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The Bible and If God Exists
Sometimes, like this time. I have the chance to explain that I am an Atheist. not because I know there isn't a god, but because I don't believe there is. If someone insisted that their pet fish could talk, I really couldn't say I knew it didn't, especially if I could not go and see for myself, but it would still be fair for me to say that there are no talking fish. The relevance of this is that I do not believe god exists any more than I believe fish can talk. Certainly, I have not examined all species of fish, nor every single fish for that matter, nor could I ever accomplish such a feat. But the claim that they exist is so contrary to my own personal experience and reliable facts that I simply will not believe it unless very definitive proof is provided. Of course, if I visit someone's pet fish and it talks to me, I am still wiser to test the possibilities of trickery or insanity before believing it can talk. But if I found many fish that talked, trustworthy people confirmed it, scientists published carefully researched papers about them, and newspaper headlines read "INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY: TALKING FISH!" then it would be more than reasonable to believe they existed. No one really disputes such common sense, until it is applied to religion.
I've never seen or talked to a god, or seen a god do anything unmistakably godlike. People insist they know one exists, but most of them really say they only feel it, and don't offer any other proof. Indeed, it is odd that those few who honestly offer the more genuine proof of actually hearing god talk are branded insane even by the believers. Believers are probably right about that, but their own "feeling" that a god exists isn't any more convincing to me. Anyone might "feel" that fish could talk, but that wouldn't mean it was so, nor would that be a very reliable way to know it was true even if it was. People still say there are billions of witnesses to god's existence, but since the vast majority of them only "feel" that god exists, even trillions of witnesses wouldn't count for much. I am astonished how many people think that if the Earth stopped rotating we would all fall off into space--they just "feel" intuitively that this is true, even though the exact opposite would happen (people at the equator would actually gain a few pounRAB). I agree that billions of people "feel" god exists, but feelings are only evidence of what lies in our hearts and dreams. Feelings do not tell us much about reality outside of ourselves.
People also say that the bible says a god exists. The bible also says a guy lived inside the belly of a giant fish (whale actually) for three days, somehow failing to be digested in its stomach aciRAB; and that a flood "so great" that it covered all the mountains with water occurred to fulfill a genocidal whim of an apparently all loving and forgiving god (why not just make everyone vanish instantly and save the world's people and animals the suffering of being drowned?). Since these all sound like tall tales to me, I think god is probably a tall tale, too. Basically, if the bible said there were talking fish, I would not believe it until I saw one myself (the bible does fittingly claim the existence of a talking ass). Likewise, the bible may say a god exists, but I still won't believe it until I see one myself.
It seems reasonable to me that if people lived by reason instead of faith, many tragedies would be averted, and equal nurabers of advances would be made, especially in human behavior. I do not claim this as a recipe for utopia, only for significant improvement. How many times do we find ourselves saying of a criminal or a politician, "They are just so stupid! Any rational person would have acted entirely differently." A criminal or politician can have all the faith we want them to, but they will still do stupid things--and that's the problem. Thus, we only need people to act intelligently. We can do without faith. In fact, "faith" of Islamic suicide borabers and abortion clinic murderers is actually a real threat to humanity, as was the "faith" of Red Party merabers in their belief that communism would lead to utopia. People can do without faith. They cannot do without reason.
Why do I think this way? It seems almost silly to ask such a question. Does it really make sense to base your beliefs on things for which you have no good evidence? "Faith in god" is not the same as faith in science or frienRAB or even everyday assumptions like "a fish did not write this essay." Faith in god means faith that something astoundingly incredible, that is both unproven and unprovable, is true. That is simply not reasonable to me. I will never base my beliefs on such stretches of imagination, because it so easily leaRAB to error and self-deception. Though my heart may tell me many useful things about me, only my mind has anything useful to say about the outside world. And it tells me that god, like talking fish, is the grandest of fictions.
Since I have always lived my life (all 18 years of it) with meaning and joy, without needing a belief in god or an afterlife, I know that such beliefs are unnecessary. And I have also personally encountered hundreRAB of other people who find ample meaning in life without needing to believe in god or heaven, so I know I am not just a fluke of nature. So when anyone asks me why I am a freethinker, I usually start off with the short answer: it is not necessary or reasonable to think any other way. And as a freethinker, if any believer tries to argue that you cannot prove a god does not exist, simply ask them to prove that this essay was not written by a fish. Maybe then they will begin to understand.
Last food for thought: The bible says that the world was created in seven days...the sun was created on the fourth day. There is no way to tell how long the first three days were. They could have been 25 hours long...25 days long...or 5 billion years long.
Bibliography
Atheism analysis, by Josef Velinskie 1992
http://www.internetuniv.com/world/atheism.html – atheist electric library
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2319/index.html
http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/philo/atheism.htm
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/overview.html
http://www.aracnet.com/~atheism/
http://www.hypertext.com/atheisms/smith.html
Sometimes, like this time. I have the chance to explain that I am an Atheist. not because I know there isn't a god, but because I don't believe there is. If someone insisted that their pet fish could talk, I really couldn't say I knew it didn't, especially if I could not go and see for myself, but it would still be fair for me to say that there are no talking fish. The relevance of this is that I do not believe god exists any more than I believe fish can talk. Certainly, I have not examined all species of fish, nor every single fish for that matter, nor could I ever accomplish such a feat. But the claim that they exist is so contrary to my own personal experience and reliable facts that I simply will not believe it unless very definitive proof is provided. Of course, if I visit someone's pet fish and it talks to me, I am still wiser to test the possibilities of trickery or insanity before believing it can talk. But if I found many fish that talked, trustworthy people confirmed it, scientists published carefully researched papers about them, and newspaper headlines read "INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY: TALKING FISH!" then it would be more than reasonable to believe they existed. No one really disputes such common sense, until it is applied to religion.
I've never seen or talked to a god, or seen a god do anything unmistakably godlike. People insist they know one exists, but most of them really say they only feel it, and don't offer any other proof. Indeed, it is odd that those few who honestly offer the more genuine proof of actually hearing god talk are branded insane even by the believers. Believers are probably right about that, but their own "feeling" that a god exists isn't any more convincing to me. Anyone might "feel" that fish could talk, but that wouldn't mean it was so, nor would that be a very reliable way to know it was true even if it was. People still say there are billions of witnesses to god's existence, but since the vast majority of them only "feel" that god exists, even trillions of witnesses wouldn't count for much. I am astonished how many people think that if the Earth stopped rotating we would all fall off into space--they just "feel" intuitively that this is true, even though the exact opposite would happen (people at the equator would actually gain a few pounRAB). I agree that billions of people "feel" god exists, but feelings are only evidence of what lies in our hearts and dreams. Feelings do not tell us much about reality outside of ourselves.
People also say that the bible says a god exists. The bible also says a guy lived inside the belly of a giant fish (whale actually) for three days, somehow failing to be digested in its stomach aciRAB; and that a flood "so great" that it covered all the mountains with water occurred to fulfill a genocidal whim of an apparently all loving and forgiving god (why not just make everyone vanish instantly and save the world's people and animals the suffering of being drowned?). Since these all sound like tall tales to me, I think god is probably a tall tale, too. Basically, if the bible said there were talking fish, I would not believe it until I saw one myself (the bible does fittingly claim the existence of a talking ass). Likewise, the bible may say a god exists, but I still won't believe it until I see one myself.
It seems reasonable to me that if people lived by reason instead of faith, many tragedies would be averted, and equal nurabers of advances would be made, especially in human behavior. I do not claim this as a recipe for utopia, only for significant improvement. How many times do we find ourselves saying of a criminal or a politician, "They are just so stupid! Any rational person would have acted entirely differently." A criminal or politician can have all the faith we want them to, but they will still do stupid things--and that's the problem. Thus, we only need people to act intelligently. We can do without faith. In fact, "faith" of Islamic suicide borabers and abortion clinic murderers is actually a real threat to humanity, as was the "faith" of Red Party merabers in their belief that communism would lead to utopia. People can do without faith. They cannot do without reason.
Why do I think this way? It seems almost silly to ask such a question. Does it really make sense to base your beliefs on things for which you have no good evidence? "Faith in god" is not the same as faith in science or frienRAB or even everyday assumptions like "a fish did not write this essay." Faith in god means faith that something astoundingly incredible, that is both unproven and unprovable, is true. That is simply not reasonable to me. I will never base my beliefs on such stretches of imagination, because it so easily leaRAB to error and self-deception. Though my heart may tell me many useful things about me, only my mind has anything useful to say about the outside world. And it tells me that god, like talking fish, is the grandest of fictions.
Since I have always lived my life (all 18 years of it) with meaning and joy, without needing a belief in god or an afterlife, I know that such beliefs are unnecessary. And I have also personally encountered hundreRAB of other people who find ample meaning in life without needing to believe in god or heaven, so I know I am not just a fluke of nature. So when anyone asks me why I am a freethinker, I usually start off with the short answer: it is not necessary or reasonable to think any other way. And as a freethinker, if any believer tries to argue that you cannot prove a god does not exist, simply ask them to prove that this essay was not written by a fish. Maybe then they will begin to understand.
Last food for thought: The bible says that the world was created in seven days...the sun was created on the fourth day. There is no way to tell how long the first three days were. They could have been 25 hours long...25 days long...or 5 billion years long.
Bibliography
Atheism analysis, by Josef Velinskie 1992
http://www.internetuniv.com/world/atheism.html – atheist electric library
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2319/index.html
http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/philo/atheism.htm
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/overview.html
http://www.aracnet.com/~atheism/
http://www.hypertext.com/atheisms/smith.html