What can happen if there is no god?

Why should we believe if you say so? What's your logic?

Not surprisingly, you've received a great many mocking replies.

I'm not sure what you are trying to ask, but if there is no god, nothing will happen. The universe has been going on for billions of years with or without a god. If we suddenly learned there is no god it wouldn't change a thing...except with humans.

If somehow it could be proven that there is no god, then the chances are that the people who believe in God would contend the revelation was fraudulent. I've really no idea how those that accepted it would react.

If, on the other hand, it could be proven that there is a god, how would atheists react? Probably the same way. Denial.

If God values faith in his creation, he is not going to reveal himself uncategorically.

It really doesn't matter though. You either believe in God or you don't. If it makes you feel good to believe or not believe, so be it.

People who mock believers or condemn non-believers are, frankly, assholes. Why should anyone care? Because it makes them feel superior.

Non-believers will go off hysterically on how religion has been a blight on humanity. Religion is a construct of men, not God. Ideology, another construct of men, has also been a blight on humanity.

The people who, in effect, blame God for all the ills of mankind are no different than those who attribute all that is good to him. Opposite sides of the same coin.

God loves us and he, more than anyone else, understands us.

There's a lot of bullsh*t there. I am an atheist, but only by the definition of the god squad. I don't deny there there is a god, because I don't know--but I don't believe it. I consider that the burden of proof is on whoever makes a claim, but it's no big deal to me. I understand that a great many people believe that there is a god, perhaps most people. So long as they don't bother me, I'm cool with that.

I am what is called a weak or implicit atheist. Most surveys which I have seen speculate that that type of atheist is the most common, but given that implicit atheists generally don't take such surveys, no one is sure. It is the so-called strong or explicit atheists--those who assert that there is not god--who cause most of the trouble that atheists experience, because the god squad attribute their aggressive manner to all atheists. Once again, I don't know if there is a god, I don't believe there is because I consider the proposition preposterous, and more importantly I don't care.

While it is true that atheists (and many theists) attribute wars to religion, it is not always the case. In some cases, religion is just a casus belli, an excuse for war. In some cases, the original cause is overtaken by pragmatic politics and plain old greed. So, as an example, the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars only got off the ground in the early 13th century, because Pope Innocent III was canny enough to declare that the lands of all Cathar lords were forfeit, and could be seized by those taking the cross in the Crusade. Prior to that, no one in France (Languedoc in the south of what is now France was then under the nominal control of the King of Aragon) gave a rat's ass about the Cathars. It took simple greed to get the Franks involved.

The so-called Thirty Years War (which was several wars, none of which lasted 30 years) was ostensibly about religion. It started with a rebellion of Protestants in Bohemia, who were part of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. But in 1630, King Gustav II Adolf landed in northern Germany, and turned the war around. Eventually, Cardinal Richelieu, who was effectively the ruler of France, would pay Protestant Sweden huge subsidies to stay in the war against the Catholic Imperialists. He considered a powerful empire to be a bigger threat to French interests than Protestants were. Obviously, the Wars of the Reformation, which had begun about a century earlier, were about religion, from start to finish.

History and society just aren't that simple. Most wars, overwhelmingly the majority, are about power and money, which are often indistinguishable, no matter what cause is alleged. Most human "evils" arise from personal cupidity or poor mental health. It is just as stupid to blame religion for the world's ills as it is to blame irreligion.

I view humans as a territorial animal who fights wars because retaining that part of instinct causes them to act so irrationally. But I also believe we have the ability to overcome if we strive hard enough and long enough.

Everything that has happened to this point is certainly perfectly consistent with no God actually existing.

And it is perfectly consistent with a Creator who has given his creation free will.

For whatever reason, human consciousness and cognition evolved to perceive the human condition as radically different than the conditions of animals and the rest of the universe. Because we view ourselves in terms of personhood, intention, active willpower, etc.; we also developed the ability to perceive nature in terms of agency, willpower, personhood, intention, etc.

So when it rains, people were able to imagine some person, a rain/water god, causing the rain. When the sun was hot, they could imagine it was a sun god bombarding them with heat, etc. Eventually, they became able to think of all of the agency within nature as a single god, i.e. God.

Now are you asking what happens to humans if they stop thinking of nature in terms of the same agency as they think of themselves? Well, they either become radical humanists who think everything is controlled by humans somehow; or they suppress the natural cognitive capacity to think of nature in terms of agency and thus limit themselves to thinking in terms that are foreign to them relative to their experience of themselves as beings with power.

You know this because....?

Oh, you have knowledge of the rest of the universe.

And BTW, humanists do not by definition believe everything is controlled by humans.

The level of his 'knowlege' is limited to naive realism. Every key word in that quotation (i.e. reason, consciousness, cognition, universe) are human constructs subject to contextual negotiation. To take just one example, the biologist Maturana argued that 'cognition' cannot be confined to humans and was an aspect of all life. Nor was 'cognition' anything more than 'adaptive behavior'.
Preachers like LL start with their faith as axiomatic and selectively filter their world through their conditioning. ID is merely a version of the apocryphal story about 'the old woman who thought the Earth was supported on the back of a turtle'.
But more significant is that preachers seek all potential 'street corners' to exercise their self reinforcement activities. This particular street corner was from a questionable source.

It's immediately clear. We perceive ourselves and other humans as having agency, but we perceive a waterfall, for example, as happening automatically, i.e. by mechanical determination, without any agency.


Everyone does. Whose knowledge is limited to themselves?


If they can't allow themselves to contemplate cause and effect outside human action in terms of agency, how can they relate to externally-controlled causality? For that you need the notion of gods, spirits, or God/Holy-Spirit.

There is no evidence of "externally-controlled causality." You're just projecting your goofy "god-did-it" world view.

And poorly at that.

There is only mechanics. There are four forces of nature: 1) gravity 2) electromagnetic 3) strong nuclear 4) weak nuclear. There is the periodic table. Humans, including their brains are made out of the elements of the periodic table, and they are subject to the four forces of nature, the same as everything else.

Through these forces of nature, God indeed does everything. He even makes it possible for humans to imagine themselves as separate from the rest of the creation and elevate their own status and the status of their creations over His. In reality, we and our artificial products are an imperfect attempt at mastering what God does perfectly through nature.

So what is your proof "God makes it possible"?

God = the power of the universe outside of human control.

These religion threads could be engaging, but they never are, because some atheists in this forum take everyone as a personal affront.

One thing is for certain...the existence of God cannot be proven or disproved.

People who believe in God should stop trying to argue that his existence can be proven. It can't and every attempt to do so has big holes in it. If you believe, that should be enough for you. If you have to prove God exists, your faith is questionable. It's a pointless exercise. The only way everyone on earth is going to believe in God is if he shows himself and acts Godlike. Even then there will be a fairly large segment of the population arguing "he" is some super-technology alien (and they could be right)

People who don't believe in God should similarly be content with their non-belief. Why is it so crucial to convince others that you are right? You don't have to prove God doesn't exist, and you can't. So leave it at that, and since you always want to cop the intellectual high ground, then stop using childish arguments about how suffering proves God doesn't exist.

The back and forth on this is primarily emotional: "You're not going to tell me what I have to believe!" and "You have to believe what I believe."

Every individual should answer the question for themselves: Does God exist or does he not? What your answer means to anyone else is hard for me to imagine. You answer "Yes," good for you move one. You answer "No," ditto. Atheists often object to proselytizing from Believers and I get that, but the best response is not to proselytize for atheism.

But maybe by proselytizing their faith in God's non-existence, atheists gain the ability to connect with theist faith and proselytizing, which ultimately brings them to peace with God.

All faith is questionable.

Faith is believing something for no good reason.

Asking someone to provide proof for something is not trying to prove them wrong.

If someone would provide proof, I'd gladly listen with an open mind.

If someone's answer is hard for anyone else to imagine, it doesn't appear to be a very good answer.

You sure do assign a lot of roles to people. I'm doing this, he's doing that. Not only that, but you seem to know beforehand what and why someone is doing whatever it is.

Your opinion on what everyone should and shouldn't do is duly noted.

You don't need proof of God. All you need is an understanding that there is order and power in nature beyond human control. Also understand that human existence and everything else in the universe arises from that order and power in nature.

You don't have to look for proof of God beyond that order and power in nature. If you accept it, you can just accept that so many people think about it in anthropromorphic terms of a single, ultimate deity.

No God = not God no

not God no = no

No = refusal

The absence of God is refusal