Why do atheist believe something can come from nothing?

[Road Warrior]

I dare you to name even ONE actual atheist in RF, who claims "something from nothing"....

You for one. You not only believe the Big Bang originated from nothing but you’ve also said that people who try to discuss where the Big Bang came from, such as Multiverses, are irrational and insensible.

 

[columbus]

You for one. You not only believe the Big Bang originated from nothing but you’ve also said that people who try to discuss where the Big Bang came from, such as Multiverses, are irrational and insensible.

@Bob the Unbeliever actually said that?
I don't remember it, and frankly I doubt it very much.
"Nobody knows" and "nothing" aren't the same thing. "Lots of ideas, no consensus" isn't "nothing" either.
The only people I know of who confidently assert that something came from nothing are the theists who insist that God exists but not from anywhere or anything.
Tom

 

[Road Warrior]

@Bob the Unbeliever actually said that?
I don't remember it, and frankly I doubt it very much.
"Nobody knows" and "nothing" aren't the same thing. "Lots of ideas, no consensus" isn't "nothing" either.
The only people I know of who confidently assert that something came from nothing are the theists who insist that God exists but not from anywhere or anything.
Tom

Search it. We’ve gone back and fourth on this almost half a dozen times. He said it then, instead of just denying it or correcting himself, he simply did a Trump thing: He declares me a purveyor of fake news. LOL

 

[columbus]

Search it. We’ve gone back and fourth on this almost half a dozen times. He said it then, instead of just denying it or correcting himself, he simply did a Trump thing: He declares me a purveyor of fake news. LOL

You seem confident that he said it. Can you post a link to a post?
It's rather implausible. Most likely you reinterpreted something he did post. That's why I'm asking you to back this up.
Tom

 

[Subduction Zone]

Search it. We’ve gone back and fourth on this almost half a dozen times. He said it then, instead of just denying it or correcting himself, he simply did a Trump thing: He declares me a purveyor of fake news. LOL

When you make a claim, especially against another poster, then you need to be able to support that claim with a quote and a link. Otherwise it only appears that you are making a strawman argument. I don't remember @Bob the Unbeliever making those claims.

 

[Hop David]

As for your ... ahem... "links"? .... REDIT? Seriously?

Cardinality of infinite sets is high school math. So no, the link to Reddit wasn't an appeal to Reddit's authority. Just the expectation that some of the folks here didn't sleep through high school algebra. That excludes you obviously.

Both Ad Hominem and Appeal to Authority are arguments focusing on the messenger while ignoring the message. Rather than slam the Redditors as poopy heads why don't you check out the criticisms for yourself?

 

[shunyadragon]

And yet it is because of multiple independent pieces of concrete evidence that billions upon billions of neurotypical men and women all across the world have come to the natural conclusion that Almighty God exists.

Ah . . . no, no such concrete evidence exists, nor natural conclusions, though humans pour enough concrete to cover the earth one foot deep. This is an over the top 'argument from popularity.'

In fact there is no objective verifiable evidence either way, therefore by your logic agnosticism is the only rational preferred choice.

 

[shunyadragon]

Something always comes from nothing.

Incoherent.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The second the Atheist adopts the position of disbelief, there are evidentiary assumptions being made, a stance adopted and an evidentiary burden being assumed.

The only assumptions underlying atheism are that claims should be questioned and that nothing should be believed beyond what the quality and quantity of available evidence supports. There is no burden of proof to justify the conclusion that there is insufficient reason to believe in gods because no claim other than that one is not convinced that gods exist is being made.

Furthermore, there is never a burden of proof when dealing with a person who decides what is true about the world by faith rather than by reason applied to evidence. They didn't get to their present position by that method, and can't be budged from it by that method.

• "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic? Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, "Well, that's not how I choose to think about water"? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn't share those values, the conversation is over." - Sam Harris

Also, one needs to care if he is believed to incur a burden of proof. I just told you that I found the evidence for gods insufficient. If you want proof, I'll decline to even try to convince you that I am not lying. I just don't care if I am believed. Many theists seem to think that it is impossible not to believe in gods, and that atheists are actually theists hiding from god. I have no interest in disabusing them of that notion.

So where is my burden of proof there?

"Atheism [is] a direct answer to one of the most important metaphysical questions in philosophy of religion, namely, “Is there a God?” There are only two possible direct answers to this question: “yes”, which is theism, and “no”, which is atheism." -Stanford Encyclopedia (Bracket mine.)

That's not the definition for atheist I use. It would exclude me and most atheists from the category.

It's also unjustifiably restrictive in its list of possible positions to take. It leaves no room for "Maybe there is a god or gods, but also, maybe not. Nobody knows."

you feel that God does not exist

I assume that you are referring to your god. I know that god doesn't exist for the same reason that I know that there are no married bachelors. The law of (non)contradiction tells us that it is logically impossible for any object, process, relationship, etc., to be both of two mutually exclusive things at the same time. The god of the Christian Bible is described in such terms, therefore doesn't exist.

That's not to say that other gods with only one or neither of those traits don't exist, just as we are not saying that a person can't be either married or a bachelor (or neither if she is an ummarried woman), but not both at the same time. THe perfect god that regrets its mistakes doesn't exist any more than married bachelors do. Likewise with the omnisicient god who possesses and grants free will doesn't exist.

you feel that God does not exist but the truth is you don't have any evidence that support this.

Sure I do, and now you do as well. I just gave it to you.

I also have good evidence that no interventionalist god exists. If a god or gods exist, they are not part of our lives. The god of the Christian Bible.

The evidence supporting the theory of biological evolution also rules out the God of the Christian Bible. There is no longer any possibility that a loving god that wants to be known, believed in, loved, obeyed, and worshiped exists. If evolution was falsified tomorrow, the only remaining possibility is that some very powerful agent or agents some extremely powerful agent or agents went to a great deal of trouble to rig the earth to look as if life evolved naturalistically on it, including building strata of fossilized life forms that never lived, with the most primitive appearing placed deepest and containing a combination of radionuclides that makse them appear oldest, with progressively more modern forms appearing in shallower strata later in time.

And then they inserted ERVs into DNA in nested hierarchies. Then strategically arranged ring species throughout the world. Does that sound like the Christian god to you?

It's like a murder trial where there are only two possible interpretations of the evidence against the defendant - he's guilty, or some malevolent agent or agents went to the trouble to make it appear so. Nothing else is possible. This is the same, unless you can come up with a third possibility were the theory ever falsified.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Fischer's "Historians' Fallacies" categorically asserts, "Evidence must always be affirmative. Negative evidence is a contradiction in terms--it is no evidence at all."

I don't know what Fischer means by direct or negative evidence, but evidence is anything that is evident and which makes one of two or more competing hypotheses more or less likely to be correct, including an absence of expected evidence.

If negative evidence includes such thing as nobody remembering seeing you at work last Tuesday, and your time card is unstamped for that day but not days before and since, if you try to get paid for that day, you will probably be denied that pay on the basis of what was NOT seen and what is NOT there.

"The nonexistence of an object is established not by nonexistent evidence but by affirmative evidence of the fact that it did not, or could not exist."

Once again, it would be nice if you would define your terms. Now its affirmative evidence. The nonexistence of an object can sometimes be demonstrated with nothing but pure reason as I did with the claim that the Christian god exists.

My disbelief in Santa Claus is, demonstrably, driven by positive evidence of his non-existence.

And now it's positive evidence.

• "When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense・- Edward Abbey

My disbelief in Santa Claus is based on the same reasoning for my disbelief (unbelief is a better word if it is understood to mean absence of belief in distinction from active disbelief) as my unbelief in gods, leprechauns, and vampires - insufficient evidence to believe.

Now try to apply the same approach to God Almighty.

That god has already been ruled out, but didn't need to be to reject the unsupported claim that it or any other gods exist.

Which makes evident the fundamental necessity all individuals have to be instructed in what is objectively good and precisely what is not.

There is no objectively good behavior in the sense of a moral principle existing outside of the minds of moral agents, even when there is a consensus on what is good and right. The prevailing ethos may change in the future as it has in the past.

the fact that there are dozens upon dozens of fulfilled Bible prophecies constitutes irrefutable evidence for the existence of its author, Jehovah God.

Bible prophesy is low-quality prophecy. It lacks persuasive power. How is it different from Nostradamus or Jeane Dixon, or even Dionne Warwick psychic hotline? It's a parlor trick.

High quality prophecy needs to be specific, detailed and unambiguous. Optimally, the time and place are specified. It needs to prophecy something unexpected, unlikely or unique - something that was not self-fulfilling and could not have been contrived or easily guessed. And finally, to be considered high quality prophecy, the predictions must be be accurate, unaccompanied by failed prophecies, verified that they came before the event predicted, and that they were fulfilled completely.

Biblical prophecy doesn't rise to this standard. It is no better than what palm readers, spiritual mediums, and professional psychics do - what they call cold readings: "I see somebody whose name begins with A, and she is near water." "That must be Aunt Esther, who loved to water her garden." It's a verbal Rorschach test, and demonstrates no superhuman quality.

there's no two ways about it: Bible prophecies are not of natural origin

Most of the world considers Christian scripture to be very natural in origin, including me. Of course there are two ways about it, and being blinded by faith and the will to believe, you can't see that you have chosen the wrong one,.

From the pen of the poet, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on. I think that the last part is too optimistic. There is a window of opportunity for switching from Christianity to secular humanism that closes in the last half to third of life. If one waits too long, the transition is more difficult, disorienting, and socially disruptive, and the odds of ever being able to dispassionately and rationally consider whether there is no god are very long.

I did it, but I was in my early thirties, with plenty of psychological plasticity and enough time to rebuild a new world view and put it to work in my life. I don't think it would be possible for you if you are over 50.

 

[columbus]

That's not the definition for atheist I use. It would exclude me and most atheists from the category.

It's also unjustifiably restrictive in its list of possible positions to take. It leaves no room for "Maybe there is a god or gods, but also, maybe not. Nobody knows."

I pointed this out several pages back.
He ignored me, I presume because the truth doesn't fit his ideology.
Tom

 

[Maximilian]

The fact that Evil People who Speak For God exist, proves that such a god cannot exist--because these people do.

These speak for Satan the Devil, not God Almighty.

 

[Maximilian]

The above, directly contradicts your earlier post... hmmmm

How so?

 

[Maximilian]

Bible prophesy is low-quality prophecy. It lacks persuasive power. How is it different from Nostradamus or Jeane Dixon, or even Dionne Warwick psychic hotline? It's a parlor trick.

This is an argumentum ad lapidem fallacy. Try again.

 

[Maximilian]

That god has already been ruled out.

This is an argumentum assertio fallacy. Try again.

 

[Maximilian]

There is no objectively good behavior in the sense of a moral principle existing outside of the minds of moral agents, even when there is a consensus on what is good and right. The prevailing ethos may change in the future as it has in the past.

For legitimate ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to exist morality simply cannot be relative for this makes ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ vulnerable to mere caprice. Under such an ambivalent standard absolutely nothing is actually ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ rendering these terms utterly otiose; conveying a distinction without a difference.

Accordingly:

(1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties don't exist.

(2) If evil exists, objective moral values and duties exist.

(3) Evil exists.

(4) Therefore, objective moral values and duties do exist.

(5) Therefore, God exists.

(6) Therefore, God is the locus of all objective moral values and duties.



That's to say, as Dostoevsky once mused, "If there is no God, everything is permitted."

 

[paarsurrey]

It Aint Necessarily So said: ↑
Bible prophesy is low-quality prophecy. It lacks persuasive power. How is it different from Nostradamus or Jeane Dixon, or even Dionne Warwick psychic hotline? It's a parlor trick.

This is an argumentum ad lapidem fallacy. Try again.

"How is it different from Nostradamus"?

Kindly address the question, please?
Regards

 

[Maximilian]

It Aint Necessarily So said: ↑
Bible prophesy is low-quality prophecy. It lacks persuasive power. How is it different from Nostradamus or Jeane Dixon, or even Dionne Warwick psychic hotline? It's a parlor trick.

"How is it different from Nostradamus"?

Kindly address the question, please?
Regards

Happily

Here's a deep dive into several Bible prophecies which are neither vague nor contemporary.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Happily

Here's a deep dive into several Bible prophecies which are neither vague nor contemporary.

The start off with the Daniel prophecy that fails because like the prophecies of Nostradamus it has more than one interpreted outcome. This site explains why it fails:

Biblical prophecies - RationalWiki

The specific prophecies, such as the Tyre prophecy or Jesus's prophecy that he would be back before all of his disciples died, fail terribly.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

Incoherent.

Actually, it's so coherent it just seems incoherent in its coherency. It is ultra-coherent!

To quote myself from another thread: ""Things" exist because they are defined by relationships in the mind from sensory data that discriminately pulls information from the environment. Without this, what is everything but "no thing"? The universe dissolves into undefined infinity. Nothing."