Kindle Notes & Highlights
since there’s no good reason why I should believe in these things, I shouldn’t need to justify my lack of belief in them.
it would be nice to know the answers, but it’s not so important to most people that we need to just accept some made-up answer rather than remain in ignorance.
Lack of a Better Explanation Is Not Evidence for Your Explanation
Claiming that our inability to explain something is somehow evidence of some other explanation
lack of an explanation cannot, by itself, be evidence for some other explanation if that other explanation has no other evidence to support it.
in order to claim that your particular explanation for something is more probable than other proffered explanations, it’s not enough to show how improbable those other explanations are.
Before you can say that God is a more probable explanation for anything, you need to first establish the probability of God existing in the first place.
there’s a difference between denying something for which there is compelling evidence and denying something for which there is no compelling evidence.
atheists are not in the position of denying something for which there is compelling evidence, but instead in the position of denying something for which there is no compelling evidence,
if you squint really hard and are willing to ignore all the evidence that contradicts your beliefs, it’s easy to find proof of god’s existence all over the place.
God will not provide indisputable evidence of existence, except that He will, and when He does, He will make it look like it’s not actually indisputable evidence, unless you already believe He exists, in which case it will look like indisputable evidence.
rather than just admit this, these people have decided to redefine God in a way that does not require any evidence.
And it’s not just foxholes, metaphorical or otherwise, where theists tend to display their lack of faith. Why bother locking your doors at night if you have God on your side to protect you?
most theists, however, do come to realize that relying solely on God isn’t actually going to solve any of their problems because, deep down, they don’t really believe in the first place.
We laugh at ancient cultures who invented gods to explain natural phenomena that we fully understand today. And yet, some still cling to the "god" explanation for the few things that we still don't have good explanations for (or things which they personally don't understand).
Since there's no actual evidence of such a god apart from our lack of understanding, however, there's really no good reason to assume that such a god actually exists.
Made-up stories by ancient civilizations have no claim whatsoever to any sort of explanatory authority.
given all the observable flaws with the natural world (genetic diseases, blind spots, vestigial organs, etc.), one might argue that the Argument from Design best provides evidence for a malevolent or incompetent god or gods instead of the all-powerful, all-loving Christian God.
Either the universe was made just to suit life, or else life evolved to fit the way the universe is.
it’s ridiculous (not to mention wholly illogical) to accept one impossible thing simply because it solves a problem caused by imagining another impossible thing.
Second of all, it's awfully suspicious that nobody ever seems to notice these scientifically accurate passages (or, more properly, realize what they supposedly “really” mean) until after modern science has made a particular discovery.
Despite whatever aphorisms you may have read or heard on the subject, absence of evidence really is evidence of absence when there should be evidence.
The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is that God is absolutely and undeniably logically impossible, a self-contradiction (at least as commonly depicted and worshiped). The only question is whether theists actually care about this fact or whether cognitive dissonance will force them to compartmentalize and ignore it so as to not feel any angst about their beliefs.
The original concepts of gods and religions were the product of ignorant and superstitious people who had little or no understanding about the world or the universe and our place in it, and just about everything else they thought they knew to be true has now been proved to be false.
We all have an innate ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. It’s just that some of us allow ourselves to be convinced (usually as the result of having been indoctrinated from childhood) that one bit of obvious fantasy is real.
Every single logical argument for the existence of God is flawed because they include arbitrary definitions and/or asserted premises that are not necessarily true in all cases.
Unfortunately, no matter how many times members of one particular religion claim to have a source of “objective” or “absolute” morality, the fact that every religion has its own set means that these morals are the very definition of “subjective” in the first place.
Or, to quote Steven Weinberg once again, “With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
it’s actually not necessary to explain how atheists come up with a detailed moral framework since the whole notion that we actually need such a framework in the first place is purely the invention of theists who think they have such a framework.
Just because you can’t live your lives without constantly referring to ancient books written thousands of years ago by people who thought it was OK to own slaves, kill homosexuals and disobedient children, etc., doesn’t mean that we are unable to do so.
I’m not even talking about getting rid of punishment altogether, mind you [Christian folk really do seem to love the idea of the guilty getting their just deserts, don’t they?], but simply making the punishment fit the crime and acknowledging that no crime is worthy of eternal freaking torment!
the bottom line is that God supposedly set up a system whereby any sin is punishable by eternal torment, and then decided “in His mercy” to create a loophole that the majority of His children would either never have a chance to accept or would have no good reason to accept, effectively condemning the vast majority of humanity to suffer in agony for all time and eternity through no fault of their own.
the bottom line is that if the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is literally true then it just proves that the god of Christianity is a complete and utter bastard who is petty, vindictive and cruel.
Just admit it was impossible and say that God can do impossible things, end of story. Stop trying to prove that your illogical and irrational beliefs are based in science and just own your beliefs for what they are.
keep in mind, the “theory” of evolution is the current best explanation for the observed fact of evolution, just like the “theory” of gravity is the current best explanation for the the observed fact of gravity.
Evolution itself is not a theory -- it's simply an observation. The Theory of Evolution deals with how and why evolution occurred,
In addition, it’s important to realize that evolution itself is actually an observed fact. The “theory” of evolution is our best explanation for how and when it occurs, not that it occurs in the first place.
