{"id":1007,"date":"2012-03-20T19:58:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T09:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2012-03-20T19:58:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T09:58:20","slug":"proof-we-don-need-no-steenkin-proof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1007","title":{"rendered":"Proof? We don’ need no steenkin’ proof!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Madoka:<\/strong>
\nI’m a Catholic but I’m open minded. I keep hearing about how God does not exist but how can you PROVE he doesnt exist? I’m just looking for your opinion because I read about some atheists who had near death experiences and became Christians so it’s kinda confusing. Have you ever thought that He might exist?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nI can’t prove God doesn’t exist, and I still think that He might exist. Neither of these is a good reason to believe in something, though.
\n
\nIn order to prove God didn’t exist, with our vague concept of what a god actually is<\/em>, we would have to rule out every place in (and outside) the universe where He might be hanging out. This would be impossible to anyone except a being which itself had godlike powers, so it’s not worth trying. Thing is, it means very little that we can’t prove God’s non-existence if whether<\/em> he exists makes so little difference to the pursuit. Put another way, we can’t prove that there’s never been any such thing as a leprechaun, but that doesn’t mean we should all believe in them.
\n
\nI used to think God existed, because I grew up Catholic. When I realised there’s no good reason to think He does, and lost my faith, I didn’t suddenly declare that God can’t<\/em> exist. I could still be wrong, and He could be out there somewhere. I just think that’s very unlikely, for reasons I’ve given here<\/a>, and until we know that it’s the right God and not a jealous alternative deity it’s no use worshipping any particular one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Madoka: I’m a Catholic but I’m open minded. I keep hearing about how God does not exist but how can you PROVE he doesnt exist? I’m just looking for your opinion because I read about some atheists who had near death experiences and became Christians so it’s kinda confusing. Have you ever thought … Continue reading “Proof? We don’ need no steenkin’ proof!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[154,134,240],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-evidence","tag-god","tag-proof"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-gf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}