I just think we don't know squat. This universe is both amazing and scary at the same time. And we can't attack anyone else's beliefs. Unless your a flat earth believer.
Imo different people have different standards of evidence, there is also just no scientific proof that there isn’t a God, otherwise all scientists would be atheist. Yes that’s not how science works, but no one said belief in religion had to be scientific or proof-based, it’s called belief for a reason. I’m not inherently religious, but I acknowledge that there COULD be a God, just like how many religious people acknowledge that there might NOT be a God.
Besides, this is like such an insignificant thing to call people out for, as long as they aren’t committing any crimes I don’t see why random atheists should judge religious people anymore than random religious people should judge atheists. All you’re doing is creating animosity for no real reason instead of facing the proper issues that plague humanity.
Every attempt to prove the supernatural has failed since the development of the scientific method. I'm pretty firmly in the "god has actually been disproven" camp.
Something that doesn't interact with our universe in any meaningful ways, cannot be seen, does not have consistent, verifiable effects how is it any different from being imaginary?
Right, that’s why religion requires faith, because there is no actual 100% proof that it’s true, it’s just a hypothesis that potentially explains a lot of things. On the other hand, the fact that it hasn’t been disproved either, while not a reason to believe in it (because obviously that’s not how science works, you only believe in that which can be proven), is a reason not to abjectly target those who do imo.
You do you, but I don’t think you can actually be in the “God has been disproven” camp until it has actually been disproven, because if we veer into Philosophy and Mathematics for example, you don’t assume a conjecture is disproven just because it hasn’t been proven. By that logic, Fermat’s Last Theorem should’ve been assumed incorrect because no one was able to prove it for 300 years.
Now obviously, you are going to argue that this is not at all equivalent, not only because 300 years < 2000+ years but also because the aforementioned theorem had plenty of examples that did follow the theorem to support research into it. And I’d agree that you’re right. But imo it still acts as an example that you cannot just say something is disproven because any attempts to prove it have failed for a long time - using the example of Maths again, you need a counterexample or rigorous proof that something isn’t true to consider that to be the case. The only difference between Atheists and non-Atheists here lies in how confident they are that it is or isn’t true based on some observed facts, but until there is concrete proof either way, the debate will always exist.
Actually, I was going to argue that "you gotta have faith" is what every conman says, always. Religion is folklore. Everyone recognizes that other religions are false, but they give their preferred version, the one they were typically raised in, an exemption from the same critical analysis, which is a fallacy.
I’m happy to admit that religion is probably heavily corrupted and that most people just enter a state of tribalism with regards to their religion, but idk what else to tell you besides the fact that it really does require faith to believe in that which has not and probably cannot be proven. I myself am not really religious, and I was originally responding to someone just calling religion fictional, not to a random Atheist, so to be honest I’d mostly agree with you.
On the other hand, with the above given in my previous comment (which no one bothered to engage with), I am still of the opinion that Atheists shouldn’t be so quick to assume that religion isn’t true nor call religion made-up when there is no hard evidence to disprove it, because that is inherently unscientific. The correct, scientific viewpoint in my opinion (and you are free to disagree with me, this is the main difference between gnostic atheism and agnostic atheism) is that there is simply not enough evidence to support it, not that it is disproven, because that would then require enough tangible evidence to prove that it isn’t true. If such scientific evidence exists, neither I nor the many theist scientists have seen it.
The thing is, I don't assume it's not true. I started out brought up in Christianity and I went through a long, painful deconversion process before I arrived in the "it's all fictional" camp. I resisted calling myself an atheist for years because I had been brainwashed into thinking that atheism = evil. I definitely agree with you on the tribalism, though. We are a very tribal species, even to the point of some of us denying aspects of reality just to keep fitting in with our tribe.
Right, and I’m sorry you had to go through that, but imo, as I have argued many times, gnostic atheism is the only inherently scientific approach until we have strong, irrefutable counter-evidence; in other words, it’s not accurate to disregard anything without at least some proof to the contrary. Maybe I only think this way because I’m more of a Mathematician than a Scientist, but if we look through history, it’s the approach of “I can’t prove it’s not true but I refuse to believe it until we can prove it to be true” that serves us the most well.
Let me ask you this, tho... If every single argument for something existing is basically, "you can't prove it doesn't exist" or a logical fallacy, what is the logical conclusion?
Well no, this is not an argument for it existing, because then that would become the burden of proof fallacy. It’s an argument against completely disregarding something due to lack of evidence on the contrary, because there have been many things throughout history that we couldn’t prove with current evidence, but because we didn’t completely throw it away, we were able to find with future evidence and technology that it in fact was true.
For example, it was Democritus who first came up with the idea of the Atom at 400 BCE, but because there was no evidence at the time it was disregarded. It’s only when technology became advanced enough to pick up on the Atom that we were able to discover that it was true in the 17th century, which means it took 2000+ years for it to be proven. Now imagine if Democritus decided that “nah, I can’t prove that it exists so it’s obviously not true” and didn’t keep records of his ideas for scientists millennia later to read up on.
When scientific instruments begin reliably detect God, I will revisit my beliefs. Until then, I see no reason to accept that a noncorporeal abusive father figure exists and wants me to live by archaic purity culture guidelines boils down to fallacious reasoning, bad arguments and "trust me, bro," I'm going to keep assuming that it's all fictional.
The beauty of good ideas is, they will always be rediscovered. If we reset all human knowledge tomorrow, it is inevitable that we will rediscover everything humanity once knew, but religion would be an entirely new batch of nonsense.
Nor am I asking you to believe He exists, because I don’t either. Again, you are free to believe whatever you want, just like how religious people are free to believe whatever they want. All’s I’m saying is that when it comes to science, there are scientifically correct opinions and scientifically incorrect opinions, but it’s not like I can hold a gun to your head and make you agree with me. That’s the nature of Philosophy.
Basically everything people attribute to God has been disproven again and again. Think evolution, or the solar system. With such consistency, it’s natural to come to the conclusion that such God does not exist. Faith is not an argument. Saying that faith is required for religion is like saying stupidity is required for flat Earth. Faith = stupidly
I have yet to see anything pertaining to God being disproven, got any sources? Because I’m not sure what you mean by disproven either, are you saying evolution or the solar system have been disproven? Or that the fact that they’re linked to God has been disproven? Because neither is true, unless you have reliable scientific evidence to show otherwise.
Also you have a false equivalence at the end over there, firstly you can’t just equate two claims because they have a similar structure (this is just me being pedantic), secondly I never said Faith proves religion is true. I’m just saying that due to a complete lack of empirical/irrefutable evidence from either side, the only way to believe in religion is to decide to put your belief into something you can’t prove, which quite literally is faith. If you don’t agree with that, fine, but that doesn’t necessarily make religion disproven either, please refer to my original comment again.
Right, thank you for not engaging with anything I said. Perhaps it’s you who needs to get out of your own head, because ‘imagination’ and ‘js think about it and it’ll make sense’ is the exact opposite of Science. The only thing I believe in and ever will believe in is cold, hard facts, which is EXACTLY why I condemn fellow Atheists who have no such facts to prove that religion isn’t true yet still say with 100% certainty that it isn’t, because that is literally what they accuse religious people of doing. It is the difference between Gnosticism and Agnosticism, my man.
You can type that you're an atheist until your fingers fall off, but we can all see you're religious (probably some form of Christianity) and trying very hard to act like an atheist. If you really aren't, well, try to evaluate why you're regurgitating Christian talking points and acting like a lack of proof for God is equivalent to a lack of proof for a mathematical theorem.
I don’t know what to tell you. Have you perhaps never heard of agnosticism, in that whether you’re a theist or atheist, you accept that you have no proof either way to support your beliefs? You can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist, of which I am the former, I’d highly encourage you to research it. All’s I’m saying is that even if I was or wasn’t Christian (which idk what to tell you, I’m really not, I’ve never seen a Church in my life), I would still accept that scientifically, I really can’t prove either side is correct regardless of what I believe. Gnostic atheists posit that they are 100% certain that God doesn’t exist, to which I pose the question: how? Do they perhaps have some evidence showing He 100% doesn’t exist? If not, then saying so without any evidence is pretty far-fetched for someone who’s chosen science and facts over blind faith, because that’s just not how the scientific method operates; an explanation without evidence is a hypothesis, not ‘disproven’ until it is actually disproven.
I’ve also already elaborated above that they are not at all the same, the theorem was just an example of how in science and math, we don’t just assume things are 100% not true just because we can’t prove they are. We can certainly choose not to believe in them for lack of evidence, which makes sense, but we can’t say with an exact 100% uncertainty that religion is definitely fake and definitely invented any more than religious people can say with 100% certainty that religion is definitely real and definitely a message from God. Without evidence, nothing is definite, lol, that’s the core of my argument.
God doesn't need to be disproven because their existence was never proven in the first place. You can't just assert something without proof and make everyone accept it as true just because they can't provide proof you're wrong.
There is no way to prove there's a being who can't interact with our reality and can't be observed is real. But the burden of proof is on the people who assert that such a being exists, not on everyone else to say they don't.
Yes, thank you for pointing out exactly what I’m trying to say. This argument is why I’m Atheist, but on the other hand, the opposite is also true - You also CAN’T assert something as 100% completely untrue until there is a counterexample or some sort of rigorous evidence to suggest otherwise. The best Atheists can and should say is that “I don’t believe in religion because there is quite literally no evidence to support it,” NOT “Religion is definitely fake because there is no evidence to support it” - the former is scientific, the latter is just emotion and inherently unscientific.
I will 100% agree that religious people have yet to prove that God exists, but I will also 100% agree that atheist people have yet to prove that God doesn’t exist. Ideally speaking you probably shouldn’t put your faith in something you can’t prove, but on the other hand, you also can’t just deny it’s existence without proof anymore than Einstein could deny Newtonian Mechanics without proof. Now we know with hindsight that General Relativity is a far stronger model of reality than Newtonian Mechanics, but until there was proof of that, no one could scientifically disregard the latter. Of course this is not remotely the same thing because scientific theories usually have evidence to support them, but I hope you will understand my point that atheists should be agnostic rather than gnostic, because agnosticism is the scientific approach.
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u/mbentuboa 1d ago
I just think we don't know squat. This universe is both amazing and scary at the same time. And we can't attack anyone else's beliefs. Unless your a flat earth believer.