what do y'all think? (the atheism thread)

[Sean]

Originally Posted by bas_I_am

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. - Paul Tillich
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. — Miguel de Unamuno

I wouldn't call my acknowledgment that there's a miniscule chance god exists "doubt", because I flat out do not believe there is a god. Really, it's just practical acceptance of the fact that god's existence/non-existence simply can't be proven. And it probably never will be either, given the fact that god has been perfectly constructed by believers to be exempt from any and all methods of scrutiny.

I just had a brief debate with a religious girl on another website in which she asserted that the complexities of the human body proved God's existence, because nothing that complex could possibly have come into being without the involvement of a "creator". I noted that if this was so, then that creator would presumably have to be at least as complex as humans if not moreso. I then asked her if a being's complexity inherently necessitated a creator, wouldn't that creator's complexity also necessitate a creator of their own? Her answer was that no, it didn't, because the nature of God is outside our realm of understanding. This is the kind of argument I always see. If you apply any logic or scientific method to the concept of "God", it simply gets brushed aside as irrelevant.

So believers will likely always update their descriptions and definitions of god so that he/she/it can never be disproven through human knowledge or understanding. As such, folks like myself will always just have to acknowledge on a philosophical level that sure - maybe there's a god, but I'm extremely confident that there isn't. Just like we all could actually be living in the Matrix....