In religion, faith in God is a sacred cow.

Wait, what? ;)

If you want to say that there's some "force" "out there" just hanging around, go right ahead. But if you claim that it's all-powerful, has a personality, and wants to be worshipped, I call bullshit.

But Joe's challenge is why, a few years back, I had to admit I was agnostic rather than atheist.

There is no doubt in my mind that all religious texts are the superstitious bullshit of a backwards people trying vainly to describe their world. As Penn Jillette says, reading the bible is the easiest way to become an atheist. But just because those guys in the desert got it wrong, doesn't mean that there's some form* that kicked this all into motion. That, I have no way of knowing; and so the answer has to be I Don't Know and not only that but I Will Never Know.

So, even though I will only believe in things that are directly observable and provable, doesn't mean I can say there is definitely no God, whatever that word might represent.

The fact that the universe is pretty much incomprehensible is not an argument for OR against a God.



*The superstitious people wanted that form to be semi-human, to have human shape, human thinking. We all want our God to be describable in human terms. It may not be.

You can be both. Most atheists* are agnostic. If an omnipotent being wanted to hide, it could. But just because it's theoretically possible doesn't mean it's worth believing.

*ETA: I suspect that many theists are, as well.
Do you believe? Atheist or Theist
Can you be 100% certain? Agnostic or Gnostic

A mystery wrapped in an enigma.
 

What God is depends on what your definition of "is" is.

It doesn't even have to be omnipotent, just smart enough to fool us very thoroughly.

By the same argument, I'm equally agnostic on gnomes.

I'd say it's only as powerful, has personality and wants to be worshiped just about as much as the collection of about $100.00 worth chemicals typing on these keyboards. Actually this force may have more personality.

The difference between the two propositions though, is this: the idea that God exists isn't based on any observable or measurable phenomena. That is to say, every observable phenomena which we have been able to measure has offered a non-deity explanation. The unseeable energy that so many people are prepared to believe in wasn't just posited as an idea, it was arrived at through the use of mathematics, and observations of other, observable phenomena reacting to or being affected by 'something' unseen. More importantly, their findings could be replicated by others using the same methods.

And yes, there are gaps left to be filled. But why would my mind not rebel at the notion of God? 'God' has been offered time and again as the answer to the great questions, but nobody as yet has been able to find any real sign of the existence of 'God', either in terms of measurable and observable phenomena, or in terms of unobservable but mathematically theorised effects on same.

Everytime we go a little further in, God gets pushed a little further out. And still people say: ahhh, but...you can't say he doesn't exist. He can't be found, and his effect on the world cannot be measured, or even inferred (in scientific terms) from other natural phenomena. Time and again, our greatest scientists and most creative minds dig a little deeper and time and again the explanation is not God. We go further in and deeper down, we go further out and bigger scale, and it is never God we find.

I don't trust the words of priests, or holy books, or spiritually inclined people on this matter, because their 'methods' are suspect. I don't trust the feeling of 'there must be something there' and I don't trust the feeling of 'someone watching over me'.

I do trust, broadly, the scientific method to increase our understanding of our world and universe. I trust them to occasionally get it wrong, or misread the evidence. I also trust them to revisit and revise and I trust each new generation of scientists approaching a problem to go further.

Why would my mind 'rebel' at the idea of something I cannot see, but which can be shown through mathematics (as much as anything the building blocks of existence) and observation of phenomena in repeatable formulas as possible or probable?

Why would my mind not rebel at something which cannot be seen, proved, theorised beyond the simple feeling of 'something must be behind it all' and yet is broadly accepted as truth by vast numbers of people, simply because other people who also felt sure there must be something behind it all said so thousands of years ago. Why would my mind not rebel at a work of fantasy masquerading as fact?

What's the quote about one man's science being another man's magic?

Science has been able to explain (not prove) almost everything since the big bang. If you want to say that god is what created matter/energy, and caused the big bang, you'll get no argument from me. Beyond that, I'll argue.

Because sooner or later we'll kick the football?

Dunno

But I do know that we've come a long way, but we are still pretty stupid. And our egotism keeps getting in the way when we describe the universe -- and probably when we describe this God thing, too. We are handcuffed by our concept of what we thought God would be: a better, smarter version of ourselves, most of the time, which now seems ridiculous.

I think as human beings we understand the world in terms of social relationships and agency. 'God' is our way of imposing social relationships and agency onto the universe.

This. If one is sufficiently humble about what we can and cannot know, then God and science converge on being synonymous. But the egomaniacal twats take up both far ends of the spectrum--one ends up with a bearded-man-God who wants to tell everybody what to do, and the other can't help but masturbate to the certainty that we are so much better and smarter than our animal instincts.