Why do atheists consider the concept of a creator as invalid?

@GreatLakesGuy: If someone comes to believe in God through science, they have severely misunderstood the science involved.

@GreatLakesGuy: Well the first 10 seconds of this video is wrong already ... Atheists don't believe that science proves there is no god. We just believe that there is no evidence of god. Big difference. Christians always have to see everything as a battle.

Atheists just don't care that much what Christians think.

Not sure what to say here, Flew isn't talking about science. He says "DNA is complex, so there must have been a creator." No real scientist would say that as it has no proof or backing behind it. Its an opinion.

@Pherick: If you didn't care why bother asking for evidence from Christians. I suggest you read or watch videos by Ravi Zacharias, J. Warner Wallace, or Lee Stroebel. Two were former atheists and now are Christian. Ravi is a brilliant Christian scholar who is very gracious and part of many debates with atheists.

@GreatLakesGuy: We atheists only act this way when you try to undermine science with religion. Otherwise, we don't care what you believe, so long as you don't try to penetrate science or law with your beliefs. By all means, have them, but the second you try to impact on others with your beliefs, you'll get backlash from us.

@MaryMum: there have been many great scientists who were people of faith. Science and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive.

@GreatLakesGuy: What MaryMum just said! The only time I ask christians for evidence is when they try and force beliefs or force out science with those beliefs. I don't need to read or watch those men. I am happy they decided to abandon good science and become religious, but I don't think they are right.

@Pherick: your choice. As I have made mine.

@GreatLakesGuy: That's my point. On a personal level, faith is fine. But letting it impact on science or others is wrong.

Also, you can only judge people by their circumstance. Saying that scientists were people of faith in a time when being an atheist was a surefire way of being ignored and/or prosecuted, it doesn't mean that much to say that they believed in God.

@MaryMum: There are contemporary scientists who are Christians.

@GreatLakesGuy: And they are in 2 groups:
1) Credible sientists who separate science and relgion. (The majority)
2) Discredited people who nobody listens to because they can't separate their beliefs from their study. (The minority)

@MaryMum: Is he credible enough?

from Relevant Magazine

Francis Collins

One of the preeminent geneticists in the world, Francis Collins helped complete a groundbreaking research into human DNA and gene sequences as a leader of the Human Genome Project. Collins, who is currently the Director of the National Institutes of Health, is also passionate about another topic: Exploring the intersections of science and his Christian faith through his idea of “BioLogos.” In his bestselling 2006 book The Language of God, Collins discusses his view of theistic evolution, suggesting God is a master creator and designer, responsible for setting forth the events resulting in life. He’s also an influential voice in modern Christianity: His BioLogos Foundation fosters dialogue in faith an science communities, and he was even recognized by Pope Benedict, receiving an appointment to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

@GreatLakesGuy: I think he loses credibility when he injects religion into science, no matter what his credentials are.

@GreatLakesGuy: Yes, if he separates his faith from his science. Being vocal about faith isn't a problem for a scientist, so long as they don't let their faith influence their science.

@Pherick:
@MaryMum:

Werner Heisenberg, one of the pioneers of theoretical physics and a devout member of the Evangelische Kirche, said, "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."

(Peace Out)

@GreatLakesGuy: Oh a quote! I love quotes! One of my favorites ..

@GreatLakesGuy: Yeees, In his book The Case for a Creator, former atheist Lee Strobel writes: “The six-feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body's one-hundred trillion cells contains a four-letter chemical alphabet that spells out precise assembly instructions for all the proteins from which our bodies are made. Cambridge-educated Stephen Meyer demonstrated that no hypothesis has come close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic [evolutionary] means”.

So there is no logical explanation as to how this incredibly extensive, exquisite code inside the cell could exist without a supremely intelligent Being having designed it. Microsoft founder Bill Gates noted, “DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than anything we've ever devised” ( The Road Ahead, 1996, p. 228).
It is absurd to think that nobody designed such a complex code—that it is simply a result of time, chance and mutation.

@MaryMum: There would be no science without its Creator, God.

It's not up to any to prove it to you. It's up to you to prove it to yourself, but without faith, there is no hope, and without hope, there is nothing.

I don't understand everything about physics, but that doesn't mean I think gravity is imaginary.

Faith is not about seeing Him, it's about experiencing His presence. Not all things that exist are readily visible.

@GraceFromEP: You can't use God as evidence for God, especially when talking to someone who doesn't believe that God exists.

I resent the idea that there is no hope without a God. In fact, from my perspective, the opposite is closer to the truth. I have so much hope, but if I were to find out that the God of the Bible is real, so much of that hope would be lost.

You don't think gravity is imaginary becasue you can observe the effects of gravity, just like scientists can observe the effects of evolution.

If something can't be observed with a consistent method by multiple independent people in way that is quantifiable, that thing has no evidence for existence. If you have no evidence for something, you need no evidence to dismiss it.

If you feel hope, comfort and faith in a God, that is fine. But until you can prove God's existence quantifiably, keep him and his book away from our children. That is all we ask. Faith should not be influencing school curriculums or government policy.

@MaryMum:
Mary, when I said no hope, I was only making reference that without faith, there is no accessibility to God, then heaven. The fact still remains that science cannot exist without a Creator, no matter how you figure it. Neither can anything else. If God did not create everything, how did the first single-celled organism originate? By chance? But even if we skipped all that...How anyone can look at this world and everything in it and still deny God's existence, is beyond me. His fingerprints are everywhere, they cannot be missed. The only reason you have reason and logic is because God put it there. Birth alone is a miracle. All the physicists and science in the world MAY be able to make an eye, but they'll never make it see. I have no doubt my God is alive, because if it weren't for Him, I would not be alive today. He saved me from death. He (Love) came down and rescued me. We may never agree and I'm fine with that, I respect your beliefs, too, but I will never understand this:

@GraceFromEP:

Heaven would be horrible. I would never want to live for an eternity. If I knew that was what awaited me, I would dread it. Eternity is a prison, and even the nicest and most comfortable prisons, are still prisons.

That's the equivalent of saying God exists because God exists. That logic is fine for your personal beliefs, but if that's the logic you're going to use, don't try to argue it with anyone else. As for whether science could exist without God, the answer is yes. Definitely. From my perspective, it does. To answer the question: "how did the first single-celled organism originate? By chance?" Simply put, yes. But think of it like this. If the chance of life evolving around our star was 1 in a quadrillion(1,000,000,000,000,000), with about a sextillion(1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the observable Universe (And probably much more outside our observational limits), that leaves a predicted million star systems with life. So yes, it would happen by chance.

If the fingerprints of God cannot be missed, then why doesn't the scientific community pick up on them? And I find it incredibly hypocritical to base your belief in God on "fingerprints" (That, miraculously, atheists just can't see), and then claim that Evolution is unsubstantiated when scientists use fossil evidence, etc. (fingerprints of evolution, and these "fingerprints" aren't invisible. Imagine that.) to show Evolution.

You have no evidence for your claim that my reason and logic comes from God, and that very same reason and logic tells me that there is no evidence to be found.

Birth is not a miracle, it's a dangerous, messy and flawed biological process that usually produces living babies, but only has a serviceable infant mortality rate with advanced human technology only invented in the last century or so, and occasionally kills the mother too. (Not so occasionally before the previously mentioned medical technology was invented.) It was also mostly driven by rape for many millennia, but apparently the Bible is okay with that.

No, scientists can't quite make a functioning eye. Yet. (Though we're not far now). Science can't show or explain everything, but that's why we're still doing it. We seek understanding.

That picture shows nothing more than a collection of serious misunderstandings of the scientific theories about the beginning of the Universe, and an even more serious misunderstanding of Evolution by Natural Selection.

The truth is, we don't know how the Universe began. (And, as scientists, we don't care why, because science explains the universe, it doesn't, and doesn't try to, give meaning.) But just because we don't quite know how the Universe began doesn't mean we can't dismiss other hypotheses, like the idea that God created the Universe, as described in Genesis. That has no evidence, and so it can be dismissed.

The Big Bang Theory is widely misunderstood. Put simply, the theory states that at one point billions of years ago, space and time was created, and matter began to expand outwards from a single point. Again, science assigns no meaning. If you wish to believe that the cause of this was God, you can go ahead. But that doesn't necessarily make it true for anyone else. There are plenty of other theories out there about how it started. The key word being "How". The entire reason that science and faith can coexist is because science tells you how things happen, and faith is free to tell you why.

The only reason I ever have problems with people of faith are the following:
1) Attempts to use faith to curb the rights of other people (for example being against same-sex marriage because your religion says it's bad. That's not ok, clearly these people don't believe that, and no religion has the right to influence people that are not within it)
2) Trying to claim that their creation stories are literal facts. Science tells you how things happen. That is the entire purpose of it. It's up to you to assign meaning.
3) Teaching said creation myths to impressionable children (If you must teach them to believe in God, don't let them believe the myths are literal).
4) Any hypocrisy (Gay, child-molesting priests, etc.) and hatred towards others.

I just realised how long this is. Brings me back to the days of writing essays at school. If only I'd had the drive to write then that I do now. If you read all of this, thank you. It's a seriously long thing, and I wouldn't blame anyone for falling asleep after the first few lines alone. I have to say I'm quite enjoying our debate. We may disagree wildly, but it's good to talk about these things. It's not my hope to convert you at all, just to make you think, and to explain how atheists, or at least this atheist, views the world. Have a nice day!

@GraceFromEP: Who created God then? Why is there no quantifiable evidence of one? What sense is there to put " faith" in one God over another god or gods?

@MaryMum: Just sayin. From a biological stand point birth is pretty well good. You say it's messy because without modern science there is high infant mortality rates. Biologically speaking that's part of the process. Some aren't supposed to make it in the natural world. It's part of the genetic strengthening process.
Fact is a lot of modern medical science is leading us to weaken our gene pool and allow undesirable genes to stay in the gene pool. It's a double edged sword for our species in the grand scheme of biology.

@MethDozer: I agree entirely. But @GraceFromEP was talking about birth as if it was a miracle, and I was simply explaining why it's not in a qualitative way, explaining the bias that modern medicine has caused. The science, of course, is what you described, but I wanted to keep it simple, as I usually do when writing to someone who doesn't have a higher degree in the sciences. Also, I wrote about 800 words, and I think that was already pushing it a bit, so I couldn't really flesh out each point. Nevertheless, the extra context and depth is helpful to the debate, so thank you.

@MaryMum: Oh I know.

I completely agree with you though on the idea of eternal afterlife and life having a grand purpose to be depressing.