God Hypothesis
To those who say I should think there is or could be a god, I ask you: why don't you consider that lightning bolts are caused by Zeus or that the universe was created by Ganesh? Why don't you consider that there really are fairies and leprachauns (some people have claimed to see them)? I can't say with absolute knowledge or certainty there are no gods or afterlife, but I do think it's not too irrational to think there most likely isn't. That's my opinion. And I do think it's rationally justified. Why? There simply isn't any good reason to believe in gods. There's no evidence and it doesn't make scientific or logical sense. Furthermore, we know gods were invented by humans, just like the many other fabrications of humans. The problem people have is that they have grown up in a culture that has taught them to give a special free pass to god belief over everything else. They give special treatment to the god believed in their culture that isn't given to other unsubstantiated claims such as the lochness monster, fairies, elves, dragons, giants, other gods, etc. People really believed in those things, and some still do. But I'm willing to bet you can easily say those things don't exist or won't have a problem with anyone else saying they don't exist. Gods are equal to all other claims and should be held to the same critical examination.
Even if there is a god, it hasn't made itself known. We still have no reason to believe there's one out there. And the evidence needs to be pretty good because the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence required.
A god, which is basically a disemodied mind with mind boggling power, enough to create a universe, and no explanation for its existence, is probably never going to seem plausible to me, and I don't know how it ever was. By filling a gap with a god, all you're essentially doing is creating a much bigger problem and shitting all over occam's razor. How the did that god get there? It's more complex than the entirety of the universe. Complexity building up over time is plausible and we observe it all the time in nature, we have many examples of this. But complexity just existing without any processes leading up to it has never been found anywhere in nature. I'm being more reasonable saying there aren't any gods than I am saying there are. Even if I can't KNOW. Because really it's just as reasonable as saying there aren't any unicorns.
I would like to also address the really annoying and absurd tendency of some to try and make the argument that god is just some higher power. These people refuse to define what they're talking about. Higher power or god can be literally anything. So the term becomes meaningless and the argument a pointless, wasteful diversion. I can easily say that stars are a higher power, does that make me a theist? Obviously that's ridiculous.
God of the gaps is very popular. Many people think it reasonable to assume that just because we don't know for sure what exactly happened before the big bang, that we should assume some sort of god like entity is responsible. Few people can say "I don't know." We have found a scientific explanation for everything else so far and yet people still want to assume a god for the last gap in our knowledge. I find that absurd and assinine. That's not my atheism speaking, thats my opinion as an individual who has thought about it and heard many well reasoned arguments. The more I thought about it and researched it, the less plausible and rational I have found the god explanation to be. When we have found a scientific, natural explanation for everything else thus far, why can't we imagine finding yet another natural, scientific explanation for what started the big bang? We already have hypotheses. If people are really curious and really are interested in what's true, then why do they not seek real answers instead of just throwing their hands up in the air and leaving it up to "god did it" and stopping their search. Why not see what scientists have to say on the matter?
