Atheists: Do you ever wish there was a god?

Then I’ll be GOD! ~

I’m an agnostic, which means I can have my cake and eat it, too. If I felt like praying would bring me comfort, I could, yet I don’t have to worry about any specific “thou shalt’s” but for the Golden Rule and all it’s nondenominational permutations.

My bases are covered.

Peanuts! Popcorn!

Not really. There are moments when it would be nice if some benevolent supernatural being could make sure certain things went right. For example, I have a really hard-working student taking a final exam today that will determine whether or not she graduates. It would be great if I could just pray for her success and get her the success she deserves. But I don’t think a real God could work that way (there’s no sense in helping a girl pass her final exam while leaving people to starve elsewhere), and for the most part I think it’s for the best that our lives are our own rather than the playthings of a being we have to hope is more interested in our wellbeing than His own amusement.

It sounded like a good idea when I was a kid.

I can’t think of a definition of a god I would be comfortable with creating.

No. Besides, IF there is a “God”, what would they, it, he/she really be?
An alien. I wish we could know if there was intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, but wishing for a magical “God”, no.

And doom the universe to an eternity of subjugation and oppression? No.

Since removing deities from my life, I’ve felt no desire to replace them.

I sometimes wish that I could get my hands on that Death Note book, but that’s a different story entirely.

No. “God made it that way. ” would become an acceptable answer to any question.
That is the day creativity, responsibility, tolerance, scientific study and research dies.

“Mommy, why is the sky blue?” “Because God made it that way, dear.” “Thank you, Mommy. Can I have another cookie?

Yep, Cthulu.

Theists always think of God as an easy explanation for…well, a lot of unanswered questions. Which ones might vary from person to person, but a big one is “How did we end up existing?” And I think it’s fair to say moderate theists can basically accept scientific explanations and still believe even in things that ultimately seem very unsupportable.

But, for me, a big problem with God is it just creates a lot more unanswered questions than it resolves. Morality questions are the biggest problems, since the existence of an omnipotent God, at least a remotely compassionate one, doesn’t jive well with things like the Holocaust. But scientific questions aren’t adequately resolved by God either, since they require inquiring about the nature of the deity’s nature – which is hard to do in the absence of evidence for one.

In short, the existence of a God just seems to add complexity, not subtract it.

@ibstubro for me it’s like starving and only imagining cake. The flying zero calorie chocolate cake monster of wholesome goodness, that’s a god I could bite into. Alas.. there is no evidence for such a diety. Consuming the blood and body of cake only makes my brain foggy, belly fat and sugar spike. No cake for me but I sure like the thought of cake.

I am agnostic but I have wished that I could believe in God. It would be much more comforting to know that my father went to a better place. To know that there is something beyond what we have here. Alas and alack, I have trouble convincing myself that there is more.

But yes, if I had my druthers, I would be a believer.

No.

I’d get ice giants.

No. Sometimes I wish karma was real, so the shitty people would get theirs.

No, I just take the universe as I find it. I don’t mind being astonished by it.

Sure. A benevolent, all knowing entity that could actually be there to literally help you would be awesome. My God would take out all the bad people though. My God wouldn’t randomly take out good people and children and leave bad people unscathed.

If there was an all powerful god that loved its creations, they wouldn’t create bad people to begin with.

No, I think it’s a terrible idea. Let’s not.

I think it would be great to have someone to go to, that would fix things when everything is going to sh**. That is what I need out of a god. If your god can’t or won’t do that, then what’s the point?

No, I am much too realistic to hope that undesirable false things could ever be true. Gods are infantile inventions of imbeciles. It is amazing that so many people believe in such crude fiction.

No, I have no need of gods.

I have a need of god, but alas, god still doesn’t exist.

Sure.

That would mean when I die I’m not just dead.

I am envious of those who believe. I want to, but I don’t anymore.

@longgone: “Say you had the opportunity to create a god. Would you?”

Only if he/she would actually answer prayers.

@hominid
Well…I have wished there was a god. The world is complicated. For every problem, there are a myriad of possible solutions accompanied by varying “side effects”. Sometimes, I wish there was a single being to be held accountable.

That said…no, I would not create a god. I’d be extremely uncomfortable giving a single being that kind of power. What would concern me even more, though, is all the changes the existence of a god would bring to our daily life: There would be no more questioning, no decisions, no challenges. I liked @LuckyGuy‘s example… Every action would be meaningless.

I see I’m in line with most of you here, unsurprisingly. Thanks for answering!

This question begs to be like asking a springbok if it wants to be eaten by the lion or the jackals. I cannot see why any atheist would want to create a god, because even one created by their own hands, would only have the power they gave it. They don’t have to wish there was a God, they already can believe, they just don’t want to. For mankind to fathom something greater than he would mean he would have to take a step down and be second fiddle, and surely man cannot be anything but the highest, best, and smartest life form in the Universe; that way he can do as he wants, as he pleases, and believe himself omnipotent.

@Hypocrisy_Central “Even one created by their own hands, would only have the power they gave it.”

Why? I could make my god omnipotent. OP’s rules.

By the same logic, a crane can only lift as much as the engineer who designed it.

@Hypocrisy_Central “They don’t have to wish there was a God, they already can believe, they just don’t want to. For mankind to fathom something greater than he would mean he would have to take a step down and be second fiddle, and surely man cannot be anything but the highest, best, and smartest life form in the Universe; that way he can do as he wants, as he pleases, and believe himself omnipotent.”

Funny. Apart from the addition of one higher being that’s pretty much exactly what religion teaches. Once I finally stopped fighting and accepted my inherent lack of belief (which had always been there, in the back of my mind, since childhood) I came to realize and embrace how insignificant we are.

christians believe that humans are a special creation of their god, that the same god appointed humans, whom he created superior to animals, to have dominion over the animals and the planet, that the entire universe revolves around earth and humans, and that only humans have the privilege to ascend to eternal paradise because they are just so awesome and special, and somehow it is atheists that think humans as the king of everything. The amount of brain twisting involved is just staggering.

The truth is the reverse. If you take a reality based view of the world, you recognise that humans are just another animal, that is inferior to all other animals in every aspect but intelligence, and even the latter position is slowly being eroded by scientific discoveries in animal intelligence. You recognise that humans are utterly insignificant compared to the cosmos, without any divinely preordained purpose, divine right or privilege, that the universe was not created for humans, and that the universe does not give a god damned fly shit about you hairless apes crawling around on a tiny speck of dust in the vast expanse of space.

@ragingloli Amen! Oh if only everyone were to understand that instead of closing their minds to doctrine!

Believers do grant God on only certain abilities. We grant him the ability to save a rapist and drown a child. We grant him the ability to miraculously save someone’s life in a horrible car accident, and to miraculously kill someone in what should be a minor freak accident. We grant him the ability to “create” Hitlers and to create Ghandies.

If I could create a God, my god would get rid of the evil with a snap of his fingers. His workings would be obvious, explainable and logical. Or they’d seem miraculous (like the universe) but he’d grant us the ability to discover how it all works. Wait…he does that already.

@Dutchess_III Believers do grant God on only certain abilities.
Right God, wrong attributes. What you are talking about is the god of @ragingloli, @longgone, @Skaggfacemutt et al. That is a god who mere men can grant permission to do or not to do; men created them, down to what they look like. God, as you used in your opening sentence, is omniscience and omnipotent, Hen doesn’t need to ask anything of His created beings to do anything He wishes to do.

If I could create a God, my god would get rid of the evil with a snap of his fingers. His workings would be obvious, explainable and logical.
People have already created gods, Horus, Ra, Baal, Aphodite, Poseidon, Adonis, Helios, Isis, etc. etc. To create a god, makes you a god, for no true God, can be created of its creation. Man has played god for thousands of years, how has that worked?

His works is all around, and easily seen to those who want to open their eyes.

Or they’d seem miraculous (like the universe) but he’d grant us the ability to discover how it all works. Wait…he does that already.
Amazing isn’t it? God pulls back the veil from 2% of His creation so man can understand how marvelous it is, and man thinks he knows it all. Kind of like showing a novice med student how to make a descent scalpel cut, and that student thinks he is a thoracic heart surgeon.

@Hypocrisy_Central People debate for hours about what God will and won’t do! They say “He created everything in 7 days.” Why do they say that? Because they can wrap their brains around that, whereas evolution is mind numbing and can be hard to understand. Ergo, they say God can only do things they understand. They cram him in a human size box when they think they understand what he’s done. If they really can’t understand they just blow it off as a miracle or “God works in mysterious ways.” To me, that’s a cop out.

Yes, people create Gods and then devise rituals and things to act out the God they have created. The endow him with certain divine rights. They put rules on how the God they created is to be viewed and how society will be ruled by the laws the God they created have put down.

We are far, far from knowing it all. It will forever be an ongoing quest, with discovery building upon discovery. I’d rather be in that camp than have my brain just shut down and quit trying to think for myself.

Even the One True God that Abraham claimed came to him has changed personalities as the various cultures changed. Abraham was a Jew, and out of his God came the entire Jewish people, along with Islam and Christianity. All three cultures supposedly worship the same God, but who he is and what he expects from us vary wildly and everyone is running amuck calling everyone else a liar.

@ragingloli That, and if every animal and insect ever decided to turn on mankind, we would all be dead in like two days.

@Dutchess_III People debate for hours about what God will and won’t do!
I would agree, that would be pure folly. God has said what He will do and won’t in His Word. Many have not read it, or they have not read it well enough to pay attention.

They say “He created everything in 7 days.” Why do they say that? Because they can wrap their brains around that, whereas evolution is mind numbing and can be hard to understand.
Though the words can be translated over grammatically correct, the intent may not. The word “day” in the Old Text often mean a span of time not literally a 24 hr. period. Those seven days could have been 70 thousand years, or 70 million years. I can understand evolution at its basic core but I just don’t see enough evidence in it to say it is the smoking gun on how humans got here; unlike faith, as you say ”show me the money!”

If they really can’t understand they just blow it off as a miracle or “God works in mysterious ways.” To me, that’s a cop out.
There are many things science has been able to explain from a logical sense, and I still believe them to be miracles. Loom outside on any given day and behold the thousands of gallons of flying water we call clouds. The fact you can take crappy water, have it evaporate, have the wind blow it over land and then have it fall as fresh rain is a miracle; then it flows back to the ocean to do it all again. Take a flock of seagulls swarming, there can be more than 50 birds in the flock spinning and wheeling abound in a tight ball of a formation and not crashing into eachother; miracle. I see it all of the time, I see God in there, others choose not to.

Even the One True God that Abraham claimed came to him has changed personalities as the various cultures changed.
It was man that changed and tried to say God changed with him, but God is the same as He always was.

The entire concept of God is the price we pay for living outside of the natural order and fearing death.

Neither the lion nor the lamb have the time or energy to contemplate a supreme creator. They are too busy simply living.

This is also why no other living creatures on this planet destroy their own sustainable habitat to build churches and fast food chains.

So @Hypocrisy_Central, are we wrong to not believe the way the Jewish believe? They’re the ones who came up with discovered God.

I’m always amused that religious folks have the arrogance to presume that they have all the correct ideas and that everyone else (even those that believe in the same god but may have certain doctrinal disagreements) is wrong. Damn near every religious person thinks this way.

^^^^ Yep. God revealed himself to Abraham but Abraham got it all wrong, you see.