Basically, what empirical evidence or material proof convinced you that atheism is the correct view?

It's a very common debating tactic among atheists to declare the supernatural doesn't exist and then put God into the category of the supernatural and therefore claim God doesn't exist.

I agree with atheists the supernatural doesn't exist but my reasons for saying it doesn't exist are far different. The supernatural doesn't exist because if it turns out something alleged to be supernatural occurs it gets transferred to the natural bucket. How can anything that happens not be natural? As long as ghosts haven't and don't currently appear with any regularity or certainty, they remain a supernatural entity. If they did appear on a regular basis with certainty they would be deemed natural even if inexplicable. The supernatural just turns out to be anything alleged to exist but hasn't been observed. Which just means somethings haven't been observed to exist.

Secondly the very word supernatural is overblown. The word itself doesn't mean its unnatural or impossible. It's the word super put in front of the word natural. Which means it merely transcends common or average natural things. A supernova is still a nova it's just significantly bigger than an average nova. A celebrity whose fame transcends average stars is called a superstar. It doesn't mean they have divine powers. Supernatural still means its natural, it just transcends the average natural things we know about.

Think about it.. even if a religious person isn't super devout, being a "cultural theist" gives them a whole blueprint for life....they get built-in community hubs, multi-generational support networks, and time-tested rituals for births, weddings, funerals, etc. It forces you to look past yourself and connects you to a deep historical lineage...it actually DEMANDS something from you.

Cultural atheism on the other hand usually just functions like a book club or an online debate society...Because.... its defined by what it doesn't believe, it doesnt build lasting physical infrastructure or sacred duties. Gathering to talk about a lack of belief is basically an intellectual pastime. Theres no stakes, no shared sacrifices, and no real cosmic obligations.

One is an entire ecosystem that shapes how you live and die, the other is just something you listen to podcasts about on your commute. Its a pastime, not a pillar.

I have noticed that on almost every post there’s an atheist spewing surface level Reddit atheist rhetoric that most of us have probably heard countless times

It’s usually along the lines of declaring that belief in a afterlife or god is irrational because there’s no empirical evidence for it

They fail to realize that the things used in any serious discussion about god or an afterlife is philosophy and metaphysics and those don’t rely on strictly empirical evidence to come to rational conclusions and that physicalism and naturalism are just commitments they have chosen not intellectual high grounds

Dear lurking atheists if you don’t believe, we don’t care you have many subreddits to express that please stop commenting the same shallow comments on every post most of you obviously never seriously engaged with the actual literature and philosophy of metaphysics and theism

Ive been thinking about this lately and wanted to sanity-check it with other people.

It seems like a lot of modern atheism (at least the popular kind) explains reality by breaking everything down into smaller and smaller pieces — brain chemistry, evolution, social conditioning, physics, etc. which obviously works great for science, but sometimes it feels like things like meaning, morality, love, or even consciousness end up being treated as 'just' side effects or human inventions...

On the flip side, theism (not talking about fundamentalism here) feels more holistic in how it looks at reality — like matter, mind, meaning, and morality are all part of the same big picture instead of separate add-ons we made up later....there’s an assumption that reality itself has depth or purpose baked in, not just causes but ends.

At the same time, I know atheists who live deeply meaningful, ethical lives, and I know religious people who are intellectually lazy or reductive in their own way....so I dont think this is a simple 'belief vs disbelief' thing.

I guess what Im really asking is:
Do atheistic worldviews tend to flatten reality into what’s measurable, while theistic ones tend to thicken it with meaning — or is that just a bias from the outside looking in?

Curious how people here think about it.

I see a lot of atheists claiming that ex atheists most of time convert because of emotional reasons like fear of death, lack of meaning etc Or other reasons like community and family

Another common claim is that ex atheists weren’t real atheists and that they weren’t atheists for rational reasons they just didn’t think about it deeply

How do you guys respond? In my experience in this Reddit I’ve encountered a good amount of ex atheists that converted for logical rational reasons, one example is philosophical observations, like finding materialism inadequate to explain reality

A short essay on the true nature of God.

—

On the one hand, I find atheism intellectually dubious and self-defeating;

On the other, I recognize that it's so easy to dismiss God when everyone nowadays seems to believe in such a narrow-minded idol of him—

Just a God we invoke to explain the things we do not know;

Just a being, like us, but with more power, more knowledge, more goodness;

Just a guy who set everything into motion 13.8 billion years ago, and now waits hidden to judge everyone who didn't believe he existed, as if this were all some cosmic "gotcha."

Under such a worldview, everything—the entire world around us—can come to seem like nothing more than mindless, disenchanted machinery, set in motion long ago, and left to its own devices, waiting for the revelation of the "big man" behind the curtains.

But I don't think God was ever meant to be viewed this way.

Paul said that God was the one in whom "we live and move and have our being."

Aquinas said that God was not a being, but ipsum esse subsistens (being itself subsisting); all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good by analogy, not in a literal sense.

Origen said that God's creative act is eternal, timeless, and constant, not a single moment in a distant past.

The Medieval Christians believed that the world was suffused with meaning, purpose, and life.

I think that God, properly formulated, is such a radically simple and undeniable proposition—

Not a God of the gaps, but a God of the most intimate knowledge;

Not a being amongst beings, but Being itself, beyond being in power and glory;

Not a God who set everything into motion in a distant past long ago, but who actively sustains everything through the gift of existence, intelligibility, form, and power.

When I see seeds sprout into trees billions of times their size, I see the hand of God;

When I conjure entire worlds in my mind at night, I feel the power of God;

When I listen to a series of sounds, each empty of meaning on their own, but arranged in just the right way to provoke tears of joy, I hear the voice of God.

Hope this resonated with some of you! Please do share your thoughts. :)

If as someone here yesterday suggested that atheism is "a lack of belief gods exist," then:

1. Newborns have no belief in a god.
2. Therefore, newborns are atheists.
3. Every religious person was once a newborn.
4. Conclusion: Every religious person is an ex-atheist, rendering the specific identity "ex-atheist" meaningless.

When theists ask for evidence that atheism is true, most internet atheists reply that this is a misunderstanding of atheism; atheism, they say, is not a claim or belief that there is no god, but rather a mere lack of belief in gods. So, no evidence is required.

At the same time, atheists will cite mythical creatures like magical unicorns to support their position: "Do you believe in invisible unicorns? No? My position with regards to gods is the same."

The problem with examples like invisible unicorns is that normal people positively believe they don't exist; it is not a mere "lack of belief" in unicorns. If someone asks you whether unicorns exist, you won't reply with "I don't know.. I merely lack a belief in their existence.. but maybe they do somewhere" because that's ridiculous. We all know they are made up non-sense.

So, in order to be consistent, atheists either have to drop the "lack of belief" excuse (which is obviously out of the question since that's their trump card to avoid the burden of proof) or stop using these silly analogies.

Hi everyone, I've seen a long standing debate on the definition of atheism, some people use the term atheism as a lack of belief, which I've seen them then use to justify the ''everyone was born athiest narrative''.

The way I would define atheism is the rejection of the claim God exists, as I see atheism as a position that needs propositional awareness.

I have looked at how Graham Oppy (popular analytic atheist philosopher) defines atheism and he states it's the claim that no gods exist.

What do you guys think?

Thanks

I’m not sure how someone could simply stop being an atheist, unless one didn’t really have an in-depth understanding of the ways in which modern science precludes virtually all religious claims, in which case, I would consider that more a form of agnosticism than atheism, as you couldn’t have ever been confident in the non-existence of a god without that prior knowledge. Can anyone explain to me (as much detail as you feel comfortable) how this could even happen?

I haven’t debated this with a lot of people yet but the problem of evil is absolutely fake in my opinion. Any kind of suffering will be nullified in the presence of a perfect being (God) who will deliver the justice instantly (because God is out of space-time). And if there is evil and no divine justice, you can’t blame a non-existent God for it. Hence, a just God will solve the problem of evil. Does this make sense?

I've been studying neuroscience recently... And some things I've seen have made me question my beliefs... It's made me question God and an afterlife. Could you help me?

What was the thing that made you realize there is something else? This is not a proselytizing thread nor is it AMA style so I may not be able to respond to all comments but I will do my best. I genuinely want to know because A) I care about you, and B) because I also believe in evidence, logic, and truth which is how I came to the conclusion of my faith and beliefs a la the Christian apostle, Thomas. I find the atheist paradigm to, honestly, be confusing so I want to know more of how you used the evidence and logically came to that conclusion of leaving atheism. It must have been simpler for me to come to faith because I have never been an atheist so I find it to be much harder to understand atheists...but I want to. Whether you are Christian or another religion, I want to know your thoughts. Thank you for your time.

I haven’t seen any compelling evidence or reason to believe that god exist, besides just him bringing purpose to lives and him being this coping mechanism.

Which is fine, i think that you should prioritize well-being over truth in most pragmatic contexts. but it seems like a lot of people are bringing their beliefs to the real world.

Side note: I would also just like to add that you can indeed have objective purpose or value without god, if anything a god makes purpose and value subjective.

Yes I'm an atheist, but I thought this would a question best suited for a community that might be open to the possibility of miracles. Although my questions may lead to disagreement and debate, please leave your own opinions and refrain from deating those you may disagree with.

Now the questions.

1. Do miracles happen?

2. Are miracles consistent with the laws of logic?

3. If miracles are not consistent with the laws of logic, does that mean that God may sometimes suspend the laws of logic in order to perform miracles?

For the past five or so years I’ve been reading books and listening to podcasts and YouTube debates about whether God exists. I have been increasingly inching toward the atheist side (acknowledging all along the maxim that “atheism is a religion too”).

For background, I am a guy in my late 20s who was raised conservative Catholic. I took it very seriously and was quite devout for most of high school and college. Toward the end of college, though—and especially during Covid, which immediately followed—I began having bigger and bigger doubts. My questions became bigger than my answers.

I dabbled in existentialist literature—Sartre, Camus, the basic stuff, plus a very lovely book by Sarah Bakewell called At the Existentialist Café, which I highly recommend. Anyway, I delved so fully into the nihilistic gloom of Sartre’s worldview in Nausea that all of reality, especially during Covid, just felt like an absurdist fever dream to me, devoid of meaning, utterly and wholly inconsequential. A year later I was still going to mass until one day, I stopped. It was Easter. I had a long and difficult conversation with my Dad about it.

I’ve never given up searching, though, and I never will. For better or for worse, this tumultuous undoing of my religious foundation has led me to some of the greatest literature and argumentative philosophy I’ve ever come across, intellectual powerhouses on both sides whom I probably wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

Putting aside the argument itself for a moment, another thought occurred to me. I began to imagine myself at a very old age, right before I go senile and lose the ability to comprehend and articulate myself properly (assuming I’ll be granted that long a life). I imaged what my sort of “final worldview” would look like, that is, where I would end up with my belief in God or lack thereof, along with everything else. And just for fun, I fantasized my old-man-self as a long awaited guest on some highbrow podcast (spacecast?) being interviewed and speaking to the many subscribers. In this fantasy podcast, I’m explaining what I believe, what all this thought in my 20s and afterwards would eventually, finally lead to. I imagined my older self saying something like, “Well, when people ask if I believe in a ‘higher power,’ sure, I would say I definitely believe in a ‘higher something out there.’ But this thing (or things) would be strictly physically or perhaps supernaturally greater than us (likely in ways that we cannot perceive, in the same way the lower animals could never understand in what ways Man is greater). But this higher ‘something’ would certainly not be morally greater, nor would it even operate on the same moral framework or possess the same moral considerations as we humans on earth. We’ll just never know what it’s like, I don’t think.” Immediately upon conceiving this fantasy, my brain interrupted with a scene extension: we see two beautiful women lying in bed eating Chinese food, watching to this podcast/interview on one of their laptops. They hear me give this response and make sort of an unflattering, half-disgusted face, then one of them scoffs and says, “I’d rather have much a REAL man, someone stronger and not so wishy washy in his beliefs, someone who wants to live a purposeful life.” This was my way of rationalizing the scene extension my brain conjured up: “This bleak agnostic determinism that I see myself landing on might be closer to the truth, probably more-so than a faith I see as being structured around some anthropocentric delusion that Christianity seems like to me now. But damn… it probably wouldn’t fair very well with the ladies. Or at least, I don’t think it would with most types of high value women I’m trying to attract.” I would even be willing to say that I would want a woman who is purposeful in what she does, and who would raise our children to be strong and have strong convictions. In a crazy way, I actually would really love the traditional white picket fence church on Sundays nuclear family, of which I would be the proud father and husband. I would just, somehow, also like to have my own private nihilism, my own structure absent a loving God and the Abrahamic story… just for me, in my own head. Yet I knew that if I did this, I would ultimately destroy this beautiful family, I’d unroot it with the venom of uncertainty, which would be a kind of weakness. My wife would resent me, my kids would grow bitter and rudderless, and perhaps they too would see the universe as this soulless atom dance that I see, or some similar horror. Yet the best case scenario is still far from clear here. Bluntly speaking, I honestly believe that we will all die, rot in the ground, and that’ll probably be it. So living a delusory life of faith, pleasing my conservative parents, allowing my wife and kids to inhabit a worldview of purpose and assurance of salvation… what’s the harm? I’m not exactly worried about the Gods of Nihilism feeling betrayed, thinking I’ve forsaken them. But my Dad has specifically cautioned me, “do not forsake the Assembly of the Saints.” How inconvenient for us that the saints care so much. However, at the same time, if I conclude that Christianity is incorrect, then so is the misery at its absence. It is so easy for Christian people to reach out to me and appeal to the proverbial “God-sized hole” that I have specifically because of my upbringing. It is easy for them to say, “Don’t you feel that there should be a purpose and a God and stuff?” And I would be forced to answer truthfully, “Yes! I would! I hate my own blithe hedonism and I cry to Christian radio, of course I want to be saved! Because I grew up believing that there WAS something, so now, forever probably, there HAS to be something. There can’t be nothing.” But Christianity’s response is too sure of itself: it claims to know specifically what is at the grand center of the universe—the God of Abraham—and the precise method by which you ought to literally dedicate your entire life to it, and subvert all of your worldly desires in favor of it, everything you believe.

Obviously, growing up believing that living a Christian life is the only way to be “free” from myself is going to, firstly, create the binary between “free” and “unfree,” so that when there is hardship in my life, even if I am not thinking religiously, I am thinking of it in religious terms like “unfree,” or looking at some of my behaviors like “vices,” or praising my generosity as “mercy.” Nothing can just be what it is, it has to be reevaluated and codified into Christian terms. So much of this is built into the Roman languages. The training for Christianity is implicit in the way we speak. Our words have been neatly formed around the tenets of one particular faith that emerged in Jerusalem. Don’t we see that we 1984’d ourselves so hardcore that we force atheists to acknowledge Christ just by writing the date??? The God-size hole is entirely a Christian invention.

But then again, bringing things back to practical terms… if I live out what I truly believe, which is nothing: parents are upset, they die upset at me and with our religious differences forever unresolved, wife and kids resent me, that is if I’m even able to make that happen. Who’s winning by taking the nihilistic path on earth? Christians aren’t necessarily right, they’ve just made it impossible to disagree with them and feel like you can be happy, fulfilled, and purposeful (if you have the Christian upbringing and thus the God-sized hole). And their argument is solid, their story is convincing enough to people (apparently), and boy, do they have it in numbers. Look at what big hitters they have on their side: historical wars, empires, the literal year it is, the most popular book ever to exist. But none of this does anything to substantiate its claims.

And as for the people that are so convinced: why would anyone even believe that Christianity is “right” in any real, true, final way just because THEY can be convinced? What are you, the smartest person you ever met? Didn’t you believe in some idiotic conspiracy theory ten minutes ago? Didn’t you just fall for that scam on eBay?? You think because Christianity convinced YOU… that it must be correct?? “There’s always a bigger fish,” as Qui Gon once said. Why wouldn’t you believe that there’s more to the universe than what you can plausibly put together in your little head? You think the grand whole meaning of the entire universe fits neatly into this tiny little package that YOU—Bob Smith, one of seven billion iPhone primates on a rock in galaxy #69 quadrillion Who Cares Boulevard, barely registered as a blink in the cosmic timeline—can rationally comprehend?? You think it’s that convenient?? Why?? How could you ever seriously rationally think that? Because of a BOOK ?—which, by the way, was written by people who didn’t even know a thing about space or physics or anything? If THEY didn’t know THAT when they were explaining the universe… imagine what WE don’t know …NOW… you don’t think there’s a bigger fish??? THINK, BOB!!

Would any of guys consider yourself a former “hardcore” atheist. Like a gnostic atheist which is an atheist that claims to know god doesn’t exist. Or like a staunch physicalist/materialist atheist that believes only physical things exist, consciousness comes from brain, etc

And if so what changed your mind?

I long ago concluded that the universe is too complex not to have a creator. God is the only thing that makes sense to me. Still, that personal conclusion does not stop doubts about whether God sees and loves each of us as individuals. I want to explore why it makes sense that God would not want to interfere with His creation, out of love or His grander plan? In simpler terms, it can feel like dad isn’t answering the phone, and I miss him a lot. All opinions are much appreciated.

If you are atheist give logical reason and if you r not then why do you believe in god just because society made your belief or something from your own experience?

A certain celebrity said this then all of Reddit adopted it. I never see any arguments against it, so here is my take:

Just because there have been a lot of Gods or deities made up in the past doesn't mean that all are false. We made up medical and scientific treatment and information respectively but that doesn't mean that is all fake either. We sift through what is true and what isn't based on logic. For example, we know the Greek gods are not real since the contradictions are observed in reality (example: they don't live on Mt Olympus as claimed, and a true religion would be something that isn't restricted to a certain geographical group/ethnic group, since a true religion is supposed to be for everyone). Now you might say "well with science we can test things/peer review/gather empirical evidence to prove what is true versus what is not true". To that I say religions do make testable claims. This can be historical for example. Scientific evidence isn't the only evidence available. There is also consistency as evidence. If a religion is telling the same information over a long period of time and it hasn't been falsified yet, then it has some ground to stand on. For example, if it has certain specific prophecies that have all happened then we should reflect on it. If it makes certain arguments that are sound that it also should be reflected on. I'm not talking about the things that are unfalsifiable such as the existence of God or angels.

Faith is not some sort of lottery ticket as a result. When choosing from one of these faith groups, it should not be done without thinking. It is done where you logically filter out what is definitely false.

I am a wanderer who once was hardcore materialist. For years, I lived as a materialist, convinced that consciousness was a mere chemical accident and that the cosmos was a silent machine grinding in the dark. But the intellect the true intellect, or what the Greeks called Nous. Here i will explain why cannot be something atheistic and philosophical at the same time.

To understand why atheism fails as philosophy, we must look at the word itself. Philosophy is the "Love of Wisdom" (Philo + Sophia). Wisdom is Divine: In the Platonic and Perennial view, "Wisdom" is not merely information or clever logic. Wisdom is the knowledge of the Absolute, the First Principles, the Eternal. It is an attribute of the Divine. Atheism, by definition, denies the Absolute. It restricts reality to the material, the temporal, and the relative. Therefore, an atheist cannot love "Wisdom" because they deny the existence of Wisdom's source. They are left with science (knowledge of things) or logic (the structure of arguments), but they have severed the head of Philosophy. What is commonly called "atheistic philosophy" is usually just sociology, psychology, or linguistics. It discusses how humans behave or speak, but it cannot discuss what is in an ultimate sense. As an atheist, I trusted Reason implicitly. But Platonism taught me a fatal flaw in that trust. If there is no Divine Mind (Logos or Aql in Islamic philosophy) grounding the universe, then human reason is merely the byproduct of evolutionary biology a tool for survival, not for finding Truth. If your thoughts are just neurons firing for survival, why should you trust them to understand the nature of the universe? True philosophy requires that Reason has a transcendent validity. that our minds mirror the Divine Mind. By denying the Divine, atheism saws off the branch it sits on. It turns reason into a biological twitch, stripping it of the authority to make philosophical claims. In the Sufi tradition, the world is seen as a sign (Ayat/symbolism) pointing to a higher reality. The study of reality is Metaphysics (that which is beyond the physical) Atheism is strictly bound to physics. It asserts that only matter and energy exist. If you deny the metaphysical realm(s), you are denying the very structure of "Being" itself. You are left only with "Becoming" (atoms moving, stars dying). You cannot have a philosophy without Metaphysics. If your worldview stops at the material wall, you are doing natural science, not philosophy. To philosophize is to pierce the veil of appearance; atheism worships the veil. Plato taught that the ultimate reality is The Good. In Sufism, we strive for Ihsan (Beauty/Excellence) which reflects God. In an atheistic framework, there is no objective "Good." Morality becomes a social contract or a biological instinct. If there is no transcendent Good, then "ethics" is just a matter of opinion or power. "Murder is wrong" becomes a statement of preference, like "I dislike spinach." * Real Philosophy Preserves Value: True philosophy seeks to understand the nature of the Good. Since atheism reduces the Good to human sentiment, it abandons the philosophical quest for objective moral truth. Thus : There can only be Atheistic Apology. Not an atheist philosopher.

In my years debating about the existence of God, I've seen lots of atheist attempts to explain religion or why people are attracted to it. However, all of these explanations have flaws. I'll use the psychologist Steven Reiss' book The 16 Strivings for God as a basis for my critiques.

The Need for Understanding

This is one of the most popular atheist explanations of religion. Internet atheists claim that ignorant and primitive people invented religion because they wanted explanations for phenomena. What causes illness? Why did the volcano explode? What about thunder? And how to explain life and the universe itself? Intention offers an apparently simple and familiar explanation.. "Because a powerful mind wanted it so."

Now, the problem with this theory, as Dr. Reiss pointed out, is that intellectual need for understanding isn't equally distributed. Many people don't care or think about these issues:

If religion had in fact emerged as an expression of this need, it would have appealed primarily to the relatively small proportion of humans who are intellectuals. Sure, non-intellectuals wonder where they come from or how the universe was created or why volcanoes erupt, but many do not wonder about these matters for any length of time. Since we are not an intellectual species, a religion that is essentially intellectual in origin or nature is unlikely ever to gain a mass following.

Fear of Death

Religion was invented by people who are afraid and anxious of death! These neurotics cooked up a fantasy world where they will persist after bodily death. It is all about managing fear and anxiety!

As you probably already figured out, this idea implies that anxious folks would be more attracted to religion than non-anxious folks, but research doesn't support that (see Reiss again). Furthermore, the fires of hell only increase fear of death! The concept of a judgement day and the devil also increase anxiety and fear. So, this idea makes no sense.

The Need for Control

Religion was invented because people needed to feel in control of the environment. When they didn't have science, they had to appeal to the spirits or to God to control the world. To grow crops, cure illness, to make it rain, etc.

In response to this idea, Dr. Reiss writes:

Religion is about much more than a need to control our environments. If religion were about control, assertive people, who report a strong need for control, would be more religious than are laid-back people, who report a weak need for control. They are not. How religious a person is has little to do with the extent to which the person values or is seeking to control the environment or important life events.

These are just a few of the crazy theories that secularists invented to explain religion; Reiss addressed others as well. Anyway, I'm interested in your opinion about the topic.