Belief is for something you can not know.
God is an improvable. No one can prove God exists. We can look at things and surmise the existence of God is true. Often, that is a fallacy based upon skewing the facts—including just what proves one’s point while ignoring the rest of the data.
By the same token, one can not prove that God does not exist either.
This was a point made by Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest logicians of our time and the 19th century.
Believing in God is quite logical. The belief answers many questions.
The disbelief in God, is also quite logical.
However, the dogmatic disbelief in God is not logical at all.
Or, the belief that the disbelief in God is a fact, is not logical.
There are good reasons not to believe in God.
There are even better reasons to reject that which is said in the name of God.
While the opposite of the belief in God is atheism, this is not what many people mean when they say they do not believe in God. What they mean is they reject their theory of God or belief system in God. Meaning, the explanations of evil, heaven & hell, austerity of life, suffering, poverty, etc. ‘Why me?’ ‘Why do I suffer so much, while others have it so good, or easy?!’
Not believing in God is usually more a denouncement of a religion than the disbelief in God.
Many people use the idea of intelligent design to prove the existence of God. This is not new. This is done by the old Middle Eastern view of master architect. This was done by the Greeks with all their math. Albeit for a polytheistic view of gods. This has been done by many physicists. The French Catholic scientists and mathematicians did the same. Louis Pasteur’s discoveries were all done in the quest to prove that life comes from God and can not be man made. Laplace, in his magnum opus, Méchanic Céleste (Heavenly Mechanics or The Mechanics of the Sky), went into a great in-depth explanation of the math of motion. Also, to explain, that there is a “great” intelligent mover, who knows where every molecule will go and when.
None of which “proves” the existence of God. All of which merely lends credibility to the existence of God.
Or, as some would say, using God to explain what we can not understand.
A proposed logical argument that is not logical is a fallacy.
A refutation proves that a logical argument is a fallacy.
The refutation of intelligent design is NOT atheism—the belief that God does not exist.
The refutation of intelligent design is proving the premise, the idea, that the design of the universe is really not as intelligent as we believe:
“If a man in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if in order to get into a locked room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather—assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence.” [Yet so is Nature…] – J.W.N. Sullivan … The words quoted by Sullivan are from Lange, “History of Materialism”.
THAT—is a real counter-argument to intelligent design!
Of course, that counter-argument has been rebutted with all the advantages to the eco-system and fulfillment of the needs of the food chain as well as life in general, that such behavior brings.
Brilliant. Yes, brilliant. We can go around in circles forever; with more and more retorts; all summing up to the same basic argument; pointing to the same type of facts; demonstrating: Intelligent and Unintelligent design.
The real question remains: “Does one believe in God because one believes in God?”