Quick Questions for a Project

Question from Mercadez:
Hello, I am doing this host-a-conversation project for my religions class. I was wondering if you would answer the following questions…
1. Why do you not believe in God(s)?
2. Who do you think created the world, specifically things science cannot explain?
3. What exactly do you believe in? Like, do you believe in karma?
4. Do you believe in an after-life?
Thank you in advance.

Answer by SmartLX:
Search for some keywords and you’ll find plenty of material on each of these. For the benefit of your project, though, I’ll answer them all concisely in one place.

1. Because I stopped thinking about God seriously for over a decade. When I did come back to the subject my emotional attachment to the concept had faded and I was able to see clearly that the arguments and supposed evidence for the existence of a god are far from sufficient to justify believing in one. There’s a good chance that if I’d kept regularly going to church I might not have seen that.

2. We don’t know what science cannot explain, only what it hasn’t explained yet. I don’t know whether the world was created at all, so it’s premature to wonder who did so. Perhaps it has always existed in some form, like God is supposed to have done. Perhaps its emergence was quite spontaneous, as quantum mechanics are often observed to be. The options are far broader than the false dilemma of either God or something-just-like-God-but-not-God.

3. I do not believe in any guiding entity or energy in the universe, no gods, spirits or mystical energies or forces. Of course the universe has energy but it does not have a will of its own. I believe all kinds of things but they’re all quite plausible or workable in an entirely non-supernatural world, such as that empathy with people of all types will make for a better world, or that pineapple can in some cases improve a pizza.

4. I don’t believe that one’s identity can survive the death and subsequent rapid disintegration of the brain. After you die there is no you for anything to happen to, so nothing is experienced after death.

2 thoughts on “Quick Questions for a Project”

  1. Jacob here Ill Answer these questions as best I can.
    First why don’t i believe in gods? well I find the very idea of gods to be the ultimate form of dictatorship and oppression.(even in the worst dictatorship even the slaves still have the freedom of thought gods take even that)

    Second how do i think the world came to be. Well if i knew that answer i would now have a noble prize and would have been the next Newton. I don’t think the universe was created though. It seems to random and chaotic for that. to say someone created it would not solve the problem it will simply create a bigger one like fixing a hole in the wall be knocking the wall out.

    third I believe in chaos theory. even good actions can have terrible results. for example I decide to give a begger some money only to have him stabbed by another to take the money from him so no i don’t believe in karma

    4 that is the hardest one so far and I can only say that I don’t know some people state to have had near death experiences but it differs by culture for example christians see jesus and muslims see muhhamed some also state they have seen there past lives. so what is more likely
    A the afterlife is determent by what you believe
    B its hallucinations
    or C aliens. These can also be triggered by taking certain drugs.

  2. Mecadez:

    If I may also be allowed to answer your questions, here are my thoughts.

    1) I lack belief in god creatures because I know of no evidence or empirical data that says they do exist. And I mean absolutely zero evidence for them. Furthermore, the specific claims made about the various gods in human history are often quite irrational and contradictory, such as the logical paradox of a god that is all knowing AND all powerful. I used to be a believer, but the more I read the Bible and thought about everything the bigger my doubts, until I reached the point that I simply could not ignore the fact that gods are nothing more than a figment of the human imagination.

    2) I don’t think anyone “created” anything. There is no data or evidence that supports the idea that the universe or anything in it exists as it does specifically because of a directed effort. And while no one can say with 100% certainty how or why the universe came to be, or how or why the rules of the universe are the way they are, there’s no reason to accept tales of a super being as a plausible explanation in the mean time.

    3) I don’t believe in anything. I accept those things that can be shown to be reasonably true (like the theory of gravity), and everything else I await to see what data and evidence can be found before making a decision on. While some ideas and concepts may be more plausible to me than others, I try to refrain from accepting any of them until such time as we can prove one over the others in a conclusive way.

    4) No.

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