Analysis: Athiesm worldwide in decline

I've said this before, but I still don't understand why denying the existance of a diety when there is no proof of it's existance requires faith. People who do believe generally acknowledge that it takes faith to believe in something which cannot be proved. I've seen lots of evidence for the belief in a God or Gods, but no proof that any such diety exists. Why is it a leap of faith to say "I won't believe it what isn't proven?" Aren't you asking atheists to prove the negative?

Nobody is asking an atheist to prove a negative, but in my view atheists are not proving a negative but trying to disprove a positive. To me atheism makes no sense. (with all due respect to those who hold that view, I am just offering a humble opinion, just to interchange ideas).

If we define 'God' as the cause of the universe, (in other words, that something which is the cause of the universe and which has the attribute that it either always existed or which started itself out of nothing), then by definition it has to exist. You can say matter is 'god', you can say life is 'god', or perhaps an intelligence force is god, (or a number of intelligent forces), whatever. But if you say there is no such thing as god, that there is nothing which has the attribute that either it always existed or that it 'created' itself out of nothing, then what exactly is the universe that we observe, and what exactly are we as sentient beings? Is it all an illusion that doesn't exist? Are we and all living beings also an illusion that doesn't exist? And if we do exist, what is the cause which caused us to exist? That is what no atheist has ever been able to explain to me with satisfaction.

I think most atheists are atheists because they think there is no relevance in answering these questions, not because they think atheism itself really makes sense. There is nothing wrong with that. My problem is when an atheist tries to claim that science supports his position. Or worse, when he ridicules someone who holds specific spiritual beliefs which cannot be proven. Because the atheists are doing the exact same thing. It is not about 'proving a negative'. It is about expousing an idea which doesn't really make any sense at all in explaining who we are, where we came from, and what the hell is this place in which we are at. It takes a lot of faith to believe that all this came from nothing and we came from nothing and it all just happened accidentally and randomly. But in spite of what some posters here have said, I think that if you follow atheism to its logical conclusion, it necesarily leads us to believe exactly that.

Did you miss the answer above? It's I don't know. (Yes that's an atheists position, not an agnostics, an agnostic wonders, an atheist doesn't).

Why did you arbitrarily define God as "the cause of the Universe"?

Are you saying "God" is the positive?

Also please do not generalize. As an Atheist I do not ridicule my family or friends who believe in god -Or try to force my own beliefs on them. Some of my best friend are priests and the bulk of my family is fairly religious.

Belief in god does not make one "spiritual" as well.

Does the answer that we came from nothing bother you? I can accept mystery and it requires little faith.

However, not a bad question ASF. Keep us honest

a) I am saying the existence of life and the universe is the positive, and there has to be an explanation for its existence.

b) I did not generalize, please read my post again. I was talking about some people in particular who behave as I described, and I've run into plenty of them. But of course it is not everybody and not even a majority of people who hold that view, who behave as I described.

Because religion does answer the question.

Because once we allow for the existence of matter, and of life, it follows that either it always existed, it created itself, or it must have a cause. Unless we are willing to give life or matter the property of either being eternal or being able to create itself out of nothing, (in which case we are giving them the properties which we would give to a deity), then there has to be a cause for it which is either eternal or is able to create itself out of nothing.

Religion answers this. Some religions answer this by saying that the cause is God, because by definition 'god' is given the attribute of being eternal. Other religions argue that nature itself is the deity. Either way, they do have in principle an explanation. But atheism offers nothing. A true atheist cannot even offer a supernatural experience as proof, as some religious people sometimes do, because an atheist doesn't believe in the supernatural.

(Although, I have known people who are atheists and who believe in the supernatural, so I shouldn't generalize. I am talking about what I consider to be a typical atheist, based on the majority of atheists with whom I've had methaphysical discussions, and my experience is that a majority of people who are atheists seem to also disregard the supernatural).

So, if you believe in a deity, something which has the supernatural property of either eternal existence or of creating itself, then the universe makes sense. But if there is no deity, then we have no satisfactory answer for the question of 'how'. And that is before we even get into the question of 'why'.

The fact is, we are here. Most of us will accept the idea that we exist and we are aware of our own existence. Most of us also accept the existence of matter around us because we can feel it through our senses. I think up to that point most of us are in agreement. (with apologies to Hume). We live, we experience our world and our universe, and we die.

Beyond that, we get into the realm of speculation. We can live our lives without thinking about any explanation for all this, or we can think about possible explanations and beliefs. But once we are talking about belief, I will argue that the belief that denies the possibility of a God, which leads to the idea that life and the universe all started out of nothing and without purpose, is to me the least satisfactory of all possible beliefs, from an intelectual point of view. I think that the very fact that we can speculate about this is, to some extent, proof of the likelyhood that there must be more to us than what we perceive through our senses and what we are able to measure through our puny scientific experiments. In fact, the very fact that the universe is reliable enough that we can conduct scientific experiments seems to me in itself proof of the likelyhood that there must be more to it that what we can measure.

A) But the explanation could be as simple as "Because there's stuff, instead of there not being stuff."

B) Fair enough. I don't think science 'proves' the non-existance of God. I find creationists just as annoying.