I'm a nonrelgious person...but your's is a complicated question. I used to feel a need to have to explain myself on the issue, but now, not so much. Which isn't me taking a shot at you, but rather a general comment.

So, in short: It's complicated.

Because if he exsisted I would have issues with him.
A kind loving god my ass.
We're his children?
Then he treats us like crap.
If i believed in him I'd have to believe in magic, and we know magic is just illusions and slieght of hand.


Just a few reasons why.....

I don't believe in a creator as depicted by the character of a god. My reasons:

There is absoluetly no logic or rational thought that can conclude that the god of Hebrews, Islam and Christianity is as they define. There simply no continuity between maker and creation - perfection that can't create perfectly can't be a god.

Of course there could be a creator who is not 'exactly' the perfect god as those above believe. In which case, we are simply either animals in a cage or an experiment.

I prefer to believe in no god rather than to deny rationall and logic and I definately would not worship a a creator whose experiments are at our expense.

The God that people talk about is not the true God.

Truth trancends meaning, meaning trancends language - and God is a word.

I am an atheist because every "pro-God" belief/ argument/ dogma I've seen so far reduces to nonsense - except those which sidestep reason altogether.

What is the purpose of applying language to the question of God?

We all know ways to awaken our hearts.

...and "atheist" is just a word.

...and "atheist" is just a word.

massagetrade,

Do you believe that humans, as we are today and with our technology today, can know everything about the universe?

Spidercmb
No, we cannot
We don't even know if there's an end in the universe
We don't even know if there's another earth in the universe
All we have right now is only theory
which we can't prove with our technology today

It’s certainly true that we can’t know everything about the universe in which we live. But that’s not really a religious issue.

One thing that we CAN know is that ancient religious doctrines that were written by men are full of inconsistencies and contain obvious male-chauvinistic views as well as bigotry based on superstitions and myths that were popular in ancient times.

There are also things that we CAN know about the universe in which we live. Like the fact that we evolved out of it and that we are obviously part of it. We are made of precisely the same stuff that everything around us is made of. In fact, we already know that the entire universe is made up of just a few fundamental constituents, namely the quarks, leptons, and bosons. And we even have come to realize that those apparent ‘particles’ are actually nothing more than pulses and waves that come and go according to specific rules of probability and chance. It’s not just chaos, it’s chaos with rules, and the universe as a whole is obvioulsy one contiguous thing.

So it’s not like we can’t know anything.

To suggest that because we can’t know everything we must resort to accepting superstition based on blind faith is an empty argument but, unfortunately, one that many religious people resort to in an attempt to sell their particular brand of religion. I think it’s pretty sad when their doctrine is so weak that the only thing that can be used to support it is the idea that we having nothing better to go by. That’s untrue. We do have better things to go by than stories written by ancient people who were seriously in the dark about our place in this universe or even the size of the universe itself. All of the people in the ancient world believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that the stars existed in heaven. We don’t call the skies “the heavens” for nothing. This is what the ancients actually believed. They believed that only two things exist - Heaven and Earth. And all of there stories assumed that picture.

Today we know that this isn’t the case.

I don't think God created us.
I think we created God.

Why?

Simple. We needed something to use to "explain the unexplainable". You know, the things we pass off as "miracles". Better to credit it to an unproven source, rather than attempt an explanation.

Very true Knoxman, and there’s the obvious catch that is a real nemesis.

Once we resort to attributing things we can’t explain to a God, we are stuck with the fact that there are both good things, and bad things that we can’t explain.

So then we realize that we need a good God and a bad God. But we find that idea repulsive so we end up making the good God the “Almighty God” and the bad God a mere lowly demon who the good God simply patronizes.

Then we end up with a whole can of worms that becomes inconsistent and contradictive.

It’s better to just accept that we haven’t yet figured out why certain things happen.

Here are some quotes by Richard Feynman that relate to the topic of knowing things:

"I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me." – Richard Feynman

"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama. " – Richard Feynman

“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.” – Richard Feynman

When we resort to blind faith as an explanation for things we are shirking our responsibility to help future generations (our children) better understand the universe they live in.

I don’t mean that we shouldn’t have personal religious values, etc. But when we cross the line and attempt to put those views into societies laws, or schools, then we have indeed become advocates of supporting blind ignorance over genuine knowledge and discovery.

Spider, I answered your question indirectly in the previous post. I suspect you knew the answer when you asked.

Spider, I answered your question indirectly in the previous post. I suspect you knew the answer when you asked.

Religious beliefs are not the only beliefs which reduce to nonsense on close examination.

massagetrade said:
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"I am an atheist because every "pro-God" belief/ argument/ dogma I've seen so far reduces to nonsense - except those which sidestep reason altogether."
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If we can't know everything about the universe with our current state of technology and our current brain capacity, then why assume that God would make sense in the lense of your reason? Wouldn't a computer confuse the heck out of a caveman? Assuming that an all powerful being existed and created the universe, why then apply our limited knowledge and reason to the task of determining if God exists? Compared to God, our intellect is far less than a caveman and God is far more difficult to understand than a computer.

God promised to show His face to all who seek him. I can't tell you enough how important it is to seek God's face with an open and honest heart. Your reason and logic and sciences will never prove or disprove God's existance, but He is so willing to show Himself to you.

yup what he said.
They call it "faith" for a reason but the proof is all around you if you but take the time to look. (with an open mind)
Ive seen prayers answered in a matter of minutes so mabe im a lot luckier than most.

i still say to all the disbelievers.... go to the laboratory and make a blade of grass from chemicals. when you get done trying mabe youll appreciate the complexity of any life and therefore the absurdity that it couuld all happen by some accident. It was designed, like a tree, a person, or a fly. Admitting there was a designer is a big step toward appreciating that there MUST be a God.

""why then apply our limited knowledge and reason to the task of determining if God exists?""

Exactly. He he he.

Why not? Wouldn't it be great if scientists could prove the existence of a higher state of being?

Religion to me is a damper on science and the quest for human perfection and evolution. It is basically a break put on the human race so that we don't accomplish all the wonderful things we can accomplish... IF there was no religion in the world.