Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books. Just as miracles are impossible to prove without resorting to unreliable anecdotes, the power of prayer is certainly not supported by science. Realize that God is impossible. It's curious to note that the miracles performed by an "all-loving" and benevolent God so often involve sparing a handful of people from a tragic accident, devastating disaster or deadly disease. When every religion states that it is the one true path to salvation, it by necessity claims that all others are false. Atheists claim there is scientific proof that God is not real. But there is simply no evidence that prayers are anything more than a placebo. The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies … With no enduring evidence that a God exists, there is simply no reason to believe in a deity, even if it's not possible to irrefutably disprove his existence. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. He is therefore an atheist. Part of HuffPost Politics. For example, the Bible contains two separate creation stories, each of which provides a very different explanation. Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. There is no fear of God before their eyes. The human brain has evolved to be particularly sensitive to patterns and causality. Occam's razor It is a principle for scientific labour which means that one should use a simple explanation with a few explanatory premises before a more complex one. There are similarly few people who still believe that the earth is flat or the center of the universe despite those also being very popular beliefs at one time. Talk to a theologian. Almost all the races of the world have conceived God. This argument is often offered as a last line of defense in religious debates, and the person posing it might feel very clever coming up with it. The Fool Says, There Is No God - To the choirmaster. Religious texts are just an attempt to codify acceptable behaviors into a set of laws. Just to be clear, here is the title of this book: Why There Is No God : simple responses to 20 common arguments for the existence of GOD My joy is to go through all 20 arguments and see where X-muslim (New atheist) Armin Navabi went wrong. Similarly, there is no historical, archaeological or scientific evidence to support many of the stories in the Bible and the Quran. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. (2) The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. To me that is the ultimate realization. Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. These religious experiences are always personal and emotional, which makes them count as nothing more than anecdotal “evidence”. (… Realize that Jesus was a jerk. This type of claim is called an "argumentum ad populum" or “appeal to the majority,” and it's simply not true. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. God could just as easily reward his creations for being skeptical. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? No one created our universe, and no one directs our fate. Stephen Hawking makes it clear: There is no God. Or make a one-time donation in any amount. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Most believers aren't comfortable with that, though, and faith simply does not stand up in the face of scientific scrutiny. Surely an omniscient deity could see through that act and choose to reward only true believers. 1 On the other hand, for those who want to know God if he is there, he says, "You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you." In fact, it is the “atheistic delusion”. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. Stephen Hawking, in his final book, argues there's no possibility of God existing because time didn't exist before the Big Bang. Alchemy, at one time, was extremely popular and widespread, but few people today would seriously claim that lead could be transmuted into gold. Many beliefs are popular or widely held without being true, and things that are true exist whether anyone believes in them or not. Instead, it acts as a way to coerce belief out of unwilling participants. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner. While this can be awe-inspiring, it by no means suggests a creator. Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for The Existence of God, Chapter 15: “Believing in God provides meaning and purpose; without it, life would be meaningless.”. None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either. Here’s how. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. When individuals report a private revelation or communication with God, it's never about factual information that could be confirmed or denied. This is why it's easy to identify objects or faces in the clouds, for example, or why white noise can be interpreted to resemble human speech. Instead, it has its roots in brain chemicals and is supported by strong cultural conditioning. There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. The overwhelming number of 1. scientific impossibilities 2. logical impossibilities 3. internal contradictions 4. differences in theology between the Old and New Testaments 5. differences in theology between writers of the gospel 6. numerical contradictions 7. mathematical errors 8. anachronisms 9. inconsistencies 10. incorrect historical references 11. failed pr… While it's true that many cultures around the world all hold religious beliefs, those beliefs themselves are widely variable and often at odds with each other. We made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote. These were people of faith. This is a thankless job. Genesis 20:11 And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife's sake.. Psalm 36:1 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David the servant of the LORD. It's so effective at this, in fact, that people often see a pattern or purpose in things that are actually random. In science, hearsay and anecdotal evidence are not sufficient to prove something. Notice Jesus' myopia. Other religious texts have similarly convoluted histories. Faith precludes scientific thinking and the natural wonder of discovery; it stops people from searching for answers to questions about the real world. Gravity, for example, works the same whether you have faith in it or not. If that child does recover, the praying relative will attribute this to the power of prayer, not to any medical innovations, immunological responses or sheer power of chance. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. In order for Pascal's Wager to work, the believer would need some assurance that believing in God would, in fact, save him from punishment. Armin Navabi is a former Muslim from Iran and the founder of Atheist Republic, a non-profit organization with over one million fans and followers worldwide that is dedicated to offering a safe community for atheists around the world to share their ideas and meet like-minded individuals. Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter. It's far more likely that every religious book is equally fictitious and unreliable. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is simply a psychological problem, it has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with philosophy. There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. Ultimately, religious texts are infinitely fallible because they are man-made products of whimsy, poetry, mythology and some history woven together into a new whole. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. The logic goes something like this: if I believe in God and am wrong, then nothing bad will happen. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.” He then goes on to write: “This leads me to a profound realisation – there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. But if there is nothing other than god then either god cannot be said to exist for the reason just explained, or god is the known world, in which case, by definition, god is not a god. It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Faith is little more than the glorification of willful ignorance. God told no one of his plans. If religion were true by virtue of widespread belief, it would certainly make more sense for all people to at least believe the same thing. When multiple religions exist with conflicting messages, however, this is impossible. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. There is currently no evidence to suggest that miracles truly exist. Believing in something does not make it true. This concept, called Pascal's Wager, does not actually support religious beliefs. Aside from the problems with individual texts, there's also the obvious issue that the very presence of multiple scriptures negates the authenticity of any single religious document. So-called "moral" behaviors, such as altruism and reciprocity, are not inherently human. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want. Because there is no way to ascertain what a deity's motives might be, there's no way to know that Pascal's Wager would even work.-- If a person believes in God only out of fear of punishment, that belief would be thin and false. Stephen Hawking Says 'There Is No God,' Confirms He's An Atheist By Dominique Mosbergen Stephen Hawking says he's an atheist, arguing that science offers a "more convincing explanation" for the origins of the universe and that the miracles of religion "aren't compatible" with scientific fact. Stephen Hawking There is no God. All rights reserved. It's easy to impose a design upon things that exist by chance or developed through a natural process like evolution. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. Of David. The Bible is wrong about every important “fact” that believers use to support their faith. In the natural world, they can be observed in a variety of animal species, especially social animals. Donating blood, giving money to the Red Cross or volunteering with a relief organization would all be far more beneficial than praying to the same hypothetical deity who ostensibly caused the disaster in the first place. There is no Fate. Examine God's sexism. Products are provided by Feline Purrty Designs for Atheist Republic, Atheist Republic - 2443 Fillmore St #380-8406 San Francisco, CA 94115 | Atheist Republic © 2020 | Registered 501(c)(3). But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? What if you choose to believe in the wrong God and go to Hell anyway? Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. This same sensitivity can make random or unrelated events seem like the presence of God, especially if the person experiencing them has a predisposition toward wanting those beliefs to be true. 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