I find it funny that atheists believe in not believing so much that they feel the need to spread the gospel of their disbelief to others. For some reason it is important to them to convince others to not believe. Why? Did someone steal your cookie?
I don't believe in "not believing". I just feel no need to "believe" in something of which there is no evidence. I also don't feel like I need to "spread the gospel of disbelief". However, as has been discussed before on this thread, a lot of evil in the world has been perpetrated by people who "believe" in the name of whichever god it is that they "believe" in. I think if people were less prone to belief and faith, they would also be less prone to participate in evil.
Science would find it hard to answer the question of God's existence as proving the negative is a difficult task. There is no test to see if God doesn't exist. You can get an EPT to test for pregnancy, but there is not DGE test to answer the question of "Does God exist"?
Science doesn't have to prove the negative. Pregnancy is something that exists. God is something that, based on evidence up to this point, does not appear to exist. You can only test for the existence of something if you actually have some evidence that the thing exists, which, in the case of god, we don't.
It's funny that a good portion of atheists probably to believe in the existence of aliens or ghosts. None of that has ever been proved. Many atheists are probably conspiracy theorists, but none of that has ever been proven. How do they know these theories are true...they just do.
Wrong on all three counts. I don't believe anything "just because". There has got to be good credible evidence.
Everyone believes in something. It's just hard for some to believe in a higher power as sometimes it doesn't make sense how the world could be so messed up with the existence of God. But is it really that easy to believe that we all used to be some green sludge that evolved after some cataclysmic event?
What is more believable: out of nowhere, there appeared an all powerful being that then created the universe, the earth, and all life on earth, but nothing on any of the other planets. The being then went into hiding as was never heard from again, even as his creation became destructive (and self-destructive).
or:
After one of many "big bang" events, a planet was was formed with a combination of a warm temperature, a thick atmosphere, and lots of water. The combination of these factors led to an active chemical "soup" that after millions of reactions, by chance led to the creation of a one-celled creature. Evolution explains the rest from there.
Obviously I choose the second answer, while you choose the first.
If people want science and belief to coexist, I offer math as a reason to believe. There are two types of mathematical errors that can be made. Type 1: You believe something is true when it is not. Type 2: You believe something is not true when it is. When deciding whether to believe in God think of which type of error you would rather make?
To answer that question, you have to say, what are the consequences of each error? In the case of god, there are no consequences to making the second error. There is not one speck of evidence that people who do not believe in god suffer any consequences in this life (other than the grief we get from evangelicals), and there is no evidence whatsoever of an afterlife.
People don't behave morally because they are afraid of being judged by god. People are moral creatures by nature, not because of their religion. You aren't going to find anyone who, if you take away their religion, is suddenly going to go rob a bank. If you live a good life, and when you die it turns out that god does exist, do you really think he is going to say, well, you did everything right, but you didn't believe in me, so you are going to hell? Really? I would classify a god who thought that belief in him was more important than doing good deeds as a narcissistic ass.
Given the incredibly small possibility of there actually being a god, I feel very comfortable not believing.
