religion, oh god... gods!

I was a Christian, but then I switched to Pantheism. In case you don't feel like googling, pantheism is the belief that God is the universe. I'm not sure whether the universe is the body of God (just like how a compilation of cells make up our bodies) or just the mind (Perhaps this existence is somewhat of an imagination from within a higher being's consciousness), but that's what I believe in a nutshell. I also believe in other universes and reincarnation. You're consciousness is immortal and travels from one plain to the next. When you sleep, your consciousness probably temporarily travels to another dimension. The dreams you envision are probably short glimpses into those other realities.

If a god asks me to worship him once a week if I don't want to go to hell, after flooding the earth, turning people to stone, and punishing the human race cause girl ate an apple, he's probably an asshole. Who cares if he exists. I got better things to do.

As much as I agree with those pointing out the logical flaws in the bibles and whatnot, why not just point out that you just shouldn't go around worshiping stuff? Real or not, that's all there is to it for me.

I do not believe in any higher power. I simply rely on science and logic, a rational person. I am Atheist.

I would recommend reading books on Physics but I see your point. There is a lot of stuff Science doesn't know. The thing is that if Science doesn't know, what hope do we have of knowing?

In that situation the right thing to do is either work things out (if you're a scientist) or accept our ignorance and say: we don't know.

The problem with your comment is that you say it came from a higher power. Okay, that's something to work on. Not for scientists but for philosophers which everyone can be if they want, or so I think. What does it mean to be a higher power? What why doesn't something like the Big Bang qualify as a higher power? And if you do provide an explanation for what that higher power is, how can we know it exists?

The last thing I could point out is that your argument falls into something called infinte regression. It explains itself really but when if you ask what created the thing that created the Universe (negative energy) you could ask the same over and over again until we are 99 years old. It would be the same as asking your father, then your father's father, then your father's father father and so on. But since we are talking about the Universe and not the Earth, we quickly reach a point of blinding ignorance.

I find this to be an issue that's very commonly pointed out, but there is a relatively simple idea that explains it well: something doesn't have to come from nothing.

Quite a few people believe that the big bang is either the creation of the universe, or tries to explain the creation of the universe; this is wrong. The big bang is merely an event within history, and the oldest event in history that we are capable of observing. Because of the state of the universe during the events of the big bang, we can't observe anything beforehand; this is why it's referred to as the beginning of time and space as we know it.

If time is infinite, and I believe that it is, then it would imply that the universe has always existed.

I grew up as a Catholic, but as you get older a lot of things in the religion just doesn't fit in history. I only stick with my faith and never denounced it because 1. I don't want to hurt my parents feelings, 2. Don't care to join another religion, 3. To lazy to bother. I respect religion and love the history it provides I am just not much of a believer in any.

Atheism doesn't try to explain that. I've got this one kid in my physics class, and he just loves stringing together as many long words as he can in hopes that the teacher will think he knows what she's talking about. Of course, it's usually kinda obvious if he's full of shit. Me? If I don't know, I either ask, or figure it out. If neither of those work, I live on not knowing.

There are some theories (keep in the mind that in Science the word «theory» isn't always as people make it out to be). It seems as though that someday we could have a good answer as to why something can come out from nothing. Or maybe we can have an answer that explains the Universe has always existed. We simply do not know. It doesn't make sense to say Science doesn't know but other things do.

I see your point and it is a good one provided you don't go any further with that belief. Still, there's no problem with saying you don't know either. Usually I make a distinction with these types of things: social and philosophical.

Socially speaking, yeah, believe whatever you want. Makes no difference. Philosophically speaking it is wrong until you can justify that belief keeping in mind of course that justifying a belief involves demonstrating what is true about it. So far, we have no reason to believe in higher powers. Not to forget that the expression «higher power» lacks a definition.

Not at all. I don't see where you got that. I did write that post in a bit of a hurry so I won't discard that the possibility that I made a mistake. Either way, it was not my point.

Things being unable to be proven right or wrong with absolute certainty is not a reason to sit in the middle. When you are at work or school or whatever, does your house continue to exist? Intuitive answer: of course, it would be stupid the other way around. But how can you know with absolute certainty? We simply can't, we just see what we see.

And keep in mind that saying «there is no reason to believe in a higher power» is not the same as «there will never be a reason to believe in a higher power». It just means that, today, right here and now, there isn't one. If there isn't one, you could become an agnostic but the problem I see is that you would have to be an agnostic with things like the house example I gave which is just the surface of real world skepticism.

It's beyond having to be proven or not proven. I don't care if I don't have proof it ISN'T real. It's harmful to believe in. If somethings proven but harmful, I'll believe in it because it's true and because I'm honest, but if something is a danger, and I technically can't prove it ISN'T real, then I'm going to say it's not. To boot, saying "you can't prove it ISN'T real" is completely stupid. Sorry, but think about it; I could run into a movie theater and shout "THERE'S A TERRORIST COMING! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" and noone would be able to prove that the terrorist didn't come, because I can perpetually say "he just hasn't shown up yet".

Now think about the havoc that would cause, assuming people believed me. People would be trampling eachother to get out the door, who knows what. Like that episode of nichijo where the girl tricks her friend into pulling the fire alarm. This is why I wouldn't believe someone who rushed into a movie theater claiming I was about to be blown up with no evidence, even though I technically have no evidence to the contrary. It's harmful to do so.

Now, how can religion be harmful, you say? I'm sure you'll admit to the terrorist example I've foreshadowed, but call it an extreme case. Fair enough. What about evolution though? You've seen people like Ken Ham on TV, I'm sure of it. You think they aren't doing harm by being idiots? They absolutely are. "Name one thing that couldn't be invented without believing in evolution," says Ken? Blow me. Belief in evolution has allowed us to trace our relations to other animals and develop all sorts of things. Humans relation to apes once allowed us to use them as psycological test subjects and make huge advances in understanding the human mind. Course' most of that's illegal now. Though there are things aside from the obvious example. We have the same mechanism for creating memory as sea slugs. Would we be know this without believing in a common ancestor? Nope. Not to mention medicine. All sorts of diseases are fought because we can look at animals as a means of better understanding ourselves. Anyone acting as if things like genesis deserve respect makes developing those cures harder to do. They make it harder to vaccinate children, to find the cure for cancer, to save lives.

What reason do I have to believe in religion anyway, outside of the reasons I have to "believe in"?

Furthermore, if not being able to "not" prove your religion wrong is reason enough to believe, why don't you believe in all religions?

No, it doesn't. How are you not getting this? Listen to what I say: Can you prove your house continues to exist when you leave? No, you can't. There's no way to be 100% certain of that. The same way, there is not way to be 100% certain of higher powers or anything for that matter.

Which means, we should believe what we have reason to believe. If you go around sitting on fences when there's no absolute truth, that's all you would be doing because, deep down, we can't be sure of anything.

And also, it is nearly impossible to disprove a negative and it is impossible to disprove the existence of something like a higher power which, as I've said from the beginning, is something you need to provide a definition for before we can talk any further.

Like I said before, I wrote the post in a hurry. If you are saying what you say I am, quote me and I'll believe you. And while you're at it, tell me how we should handle the situation then of disproving negatives. If you do, you could probably become a billionaire by the way. If you really think that's a fair point, go ahead.