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How Bertrand Russell Became An Atheist

Aupmanyav

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Yeah, sure, it is not illogical, like the elephant in your room (or in your pocket). Perfectly logical.
 
BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
Hubert Farnsworth said:
Just because something contradicts our intuition doesn't mean it is illogical. For instance, it is counter-intuitive that an elephant and a feather fall at the same speed in the absence of air resistance. But it is still true. A circular causal chain is not illogical, because it is not self-contradictory. It may be weird, but is not illogical.
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I parse between "counter intuitive" (feather and elephant obey known laws) and the universe existing without a cause (disobeys known laws).
 
Rational Agnostic

Rational Agnostic

Well-Known Member
BilliardsBall said:
I parse between "counter intuitive" (feather and elephant obey known laws) and the universe existing without a cause (disobeys known laws).
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I think you're misunderstanding. With a circular chain of causes, the universe WOULD have a cause. But the universe would also cause that cause, etc. A weird thought, but I don't see anything illogical about it.
 
P

Ponder This

Well-Known Member
ecco said:
Not necessarily. If you Google "did the universe come from nothing" you will find many different opinions and concepts.

That's nothing more than a strawman that theists like to throw out.
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If you believe that is true, then just give an example of something proven by science to come from nothing. As to the relevance of the the universe from nothing, it is relevant to Bertrand Russell's thinking, as I've already pointed out.

ecco said:
For this atheist, it is clear that gods are the creation of man's imaginings. History, not any priestly tyranny, confirms this. Did an atheist tell you that his confirmation came from a priestly tyranny, or is that just another strawman?
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The quote is directly from John Stuart Mill's auto-biography.
Autobiography by John Stuart Mill : two
Same paragraph that Russell references for the "Who made God?" quote that convinced him. I'm simply pointing out the obvious connection here.

ecco said:
Yet another strawman. You heard a person argue? Really.

I really have to wonder about your alleged sources.
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You seem awfully quick to label everything I've said as strawman without giving it any consideration.
Do you think we should be impressed at a person because he comes to some sort of conclusion about God at the age of 18 years (or in other cases at the age of 5 years or in other cases before he was born) and refuses to reconsider his position when presented with reasonable evidence at a later age?
From the OP:
Hubert Farnsworth said:
Until the age of eighteen I continued to believe in a Deist's God
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Should we be impressed that he was 18 years old when he came to this conclusion? I think not. What do you think?
 
Samantha Rinne

Samantha Rinne

Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
Shad said:
Not if one accounts for time in physics and astrophysics which render eternal moot and turns the point about being first merely an assertion based on nothing.
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:scratches head:

Ummmm...? Am I missing something here?

So, atheist scientists typically justified a universe without God by simply asserting the universe was eternal. Logically, this would have no issues because it doesn't have to contradict actual laws that say "matter cannot be created or destroyed." An actual deity could suspend or alter such rules, but an eternal universe is far easier to defend in that it instead renders the universe a series of atomic reactions.

But Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest and astronomer came up with this idea (sorry, contrary to the movie Theory of Everything, Stephen Hawking did not "invent" the Big Bang, any more than Al Gore "invented" the internet), by essentially rewinding the universe's tendency toward expansion backwards.

Big Bang - Wikipedia

So, you have a Catholic priest, who helps establish that the universe had an origin point, which is compatible with a central point of creation. And scientists, even atheist ones accept it! Game over, right? Nah, it's like blacks co-opting the N-word. Suddenly, this is supposedly an "atheist" theory even though it doesn't work in the same way as one (because it then requires an immovable mover or first cause, since it is an event rather than an eternal state). Eternal means having no beginning and no end. Something that has a beginning, is by definition subject cause and effect. While God, as an eternal being cannot be asked "what created God?" the same cannot be said of the Big Bang, which is not only a temporal event, but THE temporal event.

Eternal
adj.
without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing (opposed to temporal)
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Atheists, often try to do this to show that the Creation and the Big Bang are somehow incompatible.

6-days-creation-lge.jpg


Yes, if we understand things literally. But notice, none of these things are said like you think they are said. Let's read the passage:

Genesis 1 - NIV Bible - In the beginning God created the heavens and the...

Let's start with "Earth" and "water."
  1. There was no Earth. They mention it is formless (that is, it does not yet exist), and that there are depths (the literal word is closer to "void"). And these waters aren't water either, they are the "waters" of the void. God creates light.
    big-bang.jpg

  2. God separates light and darkness, despite there being sun or moon yet. So, what is actually being talked about? Time. We have time now.
  3. Next, we hear that God creates the sky. But yet, again, there is no atmosphere. So what's this one talking about? Well, the sky is sometimes called the heavens. Outer space.
    GettyImages-52374170-58b847b33df78c060e6851d4.jpg

  4. At this point, they mention earth and seas. They also mention vegetation. Surely, by now they said Earth is created, fully formed with oceans and land, right? Not necessarily. You see, NASA found that early Earth was probably molten as a result of asteroid impact and looked more like this originally
    highres0250.jpg

    than it looked like this
    o-HELLISH-EARLY-EARTH-facebook.jpg

    In fact, I got the second image from this article.
  5. But what about all those "fruit trees"? Well, perhaps you've heard scientists suggest life came delivered by meteor. Mostly, these were basic bacteria, which created oxygen. In other words, we have lifeforms that later become what life is now known as plants/animals/etc. Not quite fruit trees, but anyway.
    hoover2.jpg

  6. "But wait," you say! "The Earth is around before the sun and moon!" I want you to imagine the "Earth" as possibly being larger at one point, and having excess stuff split off from the sun, as did the moon from all of this. Basically, some parts were lighter, and some were heavier. Now, honestly, I would put this a day before, but I could reasonably say that this "day" is about Earth becoming sufficiently distant from the sun, and the moon in turn forming from the excess of the Earth. More importantly, what this day is really about is the forming of Earth's atmosphere.
    451909885.jpg
  7. So, we have a volcanic and steamy Earth, that has cooled down and now has an atmosphere, proper distance from sun and moon, and the beginnings of bacterial life. What happens next? Well, it floods. From the Proterozoic to sometime in the Devonian/Carboniferous period, there's only occasional land. Most life is on water.
    geological-time-scale-2.jpg

  8. Then we have land animals (birds come a bit later, according to most geological models), and eventually primates.

Is the chronology 100%? No. Is it what a reporter would call accurate? Yes. The events for the most part happened the same way is it should be depicted, people just misunderstand the terms, and don't bother to realize that is they meant literally what they are written as, this would make water and earth, and possibly the sun/moon created multiple times, or be around before they are created.
 
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exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
BilliardsBall said:
I parse between "counter intuitive" (feather and elephant obey known laws) and the universe existing without a cause (disobeys known laws).
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It is perfectly obvious there is no law in science to prevent the universe coming into existence without a cause. If there were, science would not hypothesise that it may have done.
 
exchemist

exchemist

Veteran Member
BilliardsBall said:
It's not the "gut feeling" or "illogic" that concerns me. It's the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy!
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This is misconceived on your part. Gravitational potential energy, at infinite separation of the bodes concerned, is zero. As the bodies move closer, under the force of their mutual attraction, their gravitational potential energy becomes increasingly negative.

One very serious hypothesis is that the -ve gravitational potential energy in the universe is exactly balanced by the +ve energy of the matter and radiation. If so, there need be no breaking of conservation laws.
 
ecco

ecco

Veteran Member
Samantha Rinne said:
I want you to imagine the "Earth" as possibly being larger at one point, and having excess stuff split off from the sun, as did the moon from all of this. Basically, some parts were lighter, and some were heavier.
...
Well, perhaps you've heard scientists suggest life came delivered by meteor. Mostly, these were basic bacteria, which created oxygen.
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The above is just two small parts of your post. However, they serve as examples of your lack of comprehension of scientific knowledge.
 
BilliardsBall

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
exchemist said:
This is misconceived on your part. Gravitational potential energy, at infinite separation of the bodes concerned, is zero. As the bodies move closer, under the force of their mutual attraction, their gravitational potential energy becomes increasingly negative.

One very serious hypothesis is that the -ve gravitational potential energy in the universe is exactly balanced by the +ve energy of the matter and radiation. If so, there need be no breaking of conservation laws.
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And the -ve and the +ve came into existence how?
 
Poppa

Poppa

Member
for me: There is dirt under my shoes, therefore the dirt always existed in some form, whether matter or energy. For me, this is proof that it always existed for matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Easier to believe this than to believe a god always existed.

People often point to the complexity of the universe as needing an designer. then why would one believe the most complex and powerful thing in the universes ("god") should not need a designer?

No, the dirt under my shoes proves that it always existed and probably in it's most simple form (energy) in the beginning. I believe the simplest answer is usually correct. Matter (and the universe(s) ) began in the lowest form which is energy. A god, highly complex, just doesn't make sense. I don't know the conditions that set the big bang off, but rest assured there was NOT Nothing. There may have been nothing in THIS universe (because it didn't exist) but the energy existed somewhere. period.

Back to the OP. If I as an atheist have a purpose, it is to continue my species. to provide a future world that supports healthy and thinking children that will explore places and solve the mysteries of the universe(s). I think that is a worthy and noble purpose.
 
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