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Why are you an Atheist?
- Thread starter Tomorrows_Child
- Start date
Tomorrows_Child
Active Member
the counter to that is to believe such complex life and laws of nature occurred out of nothing or through chance.
Yes but it does not. That is what makes human life and life on earth in general, so unique, special, different.
Altfish
Veteran Member
And the counter to that is, "Where did your god come from?"
btw. Chance is only a small part of evolution.
Perhaps you both should take a little time to google the latest Drake equation probabilities.
As opposed to through magic...
That is an argument from ignorance. We can't even figure out if Mars ever had any life let alone any planets millions of light years away.
Really the earth seems rather hostile for life but I'm not atheist either way. The earth certainly does not seem to be created for humans, we took it by force. Which is why I can't believe in a creator god as if god is some sort of mad scientist.
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
Is it lack of understanding of evolution that causes people to say things like this? It's got very little to do with "chance." In fact as species evolve they have very little chance to end up any other way than they do.
There was a "God Delusion" thread a few weeks ago where people mostly crapped on the well known book by Richard Dawkins. I didn't love much of the book, but the section describing how evolution works as a "crane" to slowly and gradually build complexity out of simplicity is very easy to read and was rather eye opening to me. I suggest anyone who's idea of evolution is that things just randomly change 'by chance' give it a read. You might still end up preferring the Cosmic Overlord explanation in the end, but at the very least you'll have an understanding of the other side of the argument.
Well said.
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
And every time we look up, thousands more planets are being found and the numbers of Earthlike planets in the habitable zone of their star is increasing. This latest batch of 1284 new planets was found by looking at a relatively tiny patch of sky with only about 150 stars in the window. Imagine how many we will find as we continue to look?
We, and Earth, are about as special as grains of sand on a beach. To peer into the vast universe and think some God created the billions of starts and megabazillons of planets, but is laser focused on only one species on one of those planets, in my mind is absurd thinking.
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...largest-collection-of-planets-ever-discovered
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
Tomorrows_Child
Active Member
As opposed to through magic...
Why is it magic to have an intelligent creator? Is your computer magic?
No, the whole of evolution or more importantly, the coming together of the universe, is chance, if there is no creator around.
Also, that question is irrelevant because as God states, He is unlike anything, so he does not have a creator. It's like asking who made my sony phone, and I say the guys at Sony and the response is, who made the guys at SOny. we could go on ad infinitum. It is a logical fallacy.
Tomorrows_Child
Active Member
The earth is hostile to life? Cmon now.
Altfish
Veteran Member
No, mutations happen all the time. The ones that go on to be successful and cause change in a species are the ones best suited to the environment at the time.
Atheists call that special pleading.
The Sony phone analogy doesn't make sense because indeed you do go backwards to the parents and grandparents and eventually to apes, amoeba, etc. So in your world you again eventually get to god. Which is answering the question with the same question, because I again ask, "Who created god?"
No more chance than a rich hydrogen and oxygen environment subjected to burning will produce water. Chemistry and physics and biology isn't about chance, but established relationships between objects.
This is special pleading. If to avoid a infinite regress I decide gods must not have been created, then I could have just as easily avoided infinite regress to say that the universe wasn't created, but arose through natural if not yet well understood processes. Inserting a god just because there are unknowns is an argument from ignorance: God of the gaps.
I'm an atheist because I know of no good evidence for the extraordinary claim of a deity.
I'm an anti-theist because I've personally seen the negative effects of theism, and when I look at the world I see the negative effects of theism.
I'm an anti-theist because I've personally seen the negative effects of theism, and when I look at the world I see the negative effects of theism.
My computer operates through explainable and understood mechanisms, in accord with the laws of physics.
Godidit is not a mechanism and, presumably, involves an invisible personage reaching out and intentionally altering the laws of physics in order to create something.
How is this not magic poofing?
Not chance in the sense you're thinking. There are mechanisms to lock in and build on beneficial "chance" occurrences and eliminate deleterious changes.
Try going just 8000 m up or down and see how long you last.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Because I place a high value on reason. As always, I don't expect everyone else to.