Is there proof there is no God?
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins explains that while we don’t have definitive proof there is no God, it is extremely unlikely. Particularly when it comes to creationism, arguments tend to be extremely weak. Keep reading to find out whether or not there’s proof there is no God.
What does the Bible mean when it says “there is no God”?
What does the Bible mean when it says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’”? Both Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 read, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Some take these verses to mean that atheists are stupid, i.e., lacking intelligence.
What would happen if God did not exist?
If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
Should we play it safe if we don’t know if God exists?
Pascal — French philosopher, scientist, mathematician and probability theorist (1623-1662) — argues that if we do not know whether God exists then we should play it safe rather than risk being sorry. The argument comes in three versions (Hacking 1972), all of them employing decision theory.
Who is the most famous philosopher who argued that God exists?
Who said God allows evil in order to allow humans to have free will?
What is the contradiction that goes against the existence of God?
What is the argument for free will?
What is the null hypothesis?
What does it mean when God knows what you are going to do in the future?
Who wrote the book The God Delusion?
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What did Friedrich Nietzsche say about God?
Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy. "God is dead" remains one of the most famous quotes from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Who says there is no God?
Stephen Hawking: There's no God; no one directs our fate, says Stephen Hawking in final book - The Economic Times.
What did Sartre say about God?
We can take refuge in the idea of God, to escape the brute fact that we may never be truly seen by another and that justice may never come. Faith in God is one of the many ways that human beings avoid freedom and responsibility: in short, Sartre says, faith in God is bad faith.
Did Friedrich Nietzsche believe in God?
It took Friedrich Nietzsche almost 40 years to lose his faith in God. In 1844, he was born into a long line of Lutheran clergymen on both sides of his family. His father was a local pastor known for his religious strictness.
Who said there is no god higher than truth?
Mahatma GandhiRemembering Father of the Nation : There is no God higher than truth- Mahatma Gandhi.
Who wrote Psalm 14?
King DavidIts authorship is traditionally assigned to King David. With minor differences, it is nearly identical in content with Psalm 53. Hermann Gunkel dates the psalm to the exile period. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."
What did Jean-Paul Sartre believe in?
Sartre believed in the essential freedom of individuals, and he also believed that as free beings, people are responsible for all elements of themselves, their consciousness, and their actions. That is, with total freedom comes total responsibility.
Do existentialists believe in God?
It has been claimed that Radical Existential Christians' faith is based in their sensible and immediate and direct experience of God indwelling in human terms. It is suggested that individuals do not make or create their Christian existence; it does not come as a result of a decision one personally makes.
What is Nietzsche's main philosophy?
Nietzsche's moral philosophy is primarily critical in orientation: he attacks morality both for its commitment to untenable descriptive (metaphysical and empirical) claims about human agency, as well as for the deleterious impact of its distinctive norms and values on the flourishing of the highest types of human ...
What is Nietzsche's theory?
Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul.
Did Nietzsche read the Bible?
Nietzsche as a Young Reader Under Instruction As the only descendant of two dynasties of Protestant ministers, Nietzsche learned to read from the Bible, in Luther's translation, which he inherited from his father and used for the rest of his life.
Why does the atheist feel in his bones?
Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is — and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
Did the pilgrims believe in the Koran?
There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. 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.
Is atheism a philosophy?
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job.
Is the God of Abraham a fiction?
If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor.
Did the atheists have courage to admit the obvious?
Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend. 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 trag ically inept .
Is God impotent or evil?
If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality.
Is atheism a moral necessity?
That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion — to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources — is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society.
Who was the philosopher who argued that humans bet on God?
Pascal's wager. Pascal's wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, theologian, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that human beings bet with their lives that God either exists or does not. Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists ...
Who is the philosopher who bets on God?
Philosophy of religion article index. v. t. e. Pascal's wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, theologian, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that human beings bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.
What does Pascal say about inability to believe?
Explicitly addressing the question of inability to believe, Pascal argues that if the wager is valid, the inability to believe is irrational, and therefore must be caused by feelings: "your inability to believe, because reason compels you to [believe] and yet you cannot, [comes] from your passions.".
Why was Pascal's wager criticized?
It is criticized for not proving God's existence, the encouragement of false belief, and the problem of which religion and which God should be worshipped.
Which religion requires the adherent to worship Jesus as God?
Another version of this objection argues that for every religion that promulgates rules, there exists another religion that has rules of the opposite kind, e.g., Christianity requires the adherent to worship Jesus as God, but Judaism requires the adherent not to worship Jesus as God.
Who wrote the Atheist's Wager?
The Atheist's Wager, popularised by the philosopher Michael Martin and published in his 1990 book Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, is an atheistic wager argument in response to Pascal's wager.
Who was the sophist who believed in the gods?
The sophist Protagoras had an agnostic position regarding the gods, but he nevertheless continued to worship the gods. This could be considered as an early version of the Wager. In the famous tragedy of Euripides Bacchae, Kadmos states an early version of Pascal's wager.
What is the Pascalian reasoner's objection to God?
There are two versions of this objection that need to be kept distinct. The first one suggests that Pascalian reasoners are manipulative egoists whom God might take exception to, and they won’t be rewarded after all (Nicholl 1978). Schlesinger 1994 responds by saying that any reasoning that gets us to believe in God, if God exists, cannot be bad. But this argument seems to depend on the nature of God. If God holds that results are all that matter, that the ends justify the means, then Schlesinger is right. But maybe God holds that true beliefs count as meritorious only if they are based on good evidence; maybe God rewards only evidentialists. In short, this form of the objection is just another version of the many-gods objection.
Who said that an ayatollah could just as well reason the same way?
Pascal’s compatriot Denis Diderot replied to the wager that an ayatollah or “imam could just as well reason the same way.” His point is that decision theory cannot decide among the various religions practiced in the world; it gives no warrant for believing in Pascal’s Catholicism, or even in a generic Judeo-Christianity. The reason is that Tables I and II beg the question in favor of a certain kind of theism; a more complete matrix must consider at least the following possibilities.
What does the Professor's God reward?
The Professor’s God rewards those who humbly remain skeptical in the absence of evidence, and punishes those who adopt theism on the basis of self-interest (Martin 1975, 1990; Mackie 1982). Second, the claim that Pascal’s wager yields generic theism assumes that all religions are theistic.
Does the probability of God's existence matter?
The Dominating Expectations Argument. It’s unlikely that the probability of God’s existing is exactly one-half, but this does not matter. Due to the infinite value in cell (a), if God’s existence has any finite probability then the expectation for believing in God will be infinite.
Can you go to heaven if you don't brush your teeth?
If you regularly brush your teeth, there is some chance you will go to heaven and enjoy infinite bliss. On the other hand, there is some chance you will enjoy infinite heavenly bliss even if you do not brush your teeth. Therefore the expectation of brushing your teeth (infinity plus a little extra due to oral health = infinity) is the same as that of not brushing your teeth (infinity minus a bit due to cavities and gingivitis = infinity), from which it follows that dental hygiene is not a particularly prudent course of action. In fact, as soon as we allow infinite utilities, decision theory tells us that any course of action is as good as any other (Duff 1986). Hence we have a reductio ad absurdum against decision theory, at least when it’s extended to infinite cases. In reply to such difficulties, Jordan 1993 proposes a run-off decision theory as described above.
What does it mean when a philosopher finds no meaning in the world?
The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do.
Why do atheists reject God?
A lack of evidence of God’s existence is not the true reason atheists reject a belief in God. Their rejection is due to a desire to live free of the moral constraints God requires and to escape the guilt that accompanies the violation of those constraints.
What does the fool say in his heart?
The point of “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” is that it is an impious, sinful heart that will deny God. The atheist’s denial flies in the face of much evidence to the contrary, including his own conscience and the universe he lives in.
What does it mean when people reject God?
What people reject is the idea of a Creator who demands morality from His creation. Rather than struggle against a guilty conscience, some people reject the idea of God altogether. Psalm 14:1 calls this type of person a “fool.”. Psalm 14:1 says that denying God’s existence is commonly based on a desire to lead a wicked life.
Is it a wicked thing to deny God?
In other words, it is a wicked thing to deny God, and a denial of God is often accompanied by a wicked lifestyle. The verse goes on to list some other characteristics of the irreligious: “They are corrupt; their deeds are vile; / there is no one who does good.”. Psalm 14 is a study on the universal depravity of mankind.
Why is there no God?
Why There Is No God: Quick Responses to 10 Common Theist Arguments. Armin Navabi. 1. "Science can't explain the complexity and order of life; God must have designed it to be this way.". First, when considering this position, it's important to recognize the difference between complexity and design. Complexity itself does not require an intelligent ...
What is the meaning of the phrase "belief in God would not be so widespread if God didn't
This type of claim is called an "argumentum ad populum" or “appeal to the majority,” and it's simply not true. Many beliefs are popular or widely held without being true, and things that are true exist whether anyone believes in them or not.
What is morality in the natural world?
4. "Morality stems from God, and without God, we could not be good people.". So-called "moral" behaviors, such as altruism and reciprocity, are not inherently human. In the natural world, they can be observed in a variety of animal species, especially social animals.
Why do people believe in scripture?
People believe in scripture and place value in the words because they already believe in the religious principles the text describes . There is no inherent value to the Bible, Quran or any other religious text; these documents are not self-authenticating in any way.
Does God's existence prove by scripture?
While this can be awe-inspiring, it by no means suggests a creator. Failure to understand the scientific principles guiding the creation and development of the universe does not mean that a deity must exist to explain the natural world. 2. "God's existence is proven by scripture.". This argument presupposes its premise.
Is every religious book true?
It's impossible for every religious book to be true; it's highly presumptuous to assume that one's own preferred scripture is the single "true" scripture while all the others are false accounts. It's far more likely that every religious book is equally fictitious and unreliable. 3.
Is there any evidence to support the creation story in the Bible?
Similarly, there is no historical, archaeological or scientific evidence to support many of the stories in the Bible and the Quran.
Who is the most famous philosopher who argued that God exists?
Most notable of these include Epicurus, Hume, Leibniz, Kant, Cousin, Kreeft, and Hatcher . The argument generally goes as follows: God exists. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
Who said God allows evil in order to allow humans to have free will?
A well-known refutation to the argument is Alvin Plantinga's The Free Will Defense, which essentially says that God allows evil in order to allow humans to have free will, which is a greater good).
What is the contradiction that goes against the existence of God?
Another contradiction which goes against the existence of God is the Omnipotence paradox, which essentially claims that the very idea of omnipotence is a paradox, therefore God as typically formulated can't logically exist.
What is the argument for free will?
The Argument from Free Will is the idea that omniscience and free will are incompatible (technically, free will is also incompatible with omnipotence as well, since omnipotence encompasses omniscience). The basic idea is that if God knows what you are going to do in the future, that means your future is determined, ...
What is the null hypothesis?
In scientific statistics, the null hypothesis - that the things measured are not linked by any relationship - is assumed true as a starting position , and invalidating it requires showing that the empirical data gathered have a low probability of being encountered if the null hypothesis holds.
What does it mean when God knows what you are going to do in the future?
The basic idea is that if God knows what you are going to do in the future, that means your future is determined, which removes any possibility of free will. If you are truly free, not even God would have the ability to predict what choices you could make.
Who wrote the book The God Delusion?
For more modern arguments (and popular readings), I would recommend first and foremost Sam Harris ' books, particularly Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith. Richard Dawkin's also wrote a few books on the subject as well, the most notable being The God Delusion, although it gets dry at parts in the book.
