"Ten Questions Every Intelligent Atheist Should Answer"

[PoopShoot]

1. If there is no god, why is there anything at all? Where did the universe come from?

IDK?

2. Where is the evidence that life could have begun without intelligent interference?

Question 1.  A creator would be an intelligence that arose without intelligent interference.  In actuality, this question is merely special pleading on question 1.

3. How can evolution explain features like wings?
4. How can the evolutionary model be true since the fossil records emerge from the same time?

These are explained extensively on other youtube videos.

5. If there is no objective standard of right or wrong? how can anything be wrong?

There can't be, but neither does that objective standard have to be a magical sky d00d.

6. Which is the logically defensible answer? Simple to complex OR creationism?

Simple to complex is already implied by questions 1 and 2, meaning creationism relies on it anyway.  The real question is what evidence there is that this universe was invented rather than merely formed from quantum objects.

7. Natural selection - what came first? The code in the dna or the organism that depends on it for life?

Hydrogen.

8. ET intelligence ?

Maybe.

9. What if god is real? and you had to stand before him and answer questions?

What if bananas were carnivores, would they be the theists worst nightmare?

10. Would you recognize god as your creator?

If he could prove it.

"Your objections are just a smokescreen, if you say no, your real problem is that you don't want to submit or be accountable to given rules."

Were that the case, I'd have converted to catholicism.  Absolution, FTW.

I just wanted to see some different intelligent responses.

Do mine qualify?

[Diosjenin]

Okay, Christian here.  Let's see if I can bring this list up to a higher intellectual standard (shouldn't be hard, unfortunately)...

1. If there is no god, why is there anything at all? Where did the universe come from?

Whether the universe is (or ever was) capable of spontaneous self-generation is still very much up for debate, although either answer would not preclude a supernatural trigger for the process.  What is most interesting to me personally are the implications of spontaneous self-generation.  Were the so-called "universal constants" generated and separated from each other in the moments after the initial Bang, as we currently believe, or do they have to exist apart from matter for self-generation to be possible?  What stops more huge Universe-generating Bangs from happening at random?  ...etc.

But the question at hand is only theologically useful if you rephrase it as a formal cosmological argument.

2. Where is the evidence that life could have begun without intelligent interference?

I at least know Dawkins' answer to be the anthropic principle, though I think the odds are even longer than he seems to.  He maintains the genesis of, say, RNA need only to have happened once, but in truth it needs to have successfully happened once; when taking into account the number of times it may have been created and then destroyed due to environmental influences or whatever else before it could replicate, the odds of it being a random occurrence go down another several orders of magnitude.

In any case, there is no hard evidence in either direction, but that does not mean that none will be found.  Even though I'm personally inclined to agree that intelligent interference was necessary to start the process of evolution, this is still a 'God of the Gaps' question.

3. How can evolution explain features like wings?

Easily.

4. How can the evolutionary model be true since the fossil records emerge from the same time?

...what.

5. If there is no objective standard of right or wrong? how can anything be wrong?

Without an objective standard, nothing can be right or wrong, correct.  I personally have enormous problems with that implication, but I know of no science-centric (as opposed to philosophy-centric) atheists who have any real problem with it.

6. Which is the logically defensible answer? Simple to complex OR creationism?

Simple to complex, unfortunately for him.

7. Natural selection - what came first? The code in the dna or the organism that depends on it for life?

Most likely the DNA, but again, despite the current lack of hard evidence, this is probably not unknowable.

8. ET intelligence ?

I'm inclined to be skeptical.  Mathematical estimations are inconclusive at their absolute best, and aside from that we have absolutely no evidence that they do exist.  For all the intelligent extraterrestrials out there that supposedly could exist, they sure do a good job of not letting anyone know that they're out there.

But at the end of the day, I can only honestly say that I side with Calvin.

9. What if god is real? and you had to stand before him and answer questions?

Ugh.  "What if you're wrong?"  I've watched Religulous I don't know how many times, and I gagged every time someone said this (Maher included).  How is this meant to convince anyone of anything?

10. Would you recognize god as your creator?

Atheists don't recognize God at all.  Really, what is so hard to understand about that?

This guy really seems to be the type of Christian who thinks people who call themselves atheists are just faking it or in denial or whatever (the 'smokescreen' quote really seems to drive that home).  I can't see any other explanation for the thought that this might be an even remotely revealing question.


So let's tally: Five 'God of the Gaps' questions, two that suck, and only three that are any good whatsoever.  1) Rephrase the first as a cosmological argument and it would at least be valid.  2) I personally find that the ET question is more useful as an examination of scientific atheism generally than it is as an argument against atheism, but it's not the worst question I've ever seen.  The question of objective morality I think is the only one that really holds any significant amount of water, but this guy does it no justice (then again, can you do it justice in a couple minutes of video on YouTube?).


 - Diosjenin -

[PoopShoot]

The question of objective morality I think is the only one that really holds any significant amount of water, but this guy does it no justice (then again, can you do it justice in a couple minutes of video on YouTube?).


 - Diosjenin -

Do you think that objective morality is impossible aside from imposition by a creator?

[Diosjenin]

Do you think that objective morality is impossible aside from imposition by a creator?

The existence of a creator is necessary for the existence of an absolute moral standard, yes.

 - Diosjenin -

[PoopShoot]

Do you think that objective morality is impossible aside from imposition by a creator?

The existence of a creator is necessary for the existence of an absolute moral standard, yes.

 - Diosjenin -

I didn't say absolute, I said objective.  Absolute morality doesn't exist, even in theism.

[Asmodean]

Who is this guy?

An idiot, a religious one at that, who, apparently, thinks that the atheists in general must be just as idiotic as he.

Ugh. "What if you're wrong?" I've watched Religulous I don't know how many times, and I gagged every time someone said this (Maher included). How is this meant to convince anyone of anything?

You know, I almost threw a flower pot at the screen when that trucker started babbling about how he was a satanic priest with drugs and women and rolls of money...  

Simple to complex, unfortunately for him.

Some people have apparently never heard of lego bricks, houses, anthills, dunes, snow flakes or the like.

None of those things can, as far as we know, be just wished into existence. However, all of them are present and all have begun as much simpler structures.

[PoopShoot]

You know, I almost threw a flower pot at the screen when that trucker started babbling about how he was a satanic priest with drugs and women and rolls of money...  

I feel the same way about comedian Mike Warnke.  Not only does his story of having been a Satanist high priest reek of inaccuracy about the Satanic church (he even claims to have used the LaVeyan bible as a guide, but also that it and he both claimed Satan to be an actual entity), but an investigation by a Christian magazine debunked his lies, yet he stands by them.  No tthat I care for Satanism, but what does it take for those allegedly the only moral people on Earth to have a bit or two of honesty?

[Parsifal]

I once made my own list for Christians, but in an Afrikaans newspaper here in South Africa, so I can't copy and paste it here.  But it boiled down to this:

Dear Christians,

You see, I really want to believe in the biblical tale of creation and the other stuff in the bible.  I just have a few problems.  If, as you maintain, evolution isn't true, why:
1. Do whales have the vestiges of hind legs?
2. Do we share appendices just like other apes?
3. Are our skeletons exactly the same as that of the other apes, except for some variations in shape?
4. Do whales have chambers in their stomachs, exactly like sheep, cattle and hippos, if they didn't have a common ancestor?
5. Is our DNA 99% (or there abouts) similar to that of chimps?
6. Do we have wisdom teeth?
7. Do we have vestiges of a tail?
8. Do we get a coat of hair in the womb that we loose before birth?
9. etc etc

If you can help me with this, soon I'll be back in the church benches judging all others and condeming them to hell with you.

Yours sincerely,

An Atheist

Of course the list can go on and on.  I was not given a straight answer (of course not), other than the usual drivel of god making it like that to test us and the other ready made (yet long debunked) answers against evolution.

[Asmodean]

@ PS

Hahah! Yeah, look at his Wiki page. "Known for"-line below the photo someplace is... Priceless

[Diosjenin]

I didn't say absolute, I said objective.

My mistake.

You know, I almost threw a flower pot at the screen when that trucker started babbling about how he was a satanic priest with drugs and women and rolls of money...  :hissyfit:   What made him think that was a good idea?  Did he really not expect babbling incoherence?  *grumble*

 - Diosjenin -

[Squid]

[KebertX]

[youtube:277w65cd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN93ruChnJM[/youtube:277w65cd]

Really? Half of those are about evolution, which really doesn't have anything to do with atheism.  I can believe that all life was created by a race of aliens and still be an atheist (maybe not an intelligent atheist, but...) Okay, let me try this out...

1. If there is no god, why is there anything at all? Where did the universe come from?

Big Bang. Origin of Space and time. There was nothing before it. Anything we try to imagine beyond the Big Bang that may have "Caused" it is meaningless. It would be outside the 11 dimensions of the universe, and therefore irrelevant to anything that we could possible experience. No one knows anything about this postulated thing outside the universe, and religions are filthy liars for pretending that they do.

After the big Bang all Every Fermion and Boson, and all the forces of the universe, and all the atoms of all the stars, everything that ever was, and ever will be arranged itself into what we experience today with our limited human perception.  It's where the sun came from, and the Earth, and the first organic molecules, and the origin of pre-biotic life, and Human Beings originated from. It's really more poetic than anything the Bible has to offer.

I like how this guy discounts the "Where did God come from?" argument by saying "There was no time before god. God created the universe and created time. He is self existent!" So we both agree that the origin of the universe was a self existent thing from before time, the only difference is that there is actually EVIDENCE for the Big Bang.

2. Where is the evidence that life could have begun without intelligent interference?

Why, it's in this video, of course!
[youtube:277w65cd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg[/youtube:277w65cd]

3. How can evolution explain features like wings?

In Birds? Insects? Bats? I think it's simple enough: Feathers are first seen in dinosaurs as insulation (More efficient insulation than hair) and as a mating display.  Flight most likely originated from small dinosaurs gliding from trees to catch prey (It's adaptive: Nature selects).  In insects, it was simply an extra series of proteins extending from the exoskeleton making it easy to "fly" away from predators by catching the wind. Bats' wings are not an evolutionary impossibility by any stretch of the imagination. Gliding insectivores. We see things like this everywhere. What we don't see is a giant hand reaching out of the sky to create them.

Irreducible complexity is a sham.  Every example of it breaks down before even the slightest scrutiny.

4. How can the evolutionary model be true since the fossil records emerge from the same time?

Cambrian explosion actually makes a lot of sense. There was an explosion of complexity in the genetic code around 530 million years ago. There was a sudden spike in the oxygen in the atmosphere due to a boom in vegetation population. Most phylums of organism developed at this time as a result of more nutrients, and a more hospitable planet.  This started a race for the most adaptive organisms. Predator/Prey relationships began to develop between organisms by this time.  If you didn't have the genetic plasticity adapt to your environment quickly, you were naturally omitted from the gene pool.

In other words, the development of life was a catalyst driving the further development of life. The increase in complexity was exponential.

5. If there is no objective standard of right or wrong? how can anything be wrong?

We went over this for a very long time in this thread: http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5630&p=80062#p80062
I hold the contention that morality developed as an evolutionary inevitability. We humans are social animals, and from the earliest hunter-gatherer groups of Australopithecus Natural Selection refined in the human mind behaviors of not harming one another. What was good for the group was good for each individual. It aided the total survival of the group, and nature selected for it.  So today we see the concept that it is right to help each other, and wrong to harm each other. Right to cause each other happiness, wrong to cause each other suffering.

6. Which is the logically defensible answer? Simple to complex OR creationism?

Yes, in a close system, things left on their own will grow towards more disorder. However, Earth is not a closed system. We get energy from the sun! So things go from simple to complex given the right chemical makeup, and the right exchange of energy.  This planet does not have all of it's energy being scattered randomly throughout the universe, it's actually utilized very efficiently and exchanged by organisms on this planet. Thank you evolution! The bible doesn't even come close to explaining these properties of life. You know why? Because it was written by thousands years old goat herders who wanted a quick easy way to answer their primitive curiosities, while at the same time controlling other people who haven't "heard the voice of god!"

7. Natural selection - what came first? The code in the dna or the organism that depends on it for life?

I am positive I've already put up this video, but My answer remains the same:
[youtube:277w65cd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg[/youtube:277w65cd]

8. ET intelligence ?

I don't see why not. The universe is INFINITE everything must exist at some place and time!

9. What if god is real? and you had to stand before him and answer questions?

Pascal's wager? I'm not sure what this is meant to ask. God could just read my mind. I'd try to be honest with the big BMF. I'm positive that a just god would understand why I'm an atheist, and not be so petty that he actually decides to torture me for eternity as punishment for this thoughtcrime. If such a god did exist, I would certainly not want worship him. I have too much dignity to grovel before some megalomaniac asshole.

10. Would you recognize god as your creator?

If this guy was able to answer all my objections to Christianity to my full satisfaction? I suppose, but I have A LOT of objections! I seriously doubt this guy can answer for all of them.  There are too many problems with the God Delusion for me to believe in such a thing. Therefore, I am an atheist.

[Will]

1. If there is no god, why is there anything at all? Where did the universe come from?
No one knows for sure, but we're starting to get a general idea. That idea, when it eventually becomes theory, will be based on extensive research, data collection, studying, experimentation, peer review, and conclusive, predictive results.

2. Where is the evidence that life could have begun without intelligent interference?
We only have some evidence of natural abiogenesis, but what little evidence is available to explain the origin of life eclipses the lack of evidence for intelligent abiogenesis.

3. How can evolution explain features like wings?
Beautifully. Imagine, if you will, an organism which jumps in order to survive, be it by collecting food or escaping predators. Now, imagine a random mutation in such and organism results in a tiny bit of webbing that allows jumping to be slightly more efficient. Perhaps, for example, the organism can glide a bit longer, meaning predators have more trouble capturing them or maybe they can land from higher branches. Repeat this over millions of years and you'll see the evolutionary explanation for wings.

4. How can the evolutionary model be true since the fossil records emerge from the same time?
I'm going to have to guess at what this question means. We're all transitional fossils, and many members of the same species are seeing what will ultimately be beneficial mutations, many of them heading in seemingly different directions at seemingly different rates. Evolution isn't a clean line.

5. If there is no objective standard of right or wrong? how can anything be wrong?
There's no evidence for a supernatural creator imposing a rigid moral code on the universe. That doesn't necessarily mean there's no objective morality, though it makes such a position defensible.

6. Which is the logically defensible answer? Simple to complex OR creationism?
Simple to complex, of course, as there's so much evidence to verify it.

7. Natural selection - what came first? The code in the dna or the organism that depends on it for life?
The DNA.

8. ET intelligence ?
It's possible.

9. What if god is real? and you had to stand before him and answer questions?
I'd tell him or her to go fuck him or herself for having the power to prevent bad things from happening but standing by and doing nothing. Do you know how many people spend their entire lives starving or ill?

10. Would you recognize god as your creator?
I was created from the marriage of ovum and sperm nine months before my birth. I recognize the biological process of reproduction as being responsible for my 'creation'.

[Asmodean]

What made him think that was a good idea?  Did he really not expect babbling incoherence?  *grumble*

Probably because the truckers were more representative of the general "flock" than the theology professors. After all, your general Bible Belt fundie would probably call a master theologian ten thousand kinds of blasphemer.

[hackenslash]

1. If there is no god, why is there anything at all? Where did the universe come from?

Several things here. Firstly, I'll deal with the latter part:

'Where' is a concept that pertains to spatial location. Since, as far as we can tell, there was no space before the instantiation of the cosmos, there was no 'where'. This can be elucidated quite nicely with the question 'where is the centre of the universe' and the answer 'everywhere!'

Secondly, for the first part, that there is anything at all can be dealt with by referring to the implications of Heisenberg. 'Nothing' would constitute a zero field, which is prohibited by quantum uncertainty, because it would constitute a field whose value (position) and rate of change (velocity) we could know with absolute certainty. This is not possible.

2. Where is the evidence that life could have begun without intelligent interference?

This is a horrible mis-statement of the problem. Where is the evidence for intelligent interference? As it happens, though, the scientific literature on abiogenesis is extensive. It isn't complete, but then we've only had 70 years or so, and very small laboratories, while the Earth had a lab the size of, well, the Earth, and half a billion years. Mere god-of-the-gaps argumentation, whose value we can see in all the things that were supposedly done by god but have since been shown by science to arise from the operating principles of the universe quite naturally. Where we have testable natural mechanisms to account for phenomena, god is superfluous. Where don't asserting a god that has been defeated at every turn is ridiculous.

3. How can evolution explain features like wings?

By the accumulation of of a long chain of incremental changes.

4. How can the evolutionary model be true since the fossil records emerge from the same time?

They don't. They show a clear progression.

5. If there is no objective standard of right or wrong? how can anything be wrong?

It can't. It can only be subjectively so. Interestingly, what is often misunderstood by the credulous is that if morality is predicated on the whim of a single individual, it is necessarily subjective. In any event, our morality stems from our evolutionary past, and is quite parsimoniously explained by the simple principle of our being social animals, and morality being that which allows us to function as such.

6. Which is the logically defensible answer? Simple to complex OR creationism?

Logic? Since creationism, especially such pathetic formulations as the Genesis drivel, has been shown to be anything but logical and, more importantly, not in accord with reality, the answer to this doesn't even need to be stated. Indeed, it doesn't actually rise to the level of being worthy of response.

7. Natural selection - what came first? The code in the dna or the organism that depends on it for life?

Code? There is no code in DNA. DNA is a chemical molecule. Our treatment of it as a code (actually a cipher, not a code) allows us to formalise it, which means that we can model its behaviour and properties.

8. ET intelligence ?

Where is the question here? Am I supposed to explain extraterrestrial intelligence? I'd be happy to do so once it has been shown that any exists. As it happens, I think it likely that there is, but whether it would have the same properties as our own (alleged) intelligence is another matter. Our command of our environment isn't simply a product of intelligence, but requires other features, all of which stem from our evolutionary past. It also requires opposable thumbs for the manipulation and manufacture of tools, which in turn works best in a bipedal organism. Once the progenitors of these factors are in place, they provide a positive feedback loop, and each feature drives the evolution of the others.

9. What if god is real? and you had to stand before him and answer questions?

What if my auntie had a penis? She'd be my uncle. In any event, if I were introduced to a deity, I wouldn't be the one answering questions, I'd be the one asking them, like what he thought he was playing at.

10. Would you recognize god as your creator?

That would depend on your definition of god. There are many definitions, and not all of them involve being the creator, or even a creator.