Neil deGrasse Tyson on God

Do you believe in God?

Me?

A creator?

Yeah, so the more I look at the universe, just the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on.

So if your concept of a creator is someone who's all powerful and all good, that's not an uncommon pairing of powers that you might describe to a creator.

All powerful and all good.

And I look at

disasters that afflict Earth and life on Earth.

Volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, disease, pestilence, congenital birth defects.

You look at this list of ways that life is made miserable on Earth by natural causes.

And I just ask, how do you deal with that?

So philosophers rose up and said, if there is a God,

God is either not all powerful or not all good.

I have no problems if as we probe the origins of things, we bump up into the bearded man.

If that shows up, we're good to go, okay?

Not a problem.

There's just no evidence of it.

And this is why religions are called faiths, collectively, because you believe something in the absence of evidence.

That's what it is.

That's why it's called faith.

Otherwise, we would call all religions evidence.

But we don't for exactly that reason.

So I'm given what everyone describes to be the properties that would be expressed by an all-powerful being in the gods that they worship.

I look for that in the universe and I don't find it.

So I remain unconvinced.

But if you've got some good evidence, bring it.

Bring it.

And so I don't lead with that information because what I believe should be irrelevant to anyone.

It's not about me.

It's about the real world.