Why do Atheists exist?

[McBell]

that is precisely what you would expect if all mankind orginated from the first human pair who originated in the Garden of Eden.

As the families spread abroad and away from each other, they took the same beliefs with them and from those beliefs they formed the basis of their respective religions. The similarities are not coincidence....they are evidence of a single origen. And as happens when stories get passed along over many years, the details blur a little and the characters change a little.... but beneath it all lies a true story founded on reality.

And yet there is not even a shred of reliable evidence to support that the "original" belief system is based on anything to do with reality...

 

[shawn001]

that is precisely what you would expect if all mankind orginated from the first human pair who originated in the Garden of Eden.

As the families spread abroad and away from each other, they took the same beliefs with them and from those beliefs they formed the basis of their respective religions. The similarities are not coincidence....they are evidence of a single origen. And as happens when stories get passed along over many years, the details blur a little and the characters change a little.... but beneath it all lies a true story founded on reality.

"that is precisely what you would expect if all mankind orginated from the first human pair who originated in the Garden of Eden."

We know 100% this did not happen.

"The similarities are not coincidence"

because they took the stories from a different religion and incorporated them

"And as happens when stories get passed along over many years, the details blur a little and the characters change a little"

That is for sure.

".... but beneath it all lies a true story founded on reality"

Stories yes, reality somewhat.

Evolution is grounded in reality and facts and observations and 200 years of testing and proving it.

 

[shawn001]

im sure you know that the big bang was nothing more then lightbeams. Are you saying that a light beam can organize itself into stars and planets and galaxies and then go on to become living conscious entites?

"im sure you know that the big bang was nothing more then lightbeams."

Not quite there Pegg.

You do know what E=MC# is yes?

Energy became matter and the maater became suns and then galaxies. The first really massive stars formed and exploded and seeded the universe with the elements, the carbon your made from. Your made from star dust by a process nknown as nucleosynthesis. Our sun and solar system are made from second generations material.



NASA RELEASES STUNNING IMAGES OF OUR INFANT UNIVERSE

NASA today released the best "baby picture" of the Universe ever taken; the image contains such stunning detail that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years.

Scientists using NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky, captured the new cosmic portrait, capturing the afterglow of the big bang, called the cosmic microwave background.

"We've captured the infant universe in sharp focus, and from this portrait we can now describe the universe with unprecedented accuracy," said Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt Md., and the WMAP Principal Investigator. "The data are solid, a real gold mine," he said.

One of the biggest surprises revealed in the data is the first generation of stars to shine in the universe first ignited only 200 million years after the big bang, much earlier than many scientists had expected.

In addition, the new portrait precisely pegs the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years old, with a remarkably small one percent margin of error.

The WMAP team found that the big bang and Inflation theories continue to ring true. The contents of the universe include 4 percent atoms (ordinary matter), 23 percent of an unknown type of dark matter, and 73 percent of a mysterious dark energy. The new measurements even shed light on the nature of the dark energy, which acts as a sort of an anti-gravity.

"These numbers represent a milestone in how we view our universe," said Dr. Anne Kinney, NASA director for astronomy and physics. "This is a true turning point for cosmology."

The light we see today, as the cosmic microwave background, has traveled over 13 billion years to reach us. Within this light are infinitesimal patterns that mark the seeds of what later grew into clusters of galaxies and the vast structure we see all around us.

Patterns in the big bang afterglow were frozen in place only 380,000 years after the big bang, a number nailed down by this latest observation. These patterns are tiny temperature differences within this extraordinarily evenly dispersed microwave light bathing the universe, which now averages a frigid 2.73 degrees above absolute zero temperature. WMAP resolves slight temperature fluctuations, which vary by only millionths of a degree.

WMAP 1 Year Mission Results Press Release


This light started off as bright as a star and turned into microwave as the universe expanded.

Energy organized itself into matter which then became stars and then galaxies and planets and moons.

This is a stellar nursery, creating stars right now.

 

[shawn001]

You might be interested in these Pegg.

George Smoot: The design of the universe

At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos -- with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids -- got built this way.

[youtube]c64Aia4XE1Y[/youtube]
George Smoot: The design of the universe - YouTube


The Known Universe by AMNH

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

[youtube]17jymDn0W6U[/youtube]
The Known Universe by AMNH - YouTube

 

[Blackdog22]

the scriptures say that the talking snake was 'satan the devil' not the snake itself

Chapter and verse?

The garden of Eden had no magical fruit... the trees only represented choice and possibility. And the ark does not need to be found to know that something big happened because the legend of the flood was remembered by all the offspring of noahs sons and the flood legend in various forms can be found in almost every nation on earth today from the australian aboriginals to the chinese to eskimo's of the frozen north.
That is very strong evidence that the descendants of Noah knew of the flood and it was never forgotten.

So eating the fruit wasn't the disobedience? Then what did they do to **** God off so bad according to your interpretation?

The ark does need to be found if the story is in anyway accurate and the Bible isn't making stuff up. However, the story is old, older than the bible and was likely borrowed. The story was probably related to a flood that may of been local and blown out of proportion since reality completely disagrees with a "global" flood. What this means is that the Bible got it completely wrong and doesn't have its facts straight as you were indicating earlier. No global flood, no ark, no animals appearing. It..got..it..wrong..and does not "prove itself" as you said earlier. It debunks itself.

it doesnt get the birthplace of Jesus wrong. It says he will be born in bethleham and he was. His family lived in Nazareth after he was born.

This would make the passages work if only it made sense. Mary could of traveled all the way to Bethlehem, with Joseph, for a consensus while being 9 months pregnant, only to have to go back. I will just skip all the reasons why that makes no sense and get straight to the point. There was no consensus, there are no documents of it at all and Mary, being a woman, would never of had to take the consensus.

And regarding the Exodus, Josephus writings mention an Egyptian priest named 'Manetho' who apparently wrote about the ancestors of the Jews that they "were driven out of the country, occupied what is now Judaea, founded Jerusalem, and built the temple.” Josephus actually quotes from Manetho's writings in 'Against Apion, I, 228' so the fact is that there is secular evidence of the Jews being in Egypt and making an exodus.

Josephus had some accuracies and he had some inaccuracies or outright exaggerations. This would fall under one of the things he wrote about that he couldn't possibly have known about. It was heresay and it doesn't support the slavery of the Jews in Egypt, nor the plagues, nor the exodus of the kind we are discussing. I am sure some Jews traveled at some point, but the Biblical version would take quite some faith to be believed and is in no way the Bible "proving itself to be true."

'four corners' is simply expressive language being employed. The hebrew language used lots of colorful language...that doest mean they literally meant the earth has '4 corners' .... it is also written in the bible that the shape of the earth is 'spherical' so obviously the hebrews were under no false illusions.

If you want to discard of it as expressive language then we can throw out much of the Bible and render it useless, including the passage of the "circle of the earth." However, ill play. The passage states that he sits on a circle of the earth, you could consider this like a basketball, but a basketball isn't easy to sit on. They were most likely referring to the circle as in a coin shape(a flat, circular earth). A giant circle would be easy to sit on and would also align with other passages in the Bible that lend the reader to believe the earth is flat.

What makes you sure that someone didnt name the animals? Every language has a word to describe an animal....naming the animals must have begun somewhere with someone.

Definitely, I am saying I don't think this was the result of the first person to ever inhabit the earth in a magical garden. There is absolutely no reason to believe this.

Regarding the passage of bodily fluids. That is a farcry from God saying to wash your hands before you eat. It sounds more like, "don't masturbate," which probably caused more diseases and rape than it helped. God still gets a 0/10 on communication skills.

None of what you say "Proves the bible to be true" or makes it "self evident." We still have no good reason to believe this book.

 

[cablescavenger]

The Dawkins stuff isn't very relevant. The point is "agnostic" has a more useful meaning than "not sure whether God exists". That's one that has become popular, and it's the one Dawkins is using in his quote, but it's not the originally intended one, and it's not the more accurate or better one. The proper definition is "one who submits that we can't know for sure whether or not a god exists". The best and most accurate definition of "atheist" is "one who does not hold the belief 'God exists'". Therefore one can be an agnostic atheist by saying "I don't believe God exists, but it's impossible to prove one way or the other".

An atheist is not someone who says there is no God, it is someone who rejects belief in God. There is a subtle difference, and one which your model cannot deal with.

 

[Darrell]

Theoretically God can be logically proven, there is just one hurdle in the way that needs to be overcome, and it can be found in the definition of proof:

Proof (truth), sufficient evidence or argument for the truth of a proposition

... An atheist looks for the proof to be fulfilled before accepting the argument as true, that is the logical position to take.

The alternative is to accept everything as true unless proven otherwise, or put another way

... Congratulations. You have won the $3.2m on the Nigerian National lottery, but to release the winnings you need to send an admin fee to my bank account.

Thank you well said.

 

[Darrell]

Why can't the existence of a god be logically proven? At least to the extent that anything outside of maths is ever proven. If some ghost-like image came to you, performed various violations of the laws of physics, talked directly into your brain, and showed you a video of the universe being created and zapped up a new form of life for you to take to the scientific community for analysis, wouldn't that constitute proof? Proof beyond reasonable doubt, anyway.

Yes I think that would do it if could besure is was no dream.

 

[cablescavenger]

a lot of them look at the history of religion and cant imagine how a loving God could be behind it....so they look for another explanation...and evolution provides another expalanation which explains perfectly well why the human race are such a destructive animalistic species who war with one another and fight and pillage and rape. Its a great explanation.

The bible explains perfectly well when war, fighting, pillage and rape can be justified.

Our current law states that they cannot.

 

[Meow Mix]

You do know what E=MC# is yes?

Energy became matter and the maater became suns and then galaxies.

This is just splitting hairs, but energy is equivalent to mass, not matter. I'm just clarifying on this because it can otherwise be confusing to laypersons when they find out later that while mass is conserved, matter is not -- matter appears and disappears from existence all the time in the quantum vacuum; but the total mass and energy is always conserved.

Otherwise, great post!

 

[waitasec]

The bible explains perfectly well when war, fighting, pillage and rape can be justified.

Our current law states that they cannot.

weird huh?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

And the ark does not need to be found to know that something big happened because the legend of the flood was remembered by all the offspring of noahs sons and the flood legend in various forms can be found in almost every nation on earth today from the australian aboriginals to the chinese to eskimo's of the frozen north.
That is very strong evidence that the descendants of Noah knew of the flood and it was never forgotten.

That's not support for a global flood at all.

For a moment, consider what we would see if no global flood happened: we would still have a world where regional floods happen worldwide, and just like other major events would get incorporated into the local mythology in a fair number of cultures. IOW, we would see exactly the situation we see in the world.

And regarding the Exodus, Josephus writings mention an Egyptian priest named 'Manetho' who apparently wrote about the ancestors of the Jews that they "were driven out of the country, occupied what is now Judaea, founded Jerusalem, and built the temple.” Josephus actually quotes from Manetho's writings in 'Against Apion, I, 228' so the fact is that there is secular evidence of the Jews being in Egypt and making an exodus.

One source, who got this from who knows where, thousands of years after the fact? This is supposed to be compelling?

Meanwhile, if the Exodus actually happened the way the Bible claims, just the Israelite men - to say nothing of the women and children - could have formed a line that would have crossed the entire Sinai peninsula if they stood shoulder to shoulder. And we're supposed to believe that they wandered this tiny area for 40 years?

And even setting aside the extreme implausibility of this, the archaeology shows that Canaanites were overthrown by indigenous people who were already there, not by an external invader.

 

[Krok]

And the ark does not need to be found to know that something big happened because the legend of the flood was remembered by all the offspring of noahs sons and the flood legend in various forms can be found in almost every nation on earth today from the australian aboriginals to the chinese to eskimo's of the frozen north.

The Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa, for example, did not and still don't have flood legends. So as the the Zulu and the Xhosa. There's also the fact that there's absolutely no geological evidence for a flood covering Southern Africa for the last 10 000 years. Did the "flood" miss Southern Africa somehow?

 

[shawn001]

There are places on earth where it hasn't rained for millions of years.

The Atacama desert in chile for one. There is a place there it hasn't rained hard for at least 23 million years.

In the Antarctica there is an area called the Dry Valleys, which have seen no rain for nearly 2 million years

 

[camanintx]

How can there be so many humans that are so blind to the splender and maginifecence and epicness and wonder of this universe and say there is no inteligence behind it's design?

It's like they never took Biology or a Physics class!

It's the thought that this universe came about without an intelligent designer that makes it so magnificent to me.

However FTP, an intellectually honest atheist will then admit that such a proof logically cannot exist nor can a proof that no god exists, therefore they would be agnostic or perhaps apatheistic.

Would I be intellectually dishonest if I said that square circles don't exist?

We could start with the fine tuning of the universe...

Without knowing how these properties came to be and what other values they could have taken, your argument for fine tuning is worthless.

 

[InformedIgnorance]

Would I be intellectually dishonest if I said that square circles don't exist?

That would depend on your definition of square and circle; but generally the two refer to diametrically opposed polygon concepts, as such by their usual definition it would be impossible provided that the constraints of our understanding of those terms and logic are upheld; given that, it would not be intellectually dishonest.

However that is based on a particular understanding of geometry which is based on our understanding of space; those same assumptions when applied to the capacity for proof of the (non)existence of a metaphysical entity do not hold given that the assumption of the certain applicability of our logical framework is undermined by human capacity for error - which means that the logical framework itself (let alone its application) inherits that same capacity. Given the potential fallibility, it cannot constitute proof, only be evidence 'beyond all reasonable doubt'.

 

[Daviso452]

I would have to say the majority of the people on this forum would have a hard time understanding what you have just said. If you could clarify that would be greatly appreciated

 

[InformedIgnorance]

lol

Well basically, logic applies for our understanding of the universe, which operates under certain constraints and conditions which humans have perceived to an extent and codified into our logical framework.However, that is for our physical existence - there is nothing to suggest that those same conditions and constraints represented by the logical framework apply to the metaphysical concepts which may lie outside of our universe; where it may be possible for something to be both true AND impossible, both true AND false, neither true OR false, neither false OR impossible (I certainly cannot envisage a case where such logical inconsistencies might be possible but that is only because my logical framework was developed for this existence with its constraints).

Even within our own existence; logically speaking, given that humans have imperfect knowledge, I must conclude the possibility that our understanding of logic itself might be imperfect (though I do not believe this is so) despite it being the most complete domains of human knowledge. Outside of our existence (with its partially perceived constraints and laws) there is nothing to suggest that there is not SOME existence where those constraints do not apply (once again, I dont believe that one does).

Given that, proof one way or another is impossible because we cannot even be certain of the applicability of logic (which is without doubt the most powerful tool we have for the examination of metaphysical concepts) - though personally I do not believe that there is such an existence, logically speaking I must conclude the possibility however the stronger case lies in the possibility of imperfect knowledge forming the basis for the logical framework itself (let alone the application of that framework to the metaphysical concepts being examined).

 

[idav]

I think he was talking about an english type summary. I can see what your saying but tell us how you really feel.

 

[Daviso452]

lol

Well basically, logic applies for our understanding of the universe, which operates under certain constraints and conditions which humans have perceived to an extent and codified into our logical framework.However, that is for our physical existence - there is nothing to suggest that those same conditions and constraints represented by the logical framework apply to the metaphysical concepts which may lie outside of our universe; where it may be possible for something to be both true AND impossible, both true AND false, neither true OR false, neither false OR impossible (I certainly cannot envisage a case where such logical inconsistencies might be possible but that is only because my logical framework was developed for this existence with its constraints).

Even within our own existence; logically speaking, given that humans have imperfect knowledge, I must conclude the possibility that our understanding of logic itself might be imperfect (though I do not believe this is so) despite it being the most complete domains of human knowledge. Outside of our existence (with its partially perceived constraints and laws) there is nothing to suggest that there is not SOME existence where those constraints do not apply (once again, I dont believe that one does).

Given that, proof one way or another is impossible because we cannot even be certain of the applicability of logic (which is without doubt the most powerful tool we have for the examination of metaphysical concepts) - though personally I do not believe that there is such an existence, logically speaking I must conclude the possibility however the stronger case lies in the possibility of imperfect knowledge forming the basis for the logical framework itself (let alone the application of that framework to the metaphysical concepts being examined).

One major fallacy of this whole statement is that there IS a metaphysical. How can you tell me for certain that there is even a metaphysical? If it is something outside the bounds of our universe, how could you, a human being, whose parts are completely physical and material in nature, sense anything metaphysical? Do you think that we as humans have something special that allows us to connect with the metaphysical? If so, how do you know we have such a thing?