Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

[JWeinCom]

superchunk said:

JWeinCom said:

A couple of points.

First, on atheism being a belief system.  A system implies a set of interrelated beliefs.  

Theism for example, is not a belief system.  It is a single belief on one question.  It generally does not dictate what you need to believe on any other point.

Christianity on the other hand is a belief system.  The belief in a god who is "the author of truth", and one you have to serve, necessarily dictates your belief on many other things. 

Secondly, in some situations, the lack of evidence can strongly indicate (if not dictate) whether or not something exists.  For example, suppose I said I had a ten children living with me in my studio apartment.  You've never seen me with the children, never seen any of the children.  I don't have any pictures of them on my phone, or in my house.  I have no beds for them, no children's clothes, no toys, no food, no school books, and no sign of any belongings outside my own.  Nobody has ever seen any of my children.  You talk to my friends and family, and none of them claim to have ever seen any children.

In this situation, I'm sure you would be 100% convinced that I do not have any children living with me.  Certain things, if they are true, should provide evidence.  If the evidence does not exist, you can confidently conclude it's not true.

Ok from that point, yes, it can be defined that "system" was a poor choice of wording. My intent was that atheism is just another belief, regardless of the lack of rules, structure, etc.

I agree you can theorize that something is true/not true based on the lack of evidence. But lack of evidence in itself it is not a fact which is my intent of that statement. 

Additionally, I do not think your example is without evidence. Not having all of those physical items that are required for anyone to have children is the actual data. If you told me you had 10 children, I being someone who does not know you in person or have access to any data to suggest otherwise, I'd assume you to be truthful (unless you have proven history of not being truthful). However, if I knew you in person and visited your home, I'd have data to disprove at that point.

The concept of a God is not in the same scenario. It's closer to the belief that "intelligent" life exists outside of Earth. There is no way to measure or detect either.  You can choose to use historical anecdotes and spiritual understanding to believe in a concept of God and you can use mathematical probability to believe intelligent life exists elsewhere. But, at this time, you cannot be factually driven to know either exists or does not exist at this time.

Yeah.  I'd be ok with defining it as belief, although certain people might want to argue with it that it's a lack of belief as I've experienced.  Lol.

In the example I provided, I'd say the lack of evidence is the evidence.  If I had a kid, or kids, you would expect to have positive evidence that a child lives in my house.  The lack of that positive evidence is the evidence.  

Similarly if you suggest there is a god, depending on how you define god, I might expect some evidence.  For example, if someone said that the Bible is literally true I would expect for instance some evidence of Jews having spent a significant amount of time enslaved in Egypt.  However, we don't have that.  We would also expect some evidence of a global flood, and we don't find that.  And so on.

Which is why I asked earlier if you believe that god actually interacts with the world.  If he does, then we would expect some kind of detectable evidence.  If we can't find this evidence, it is reasonable to believe that god does not exist.