Why did you pick atheism?

[Roger Duke]

No, but there is a lot we don't know about the universe and its origins.

Science completely breaks down with only a few vague theories regarding what preceded the Big bang.

The Big Bang just didn't appear out of nowhere, it was the cause of something else. How far does it go back and was there a first cause.

If there is or was a first cause, what was or is it.

If you want to prove God exists you have to do two things. First, you have to prove that something can be eternal. Second, you have to prove that the eternal thing is God. Science has already accomplished the first thing. I doubt it will be able to accomplish the second but I've learned to never underestimate science.

 

[Dragonfly]

In my experience, atheist are intellectually lazy.

Right, because the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of theists , who are theists because that’s how they were born and raised, are intellectual decathletes.

Are you not aware of how many atheists were once theists? And that by becoming atheists they risked a great deal of family strife and possibly worse?
Do you not think that many did not actively set out to become an atheist, but that’s where intelligent skepticism and intelligent investigation took them?

It’s actually your comment above that’s lazy.

 

[devildavid]

Couldn't tell you how long literacy has been around nor do I suppose could anyone else. But the Scriptures are thousands of years old with the New Testament being written only about 20 years after the the death of Christ.

The time that the scriptures have been readily available for all to read is a tiny blip in the history of human beings. If those words are so important then many human beings lived and died without them.

 

[devildavid]

If you want to prove God exists you have to do two things. First, you have to prove that something can be eternal. Second, you have to prove that the eternal thing is God. Science has already accomplished the first thing. I doubt it will be able to accomplish the second but I've learned to never underestimate science.

Science has not accomplished the first thing.

 

[Mulefoot]

Science deals with what is real and physical. What other areas are there? Many theists use the scientific method to understand physical reality so I guess they are beating the same drum too.

Deals with physical. What is "real" is your philosophical point of view.

Many theists use the scientific method to understand physical reality so I guess they are beating the same drum too.

I'm speaking to atheists who argue reality to the physical only. Obviously, doing so can be a useful debate tactic.

 

[The Baron]

Right, because the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of theists , who are theists because that’s how they were born and raised, are intellectual decathletes.

Are you not aware of how many atheists were once theists? And that by becoming atheists they risked a great deal of family strife and possibly worse?
Do you not think that many did not actively set out to become an atheist, but that’s where intelligent skepticism and intelligent investigation took them?

It’s actually your comment above that’s lazy.

Thanks for your reply...I've no idea what you were trying to accomplish with such mind-numbing rhetoric...but, hey, keep trying!

 

[The Baron]

The time that the scriptures have been readily available for all to read is a tiny blip in the history of human beings. If those words are so important then many human beings lived and died without them.

Before the Scriptures they're were the prophets and Judges.

That make you feel any better?

 

[devildavid]

Deals with physical. What is "real" is your philosophical point of view.

I'm speaking to atheists who argue reality to the physical only. Obviously, doing so can be a useful debate tactic.

If we don't have a basis for reality then the discussion of gods is just as meaningless as the discussion of reality.

 

[devildavid]

Before the Scriptures they're were the prophets and Judges.

That make you feel any better?

And before that there was no concept of the Abrahamic god at all for thousands of years. Does that make you feel better?

 

[The Baron]

And before that there was no concept of the Abrahamic god at all for thousands of years. Does that make you feel better?

Based on what?

 

[reinaert]

I didn't. It's just what's left when you stop believing. In a pervasively monotheistic culture, atheism is a simple enough affair: you stop believing in the one god you were allowed to imagine, worship or be faithful to, and that's that. Atheism is a consequence of monotheism, and was far less prevalent in the world before Christolatry and Islam.

 

[Roger Duke]

Science has not accomplished the first thing.

You couldn't be more wrong. Science has indeed proven that something is eternal. But don't don't take my word for it. Read "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss.
Don't be swayed by the fact that Krauss was fired from his job for sexual misconduct. He is a brilliant cosmolgist and it may please you to know that he is one of science's most vocal atheists. If you are a devout atheist I'm sure you have heard of him and are familiar with the book.

 

[weaver2]

Why are you even participating in a religious forum then? Just to tell everybody else they shouldn't be participating in a religious forum?

Yes

 

[reinaert]

You couldn't be more wrong. Science has indeed proven that something is eternal. But don't don't take my word for it. Read "A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss.
Don't be swayed by the fact that Krauss was fired from his job for sexual misconduct. He is a brilliant cosmolgist and it may please you to know that he is one of science's most vocal atheists. If you are a devout atheist I'm sure you have heard of him and are familiar with the book.

Instead of assigning a book report, could you summarize his claims?

 

[Mulefoot]

If we don't have a basis for reality then the discussion of gods is just as meaningless as the discussion of reality.

You're extrapolate a final conclusion from the study of natural things that only natural things exist.

Even if I didn't believe in a God, I wouldn't agree with your basis for rejecting God.

 

[devildavid]

Based on what?

History.

 

[reinaert]

You're extrapolate a final conclusion from the study of natural things that only natural things exist.

Even if I didn't believe in a God, I wouldn't agree with your basis for rejecting God.

The claim to the supra- and supernatural - especially if it is transcendent - requires more than special pleading or the mere rejection of observational naturalism.

 

[devildavid]

You're extrapolate a final conclusion from the study of natural things that only natural things exist.

Even if I didn't believe in a God, I wouldn't agree with your basis for rejecting God.

No extrapolation. Just observing and studying what can be studied. If there are things other than natural, there should be verifiable evidence of such things.

 

[Mulefoot]

The claim to the supra- and supernatural - especially if it is transcendent - requires more than special pleading or the mere rejection of observational naturalism.

I didn't make the claim.

 

[Mulefoot]

No extrapolation. Just observing and studying what can be studied. If there are things other than natural, there should be verifiable evidence of such things.

We don't know that.

 

[reinaert]

I didn't make the claim.

But you are handwaving it away on the grounds that observation is not observationally sufficient to establish the conditions of the cosmos.

 

[Mulefoot]

But you are handwaving it away on the grounds that observation is not observationally sufficient to establish the conditions of the cosmos.

What would you base an argument on that claims that observation is sufficient to establish the conditions of the cosmos.

 

[reinaert]

What would you base an argument on that claims that observation is sufficient to establish the conditions of the cosmos.

I think you are asking, how do we know about the known world's known things? If so: Falsifiabilty. Prediction. The current hard-won method of science, in short.

Epistemological problems are not settled cases, and new ones will arise as we - if we - continue to more robustly model the world.

It's no small thing to know that stairs are hazardous terrain, and often learned first through pain, and then through trepidation, but learn it most of us do. We learn that we must walk differently, which has the effect of confirming that the more usual modes of walking are generally sufficient, but each of us must still learn to do both, and having learned, can know with some certainty (predictability) that walking will produce expected outcomes.

It is this - learning to learn - that lets most every person who matures out of early childhood know that what they know about the rules of existence (the feeling of gravity, heat, wetness, hunger, thirst, depth, distance, time's passage and the variability of its felt pace, etc) are largely reliable. This is the foundation of the knowable world, that it behaves in expected ways.

Not randomly, and quite curiously, the claims about the transcendent or supernatural rest precisely on them not.

 

[pinqy]

Fine. I'll try again...

If there is a God, He allows little girls to get raped. He allows priests to molest little boys, famine, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, genocides, war after war after war after war. God has destroyed the world by flood, cities by fire, there's the book of Job. If there is a God He's an evil, childish, sadistic failure.

So I choose to believe there's no God. I'm an atheist.


Show me where my logic is lacking.

Ok. Whether or not you agree or disagree with what a god has or has not done….whether or not a god can be characterized as good or evil, or should or should not be worshipped…is completely irrelevant as to whether or not that god exists.

Also, our evaluation of good or evil does not and cannot have the same context as any being that could be called a god. We’re talking completely different levels of reality and cannot know if the actions are good or evil from the perspective of gods. Maybe they’re good, maybe evil, maybe neutral: no way to know from any perspective other than our own.

Your atheism seems to be monotheistic: you’re only rejecting one god concept, as if that were the only one and to reject it is to reject all.

 

[Daisy]

Yes

Truth be told, you're the one who shouldn't be here, if it disturbs you so...