'God' is a fundamentally logically flawed concept, so it is vastly more reasonable to simply assume that there is no God, in the absence of some startling new evidence, than concede some small possibility of such an poorly worked-out concept corresponds to something real.

Whereas Theists accept God on the basis of wishful thinking, over-interpretation of mental experiences and ancient texts.

How are those two sides remotely comparable?

If you want to actually put forward some arguments against this position, please let's hear it, that's what we're about.

There are certainly more things making up reality than we currently know about or even suspect.

But history should tell us that until we get some actual evidence as to the existence and nature of these aspects of reality yet to be discovered, to try and intuitively second-guess them is increasingly less likely to match what actually turns up.

It was once thought 'obvious' that heavy objects should always fall faster than light ones, that projectiles from a cannon travel in straight lines until they 'run out of momentum' and then just drop, that the Earth is the center of the Universe, that the stars are just lights on some 'celestial sphere', etc, etc. These ideas predated what can be properly called science, ie systematic empirical observation and testing/verification/replication. Galileo was one of the first, if not the historical first,  person to really 'get it' and seriously successfully act on such ideas in a big way. And of course he quickly ran foul of the theologians and metaphysicians, who took the ultimate source of 'knowledge' to be based on the 'power' of reason and a priori intuition and revelation alone.

Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, the details of the Big-Bang Origin of the Universe, Black Holes, are all things which were pretty much unexpected and in many or all respects highly counter-intuitive. Which points to the inadequacy of our naked reasoning and imagination, ie, not stimulated by and based upon the often surprising results of our ongoing empirical investigations of reality itself, to anticipate such empirical 'revelations'. The Big Bang origin was rubbished by some prominent scientists, especially Fred Hoyle, who came up with the name 'Big Bang' as a derogatory label on what he thought was a naive and silly idea.

'Higher Power' seems to me to be simply an ancient and ill-defined idea which we are pre-disposed to think in terms of, it doesn't really point to anything like what we have actually uncovered. There are many things in the larger universe that are 'powerful', but just what exactly is meant by 'higher'?

The feeling that some such 'power' must actually have its own will and awareness and intent is an ancient superstition, based on the precautionary reaction to a motion in the grass on the savannah, which may be a lion.

But so far, our ongoing discoveries show that a fundamental randomness or indeterminacy appears to be the additional factor blurring the more deterministic mechanics at the base of existence. IOW no hint of a 'higher' consciousness or 'purpose' or direction. Apart from the direction of increasing entropy. Quantum phenomenon are currently the most purely statistically random events yet discovered.

To quote JBS Haldane, "Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

"Atheist" simply refers to a lack of a belief in a God. This can encompass the range from don't give a f**k about the concept, to actively rejecting it as a nonsense concept.

'God' is not a concept that can justify being a default belief, since it goes way beyond anything we actually experience directly with or without augmentation of our senses by instrumentation and magnification. And it no longer fits in well what we have come to know of reality. It cannot explain existence, since that would require that it 'exist' or come into existence, prior to existence, which is nonsense.

There are an infinite number of scenarios of the origin of everything which could be postulated, the Abrahamic God is just one.

Since God is logically unnecessary, and we have no evidence to point unambiguously to the existence of any supernatural entity, let alone to any specific kind, the fully justified default assumption is that there is no such thing. This issue was largely addressed famously by Bertrand Russell's orbiting china teapot analogy.

The normal atheist position is that the claim that a God exists is extraordinary, and so requires extraordinary evidence, in the absence of which the rational thing to do is to go about affairs without concerning ourselves over much with it. Except when we are forced to by people interfering in our life. or the affairs of society, based on belief in such a thing.

I think many or most here are agnostic atheists. We don't know for certain there is not a god but we see no evidence supporting the assertion there is.

By the way, 5-senses, do you believe aliens exist?

Interstellar travel to get resources would be extremely inefficient, even in the extremely unlikely event that there was some 'resource' uniquely available on Earth.

Anyone sufficiently advanced to travel between star systems would almost certainly be able to synthesise anything they had used up locally, at far lower energy expenditure.

Similarly, any possible genetic setup they wanted could be synthesised by such advanced intelligences.

I think it is highly unlikely we are the only intelligent species in the Universe, or even just in our galaxy.

But I think the scale of the Galaxy makes interstellar contact extremely unlikely, apart from possibly contact via light or radio communication.

I think it's NOT likely that we are alone in this universe of which we don't really even have a good concept of yet.

We are 3 year olds playing with a a modern laptop with no idea of what it is or where it came from.

getting a handle on this fundamental stuff is awesome. It's real epiphany material.

For me Brian Cox takes the right amount of time to put out some science. Then he provides a pause with incredible scenery for me to digest what he just said. 

So what do you guys think/know about what the sun provides to earth now? Plants can process its light through photosynthesis.  I know we get vitamin D. 

I don't know how to properly form my next question. But can any of the elements created by the sun or stars pass through our atmosphere and become a part of the earth with even the crazy notion that even gold molecules from some supernova could be forming right now on earth?  Or were nearly all the elements captured on earth when it was formed ~4 billion years ago and little can pass through?

Is it an ongoing process or fixed? I don't want to used open or closed, because it is open.

Looks like I am trying to learn what our atmosphere allows in and blocks out.

TIA