Almost certainly not. So many people on Quora keep asking questions of the form ‘Has this happened?’ where ‘this’ is something which would break physics. Obviously they haven’t thought things through. Stuff that breaks physics is important, and important stuff makes headlines. If ghosts, or ESP, or an afterlife are proven to exist, you won’t …
Monthly Archives: September 2019
What is the point in the atheist vs. theist debates, if the theist always has the burden of proof? How can a theist win said debate without evidence?
You can’t win a debate without evidence, at least if the audience is well-informed, rational and without bias. But theists generally don’t go into debates thinking they have no evidence. They usually believe that they have convincing arguments and/or empirical proofs that their beliefs are correct. Sometimes losing a debate will help them—and their followers—to realise that …
Is science close to disproving that there is no afterlife?
There is currently no more reliable evidence for any kind of ‘afterlife’ from science (or any other source) than there always has been—none whatsoever. We have effectively proved the non-occurrence of any afterlife many years ago, in the only way that non-occurrences can be proved; by a consistent failure to find any evidence that they do occur, …
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Are atheists unable to feel God’s presence or do they just reject God out of rebellion or something else?
Without general agreement from theists on what it means to ‘feel a god’s presence’, it’s impossible to say whether atheists have that experience or not. Like many religious terms, it seems to cover a wide range of different sensations which have nothing in common other than the term used to describe them. But if the …
How can atheists know there is no creator when it is unknown what happened before the “big bang”? Wouldn’t it be more logical to label themselves agnostic?
We don’t know if fairies caused the Big Bang. We don’t know if leprechauns caused the Big Bang. We don’t know if unicorns caused the Big Bang. We don’t know if gods caused the Big Bang. Any one of these possibilities is supported by exactly the same evidence as the others—none at all. Just because …
Is it that atheists don’t believe in God but they know there’s a God, or otherwise? I ask this because an atheist has to have become that particular person from their lives, and not from birth, probably due to the influence of their parent?
Most of the atheists on Earth are in China, and most of them are born into atheist families. It’s unlikely that they spend very much time thinking about gods one way or the other. It’s simply not a part of their culture. Western atheists are growing in number, and an increasing proportion of them are …
Atheists: if Thor appeared carrying a magic hammer, smiting down the unrighteous with lightning; would you just say ‘Oh, powerful alien from another dimension, nope, no god there’?
Atheists in general are not stupid, or in denial. If something extraordinary like this happened, then atheists would acknowledge that something extraordinary was happening. And the reason they would do so would be because there was tangible, objective, public evidence of it—something conspicuously lacking from the claims made by people who claim that gods really do exist. …
As an atheist, how would you argue against the Fibonacci sequence as proof of the teleological argument?
It’s not necessary to argue against the Fibonacci sequence as proof of the teleological argument for gods, because it’s not one. And anyone who is capable of understanding any kind of argument at all can already see that.
What proof does an atheist have to not believe in god?
All the proof there is. Nobody has ever found any remotely convincing objective evidence of gods anywhere, despite billions of people looking for it for thousands of years. Evidence for non-existence claims just doesn’t get any better than that. What better evidence could there possibly be?
As an atheist, if you are wrong and you die and experience some kind of afterlife, would that be a major disappointment for you?
Atheists in general are rational people. If something good happens to us unexpectedly, we will enjoy it. If something bad happens to us unexpectedly, we will be distressed by it. Most of us would be delighted to enter upon a happy afterlife. But there’s absolutely no reason for us to expect it. So it’s not …
Jon's Quora content 