How can you possibly be an athiest?

[Frogman]

Originally posted by cinch

But didn't you yourself say that God was unknowable? If 'He' is unknowable, then how can revelations exist?

I may be confused about where you stand:

Do you feel that God created the universe, and then took a step back to just 'let it run', without interference?

Revelations can exist. Its like the blind men and the elephant, (which I use a lot to explain stuff) You can have a good solid hold of Gods "trunk" and you can be sure he exists. But then you have a hard time saying God is like a snake.

I think God created the universe. I think he is outside time and already knows how everything turns out because in fact its already happened. Otherwise prophecy couldn't work. As far as "letting it run" I think God is intimately a part of everything and we can tap into that. If God didn't want to experience His creation, why would he make it in the first place?

Being agnostic of course, I admit that I could be completely wrong and in fact have to be wrong in whatever understanding I have for what God is and what he does.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

actually, AFAIK it's not like that.

Soft Atheist: god doesn't exist.
Hard Atheist: god CANNOT exist.

That makes no sense, as there is no practical difference between the two beliefs.

No. It makes perfect sense. (1) is neutral between (a) that it is perfectly possible for God to exist, but in fact he doesn't; and (b) it is impossible for a God to exist.

Compare: "a green dog exists" with "a round square exists".

The first is logically possible but false (nothing about dogness excludes greenness - someone could engineer a green dog - but as far as we know there are no green dogs); the second is logically impossible (i.e. necessarily non-existent).

An agnostic believes that it is possible that God exists, but denies knowing whether or not he does. An agnostic is a sceptic about belief in God.

An atheist either believes that it is possible that God exists, but claims to know he doesn't, or believes that by necessity God cannot exist. An atheist is not a sceptic about belief in God - an atheist believes he knows the answer.

The practical difference is that an agnostic could be persuaded by evidence that God exists, but an atheist who believes that God's existence is impossible could not be. This is the difference between someone who thinks that there is no evidence that God exists and someone who believes that the existence of evil necessitates that no God could exist.

[gsmoove23]

In response to the first post...

I'm an atheist, I don't "believe" in science or have any proof that God doesn't exist. I simply have a faith that God doesn't exist (a sort of gut-feeling). However, I have no faith in my ability to accurately decide whether or not God does exist, so I never tell anyone "God doesn't exist", but simply "I believe God doesn't exist".

I guess that would be called soft atheism? I never even heard the term before.

[Master Zen]

I couldn't have said it better myself Agathon.

In any case I think "Hard Atheism" is just as illogical as being a Thesit since you are in fact claiming that something exists when it can't be proven.

Me, I'm a hard-core Soft Atheist!

(although it took various religious threads to make me accept this definition, there's more debate on the wording than on the philosophy behind it)

God doesn't exist. Face it. Accept it. Be happy about it. Unless he shows up in person, i'll never believe it.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Master Zen
I couldn't have said it better myself Agathon.

In any case I think "Hard Atheism" is just as illogical as being a Thesit since you are in fact claiming that something exists when it can't be proven.

Me, I'm a hard-core Soft Atheist!

(although it took various religious threads to make me accept this definition, there's more debate on the wording than on the philosophy behind it)

God doesn't exist. Face it. Accept it. Be happy about it. Unless he shows up in person, i'll never believe it.

I suppose I'm currently an agnostic.

You are right - too many debates on this forum are merely semantic. It's amazing that people should be so hung up on words rather than the things they purportedly refer to.

Personally, I think that if God exists then he's pretty much indifferent to human affairs.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
On the contrary, Rogan, your position requires a contradiction in your fundamental outlook. If you posit that it is possible that something in this universe can't be known by applications of our senses, you are just saying that this something is completely unknowable, thus diving into a mud bog of metaphysics where empty assertions bounce off each other.

No - you are misunderstanding me. Perhaps I am not explaining myself very well. I am not saying that there are (could be) things which "can't be known by applications of our senses" (since, by Occam's razor, they then wouldn't actually be there). But what if there are phenomena which cannot be explained by physics, in principle (ie. not just because we aren't clever enough).

What if we were eventually able to do experiments at the Planck scale and found that our experiments gave different answers every time, on a non-statistical basis, so that there was no way to predict the outcome of the experiment. (For example, imagine that there were an (almost) infinitely long string of letters HRISHFKSHF.... which was written into the structure of the universe somehow, and each hour we move onto the next letter. This sequence is "pre-determined" so therefore non-statistical (ie. the probability of letter 'F' is not just 1/26). Each letter triggers a different fundamental "theory of everything" - so our physical laws change every hour in a non-predictable way.

Then science itself breaks down because it posits the assumption that all things are governed by laws, which in principle we can discover. This assumption need not be true for all spacetime (and indeed we have no evidence that it is), and anyone who believes it is, is exhibiting faith.

Going further, the letter sequence is unknowable, infallible, and omnipotent, and could be defined as God (or the manifestation of HIS personality). Or to put it another way, a phenomenum which has the ability to change physical laws in an undefined, undeterminable and all-reaching way IS God. Therefore to be an atheist requires faith in the entire applicability of science and its starting assumption.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by cinch
The question, "What happened before the big bang?" is faulty, because 'before' is a term implying time, and time only exists with space, and space only exists after the big bang.

Now it is this sort of thing that bugs me. This is an extrapolation of known physics by 16 orders of magnitude (or so). How do you know what the physics of the Planck scale is? Why shouldn't gravity suddenly become repulsive at (say) 10^17 GeV? Or how do you know that gravity is not altered in some subtle way at very very small distances that avoids a singularity (and thus a big bang)? How do you know that the universe wasn't previously collapsing, pushing everything to a 'near singularity' and then expanded?

Too many people think they know physics from reading crap books like 'A brief History of Time'. No-one knows what we will discover in physics, and to make false, unsubstantiated assumptions and extrapolations is like someone from the 13th centuary assuming the Earth was flat and, for the but beyond, declaring 'here be dragons'.

The ironic thing is these 'scientific' atheists accuse theists of illogical faith!

[Master Zen]

yes but then would you follow an established religion? That's the issue. I have said that the governing body of space/time fabric of whatever you want to call it is the real god, but I don't want to use that word as it implies a spiritual deity, not a scientific one.

Under this certain logic, this "god" does not follow any logic but is auto-governed by its own constitution, therefore any idea that this god is in anyway man-like, or thinks/acts/feels/reasons like we do is wrong.

If you say then that "god" is the science or laws that govern the existence of the universe, I'll buy it. But do you need to start a religion? do you need to worship it? nope. it is there, it exists, impervious to your faith in it.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Master Zen
yes but then would you follow an established religion? That's the issue.

But you already have! There is this mass of mainly young, intelligent, well-educated people out there who believe passionately in the infallability of science and the scientific method. Despite being well educated they do not understand the subtleties of physics, so they believe anything the scientists ("priests" if you like) tell them to. Doesn't this look very much like the religions of old?

If you say then that "god" is the science or laws that govern the existence of the universe, I'll buy it. But do you need to start a religion? do you need to worship it? nope. it is there, it exists, impervious to your faith in it.

Well, of course, as a Christian, I believe that the Christian God provides the non-predictivity. My sequence of letters was just meant as an easily acceptable counter-example of the infallibility of the scientific method. It was meant to point out that atheism requires 'faith'.

[Lincoln]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Lincoln, would you gracefully quit this regurgitation of the same tripe over and over again? Last time when there was a serious discussion on this, you failed to substantiate your position. As I told you before, I still have the thread archived.

Are you talking about the "Great Information Debate" thread? If so, please link to it. I recall it perfectly. That would save me the effort here of trashing your arguments again.

[Lincoln]

In the mean time why don't you and Boris tell us what law of physics requires this order of DNA (for example):

CGATTACCGATTGAC and not this one: CGATACCATAGCCA

And while you are at it please explain how the laws of physic divide the code into triplets or codons. Then you can tell us how the code came about and how it came to be translated and by what mechanism, without the aid of intelligent input. Finally you can tell us all how the laws of physics gives meaning to a chemical smbol and translates that meaning to the appropriate parts of the cellular machinery so that the interactive part know how to asemble themselves properly.

The Blind Atheist

[Sava]

Sorry Lincoln, but the assertion: "The human body is so complex and improbably conceived, that it must have been intelligently designed..." is silly.

"The probability of me winning the lottery is so small that if I do, it must be the work of a higher power."

You can put wings on it, but it just doesn't fly... sorry.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
The other problem with "intelligent design" is that our design and that of other species isn't always so intelligent. Thanks for the appendix, Lord. Oh, and the tailbone remnant, that's really useful. And having the testicles dangle outside the body in a vulnerable position was a real great idea, yessirree!

Actually, not to get too off-topic, but there's a good reason for the dangling testicles: sperm cells don't thrive at normal body temperature. They'd overheat and croak if they were stored inside the body for too long. That's what they told me in sex ed, years ago.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Lincoln, we DID go over all of this before. We explained how evolution inevitably creates "information" from randomness, we explained that scientists believe the first self-replicating system was small enough to form randomly (and research is ongoing into molecules with the necessary properties) and so on. You were left with no argument other than the faith that intelligence was involved: you failed to demonstrate any requirement for intelligent design.

In the mean time why don't you and Boris tell us what law of physics requires this order of DNA (for example):

CGATTACCGATTGAC and not this one: CGATACCATAGCCA

Assuming the first is from a viable organism and the second is not: natural selection.

And while you are at it please explain how the laws of physic divide the code into triplets or codons. Then you can tell us how the code came about and how it came to be translated and by what mechanism, without the aid of intelligent input.

Research into the origin of the genetic code is ongoing. However, there is no reason to assume that a system of triplets was initially present, or necessary for life.

Finally you can tell us all how the laws of physics gives meaning to a chemical smbol and translates that meaning to the appropriate parts of the cellular machinery so that the interactive part know how to asemble themselves properly.

You have it backwards. The letters G, A, T and C are symbols assigned by scientists to molecules which are of four different shapes. These shapes determine the shapes of the molecules that can be built from them, and the molecules that can interact with those: and, hence, the shapes of the proteins that can be formed.

In organic chemistry, the shapes of molecules are all-important. That's why prion diseases such as BSE and CJD happen: one misshapen prion molecule has the ability to attach to a normal one and bend it into the same distorted shape, which can then bend another into that shape, and so on. A self-replicating molecule has the ability to cause free nucleotides (or proteins) to assemble themselves into a copy of the original.

In DNA, there is a system (itself refined by millions of years of evolution, and inevitably far removed from the original replication mechanism), in which combinations of four standard "building blocks" can be arranged in groups of three to make other useful shapes which fit this pattern: presumably this modular approach is more efficient. There's no reason in principle why a code involving five bases arranged in quadruplets didn't evolve instead: in fact, scientists have succeeded in incorporating an extra "letter" (another nucleotide) into the code.

Given a self-replicator simple enough to form by chance, there is no reason to assume that the later evolution of a more modular system, and hence a "genetic code", requires intelligent input.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Elok


Actually, not to get too off-topic, but there's a good reason for the dangling testicles: sperm cells don't thrive at normal body temperature. They'd overheat and croak if they were stored inside the body for too long. That's what they told me in sex ed, years ago.

So? Wouldn't it still be a failure of some intelligent design that this need be the case? The bottom line is that we're far from perfect machines.