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I don't mean to start anything, but it seems to me, as an agnostic, that it takes as much faith to say there is no god as it does to say there is. Thoughts?

monstrslyr 4 May 15
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56 comments (26 - 50)

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Faith is believing sans any proof. Religion is a method of controlling large masses of people.
To say there is no great creator is confirming science, unless the big bang or the big crunch is the creator one is referring to. Admittedly science is not all knowing as a god would be in current doctrine. Cultures are uncomfortable without answers to humankind's questions. The attempt to answer them results in mythology of which religion is part of. As yet for me there is no proof of a grand creator plotting the future. So without evidence I have faith that there is no god(s).

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I would have to disagree. It takes faith (belief in the absence of knowledge) to believe in a deity. All it takes to not believe is an examination of the scientific data provided. No scientific data actively supports the existence of a God or supernatural phenomena in a way that holds up to the burden of peer review or meets the standard of experimental replication. Science has largely separated itself from the question of religion because it exists beyond the scope of reliably observable information. I will concede that advanced sciences do require that lay-people possess a certain degree of faith in the academic community, in the scientists who do the math, and in the adaptability of science as new information arises, but the scientific community as a whole does not just accept by merit of pure ethos what any one member or hypothesis claims.

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Yes it does..its no easy thing to abandon all previous..once dearly held beliefs. Furthermore you may face consequences for opting out of and completely abandoning all things religious.
From family friends and your community. You let go of Christian comfort for accepting truth and reason..because deep down it feels right to you.

@SallyMc ? Not disproven. I wasn't and wouldn't attempt to prove that some of us were never religious either naturally, or were not brought up in families that were religious. I was talking just answering. The statment that it takes as much faith to say there is no god as it does to say there is, from my own and presumably others position of having faith at one point and abandoning that faith and having the conviction or faith to ignore or accept some experienced consequences of doing so. If you were never religious you may not have struggled with having to negotiate personal or family issues . In other words you need to have conviction or faith in breaking free from religion when loved ones are still imbedded in it.

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I always interpret the word faith as another way to say you really really "hope" but you don't know for certain. I just really can't place my hope into anything with out evidence. It would take much more effort for me to place hope in something without supporting evidence.I do say that I am agnostic only because I do not believe in any god defined in religious terms. Its all a matter of interpretation and definition. If you define a god as a entity of power, all knowing that sort of thing...we all are using that power now, we can summon it almost at will, right in the palm of our hand! The power to connect to people all over the world, and acess to all the known knowledge of mankind via internet! Technology and science is a higher power if defined in proper context.

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Well, I'll start off by saying that I'm an atheist since I don't believe in gods. That's what an atheist is fundamentally. A further step is to say definitively that there is no god. I suppose there could be gods, so I won't make a definitive statement that there aren't any. Evidence does not point to the existence of gods thus, I have no good reason to believe in them.
At any rate, it doesn't take faith to believe in a negative, not really. If you have no good reason (i.e. evidence to back it up) to believe something, it's not really faith so much as a lack of credibility to the belief.

2

Firstly those making the claim would have to define what they mean by god, but yes: anyone making the claim would have the burden of proof, yes.

I don’t think an agnostic would suggest there is no god, by definition of the word: agnostic.

KenG Level 6 May 15, 2018
1

I've looked at this question a few times without forming an opinion. But this morning, my observation is that "faith" is no more than than a synonym for "belief." And humans do protect, fight for, and swear by their beliefs. And about anything.

So i guess that i agree; it does take as much energy-faith-belief to say "there is no god as it does to say there is." hahaha

1

That’s why I am 95% Athiest 5% agnostic. We can’t know for sure, either way...

1

I agree. As an agnostic, there is no knowing for sure. It can't be proven one way or another, since the subject and object of faith doesn't rely on external circumstance or material items.

1

I have been in a chat lately with someone that is trying to convince me there is a god! She keeps quoting for the bible as proof even as I continue to let her know the bible can not be factual! Most of the population back the was illiterate and paper wasn't invented for hundred of years. Therefore most of the bible was taken from "Old Wives" tales that were passed down through many generations. We all knw how that kind of thing will get embelished!lol I also asked her about the makeup of heaven as by what she tell me, only christians will be there. I really don't want to be there as I have friends that are Jewish, Muslim and various other religions.

1

I still hold a glimmer of hope some god or another will reveal her/his self and salvage what is left of my soul. That is highly unlikely but possible even if minutely.

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For me it doesn't take any faith to say there's no god. I haven't seen any evidence for the existence of god(s) so for me it's not faith it's a fact.

Well, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.

@AstroLou I'm not saying that a lack of evidence proves non existence, all I'm saying is I haven't seen any evidence for the existence of any god. The burden of proof doesn't lie with me, it lies with the person making the assertion of existence.

And to answer your point, surely an absence of evidence, while not evidence of absence, does mean unproven, which is where I'm coming from, for me there isn't just a lack of evidence, there's no evidence.

The best I could come up with regarding the existence of any god is 'I don't know' and nor does anybody else. And until such time as something convinces me this is where I am 🙂

@ipdg77 Same here. Show me the ! ?

1

Good question.

I don't think faith as much as certainty, though one can get the latter from the former.

I'm inclined to think that certainty is a feeling unfounded most of the time by facts, neurologically it's not seated in the same parts of the brain as the knowledge that you would think leads to it at all. It's an emotion.

And while we can make a very convincing argument against God there's some pretty big gaps in our knowledge that lead me to think feeling certainty it's still a big leap. So faith? Kind of.

And I'm ok with uncertainty. I don't think there is a God but I don't have to have it confirmed or over express my confidence about that.

1

So if I make up a god and tell you it’s true. How do you identify this god is fictional inabsence of myadmitting I invented it. If I claim that a god visited me and added to its messages, what hurdleswould I have to jump through to get people to believe me? In short when there is zero way to confirm these claims are not fiction, there is zero good reason to accept them as true.

Sadly, you might not have to jump through many hurdles for a lot of people to believe you. But, for me, I would need to see far more clear and compelling evidence than, you told me so.

1

Atheism at 7 on the Dawkins scale strikes me as being as dogmatic as faith at 1 on the Dawkins scale. I believe everyone, devoutly religious or anti-religious, needs to admit that they just plain don't know. That being said, I think all current human religions are crap. Well, all of the ones I know about.

vita Level 7 May 16, 2018
1

I respectfully disagree. It’s about the evidence for the existence of a god or gods. To which I can say there haven’t been any presented to me as of yet.

1

Is it faith, or acquired knowledge from conscious to unconscious sources?

1

"I see no evidence for a god or any supernatural phenomena." That is a true statement for me in that I am going to base my decisions and actions on it. This is basically what Neil De Grass Tyson says. He does not use the word "atheist". Atheist is an interpretation of the above true statement, and belongs in the discussion section of any scientific paper, not in the results. Agnostic is an interpretation also, and says there is no evidence for a god but we cannot absolutely it out.

I think what one can say with some validity is that there is no evidence for a god that interacts with humans in any way. There may be a god and we are such trivial blobs of protoplasm that he/she pays no heed to us and is involved in much more important things, like making parallel universes perhaps.

1

Faith is the belief in something for which there is no logical explanation. I think that this takes agnosticism or atheism out of the equation.

@TheMiddleWay
I din’ think you can have faith that there is no god but you can have that belief.

1

Just because people can think of something like a new God, doesn't make it real. Requiring evidence to believe in something is just smart, especially when there should absolutely be evidence.

1

I am agnostic and I say the same thing.

0

Which use of the word faith do you mean?

faith
/fāTH/
noun

  1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
    "this restores one's faith in politicians"
    synonyms: trust, belief, confidence, conviction;
  2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
    synonyms: religion, church, sect, denomination, (religious) persuasion, (religious) belief, ideology, creed, teaching, doctrine
    "she gave her life for her faith"

0

Wow that's a good observation I never really thought about it but the main stream media putts so much emphasis on religion of all kind that in to it or not most people just go with the flow

Maybe it's just part of the whole cultural acceptance thing that so many people want to be part of .

0

Faith in what?

0

Well, does it take faith to say that vampires, leprechauns, or fairies don't exist?

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