How can you possibly be an athiest?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Sava
You're hopeless.

No, I'm an atheist, and have been one for thirteen years. I don't let Catholic priests tell me what I believe, even if Father Halstead is a very nice guy.

BTW, I've had three or four religion classes, as well as having studied it in my free time.

[Ramo]

Well, you have to tell me what "belief" is. If you equate belief with the certainty of validity, I don't believe in anything. But I'm an atheist.

I don't know for certain that I exist (I could be some computer program, etc.). I don't know for certain that my senses give me a valid view of reality. However, my experience allows me to assign a probablity distribution to various concepts. I think it's almost certain that I exist, for instance, since my past experience hasn't given me any examples of individuals who think they exist, but actually don't, outside of movies and the like. I think it's almost certain that I'm typing on a computer at the moment and am conversing with a bunch of people. But I don't know that for certain.

Similarly, I can assign a probability distribution to the question of the existence of Gods. Since I haven't dealt with any Gods, or seen any real empirical evidence pointing to the existence of such beings, I can say that it's extremely unlikely that any Gods exist.

But, the English language is a pretty damn cumbersome tool if I have to say assuming a, b, c, d, and e, f is true instead of saying f is true. As far as I'm concerned, "there is no God" is just as valid an assertion as "there is a computer in front of me." There very well could be a God, just as there very well could not be a computer in front of me, but I think the likelyhood of such things being true as so insignificant, to be disregardable totally.

[yavoon]

umm sava I think we're pretty confident now that not only is our universe expanding the but the expansion is accelerating. so the whole contraction thing is a lil faded.

[Sava]

Che we could argue semantics until our fingers bleed. But the fact remains. I do not believe in any Gods. I am an atheist. I don't believe that there is sufficient evidence to say there are no Gods. While this is an agnostic belief, it doesn't exclude me from being an atheist.

[Sava]

Originally posted by yavoon
umm sava I think we're pretty confident now that not only is our universe expanding the but the expansion is accelerating. so the whole contraction thing is a lil faded.

It's expanding at this point. At some point in the future, the matter in our region of the universe will start to collapse. You misunderstood my point.

[yavoon]

hrrm wut will cause it to contract? if contraction were evident by mechanisms we would normally think then expansion would be decelerating, but its not.

[Boris Godunov]

Che, I refer you to Ari's post.

There are only two ways: Theism and Atheism. There's nothing inbetween. A theist simply is someone who believes in God. Within Atheism are "soft" and "hard" atheists.

Soft Atheists: I do not believe in God (and the "I am unsure of God's existence" camp fits here).

Hard Atheists: I believe God does not exist.

There is nothing in Agnosticism that denotes one's belief in God, it is merely a denotion of the belief in God's existence being provable. Indeed, both theists and atheists can be Agnostics.

I argued this with loinburger (I formerly adopting your current position), and acknowledge I was wrong then and loinburger is correct.

[Sava]

Gravity. Not all matter from the "Big Bang" of our region will contract. But as orbits decay and stars die, black holes will form. Black holes will eventually fall into each other, reaching a point where another "Big Bang" will occur. I don't profess to know how or when or why this occurs, it is just my conclusion based on what I've learned over the years. AFAIK we could be at the very beginning of such a scale of events, it may be hundreds of billions of years before such a contraction occurs.

Also, all of our knowledge of expansion comes from what we can detect within our range. There may be matter outside this range that is collapsing, but we simply can't see it.

I'm not proclaiming this to be a law or anything, it's just my opinion at this point in time. Some new info could come to my attention that would change my opinion.

[Sava]

Boris... thank you, you explained it much better than I did.

[yavoon]

ur opinion sounds kind of religoius. . if gravity was causing us to contract then our expansion would be slowing(decelerating). but its not, it is accelerating, or increasing in rate. we are flying away from each other at increasingly faster speeds.

[Sava]

Sure, again, think about the timeline of such an event I described. What if we are near the beginning of such an event. WHen a bullet is fired out of a gun, it accelerates rapidly. The force causing expansion may be constant, or it may be a single event. Gravity is a constant. Our expansion would only start to slow when we reach the peak of the force of acceleration.

[yavoon]

if we were at the beginning of such an event which would be a miscalculation of the scale of the universe by many many powers of 10.

there would still e another issue, if we were off by that much we are already supposing unseeable matter as 90% of the universe. the new amt of matter in the universe required to contract the universe back on itself(considering the strength of gravity) would quickly become (INCOMING PUN) astronomical.

[Bosh]

Soft Atheists: I do not believe in God (and the "I am unsure of God's existence" camp fits here).

Hard Atheists: I believe God does not exist.

There is nothing in Agnosticism that denotes one's belief in God, it is merely a denotion of the belief in God's existence being provable. Indeed, both theists and atheists can be Agnostics.

Exactly Boris. Good to see someone who knows the difference between strong and weak (or as you term it hard and soft) belief. Strong/hard atheism doesn't make any sense since we have no way of knowing that our senses aren't so completely fallable what we're not missing moutains of evidence to theism (so God is very improbable but possible).

[Az]

actually, AFAIK it's not like that.

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

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Azazel
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.

Once again... If Theism is the belief in God, Atheism is the absence of belief in God--all of its permutations. "I don't know" is still absence of belief in God, so it is Atheism.