{"id":3078,"date":"2016-10-15T05:09:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T12:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3078"},"modified":"2016-10-15T05:09:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-15T12:09:18","slug":"looking-for-that-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3078","title":{"rendered":"Looking For That 100%"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Josie:<\/strong>
\nHello this is a college student who is pretty much confused. I do have a fact in mind God doesn’t exist. But, the other part of me doesn’t. Is there any steps to pretty much make me fully sure he doesn’t exist. My mind 85% tells me he isn’t real but some odd reason my mind won’t agree with it. Any suggestion?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nNo one said you had to be sure. I’m not. 85% confidence in God’s absence isn’t bad at all really.
\n
\nYou can’t prove a negative, as they say. To be 100% confident there’s no god you’d need the knowledge of a god yourself, to be aware of all the possible ways a god could influence the universe and know that they’re not happening. If you’re being realistic you have to accept some uncertainty, even if you think the concept of a god doesn’t make sense. (There might conceivably be a way it does<\/em> make sense that you haven’t learned yet.) But if your opinion is that there isn’t a god because you lack positive belief that there is one, that’s as good as most atheists have it.
\n
\nSo what do you do with that uncertainty, the perceived 15% chance (or whatever you estimate) that there’s a god of some kind? Not much really. You keep an open mind and consider any evidence or arguments for gods that you’re exposed to, if you have the time. But do you behave as if<\/em> there’s a god, just in case? That’s what people who cite Pascal’s Wager<\/a> would suggest, because even if there’s no god there’s no harm done, right? Unfortunately if there’s a god it might not be the one you think it is, or demand from its worshipers what you think it does, so praying on the off chance might just piss it off. Not worth the trouble, I say. Better just to try to be a good person, which any god worth worshiping would respect but more importantly is its own reward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Josie: Hello this is a college student who is pretty much confused. I do have a fact in mind God doesn’t exist. But, the other part of me doesn’t. Is there any steps to pretty much make me fully sure he doesn’t exist. My mind 85% tells me he isn’t real but some … Continue reading “Looking For That 100%”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[563,560,6],"tags":[24,37,19],"class_list":["post-3078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-faith-2","category-text","tag-belief","tag-certainty","tag-pascals-wager"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-NE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3079,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions\/3079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}