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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can't be definitively sure that God doesn't exist, but I don't believe in one.

If I went through the motions of religion simply to appease a deity, despite not believing, that would be what's known as Pascal's Wager.

I look at the universe and while I don't know a lot of things about how it was created, whether it is unique and, if not, how it fits into the multiverse and how [b]that[/t] was created, I don't see a need for a deity in that process (but I freely admit there may have been one).

When I look at the evolution of religious belief, I see primitive peoples who attempted to explain things they didn't understand based on a variant of Clarke's Law which says that the behavior of any sufficiently complex system is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke's Law in its original form says, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") They created "gods" to explain all the things they didn't understand - creation, weather, seasons, life, death, etc.

Modern religious believers look back on those pantheists and say, "They just didn't understand about God," but modern religions don't actually provide any explanation why the modern, monotheistic god(s) are any different from the pantheons of old. To me, the mythology of the modern god(s) exists to perform the same functions of providing (literally) a [I]deus ex machina[/I] for the things people don't understand and to serve as an enforcer of cultural norms and desired behaviors.

The more science pushes back the boundaries of the known and understood, the less need there is for a deity to explain it. Also, the more we understand about the multiverse, the "bigger" a deity has to be to have created it - making such a deity even more removed from life on our little rock orbiting our "unregarded yellow sun far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy." Such an entity would have less in common with us than we do with the smallest pieces of cells in our bodies.

So, even if there is a deity responsible for creating the multiverse, I simply don't believe that it would have any interest in us and our doings, and it certainly wouldn't be demanding worship from us or jealous of whether we worshipped something else.

It would be nice to think there was a caring, omnipotent, omniscient entity out there, and it would certainly be nice to believe that after I die I'll be reunited with loved ones forever after, but I don't believe it. I'd rather live my life to maximize the value of the time that I have on Earth with those I love, because I don't believe there's an afterlife.

When I die, my genes will live on in my children and descendants, and I hope that they are my gift to posterity (if not, no give backs!). The memories of me will live on for a while in the minds of those who care about me, and the bits of me - all of which were formed in ancient supernovae - will get recycled by the universe. And I'm ok with that, although I'd like to postpone it for as long as possible. :-) [/quote]

Agree fully. I think we are hardwired culturally to accept something in the form of a higher power. We are constructed with a bunch of chemicals that keep us from dwelling on the idea that we are born and then pretty much die at some point...with no way to understand why, when, or even how. There is great injustice and suffering in the world- with no way to understand why. When those chemicals wane, we have invented more to help with this and to provide the calm that we need  to suggest we are  more than we are- that we have some larger purpose in a larger plan. We fear death because we don't know what it will be, knowing we will not  be with what comforts us in this life. So, we invent reasons for our being, our purpose, our intent. Superstition provides a means of thinking that we have some control- which we do not.   Even the term "atheist" is a nod to a deity as it has to do with the negation of the concept. Ironically, I do not have any issue with believers. In the end, if they have believed all their lives and then there is nothing in the reward of death, they will not know it one way or the other. Those of us who question, or  don't believe, do not have that comfort of  a "story" regardless.  I wish I could believe. What I do believe is that while we are  here, we have  the choice of treating others as compassionately as possible, and to love as much as can. In this way, we do influence the world in great ways that impact the present and the future. Our actions, however small, may trigger a series of events ( which we may or may not ever know about) that can either positively affect the world or negatively affect the world- at that is our legacy. That may be what God is.[/quote]

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