Trying To Understand Atheism

[MonkeyFire]

Not blind at all.
Seeing things.....just no evidence for gods.
And no believer has ever been able to point anything cromulent which I'm missing.

But why would you not believe the situation when theres no evidence for or against him.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Do they? How so?

Dis-belief leads its own misfortune.

 

[Revoltingest]

But why would you not believe the situation when theres no evidence for or against him.

I don't understand your question.

 

[LuisDantas]

Dis-belief leads its own misfortune.

That does not answer my question, nor is it even remotely true either.

 

[crossfire]

Actually, skepticism can be applied to not only faith, but also to belief and also to knowledge. One can also have faith in the process of skepticism. This demonstrates that faith and skepticism are not polar opposites.

Love Hate, I guess.

OK, I can see how you might equate belief with love, as the word belief is etymologically derived from the same root as the word beloved. However, a lack of love is not hatred, it is indifference. To hate something requires a belief in the existence of the object of hatred, even if the object of hatred is the actual phenomenon of belief or the actual act of believing.

 

[Willamena]

Unjustified conclusions are necessarily irrational.

Rejection isn't necessarily a conclusion.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Probabilistic ones aren't necessarily unjustified.

Sure they are. Without justification, how do you justify your assessment of the probabilities?

That is correct.

Neat trick.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Rejection isn't necessarily a conclusion.

I suspect that we might be using the word "rejection" to describe different things.

In this context, what I mean is that to reject something is to dismiss it as false. What do you mean?

 

[MonkeyFire]

OK, I can see how you might equate belief with love, as the word belief is etymologically derived from the same root as the word beloved.

I apply all things to LOVE.

However, a lack of love is not hatred, it is indifference.

Hate is not indifferent.

To hate something requires a belief in the existence of the object of hatred, even if the object of hatred is the actual phenomenon of belief or the actual act of believing.

To hate something requires belief, but faith understandably does not need hatred.

 

[crossfire]

I apply all things to LOVE.



Hate is not indifferent.



To hate something requires belief, but faith understandably does not need hatred.

Skepticism does not require hatred, either. Hatred can be a hindrance to true skepticism. (So another misapplied polarity, here?)

 

[Willamena]

I suspect that we might be using the word "rejection" to describe different things.

In this context, what I mean is that to reject something is to dismiss it as false. What do you mean?

I refer to rejection as the antithesis of belief. Belief is acceptance of something as true, rejection is dismissal of something as true. We no more have control over rejection than we do over belief.

 

[Copernicus]

Lets start with the basic one. If the earth was inches closer to the sun it would too hot, if the earth was inches farther away it would be too cold.

Hold on, there. 9-10ths_Penguin let you off easy on that one. This is utter nonsense from a scientific point of view, because our planet only has to be within the so-called Goldilocks zone to sustain our form of life. It looks like you botched the anthropic argument, which holds that the universe was engineered specifically to sustain our form of life, and that is supposed to provide evidence for the existence of God. Usually, the argument turns on the number of ways physical laws could have differed in such a way that we could be possible. So the very improbability of our existing at all suggests it wasn't an accident. I view it as a variant of the teleological argument, which holds that the ordered behavior of natural forces suggests an intelligent designer. These are very old arguments, so you really ought to do some research on them before holding them out as evidence for an intelligent creator. 9-10ths_Penguin was, of course, responding the way most of us atheists would--asking you for a chain of reasoning to support your conclusion.

There are a lot of possible ways for our universe to come about without the intervention of a divine engineer. One of the more popular ones is that there exists independently of our universe a kind of "meta-universe" called the multiverse. Under that theory, there could be an unlimited number of other universes that could not sustain life as we know it. Ours would be extremely unlikely, but we wouldn't be around to argue the point in any of those other universes. Just because something is unlikely, that doesn't make it impossible. However, not knowing much about the properties of the multiverse (or whether such a thing even exists), it is all very speculative, just as an omnipotent, omniscient creator god is.

 

[Copernicus]

I refer to rejection as the antithesis of belief. Belief is acceptance of something as true, rejection is dismissal of something as true. We no more have control over rejection than we do over belief.

I think that logic gives us a kind of control in that it validates or invalidates belief. To dismiss or reject a belief is equivalent to believing that it is not true. Hence, rejection of belief is itself a belief in the end. Most people seem to use "atheist" to refer to people who reject belief in gods rather than merely lack a belief in gods. We've been over this argument ad nauseam in the past, and it usually comes down to people having to agree to disagree. It seems to be really important to a large number of atheists--maybe even the majority--that atheism is a kind of default position and that theists have an obligation to justify their belief. Defining atheism as a "non-belief" of sorts is one way of making that point, but it strikes me as an ineffective and futile rhetorical strategy.

 

[Christ's Prophet]

Seems to me your problem is actually in not being able or willing to understand the atheist position.
I say this because of your insistence of "there is evidence for gods, so they likely exist" constriction.

I have not seen or heard anything that convinces me god exists.
And by god, I mean all the proposed gods that I have heard of.

Do you believe there is a pot of gold at the end of all rainbows?
Why not?

There are three questions that a Christian ought to ask any Atheist?

1. What came first? Was there nothing before the big bang? But how can something come from nothing? So what came first, something or nothing? The usual response is that it is impossible that something came from nothing. But if there was something in the beginning, where did that something come from?

2. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you say the chicken, then how did it come into being if there was no egg? If the egg came first, how did it come first when there was no chicken to lay the egg?

3. Take any book. Let us say that the book contains half a million words and many pictures. Lay it open in your hand. Can you say that the book formed itself? Did the pictures fall out of the sky? Did the trees cut themselves down to form paper? Did all the words form themselves on every page, each word, comma and full stop so that they made sense? Well the answer is of course not, that would be impossible. Millions of years could go by and nothing would have happened. But the truth is that the human DNA chain contains 4.3billion parts, enough to go to the moon and back. Each part is in the right order to construct a human being with everything in its order. This is evidence of design and therefore a Designer. I would ask you other questions. Where is the edge of space; when was the beginning of time? Man thinks he is so smart, but in the overall scheme of things, he knows nothing at all.

Psalm 14:1 (KJV) The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Man thinks he is so smart, but in the overall scheme of things, he knows nothing at all.

This struck me as wise. I am guessing you're agnostic then?

 

[ArtieE]

2. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you say the chicken, then how did it come into being if there was no egg? If the egg came first, how did it come first when there was no chicken to lay the egg?

The chicken is eternal and has always existed there was no original egg. Or maybe there was an original eternal egg? What do you think?

 

[ArtieE]

Man thinks he is so smart, but in the overall scheme of things, he knows nothing at all.

Psalm 14:1 (KJV) The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.

Man thinks he is so smart, but in the overall scheme of things, he knows nothing at all. The fool hath said in his heart, there is a God.

 

[ArtieE]

There are three questions that a Christian ought to ask any Atheist?

1. What came first? Was there nothing before the big bang? But how can something come from nothing? So what came first, something or nothing? The usual response is that it is impossible that something came from nothing. But if there was something in the beginning, where did that something come from?

It always existed.

2. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you say the chicken, then how did it come into being if there was no egg? If the egg came first, how did it come first when there was no chicken to lay the egg?

The egg. There were eggs long before there were birds.

3. Take any book. Let us say that the book contains half a million words and many pictures. Lay it open in your hand. Can you say that the book formed itself? Did the pictures fall out of the sky? Did the trees cut themselves down to form paper? Did all the words form themselves on every page, each word, comma and full stop so that they made sense?

No, the DNA alphabet only contains four letters and only three of them are used in each word so there's only 64 words possible. Sometimes when those words are copied mistakes happen and letters get switched or changed and/or the whole word gets duplicated so instead of three letters in a row you get six. And if those six get duplicated you get twelve letters and four words in a row. And on and on. Evolution and natural selection keep some combinations and the rest are discarded. And you end up with millions of species.

 

[Willamena]

I think that logic gives us a kind of control in that it validates or invalidates belief. To dismiss or reject a belief is equivalent to believing that it is not true. Hence, rejection of belief is itself a belief in the end. Most people seem to use "atheist" to refer to people who reject belief in gods rather than merely lack a belief in gods. We've been over this argument ad nauseam in the past, and it usually comes down to people having to agree to disagree. It seems to be really important to a large number of atheists--maybe even the majority--that atheism is a kind of default position and that theists have an obligation to justify their belief. Defining atheism as a "non-belief" of sorts is one way of making that point, but it strikes me as an ineffective and futile rhetorical strategy.

Adding the step of believing belief is superfluous. Belief/rejection resides in that truth value, which is tied to information, hence may change. Logic validates information.

 

[jonathan180iq]

1. What came first? Was there nothing before the big bang? But how can something come from nothing? So what came first, something or nothing? The usual response is that it is impossible that something came from nothing. But if there was something in the beginning, where did that something come from?

That's more than one question...

(In order)
Everything.
No. There has never been "nothing".
It can't. Conservation of energy - Wikipedia
Something.
That something has always existed, so far as we know.

2. What came first, the chicken or the egg? If you say the chicken, then how did it come into being if there was no egg? If the egg came first, how did it come first when there was no chicken to lay the egg?

The egg - even though it's a stupid question.
The ingredients for the egg were formed through a process called Nucelosynthesis.

3. Take any book. Let us say that the book contains half a million words and many pictures. Lay it open in your hand. Can you say that the book formed itself? Did the pictures fall out of the sky? Did the trees cut themselves down to form paper? Did all the words form themselves on every page, each word, comma and full stop so that they made sense? Well the answer is of course not, that would be impossible. Millions of years could go by and nothing would have happened. But the truth is that the human DNA chain contains 4.3billion parts, enough to go to the moon and back. Each part is in the right order to construct a human being with everything in its order. This is evidence of design and therefore a Designer. I would ask you other questions. Where is the edge of space; when was the beginning of time? Man thinks he is so smart, but in the overall scheme of things, he knows nothing at all.

Your argument is that things are complex, therefore an invisible magic man in the sky must have created them via supernatural processes...

Your question and position are fundamentally flawed.

What you should be asking instead is how paper came to be...
Is modern paper made the way that ancient paper was made?
Was there ever ancient paper?
What did people write on before they had paper?
How did ink come to exist as we know it today?
What did people write on before they had pens?
Mass printing is a thing - where'd that come from?
When was glue invented?
What are the ingredients in glue?
Where did those ingredients come from?
How about binding?
Were the first books as well formed as modern books?
What can we learn about book construction by comparing ancient tomes to modern libraries?

You have to reduce your entire argument, whether you like it or not, to a God of the Gaps.
When you don't know something, you assume that it was the handiwork of an infinitely complex omniscient being... You have nothing to support that position or claim other than your personal conviction. It's the weakest argument that there is. It is equally as compelling as my argument that a Cosmic Pink Unicorn (CPM) formed the Universe via a series of Unicorn Snot Rockets last Thursday. We were all created fully mature, with memories and attributes already implanted in us by CPM. You cannot prove that it didn't happen this way, as you no have evidence. If you reject my claim of creation via the CPM, then you will banished to suffer for eternity in the pit of electric sparkles.