Atheism is Abdication

[Edward the Theist]

I was watching a video on consciousness and it was a roundtable discussion with Chalmers, Wolf, and a few others who have written about consciousness, and there is no consensus as to what consciousness is. The experts simply do not agree, which means no one really knows, and yet here it is making you, you and me, me. Not one of them mentioned paramecium, by the way.

I, myself, am having a big problem with it. Because to say it is a force with awareness, volition, memory, and the creative capability to form itself into matter is really just saying it's God. But the problems get even deeper with questions like, "What was God doing before the universe?"

It's actually not that important to know what he was doing as it is to fathom why he changed to create the universe. How could God desire anything? Even if he only desires to behold himself in his creation, then why create at one point and not another? And if it was necessary for him to create, that implies that something acts as a cause upon him--a motivator. Yet if in the beginning all there was was God staring at an eternal present moment, how could he ever be motivated from that spot to be or do anything differently?

But atheists aren't off the hook here, all these difficulties apply to them as well. Why was there a singularity? Why did it sit there for all eternity and suddenly bang at one moment and not the other? Assuming the singularity was a necessary first thing, why would it ever change?

We are confounded by paradoxes and contradictions no matter what theory we try to make about cosmology.

However, this has helped at least define for me what God is: God is consciousness (volition + memory + awareness + creative capability = God).

Perhaps God doesn't understand why he exists anymore than we do. He just woke up one day and found himself staring at eternity, and from there he began to dream. Perhaps the why of it is closed into the existence of it.

When I think of God staring at eternity, what would such a consciousness think of? It would have no past to form memories from. It would have no use for will and no desires at all for which it would use its creative capability. It would have no reason or cause for change, thus no universe--no big bang, no evolution.

If in the primordial state God had any desires, or memories, then we don't have God. We have a being that has been created. I can completely understand God staring at eternity. I think I could even model that mathematically and philosophically show how that is the necessary primordial state. But I can't get to the universe from there.

But all this doesn't make me an atheist. An atheist just gives up on these questions. The questions are still there for the atheist, however. They have just as big a problem with explaining creation as the theist does. All the problems I have with "God" they have with the primordial singularity.

When the atheist says the singularity just quantumly popped into existence and banged into a universe out of nothing, they might as well just say God did it and go back to church.

Atheism is simply a denial that resolves existential angst and crucifies the intellect to make the questions easier to live with.

Atheism is abdication.

[Asmodean]

...So what exactly makes you think a god, namely whichever one or ones you happen to worship had anything to do with anything? What use does the Universe have for gods? Which holes do they fill that can not be filled by other means - perhaps without resorting to magic?

[Edward the Theist]

...So what exactly makes you think a god, namely whichever one or ones you happen to worship had anything to do with anything? What use does the Universe have for gods? Which holes do they fill that can not be filled by other means - perhaps without resorting to magic?

Did you even bother to read the post before you posted this knee-jerk atheist response? Go be an atheist. WTF difference does it make? At least be honest with yourself as to why you are an atheist: you need there to be no God--for whatever reason.

[philosoraptor]

...So what exactly makes you think a god, namely whichever one or ones you happen to worship had anything to do with anything? What use does the Universe have for gods? Which holes do they fill that can not be filled by other means - perhaps without resorting to magic?

Did you even bother to read the post before you posted this knee-jerk atheist response? Go be an atheist. WTF difference does it make? At least be honest with yourself as to why you are an atheist: you need there to be no God--for whatever reason.

Whoa there buddy, slow your roll.  That's quite an assumption on your part about asmodean, or any other atheist for that matter.  

On the contrary, I struggled with my lack of belief for a long time.  I was raised Methodist.  I wanted to believe in God, and wanted to believe that we weren't alone and that someone was looking out for us.  Deeper examinations of the Bible and other religious texts and life experience just would not allow for that belief.  Aside from being happier as an atheist, I really don't live my life any differently than I did as a theist.  I try to be a good and honest person, to help others whenever I can, because I believe we owe it to our fellow humans to always be good to each other.  I did this as a Christian, too.  So really, I don't not need God to exist, and I'd be willing to bet no one else here does, either.

[i_am_i]

Edward, you sure do seem to have a great deal of time on your hands in which to ponder all this stuff you keep putting up here.

You also seem to have a great dislike for this imaginary well-organized group of people you call atheists.

Most of us have lives to live, we have to learn knowledge and skills and gain experience in our chosen fields in order to make money. I did all that by my own efforts. Everything I've achieved came from my effort, ingenuity and experience.

See, my life is great. It's filled with good books, good music, good food, I have a great wife and we live in a nice house. We've invested our money well. I can look back on a very interesting and somewhat unusual career as a musician, and I have a lot of stories to tell, many great memories. My plate is full, life is great.

So for someone to come up to me and insist that there's something supernatural that is missing in my life and expect me to give them one shred of credibility, well that person is either a scam artist or is highly delusional.

You need to go to college so you can pester the professors with all this flapdoodle instead of us.

[SSY]

I am more than happy to respond with "I don't know" to any singularity based questions (which by the way, is at this point a presumption, we have not got concrete evidence for before 10^-37 seconds, as far I know). Which puts me and you in similar positions, except that I have fewer entities to explain than you do.

We are both sure that the universe exists, the only thing I don't know is how/why it exists. You have the problems  of how/why your god exists, whether or not it even exists (severe lack of evidence), how/why it created the universe, all the characteristics of this god and all the continuing interactions it may or may not have with the universe. I have posited nothing that is not plainly obvious. You have posited something that just launches a dizzying array of questions. Your position is one that has far more holes than mine.

Edit, also, telling Asmodean what he needs is simply bad form.

[Martin TK]

No comment....

[Whitney]

Edward the Theist, you have been around HAF more than long enough to understand that quite a bit of what you said in the OP is a strawman in regards to what atheists think/believe.  You have also been around HAF long enough to be well aware of the forum rules and your response to the first comment was uncivil and uncalled for even if the commenter didn't address what you felt was the main point of your OP.

For this reason I'm giving you a warning.

From what I have read it seems the atheist posters here are generally responding to your thoughtfully and civilly (I'm sure there have been exceptions as that happen sometimes but I haven't seen them)...no need for you to act like we are something to be attacked.

[Kylyssa]

Please give us the explanation of where God came from so we can better discuss this topic.

If God doesn't need to be explained or have an origin, then why does the universe need one?  

I could see why pondering the possible causes for the universe existing is more interesting - because we can perceive the universe.  But if it must, must, absolutely must have a creator named Yahweh, then why does Yahweh not need a creator as well?  Why aren't you tied up in knots over who created Yahweh?  Why is God an exception to the rule?  Why does God not need a creator?  If your answer is something like "because the Bible tells us He has always existed" then surely you can see that's dogma, not reason?

If you answer to what created God is that God has always existed then why not cut out the middle man and just admit you don't know what created the universe or if it was created at all.

People have such an obsession with linear time.  What if time is not linear but is simply perceived as linear by human beings?  What if the future created the past which eventually became the future?  What if time is not linear at all?

[Martin TK]

Please give us the explanation of where God came from so we can better discuss this topic.

If God doesn't need to be explained or have an origin, then why does the universe need one?  

I could see why pondering the possible causes for the universe existing is more interesting - because we can perceive the universe.  But if it must, must, absolutely must have a creator named Yahweh, then why does Yahweh not need a creator as well?  Why aren't you tied up in knots over who created Yahweh?  Why is God an exception to the rule?  Why does God not need a creator?  If your answer is something like "because the Bible tells us He has always existed" then surely you can see that's dogma, not reason?

If you answer to what created God is that God has always existed then why not cut out the middle man and just admit you don't know what created the universe or if it was created at all.

People have such an obsession with linear time.  What if time is not linear but is simply perceived as linear by human beings?  What if the future created the past which eventually became the future?  What if time is not linear at all?

Good points, all.  I find that time is probably not what the common man thinks it is, in many ways I think that time, such as defined by the common man, is nothing more than a man made construct.  IMHO

[Thumpalumpacus]

But atheists aren't off the hook here, all these difficulties apply to them as well. Why was there a singularity? Why did it sit there for all eternity and suddenly bang at one moment and not the other? Assuming the singularity was a necessary first thing, why would it ever change?

Which atheist says that?  No one knows what happened before Planck Time, and I doubt that we can ever know it.  That is the moment when the four forces "precipitated" and took effect.  Before that time, we would have no frame of reference.

Please quit erecting straw-men.

However, this has helped at least define for me what God is: God is consciousness (volition + memory + awareness + creative capability = God).

Perhaps God doesn't understand why he exists anymore than we do. He just woke up one day and found himself staring at eternity, and from there he began to dream. Perhaps the why of it is closed into the existence of it.

Perhaps god is a bored little boy, playing with his cosmic magnifying glass, burning us little ants.  Maybe god is a jock and we are parasites living off the bacteria (of sorts) which feed on his armpit sweat.  Maybe god is a blind turtle.

All of these are possible.  All of them -- and your hypothesis as well -- are eviscerated by Occam's Razor.  It is much more likely that these gods, and your god-thingy too, simply don't exist.

When I think of God staring at eternity ... <snip> .... Atheism is simply a denial that resolves existential angst and crucifies the intellect to make the questions easier to live with.

Atheism is abdication.

Meaningless drivel.

Also, this is just a fancy version of the "atheism is a faith" argument, which is to say, nonsense.

When you present evidence for your claim that a god-thingy exists, I might take you seriously.  Please note, paramecia squirming under a 'scope aren't evidence for god.  Please, show me the data.  Show me the photos.  

You keep trying to talk god into existence, having forgot that reality doesn't take orders from men, no matter how sciencey or high-falutin' their words sound.

It's all rather amusing.

[Asmodean]

Ah..! So you want to play..? Well, let's play.

I was watching a video on consciousness and it was a roundtable discussion with Chalmers, Wolf, and a few others who have written about consciousness, and there is no consensus as to what consciousness is. The experts simply do not agree, which means no one really knows, and yet here it is making you, you and me, me. Not one of them mentioned paramecium, by the way.

Oh, they agree on some things and disagree on others. In perspective though, you can clearly define very few ways of looking at it. Of course, then you have to winnow out the actual experts from the wannabes and demagogues.

I, myself, am having a big problem with it. Because to say it is a force with awareness, volition, memory, and the creative capability to form itself into matter is really just saying it's God. But the problems get even deeper with questions like, "What was God doing before the universe?"

How does that amount to anything like god? Answer my first post.

It's actually not that important to know what he was doing as it is to fathom why he changed to create the universe.

"He" did not. However, since you asked for it, answer the first post.

 

How could God desire anything?

See above.

 

Even if he only desires to behold himself in his creation, then why create at one point and not another?

Indeed. Quite a waste of time, is it not..? Like me telling you yet again to answer the first post.

 

And if it was necessary for him to create, that implies that something acts as a cause upon him--a motivator. Yet if in the beginning all there was was God staring at an eternal present moment, how could he ever be motivated from that spot to be or do anything differently?

It's simple, really: There is no god. Thus, he was not.

But atheists aren't off the hook here, all these difficulties apply to them as well. Why was there a singularity?

Plural: singularities. They are a product of gravity overcoming the internal forces keeping particles in shape. Since we don't really know what exactly they are (physical properties except for an immence weight compared to our own Sun and equally immence gravity - which has physicists somewhat puzzled over equasions ending up with infinities), our understanding of them is limited. As to WHY they are, because supernovas occur on occasion.


 

Why did it sit there for all eternity and suddenly bang at one moment and not the other? Assuming the singularity was a necessary first thing, why would it ever change?

Hahah..! "It"? There is a singularity at the center of every black hole. Are you talking about some weird simplification of the Big Bang Theory..?

We are confounded by paradoxes and contradictions no matter what theory we try to make about cosmology.

Paradoxes according to the physical laws as defined at this point, yes. There are not many clear contradictions in science though - they tend not to remain contradictory for long. Scientists, for the most part, practice evidence based examination of the world, not book club with a guy in ridiculous robes up front after all.

However, this has helped at least define for me what God is: God is consciousness (volition + memory + awareness + creative capability = God).

Why bother calling it god? We have a word for it.

Perhaps God doesn't understand why he exists anymore than we do. He just woke up one day and found himself staring at eternity, and from there he began to dream. Perhaps the why of it is closed into the existence of it.

Perhaps Hades does not understand why you think YOUR god does any more than I do. And... Why do you assume he was sleeping..? And how do you know it was one "day" rather than in the middle of a timeless void within some weird concept of circular time? /end trollfood

When I think of God staring at eternity, what would such a consciousness think of? It would have no past to form memories from. It would have no use for will and no desires at all for which it would use its creative capability. It would have no reason or cause for change, thus no universe--no big bang, no evolution.

Again, my first comment. Why do you presume to shove a god-entity down the unsuspecting Universe's throat?

If in the primordial state God had any desires, or memories, then we don't have God.

That last part there, after the second comma... That's progress right there. Again though, you assume that "time before time" was as linear as we define it. An assumption you have no grounds for making.

We have a being that has been created. I can completely understand God staring at eternity. I think I could even model that mathematically and philosophically show how that is the necessary primordial state. But I can't get to the universe from there.

You can mathematically emonstrate god..? Please do. I'll be more than happy to poke at your equasions.

But all this doesn't make me an atheist. An atheist just gives up on these questions.

No, I just don't see the point in pulling explanations out of my ass until oh, say... My first post is addressed...

The questions are still there for the atheist, however. They have just as big a problem with explaining creation as the theist does. All the problems I have with "God" they have with the primordial singularity.

No. We do not have a problem saying "I don't know" where that answer is appropriate.

When the atheist says the singularity just quantumly popped into existence and banged into a universe out of nothing, they might as well just say God did it and go back to church.

Who says that..? A twelve year old? "Quantumly popped into existence" ... Oh whatever, suppose we simplify to such a degree for some uneducated specimens of the ape family, still, how does that in any way amount to a belief into something for which no evidence is presented, with no reason within reason (If you pardon the wordplay) to believe in it beyond silly superstitions and archaic traditions?

Atheism is simply a denial that resolves existential angst and crucifies the intellect to make the questions easier to live with.

HAHAH! Atheism, my dear, is the lack of a believe in gods. You are calling a shovel an excavator.

Atheism is abdication.

Faith is the substitution of reason for an archaic and unintelligent hive mentality.

Now, I believe I've referenced where my first comment to this thread comes from. Answer it.

[humblesmurph]

Edward,

Your worldview seems to give you comfort, perhaps that is the reason you adhere to it.  If you keep trying to prove god's existence, you might not like what you don't find.  Your god is personal.  Why try to convince a bunch of atheists of its existence?  From what I read, you aren't promising salvation.

I'm serious-- ask yourself: "Why am I trying to convince others that my god exists?"

[Asmodean]

Oh by the way, I'm an atheist because of all the weird and unprovable concepts, gods fall into the more useless cathegory. I don't NEED there to be no god - in fact, I don't give a flying duck. I'd probably be just as fascinated by proof that gods exist as I am by the Big Bang Theory, however, as gods have no holes to fill in my knowledge which are not already filled with much more honest "I don't know", I don't need them. Why wear an adhesive bandage on uninjured skin?

[Will]

But atheists aren't off the hook here, all these difficulties apply to them as well. Why was there a singularity? Why did it sit there for all eternity and suddenly bang at one moment and not the other? Assuming the singularity was a necessary first thing, why would it ever change?
Who said the singularity sat there for eternity?

We are confounded by paradoxes and contradictions no matter what theory we try to make about cosmology.

I disagree. Things which previous seemed intuitively like contradictions have ended up being easily explainable. There are plenty of questions about the universe for which the only current answer is "I don't know", but that hardly indicates there are no answers to be found. Will we ever know everything? I have no idea. Our knowledge will continue to grow, though.

However, this has helped at least define for me what God is: God is consciousness (volition + memory + awareness + creative capability = God).

You just said above you don't know what consciousness is and now you're defining it, and as "God", no less? That's a mighty contradiction.

Atheism is simply a denial that resolves existential angst and crucifies the intellect to make the questions easier to live with.

Atheism is abdication.

Not at all. Atheism is the honest response to available evidence. No pretense, no ego, no assumptions. It's simply null hypothesis. Null hypothesis cannot be abdication, as abdication implies action. Atheism is remaining unconvinced, which means no positive action of any kind.