How I Feel About Atheists

[LuisDantas]

No , my point about looking in the mirror was that some people, like myself, just find the fact that we exist and are such incredibly designed beings as possible evidence of a higher intelligence.

Definitely your prerogative.

All the same, the available data just isn't much help in convincing people who are not predisposed to share your view.

Ultimately, the way I see it, it is a very personal thing, not supposed to have consequences beyond that sphere.

I don't want you to change any of your views, that's not for me to want. I'm just having a discussion of ideas with you.
I only responded to you initially because it sounded like you were saying that it is a fact or truth that there is no possibility of a higher intelligence or Intelligent Designer. Maybe I misunderstood.

There is indeed no such possibility, if you ask me. I don't really understand how come some people disagree with that. It is just so alien.

I was just saying that there is a possibility but , of course, no one can prove that there is or isn't or state unequivocally that there is or isn't.
Just curious, do you contemplate how living matter came into being from non-living matter or how the universe suddenly began from nothing ?

I don't see anything particularly surprising in abiogenesis, and I am not sure that "how the universe arose from nothing" is even a logical question.

Those two questions simply don't strike me as having much importance at all. Let alone religious significance.

Or do you find these questions inconsequential since they are unknowable ?

I am not sure that I find them exactly unknownable so much as I find them lacking in significance. It is not like I have to validate the origin of life nor that of the universe.

 

[NoRightOrWrong]

Always a possibility, I suppose. It is not like it is a big deal. I am quite the apatheist.




So far it did not. I take it that you expected it to?



I don't think I will ever find valuing theism very natural or understandable, sorry.

Actually, I don't find theism to be very

There is no paradox. Existence simply cannot have a cause.

You have two cases: either there is an infinite sequences of causes going backwards, in which case existence of that sequence is not caused.

OR you have something that exists and is uncaused. In that case, the existence of that thing isn't caused.

So, existence itself cannot be caused. The notion is self-contradictory.


Always the theist way out: well, we just don't know, maybe the rules are different.


Existence just is. No cause for it. However, each individual thing inside the universe can have a cause (if there is an infinite sequence of causes leading up to it, for example).
One , I'm not a theist. and we don't know. So some of your
Do you believe in a first cause or do you find that concept inconsequential to our existence and the universe's ?


I am a mathematician and I work with infinite sets all the time. I have no problem comprehending them, nor do the other mathematicians around me. Are there unanswered questions? You bet. Many. i can give you a list of the easier ones to state if you'd like one.



What does it mean to have different 'capacities' of existence? Isn't it a yes/no question?



Of course I can be wrong. I have been. Many times. Maybe even daily.

Now, all you have presented for thinking I may be wrong is your 'feeling' that i am wrong. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. Give some actual evidence that I am wrong, not some vague feelings. Show where the logic I used to get my conclusion is faulty. maybe we are using different definitions. In that case, maybe the resolution of the differences is to decide on two definitions for the two concepts and proceed.

There is no paradox. Existence simply cannot have a cause.

You have two cases: either there is an infinite sequences of causes going backwards, in which case existence of that sequence is not caused.

OR you have something that exists and is uncaused. In that case, the existence of that thing isn't caused.

So, existence itself cannot be caused. The notion is self-contradictory.


Always the theist way out: well, we just don't know, maybe the rules are different.


Existence just is. No cause for it. However, each individual thing inside the universe can have a cause (if there is an infinite sequence of causes leading up to it, for example).



I am a mathematician and I work with infinite sets all the time. I have no problem comprehending them, nor do the other mathematicians around me. Are there unanswered questions? You bet. Many. i can give you a list of the easier ones to state if you'd like one.



What does it mean to have different 'capacities' of existence? Isn't it a yes/no question?



Of course I can be wrong. I have been. Many times. Maybe even daily.

Now, all you have presented for thinking I may be wrong is your 'feeling' that i am wrong. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. Give some actual evidence that I am wrong, not some vague feelings. Show where the logic I used to get my conclusion is faulty. maybe we are using different definitions. In that case, maybe the resolution of the differences is to decide on two definitions for the two concepts and proceed.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Why do you think that evolution is a blind unguided process (if you do so)?

I don't in the sense that I don't claim to know that it is not a process affected by an intelligent agent other than man. I just have no reason to believe anything else.

Does TOE specifically stipulate that or is it a philosophical extension?

I'm not aware of the theory saying that intelligent designers cannot exist or be involved. It just doesn't include one because it need not. To throw in a god before there is evidence that one exists and participated is an unnecessary complication of the theory, which accounts for what we observe without one.

It's a bit like finding a liquor store robbed, no camera footage, and no evidence or need for an accomplice to account for the available evidence, but postulating that there were three anyway. It's not impossible, but why go there without a reason?

 

[NoRightOrWrong]

There is no paradox. Existence simply cannot have a cause.

You have two cases: either there is an infinite sequences of causes going backwards, in which case existence of that sequence is not caused.

OR you have something that exists and is uncaused. In that case, the existence of that thing isn't caused.

So, existence itself cannot be caused. The notion is self-contradictory.


Always the theist way out: well, we just don't know, maybe the rules are different.


Existence just is. No cause for it. However, each individual thing inside the universe can have a cause (if there is an infinite sequence of causes leading up to it, for example).



I am a mathematician and I work with infinite sets all the time. I have no problem comprehending them, nor do the other mathematicians around me. Are there unanswered questions? You bet. Many. i can give you a list of the easier ones to state if you'd like one.



What does it mean to have different 'capacities' of existence? Isn't it a yes/no question?



Of course I can be wrong. I have been. Many times. Maybe even daily.

Now, all you have presented for thinking I may be wrong is your 'feeling' that i am wrong. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. Give some actual evidence that I am wrong, not some vague feelings. Show where the logic I used to get my conclusion is faulty. maybe we are using different definitions. In that case, maybe the resoltion of the differences is to decide on two definitions for the two concepts and proceed.

I am not a theist but anyway, I just have one question. It's a fact that many mathematician's , physicists , biologists, astronomers, chemists, genomicists, geneticists and scientists in all fields of study do believe in not only the possibility but the probability of a God, or a Supreme Being, or an Intelligent Designer. And not just a few , there are millions who believe this, many famous ,past and present. They believe that there is a cause for existence. Many of them believe this based on their research and findings in every single one of these fields. These are brilliant minds. Are you to tell me, that all of these scientists are absolutely wrong in their conclusions about this ? Because you claim with absolute certainty and absolute knowledge that there is absolutely no cause for existence. Why wouldn't these scientists all believe that there is no cause to existence ? Are you telling me you are 100% correct and they are 100% wrong ?

 

[jonathan180iq]

And yet in all my "wrongeness", and in 21 pages of posts, no one has managed to explain how I am wrong. Imagine that!

The fact that you completely ignore all of the times that you've been told, by atheists themselves, what their atheism means to them and how it's enacted is demonstrable proof that you're chasing a strong confirmation bias and nothing else.

Substantiate your original premise. If you can't do that, then no amount of typed words will make your argument any stronger, regardless of how effective or ineffective these other conversations have been.

 

[jonathan180iq]

It's a fact that many mathematician's , physicists , biologists, astronomers, chemists, genomicists, geneticists and scientists in all fields of study do believe in not only the possibility but the probability of a God, or a Supreme Being, or an Intelligent Designer. And not just a few , there are millions who believe this, many famous ,past and present. They believe that there is a cause for existence

Argument from authority - Wikipedia

None of that matters.

Are you to tell me, that all of these scientists are absolutely wrong in their conclusions about this ?

If I know Polymath, he's not saying that.
He's making a logical argument for why the Cosmological Argument, often veiled as Cause and Effect existence, is a bad argument. It's totally obliterated by an eventual appeal to an uncaused cause, making the whole position rather absurd.

Because you claim with absolute certainty and absolute knowledge that there is absolutely no cause for existence.

Nope.
It's a logical argument. Nothing more. Nothing less.
If you can refute it, it will cease to be a good argument and you can move on from it. Until then, he has the upper hand.

Hint: It's a pretty sound argument.

Why wouldn't these scientists all believe that there is no cause to existence ?

Bias is a hell of a drug.
Lots of very smart people have believed very stupid things.

Are you telling me you are 100% correct and they are 100% wrong ?

He's not saying that.

 

[PureX]

The fact that you completely ignore all of the times that you've been told, by atheists themselves, what their atheism means to them and how it's enacted is demonstrable proof that you're chasing a strong confirmation bias and nothing else.

I ignore alcoholics all the time when they tell me how and why they are not alcoholic. A lot of people are full of baloney, and some are just idiots. They don't mean to be, but that's just how it is.

Substantiate your original premise. If you can't do that, then no amount of typed words will make your argument any stronger, regardless of how effective or ineffective these other conversations have been.

I have done that a half dozen times already on this thread, but like alcoholics who can't acknowledge the reality of alcoholism, some here just can't seem to acknowledge atheism for what it is.

 

[jonathan180iq]

some here just can't seem to acknowledge atheism for what it is.

Tell me what it is, then.
How do you define it?

 

[PureX]

So, is god imagined?

Everything is "imagined" from the perspective of the human mind. The human mind has no direct access to actual reality. It has to imagine reality from the limited sensual information that it gets from our bodies, and then comparing and contrasting this with remembered information from our past. What we call, and what we think of as "reality" is a fiction that we created in our minds, and then forgot, or never realized that we'd created it.

 

[NoRightOrWrong]

Argument from authority - Wikipedia

None of that matters.


If I know Polymath, he's not saying that.
He's making a logical argument for why the Cosmological Argument, often veiled as Cause and Effect existence, is a bad argument. It's totally obliterated by an eventual appeal to an uncaused cause, making the whole position rather absurd.


Nope.
It's a logical argument. Nothing more. Nothing less.
If you can refute it, it will cease to be a good argument and you can move on from it. Until then, he has the upper hand.

Hint: It's a pretty sound argument.


Bias is a hell of a drug.
Lots of very smart people have believed very stupid things.


He's not saying that.

I don't believe I was having a discussion with you.
I know what the Cosmological Argument is and see as many sound arguments for it as I do against it. So evidently neither side has an " upper hand."
And you yourself are biased , too, just in the other direction.
You may be one of these smart people who believe a stupid thing yourself.
There are logical arguments both ways.
In the future , if I want your biased opinion , I'll post you.

 

[gnomon]

This is a very long thread, and you have just read one post. I think you ought to reserve your conclusions until you've followed the conversation a bit further. Don't you?
To act on intuition requires that one have faith in the unverified/unverifiable. Atheists aren't big on faith, nor on accepting any unverified propositions. Or so they endlessly proclaim.
Atheists generally speak of imagination as if it's an absurd and meaningless fiction. They do so because they consider the gods to be imaginary, and they have to discredit those gods. So they do it by discrediting imagination.
To decipher artifice requires both imagination and intuition, and very often also requires that one "suspect their disbelief" for the sake of a greater truth. Atheist, by their own constant admission, discredit imagination, doubt their intuitions, and are not willing to suspend their skepticism for the sake of some greater possible truth.
It is boring when all you see in the world around you are affirmations of your own bias.

Dear God what a ****ing stupid post.

I reserve nothing because I read the thread and it's garbage.

You make bull**** claims about atheism and attempt to compare them to what many atheists actually adhere to because you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Where the hell have you been for the last years on this forum?

And you state that atheists, by their own constant admission........never seen it and I have never said it.......discredit imagination.

Admit it. You are full of yourself.

Good night. Go scramble an egg, go to sleep and be full of yourself.

But this thread was boring.

 

[gnomon]

I ignore alcoholics all the time when they tell me how and why they are not alcoholic. A lot of people are full of baloney, and some are just idiots. They don't mean to be, but that's just how it is.
I have done that a half dozen times already on this thread, but like alcoholics who can't acknowledge the reality of alcoholism, some here just can't seem to acknowledge atheism for what it is.

You ignore alcoholics all the time......than why are you responding to me?

Yeah I know I am......and I recognize the simplicity of being an atheist.

The question you have to face is why are you transposing your own inequities of your own mind upon others?

Why are you so hung up on delegating so many people into a narrow category?

 

[Willamena]

Everything is "imagined" from the perspective of the human mind. The human mind has no direct access to actual reality. It has to imagine reality from the limited sensual information that it gets from our bodies, and then comparing and contrasting this with remembered information from our past. What we call, and what we think of as "reality" is a fiction that we created in our minds, and then forgot, or never realized that we'd created it.

I get the picture that you're trying to paint, but there is no evidence (no possible evidence, according to this scenario) that there is anything more than what our senses present us.

 

[PureX]

I get the picture that you're trying to paint, but there is no evidence (no possible evidence, according to this scenario) that there is anything more than what our senses present us.

Of course there is. Scientists have just discovered forms of energy and matter that have been completely unknown to us until now. And we have no idea how these new forms of matter and energy relate to the rest of the physical universe. Our senses did not detect these. Even our machinery didn't detect them. In fact, we aren't really certain that they exist , except that mathematically, we deduced that they must exist.

 

[Mister Silver]

Of course there is. Scientists have just discovered forms of energy and matter that have been completely unknown to us until now. And we have no idea how these new forms of matter and energy relate to the rest of the physical universe. Our senses did not detect these. Even our machinery didn't detect them. In fact, we aren't really certain that they exist , except that mathematically, we deduced that they must exist.

Jumping the gun, filling in the gaps, it's not intellectually noble. I have seen it too many times, and it is disturbing, because we should be smarter than simply advocating god for anything unknown or not yet assigned a realistic understanding.

 

[gnomon]

Of course there is. Scientists have just discovered forms of energy and matter that have been completely unknown to us until now. And we have no idea how these new forms of matter and energy relate to the rest of the physical universe. Our senses did not detect these. Even our machinery didn't detect them. In fact, we aren't really certain that they exist , except that mathematically, we deduced that they must exist.

I am actually concerned at this point.

Are you ok?

 

[atanu]

An intelligence that does not know how to be discernible is not much of an intelligence, now is it?

??????

 

[atanu]

Blatantly false. The sun does NOT exist only in the mind as an idea. It actually, physically exists about 93 million miles from us.

I will not be so dismissive.

 

[NoRightOrWrong]

There is no paradox. Existence simply cannot have a cause.

You have two cases: either there is an infinite sequences of causes going backwards, in which case existence of that sequence is not caused.

OR you have something that exists and is uncaused. In that case, the existence of that thing isn't caused.

So, existence itself cannot be caused. The notion is self-contradictory.


Always the theist way out: well, we just don't know, maybe the rules are different.


Existence just is. No cause for it. However, each individual thing inside the universe can have a cause (if there is an infinite sequence of causes leading up to it, for example).



I am a mathematician and I work with infinite sets all the time. I have no problem comprehending them, nor do the other mathematicians around me. Are there unanswered questions? You bet. Many. i can give you a list of the easier ones to state if you'd like one.



What does it mean to have different 'capacities' of existence? Isn't it a yes/no question?



Of course I can be wrong. I have been. Many times. Maybe even daily.

Now, all you have presented for thinking I may be wrong is your 'feeling' that i am wrong. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. Give some actual evidence that I am wrong, not some vague feelings. Show where the logic I used to get my conclusion is faulty. maybe we are using different definitions. In that case, maybe the resolution of the differences is to decide on two definitions for the two concepts and proceed.

 

[NoRightOrWrong]

You say existence simply cannot have a cause. I don't think this is simple in the least bit. Everything has a cause. I know you are referring to the Cosmological Argument about a First Cause. I can see both views of the argument but none give us a definitive answer. It is an ongoing debate that has no known answer.You believe there can't be a cause to existence. I don't believe that is necessarily true. How can we exist without a cause ? If you say we just exist, I find that a cop out also. What do yo mean we just are ? That sounds as improbable and unreasonable as saying a first cause needs no cause itself. So I still think the debate ends in a paradoxical conclusion. But I definitely lean towards there being a cause to our existence. We are here, we exist. I've never known of anything to exist without a cause. Again, our inability to know or understand how we came into existence can't include or exclude any definitive answers. So I completely disagree that existence SIMPLY can't have a cause. If your logic and reason lead you to this conclusion , I ask again, then how do we exist at all ? If you say we just exist, I find that as unreasonable as anything. So if we can just exist from no cause. then an ID can just exist without a cause. But you claimed there can be no possibility of an ID. Sounds like a paradox to me.