Happy Atheist Forum

I'm new here, so I really don't know if theists are even welcome. Most atheist forums say theists are welcome, presumably to look open-minded, but then berate and insult theists until they leave or get pissed off and banned. I don't know if this is one of those groups, but I'm hoping it's not. One way to find out, I suppose, is to ask this question: Do you feel that modern atheism is becoming more religious than it was in the past?

The reason I ask is because I've been into forums like this for the last sixteen years, and it seems way back when atheists were more philosophical and willing to debate. Now I find more and more that they are extremely close-minded, scared of debate, blindly follow leaders like Richard Dawkins, request donations, and stick together very strongly--like the early Christians.

So, what do you think? I'm not trying to start a fight and I'm not trolling for an argument. I really have noticed this trend, and I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed it.

Maybe atheists just got sick of looking at megachurces and decided it's time for their piece of the pie. Maybe a lot of atheist leaders came to realize that you can take the god out of the religious, but you can never quite remove the propensity for religion--and the religious come pre-trained to give money.

Like I said, I'm not looking to fight, and if I'm wrong, if my observation is off, I can accept that.

Well, this forum is certainly open to theists, we have a theist mod in fact, as along as you follow the rules, everyone here is welcome.

Having said that, the tone of your post does not come across very well to me, your opening posts on a new forum rarely go down well if you launch into a spiel about how close minded they are likely to be. For someone who claims to want to avoid conflict, you have a funny way of going about it.

As to your actual question, I do not recognise the characteristics you mention, we love a good debate here, ratskep also seems to be interesting, though I visit but occasionally. Perhaps one could come away from reading a forum with your impression if they see an atheist dismissing an argument for the umpteenth time, for example, Pascal's Wager has been debunked here so many times, few of us have the patience for it any more.

I also note  theme in your posts common to many Christians who enjoy apologetics; trying to equate (bring down to the level of, if you like) atheism with Christianity, the offhand reference to megachurches, the characterisation of behaviour as that typical of early Christians (as if the latterday ones had changed). It seems like an attempt to undermine rationality, without making an argument at all.

Edit, Ah, I see you blog about us, and seemingly attempt to get yourself banned from forums, how interesting.

Perhaps a mod could do an IP check? I seem to remember having someone on here before, who consistently crowed about getting banned, and then broke a load of rules in order to bring it about, have they had a relapse?

I agree with SSY here, and add that starting off with a baseless assertion is likely to only get responses of "that's not the way I am."

But welcome to the forums, I hope you have a good time.

Well, evangelical atheists bug me, but so do theists who go to atheist sites as if we gather there for their preaching convenience.

I won't "berate" or "insult" you, nor will most here, I don't think.  I'm still pretty new here, and I find this place pretty laid-back, for the most part.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I'm new here, so I really don't know if theists are even welcome. Most atheist forums say theists are welcome, presumably to look open-minded, but then berate and insult theists until they leave or get pissed off and banned.

Yes, there are places like that, and I've never bothered to join one.  There have been theists, atheists and agnostics banned from this forum, so I don't think the management discriminates based on worldview but on behavioral grounds.  And you probably know as well as I do that one does not have to "berate and insult" a person to piss them off.  Calmly and methodically shredding a poorly constructed argument can piss somebody off just as easily.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I don't know if this is one of those groups, but I'm hoping it's not. One way to find out, I suppose, is to ask this question: Do you feel that modern atheism is becoming more religious than it was in the past?

The reason I ask is because I've been into forums like this for the last sixteen years, and it seems way back when atheists were more philosophical and willing to debate. Now I find more and more that they are extremely close-minded, scared of debate, blindly follow leaders like Richard Dawkins, request donations, and stick together very strongly--like the early Christians.

So, what do you think? I'm not trying to start a fight and I'm not trolling for an argument. I really have noticed this trend, and I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed it.

Hmm.  I think there is a tendency on the part of some atheists to follow people like Dawkins.  I also think there has been a rise in the tendency to be outspoken about atheism.

Clannishness is questionable, though I imagine there has always been an element of that in atheist organizations.  The thing is, I don't think that the majority of atheists bother to join atheist organizations, so to a certain extent there is self-selection going on:  Those who join an organization also would be those who see such a thing as valuable, and see group cohesiveness as a priority. You encounter that in any group that meets to celebrate a mutually held interest, though. Are science fiction conventions (which can be very clannish indeed) religious events?  

Atheist organizations are often support groups, but there is also a tendency for them to want to present a face to the public.  Thus they can be seen making public statements and perhaps buying advertising space.  I admire the efforts of these groups for the most part, but I tend to think that for every organization-joining outspoken atheist, there are several just quietly getting on with their lives. Obviously you don't hear from them though, so you may get a skewed view of what an atheist is.

 Asking for donations?  I haven't encountered this, but then again, I don't belong to any atheist organizations.  Is that what you're talking about?  If a group is renting a meeting space, or planning events, then how else are they supposed to raise funds?  I think this, and membership dues are a natural, expected part of any organization, be it Bridge club or International Order of Odd Fellows.  As such, not something that is a special distinction of religious organizations or churches.  

I think that the characteristics you mention are generally not specific to religion, but can be seen in any special interest organization.  I do believe that there has been a rise in the number of atheist organizations in the past ten years or so.  So the typical behaviors of people in organizations have also become more noticeable in the atheist population.  

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Maybe atheists just got sick of looking at megachurces and decided it's time for their piece of the pie. Maybe a lot of atheist leaders came to realize that you can take the god out of the religious, but you can never quite remove the propensity for religion--and the religious come pre-trained to give money.

Like I said, I'm not looking to fight, and if I'm wrong, if my observation is off, I can accept that.

Maybe it's my lack of experience with atheist organizations, but I'm not aware of a tendency on the part of "atheist leaders" to emulate the behavior of mega-church ministers.  Perhaps if you could cite an example or two, it might present a clearer case?

Quote from: "SSY"Edit, Ah, I see you blog about us, and seemingly attempt to get yourself banned from forums, how interesting.

Perhaps a mod could do an IP check? I seem to remember having someone on here before, who consistently crowed about getting banned, and then broke a load of rules in order to bring it about, have they had a relapse?

That's not true. I don't try to get banned. I really don't. I do get banned, I admit, but I'm not here to get banned. I truly want to have some discussions. I apologize that my opening post was inflamatory. I don't mean to offend, but I want to write something people are going to want to read and get involved with, too.

My blog is simply nothing, to be quite honest. When I post an original post, I post it there, too, because I never know when I'm going to get banned and if someone wants to carry on the conversation, then at least the post will not have been lost. I'll gladly remove the link from my sig if it's a problem.

Quote from: "Davin"I agree with SSY here, and add that starting off with a baseless assertion is likely to only get responses of "that's not the way I am."

But welcome to the forums, I hope you have a good time.

Thanks. And I agree, now that you mention it. I mean, no one is going to jump in and say, "Yeah, I remember the good ol' days with Nietzsche. It's all commercialized now."

So, your point is taken.

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Well, evangelical atheists bug me, but so do theists who go to atheist sites as if we gather there for their preaching convenience.

I won't "berate" or "insult" you, nor will most here, I don't think.  I'm still pretty new here, and I find this place pretty laid-back, for the most part.

By the way, is there a way to multi-quote, because there's going to be a long list of my replies. Or is that okay?

And I appeciate you at least acknowledging the point (evangelical atheists). And I agree that theists shouldn't come into your forum to try to convert you, but if you want something other than, "Hey, Fred. Hey, Sam. How's the brain chemicals. Good. See ya round." Then you're going to have to have theists who disagree. But that's kind of my point: I'm not sure atheists really want to bother anymore with debate. Things may have changed to where all they want now is to have a community. If that's the case, then I have to quote The Who: "...here comes the new boss; same as the old boss."

Quote from: "Recusant"Yes, there are places like that, and I've never bothered to join one.  There have been theists, atheists and agnostics banned from this forum, so I don't think the management discriminates based on worldview but on behavioral grounds.  And you probably know as well as I do that one does not have to "berate and insult" a person to piss them off.  Calmly and methodically shredding a poorly constructed argument can piss somebody off just as easily.

Good point.

QuoteHmm.  I think there is a tendency on the part of some atheists to follow people like Dawkins.  I also think there has been a rise in the tendency to be outspoken about atheism.

Yes. Honestly, I think the more socialist we become (and I'm not at all opposed to that) the more atheistic we will become, and I'm not really opposed to that either.

QuoteClannishness is questionable, though I imagine there has always been an element of that in atheist organizations.  The thing is, I don't think that the majority of atheists bother to join atheist organizations, so to a certain extent there is self-selection going on:  Those who join an organization also would be those who see such a thing as valuable, and see group cohesiveness as a priority. You encounter that in any group that meets to celebrate a mutually held interest, though. Are science fiction conventions (which can be very clannish indeed) religious events?  

No. I suppose they aren't. And you make a good point. I see the clannishness because I'm going to the clans.

 

QuoteAsking for donations?  I haven't encountered this, but then again, I don't belong to any atheist organizations.  Is that what you're talking about?  If a group is renting a meeting space, or planning events, then how else are they supposed to raise funds?  I think this, and membership dues are a natural, expected part of any organization, be it Bridge club or International Order of Odd Fellows.  As such, not something that is a special distinction of religious organizations or churches.  

That's true.

QuoteMaybe it's my lack of experience with atheist organizations, but I'm not aware of a tendency on the part of "atheist leaders" to emulate the behavior of mega-church ministers.  Perhaps if you could cite an example or two, it might present a clearer case?

Well, not yet, no. But I never saw atheist forums asking for donations before. But...having said that, most of the ones I went to were on free servers like MSN, or the .alt group, or even Amazon.com. I suppose if there's going to be a nice forum, as more of them are now, donations may be in order.

I like your style. You don't seem to get pissed off too easily, Recusant. You don't fly off the handle. I better avoid debates with you!

Seriously though, I look forward to some real discussions. Thanks for responding.

I find it strange when theists put so much emphasis on the non-belief in a deity. As an atheist, I simply do not believe in a divine overlord. It is that simple. I don't care that this is such a difficult concept for theists to grasp. I do care when they compare my non-belief in a deity to a religion, though. Religion actively requires its followers to believe in something through 'faith'. I'm not using faith to reject the notion of god. I'm using common sense and logic.

I am therefore one of the most non-religious people I know.

By the way, this is a great forum for cordial discussion. Prepare to have your beliefs challenged - respectfully of course.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I'm new here, so I really don't know if theists are even welcome. Most atheist forums say theists are welcome, presumably to look open-minded, but then berate and insult theists until they leave or get pissed off and banned. I don't know if this is one of those groups, but I'm hoping it's not. One way to find out, I suppose, is to ask this question: Do you feel that modern atheism is becoming more religious than it was in the past?

I only became involved in the atheist community about two years ago, so my knowledge of what atheism was in the past for me has to do with my childhood and family and nothing to do with the greater atheist community.  I'm unsure about what you mean by "more religious".  Assuming you're referring to the growing organization of atheists, I disagree that a group that organizes itself is somehow being religious.  If that's not what you meant, then I don't know what you mean.  

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"The reason I ask is because I've been into forums like this for the last sixteen years, and it seems way back when atheists were more philosophical and willing to debate. Now I find more and more that they are extremely close-minded, scared of debate, blindly follow leaders like Richard Dawkins, request donations, and stick together very strongly--like the early Christians.

I think that atheists really are a very mixed group of people and there certainly are atheist groups that fit one or some or all of those things you listed, but I personally haven't noticed the rate of these kinds of behaviors increasing.  Though again, I'm essentially a noob to the atheist community.

On a side note, though I think this has been covered already, this particular forum has a donation button because Whitney runs the site out of her own pocket and some of us who use the site a lot want to kick her a few bucks now and then to chip in.  I think it's less of an atheists donating to atheists thing and more of a people supporting a website they like thing.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"So, what do you think? I'm not trying to start a fight and I'm not trolling for an argument. I really have noticed this trend, and I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed it.

Maybe atheists just got sick of looking at megachurces and decided it's time for their piece of the pie. Maybe a lot of atheist leaders came to realize that you can take the god out of the religious, but you can never quite remove the propensity for religion--and the religious come pre-trained to give money.

I often hear the term "atheist leaders" but I don't know who that's supposed to mean.  Are there atheist leaders?  There are guys who write books, Dawkins being the most popular right now, but they're hardly leaders.  They do make money off of atheism, but are they not supposed to try to make the best living they can just like everyone else?  I guess I'm not sure why you are drawing these particular parallels and who you're drawing them to.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"By the way, is there a way to multi-quote, because there's going to be a long list of my replies. Or is that okay?

And I appeciate you at least acknowledging the point (evangelical atheists). And I agree that theists shouldn't come into your forum to try to convert you, but if you want something other than, "Hey, Fred. Hey, Sam. How's the brain chemicals. Good. See ya round." Then you're going to have to have theists who disagree. But that's kind of my point: I'm not sure atheists really want to bother anymore with debate. Things may have changed to where all they want now is to have a community. If that's the case, then I have to quote The Who: "...here comes the new boss; same as the old boss."

I'm not sure about the multi-quote, I haven't figured that out yet either.

I'm glad you are here.  I would think that discussions along the lines of "how can atheists and theists get along better" are potentially very fruitful.  I don't know if it's wrong to try to convert an atheist on an atheistic forum, I would assume one wouldn't be very successful at it though.  

I'll debate until you are blue in the face if you like, as long as you take my views to be my own, and not representative of any other atheists.  As for The Who quote,  an atheist couldn't be anybody's boss in the name of atheism.   We don't have a leader, a holy book, or dogma. As stated above atheism is  just the lack of belief in the god myth.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I'm new here, so I really don't know if theists are even welcome.

Have you ever heard the old adage 'Don't assume, ask!'. It's always a good idea to study a group dynamic before jumping in and putting your foot in your mouth, I should know as I sometimes don't follow my own advice, only human after all, and I have often had to take my foot out of my mouth. I'm told I'm a typical Sagittarius but of course I don't believe in that sort of thing    

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Most atheist forums say theists are welcome, presumably to look open-minded, but then berate and insult theists until they leave or get pissed off and banned. I don't know if this is one of those groups, but I'm hoping it's not.

Well as you have already found out this isn't one of 'Most atheist forums' and that is one of the great attractions of this place for me. Living where I do the nearest I get to debate theism is to watch the TV and have the debating done for me. I joined RDF for a number of reasons one of which was the opportunity to discuss theism with theist. But it didn't turn out that way.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"One way to find out, I suppose, is to ask this question: Do you feel that modern atheism is becoming more religious than it was in the past?

Yes it would be, but it wouldn't be the very best possible way.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"The reason I ask is because I've been into forums like this for the last sixteen years, and it seems way back when atheists were more philosophical and willing to debate. Now I find more and more that they are extremely close-minded, scared of debate, blindly follow leaders like Richard Dawkins, request donations, and stick together very strongly--like the early Christians.

I came to find out about theism at RDF with an open mind. What I found were frankly a load of delusional preachers incapable of debate. I was astonished by the attitude of the sort of theists that rolled up at RDF. Some were nice reasonable polite people, but mostly they were agenda lead preachers. The trouble was that the nice guys/girls got caught in the flames wars with the fundie nut jobs, the YECs and Muslims that did nothing but quote chapter and verse. I was an atheist from birth, my mum attempted to indoctrinate me with the Christian meme and fortunately failed. I read The God Delusion and agreed with it general gist and joined RDF as a result, I have my own opinion of Richard Dawkins which can be found here What is your opinion of Richard Dawkins (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=74865#p74865)

You use the phrase 'scared of debate' I don't think this is true. I would say 'fed up with bashing oens head against a brick wall.' You can not have a debate with somebody who does not accept that their world view may be flawed, atheist or theist, and it is my personal experience is that debating the majority of theists that frequent forums is like trying to teach a pig to sing, ultimately pointless and it annoys the pig.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"So, what do you think? I'm not trying to start a fight and I'm not trolling for an argument. I really have noticed this trend, and I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed it.

Battle lines have been drawn and they are firming up as time goes by. One particular trend I noticed over the first year of my time at RDF was that at the beginning theists would arrive with their world view and it would be polity debated and gently pulled apart. It came to a point where the atheist members had taken apart every argument that theists could offer. What happened then was that for new theists was that the debate part ended and they walked into a brick wall of refutation. Then a very bad thing happened, theists became termed 'chew toys'. The first step in disenfranchisement from 'normal people' they were a stereotype before they had finished there first post.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Maybe atheists just got sick of looking at megachurces and decided it's time for their piece of the pie. Maybe a lot of atheist leaders came to realize that you can take the god out of the religious, but you can never quite remove the propensity for religion--and the religious come pre-trained to give money.

That paragraph is wrong on so many levels I'm not even going to try to debunk it ATM as I have some studying to do. If it hasn't been effectively by the time I get back I may have a go.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Like I said, I'm not looking to fight, and if I'm wrong, if my observation is off, I can accept that.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

IF and for me ATM it's a big IF, based on the first prejudiced potentially-trolling sentence you posted here, you are up front about your desire for debate, then you may well have landed on your feet in a forum that will offer you a fresh opportunity to chat to other people about 'life the universe and everything' in a civil and polite manner.

This is the first paragraph of the HAF mission statement 'At HAF we know that atheists are often happy ethical people just like anyone else. It is our goal to help dissolve negative stereotypes currently held towards atheists and facilitate productive dialogue with those of differing viewpoints.'
If you're willing to get down off your high horse so will I and then we can have a cup of Tea with cream scones and chat (https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg268.imageshack.us%2Fimg268%2F7475%2Fteah.gif&hash=974e3ef02680bc29a956eeb3296cd6601baa8c94)

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"By the way, is there a way to multi-quote, because there's going to be a long list of my replies. Or is that okay?

Yes.  Type in "[ /quote ]" without the spaces at the end of the passage you wish to discuss, to close your quote.  When ready to move to the next passage, drop down a line, and open the next quote by typing " [ quote ]" (again, without the quotes), and repeat as needed.  You can attribute quotes to a poster  using the format "[ quote="RandomMember" ]" -- again, leave out all spaces, but remember to include the quotes around the username.  Close the attribution with the regular close-quote command.

QuoteAnd I appreciate you at least acknowledging the point (evangelical atheists). And I agree that theists shouldn't come into your forum to try to convert you, but if you want something other than, "Hey, Fred. Hey, Sam. How's the brain chemicals. Good. See ya round." Then you're going to have to have theists who disagree. But that's kind of my point: I'm not sure atheists really want to bother anymore with debate. Things may have changed to where all they want now is to have a community. If that's the case, then I have to quote The Who: "...here comes the new boss; same as the old boss."

Yeah, it's not disagreement that bugs me.  I really don't care what someone else believes so long as they don't try to force-feed it to me.  Now, a discussion or debate is not force-feeding, and I don't see any problem with it.  As far as other atheists go, you're wrong; there are many, many atheists who enjoy the give-and-take of vigorous debate, and not just on the topic of god's existence.

Great song quote, too.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"By the way, is there a way to multi-quote, because there's going to be a long list of my replies. Or is that okay?

While you are in the message replying, scroll down below the [Save], [Preview] and [Submit] buttons there is a frame with older posts, each post has a |quote| button in the top right. When you click on the |quote| button that post gets quoted where ever the cursor is in the text entry box. That is how I multi-quote and it's not too bad.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"If that's the case, then I have to quote The Who: "...here comes the new boss; same as the old boss."

For me it's more; "I quit my job, now I'm working for myself." Beware: this is just in equal abstraction to the quote from The Who, this doesn't mean that I get to make my own morals and go around thinking I can do whatever I want. In keeping in line with the "boss" analogy: just because I'm my own boss, doesn't mean I don't do business with anyone else.

Just removing the religious boss (Preacher, Priest, Rabbi... etc.), doesn't remove one from the world or social responsibilities. Just as if your religious boss told you to go and steal boxes of Twinkies, you'd still be responsible for your own actions because you should know that stealing is wrong in our society no matter what your boss tells you. The biggest difference is than instead of me having someone to symbolically blame for my actions (the Pastor told me to do it) or something like a holy book (the Bible said it was OK), all my actions (good, neutral and bad) are completely of my own volition with no one to blame but myself.

In my experience, theists who accuse atheists of being closed minded seem to think that open mindedness means agreeing with them that they are right and nothing could possibly contradict them.

Atheists have looked at your beliefs, probably in far more detail than you ever have, and have concluded that there is no basis in fact or logic for them.  If you were to open your mind to the possibility that the label your parents pinned on you as a child, and the stories and books they told you were gospel truth, might possibly have been wrong, you might have come to the same conclusion as we did.  

I can only assume it's the fear of punishment for merely questioning these handed down beliefs that is preventing you from a rational appraisal of them.  Phobias do that to people.  Trying to feel better about yourself by denigrating others will not change the world, though no doubt it will reinforce the delusion which you seem to need reinforcing at every oportunity, as though, deep down, you know it's got no basis in fact or logic but are afraid it just might have.

Quote from: "Davin"The biggest difference is than instead of me having someone to symbolically blame for my actions (the Pastor told me to do it) or something like a holy book (the Bible said it was OK), all my actions (good, neutral and bad) are completely of my own volition with no one to blame but myself.

Reading your quote makes me think of something about religion and morality--why must they go together? Is it because there's no other way to make sense of morality? If you are good because you choose to be good without any external boss making you be good, then you are better than the Christian who has their morality prescribed to them. If one has to be told to do something, or forced to do something, where's the morality?

I must admit, I, myself, have no particular religion, and my view of God is so off from the Christians, that I'd probably be considered by them to be an atheist. Nonetheless, I do feel that consciousness is a force that exists external to central nervous systems, and I believe the psychological construct of God (whom I call, Father) is my way of manifesting that consciousness to a greater degree, here in the physical world. Of course, I am a monist, so I believe everything is God, for lack of a better term. Thus, one could say all I believe in is God, it's the inherent reality of everything else I doubt. That kind of makes me an atheist and a theist at the same time.

Okay, I'm going to try to multi-quote.  :bananacolor:
I hope your right, Thumpalumpacus, because that's what I want to do. I have come across some interesting philosophical notions lately, and I want a chance to debate them. I almost think debating the existence of God is worthless. I mean, no matter how hard I try in such debates, I can never get passed first base, which is to agree on a definition of God. Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God. Christians say they believe in God, but they can't describe what He is like, other than in vague terms.

Quote from: "Tank"Well as you have already found out this isn't one of 'Most atheist forums' and that is one of the great attractions of this place for me. Living where I do the nearest I get to debate theism is to watch the TV and have the debating done for me. I joined RDF for a number of reasons one of which was the opportunity to discuss theism with theist. But it didn't turn out that way.

You lost me with some of your acronyms. What's RDF?
I do agree with you that, so far, this forum seems to be different. I'm wondering if it's an older crowd. The last group I was in was a younger crowd and so it seemed like with them atheism was a fundamentalistic religion. But then that's how younger people are, anyway about everything--very black and white. Even if they are middle of the road, they tend to be militantly, fundamentalistically middle of the road.

So, maybe this is an older crowd, or maybe I'm wrong about younger people and it was just that particular group. Either way, this group seems to be a more comfortable fit.

Quote from: "humblesmurph"I'll debate until you are blue in the face if you like, as long as you take my views to be my own, and not representative of any other atheists. As for The Who quote, an atheist couldn't be anybody's boss in the name of atheism. We don't have a leader, a holy book, or dogma. As stated above atheism is just the lack of belief in the god myth.

Ah, but it's in how you define that God-myth. Because you don't just throw out God, you throw out anything that isn't either prescribed by the "scientific community" or immediately apparent to your five physical senses. I have yet to encounter an atheist who wants to speculate what conditions were like prior to the big bang, and yet because current scientific theory says there was a big bang, I don't find atheists who believe in a steady-state universe. All I find is closed minds on that subject--and that's the forerunner of religion.

Evolution and chaos/natural selection have problems. One of the biggest is the vast amount of time needed for life to evolve into what we see around us, and even more is the absolutely ridiculous odds of a single cell ever evolving in the first place from organic chemicals--and then surviving to evolve! Atheists just tend to believe it and ignore the problems--that's the forerunner of religion.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with evolution, but I have to add another ingredient to make it work and that's a kind of primordial consciousness--something, anything, with some kind of volition and the ability to shape the natural world. Is that God? I don't know, I don't really even care. God, for me, is a psychological construct I have created over the course of my life.

What I'm saying is that to be an atheist, by todays common definition, you have to turn your back on so many things that you might as well just build a church and call it the First Church of Atheism. Because you say you don't believe in God, but you do nothing other than to disprove the primitive notion of the Christian God. Well, of course there's no man sitting on a thrown in a separate dimension called heaven where the streets are gold and there are mansions everywhere. Besides I think that's called Beverly Hills, California.

Atheists appear science-minded and intellectual when they are doubting the Christian god, but they seem fundamentalistic when they turn there back on the very contradictions strict atheism creates.

Quote from: "pinkocommie"I often hear the term "atheist leaders" but I don't know who that's supposed to mean.  Are there atheist leaders?  There are guys who write books, Dawkins being the most popular right now, but they're hardly leaders.  They do make money off of atheism, but are they not supposed to try to make the best living they can just like everyone else?  I guess I'm not sure why you are drawing these particular parallels and who you're drawing them to.

I agree with that, now. I can see that. Good point.

Quote from: "RosaRubicondior"In my experience, theists who accuse atheists of being closed minded seem to think that open mindedness means agreeing with them that they are right and nothing could possibly contradict them.

Atheists have looked at your beliefs, probably in far more detail than you ever have,

I highly doubt that, unless you know what veridican philosophy entails, and since there are only two people in the world who consider themselves, "veridicans," and since I invented it, I doubt atheists have looked at my beliefs in far more detail than I have. Religiously, I believe two things: God is monistic in nature, and the human purpose is to become Christ (Christ being God conscious of Himself from within His creation). That being the case, I have pretty much shelved the religious aspects of veridicanism and adopted a more philosophical/mathmatical approach to what I now call veridican cosmology.

But since I have been making sweeping generalizations about atheists, I suppose it's only fair that you get to make a sweeping generalization or two.


 

Quoteand have concluded that there is no basis in fact or logic for them. If you were to open your mind to the possibility that the label your parents pinned on you as a child, and the stories and books they told you were gospel truth, might possibly have been wrong, you might have come to the same conclusion as we did.

Or, maybe what I found was that the stories were much more abstract and symbolic and reveal deep mysteries to those who have it within them to study them outside the light of traditional religion. Maybe atheism is an overreaction. Case in point: Christians don't believe we can become Christ. They believe we can be Christ-like, or that we can follow Christ, but not be Christ. Yet Jesus said on two occasions to eat his body and drink his blood. Why? Well, let me ask you this. You used to be a tiny baby. Now you are a completely different physical body. What is the substance of your adult body? Quite simply it is the food you ate. We become what we eat and what we eat becomes us. We are to be Christ. Once that is realized, it opens up the whole gospel in a new light. Especially when Jesus says, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." But that's for another discussion.

So, I would say I've moved beyond the theology of my youth. How about you? Oh, right, you just threw everything out, and when people ask you to explain the impact of Jesus Christ on the world, you just say he never existed, right?

QuoteI can only assume it's the fear of punishment for merely questioning these handed down beliefs that is preventing you from a rational appraisal of them. Phobias do that to people. Trying to feel better about yourself by denigrating others will not change the world, though no doubt it will reinforce the delusion which you seem to need reinforcing at every oportunity, as though, deep down, you know it's got no basis in fact or logic but are afraid it just might have.

Every religion has its hypocrites, apparently. You say, "Trying to feel better about yourself by denigrating others will not change the world..." Then you call me delusional, you say that my personal religion has been studied by atheists and discredited. You make me feel retarded by suggesting I have an infantile fear of punishment, and you insinuate that I am a phobic personality. Hell, I've never even met you. But you see, that's what religion does to people. It allows them to sin, and preach morality at the same time. It really doesn't matter whether you call the religion atheism or Christianity.

As for facing reality: I'm one of the rarest people I know. I look in the mirror, and I know I am not a good person. So, fear punishment...yes, because I deserve it so much. Most people I know think they're "pretty good people." I never think that way about myself--ever. I suppose that's why my God has protected me so much throughout my life and prevented me from reaping the consequences of what I have sown.

Do you think that's a low self-image?

Edward, there may have been a first cause, you call it god, cool.  I believe there was a first spark that turned simple compounds into living things, you call it god, cool.  There may be some unifying energy or strand that runs through all of existence, again, if you want to call it god, cool.  It would seem to me that by your definition I'm not really an atheist, I just don't use the word god to describe these entities.  

When I say I don't believe in god I mean a singular, all powerful being--that designed the universe--that I can pray to-- that I can please--that I can make angry.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"If you are good because you choose to be good without any external boss making you be good, then you are better than the Christian who has their morality prescribed to them.

For some people prescribed morality is better for them than figuring things out for themselves, does that make them better or worse people? I don't think it does in itself, but I think that those who take the time to think of the consequences of their actions are at least better in the area of morality than those that don't.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"If one has to be told to do something, or forced to do something, where's the morality?

It's still the person's choice to blindly follow someone, so the morality is in whether the person should seek the answer themselves or just follow what someone else says.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God.

There's a perfectly rational reason for this: one can't be expected to come up with every infinitely possible version of every possible god to say that they don't believe in any of them. It's far more reasonable for time, sanity and reality to wait for someone to provide evidence of their positive claim.

It's like if I just randomly believed that there are now hologram traps everywhere and I must be careful where I step or I'll fall into a pit covered by one. If I started telling other people that there are random hologram pit traps everywhere I should hope that they would ask for evidence that at least there are holograms that can do such a thing and/or a pit that I had found covered by a hologram. Otherwise why would everyone start testing out every step they make to make sure its solid ground if there's no evidence that the hologram covered pits even exist?

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Reading your quote makes me think of something about religion and morality--why must they go together? Is it because there's no other way to make sense of morality? If you are good because you choose to be good without any external boss making you be good, then you are better than the Christian who has their morality prescribed to them. If one has to be told to do something, or forced to do something, where's the morality?

The essential question is here is whether morality is intrinsic or extrinsic to any god(s).  If intrinsic, then morality is inherently relative (to the whim of the god).  If extrinsic, it means that any extant god(s) are not the ultimate arbiters.

QuoteI hope your right, Thumpalumpacus, because that's what I want to do. I have come across some interesting philosophical notions lately, and I want a chance to debate them. I almost think debating the existence of God is worthless. I mean, no matter how hard I try in such debates, I can never get passed first base, which is to agree on a definition of God. Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God. Christians say they believe in God, but they can't describe what He is like, other than in vague terms.

For what it's worth, I don't see that as an atheist, I need to define god.  I see only that I need to determine whether I have faith in unsupported claims or not.

QuoteI do agree with you that, so far, this forum seems to be different. I'm wondering if it's an older crowd. The last group I was in was a younger crowd and so it seemed like with them atheism was a fundamentalistic religion. But then that's how younger people are, anyway about everything--very black and white. Even if they are middle of the road, they tend to be militantly, fundamentalistically middle of the road.

It is true that younger people tend to have more energy.  However, I think you're kind of painting with too broad a brush about openness.  It's been my experience that the older the person, the more set in their ways, and the less amenable to correction, they become.

QuoteAh, but it's in how you define that God-myth. Because you don't just throw out God, you throw out anything that isn't either prescribed by the "scientific community" or immediately apparent to your five physical senses. I have yet to encounter an atheist who wants to speculate what conditions were like prior to the big bang, and yet because current scientific theory says there was a big bang, I don't find atheists who believe in a steady-state universe. All I find is closed minds on that subject--and that's the forerunner of religion.

I'll be happy to speculate.  I don't think my speculations have any particular utility, though, given the close limits on my knowledge in the field of cosmology.

QuoteEvolution and chaos/natural selection have problems. One of the biggest is the vast amount of time needed for life to evolve into what we see around us, and even more is the absolutely ridiculous odds of a single cell ever evolving in the first place from organic chemicals--and then surviving to evolve! Atheists just tend to believe it and ignore the problems--that's the forerunner of religion.

Would you please detail these problems?  The Earth has been around for 4.6-4.8 billion years; life, for 3.8 billion and perhaps more.  Also, saying "single cell" is misleading, because in a primordial earth, chemical reactions are occurring amongst quadrillions of molecules per second.  

QuoteDon't get me wrong, I agree with evolution, but I have to add another ingredient to make it work and that's a kind of primordial consciousness--something, anything, with some kind of volition and the ability to shape the natural world. Is that God? I don't know, I don't really even care. God, for me, is a psychological construct I have created over the course of my life.

Very well.  I don't see either the need or the utility of adding an unnecessary proposition here.

QuoteWhat I'm saying is that to be an atheist, by todays common definition, you have to turn your back on so many things that you might as well just build a church and call it the First Church of Atheism.

Nonsense.  The only thing an atheist rejects is faith.  For that reason, calling it a church is most inappropriate.

QuoteBecause you say you don't believe in God, but you do nothing other than to disprove the primitive notion of the Christian God. Well, of course there's no man sitting on a thrown in a separate dimension called heaven where the streets are gold and there are mansions everywhere. Besides I think that's called Beverly Hills, California.

Neatly played, but in all seriousness, I don't "disprove" anything.  I ask for evidence, because I lack faith.  Those who don't present evidence have no right to expect their ideas to be entertained; and the more far-fetched the idea, the more powerful -- and clear -- the evidence must be.

Also, at this point, I notice you yourself engaging in that which you castigate in other theists: defining god so broadly as to be a useless definition.

QuoteAtheists appear science-minded and intellectual when they are doubting the Christian god, but they seem fundamentalistic when they turn there back on the very contradictions strict atheism creates.

Perhaps your first use of the word "atheists" ought to have the qualifier the second usage bears.  Not nearly all atheists are "strict" atheists.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God.

I'll give you my definition of God: an idea fabricated by primitive humans to explain nature.

Richard Dawkins Forum = RDF

Quote from: "i_am_i"

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God.

I'll give you my definition of God: an idea fabricated by primitive humans to explain nature.

I agree with i_am_i and expanded a bit on a thought along those lines, for want of a better term God in The ghost in the machine.

Quote from: "Tank"God was the creation of human frailty and fear, in particular the fear of the perceived but not understood and the unconscious ramblings of the mind. At the dawn of human awareness came the moment of knowledge without understanding. Humans have evolved into cause and effect machines, we see cause we infer effect, we see effect and we infer cause. It's the way we evolved as the ability to second guess our prey and/or predictors is a huge evolutionary advantage. But with this ability came the cost of cognitive dissonance when a cause is seen or an effect is observed we are evolved to balance that equation. And every night unconsciousness came, not in a comfortable bed in a secure home, but surrounded by predators out in the open. And there were dreams and nightmares, the unexplained visions, an affect of what? What caused the visions seen at night that were good or bad, heaven or hell? So our ancestors had knowledge, they could see the Sun rise, they had effect but no cause, they did not understand why the Sun rose, a psychologically intolerable situation. They knew their dreams, visions of beauty and fear, an effect with no cause. So they balanced the equation with superstition and called it God. God is the filler in the cracks of our evolved mind.

I'll be completely honest here....I didn't read the entire thread and I may be straying from where the conversation has gone.  If I have, well this will be just a fun road bump of a post.  So, is atheism becoming "more" religious?

Well, I never really saw atheism itself as a religion or religious but that would depend on how you utilize the word.  If you mean to utilize it in comparison to religions such as Christianity, Judiasm and the like then, no I would say it isn't.  However, if you use the word meaning something that people who hold a common interest on come together and discuss, interact and hold events surrounding this interest, then I'd say yes but that also means that Trekkies, Star Wars geeks and Comic nerds would be considered religious as well.

If we look at it using a different operative word like "active" - are atheists more active now then I'd say yes.  You can see more atheists groups that are public and the internet and other modern technologies have made it easier to connect and organize with other like-minded people.  But I wouldn't equate organized atheists to religions, not because I hate religions or anything like that but I use the concept of religions that F.C. Wallace proposed, defining them as:

Quote...a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man and nature

Wallace, A.F.C. quoted in Haviland, W. (1999). Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Orlando: Harcourt Brace.

That differentiates the concept we think of as religions such as the ones I mentioned earlier from organizations such as particular groups of common interest or even things like fraternal orders and such.  When I hear someone refer to a group as religious then I would think that means showing the characteristics of a religion.  Usage of terms has been such a barrier to discussions like this, I think, because people are discussing two different things and don't even realize it.

That's a great definition, thanks.

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Would you please detail these problems?  The Earth has been around for 4.6-4.8 billion years; life, for 3.8 billion and perhaps more.  Also, saying "single cell" is misleading, because in a primordial earth, chemical reactions are occurring amongst quadrillions of molecules per second.  

I am in no way a new earth creationist, but I don't see how those claims can be substantiated. I'm thinking about it, and I can't, for the life of me imagine how any science or scientist could determine the age of the earth. I mean really. Maybe it's a lot younger. Maybe it's nearly as old as the universe. The idea that it has rotated around the sun 4.6-4.8 billion times and that life started 3.8 billion years ago--I think those are just made up numbers. What if an asteroid that eventually became the earth was moving through the Milky way for 100 billion years?

Like I said, I'm not a creationist, but I can't imagine it is possible to date our planet that way. I mean, what assumptions were made to give a date so precisely, a difference of .2 billion years? It's starting to sound a lot like faith to me, and it's starting to sound about as credible as using the generations in the bible to date the earth.

Quote from: "Tank"God. God is the filler in the cracks of our evolved mind.

I read what you wrote, and I agree that God is often used as a gap-filler. But there are lingering questions. The deepest, in my opinion being why does anything exist at all, and why does the evolution of man seem to be racing towards some higher state of being (e.g., via technology) when it really does nothing for our survival as a species. For that matter, why would a species even know to survive, or desire it?

I'm not saying the answer to all of this is God. I'm only saying that blind chance and natural selection doesn't quite seem to cover it all.

Quote from: "Squid"I'll be completely honest here....I didn't read the entire thread and I may be straying from where the conversation has gone.  If I have, well this will be just a fun road bump of a post.  So, is atheism becoming "more" religious?

Well, I never really saw atheism itself as a religion or religious but that would depend on how you utilize the word.  If you mean to utilize it in comparison to religions such as Christianity, Judiasm and the like then, no I would say it isn't.  However, if you use the word meaning something that people who hold a common interest on come together and discuss, interact and hold events surrounding this interest, then I'd say yes but that also means that Trekkies, Star Wars geeks and Comic nerds would be considered religious as well.

If we look at it using a different operative word like "active" - are atheists more active now then I'd say yes.  You can see more atheists groups that are public and the internet and other modern technologies have made it easier to connect and organize with other like-minded people.  But I wouldn't equate organized atheists to religions, not because I hate religions or anything like that but I use the concept of religions that F.C. Wallace proposed, defining them as:

Quote...a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man and nature

Wallace, A.F.C. quoted in Haviland, W. (1999). Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Orlando: Harcourt Brace.

That differentiates the concept we think of as religions such as the ones I mentioned earlier from organizations such as particular groups of common interest or even things like fraternal orders and such.  When I hear someone refer to a group as religious then I would think that means showing the characteristics of a religion.  Usage of terms has been such a barrier to discussions like this, I think, because people are discussing two different things and don't even realize it.

Acutally, I can't argue with what you said or the quote you used from F.C. Wallace. I mean, you basically answered the question of this post, in my opinion. But maybe religion shoud be defined merely as faith in spite of reason. If that's the case then many atheists would be included, along with some trekkies, and others.

I wrote a paper (for which I was banned from a previous group) that gave three rationales for why I believe consciousness exists external to central nervous systems. In all three examples, I have either seen, or experienced, or logically concluded that it is the case the consciousness is external. That's reason--even if I'm ultimately wrong. Faith would be simply assuming consciousness was external because I wanted it to be so. I would have faith in that conclusion in that case.

Atheists often have a great deal of faith. They assume, for instance, that evolution is the reason for everything, and yet there's yet to be found a way that life could have started on this planet. They assume the big bang happened, but as I have recently found out, there are problems with the red shift theory that make it unlikely to be true (search: red shift and binary star problem). We assume the standard model of quantum mechanics, but the as of yet undiscovered Higgs boson is the key to it. If it doesn't exist, the standard model is essentially wadded up and thrown in the garbage. But all this agnosticism ends up getting mixed with a little faith to end up atheism. Because if one thing is a fact I have observed in my dealings with atheists, they don't want God to exist.

Hence, the religion of atheism--perhaps.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Because if one thing is a fact I have observed in my dealings with atheists, they don't want God to exist.

Now you're projecting. The truth is that you very badly want God to exist, so you've made up an assortment of reasons for God to exist.

Let me ask you something. How did you hear of this God you're talking about? Did someone tell you about it and you believed what they had to say? Did you read it in the Bible? How?

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Would you please detail these problems?  The Earth has been around for 4.6-4.8 billion years; life, for 3.8 billion and perhaps more.  Also, saying "single cell" is misleading, because in a primordial earth, chemical reactions are occurring amongst quadrillions of molecules per second.  

I am in no way a new earth creationist, but I don't see how those claims can be substantiated. I'm thinking about it, and I can't, for the life of me imagine how any science or scientist could determine the age of the earth. I mean really. Maybe it's a lot younger. Maybe it's nearly as old as the universe. The idea that it has rotated around the sun 4.6-4.8 billion times and that life started 3.8 billion years ago--I think those are just made up numbers. What if an asteroid that eventually became the earth was moving through the Milky way for 100 billion years?

Like I said, I'm not a creationist, but I can't imagine it is possible to date our planet that way. I mean, what assumptions were made to give a date so precisely, a difference of .2 billion years? It's starting to sound a lot like faith to me, and it's starting to sound about as credible as using the generations in the bible to date the earth.

Google "solar system formation".

Enjoy!

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Now I find more and more that they are extremely close-minded, scared of debate, blindly follow leaders like Richard Dawkins, request donations, and stick together very strongly--like the early Christians.

Hello Edward and welcome...
I can't speak for everyone but I don't blindly follow any man, but I often like the thinking of Richard Dawkins. Not always do I agree with his philosophies, so to speak, but his science and his metaphysics, in my opinion, are frequently brilliant. Actually if you take a look at the RD website or forum (well, erm... there used to be a forum. I don't know if they preserved the old content or not) a lot of the atheists and agnostics there critique him or his posters. Even if it's not the main crux they're disagreeing with they might pick apart something within the content of the article. Example an analogy or something.

It has been my experience that most atheists (never all, as with anything) are more independent thinkers. Also, I personally haven't seen any afraid of debate, in fact it has been quite the opposite. Do you have an example of this?

As far as the donations go, it's for a secular cause, not the pockets of preachers. Fighting for the separation of church and state, keeping Creationism out of the classrooms, secular charities, etc.

So, are atheists becoming more religious? Is bald becoming a more beautiful hair color?  :pop:

QuoteBut all this agnosticism ends up getting mixed with a little faith to end up atheism.

I don't pretend to know anything I don't. Hence not believing in God.

On the dating methods: Squid touches on it here. (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4390)

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "Tank"God. God is the filler in the cracks of our evolved mind.

I read what you wrote, and I agree that God is often used as a gap-filler. But there are lingering questions. The deepest, in my opinion being why does anything exist at all, and why does the evolution of man seem to be racing towards some higher state of being (e.g., via technology) when it really does nothing for our survival as a species. For that matter, why would a species even know to survive, or desire it?

I'm not saying the answer to all of this is God. I'm only saying that blind chance and natural selection doesn't quite seem to cover it all.

I'll take the 'bait and switch' as you started the thread, the subject was initially 'Are Atheists More Religious Now?', then brought in the question of the nature of God and then look, as if by magic what a surprise! 'How did the universe start?' It was so predictable.

However.

a)

'

why does anything exist at all'  don't know, TBA, watch this space (pardon the pun). Insert name of deity or personal wish fulfilment here if you must, just must have an answer where there is none, yet.[/list]
b)

why does the evolution of man seem to be racing towards some higher state of being (e.g., via technology)' The answer is the 'virtuous' circle of curiosity and tool use, later qualified as science and technology. The advance of our understanding of the way the world works improves our ability to make new tools which further advance our ability to to understand the way the world works etc etc. Some of the spin off's from this process satisfy other needs in humans, such as communication. Telegraphs, Telephones, Radio, Television and the Internet are all applications of progressive technologies and all are related to one of the defining characteristic of humanity, an obsessive desire to communicate. [/list]
c)

'when it really does nothing for our survival as a species.' In your opinion. However I would contend that the human ability to positivity effect change in their environment, e.g. build a shelter, process a protein into food, build a system to defend the planet from an extinction event collision, would be the one thing that could ensure the survival of the human species. Given that the vast majority of species are extinct because of environmental change our ability to exist across a huge range of environments, due to our technological capabilities, is the ace up the sleeve for humanity. T-Rex didn't have a sleeve and look what happened to him  :D [/list]

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Evolution and chaos/natural selection have problems. One of the biggest is the vast amount of time needed for life to evolve into what we see around us, and even more is the absolutely ridiculous odds of a single cell ever evolving in the first place from organic chemicals--and then surviving to evolve! Atheists just tend to believe it and ignore the problems--that's the forerunner of religion.

Would you please detail these problems?  The Earth has been around for 4.6-4.8 billion years; life, for 3.8 billion and perhaps more.  Also, saying "single cell" is misleading, because in a primordial earth, chemical reactions are occurring amongst quadrillions of molecules per second.  

Here's the problem. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend. We are now trying to think about multiples billion.

I read it once, something like:
A billion seconds ago it was 1973.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive (allegedly)
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the stone age
A billion days ago no creature on Earth walked on two feet.

I can't verify the claim made in the above section, because I'm just not that good with math and that many zeros. And that is just a billion days. Multiply that times 365 (a tough figure to imagine groups of... unlike pairs or a dozen) and that is merely a billion years. Now quadruple that and thaaaaat far back is when the Earth and the rest of the solar system was forming.

The moon formed formed 30-50 million years after (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Formation) the solar system started forming (so 4,450,000,000 years ago instead of 4.5 billion...) when a body approximately the size of Mars crashed in to the cooling proto-Earth. The point is, on a scale of billions, even 50 million seems pretty insignificant.

So Thump, if the OP can't quite grasp billions (as admittedly, neither can I, nor anyone I know) than how will he get quadrillions. Anyway, I was under the impression that after billion came brazillion.  

I've never liked the "there just doesn't seem that there is enough time for life to begin as what it did and evolve in to the varieties and complexity that it did" notion. It has taken a collecion of the most brilliant members of our species to even come close to really fully locking down the idea of just how much of something a billion is.

And for me, the reason I visit this site, is because my notions are constantly challenged by others, many of them have posted on this particular thread, and because I read and digest their comments and discussions, I learn.

One of my favorite quotes puts it best:

Quote from: "Neil DeGrasse Tyson"We stockpile the discoveries of the most brilliant members of our species, allowing us, however strained and with whatever struggle it involved, to slowly ascend the ladder of knowledge, maybe compensating for the fact that any one of us is just too stupid to figure it all out.

Quote from: "hismikeness"I read it once, something like:
A billion seconds ago it was 1973.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive (allegedly)
A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the stone age
A billion days ago no creature on Earth walked on two feet.

Interesting post. Very close.

A billion seconds ago it was Tuesday, December 5th 1978.
A billion minutes ago it was 109 AD.
A billion days is 2.74 million years.
 

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Atheists often have a great deal of faith. They assume, for instance, that evolution is the reason for everything, and yet there's yet to be found a way that life could have started on this planet. They assume the big bang happened, but as I have recently found out, there are problems with the red shift theory that make it unlikely to be true (search: red shift and binary star problem). We assume the standard model of quantum mechanics, but the as of yet undiscovered Higgs boson is the key to it. If it doesn't exist, the standard model is essentially wadded up and thrown in the garbage. But all this agnosticism ends up getting mixed with a little faith to end up atheism. Because if one thing is a fact I have observed in my dealings with atheists, they don't want God to exist.

Hence, the religion of atheism--perhaps.

I see your point you're trying to get across but I think it may be based on an assumption about atheism that isn't entirely accurate and may apply only to a portion of atheists, however, let me address a couple of other things first.

You mention assuming that evolution is the reason for everything, while I can't speak for others (although I think many here will agree with me), we don't see evolution as the reason for everything only a an explanation for the diversity of life we see today and how those populations change over time.  The origin of life is a separate question all together and one which is not explained by evolutionary theory because it was never meant to - evolution, by definition, does not deal with the origin of life.  For that realm it is a matter of an interdisciplinary research involving organic chemistry, biochemistry, geophysics and other specialized fields.  However, to insinuate that research in that area has yielded to answers or clues is not correct.  If you ever have time (even though it's now a few years behind the current research since it was published in 2005 I believe) a decent lay book on the subject is Robert Hazen's Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins.  From that book which is written by an origin of life researcher you can get a feel for how small the field is in terms of those actually performing research actively, full time.  Even though you can also see how these people have made some interesting finds including self-assembly of polypeptides, amino acids, phospholipid vesicles among other things.

As for the Big Bang, much of the more complicated discussions are far outside my area of knowledge as astrophysics is not my forte.  Nevertheless, as far as I am aware there are several lines of solid evidence to support the major tenets of the Big Bang theory.  As for the binary systems "problem", are you referring to the alternating shifts in spectroscopic binaries?  Or are you referring to Halton Arp's claims?

However, all this is besides the point that we're addressing where you allude to atheism being agnosticism coupled with faith.  Here's where I must disagree but only partially.  In terms of atheism you have two major sub-types of atheists - strong and weak or some prefer the terms gnostic and agnostic atheists.  From an epistemological standpoint I can see how gnostic atheism can be viewed as having some matter of faith to proclaim a positive and immutable stance in regard to supernatural entities.  However, this wouldn't necessarily hold true for agnostic atheists which would be those who have at this time seen evidence supporting those supernatural entities as lacking and therefore a tentative conclusion is utilized until other evidence is presented to the contrary.  I can also understand some skepticism (even among other atheists) at the assumption that agnostic atheists will actually examine contradicting evidence to their conclusions as this can be a "take me at my word" sort of thing.  However, the requisite inquiry involving said evidence can be see in meaningful discussion and the willingness to read, examine and understand those opposing ideas - for instance, in relation to evolutionary theory, I have a nice little collection of creationist and intelligent design literature - I've actually had acquaintances give me some strange and disapproving looks when they saw me reading Behe's Darwin's Black Box  or Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells.  

However this can get into another language usage problem if we start equating faith with conclusions based upon evidence which have foundational assumptions.  Yet these assumptions are often not with merit and have, in the past, been established therefore equating it to faith would need to take a much broader idea of the term.  If a wide concept of faith is to be used in relation to anything that does not utilize absolute knowledge then it is a moot point as everything we discuss will be in some part based upon faith.  But this becomes simply another problem due to language usage and the differing assumptions of what each party has in regard to the terms being focused on.  It's been my experience that many criticisms of particular scientific theories is due to simply a misunderstanding or miscommunication of the usage of key terms that are involved such as when someone argues that evolutionary theory isn't valid because it is "just a theory".  Although that is a fairly elementary example I think it communicates my point on the matter.

As for the claim that atheists "don't want God to exist" - I'm sure some don't, although it may depend on which version of a god exists - the jealous, short tempered one or the more passive one.  Take Jesus for example, the avatar of god in human form - a deity I could sit down and have a beer (or I guess wine was more his thing) with is fine by me however, some booming voice from above demanding sacrifice...not so much.  However, this is not really the main point.  Would it be accurate to say that some atheists don't want god to exist?  Yep.  Would be accurate to say that all atheists don't want god to exist and this is the primary motive behind their atheism? I would have to say, no.  I think that too many people will often make the assumption that atheism is a stance that is taken because of anger, resentment, selfishness and narcissism which may apply to some but it is not the driving force which led all atheists to where they are.  I was actually quite happy where I was as a non-denominational, non-biblical literalist, generic Christian yet my journey into the world of philosophy and science as well as comparative religion lead me from Christianity to more Eastern schools of thought such as Taoism and Zen and finally to an agnostic atheist with Taoistic tendencies (that is Taoism as laid out by Lao Tzu and not the crazy mysticism thing that others later shaped it in to).  I wasn't some bitter person with a chip on their shoulder blaming a deity for all the worldly ills and then declaring that I don't believe in them anymore.  However, in many things in which involve the question of existence of a particular object, entity or the like you will always have those who dislike it and shove it off because they don't like it, those "true believers" who accuse those who don't accept it of being "blind" and telling them that they'll "be sorry" when they find see the truth and then there's most everyone else in the normal distribution around the mean - those who aren't so full of zeal on the matter.  Therefore what may be fact in your observation does not generalize to the entirety of atheists.

Mike, I'm pretty sure the "boggledyness" of the big numbers is exactly what causes this fallacious argument.

Sophus, thanks for giving some much-needed perspective.

I get very frustrated with this "refutation" of evolution because it almost invariably computes the odds serially, when in reality every environment can be seen as a massively parallel processor.  It also ignores the phenomenon of autocatalysis.

Quote from: "i_am_i"Let me ask you something. How did you hear of this God you're talking about? Did someone tell you about it and you believed what they had to say? Did you read it in the Bible? How?

I heard about him, I believe, at around 5 or 6 at a Christian school I went to. I think that was the first place I ever heard about God. But there's no sense in going down this road. My next paper is a philosophical one about the nature of God. When I'm finished, I'll anounce it here and provide a link. I think you'll see that what I consider God, and what Christians consider God are not the same thing.

I blame myself.

I really should narrow the topics that I bring up in posts. Obviously, I can't respond to the current barrage of opinion expressed, though I have read it all. But in order to respond intellectually, I'd actually have to study for about a year. But I blame myself, because I'm the one who broached the topics.

Honestly, I'm not all the concerned about evolution. I just think it required a guiding hand of some sort, a consciousness. It just seems that chance would have wiped out life as often as it created it, thus never allowing for evolution to occur. But one could argue that the first life form was too hardy to kill off so easily--okay, fine.

But that chance would have created such a structure...I mean it's possible, but I just can't accept it that way. It simply takes too much faith on my part, and I don't have it. I'd rather just say "I don't know." I do know that most mutations kill off the mutant before it can ever breed, so evolution not only has to occur by blind chance, but also by the natural selection of fortuitous mutations.

I honestly don't think you could set up a more unlikely scenario, but perhaps extremely unlikely scenarios is what's required if you remove all notions of God. And by God, I don't even mean a person. I mean a force like consciousness that has volition and the ability to shape the physical universe. Still, if there is no God, and maybe there isn't, I don't think anything would actually exist. If there were no God, it would seem more likely that there would have been an eternal "nothing." No universe, and certainly no life.

Edward

Are you the only person who believes what you do in the sense of your God perception being unique to you?

Regards
Chris

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I blame myself.

I really should narrow the topics that I bring up in posts. Obviously, I can't respond to the current barrage of opinion expressed, though I have read it all. But in order to respond intellectually, I'd actually have to study for about a year. But I blame myself, because I'm the one who broached the topics.

QuoteNo sweat, it's a busy thread.  

QuoteHonestly, I'm not all the concerned about evolution. I just think it required a guiding hand of some sort, a consciousness. It just seems that chance would have wiped out life as often as it created it, thus never allowing for evolution to occur. But one could argue that the first life form was too hardy to kill off so easily--okay, fine.

Our particular iteration of life (DNA-based) may not be the first form of life on Earth; it may just be the only one which succeeded.

QuoteBut that chance would have created such a structure...I mean it's possible, but I just can't accept it that way. It simply takes too much faith on my part, and I don't have it. I'd rather just say "I don't know." I do know that most mutations kill off the mutant before it can ever breed, so evolution not only has to occur by blind chance, but also by the natural selection of fortuitous mutations.

First, EbNS only deals with how life evolves.  How life arose is the field of abiogenesis.

Selection pressures work on random mutations, so evolution is not just "chance", and it's inaccurate to portray it as such -- especially the phrase "blind chance", because mutations are culled by a selecting agency, even if that agency has no conscious will.  Slow cheetahs tend to starve, and that is certainly not chance.

Most mutations don't happen in the gametes, and so are not passed on; therefore, they are not exposed to phenotypic expression of selective pressures at all.

Finally, I don't know of a single scientist who has said that he "knows" life arose by abiogenesis.  Do you have one in mind?

QuoteI honestly don't think you could set up a more unlikely scenario, but perhaps extremely unlikely scenarios is what's required if you remove all notions of God. And by God, I don't even mean a person. I mean a force like consciousness that has volition and the ability to shape the physical universe. Still, if there is no God, and maybe there isn't, I don't think anything would actually exist. If there were no God, it would seem more likely that there would have been an eternal "nothing." No universe, and certainly no life.

Nothing is a very unstable state.  Also, virtual particles show that occasionally matter comes out of nothingness.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I blame myself.

I really should narrow the topics that I bring up in posts. Obviously, I can't respond to the current barrage of opinion expressed, though I have read it all. But in order to respond intellectually, I'd actually have to study for about a year. But I blame myself, because I'm the one who broached the topics.

Honestly, I'm not all the concerned about evolution. I just think it required a guiding hand of some sort, a consciousness. It just seems that chance would have wiped out life as often as it created it, thus never allowing for evolution to occur. But one could argue that the first life form was too hardy to kill off so easily--okay, fine.

But that chance would have created such a structure...I mean it's possible, but I just can't accept it that way. It simply takes too much faith on my part, and I don't have it. I'd rather just say "I don't know." I do know that most mutations kill off the mutant before it can ever breed, so evolution not only has to occur by blind chance, but also by the natural selection of fortuitous mutations.

I honestly don't think you could set up a more unlikely scenario, but perhaps extremely unlikely scenarios is what's required if you remove all notions of God. And by God, I don't even mean a person. I mean a force like consciousness that has volition and the ability to shape the physical universe. Still, if there is no God, and maybe there isn't, I don't think anything would actually exist. If there were no God, it would seem more likely that there would have been an eternal "nothing." No universe, and certainly no life.

The best way for anyone to be able to understand evolution without having to trust what anyone else has to say about the issue (which seems to be what you mean by 'faith' in this instance) is to really educate yourself on the topic.  I think the hypothesis that there is a god is far far FAR more unlikely than anything verified by the scientific method has to offer.  I've heard "it seems so far fetched, so impossible, there has to be something more" applied to evolution more than once - my response is that just because you personally can't fathom it, that is not an adequate criticism of the process nor does it in any way suggest logically that a god exists.  This argument seems like a complicated 'god-of-the-gaps' argument - and that's fine if you personally feel comfortable accepting it, but there's no logical reason anyone else needs to accept it - they may just understand the evolutionary process more than you do so they aren't as confused by the process and thus lack the need for a deity to make it make sense.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I really should narrow the topics that I bring up in posts. Obviously, I can't respond to the current barrage of opinion expressed, though I have read it all. But in order to respond intellectually, I'd actually have to study for about a year. But I blame myself, because I'm the one who broached the topics.

You'd be surprised how much you can learn right here

QuoteHonestly, I'm not all the concerned about evolution. I just think it required a guiding hand of some sort, a consciousness. It just seems that chance would have wiped out life as often as it created it, thus never allowing for evolution to occur. But one could argue that the first life form was too hardy to kill off so easily--okay, fine.

First we have to make a distinction between what is evolutionary theory and what is not.  Evolution, by definition, does not deal with the origins of life.  A concise definition of evolution is:

Quotethe descent of modern organisms with modification from preexisting life-forms; strictly speaking, any change in the proportions of different genotypes in a population from one generation to the next (Audesirk, Audesirk & Byers)

Audesirk, T., Audesirk, G. & Byers, B. (2002). Biology: Understanding Life (3rd ed.). Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

No mention of the origin of life, why is that?  Well, as I mentioned before evolutionary theory was never formulated or meant to explain the origin of life but only changes in populations of organisms over time.  The field of abiogenesis is what is inquiring into the origins of life - a separate field from evolutionary biology relying more upon the areas of organic chemistry and geophysics then evolutionary biology.  The research, however, is fairly fascinating stuff and while fleshing out the process which led to what we call life is difficult, slow and frustrating sometimes the small number of dedicated researchers have made some amazing and enlightening discoveries along the way as I had mentioned previously.

QuoteBut that chance would have created such a structure...I mean it's possible, but I just can't accept it that way. It simply takes too much faith on my part, and I don't have it. I'd rather just say "I don't know."

The assumption here is that the processes at work are completely random and this is not true.  Reactions will happen in accordance to the properties of the molecules involved.  Just as Miller showed a particular arrangement of atmospheric gases and natural energy can produce organic compounds and as Dave Deamer showed that phospholipids can self assemble into vesicles as well as how Claudia Huber and Gunter Wachtershauser demonstrated the self assembly of small polypeptides, there is not some completely random, chaos in which life arose.

QuoteI do know that most mutations kill off the mutant before it can ever breed, so evolution not only has to occur by blind chance, but also by the natural selection of fortuitous mutations.

Most mutations are not deleterious though, most are effectively neutral and also, a mutation does not automatically mean it is harmful to the organism - mutations occur all the time yet we see no ill effects from most of them.  Occasionally, a mutation or mutations will produce a trait that aids the organism to survive and reproduce.  If this mutation can give the carrier a better chance at producing more offspring then it would be considered advantageous and most likely see the frequency of that allele spread through the population over generations.

QuoteI honestly don't think you could set up a more unlikely scenario, but perhaps extremely unlikely scenarios is what's required if you remove all notions of God. And by God, I don't even mean a person. I mean a force like consciousness that has volition and the ability to shape the physical universe. Still, if there is no God, and maybe there isn't, I don't think anything would actually exist. If there were no God, it would seem more likely that there would have been an eternal "nothing." No universe, and certainly no life.

It's not that it's an "unlikely process", it seems you have an inaccurate idea of what it actually is.  I've made much more in depth posts on this subject here on the forums, just do some searching around and you can find them.  One of the lasts ones I did was actually in response to a guest column written in a local newspaper which you can read here (http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4390&start=) if you have the time.

Quote from: "Tank"Edward

Are you the only person who believes what you do in the sense of your God perception being unique to you?

Regards
Chris

Yes. Absolutely. In fact, that is a theory I want to write on some day, the fact that there is a primordial force of consciousness, but everyone personifies it in their own way--atheists included. Atheists just see it as their physical self. I see it as "my Father," and I am His son. I pray to my God and He speaks to me, and I have seen many "miracles" in his name. But I know that my Father is a psychological construct I use to understand and get in touch with, if you will, the primordial consciousness that prevades everything--the primordial consciousness, in fact, that I will return to when I die, just like you will, just like everyone does.

I admit the above is a pretty religious statement, but you asked. If one day I can explain it philosophically so others can understand it and refine it or diminish it, and if one day I can explain it mathematically, or at least model it mathematically, then I will be blessed. But right now the paragraph above and a paper I wrote on consciousness is all I have. You can read the paper here: http://www.veridican.com/paper1.pdf

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "i_am_i"Let me ask you something. How did you hear of this God you're talking about? Did someone tell you about it and you believed what they had to say? Did you read it in the Bible? How?

I heard about him, I believe, at around 5 or 6 at a Christian school I went to. I think that was the first place I ever heard about God. But there's no sense in going down this road. My next paper is a philosophical one about the nature of God. When I'm finished, I'll anounce it here and provide a link. I think you'll see that what I consider God, and what Christians consider God are not the same thing.

Irrelevant. What Hindus consider God and what Christians consider God are not the same thing either.

No, my point is this: you've conctructed a world view around a concept that has existed since primitive humans formed into tribes, that concept being an invisible all-controlling creator of the universe and everything in it. There just must be an explanation for all this, whatever all this is. So primitive humans made up God.

I don't have any statistics to back me up but I'd say that the majority of atheists are such because they've come to reject that idea as being born of superstitious ignorance, no matter how many brilliant philosophers still engage themselves in the god question.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "Tank"Edward

Are you the only person who believes what you do in the sense of your God perception being unique to you?

Regards
Chris

Yes. Absolutely. In fact, that is a theory I want to write on some day, the fact that there is a primordial force of consciousness, but everyone personifies it in their own way--atheists included. Atheists just see it as their physical self. I see it as "my Father," and I am His son. I pray to my God and He speaks to me, and I have seen many "miracles" in his name. But I know that my Father is a psychological construct I use to understand and get in touch with, if you will, the primordial consciousness that prevades everything--the primordial consciousness, in fact, that I will return to when I die, just like you will, just like everyone does.

I admit the above is a pretty religious statement, but you asked. If one day I can explain it philosophically so others can understand it and refine it or diminish it, and if one day I can explain it mathematically, or at least model it mathematically, then I will be blessed. But right now the paragraph above and a paper I wrote on consciousness is all I have. You can read the paper here: http://www.veridican.com/paper1.pdf

Edward

Thank you for a marvellously straight answer. I had fully expected to have either been ignored or have had a pile of obfuscation thrown up, which reveals my own prejudices about what I expected you to be. (https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg34.imageshack.us%2Fimg34%2F2438%2Fheheoc.gif&hash=50cf1131f6316b9f48965cce1bfe1877dc8f90e7)

I think you're ideas are barking mad though, but very much in a harmless eccentric kind of way, and I'd be delighted to sit down and have a face-to-face chat with you about your world view one day. In the mean time this place will have to do.

I'm busy today so I'll consider a further reply later, and again thank you for stating your view in such a forthright manner, it's such a pleasant change to find a theist who is prepared to make an effort and stand up for their ideas, not those of others.

Regards
Chris

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Nothing is a very unstable state.  Also, virtual particles show that occasionally matter comes out of nothingness.

Nothingness is an impossible state; it is self-contradictory (i.e., the state of nothingness is something). Of course, I don't have the proof of this, but I would like to find it someday.

Quote from: "pinkocommie"The best way for anyone to be able to understand evolution without having to trust what anyone else has to say about the issue (which seems to be what you mean by 'faith' in this instance) is to really educate yourself on the topic.  I think the hypothesis that there is a god is far far FAR more unlikely than anything verified by the scientific method has to offer.  I've heard "it seems so far fetched, so impossible, there has to be something more" applied to evolution more than once - my response is that just because you personally can't fathom it, that is not an adequate criticism of the process nor does it in any way suggest logically that a god exists. .

I'm not sure how you want to define God, but it is very hard for me to comprehend how something can exist for no reason at all. Do you realize that without something like a God, you have a singularity of matter and energy sitting there waiting to "bang" for absolutely no reason at all. When you really contemplate it, it's like magical thinking. God, at least in some form, is actually the remedy for that magical thinking.

 

QuoteThis argument seems like a complicated 'god-of-the-gaps' argument - and that's fine if you personally feel comfortable accepting it, but there's no logical reason anyone else needs to accept it - they may just understand the evolutionary process more than you do so they aren't as confused by the process and thus lack the need for a deity to make it make sense.

Believe it or not, I have studied evolution. I agree with evolution for the most part. I'm more concerned with cosmology.

By the way, who the heck is the guy in your avatar. He just looks like someone you have to keep away from the children...I don't know.

Quote from: "Squid"You'd be surprised how much you can learn right here
 

I'm sure you're right.

QuoteNo mention of the origin of life, why is that?  Well, as I mentioned before evolutionary theory was never formulated or meant to explain the origin of life but only changes in populations of organisms over time.  The field of abiogenesis is what is inquiring into the origins of life - a separate field from evolutionary biology relying more upon the areas of organic chemistry and geophysics then evolutionary biology.  The research, however, is fairly fascinating stuff and while fleshing out the process which led to what we call life is difficult, slow and frustrating sometimes the small number of dedicated researchers have made some amazing and enlightening discoveries along the way as I had mentioned previously.

Understood. And as I was saying to pinkocommie, I'm really more concerned about original cosmology than evolution or abiogenesis. But let's face it, if they could have found the way original life began, they would have, and would have duplicated it. But it doesn't matter, because I'm not suggesting it magically appeared. If there was a consciousness that began the universe, than it is probably responsible for the beginning of life here and anywhere else. If that consciousness doesn't exist, then we may never know, and it probably wouldn't matter anyway. No God = breeding-is-all-that-matters. And even that doesn't matter. Nothing really matters in that case.

QuoteThe assumption here is that the processes at work are completely random and this is not true.  Reactions will happen in accordance to the properties of the molecules involved.  Just as Miller showed a particular arrangement of atmospheric gases and natural energy can produce organic compounds and as Dave Deamer showed that phospholipids can self assemble into vesicles as well as how Claudia Huber and Gunter Wachtershauser demonstrated the self assembly of small polypeptides, there is not some completely random, chaos in which life arose.

You know, the more you detail the pathetic attempts to reproduce an environment in which a cell (that can actually survive and reproduce) is created, the more convinced I am that it had to be consciously directed. I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying that's the effect of this whole abiogenesis research.

I remember recently there was an article in the news "Life created in the Lab!" All it was was some artificial DNA injected into an already existing bacteria. So you see, it looks desperate, and that desperation looks foolish and supports quite the opposite opinion.

QuoteIt's not that it's an "unlikely process",

No, it is an unlikely process. Even if it's true, it's extremely unlikely that abiogenesis, creation of something out of nothing, and evolution would occur and work. Especially when you compare it simply to nothing existing at all, which is the simplest possible state of being--absent a God.

Quote from: "Tank"Edward

Thank you for a marvellously straight answer. I had fully expected to have either been ignored or have had a pile of obfuscation thrown up, which reveals my own prejudices about what I expected you to be. (https://www.happyatheistforum.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg34.imageshack.us%2Fimg34%2F2438%2Fheheoc.gif&hash=50cf1131f6316b9f48965cce1bfe1877dc8f90e7)

You're welcome. Thanks for the marvellously straightfoward question.

QuoteI think you're ideas are barking mad though, but very much in a harmless eccentric kind of way, and I'd be delighted to sit down and have a face-to-face chat with you about your world view one day. In the mean time this place will have to do.

I agree. It's just that I've made certain observations and experienced certain things and came to certain conclusions (detailed in that paper) that I simply can't divorce myself from. To do so, for me, would always be a lie. I would always know I was full of shit, and a coward at that. I think it would be a sin to delude myself in that way--even if ultimately I am wrong.

But I fully realize I could be wrong. My only goal is to go forward with the idea of consciousness being external to central nervous systems and try to make a logically coherent model of cosmology, even if ultimately it is wrong. Of course I don't think it's wrong. But maybe one day we will sit down face to face and ponder the mysteries of the universe. That would be cool.

QuoteI'm busy today so I'll consider a further reply later, and again thank you for stating your view in such a forthright manner, it's such a pleasant change to find a theist who is prepared to make an effort and stand up for their ideas, not those of others.

Regards
Chris

Again, thanks for giving me a chance to. Do Christians even come in here and try anymore? It just seems that the Church is so discredited these days that they wouldn't even try.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"No God = breeding-is-all-that-matters. And even that doesn't matter. Nothing really matters in that case.

Why is it that you equate the absence of a deity with a purposeless life?  Most of the the atheists I know see their life as purposeful - to be a good parent, a mentor, a teacher, to help others, to share music and/or art - a pursuit of individual passions can provide purpose.  Just because there is no supreme law-giver to tell everywhere what purpose their life should serve doesn't mean that meaning is lacking all together.  I don't see absence of god as an automatic plunge into some meaningless void.

QuoteYou know, the more you detail the pathetic attempts to reproduce an environment in which a cell (that can actually survive and reproduce) is created, the more convinced I am that it had to be consciously directed. I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying that's the effect of this whole abiogenesis research.

I remember recently there was an article in the news "Life created in the Lab!" All it was was some artificial DNA injected into an already existing bacteria. So you see, it looks desperate, and that desperation looks foolish and supports quite the opposite opinion.

That's the problem with news articles, they want you to read them so they use titles like that.  What the researchers did was quite amazing in itself but, no they did not created a completely synthetic life form and it probably won't occur.  Even evolution, the process of change in life forms uses what is already available and from this comes novel structures, behaviors, traits and so forth.

As to the "pathetic attempts" of the researchers in the origin of life field, I would not see it as pathetic at all rather as another step in the pursuit of knowledge.  I am curious as to why you think it looks desperate and foolish - what about the research is it that rubs you the wrong way?  Is it actually the research itself or just the fact that people are even researching this topic at all?

QuoteNo, it is an unlikely process. Even if it's true, it's extremely unlikely that abiogenesis, creation of something out of nothing, and evolution would occur and work. Especially when you compare it simply to nothing existing at all, which is the simplest possible state of being--absent a God.

Upon what do you base this statement?

Quote"I pray to my God and He speaks to me, and I have seen many "miracles" in his name.

:|

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"No God = breeding-is-all-that-matters. And even that doesn't matter. Nothing really matters in that case.

I've seen it more like supply and demand. What value can today possibly have if there is an infinite supply of tomorrows? Ever since becoming an atheist I've valued my life so much more.  

At the same time I never liked somebody else trying to define my purpose in life for me. No matter what I did the point of it was suppose to be "to glorify God". It hindered my creativity and drained my drive. It also policed my thoughts so that I couldn't fully appreciate the work of others.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I blame myself.

I really should narrow the topics that I bring up in posts. Obviously, I can't respond to the current barrage of opinion expressed, though I have read it all. But in order to respond intellectually, I'd actually have to study for about a year. But I blame myself, because I'm the one who broached the topics.

Honestly, I'm not all the concerned about evolution. I just think it required a guiding hand of some sort, a consciousness. It just seems that chance would have wiped out life as often as it created it, thus never allowing for evolution to occur. But one could argue that the first life form was too hardy to kill off so easily--okay, fine.

But that chance would have created such a structure...I mean it's possible, but I just can't accept it that way. It simply takes too much faith on my part, and I don't have it. I'd rather just say "I don't know." I do know that most mutations kill off the mutant before it can ever breed, so evolution not only has to occur by blind chance, but also by the natural selection of fortuitous mutations.

I honestly don't think you could set up a more unlikely scenario, but perhaps extremely unlikely scenarios is what's required if you remove all notions of God. And by God, I don't even mean a person. I mean a force like consciousness that has volition and the ability to shape the physical universe. Still, if there is no God, and maybe there isn't, I don't think anything would actually exist. If there were no God, it would seem more likely that there would have been an eternal "nothing." No universe, and certainly no life.

Hi Edward,

It's been a while since I was on here, so I'm way behind, but I did read most of this thread.  I wanted to answer this particular post, because I think it's important that you understand, from my perspective, at least one or two things.  First, you said something about life being destroyed as often as it is created, is actually quite right.  According to most biologists I know, nearly 98% of all the life species that have existed on this planet are NOW extinct.  That's a lot of life destroyed.

You talk about not having enough faith to believe in the chance that life somehow began and continues by chance, but you have enough faith to believe that a "god" somehow has been able to suspend the laws of Physics and Science to interfere with life on Earth.

You are making a very typical Theist argument for the existence of a god, however you wish to define him/her/it.  What evidences do you present for this theory that there might be an eternal "nothing" as you say, if there is no god?  It seems to me that you suffer from the same "need" that many humans do, the NEED to have an explaination for all that you do not understand.  This is a normal human need, actually; and one that has been the driving force for the nearly 6,000 gods that we can now define as mythical across the globe.

Anyway, welcome to HAF, and I can attest that if you are respectful on here, NO ONE will ban you, and you get a lot more wiggle room here than any atheist will EVER get on a Christian forum.  I'd know because I've been banned from nearly every religious forum on the net, NOT because I debate using bad language, am somehow abusive, or because I am rude, crude, or ruthless; but because I refuse to bend my world view and eventually that is enough to have me banned.  Good luck..

Quote from: "SEQLAR"

Quote"I pray to my God and He speaks to me, and I have seen many "miracles" in his name.

:|

A. My God is not your God.

B. The ultimate monistic conscious force probably doesn't give a shit about disease.

Quote from: "Martin TK"You talk about not having enough faith to believe in the chance that life somehow began and continues by chance, but you have enough faith to believe that a "god" somehow has been able to suspend the laws of Physics and Science to interfere with life on Earth.

Well, you know, you find a watch on a beach...and all that.

QuoteYou are making a very typical Theist argument for the existence of a god, however you wish to define him/her/it.

How is hypothesizing a force of consciousness in the creation of the universe, given my observations of consciousness and the apparent design of the universe any different than any other scientific inquiry?

QuoteWhat evidences do you present for this theory that there might be an eternal "nothing" as you say, if there is no god?

A. The inate logic that if there was no purpose for something to exist, then it wouldn't exist. To just say "Well, it does." is both faithy thinking and close-mindedness bordering on psychiatric denial at the same time.

QuoteIt seems to me that you suffer from the same "need" that many humans do, the NEED to have an explaination for all that you do not understand.  This is a normal human need, actually; and one that has been the driving force for the nearly 6,000 gods that we can now define as mythical across the globe.

So, you're saying as an atheist you have no need to have an explanation for all you don't understand?

QuoteEdward the Theist:
I'm not sure how you want to define God, but it is very hard for me to comprehend how something can exist for no reason at all. Do you realize that without something like a God, you have a singularity of matter and energy sitting there waiting to "bang" for absolutely no reason at all. When you really contemplate it, it's like magical thinking. God, at least in some form, is actually the remedy for that magical thinking.

All you appear to be doing is taking the phrase, "We don't know what came before the singularity or what made it 'bang' " and substituting the phrase, "God came before the singularity and made it 'bang'."  Why did this being come to exist? How did your god come to exist?  Did this being come from nothing at all? Was it just sitting there waiting until it decided to cause the singularity to 'bang'?  How is this not magical thinking?

You credit this god of yours with the ability to act spontaneously.  How is this different from the singularity acting spontaneously?  Perhaps you are misspelling your concept as 'god' when you should be spelling it 'gap' [in knowledge].

As for consciousness, it has no real definition.  Look the word up and you will find it is defined as aware.  Look up awareness and you will find it defined as conscious.   There is no indication that consciousness is an independent force in the universe. Consciousness, as nearly as we can tell, is an emergent property of complex life similar to quorum sensing arising when a sufficient number of bacteria are in a single location. The following is from PubMed.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11544353 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11544353)

QuoteAbstract
Quorum sensing is the regulation of gene expression in response to fluctuations in cell-population density. Quorum sensing bacteria produce and release chemical signal molecules called autoinducers that increase in concentration as a function of cell density. The detection of a minimal threshold stimulatory concentration of an autoinducer leads to an alteration in gene expression. Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria use quorum sensing communication circuits to regulate a diverse array of physiological activities. These processes include symbiosis, virulence, competence, conjugation, antibiotic production, motility, sporulation, and biofilm formation. In general, Gram-negative bacteria use acylated homoserine lactones as autoinducers, and Gram-positive bacteria use processed oligo-peptides to communicate. Recent advances in the field indicate that cell-cell communication via autoinducers occurs both within and between bacterial species. Furthermore, there is mounting data suggesting that bacterial autoinducers elicit specific responses from host organisms. Although the nature of the chemical signals, the signal relay mechanisms, and the target genes controlled by bacterial quorum sensing systems differ, in every case the ability to communicate with one another allows bacteria to coordinate the gene expression, and therefore the behavior, of the entire community. Presumably, this process bestows upon bacteria some of the qualities of higher organisms...

Quote from: "notself"You credit this god of yours with the ability to act spontaneously.  How is this different from the singularity acting spontaneously?

Are you saying you believe a singularity can exist as its own cause and act spontaneously?

QuoteConsciousness, as nearly as we can tell, is an emergent property of complex life similar to quorum sensing arising when a sufficient number of bacteria are in a single location.

You can try to make that sound scientific, but you are thinking magically. You take a simple solution that begs more questions and call it your truth in the matter--just like magic. I would encourage you to read my paper on the subject, but that's up to you. I just don't want to re-type it all here in this post.

http://www.veridican.com/paper1.pdf

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"How is hypothesizing a force of consciousness in the creation of the universe, given my observations of consciousness and the apparent design of the universe any different than any other scientific inquiry?

You're kidding, right?

Are you presently enganged in testing your hypothesis? If so, how?

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "notself"You credit this god of yours with the ability to act spontaneously.  How is this different from the singularity acting spontaneously?

Are you saying you believe a singularity can exist as its own cause and act spontaneously? Why not?  You are saying your god acted spontaneously, a cause without cause.  There is just as much evidence that the singularity is a cause without cause.  You have just named this un-caused cause, god.  You could have named it singularity just as easily.

QuoteConsciousness, as nearly as we can tell, is an emergent property of complex life similar to quorum sensing arising when a sufficient number of bacteria are in a single location.

You can try to make that sound scientific, but you are thinking magically. You take a simple solution that begs more questions and call it your truth in the matter--just like magic. I would encourage you to read my paper on the subject, but that's up to you. I just don't want to re-type it all here in this post. You aren't supporting your statements on this thread.  Perhaps you could cut and paste from your paper.  The source I quoted regarding quantum sensing is scientific.  PubMed is a service that provides abstracts from scientific articles published in peer reviewed scientific magazines.  No magical thinking about quorum sensing. Chemicals produce response in bacterial genes and initiate communication between bacteria both of same and differing species.  If you wish to call these "triggers" you may but that does not prove that consciousness exists outside of a chemical soup.

http://www.veridican.com/paper1.pdf

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Are you saying you believe a singularity can exist as its own cause and act spontaneously?

I don't know anything about the matter coming from nothing theory, although there was a lengthy video posted on this forum somewhere that I hear is pretty good at explaining how it could happen. Perhaps I'm wrong (especially since I don't know anything about it) but I don't see how it's possible either. Thus far I've seen this issue along the lines of: Both atheist and theist must believe that something has always existed. The difference is that atheists think it was something most austere which over an infinite amount of time led to a complex universe, whereas theists believe something more complex and grand than the universe itself created it. But again I could very well be wrong. I'm no physics major and I haven't even gotten around to that video yet.

In order for time to exist matter must exist, no? Given an infinite amount of time anything seems possible.

Quote from: "i_am_i"You're kidding, right?

Are you presently enganged in testing your hypothesis? If so, how?

I'm not kidding, and yes, I am trying to test my hypothesis. I have done a lot of reading research into the subject of consciousness, and in a paper I have on my website, I detail a philosophical argument for why consciousness can't arise from central nervous systems. If that argument doesn't convince you, I have reports of my own precognitive episodes that leave no doubt, at least in my mind, that consciousness is not a result of our central nervous system. And if that is no good, then there is the direct observation of protozoa, especially paramecium, who display apparent consciousness but have no CNS. I have witnessed their behaviour several times under a microscope, but I have found the exact same thing now on YouTube videos which you can see for yourself. The link is in paper, or you can search under "paramecium feeding" on YouTube.

If none of those convince you, then I guess you're just going to have to disagree. But if you agree with me that consciousness is outside of the CNS, then we have to try to hypothesize what it is. I think I can do that by modeling its actions mathematically, and hopefully using that model perhaps to solve paradoxes or some other mathematical mystery. That's what I'm hoping to do anyway.

Quote from: "notself"Why not?  You are saying your god acted spontaneously, a cause without cause.  There is just as much evidence that the singularity is a cause without cause.  You have just named this un-caused cause, god.  You could have named it singularity just as easily.

And you could have called it God. We're only arguing semantics now.

Quote from: "Sophus"In order for time to exist matter must exist, no? Given an infinite amount of time anything seems possible.

I think time is an illusion. It's nothing more than something we measure according to the relative motion of objects i the universe. Take away the relative motion, so during the singularity or before, and there is no time, only an eternal present. And you may be right that anything is possible with enough time, but I don't believe it is possible for something to come from nothing. The idea itself is a contradiction.

However, the way around all this is what I am currently hypothesizing now, but I am not quite there.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "i_am_i"You're kidding, right?

Are you presently enganged in testing your hypothesis? If so, how?

I'm not kidding, and yes, I am trying to test my hypothesis. I have done a lot of reading research into the subject of consciousness, and in a paper I have on my website, I detail a philosophical argument for why consciousness can't arise from central nervous systems. If that argument doesn't convince you, I have reports of my own precognitive episodes that leave no doubt, at least in my mind, that consciousness is not a result of our central nervous system. And if that is no good, then there is the direct observation of protozoa, especially paramecium, who display apparent consciousness but have no CNS. I have witnessed their behaviour several times under a microscope, but I have found the exact same thing now on YouTube videos which you can see for yourself. The link is in paper, or you can search under "paramecium feeding" on YouTube.

If none of those convince you, then I guess you're just going to have to disagree. But if you agree with me that consciousness is outside of the CNS, then we have to try to hypothesize what it is. I think I can do that by modeling its actions mathematically, and hopefully using that model perhaps to solve paradoxes or some other mathematical mystery. That's what I'm hoping to do anyway.

Search under paramecium feeding on YouTube, no I'm not going to do that. I'm not here to do homework assigned by Christians or by anyone else.

You say that you've done a lot of reading on the subject of consciousness. What have you read?

Then you say that you've got a philosophical argument for why consciousness can't arise from the central nervous system. But a philosophical argument is not science. Anyway, show us that philosophical argument.

Then you say that you "have" reports of your own precognitive episodes that leave no doubt, at least in your mind, that consciousness is not a result of our central nervous system. So, let's see those reports. Are you saying that somehow you knew what was going to happen before it happened?

No, I do not want to go to your website. You came here, so show us what you've got.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Most atheist forums say theists are welcome, presumably to look open-minded, but then berate and insult theists until they leave or get pissed off and banned.

It has been my experience that this is actually opposite of the truth.  I have found myself banned, or at least suspended from many theist forums for no reason.  I was even permanently banned from a forum, and all my posts deleted, for simply for standing up for Mormons right to claim to be Christian.  I was "Interfering with evangelism", which wouldn't have likely gathered any attention had I not been effective.

If you look at the rules for some of these forums, they actually have two sets of rules, one for Christians and one for atheists.

On the other hand, most atheists seem to allow all sorts of insanity from believers.  I have had theists make some really stupid statements on my blog, and have had some that have really pissed me off because they start attacking me, or because they just can't see the other side of the coin, and argue as if there were no statement opposing their position.  I have refused to continue to engage them in conversation, but I have never deleted a single comment that wasn't spam from my blog.  I think that would be dishonest.  Ideas should not be censored, no matter how much you disagree with them.

Caveat:  I would also delete any comment that was illegal, such as one calling for illegal activity.

QuoteThe reason I ask is because I've been into forums like this for the last sixteen years, and it seems way back when atheists were more philosophical and willing to debate. Now I find more and more that they are extremely close-minded, scared of debate, blindly follow leaders like Richard Dawkins, request donations, and stick together very strongly--like the early Christians.

Once upon a time, the only "prominent" atheists were philosophers.  Dawkins and Hitchens have made atheism a little less philosophical in my opinion, although they both make some very good points.

Now, I have my issues with Dawkins, and to tell the truth I have only read his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, but I know enough about what he has written and said to be able to oppose some of what he says.  A true skeptic should never dogmatically defend anything.  I am a proponent of questioning everything purely for the sake of making sure you get the right information.

This isn't to say it doesn't happen, but I would say the majority of the "defense" of Dawkins is more along the grounds of what he is saying, and not who is saying it.

QuoteMaybe atheists just got sick of looking at megachurces and decided it's time for their piece of the pie. Maybe a lot of atheist leaders came to realize that you can take the god out of the religious, but you can never quite remove the propensity for religion--and the religious come pre-trained to give money.

What money are we talking about?  Atheists aren't out deconverting the converted and starting big atheist churches that tell people that they have to give money in order to be saved.  They are selling books, but the majority of the people I find buying these books are actually believers.  I have only come across a few atheists that have purchased atheist books.

Atheists don't generally need confirmation that not believing in gods is justified.  It is the people that are starting to doubt that benefit from this kind of thing.  Also, apologists are buying these books so they can keep up on the currently understood flaws in their view of things.  They buy books from Dennett, Harris and Ehrman too, just to keep up on the things they need to account for.

As for why atheists are being more outspoken, it is probably because with the current state of the world, more atheists are wondering why people can justify allowing religions to continue.  When you make it a virtue to believe in things without evidence, and you have a book that claims to be absolute truth and also condones all sorts of evils, you have a recipe for destructive and anti-social behavior that we have seen manifest in the Islamic community most recently, but can see happens in Christianity as well, such as in Bosnia, such as with anti-homosexual activism, such as with parents allowing their children to die from highly curable diseases, and as with all sorts of nasty behavior that has happened in the past or is currently happening in the name of Christianity.

Anyway, when atheists speak out, it isn't to reach hard core theists and deconvert them, it is to reach those that are legitimately questioning their faith, in order to give them validation of their questioning.  If a person finds the arguments about theism or atheism compelling, they were already on that path on their own.  People don't just change their core belief system merely because of a lost debate.  They have started questioning already.

Suggesting that the big bang theory is in any way on equal footing in regard to plausibility with the idea that there's some god-ish entity that exists and has influenced the universe and mankind (which seems to be your position - though from reading through the replies, your position honestly seems very airy and at times is very reminiscent of Sagan's Dragon) seems either willfully disingenuous or, if earnestly proposed, unfortunately critically flawed.

We're dealing with a question - in this case, how did the universe come to be - which doesn't have a clear answer (if we agree that the whole 'in the beginning' stuff is bunk- which I think we do, but if not, I'm sorry I assumed that) regardless of your belief in deities or understanding of science, so the only way to really gauge the validity of any given explanation is the empirical evidence on which the explanation is based.  I am by no means an expert, but I have read up on the big bang quite a bit and I personally regard the evidence for that explanation to be far far far more compelling and scientifically sound than any evidence I've heard for any kind of God creating the universe.  One thing I have noticed is that people who do prefer a deity-centric explanation tend to have personal evidence which is very important to them, but unfortunately that kind of personal experience is only compelling to the individual and possibly the easily convinced.   :D

Also, the guy in my avatar is Charlie from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.  And no, you would never ever trust Charlie with kids.  

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

QuoteWhat evidences do you present for this theory that there might be an eternal "nothing" as you say, if there is no god?

A. The inate logic that if there was no purpose for something to exist, then it wouldn't exist. To just say "Well, it does." is both faithy thinking and close-mindedness bordering on psychiatric denial at the same time.

I should expect that a philosopher ought to know the difference between "logic" and "evidence".  I'm just a redneck, and I know the difference.  The two are not the same.  Logic is a mental construct; evidence is physical residue, or affect.  The following syllogism is logically sound:

A: All bananas are Cadillacs
B: This is a banana
C: This is therefore a Cadillac.

Logic can be both correct and useless when the premises are faulty.  Because of this, logic cannot be evidence.  

Also, you do understand that you are begging the question in your first sentence, no?  You must demonstrate "purpose" independant of existence if you wish to use "purpose" as evidence for your god.  Just saying that it is so doesn't cut it.

Finally, the "psychiatric denial" trope is shit.  You shouldn't insult a person's sanity (even in such a tangential, slippery manner) simply because they disagree with you.  No one's called you crazy yet, and here you are positing a magical sky-guy.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"No, it is an unlikely process. Even if it's true, it's extremely unlikely that abiogenesis, creation of something out of nothing, and evolution would occur and work. Especially when you compare it simply to nothing existing at all, which is the simplest possible state of being--absent a God.

I always find it funny that someone can say how unlikely it is that something that happened could happen.  Let me show why.

Either a god exists or it doesn't.  That means that there is a 50% or a 1/2 chance either way of either side of that particular statement being true.

The claim that a God doesn't exist always has a 50% chance of being true, since it makes no claims of what attributes God has.  On the other hand, the more attributes that you give God, the less likely it is to be true.

Let's start off with something easier to calculate, such as the possibility of any particular randomly generated picture being on a screen that was 100x100 and monochrome.  A screen that size has 10,000 pixels that can be on or off.  That means that the chances of any particular pixel being on or off depending on which way you like it is 1/10,000.  If you extrapolate that out for all the pixels in a particular picture, the chances of a picture being randomly generated are always going to be 1/10,000^10,000, or 1/10^40,000 power, no matter what that picture is.  That means that even if the picture just looked like white noise, the chances of that particular pattern being on the screen are statistically impossible, yet it is there.

To put that in perspective, the number of atoms in the visible universe is approximately 10^80.  That means that the chances of you picking the same atom in the universe that I pick are 1/10^80, which you must admit is a better chance.

But, when it comes to the chances of one thing being true or another, a God that put things in motion and has knowledge of the position of every atom in the universe is much lower, since you would have a 1/10^80^(number of possible positions in the universe) chance of every atom being where it is.  That's such a high number, I don't have time to figure it out right now.  I would have to calculate the size of the visible universe divided by the average size of an atom.  You should be able to get some idea of how large of a number that is with that explanation.

So, if you are going to go with the chances of something being statistically likely, you have to also put your God in the realm of the impossible, and you would certainly have to agree that there is more of a chance that there is no God than there is of there being an omniscient one.

This kind of argument therefore only works on someone that doesn't understand that without the absolute knowledge that something would be a different way under any circumstances, there is no way to say that anything is likely.

Quote from: "i_am_i"Search under paramecium feeding on YouTube, no I'm not going to do that. I'm not here to do homework assigned by Christians or by anyone else.

A 1 minute video, and you won't even do that, oh but you're sure there is no God. You're a religious fanatic. You're just an atheist one.

Quote from: "pinkocommie"It might be a good idea, however, to start a new thread about cosmology and that way we can get this conversation back on track in regard to the alleged religiosity of atheists and start fresh in a new thread which focuses from the get go on cosmology.  That's only a suggestion, though, and I don't mean to be bossy.  :crazy:

Thanks for the info on the avatar, and I agree. We should start a new post on cosmology.

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"I should expect that a philosopher ought to know the difference between "logic" and "evidence".  I'm just a redneck, and I know the difference.  The two are not the same.  Logic is a mental construct; evidence is physical residue, or affect.  The following syllogism is logically sound:

A: All bananas are Cadillacs
B: This is a banana
C: This is therefore a Cadillac.

Logic can be both correct and useless when the premises are faulty.  Because of this, logic cannot be evidence.  

If the premises are faulty...if. And I'm not making an argument for God in this case, I'm making an argument against atheism. It's kind of like the way you guys are always saying you don't say there is no God, and you don't believe there is no God, you only say there is no proof for God and then go around acting as if that were the fact you believe in.

It' get's convoluted doesn't it?

Quote from: "Godlessons"Either a god exists or it doesn't.  That means that there is a 50% or a 1/2 chance either way of either side of that particular statement being true.

Right there is your problem: That either god does or does not exist does not mean there is an equal chance either way. There could be only a ten percent chance god exists or a 90% chance, and you could make the same initial statement.

All the other stuff you wrote is basically white noise. We first must define what god is and then we can try to prove one way or another whether god exists. In theist groups and atheists groups the one common denominator is that neither side actually agrees on a definition of what God is. So, no argument can go forward.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"I think time is an illusion. It's nothing more than something we measure according to the relative motion of objects i the universe. Take away the relative motion, so during the singularity or before, and there is no time, only an eternal present. And you may be right that anything is possible with enough time, but I don't believe it is possible for something to come from nothing. The idea itself is a contradiction.

I'll deal with your second problem first.  If you don't think it's possible for something to come from nothing, then why is there a necessity for a god to "create" everything if it was there in the first place?  That would be rearranging, and if the stuff was already there for God to rearrange, why do you not think it's possible that it came about on its own?

If you think that God did create the something, what did he create it with?  Or, if you believe such an impossible thing such as a god could have just always existed, you admit that something could have 'just' always existed, why do you have to jump from the universe to a god?  (Thanks Segan)

Now the first problem with your statement.  You assume there was a singularity.  http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.1750 may disagree with you.  Also, Lawrence Krauss has an interesting hypothesis about the origins of the universe, not from a singularity, but from a virtual nothing.  Second, it isn't at all clear that there can be matter without time, so even a singularity without time may not work.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"Right there is your problem: That either god does or does not exist does not mean there is an equal chance either way. There could be only a ten percent chance god exists or a 90% chance, and you could make the same initial statement.

God not existing always has a 50% chance of being true where just adding a single attribute to God, such as omnipotence, brings that possibility down to 33%, omniscience brings that down to 25%, creator of the universe brings it down to 20%, Spoke to Abraham, brings it down to 16%, spoke to Isaac, father of Jesus, put demons in pigs, knows that I'm typing this conversation, etc. brings it down even farther.

You assume that all the other stuff I wrote is white noise because you don't understand it, not because it is meaningless.

I'm just saying that if you want to say that we can calculate the chances of abiogenesis happening, you must accept that the chances of just an omniscient God existing is much smaller than abiogenesis happening spontaneously, and the chances God doesn't exist are greater than both.  The reality is you can't calculate the chances of either thing existing.  Your argument was bad to begin with.

QuoteWe first must define what god is and then we can try to prove one way or another whether god exists.

This is true, but not for the reason you think, and certainly not to show the statistical unlikelihood.

QuoteIn theist groups and atheists groups the one common denominator is that neither side actually agrees on a definition of what God is. So, no argument can go forward.

It really doesn't matter all that much if you're going to claim God is supernatural, and you can't provide an ontology of God.  If you want to say that God is love for example, we know that love exists, and it is a chemical reaction in our brains.  That would be just redefining the word God to be something we know about and can demonstrate, but call by a different name.

On the other hand, if you want to say that God is a supernatural, immaterial spirit, or a disembodied consciousness, I would ask you to tell me what you're talking about.  Can you pour me out a measure of God stuff?  Is it measurable?  Can it be seen, touched, smelled, tasted, etc.?  What is God's ontology?

Essentially, your task as a theist, is to explain what demonstrable thing makes God any different from things that don't exist?  As far as I can tell, the answer to that question is nothing.

Quote from: "Edward the Theist"

Quote from: "notself"Why not?  You are saying your god acted spontaneously, a cause without cause.  There is just as much evidence that the singularity is a cause without cause.  You have just named this un-caused cause, god.  You could have named it singularity just as easily.

And you could have called it God. We're only arguing semantics now.

The singularity did not require worship, obedience and ritualized behavior.  It ceased to exist as a singularity once it 'banged".  If you choose to worship the former existence of the singularity and attribute to it human behavior that's up to you.