Topic: The Treadmill of Atheism - page 2. (Read 7037 times)

I won't pitch in to the arguments how disbelief in god/unicorns is in fact a belief or not, but I reading that wrong thing unopposed:
There most definitely IS pure random. You talk so much about science, you can't simply stop with the views of the 19th century, when determinism was a plausible assumption. Pure random is everywhere in Quantum Mechanics, and Bell's inequality precludes any "hidden variables". While shocking to early 20th century physicists, we had plenty of time to accept that.
Combined with Chaos Theory, from later last century, determinism can't even be considered globally on a macroscopic scale.
And it should be common knowledge, especially someone interested in cryptography and Bitcoin should know where true random exists and where not.
Ok, so you've about QM, now read about it to understand how you were wrong.
Besides that this "cue ball player", or "demon" as called by Laplace who first formulated this line of thought, has been proven impossible by both QM and Chaos Theory, there is...

..Ouch. Young-earth-creationist? Please stop insulting the vast majority of Christians and their intelligence, by calling this small god of yours the "God of the Christians"! Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox, these churches don't show the willful obscurantism, the weird insistence of a god that, as you pointed out so well, would be an awfully small god, a god that is much smaller than the universe we can see. The medieval bishop who counted and extrapolated some years in the Bible to get your estimation was likely no small mind, he worked with the little he had in his system of reference, without knowing of contrarian evidence. Then scientists, these great minds, watched the earth and her geology, the stars and the universe. Some had religions, others not, but they opened their eyes and saw an earth that was vastly older, a universe far greater than they had imagined.

And then later came some small minds, who were scared by greatness, scared by anything that could be larger than them. They shut their eyes and created fundamentalism, started cults in which they forbade their adherents to use their eyes and minds. You can simply count the years of tree rings for far longer than any date of their "flood", count the years of the strata in ice cores far longer than your "absolute maximum" age. Why do you want to believe in a god that is that small, that you are forbidden to even count, much less look at the stars, for fear that you could cross some arbitrary limits made by very small minds?

Funny how the arguments of others require evidence, but your argument does not because pink unicorns. You have an imaginary conclusion too, that there is no God. You have no evidence yet some how the same standard does not apply to your dogmas, only the dogmas of others. Your conclusion that there is no God is just as idiotic as declaring that there is a God, because the FACT is, no one knows for sure what is true regardless of how sure you are of your beliefs.

What is it about theism that encourages so much dishonesty?

I am not declaring there to be evidence of the absence of God any more than I would bother declaring there to be evidence of the absence of invisible pink unicorns or an infinite number of variations of same.

Atheism rejects the theist assertion, because the assertion is based on nothing other than wild imagination. Atheists also reject the invisible pink unicorn assertion, too.

*That* is the evidence for rejecting the assertion, the fact that the assertion concerned is without evidence.


But, then, I guess you're just going to keep on ignoring the cold hard fact that rejecting a baseless assertion FOR BEING BASELESS, is all that is required and that there is absolutely no need to seek evidence of the absence of a God when the assertion for the existence of a God is BASELESS.

  ...and just as you examine the claims of theists I am critically examining your claims. I argue you are the one being willfully ignorant in your rabid anti-religious fervor. I understand your obsession with demanding proof of the unprovable. All I am asking of you is, since you declare the absence of God the DEFINITION OF ATHEISM, what evidence do you present God doesn't exist? I am not arguing God is real I am asking you to provide evidence for your conclusion that God does not exist. Simple as that. You can't? That is a BELIEF. Your argument has no more authority than mine because THERE IS NO EVIDENCE. NO EVIDENCE + CONCLUSION = BELIEF regardless of how you mutilate the English language to fit your ideology.

The thing that is important about this is that, the thing that started this whole universe to operate in the cause and effect way that it operates, is the same thing that might be wanting us to look for the source of the cause and effect. Why? Because we have the urge and desire to find out about everything. It is built right into us.

One of the greatest urges we have is the desire to find out about the beginning. That's the reason science spends millions of dollars to determine what their Big Bang was like. The Big Bang God (or whatever God) that started this whole thing, placed into our hearts and minds, from the beginning of it all, right down to the present through cause and effect, the desire to find out about him/her/it.

The fact that we seldom hear about pure random from a scientific standpoint, leads me to suspect that there is some kind of conspiracy among the scientific community, or the political community that influences them. After all, you can go to school and learn about all kinds of things of science. You can learn about probability and random. The idea of pure random probably comes up in class. But why isn't it a major topic?

Personally, I think it has been forced into the background because it would upset a lot of things in science. People just don't want to hear that they are NOT in control of their lives... that maybe their whole lives are already set in stone, like words on the pages of a book. Who wants to hear that? But that is what science suggests, behind the scenes.

I, personally, am not saying that. Rather, science is.

Since all science involves cause and effect, action and reaction, it is the scientists who are saying it. If science had a method for complete emotion, thought, consciousness, conscience, soul, spirit, etc., analysis, then we might find that there is random, somehow.

Up to this point, most science suggests or says that the things that we interpret as the list that I mentioned above, are only biochemical reactions in our brain and nervous systems, etc.  If that is indeed all it is, then everything is cause and effect. There is no random. We feel like we made the choice. But we were really forced into it by all kinds of stimuli.

So are you saying I have no freewill to pick up that ball example randomly?

Why do you pick up or not pick up the ball?

Let's say that in this case, there is some great need to do it while, at the same time, there is another great need to not do it. The needs are causes.

In the brain, which neurons fire and which don't? Which fire with more strength? What is the chemical memory reason that is behind the stronger firings? What contribution did the food that you ate play, because you happened to eat fish today, which strengthened brain activity? What about the way a mild allergy "tickles" your nose, weakly, in a subconscious way?

In other words, the stimuli are the cause that lead you into making a decision that you feel is your random choice, even though you don't know anything about which stimuli are acting in what way on you.

If you were plugged into some gigantic supercomputer that was programmed to read all the stimuli, would it not be able to predict your decision?

All of the stimuli were caused by other stimuli that caused them. And those by others, and those by others. This goes all the way back to the beginning, whatever/whenever that is/was. There is no random. There might have been in whatever started the whole universe running in the first place (Big Bang? God?).

Interesting point of no true random.
I have the choice to pick up a ball or not pick up a ball. You cannot predict my choice because it is my random choice. Or cannot my choice be truly random?

Call the universe "Colin" if you want. That's not what I am talking about.

The idea of God has to do with something greater than man. If cause and effect had only produced plants and animal, but no creature that could truly feel emotion, or truly reason, then there might be a slight point to atheism. And, of course, then it wouldn't matter at all. 'Cause nobody would be around to consider it.

But since the idea of God is talking about something that is greater than the reasoning of man, greater than the emotions of man, greater than the scientific thinking of man, because it produced all these things, and even produced man, through cause and effect in an extremely difficult and complex process, it fits the definition of God.

But, you are welcome to continue to call yourself ignorant if you so desire.

And there we have it, further proof of the inane arguments used by theists to desperately claw their way out of the hole they keep being shown to be in, give 'em God, any God, for God's sake!!!!1111!1!eleventy!!1!

So now you want to turn an event (the big bang) into God?

Are you even capable of recognising the desperation in your position? You can call anything you want God, knock yourself out, it still doesn't leave you doing anything more than making-shit-up(tm).

What if I want to call The Universe 'Colin' and declare it to be evidence of 13-Dimensional super-being's school science project?

We can all play that game, it's called "Using your imagination". But you don't get it stick it in a medium-sized Hadron Collider and conduct experiments on it, that's reserved for things which actually exist outside of human imagination.

Here is another explanation of one of the great 3 evidences for God. This explanation is about the idea of cause and effect, action and reaction. Said another way, there is no pure random.

Be patient, and read the whole thing, even if you don't like to look at an argument that offers strong evidence for God. Here goes.

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When we talk about probability (randomness), we show that we are speaking from a position of not knowing. For example. When one flips a coin, what are the odds it will land heads, and what are the odds it will land tails? Over time, with many tosses of the coin, we find that the answer is very close to 50% both ways.

Why don't we know ahead of time what the result will be each time? Because we are unable to measure all the forces acting on the coin sufficiently well to make an absolute prediction. Now, I understand that there are some few people who have practiced so much that they can tell the outcome almost every time. But the point that I am making is, there is no easy way to measure all the forces acting on the coin so that we can predict accurately.

This is what OUR random is. It really isn't random. What it is, is our weakness in knowing, our inability to observe. In the case of the flipped coin, it is our weakness in knowing all the forces acting on the coin.

Essentially, there is NO pure random.

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Next...

Consider the common (American) game of "Pool" (the billiards sport). Once in awhile a player is able to hit the cue ball, which hits a second ball, which hits a third ball, which taps a fourth ball into a pocket. Predicting 4 balls in this fashion isn't easy. What about 5, or 6, or 7 balls in a sequence shot like this?

The point? Whatever makes cause and effect work in nature, has produced untold numbers of sequence shots in subatomic particles, with untold numbers of length of sequences, including cross shots (where more than one ball act on another), which have produced all kinds of highly complex materials and operations of nature, possibly the greatest of these being life itself.

The point? Since we don't have the ability to track more than a tiny, tiny percent of these forces, if we want to understand what's going on, we need to use probability. So, what are the odds that things would work out as well as they have, universally, through cause and effect of these HUGE numbers of sequences and cross sequences?

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Everything in nature acts according to the action and reaction principle... cause and effect. Science has no evidence of anything that happens by accident, randomly; everything that we call random activity exists ONLY because we are so extremely limited in our methods of observation, that we can't track the billions upon billions of action-reaction operations in the universe around us.

Is there mathematics that shows the existence of pure random activity? If there is, it lies in realms of quantum mechanics where other math shows that pure random does NOT exist.

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Whatever started all the cause and effect, action and reaction, that produced all the fantastically marvelous things found in nature, and life itself, IS A FANTASTICALLY GREAT GOD, whatever this God might be.

If God is the Big Bang, or if God is simply nature itself, or if God is one of the gods of one of the various religions, whatever God is, GOD IS EXCEEDINGLY GREAT, beyond understanding.

And here is a very interesting point. The god behind modern science is extremely greater than the Christian God. It all has to do with action and reaction, cause and effect. Here's what I mean.

Modern science suggests that the universe is 13 to 14 billion years old. The Bible suggests that the earth is 6,000 to an absolute maximum of 25,000 years old. What of it? Here's what.

A good pool player might be able to hit the cue ball with such precision that it hits a second ball that hits a third ball that taps a fourth ball into a corner pocket.

The God of the Christians hit some "cue balls" way back 6,000 to 25,000 years ago that knocked this whole fantastic universe into place today. Look around yourself at nature, at life, at human emotion, and imagine how great Someone has to be to hit the "cue balls" of the Beginning so that we wind up with all the marvels that we have today.

And if the God of the Christians is great, THE GOD OF MODERN SCIENCE IS FAR GREATER! Why? Because there are COUNTLESS more action-reaction/cause-effect happenings over 13 to 14 billion years than over 6,000 to 25,000 years. And the Big Bang(?) God shot was SOOOOO exceedingly good that it STILL produced what we have today, all the marvels of nature, and the universe, and life, and emotion in people, and human thought, and even scientific investigation by man, even though it had countless MORE numbers of action-reaction, cause-effect activities that the gods of any of the religions.

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All you scientific atheists, you are simply denying a Great God, One you are making way stronger than any god of any religion, simply by proving all your scientific theories and hypotheses.

Now, you may not like me. You might even hate me for showing you this. And you certainly have the ability to talk all around what I say. But one thing stands HERE as FACT, even if I have stated it poorly. As things stand in science right now, THERE IS GREAT STRENGTH IN THIS ARGUMENT that I have just shown you.

God exists, whomever/whatever he/she/it might be!

This is the point in the debate where I wonder out loud if your ignorance is wilful. I can handle plain ol' lack-of-education-on-the-subject ignorance, it's the I-refuse-to-consider-that-I-may-be-mistaken brand of ignorance I despise.

You continue to ignore the fact that you are the one claiming 'disbelief' is 'just another type of belief'. It is you who seeks to rewrite and reinterpret the meaning of a word that clearly does not mean what you want it to.

Let's break it down for you *real* simple:

+1 = Belief that there is evidence for the existence of an omnipotent super-being, a 'God'.

-1 = Belief that there is evidence against the existence of an ominpotent super-being, a 'God'.


Atheism on that scale = 0

That there is no objective evidence FOR the existence of an omnipotent super-being, a 'God'.

So, with regards to your
The Atheist conclusion is not derived from the "There is no God" assertion, it is derived from the "Your theist assertion lacks any objective evidence" position.

Which is correct a conclusion to reach because it does not require the invocation of the paranormal or 'ooky and spooky' made-up-stuff(tm), it simply examines the claim being made by theism and draws the, absolutely correct conclusion, that the assertion theists make is utterly devoid of evidence and, you know, looks *exactly* like it has just been dreamed up in human imagination and asserted to be true.

Because that is *exactly* what theism is.

Your argument about disbelief is a red herring. You are still misrepresenting the definition of atheism. Declaring the existence or non  existence of anything requires a conclusion, and with no evidence to support it either way this is called a belief. I am simply holding you to the same standard you hold theists. You are defining agnosticism, not atheism, which is the BELIEF there is no god.  

 British Dictionary definitions for dis-
(would have used Websters but they apparently don't do word prefixes)
dis-1 prefix
1. indicating reversal: disconnect, disembark
2. indicating negation, lack, or deprivation: dissimilar, distrust, disgrace
3. indicating removal or release: disembowel, disburden
4. expressing intensive force: dissever

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dis-?s=t&path=/

No, I quoted another source but you, however, also happened to deviously misrepresent what yours actually meant.

You may have quoted Merriam-Webster regarding the word 'Atheism', but it is you who falsely asserted the claim, "Disbelief is still a belief".

Merriam-Webster didn't say that, you did.


Which is utterly different from your claim that Disbelief is still a belief, when it is actually a lack of belief, or an inability to believe.

So, as I said, theists assert the existence of something for which they have no evidence. It is not down to the atheist to do anything more than to point out the fact that theists have no evidence for their assertion.

So you are arguing with Websters dictionary now? Polarizing your belief to an opposite doesn't magically make it not a belief.

No it isn't. You are either failing to grasp the concept or you are intentionally misrepresenting it.

Disbelief or lack of belief is not the same as having a belief.

Otherwise, in your reality, I am also just as required to furnish you with evidence of the lack of invisible pink unicorn angels who protect us from invisible blue gremlins at all hours of the day. Otherwise, according to you, the claim towards the existence of said unicorns and gremlins is equally as valid as my disbelief in same because neither side can offer evidence towards or against.

Theists assert the existence of something, they are the ones needing to justify their assertion with reasonable evidence, which they do not have, therefore, we atheists dismiss their claim as having insufficient evidence or reason to be worthy of consideration.

That is not the same as you requiring that we atheists offer up evidence to prove the non-existence of something. That is asinine.

ATHEISM:
1 archaic :  ungodliness, wickedness
2
     a :  a disbelief in the existence of deity
     b :  the doctrine that there is no deity

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

Who is being dishonest now?  Disbelief is still a belief. You are still making conclusions that there is no god with a complete lack of evidence in either direction. I think what you are defining is whats called agnostic.

Agnostic:
: a person who does not have a definite belief about whether God exists or not
: a person who does not believe or is unsure of something

Full definition:
1:  a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly :  one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
2:  a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism?ref=dictionary&word=agnostic#