literally fails to know what he is talking about. It makes just about as much sense as me making up a word and saying I believe in it, without giving a rational definition. Example:
Person 1: I believe in a blark
Person 2: What is a blark?
Person 1: The blark is undefinable
Person 2: Do you have evidence that the blark exists?
Person 1: It rained for three hours on Sunday
Does this seem like a reasonable conversation? Absolutely not, and the blame lies with Person 2 — he has accepted the concept of the blark without pointing out that its completely vacuous. This is the same with God. When the theist cannot provide a coherent definition, it becomes unworthy of any consideration.
The English language doesn’t have a concise way to distinguish between factual statements and statements that you assume, based on ample evidence, to be factual (but don’t actually know for certain).
Thus, if asked whether “2 * 2 = 4” we say “yes”. This is a factual statement that directly follows from the axioms of arithmetic. Likewise, if someone asks whether the time that a photon takes to get from the Sun to the Earth is approximately 8 minutes, we also answer “yes”.
But this is a fundamentally different kind of knowledge. It may in fact be true that the distance and speed of light is thus, and this would be a factual information. But we many never be certain, philosophically speaking. There is always the possibility that all our measures are misinterpreted, all our instruments skewed, all our inferences false.
Still, nobody would be tempted to answer “yes, with 99.9999…% probability” – or even “I believe so”. That is absurd.
I don’t know why so many people treat the existence of a god differently.
Of course we may never know. But the evidence is overwhelming. Every known religion is fundamentally flawed and self-contradictory, every miracle ever investigated turned out to be not miraculous, and every prophesied apocalypse just another Monday.
Making concessions instead of using clear language has one serious consequence: it makes the statement considerably less understandable. Clear language is a virtue, and clear arguments don’t benefit from overly convoluted statements of a very simple assertion.
The probability for any god's existence is so slim that for practical reasons you can say "there is no god" same as one can say that "there is no Santa" or "there are no unicorns" or "there are no faeries" and etc.
Of course, there is this 0.000000001% (or whatever) chance that there is god, but all evidence show that there isn't and that there is no need for one. Same can be applied about any other made up entities like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Russel's Teapot, etc.
Of course, if some evidence will show up that will require or prove the existence, probably all atheists will believe. It was already discussed here, and you can read my answer here.
Nevertheless, the theists' God is pretty much proven to be nonexistent, and you can find arguments about it in this question.
(And I know that I am repeating some of the points already made by others, but, well, there's only so much you can say about it...)
I believe its because we were brought with like that. From our childhood we were made to be “scared” of god. “He will punish you if you do something bad” etc. Its really hard to get it out our heads, even though we are very rational.
When we were kids, we prolly werent that rational and believed in whatever the elders said. So now, trying to go against what we were brought up with is in a way difficult. All we need is more time to get that concept out of our head and then we can say for sure “There is no God”
I think it may be an effort to not offend or upset a believer by not coming out directly against their believe. It occurred to me recently it’s similar to not telling a child that Santa does not exist. You know it’s not true, but you don’t want to burst their bubble that they seem to so much enjoy.
I don’t believe god exists, but I can’t prove it. I could be wrong.
This is a bit of a strawman question. I can't actually disprove a 1000-ft man in Kansas. But it seems ridiculous. I can say "No, there is no such man" because it is unlikely that people will disagree with me.
Also a "man" comes with a lot of definition, even generalizing it to "human" introduces alot of assumptions (such as being a certain shape, and a certain physiology). And without that definition you aren't talking about a (hu)man anymore.
Add to that the fact that the definition of God is entirely subject to a person's interpretation, means that there is no definition to base a discussion around.
While, yes, we can't know for sure there is a God, this is the same as us not knowing for sure that there isn't a teapot orbiting the sun.
I comfortable expressing doubt about a 100-foot-tall man in Kansas because I understand the square-cube law. People are physical things and subject to certain constraints, so it’s easy to dismiss such an idea.
The rules are different for God; He’s supposed to be some disembodied, all-powerful force that permeates the Universe, and not bound by any of the same physical laws we are (at least, that’s the propaganda). Is it possible for such a being to exist? I cannot say with any certainty one way or the other. I don’t think so, and I behave accordingly, but I can’t apply the same reasoning that I do for the 100-foot-tall man.
Put another way, there are always going to be gaps for God to hide in; there are no such gaps available for 100-foot-tall freaks.
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