Religion, what's the point?

The idea of a God is clearly different. It's not more or less stupid, but the idea of a God is far more interesting and pertinent to the kind of questions humans ask such as 'why are we here?' Nuclear cheese is pretty boring by comparison.

PS - Do you ever agree with me?

I don't see it's pertinence to those kind of questions. It answers nothing. It explains nothing. We gain nothing. Many hypothesis in science were formulated with the only basis to sustain their existence being to explain other phenomena. Some of these are proven to be correct down the line, some are proven to be wrong, some we still don't know. Stuff like neurotransmitter molecules are foreseen before they are actually found out. In fact you can't even look for them if you don't think they are there. But when these things are forethought they are on agreement with the current knowledge in any given field of expertise... We need to have a problem first. "How do nerves communicate with muscles or among each other?" "There must be some kind of molecule they release upon them". These solutions make sense with what is known at the time, so they're fair hypothesis that merit discussion and investigation.

We indeed have a problem. Where do we come from? What's there beyond the borders of known Universe? Nothing? What is nothing? What was here before the big bang? What's this "nothing" that was around it before it expanded?

Yet God doesn't answer any of that. It's just a blanket some people put over that stuff to avoid them have to keep thinking about those questions. And it's a blanket that isn't even concordant with the stuff we do know.
 
Yes, al. I agree entirely with your speil. The concept of God is an unknown. This type of un-disprovable God though, is as far from the Christian, Islamic or Jewish conception of God, as Thor, Zeus & Ra are from it. Even further in fact. So when arguing with a Christian, or a Muslim, who says "you can't disprove God" you're invariably arguing with them about THEIR God, or their idea of God.

The Deist interpretation of God is completely sound as far as I'm concerned. As is the Pantheist one.

Spot on.
 
Yes, al. I agree entirely with your speil. The concept of God is an unknown. This type of un-disprovable God though, is as far from the Christian, Islamic or Jewish conception of God, as Thor, Zeus & Ra are from it. Even further in fact. So when arguing with a Christian, or a Muslim, who says "you can't disprove God" you're invariably arguing with them about THEIR God, or their idea of God.

The Deist interpretation of God is completely sound as far as I'm concerned. As is the Pantheist one.


Agreed.

Interestingly though, few are educated about Deist or Pantheist ideas even though, without knowing it, a lot of people believe very strongly in those types of theories. This, in my view, is one of the reasons we live in a society where religion seems to be an all or nothing concept for so many. Either you follow one of the major faiths, or you are strongly against it. All of those in between supposedly fall into agnosticism, which isn't really the case.
 
The idea of a God is clearly different. It's not more or less stupid, but the idea of a God is far more interesting and pertinent to the kind of questions humans ask such as 'why are we here?' Nuclear cheese is pretty boring by comparison.

PS - Do you ever agree with me?
It's the assertion I have a problem with more than the questions around it. Ask 'why are we here' or 'whats the meaning of life' all you want, but once people start asserting that there's a god, who exists independently of creation and that they know this for a fact it becomes a problem. How is it that anyone can know that there is anything independent of creation, and more importantly, what makes those people so special that they've seen such a pertinent truth? It's all a load of bollocks really, a god or gods who are beyond our understanding become obsolete, discussing them is futile because regardless of whether or not they're real, it's impossible to even conceive of them within our frames of reference. The entire argument is based on the fact that we can't know.


And I'm sure we've agreed on a couple of things.
 
It's the assertion I have a problem with more than the questions around it. Ask 'why are we here' or 'whats the meaning of life' all you want, but once people start asserting that there's a god, who exists independently of creation and that they know this for a fact it becomes a problem. How is it that anyone can know that there is anything independent of creation, and more importantly, what makes those people so special that they've seen such a pertinent truth? It's all a load of bollocks really, a god or gods who are beyond our understanding become obsolete, discussing them is futile because regardless of whether or not they're real, it's impossible to even conceive of them within our frames of reference. The entire argument is based on the fact that we can't know.


And I'm sure we've agreed on a couple of things.


I do tend to agree actually, to an extent, and that's the reason why I feel this entire debate is often done so pointlessly, and is just sniping from both sides.
 
It's the assertion I have a problem with more than the questions around it. Ask 'why are we here' or 'whats the meaning of life' all you want, but once people start asserting that there's a god, who exists independently of creation and that they know this for a fact it becomes a problem. How is it that anyone can know that there is anything independent of creation, and more importantly, what makes those people so special that they've seen such a pertinent truth? It's all a load of bollocks really, a god or gods who are beyond our understanding become obsolete, discussing them is futile because regardless of whether or not they're real, it's impossible to even conceive of them within our frames of reference. The entire argument is based on the fact that we can't know.


And I'm sure we've agreed on a couple of things.

Essentially a belief in God stems from a time whereby humans possessed the intelligence to ask fundamental philosophical questions about existence but weren't in possession of the technology with which to begin such a quest for discovery.

They were in possession of a whole lot of hallucinogenic plants though, and there were all these unexplainable bright lights in the sky.

One thing led to another of course; shamans realised that they could control populations with their stories about the bright lights in the sky, and probably more than a fair share of them took enough drugs to start believing their own stories too. Before long children are being brought into the world with parents convinced that they know the nature of the bright lights in the sky - though obviously the true nature of the bright lights wouldn't he known for many millennia yet - and thus organised religion was born and it was a powerful device.

Belief in God then is but a disguise for the unknown; stories concocted by humans long ago to answer the questions that they were intelligent enough to ask but not well equipped enough to correctly answer. Belief in God is a state of denial of one's true state of absolute ignorance.

Then along comes science; a science equipped with advanced mathematics and the technology to explore beneath and beyond that which we can see with our biological eyes. If the God we've created exists, if the stories are true, then where is the evidence of such?

People see more clearly now. We don't need drugs and fairytales to explain the workings of the universe, and those bright lights in the sky, we've been up there and had a look at what they really are.

Religion is a powerful device though and the stories have been passed down and firmly believed for many generations; the people are reluctant yet to acknowledge their own ignorance - an ignorance which grants them great hope through its fanciful pleasantries such as the notion of eternal life after death - and the organisers reluctant to relinquish this long held power over the minds of their congregation. What's this science got that cannot be countered by faith?!

For a long time religion held the upper hand; but not any longer, science has become too powerful, it has advanced too quickly. Now religion is reduced to having to justify its beliefs on science's terms, and the answers get thinner and thinner on the ground as science treads ever forwards on its march of genuine discovery whilst religion looks desperately backwards to the tales of those drug addled shaman for reassurance. No reassurance comes though, or at least, very little. Clinging now to notions of faith for faith's sake; whereas civilisations of the past had no genuine knowledge to contend with their concocted systems or belief, the modern human can take the tools of science and free himself from the denial of ignorance and begin to remedy that ignorance with genuine answers to the questions first asked thousands of years ago. Religion stands no chance when confronted with truth.

Religion is dying. Athiesm takes center stage with its acceptance of ignorance and willingness to learn through the very real an effective medium of science.
 
I'm sorry, if there's a point somewhere in there it's opaque to me.

Sorry about that. You were equating the two and there are not the same in my view. In this world those concepts could be reasoned for/against because there are certains 'laws' that we at least expect them to fall under.

In a fictitious world you could let the sun shine from the north and that's OK because the only boundary is our imagination. Hence my movie example earlier. One is much closer to our realty.

-------

1a. The unicorn example is a dangerous one. Because we are 'humanify-ing' a concept which is supposed to be a 'Super Being' who* happens to be outside our 'existence' (physical?). Human experiences/impressions are repeated in this thread like - white rooms, man with white beard, red guy with pitch fork etc. IMHumbleO, these images corrupt the intellect when it comes to such abstract concepts.

1b. If one looses respect for words and their true meaning in our language we become less sensitive towards them. One would give Black Holes most respect due their sheer power - how about then a 'Super Being' who 'supposed' to have created it the first place? can one imagine such power? But if I replace 'Super Being' with God or god/s... perhaps one is not sensitive to its meaning anymore and thus replaced with unicorns and the like.

2. Satan? To me his image is not important. But, I think, one point of it is: satan is arrogant about his make up (flame/fire) i.e. better than a human (clay). Racism concept?

3. God is out of bounds so how would we know? It's a tricky one especially for the inquisitive mind I guess. But maybe that's why people supposedly had prophets/messengers with miracles and such. So why no prophets now? maybe we reached a level of intellect of which we don't need such miracles anymore? It is a challenge for sure and I don't know.


*Sorry if I'm not following the right etiquette in writing in this field but thanks to you guys it's getting better - I think :nervous:
 
Essentially a belief in God stems from a time whereby humans possessed the intelligence to ask fundamental philosophical questions about existence but weren't in possession of the technology with which to begin such a quest for discovery.

They were in possession of a whole lot of hallucinogenic plants though, and there were all these unexplainable bright lights in the sky.

One thing led to another of course; shamans realised that they could control populations with their stories about the bright lights in the sky, and probably more than a fair share of them took enough drugs to start believing their own stories too. Before long children are being brought into the world with parents convinced that they know the nature of the bright lights in the sky - though obviously the true nature of the bright lights wouldn't he known for many millennia yet - and thus organised religion was born and it was a powerful device.

Belief in God then is but a disguise for the unknown; stories concocted by humans long ago to answer the questions that they were intelligent enough to ask but not well equipped enough to correctly answer. Belief in God is a state of denial of one's true state of absolute ignorance.

Then along comes science; a science equipped with advanced mathematics and the technology to explore beneath and beyond that which we can see with our biological eyes. If the God we've created exists, if the stories are true then where is the evidence of such?

People see more clearly now. We don't need drugs and fairytales to explain the workings of the universe, and those bright lights in the sky, we've been up there and have a look at what they really are.

Religion is a powerful device though and the stories have been passed down and firmly believed for many generations; the people are reluctant yet to acknowledge their own ignorance - an ignorance which grants them great hope through its fanciful pleasantries such as the notion of eternal life after death - and the organisers reluctant to relinquish this long held power over the minds of their congregation. What's this science got that cannot be countered by faith?!

For a long time religion held the upper hand; but not any longer, science has become too powerful, it has advanced too quickly. The answers for science on behalf of religion get thinner and thinner on the ground as the former treads ever forwards on its march of genuine discovery whilst the latter looks desperately backwards to the tales of those drug addled shaman for reassurance. No reassurance comes though, or at least, very little. Clinging now to notions of faith for faith's sake; whereas civilisations of the past had no genuine knowledge to contend with their concocted systems or belief, the modern human can take the tools of science and free himself from the denial of ignorance and begin to remedy that ignorance with genuine answers to the questions first asked thousands of years ago. Religion stands no chance when confronted with truth.

Religion is dying. Athiesm takes center stage with its acceptance of ignorance and willingness to learn through the true medium of science.


tumblr_mi4oqboDjc1r5r4uyo1_500.gif
 
One of the things I hate the most in this
Agreed.

Interestingly though, few are educated about Deist or Pantheist ideas even though, without knowing it, a lot of people believe very strongly in those types of theories. This, in my view, is one of the reasons we live in a society where religion seems to be an all or nothing concept for so many. Either you follow one of the major faiths, or you are strongly against it. All of those in between supposedly fall into agnosticism, which isn't really the case.


You're looking for a false compromise. To be a deist or pantheist still means to reject religion. It isn't a middle ground, nor does it solve the argument.

Appeals to moderation are boring shit anyway.

And the reason why this is an 'all or nothing concept' isn't really that much of a conundrum. The Catholic Church(the one true Church) to take just one example, says extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

Of course it's a fecking all or nothing concept. There's no squaring that circle. Welcome to the debate.
 
I became an atheist when I was about 10. I was having a tremendous conflict because it didn't seem to make sense to me. So I closed my eyes, dropped a paper handkerchief in the ground with my eyes closed whilst asking him to turn it into an old fabric handkerchief - to make sure my request for a miracle didn't imply material gain. He failed the test. If he couldn't bother to make a small thing like that to gain a faithful servant as amazing as me then he couldn't exist.
 
I became an atheist when my RE teacher told my class we were going to hell. It was quite liberating. All the ceremonies they made us do in school really pissed me off as well, they're all so stupidly pointless.
 
I just spent half an hour reading up on pantheism and deism and, frankly, they look like a bucket of shit to me, too. Not as harmful as organised religion, perhaps, but still intellectually feeble. What's so terrifying about the prospect that we know next to nothing about the universe? That our entire existence is both an accident and completely meaningless? That the universe came about by chance, and that its laws and fundemental mechanics only seem regimented and ordered to us because we have adapted to them. If gravity worked upwards, life would have evolved around that, and a bunch of upside-down humans would be sitting on the ceiling thinking, "wow, look how perfect we are in this world, it must have been created by a superior being - just think how awful things would be if gravity worked the other way around!".
 
First of all, the laws of probability, and the laws that regulate the universe which made the probability became close to 1 (if we assume that this claim is actually correct), didn't come from nothing, and can't come from nothing.

Who said the universe came from nothing? Even if they did it would still be a better idea than "a powerful invisible superbeing did it". Impressive beard or no impressive beard.

There is an important thing you should realize here. Science is not explaining where things come from. They only explain the mechanisms through which things happen, and the properties of the things that exist in the universe.

The two are the same thing. We just don't know what came "before" the big bang. Yet. Classic God of the gaps and as the gaps narrow rapidly the search for unknown things to hang god on continues.

Science is like analyzing a really complicated program. You can discover a lot of things about the program. You can discover how pushing this button does this. And how pushing that button does that. And what the mechanism is through which these events happen, but what you have to realize is that you're merely discovering the details of an already written program, which is why you're always going to be tied to the laws according to which the program runs. And that logically means that you'll never, no matter how much you discover, be able to eventually reach the conclusion that the program simply "wrote itself". Because you have to start somewhere, and you have to have laws to depend on to be able to build a theory in the first place. That's the limits of our science, which is why all what science can do is really just "prolong the chain".

Science is limited because it doesn't take account of unicorns. brilliant*

* sarcasm

Second, are you saying that what atheism is saying is: "I don't know if there is a God", rather than "God doesn't exist"?

I think that was third or fourth. In any case No.

We decide what exists based on the evidence. You don't think that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the ultimate ruler of the universe because there is no evidence of it. You dIsmiss Zenu on the same basis. You know not to jump off buildings without a parachute based on the evidence.

Etc etc etc

Yet when it comes to god, logic and the balance of probability get thrown out of the window. I wonder why that might be?
 
Wibble, it's not worth it.
True but why try to justify a religious belief in terms of other stuff like science? Some need to not confront the nature of belief or a suspicion that they are utterly wrong or ?????
 
Evidence.

(1) Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
(2) What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
(3) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Pretty much sums up my position anyway. I can't speak for other atheists obviously.

I agree except I don't believe in evidence. I examine and then accept or reject the evidence. I never believe it. Pedantic but important difference IMO.
 
There is never a 'proof' in science. It is always a working theory based on current evidence. I like it the way you put it acrss that you are OK to change your view once evidence changes. So in effect that all you are saying is that "Current evidence does not support God" which is different from the popular definitive view that "God does not exist" that many seem to argue on here. The arguement on argumentum ad ignorantiam may also be a good read in this context as there is no proof that God did not exist either.

I did mention that not all have evidence as you claim as even in creationism all science can come up with is 'singularity' where all scientific laws break down. It is just a fancy term for "I don't know". "God" may well turn out to be a alien or even an ancient race from earth who did have powers that seem supernatural to us currently. What I would argue is that as across multiple ancient civilizations have provien to be knowledgeable without the gadgets we have at hand, there does seem to be a phase in humanity where we seem to have lost all knowledge across the globe. This may well have triggered thebelief in 'God' and may well gain evidence in future. I would say that this (a clarity in definition of god) has more probability of happening than getting proof that God did not exist.

Excellent post. Truth is i have debated many iof these posters before and they treat modern science as the basis for their own zealousness. Not much point in trying to change their minds, because all they will say is there is no evidence for this or no evidence for that, but they really mean science doesn't accept the theories, so neither will they.

Enjoyed your point about the scientists, who when encountering a problem they cannot explain, simply invent a particle or new theory to explain the anamoly. Science works arrogantly from the premise that they already know how everything works they just need to fill in the gaps. Hence the emergence of unshakable 'standard models', that are used to rubbish every other theory that threatens the dogma surrounding them. When science is pressed for specifics they make something up, and followers of these baseless musings then treat them as accepted fact. It's really just a case of 'Give us one free miracle for each theory, and we'll take care of the rest'. :D
 
That's not the case at all though.

When experimental physicists encounter a problem that they cannot explain, they don't just make something up; this is an incredibly rudimentary and frankly quite wrong way of interpreting the work of scientists. The experimental physicists in fact turn to the theoretical physicists for solutions to their problem. The theoretical physicists work on the problem through advanced mathematics and usually come up with a number of conflicting hypothesis for the experimental physicists to work from. It's the task of the experimental physicists then to sort through the work of the theoretical and test the various hypothesis for validity. At no stage has anything been simply made up. If you look into the nature of the tools utilised by theoretical physicists and mathematicians you'd see for yourself that they're an absolute world away from the fanciful meanderings of the religious mind.

Religion makes things up. Science finds things out.
 
Not to mention that when these theoretical solutions don't pan out with the evidence, they're readily jettisoned, and something else is tried, and then something else, and something else, and we trial and error until it actually fits. THEN we trial and error again, and again, and again to make absolutely sure it's the only thing that can fit, before making anything close to a concrete conclusion to the problem.

This is precisely what the scientific method is. It IS science. If you can't even get your head around it's very definition then I don't hold out much hope for how you think it applies in practice.
 
Obviously science isn't entirely devoid of original thought and imagination though; the best scientists can picture where the solutions lie long before defining them concretely through mathematics and experimentation. The difference between the imagination of science and that of religion though is that the former is based strongly on the definitive work of prior experimentation whilst the latter seeks no evidence whatsoever from which to base its claims; the result being that original thought and the imagination of science repeatedly arrives at the demonstrable truth whilst religion simply continues to pen an ever more reasonless fable of hope and bottomless assumption.
 
That's not the case at all though.

When experimental physicists encounter a problem that they cannot explain, they don't just make something up; this is an incredibly rudimentary and frankly quite wrong way of interpreting the work of scientists. The experimental physicists in fact turn to the theoretical physicists for solutions to their problem. The theoretical physicists work on the problem through advanced mathematics and usually come up with a number of conflicting hypothesis for the experimental physicists to work from. It's the task of the experimental physicists then to sort through the work of the theoretical and test the various hypothesis for validity. At no stage has anything been simply made up. If you look into the nature of the tools utilised by theoretical physicists and mathematicians you'd see for yourself that they're an absolute world away from the fanciful meanderings of the religious mind.

Religion makes things up. Science finds things out.

So we now have a science based upon mathematical likelihood, rather than observation? That is not science i am afraid Cider, and the fact you and others who support the idea that such a premise represents actual science is the problem.

Super string theory is completely untestable, yet if the notion of SST supports a particular view, then it somehow becomes more acceptable on that basis alone. The Big Bang theory is another example. Quantum physics supports the notion of observation by consciousness being the instigator of events. So the Big Bang theory could be perceived as only coming into being by an act of observation. I encourage you to check out the work of quantum theorist Amit Gotswami, who claims nothing in a matter reality is possible without the observation of a concisousness to manifest it into being.

I am not saying i hold to that theory, but he is mainstream, and it is an interesting take to say to the least. It also fits with Heisenburgs uncertainty principle where the intent of the observer allows position or velocity to be determined, but not both at the same time.

Could then not the instigation of the big Bang itself be attributed to an act of observation? If so, by who? Science has no answer to this problem, because it doesn't incorporate such aspects of consciousness within it's standard model. Yet it is more than happy to overlook these major flaws in their model, and write off anything it cannot explain as an anamoly or singularity, and content themselves with that.

You would probably refute this despite Princeton University conducting many experiments which suggest that intention of consciousness has bearing upon the material world. Positive mental attitude, intuition, remote viewing, psychic phenomena, mind over matter. Yet does mainstream science support the notion that it is mind that has bearing on matter?

Not to my knowledge, in fact the opposite is true. Science actually supports the notion that mind is simply a byproduct of matter, and without matter, mind or conciousness has no bearing. SST also suggest the possibility of 12 other dimensions which co-exist with our own. Yet when people have talked in the past about alien life, ghosts etc existing in realities different to our own, they were and are still ridiculed.

I don't really see the difference between the 2. Gods, aliens, ghosts are rarely claimed to exist in our reality, and we now have mainstream mathematical theory that suggests the possibility that the realms in which these entitites have long been claimed to occupy, actually exist. So is even the possibility of corporeal life now accepted? Of course not, despite science itself inadvertently providing the maths to support the possibility. If not, why not? Simply because it doesn't fit with the standard model.
 
Not to mention that when these theoretical solutions don't pan out with the evidence, they're readily jettisoned, and something else is tried, and then something else, and something else, and we trial and error until it actually fits. THEN we trial and error again, and again, and again to make absolutely sure it's the only thing that can fit, before making anything close to a concrete conclusion to the problem.

This is precisely what the scientific method is. It IS science. If you can't even get your head around it's very definition then I don't hold out much hope for how you think it applies in practice.

Concrete conclusions? Don't make me laugh. The arrogance that you think you know enough to make any claims concrete is the whole problem. We don't know enough about what goes on to have anything concrete.

As i said, science works from the premise that they already know how everything works, they just have to fill in the gaps. Until they can explain why complex man made mathematical algorithms can somehow explain the workings of an apparently randomly constructed universe, they can make no concrete claims at all. Unless you are struggling with the definition of random.

I struggle to comprehend how a series of random occurences can be given structure by mathematics, if mathematics were not intrinsic to it's manifestation.
 
I didn't say concrete conclusions. I said "anything close to concrete conclusion". It was a mocking response to your assertion that science makes such things via the power of imagination.

You clearly know absolutely nothing about science. But you keep telling us how it works, wrongly. Dare I say, arrogantly?
 
I didn't say concrete conclusions. I said "anything close to concrete conclusion". It was a mocking response to your assertion that science makes such things via the power of imagination.

You clearly know absolutely nothing about science. But you keep telling us how it works, wrongly. Dare I say, arrogantly?

My mistake Mockney, i stand corrected. Care to humbly address the issue i proposed to you? :)
 
If science worked in the away apotheosis thinks it does he wouldn't even have a computer to sprout that rubbish he's saying. In fact he'd most likely that not have died in infancy of measles or something like that.
 
Have you ever even read a scientific book? I'm studying Medicine and any book I use it's riddled with "we don't quite know how this process works yet". They assume nothing. Some stuff has been proved beyond doubt, others are evidence based - even though we don't know how they work, we know they work! We know anti-depressants are helpful in chronic pain. We don't have a clue how that works, we just know that if you pick up 1000 dudes with chronic pain and give half of them an anti-depressant and the other half a placebo, the first half will have a remarkable improve in symptoms and the other half won't. You won't find anyone making up stuff to explain how the anti-depressant does that.
 
I agree except I don't believe in evidence. I examine and then accept or reject the evidence. I never believe it. Pedantic but important difference IMO.

You're right, "believe" is the wrong word.
 
You would probably refute this despite Princeton University conducting many experiments which suggest that intention of consciousness has bearing upon the material world. Positive mental attitude, intuition, remote viewing, psychic phenomena, mind over matter. Yet does mainstream science support the notion that it is mind that has bearing on matter?

Science is very open to the idea that a positive mental attitude can assist someone to get over an illness. I assume that this is what you are talking about? The problem is that recent studies strongly suggest that there is no significant statistical significance associated with mental attitude. Presumably it is just that people who believe that they are going to get well and then do sing it from the tree tops, whereas the average person who gets well doesn't. Everyone else is dead and thus has no voice.
 
That is a thoroughly silly sentence. It's like you think "science" is our holy book, and we daily pray and ask for answers from St. Darwin and St. Dawkins.

It is a whole new designer kind of stupid.
 
You're right, "believe" is the wrong word.

Believe has become a sneaky little word that I have more or less stopped using. At the risk of sounding like a Mail reader in the 80's bemoaning the loss of the word gay.
 
Every atheist does admit this. Even Dawkins created a scale of Atheism, with 6 being a concrete certainty there is no possible God of any conception, and put himself at 5. You should probably learn more about atheists and what they believe than waffle on about how we don't know anything about theists.

As for "There's zero evidence that God doesn't exist" that's nonsense. There are countless pieces of evidence, in archeology, biology, paleontology, history, astronomy, chemistry even flipping sociology and anthropology that concretely disprove all manner of claims from all manner of religious texts, not to mention ontological arguments.

All that's happened is theists move the goalposts, re-positioning claims as metaphors, and the argument as a Diest one rather than for their specific, fragile sect.

Do you believe there's zero evidence that Poseidon doesn't exist? He's a God. And one just as widely believed as your God once upon a time. Presumably you accept that evidence. We're just one step beyond you in accepting the stuff that rules out your God too.

Yes, there's no real evidence that A God of some sort, a creator and non-interventionalist being of some unknowable form may exist. But that's not remotely close to the same argument religions are making.

This is a lie. If every atheist really believes that he doesn't really know, they wouldn't be actively trying to convince others to believe that there is no God. Atheists only admit that they "don't really know" when they engage in a real debate. When most atheists talk they talk about how ignorant it is to think that God exists, and how there is no such thing as God, which most of the time reflects the ignorance of most atheists about atheism itself..

And if you need an "evidence", just check the meaning of the word atheism in the dictionary..
  1. a·the·ism

    /ˈāTHēˌizəm/

    Noun
    The theory or belief that God does not exist.
So stop kidding yourself. Atheists don't believe in that, and they don't admit it, except when they engage in a real debate that forces them to admit it.

And by the way, there are logical reasons that make me believe that multiple Gods and materialistic Gods can't exist. If there was to be a God, then he has to be only one (meaning going in one direction, rather than the mathematical "one" we use to count things) and he can't belong to our universe and can't follow its laws.

"Metaphors" is not something religious people invented. It's something 1- mentioned in the Quran for example many times, that God gives examples to people hoping they could understand, 2- it's something common we use everyday in our life.

Different people will interpret religious book in different ways to suit what they want. Hell you see people differ in their interpretations for human-written constitutions, how on Earth would you expect them all to agree on one interpretation for books talking about things we don't know much about (especially when you only focus on the parts that we don't know much about).. There is a difference between religious people and religion, something you don't seem to be able to grasp.
 
No there aren't any logical reasons, that’s why they call it faith and that’s why you are wrong in your entire line of argument.

The sum of your criticism of science was that it prolongs the chain which in fairness it does through logic and evidence. Whereas your self creation of god is also prolonging the chain it just doesn't do it with anything remotely logical or testable. It also does it with an add on which if you stop to think about it for a minute doesn't even make sense. If god created the universe then what is god made of and who made him?

So yes I'm an atheist and I have proven god can't exist and I'm not going to stop telling religious people that he doesn't exist until they stop trying to tell me he does.

There is a logical reason. Because in our universe, according to our laws, everything has to have a reason to happen. This logic will be flawed if we don't have a primary reason that was reason behind everything in the universe. That reason is what we call God.

The second bolded part, I'd let your fellow atheists handle this.