Why do people believe in gods anymore? There's no evidence of any of them existing

No way bro, Odin revealed himself to me, it's as real as it gets.

>proving/disproving the existence of metaphysical beings with modern day technology
Good luck with that. We can't see beyond the borders of our own physical realm, so discussing the existence of such a being is utterly pointless. Discussing the pros and cons of organised religion and the hypothetical existence of such a being, now that's another thing.
People believe in shit, because it provides them with answers we can't even begin to explain yet. Get over it.

>Wheres the PROOF putting my hand on a hot stove will hurt
>"Try it faggot"
>Lol meme reaction

>answers
you mean "hurr durr god dun did it"?

Durr

God is not a bearded man in the sky, an omnipotent deity, or even sentient. At least, not that we know. "God" is the point from which matter was created.

not an argument

Yeah. And "hurr durr god dindu nothig lelelelele dumb kristian"

>Babby's first philosophy

>if i change the definition God exists
Amazing.

okay but there are ways to verify, test and document hot things hurting. meditation is not and seems completely indistinguishable from any other hallucination or made up premonition.

>There is no proof for metaphysical beings inside the physical realm

Why do people who state this act like they are clever or have somekind of profound knowledge? when they've just outed themselves as a migrant from /r/atheism

I never claimed he existed.

This is not philosophy.

well

where is it

there is none

the religious have to resort to insults instead of refuting any points

>He even managed to misunderstand the post

Does it bother you to realize that your line of logic can be used to justify belief in fairies, goblins, flamboyant little puerto rican gnomes, and loyal millenial women?

>atheists this dumb

Religion, a public institution, enforces the collective belief in the entity of god/gods as a means of reinforcing its own power and justification for its actions.

Bad argument if you want a good one you should say "...to justify belief in any God or religion you so choose" friend

by no proof it obviously means nothing that has been presented that can't be debunked with simple logic
if there's any real evidence I'd like to see it

People "believe" in gods because the vast majority of the population would otherwise be justified in redistribution of wealth.

Gommies only hate God because he is a rival of the great red God of gibedat.

If something cannot be proven to exist by any means, then it must have no physical presence within existence and thus effectively doesn't exist. If something has no effect on reality, why should we say it exists? Labeling it 'spiritual' or 'metaphysical' doesn't change this.

>meditation
Meditation is the induction of an altered state of conscious. Saying God is real because you meditated on it is no different than saying he's real because you say him in a dream or while high. It's no proof of existence.

concise, correct, and no thesaurus abuse. 10/10 user.

Define "exist", "proven", or "reality".

You are acting superior for literally pointing out the absolute basics of epistemology.
You're an empiricist, there's nothing wrong with that, but read even a fraction of philosophy and maybe you wont sound like such a cunt.

Also, not everything within science is ultimately empirical (denoted by physical presence), there are semi-empirical truths, such as axioms and laws.
If we can accept these as truths, then we are essentially engaging in continental rationalism. Therefore rationalism has merit.

Can be used to justify belief literally anything you can imagine. Feel free to believe in magic and imaginary characters, just don't be surprised when people treat you like a retard and ask you to prove your beliefs in some tangible way.

You are ignorant.

I'm just recommending you read the tiniest bit of philosophy to better understand YOUR OWN beliefs. I'm not attempting to prove Gods existence.

>magic and imaginary characters
>retard
This is why people find Atheists annoying.

he doesn't need to because you haven't defined God

How have I acted superior or like a 'cunt'? What's wrong with you?

>Define "exist", "proven", or "reality".
To exist is to have some kind of presence within the universe. If something has some sort of physical presence, then its existence can be proven. Maybe God is real and we just don't have the means to prove it yet, I'll accept that possibility, but its nothing but a fantasy until proof can be provided.

For something to be proven is for its truth to be confirmed by evidence such as observation and experiment. You can argue that nothing can be proven, but that accomplishes nothing. I can say I can't prove that fire burns me, but my hand will still burn if I set it on fire, so as far as I'm concerned it is 'proven' that fire burns me. On the other hand I can't prove that God is not real, but no observation or experimentation will give me any reason to believe otherwise.

Reality, as far as humanity should be concerned, is everything that can be observed and proven to exist (not everything that actually has been proven). There may be far more in reality than we can ever observe or prove, but without observation or proof we have no reason to believe anything specific, only accept it as a possibility.

Also I should clarify I'm not a philosopher and I'm not saying these are absolutely true definitions. These are just what seem to me to be the most reasonable ways of defining them.

It doesn't matter that you're not trying to prove god's existence, I'm saying that it's completely reasonable to consider it ridiculous.

I used the word magic and imaginary characters because that's literally what we're talking about here. If this were about Roman mythology or Islam's view of God or Norse mythology I would use the same terms.

Imaginary characters and magic. You are so conditioned to it that you cannot see it from the outside for what it is.

Mostly a combination of ignorance and foundational world view. Imagine being raised so that everything you know about the world is based on the idea that a deity really does exist. No matter what you learn later, it won't counter this belief because you live in a world where such disconnects are a common occurrence and you've developed a strong level of cognitive dissonance over it.

I think that's a bit presumptive. I grew up believing in God and actually hated people who didn't believe in some kind of religion, because their ideas terrified me. I loved the fedora meme. A mixture of realising what a dick I had been and experiencing and learning about the world completely killed that belief.

I'd say it really has more to do with individual circumstances, like how hard it's drilled into you as a child, how much your life is based around it, your exposure or lack of exposure to other ideas and form that takes, etc.

We can't define anything until we define knowledge first. Hence theory of knowledge and centuries of philosophy leading us to have established concepts for epistemology.

See, this is exactly my point. You are an empiricist who is just saying "rationalism is fantasy" without adding anything else.
It's literally pointless to debate with you.

You don't even acknowledge idealism or anything post empiricism, which is why it's frustrating.
The irony is that you are the one with a narrow viewpoint.

>You can argue that nothing can be proven, but that accomplishes nothing. I can say I can't prove that fire burns me, but my hand will still burn if I set it on fire, so as far as I'm concerned it is 'proven' that fire burns me

So you accept an axiom to exist outside of your sensory experience; fire burns, despite never being burned by fire. This implies a belief in the existence of something beyond the scope of your observation: A "Law of Science".

So if there is a realm outside of observation that we can assume to be true, like axioms and laws, which govern the state of observable matter within them, then there could be axioms and laws which we have yet to observe.
If we can accept our knowledge of these laws is imperfect, then we can accept transcendental idealism, or at least some type of idealism/rationalism.

This is why people believe in God, though usually after a deeper path through rationalism

if god exists, tomorrow this thread will be no more.
and no one will ever get dubs again - expect for the devil dubs (00)

>rationalism is fantasy
That's not what I'm saying. I'm sure you found some way to interpret what I'm saying as that.

>It's literally pointless to debate with you.
Well yes, it is. There's no way I'd ever be convinced of your beliefs, just as there's no way you'd ever be convinced of mine. People don't change their entire worldview because of internet arguments. But just maybe what I'm saying will eventually, in some small way, push you or somebody else reading this towards a more reasonable worldview.

>The irony is that you are the one with a narrow viewpoint.
I would say my viewpoint is narrow in some ways. I'm open to new ideas, I accept many things I cannot prove as possibilities and I like to speculate about those things. But my view as to what is real and what is not is very narrow, yes, because everything about the world we live in suggests to me that it is of no use to anyone to believe things are 'true' or 'real' if those things cannot be proven in any way.

I also think that it's of no use to humanity to spend so much time and energy pursuing a question that we know probably cannot be answered. If we had some suggestion that God might be real, and knew of some way we might be able to prove that existence, I think it would be best to explore that idea and search for evidence. But so far no attempt to prove or disprove God's existence has had any success, and rather than accepting that we don't know and have no reason to believe anything, we've decided that we can't stand to go on without some kind of belief and opt instead for definite answers based on irrational reasoning based on faith. Countless theologians and theistic philosophers devote their lives to elaborating on this 'reasoning', and I think that's a huge waste of human potential, because it's ultimately going nowhere. At least it provides some people with comfort, that seems to be the one positive of faith-based belief, but I don't think it's worth it.

Many do but it looks like it may become a lot less common in the next few generations, at least in Europe and the US.

I've never tried to convince you of my beliefs. I'm not religious in the slightest, however I think belief in God is rational. I'm merely arguing that theists aren't ridiculous, and their viewpoints are based in logic at some level. Not arguing for God, trying to better define God so you can understand why people are theists.

Going off this, but that's what "faith" means.
You have "faith" that fire will burn you, the degree to which you accept that rationalist faith is Theory of Justification.
Most people are constantly shifting between the realms of empiricism and rationalism, accepting some things are more "true" than others.

Believing in God typically comes through a type of reductionism where some 'a priori' knowledge supersedes all other 'a priori' knowledge, or continues in an infinite recursion.

In other words, a "Law of Science" that defines the "Laws of Science".

Not afraid of dying. Just afraid of hell

The problem is that the modern terms of existence are machinelike, which is a nihilist view. Nihilism is based on rage and an incompetence to process the universe as it is. To believers the widest expanse of the universe is personable because it was created by a thing that also created us.

>So you accept an axiom to exist outside of your sensory experience
No, I accept the axiom to exist because of my sensory experience. I feel fire burn me, so as far as I'm concerned it burns me. I can't prove absolutely certainly that I'm not actually being tricked by alien brain control and that fire actually doesn't burn me, but I have no reason to believe that, so I accept that fire burns me. If I'm to be more specific, I don't really experience these things myself (I've never actually stuck my hand in a fire), but I know through sensory experience of the world that other people have. I trust that there isn't some grand conspiracy and everyone's lying about fire hurting, so I accept that fire burns.

On the other hand, I have no sensory experience that I feel any need attribute to God or magic or anything else mystical. I do have experience of other people claiming to have sensed God, like writings in holy books and people's first hand accounts, but unlike fire burning people's hands, I actually do have a lot of reasons to believe that these people are either lying, or more likely, mistaken.

>This implies a belief in the existence of something beyond the scope of your observation
My personal observation, yes. But I do not accept something beyond the scope of any human observation. I do not accept things which nobody can prove.

>If we can accept our knowledge of these laws is imperfect, then we can accept transcendental idealism, or at least some type of idealism/rationalism.
No, we can simply accept that out knowledge of these laws in imperfect. We can accept that we don't know yet, we don't need to start pretending that we can know through baseless 'transcendental' means. We don't know things because we don't understand them, or maybe can't understand them. We should thus try harder to understand those things though observation, or we should accept we don't know, not pretend to understand based on 'faith'.

Also I think the notion of wasting "human potential" is silly, but I acknowledge religion has tons of negative effects. Human sacrifice, worship, zealotry, persecution etc are negative, but the discussion of existence and knowledge, and philosophy in general, is a net positive. Without the endless postulating of God by past philosophers we would never have progressed to our current state of science/materialism or developed the scientific method.

>I do not accept something beyond the scope of any human observation

How then can we reach paradigm shifts such as the duality of light particles and quantum mechanics, or theory of gravity, or theory of relativity?
These are all based on rationalist approaches that lead to empirical breakthroughs.
Simply sitting back and saying "No one's seen it/thought of it, so it can't exist" is intellectually limiting.
If we all accepted that, then we would stop our research into quantum computing because as far as we know it can't be achieved on a large scale by any known system of engineering. The "superposition" of particles is a direct question of our approach to them, and rationalism is necessary.

>Human sacrifice, worship, zealotry, persecution etc
I'm not talking about them. I accept that religion can have good and bad effects, and I don't really think we'd be much less awful without it. Any ideology can inspire evil.

>the discussion of existence and knowledge, and philosophy in general, is a net positive
I don't think believe in God or anything else which cannot be proven is necessary for this. There's a big difference between speculation and belief.

>Without the endless postulating of God by past philosophers we would never have progressed to our current state of science/materialism or developed the scientific method.
You don't know that. Just because things turned out one way doesn't mean they could only turn out that way. Muslim philosophers never developed modern science, and what they did achieve was due to the more secular philosophical tradition inherited from Greece. Many historians attribute the decline of Islamic science largely to a growing neglect of secular philosophy in favour of theology, as religious madrasah spread across the Islamic world and diverted education away from independent inquiry towards Islamic law and theology. As for the West, it seems to me that the printing press more than anything else was what drove the rise of modern science, and had it been adopted in Islam or utilized to its full extent in China (they invented it but didn't use it as much) it's likely similar developments would have happened there, regardless of the influence or lack of it from theology.

Even if we argue that religion and other unproven beliefs had plenty of good effects (along with the bad ones), I see no reason for their continuity in the modern world. It certainly seems today that they drive far more bad than good. But I don't want to get into an argument about whether religion is ultimately good or bad, since that's another discussion entirely.

>no proof of god
>never heard of fine-tuning theory or the problem of abiogenesis.

have faith ye little ones. the time is nigh.

>thinks it's fine tuning instead of anthropic principle
>doesn't know how abiogenesis works so calls it a problem

>devises something called anthropic principle yet denies that there could be a universe with a slightly altered gravitational constant making our universe finely tuned for life.
>thinks that abiogenesis is not a topic rampant with debate with two opposing sides each skeptical of the others claims while missing the point that they are both proving the case for God because "God is not scientific"

Fuck it, enough with the greentext. Here's why you're a moron:

The anthropic principle states that we exist as we do solely because the laws of the universe happen to allow it. It is hardly surprising we exist in a place that can provide an environment for it to happen. If, an another universe, there is a slightly altered gravity, but there is still a form of life, there's a chance one of those lifeforms is sitting there thinking the universe was made for it, not that it is made from the universe. Like a snowman thinking the arctic was made for it, instead of understanding that it can only exist because of the climate.

As for abiogenesis, there is no rampant debate, and you're being a dishonest cunt for even suggesting it. The only debate is HOW the process of abiogenesis went about, not whether it was abiogenesis or God. Your ignorance of this doesn't make "God did it" a valid argument.

People don't believe in religion because they've studied the metaphysics of the universe and found it to be the logical answer. Religion isn't logical, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad.

Lots of people use religion as a tool of personal comfort or a moral guideline. They find the idea of some "higher power" looking after their life and confirming that they're 'doing good' through following scripture calming. It's an easy method of tradition and personal insight for people who perhaps don't want to confront scary ideas.

It's a lot easier to believe that everything bad that happens to you is a personal test, that everything good is a reward for being good, and every relative (including you, someday) will be whisked to paradise - as opposed to coming to terms with the reality of the world. Religion is comfort, IMO - people who keep it to themselves are fine.

If the gravitational constant were changed by .00000001% then the universe would collapse in on itself.
From where are these life forms that observe the universe? In a black hole?

There is a rampant debate between metabolism first and RNA world hypothesis. They both have their flaws and both don't deal with the problem of chirality. The problem of chirality is what led Anthony Flew, a world renowned atheist to change his view point.

>I trust

You literally have faith.

>I do not accept things which nobody can prove.

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Prove it.

God damn cookie cutter atheists.
Anyway what's this chat about abiogenesis, that's a new one on me.

>I'm merely arguing that theists aren't ridiculous
I don't think they all are, but I don't think modern educated theists are reasonable. I think people of the past without out knowledge of the world had much more reason to believe than we do.

Like I said;
>We don't know things because we don't understand them, or maybe can't understand them. We should thus try harder to understand those things though observation, or we should accept we don't know, not pretend to understand based on 'faith'.

I'm not against exploring theoretical but unproven ideas. That's the driving force behind science. We absolutely should be exploring every possibility if we have any reason to believe those possibilities might lead us somewhere, or maybe just explore them because they seem interesting. What I'm against is actually believing things without proof. Rational people should not believe in things which there is no proof of, and researchers above all shouldn't put their personal beliefs and gut-feelings ahead of what they can actually prove. Sure, sometimes they get lucky and it turns out their baseless belief was actually true, but that's luck rather than a confirmation of baseless reason. Nor should we spend much energy seriously exploring ideas where no progress can ever be made. We can explore impossible ideas for entertainment in stories and stuff like that, but we shouldn't be devoting our lives to proving the existence of Hogwarts. God is just another fantasy, only different from other fantasy because of the cultural baggage which the concept carries. He might well exist, but there's no reason for us to believe it.

idk. what do you think maintains the physical laws of the universe? gravity, speed of light, etc?

most natural things are subject to change and development, but physical laws seem effectively permanent, so that the speed of light is not changing at all.

i don't know why that would be true.

Strong agnosticism is flawed because it likes to deny inductive and abductive reasoning.
Empirical science is based on an inductive argument, a probability, yet it is such a persuasive argument that all rational people believe it.
Why not remain skeptical and think the universe has no consistent laws and what we observe is merely what one observes in one place of the universe?

>If the gravitational constant were changed by .00000001% then the universe would collapse in on itself.

Bollocks would it. You've been listening too much to those nutjobs who think being 10ft closer to the sun would cook us all.

>There is a rampant debate between metabolism first and RNA world hypothesis. They both have their flaws and both don't deal with the problem of chirality. The problem of chirality is what led Anthony Flew, a world renowned atheist to change his view point.

So nothing about God, then, just scientists using science, and one fag being too retarded to keep thinking about it.

That's my understanding of it.
Another example is changing the strong or electromagnetic force by a few percent means that there is not enough carbon for life to form. Unless you propose life that is not carbon based (which you would have to show to prove your case)

The problem of chirality is a major problem for chemists. It's not like the unknowns of nature, quantum gravity or a unified theory would help them solve their problem.
We should be able to figure it out with what we know. Unless of course you are chasing rare chemical reactions which would be an unprecedented phenomena.

I was thinking that the gravitational constant could be being maintained, but not for the sake of people.

The real God could be like the greek gods, in that he has his own motivations for keeping physical laws the way they are.

i just would love to hear an atheist explanation for why physical laws would never change. my brother says they do but he wont really explain it

They do change. Look up the current debate regarding gravity constant never being measured the same way twice, and how it points to the existence of dark matter.

I have reasonable faith. I have faith that the world isn't lying to me about fire being dangerous, because if I didn't believe that I would have died years ago. All of us have faith in countless things. I'll even admit that I have some unreasonable faith, beliefs in things that I cannot prove, because I know I'm not perfect. However I will not pretend that such beliefs, my own or anyone else's, are reasonable or justified.

Faith in God is not reasonable. We can live perfectly well without faith in God and other unproven concepts, and aside from comfort they offers us nothing. Rather, belief in what cannot be proven leads us to division, fanaticism and self-harm as we grow addicted to the comfort they provide us.

It's ultimately down to pragmatism.

I don't, but I think people need some kind of glue to keep us all together and behaving properly. Until enough people are enlightened philosopher intellectuals, religion will have to do.

>gravity constant never being measured the same way twice
i looked it up and it seems as though g might be a constant.
phys.org/news/2015-04-gravitational-constant-vary.html

>It's not G itself that is varying by this much, they propose, but more likely something else is affecting the measurements.

>As a clue to what this "something else" is, the scientists note that the 5.9-year oscillatory period of the measured G values correlates almost perfectly with the 5.9-year oscillatory period of Earth's rotation rate, as determined by recent Length of Day (LOD) measurements. Although the scientists do not claim to know what causes the G/LOD correlation, they cautiously suggest that the "least unlikely" explanation may involve circulating currents in the Earth's core.

Man I wanna jerk off now

Curiously, this observation is in accord with a prediction made by Nobel laureate and physicist Steven Weinberg in 1987, who argued from basic principles that the cosmological constant must be zero to within one part in roughly 10120 (and yet be nonzero), or else the universe either would have dispersed too fast for stars and galaxies to have formed, or else would have recollapsed upon itself long ago.

Read more at: phys.org/news/2014-04-science-philosophy-collide-fine-tuned-universe.html#jCp

Such a narrow concept of God.
A lot of people see God in the Taoist sense, or as an ultimate axiom

>Why not remain skeptical and think the universe has no consistent laws and what we observe is merely what one observes in one place of the universe?
Because we have no reason to believe that. We can accept it as a possibility, maybe explore the idea if we have the chance to get something definitive out of it. But we should not actually believe things without a solid reason, without some kind of evidence. God is only one of an infinite number of ideas which we could propose without evidence, and while we can entertain ourselves with such ideas we cannot pretend they are true if we're to be reasonable. If evidence for God arises, then we can believing it as we could believing anything else for which there was evidence (while approaching the evidence as skeptically as we always should).

youtube.com/watch?v=ijFm6DxNVyI

Suggests all constants fell into a stable state, but some might still be in a pseudo-stability.

Exactly, evidence based upon inductive reasoning.
You can make inductive arguments for the probability of God.

>I'm not against exploring theoretical but unproven ideas. That's the driving force behind science. We absolutely should be exploring every possibility if we have any reason to believe those possibilities might lead us somewhere, or maybe just explore them because they seem interesting. What I'm against is actually believing things without proof

People believe in God as a causal inference based on pattern matching not through deductive first-order logic

God means seven billion different things to seven billion different people, it makes no difference to what I'm saying.

>You can make inductive arguments for the probability of God.
Not reasonable ones. You can only make speculations which carry no more weight than any other speculations. Ultimately you're left with no reason to believe anything. Inductive reasoning isn't just something that can be used to assert any baseless concept.

>Not reasonable ones.
That's a matter of opinion.

Because some people don't care enough about evidence and will believe what they want.

Yes, but by no means do these potential axioms and laws not yet discovered mean God.

To further clarify my point, we weigh speculations with abductive reasoning.
I've yet to see an atheist propose proper abductive reasoning that proves that God is the least likely option.

My opinions are right.

Inductive inference is key to making AI faster, and helps us work around P vs NP.

Inductive inference of a priori probability distribution is valid.

>Why do people believe in gods anymore?
pride

imagine admitting to allowing million upon million of people die for millenial was all cause some guy made up some stories in Canaan

all the people who live and breath religion through their holy books right at this moment are doing it cause it was all just a prank

Nobody needs to prove that God is unlikely. The existence of God is a claim for which proof must be provided. There's no need to disprove the existence of God through any kind of reasoning, unless you actively assert that God doesn't exist. People should therefore assume God a possibility, but they should have no inclination to believe in his existence.

That's faulty abductive reasoning.
You have to weigh the options fairly.

Yes but simply viewing god as a possibility is problematic given the "gravity" of god in most peoples' minds. If god is simply a possibility, he's trivialized to the point where there's no point in believing in him. If he's not 100% the way, why bother?

I really don't see where you're going with this. Belief in God isn't going to make AI real.

If there's proof that inductive inference is key to making AI faster, then we should use inductive inference to make AI faster. Great. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean people working on AI are just basing what they're doing on faith.

And that doesn't make belief in God or other baseless concepts any more valid.

>The existence of God is a claim for which proof must be provided
We can use inductive rationalism.
You are asking for deductive proof which cannot be provided. The very concept of God denotes that it can only exist through induction.

>should have no inclination to believe in his existence
If relying solely on deductive soundness, yes

absence of proof is not proof of absence

Unless people believe in a vague deistic god they can be proven to not exist. The Abrahamic ones for sure can be proven to not exist. Doesn't stop apologists from making excuses anyway.

I'm saying that inductive inference produces a mirror to the solution of a deductively impossible question

(Impossible within the limits of time)

>If god is simply a possibility, he's trivialized to the point where there's no point in believing in him. If he's not 100% the way, why bother?

No, all religions address this with the concept of faith

No I don't. God is one of a virtually infinite number of ways we could speculate about the universe and existence. We could say that God does everything, or we're in a simulation, or we're in a dream, or we're actually the sperm of ancient wizards, or we're just atoms and everything is meaningless blah blah, or our universe is an atom inside another universe or whatever. God has no weight over any of those speculations. None of them have any weight at all, and none of them deserve any consideration without belief.

Exactly. God is simply a possibility and there's no point in believing in him. The weight of God in people's minds is due to the fact that we're imperfect, unreasonable beings who often believe things based on what we want to believe. Different cultures come to the comforting conclusion that there's a higher power, sentience, or order in one form or another, because those ideas work for different cultures and their particular psychological needs and uncertainties. They're very important fantasies which are dear to us all, but fantasies nonetheless.

I can make a deductive argument for God, but it involves analytic definitions of phenomena, which can be questioned due to ignorance.