I believe Dawkins hit a stumbling block on this one too. Biogenesis is a scientific law, Pasteur I recall. Abiogenesis has not been proven in any way shape or form other than one slight experiment that didn't really create life as such.
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The Game of Life
Most of you comrades are athiests I take it--and that's fine with me. But wouldn't a more logical position be agnosticism? We don't actually "know" if there is a God or not. For that matter closer to home we don't even know if life can emerge from non-living matter. Do we have any scientific evidence for it? All it seems is that we have "belief" and that is just as "dangerous" to logic as belief in God.
I believe Dawkins hit a stumbling block on this one too. Biogenesis is a scientific law, Pasteur I recall. Abiogenesis has not been proven in any way shape or form other than one slight experiment that didn't really create life as such.
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Let me bring up just a few reasons why I'm an actual atheist, not a mere agnostic.
1. http://atheistcolby.com/wp-content/u...sonProject.png
If Christianity is real, what's up with all the contradictions in the Bible?
Also, if there is a god, why do all the different people have all those different explanations for it?
2. Now to disprove the more general existence of a supernatural being. By assuming that there is one (or more), we imply that our world was created by said being(s). But who created that being/those beings, then? As an atheist, this dilemma doesn't exist, in the sense that we don't know how the world came into existence - but neither do we have a false theory for it.
3. And a final point: if a god exists that created our world, why did he/she make such a stupid, chaotic system? What motives would he/she have had for it?
Okay, so these points may sound a bit BS - they reflect my feelings, though, it's pretty hard to completely rationally explain this.
Oh, and one more thing. When I looked at the title I was expecting something about Conway's Game of Life. Now I'm a sad panda. Please change the title to avoid disappointing more people.
If physics is real what's up with the paradoxes, if mathematics is real what's up with the paradoxes, if astrophysics is real what's up with the paradoxes etc etc etc?
You also seem to equate atheism with a rejection of Christianity and not all religion.
Because all people are different and see and experience things in different ways?
Well according to Judaeo-Christian tradition, God created spacetime itself and therefore God exists outside of the universe as we know it and therefore the physics of cause and effect do not apply.
Why is it stupid? Value judgement.
Why is it chaotic? Are you telling me that an eco-system as finely tuned and intricate as the Amazon is chaotic, for example?
Now, what about abiogenesis?
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Atheism is simply the rejection of theism. Atheists make no assertions; it is theists who do this. We have plenty of scientific evidence for all kinds of things, and none of it points to the existence of a deity, so atheists completely reject belief in one. It is not necessary to assert that there is no god (insert something about unicorns or the FSM here) as the burden of proof lies with the theist. The proposition that god exists is the one with which we are concerned. Theists believe it, atheists do not. That's all there is to it. Why should we even care about disproving a claim that has no real evidence for it?
Agnosticism, as its etymology suggests, concerns itself with knowledge rather than belief. Its presentation as an alternative to theism and atheism represents a type conflation on your part.
All this is subjective though. The creation of the univese by God is just as subjective as any other explaination for the existance of the universe. There is no evidence for anything--or lots of evidence for any belief system you choose.
The burden of proof exists with anyone saying anything. It's a two edged sword.
That's a logical formalism that really doesn't get to the point of why things actually exist and what actually happens.
The point is we have no real knowledge--so how can we choose?
Bud, we are talking about faith here. You have a need to believe in a Gd. I get that whole fear thing of "What if logically Gd doesnt make sense, but if I dont beleive in him, then what if he really does exist and he sends me to an everlasting torturous lake of fire?" Admit it, that thought has gone through your head, and you ran to you priest and said confession, did a few hail marys, lit a candle or two, then felt alot better. THAT is fear.
Its very simple. Either you have faith in something or you dont. You have faith in your Gd. We dont. You need that faith as much as we dont need that faith.
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I'm sorry but Atheism is the only rational position.
Almost all atheists I have ever talked to have said that they don't know if God exists or not, the only thing is that there is no evidence to say that he does exist. So barring future discoveries, it makes sense to say that God does not exist, or it is very improbable that God exists.
So at least, when I say that I am an atheist, it means that I think considering the fact that we have no evidence for God's existence, it is likely that he does not exist.
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That too, but thats going to be over alot of believers heads. When you tell them you dont need what they have because you are incapable of believing it, they have a better chance of getting it. Of course the light bulb doesnt always go off, but I have gotten a few, "Ahhh, oh I see......s"
No, I dont know if Gd exists. But I do know I dont believe he exists.
By having no family … I inherited the family of humanity.
By having no possessions … I have possessed all.
By rejecting the love of one … I received the love of all.
By surrendering my life to the revolution … I found eternal life.
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Pertaining to this point, it's important to recognize that scientific paradoxes are recognized to be flaws, and so work is done to rectify them. However, religious paradoxes are a fundamental part of what is considered to be a complete and unchangable set of beliefs.
To be more direct, paradoxes exist in perfect religion, but science with paradoxes is recognized as imperfect science and is fixed.
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Actually no. The theists are the ones who want to order society according to the word of God. They are the ones who have a generally missionary attitude and they are the ones proclaiming that sin will lead to hell and damnation.
Thats not the atheist doing that stuff.
And the Theists have been doing this for centuries...killed millions of people in the process for having the wrong faith.
So the burden of proof is very much on the theists. Writing books and proclaiming them the ultimate truth....and then claiming gthe burden of proof is on those who doubt the gtruth in the statements....yeah...thats twisting the reality of the matter.
It is not about two simply conflicting visions. The Theists are the ones claiming the existence of something....they claim there is something more. Then they need to provide proof for that claim.
Just because Abiogensis hasn't been proven to exist doesn't mean we need to jump to the conclusion that "something", in the sense of a conscious being with intent, must have created life.
You only set the problem back a step and have to answer where that something came from.
SO Budstruggle is right, agnosticism is probably the most logically consistent position to take, but that's more to do with the nature of inductive reasoning than anything else.
Is there a god we couldn't know about yet? I don't know.
Are all men mortal? I don't know.
But the better answer is "As far as we know, there is no evidence of a creator."
Now onto the million of other spiritual and religious beliefs that we as human beings have thought of.
But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on
I think you're missing my point. Atheism is not a system of belief. It is the rejection of a particular belief, entailing no alternative belief.
Ditto. In this sense, atheists are not saying anything, just refusing to say something on the basis that there is no reason to say it.
Atheism does not concern itself with explaining why things exist and how the universe works. That is the job of science. In the absence of a verified scientific explanation, I'll refrain from adhering to any theory regarding these matters, especially one that is clearly baseless.
It's easy - see above.
I think part of the problem here is the widespread characterisation of atheism as a belief system which makes some kind of positive assertion regarding god's non-existence. This characterisation is false. Of course the non-existence of god is unprovable, but any such argument is meaningless, as the list of unprovable propositions is infinitely long.
Essentially, many major spiritual systems see this reality as sort of a flawed copy, even a counterfeit of the higher, and truer realities. For various reasons the material world was formed as the embryo of corruption - many Gnostic texts, the Apocryphon of John, to name one, describes the creator of the material world as the corrupt and wicked Demiurge who is a counterfeit of a higher more Perfect aeon.
So, essentially demonic forces created and maintain hegemony over the Earth and material world according to Gnostics and Hermeticism.
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Acquiring absolute proof on the matter is impossible (as is acquiring absolute proof of anything outside mathematics), but that does not mean we cannot assess the probability of something, in this case, the existence of God.
Considering the lack of positive evidence for any deities, let alone the Christian blood god Yahweh, as well what scientific evidence tells us about the purposeless and indifferent universe we find ourselves in, I'd say that dismissing the God hypothesis for a lack of evidence - being a de facto atheist - is a sensible position to take.
If life cannot emerge from non-living matter, then one is left to explain how life could arise at all, since life by all available evidence arose after the formation of the universe as we know it.
"Goddidit" doesn't count as an answer.
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I believe that god is real and exists, but only in the ontological sense that a social construction can have properties beyond individual control. But defining god as a social construction doesn't necessarily qualify me as religious does it?
EDIT: And maybe this doesn't really make me atheist, since I am making an assertion about god.
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Sorry, maybe it's me but you are missing my point. I'm not talking about a particular God. That concept, that of a Christian God that wants a certain ordering of society of a Moslem God that wants people to behave in a certain way--that indeed is a matter of aith. But the question of the beginning of the universe and that of life in particular really doesn't have a scientific answer.
In the absense of any knowledge at on on the subject the answer that God created it is just as good as any other.
Yet.
Just because science currently has no answers to such questions does not mean science will never answer such questions.
If by "just as good" you mean "just as useless".
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
Maybe not, but it's as good as an answer as "it always existed" or it "appeared out of nothing."
Actually, that's not true. If the universe has always existed in some form or another, then scientific investigation will discover evidence for that sooner or later; perhaps in the form of objects, structures and artefacts that could not possibly be younger than about 15 billion years. If we discover no such objects, then odds are good that the universe has a finite past extent.
The "god of the gaps", on the other hand, has no evidence for it and the places it can hide are getting smaller by the year.
The Human Progress Group
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains - Karl Marx
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller
The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Check out my speculative fiction project: NOVA MUNDI
