Why Ricky Gervais is an atheist

[Andrespetmonkey]

yo_john117 said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

@quote "When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose." That's simply not true. The best answer we can give now concerning the origin of life with any certainty is "I don't know", not Spontaneous generation or God (not to mention a personal, benevolent, omnipotent God). There are many theories floating around about the origin of life, and although as I said, we can't yet believe in one with any certainty, this does show that there are far more options than Spontaneous generation or God. Here's a list that summarizes 7 of them.

@bolded I don't get this. I lack a belief in any God because of a lack of evidence. Where is faith involved? I lack a belief in Unicorns because of a lack of evidence. Does that mean I have faith that unicorns don't exist? Ofcourse not. Why doesn't the same apply to God? The burden of proof is on believers, not unbelievers. 

Edit: I hope this doesn't come across as hostile in any way, it's not. I know it's hard not to seem it when debating things like these.

That wasn't entirely my point with the quote. My point was he thought that there were only 2 possibilities as to how life arose (even though I think he's correct and i'll expand on that in a bit) and even though one had been disproven (at least in his time) he would not accept the other option simply because he didn't want to believe in God. I guess I found that just rather ironic and I think stuff like that happens even today for both Christians and Athiests. As for the 2 possibilities , I think he was correct but just didn't really word it right. I think everyone here could agree that the only two possible outcomes to everything as we know it is either A.) An intelligent being created and designed it or B.) It happened randomly or by pure chance.  I disagree, I don't think it happened purely by chance or an intelligent being created it, I simply don't know. 

I know when most people think of the word "faith", they automatically associate it with religion and religion alone. This is simply not true; faith is believing in something that you cannot prove with any amount of certainty.  This was the type of faith I was referring to. Since there is no way to prove that there isn't a God and that everything happened by chance, believing in that is a faith step and vice versa for belief of God and since both of these are faith based decisions then the burden of proof should be on whichever side is trying to convince the other side that they are wrong.  I'm not trying to convince you that a there is no God, what I'm doing is rejecting your claim and presenting my reasons for rejecting your claim. Asking me to prove Gods non-existence would be shifting the burden of proof, you are making the claim, not me, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. I know one could easily bring up fairytales, flying spaghetti monsters and other things much like that to show how you don't have to prove that they are not real but the comparison to something like that and the existence of God are two very different things. For something like a flying spaghetti monster, the amount of people that believe it is real are probably absolutely miniscule whilst there are millions upon millions that believe in God.   Argumentum ad populum Secondly (and more importantly) there isn't even a smidgen of proof that such a being exists (although God could very well have the shape of a flying spaghetti monster ) whilst there are signs and tidbits of proof that point that God (or at the very least an intelligent being) exists.  Could you give me one example of empirical, peer-reviewed evidence for God? 

BTW I didn't find your post to be hostile at all. I think you've been very reasonable and fair in all of your responses in this thread and I really respect that

Coolio :)

I'd like to emphasise what my position is; I'm not asserting that God does not exist, i'm simply rejecting the claims made of its existance, leaving me at the default position which is the lack of belief in God. This could make me either agnostic or atheist I guess, depending on how you define each label. And I think you'll find that most atheists hold the same or a similar position. Whilst having a slightly different viewpoint ot me, even Richard Dawkins doesn't assert that God does not exist.