Atheists: Is that your final answer?

[Jackytar]

Do you now accept the proposition that God is an extremely unlikely being?

Unlikely? Hmmm...

"That god" seems impossible. The sticking point for me is that we seem impossible so who's to say?

I reject the possession of divine knowledge by humans. As such I've been an atheist for 30 yrs. I've never been formally welcomed into the fold so thanks for that.

Philosophically, I'm a strong agnostic but only toward's "that god". The leap from non-living to self aware is mysterious. In this context you have placed the word mysterious in quotation marks. I don't. Perhaps therein lies the difference.

Jackytar

 

[Copernicus]

Unlikely? Hmmm...

"That god" seems impossible. The sticking point for me is that we seem impossible so who's to say?

I would recommend that you take a closer look at the nature of the odds that evolution would produce creatures such as ourselves. Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable was dedicated to explaining just why we aren't such improbable creatures, given the inconceivable (from a human perspective) amounts of time involved. The problem with the God hypothesis is that the existence of an undetectable superbeing that somehow had the knowledge and experience to plan and construct everything in existence doesn't even approach our level of probability.

I reject the possession of divine knowledge by humans. As such I've been an atheist for 30 yrs. I've never been formally welcomed into the fold so thanks for that.

I suppose that nobody ever taught you the secret handshake, then: :slap:

Philosophically, I'm a strong agnostic but only toward's "that god". The leap from non-living to self aware is mysterious. In this context you have placed the word mysterious in quotation marks. I don't. Perhaps therein lies the difference.

That leap is what eventually drove the strongly atheistic philosopher Anthony Flew to deism in his dotage. The man was apparently done in by the old "argument from design" and a lot of supportive Christian friends. As Dawkins pointed out so well in The Blind Watchmaker, the argument from design is one of the most convincing arguments that theists have, but it is fatally flawed in the end. There are lots of good reasons to why abiogenesis is not such an implausible explanation of the origin of life. The alternative--creation by miracle--creates far worse cognitive dissonance.

 

[Jackytar]

So now you think I'm a creationist?
Oh boy... am I that incoherent?

Jackytar

 

[Copernicus]

So now you think I'm a creationist?
Oh boy... am I that incoherent?

So now you think that I took you for a creationist? Oh boy... am I that incoherent?

Look, I don't take you for a creationist. What I am trying to do is figure out just what it is that you think plausible and implausible. So far, you seem to have equated the implausibility of God with the implausibility of abiogenesis. Have I misunderstood you? My own view of this is that God is far and away less plausible than abiogenesis.

 

[Katzpur]

Man, I am totally amazed at how my thread took off! I'm not even following it any more. I wonder why the threads I start and am interested in participating on myself don't do this well.

 

[Copernicus]

Man, I am totally amazed at how my thread took off! I'm not even following it any more. I wonder why the threads I start and am interested in participating on myself don't do this well.

Katzpur, we are still pretty much on target with the subject of the OP. Jackytar is a self-proclaimed agnostic, and I am a self-proclaimed atheist. What I am trying to defend here is the view that atheism is not an argument for the impossibility of gods, but for their implausibility. I think that Jackytar has essentially agreed with my underlying point that there is no fundamental contradiction between agnosticism (a claim about absolute knowledge) and atheism (a claim about belief in gods). I have just been pressing him for his "final answer", which still seems a little different from mine. Does he really consider the creator "God" to be roughly as credible as the idea that life arose from inanimate self-replicating processes in nature?

 

[Jackytar]

Katzpur - this thread belongs to Copernicus and me now. Go away, you're distracting us!

Copernicus - please eliminate any reference to a creator god from your arguments, as you have done again in your reply to Katzpur. You are begging me to yell "straw man"!

To find a conceptualization of "that god" we need not look any further than your own statement:

"we aren't such improbable creatures, given the inconceivable (from a human perspective) amounts of time involved."

To clarify - what you are actually referencing here is not the inconceivable time frame so much as the inconceivable number of probability events within that time frame - an inconceivability of many more orders of magnitude greater than the time frame itself.

But why qualify this with "from a human perspective"? What other perspective(s) are you comparing it to?

Jackytar

 

[Copernicus]

Jackytar, we measure times in terms of our own experiences, e.g. the span of a human life. Geological time really is inconceivable from our perspective. That is why I have been recommending Dawkins' books The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable. I'm not sure how much we want to get into probability theory, but Dawkins is pretty good at calculating probabilities.

 

[Jackytar]

Geological time really is inconceivable from our perspective.

Why would you think I don't understand this when what I did was expand on it?

Again. Why qualify this statement with "from our perspective"?

With what other perspective(s) are you differentiating "our perspective" from?

Jackytar

 

[Copernicus]

Why would you think I don't understand this when what I did was expand on it?

Again. Why qualify this statement with "from our perspective"?

With what other perspective(s) are you differentiating "our perspective" from?

As I stated quite clearly in the last post, humans measure time in terms of human experience. We can understand a human lifespan, but geological time cannot be comprehended easily with such a short length of time to measure it with. You seemed to find abiogenesis somewhat implausible, and I was trying to explain why it might seem that way but not really be implausible. I'm not sure that I made my point with you, but no big deal. Perhaps another time.

 

[Katzpur]

Katzpur - this thread belongs to Copernicus and me now. Go away, you're distracting us!

:ignore: I'll only go away if you frubal my OP.

 

[Copernicus]

:ignore: I'll only go away if you frubal my OP.

I fruballed the OP, Katzpur, but I wouldn't want you to go away. Sorry if you consider our interaction a thread hijack.

I think that Jackytar and I are in agreement in at least one way (although he may "correct" my misunderstanding, as he is wont to do). Atheism is not really incompatible with agnosticism. It is possible to reject the idea that gods are plausible entities without rejecting the idea that they could exist in principle. What would convince an atheist/agnostic to view gods as plausible beings? Good verifiable evidence.

 

[Katzpur]

I fruballed the OP, Katzpur, but I wouldn't want you to go away. Sorry if you consider our interaction a thread hijack.

Not at all!

 

[Jackytar]

I think that Jackytar and I are in agreement in at least one way (although he may "correct" my misunderstanding, as he is wont to do). Atheism is not really incompatible with agnosticism. It is possible to reject the idea that gods are plausible entities without rejecting the idea that they could exist in principle. What would convince an atheist/agnostic to view gods as plausible beings? Good verifiable evidence.

For what it's worth, I don't believe that you are intentionally misunderstanding me and as such I apologize for being curt. My intention is to be succinct but I as I am not as good of a writer as I would like to be I tend to leave out intonation (which reads as rudeness) and details of finer points (which leads to misunderstanding).

So perhaps it has been lost that we are more in agreement than not and that I do actually have a decent nonscientist grasp of natural history. In the next week or so I will try to find the time to expand on my overarching assertion that things are more uncertain than they seem. It will be a good exercise for my own sake outside of this discussion. Please understand that I work full time at a busy job, help my wife run a medical business with 11 professional staff outside of my job, HAVE a wife , travel a lot, and that this is challenging material for my puny intellect.

Frubals for you, Katzpur.

Jackytar

 

[Dirty Penguin]

:ignore: I'll only go away if you frubal my OP.

Ewwww..!

That sounded so dirty, and yet....I'm intrigued by it.....

I'll Frubal your OP.....:flirt:....OK...may be you didn't mean it that way....

 

[Katzpur]

Ewwww..!

That sounded so dirty, and yet....I'm intrigued by it.....

I'll Frubal your OP.....:flirt:....OK...may be you didn't mean it that way....

Oh, you nasty, nasty boy!!!!

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Actually, I've been thinking about my [not so] final answer recently ...

Franz Rosenzweig was, along with Buber, an extremely important Jewish existentialist. Born on Christmas, this very secular German came very close to converting to Christianity yet, in the end, became a highly observant Jew. Along the way, when asked if he observed this or that stricture, he would answer either "yes" or ... "not yet."

I have been a religious naturalist and nontheist for many decades. If asked whether I believe in Deity, the answer "no" is both honest and readily available, but it is becoming less and less meaningful: it says too little and forecloses too much. Far more appropriate and satisfying is the answer offered by Rosenzweig - albeit to a different set of questions: so ...​

Do I believe in God? Not yet ...

 

[Magic Man]

Actually, I've been thinking about my [not so] final answer recently ...

Franz Rosenzweig was, along with Buber, an extremely important Jewish existentialist. Born on Christmas, this very secular German came very close to converting to Christianity yet, in the end, became a highly observant Jew. Along the way, when asked if he observed this or that stricture, he would answer either "yes" or ... "not yet."

I have been a religious naturalist and nontheist for many decades. If asked whether I believe in Deity, the answer "no" is both honest and readily available, but it is becoming less and less meaningful: it says too little and forecloses too much. Far more appropriate and satisfying is the answer offered by Rosenzweig - albeit to a different set of questions: so ...
​

Do I believe in God? Not yet ...

So, are you going to start saying "not yet" in place of "no" in every instance now? If I ask you whether you believe that Santa Claus is real or whether you believe in little green men and conspiracy theories, would you say "not yet", or would you simply say "no"?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

So, are you going to start saying "not yet" in place of "no" in every instance now? If I ask you whether you believe that Santa Claus is real or whether you believe in little green men and conspiracy theories, would you say "not yet", or would you simply say "no"?

If you asked me I would consider the source ...

 

[Magic Man]

If you asked me I would consider the source ...

In other words, "I have no answer to that, so I'll just insult you for no reason". That's about what I expected.