bingle

I've been seeing a lot of people on this thread, including the original poster, make the assertion that Atheism is just stating "There is no god." and taking it on faith as something that cannot be proven.

This is incorrect.

In fact, there's two tiers of questions to be asked, here, instead of just one. The first is, "Can the existence of God be proven or disproven?" Many philosophers have considered this question, and some have thought one way, and some another. But that is separate from the second question: "Does God exist?"

So basically, there are four groups here: People who believe that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, but believe in God regardless (like Kirkegaard, and the original poster), people who believe that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, but do not believe (like the characterization of Atheists in this thread - I think this is actually very rare), people who believe that the existence of God can be proven, and thus believe (like St. Augustine, and the intellectual theology tradition), and people who believe that the existence of God can be disproven, and thus disbelieve (like the majority of actual Atheists).

So the original poster asked for some examples of how people prove or disprove these things (at least, that's how I choose to interpret "Shut the fuck up"). Look into philosophy, there's a whole tradition of considering this question, and some very intelligent people have come to both conclusions.

Also, I should note that I'm not talking about scientific proof, either. The proofs mostly used are logical proofs, because of course science can't prove anything, it can only show what is most likely to be true. Logic can prove that things can or cannot possibly exist, though. Sometimes science influences logical proof - for instance, one of the premises for the Argument By Design (the Cosmological Argument) was that there was no way for complex designs to arise without an intelligence behind them. Before Darwin, this argument was basically bulletproof. But Darwin showed, not that there was no God, but that this premise was not actually true. He did nothing to prove or disprove the logical argument, but challenged the validity of one of the premises.

So basically, don't dismiss such things so readily - while you may feel one way, there's a long history of considering the proof of the existence of God, and you should consider the arguments and come to your own conclusion. Some religious philosophers have come to some surprising ones, like the aforementioned Kirkegaard.

Bingle