Belief... or lack thereof

[pocaracas]

So I’m an atheist, yippee!

What does that mean?
The dictionary typically provides two possibilities, one of them does apply quite nicely: a person who disbelieves Some will call this simply “agnostic”, “agnostic atheist” or “weak atheist”… I don’t care… For me, I’m just atheist.

I’ve been in a few threads on this forum and some of them have veered a bit off-topic (can’t take all the blame for it, but some is certainly on me ) so those threads ended up closed.
I’d like this thread to be one where we can discuss any detail concerning how this disbelief of mine affects any particular aspect of life, of how I view the world, of how I envision that which is, as far as I am aware, unknown… and even that which is unknowable…

There are also some people in this forum who seem to operate under a few misconceptions about atheists, so I’d like to address them… Here’s one:

• All-mighty Lady-Chance-did-it: If no God creator of the Cosmos made all this and provided that mighty initial spark for life, then chance must have done it - no purpose, no intent, no reason… Or something like this, right?
  Well, I prefer not to be so bleak, but ultimately, yes… Under the assumption that no God exists, there seems to have been no consciousness that somehow started the Universe. Mind you, we, human race, don’t know how the Universe came into being. We can trace it back to the big bang… well, almost to the Big Bang and then our known physics becomes unsuitable, so the real answer is “I don’t know”, actually, no one knows. If anyone claims to know, they’re making it up. Any claim of divine revelation is also seen as making it up.

So, provided no God is available, why do people believe in them? How did that happen?
Sadly, written history starts at a time when religions already exist, so we don’t have any way of knowing the answer to this question.
We can try to reason it out, using the few pieces left behind for archaeologists to find, mingling them with known psychological traits shared by most humans (and likely shared with those humans who started the belief in spiritual entities).
Bah… we can never know the particulars, but my general guess is that, at some point, the frustration of not knowing many answers to questions that were burning their early curiosity-ridden minds led them to speculation… from wild speculation told over a campfire to a story which feels like it’s conveying the reality of things would go but a few generations, if any at all.
And then… just build upon it. The evolution of religions… it seems there are books written on that subject… (no, I didn’t read that… I arrived at that conclusion independently). It does make some sense, seeing as Christianity itself is clearly an evolution of the Judaic model.

With this, my mind is satisfied as it allows for everything that we see and experience to be caused by natural means.

Feel free to pick my atheism apart… I welcome you!

 

[adf417]

So I’m an atheist, yippee!
…
Feel free to pick my atheism apart… I welcome you!

That would be silly! Anyone attempting to do so would be defeating their motivation of faith.

Peace!!!

 

[Della]

Why should we try to pick apart your atheism? Why should we make the effort? Are you ready/open to consider what we’d write? Are you disposed to actually credit our evidence? That’s what I’d like to know before writing a lot of words if you just want to brush us aside. If your mind is made up–what do you hope to gain except to confirm what you already believe by dismissing anything we’d write? Sounds like an exercise in futility to me.

 

[Bballer32]

All-mighty Lady-Chance-did-it: If no God creator of the Cosmos made all this and provided that mighty initial spark for life, then chance must have done it - no purpose, no intent, no reason… Or something like this, right?
Well, I prefer not to be so bleak, but ultimately, yes… Under the assumption that no God exists, there seems to have been no consciousness that somehow started the Universe. Mind you, we, human race, don’t know how the Universe came into being. We can trace it back to the big bang… well, almost to the Big Bang and then our known physics becomes unsuitable, so the real answer is “I don’t know”, actually, no one knows. If anyone claims to know, they’re making it up. Any claim of divine revelation is also seen as making it up.

So, by believing in Chance, you are giving a lot of credit to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, who, for the most part, are not well accepted among common philosophers and scientists. The belief in Chance is interesting, as it denies Order.

To deny Order is to deny basically anything and everything that has existed, is existing, and will exist. We cannot say that a stack of logs next to a house happened to be there by Chance. If they did, then the next pattern of logs should not look the same as the first and it also should never happen that way again, for Chance is sporadic and never the same.

If everything came about by Chance, then why does a Weeping Willow tree droop the way it does? How come when we plant the seed of a Weeping Willow, we will know that it will droop the same way as the other one, if everything were to only come about by Chance?

What about human teeth? If everything comes about by Chance, then why do we have sharp teeth in the front, and flat teeth in the back in every single human person? For if it happened by Chance we would have some with flat in front, sharp in back, a mixture of the two, and so on. When a person does, however, have different teeth, we don’t say “oh that’s just by chance” we call it a disorder because it’s not the way the teeth were designed to operate.

And you cannot say that Evolution created this order because in a sense, Evolution itself is flawed by Chance. Actually, Chance contradicts evolution, because Chance denies the possibility of Order.

Now, I’m going to assume right now (yes assume ) that you will respond something along the lines of “Well Chance created the Order.” Well, no that’s not exactly true. For if the universe Started by Chance, then there can never be any order (Read any of Aristotle or Plato on Nature and you will see my argument, especially Physics and Parts of Animals). You would also be denying your initial argument of everything Happening by Chance, because when does Chance end? Or does it?

That’s all I got for now before Class hahaha

So, provided no God is available, why do people believe in them? How did that happen?
Sadly, written history starts at a time when religions already exist, so we don’t have any way of knowing the answer to this question.
We can try to reason it out, using the few pieces left behind for archaeologists to find, mingling them with known psychological traits shared by most humans (and likely shared with those humans who started the belief in spiritual entities).
Bah… we can never know the particulars, but my general guess is that, at some point, the frustration of not knowing many answers to questions that were burning their early curiosity-ridden minds led them to speculation… from wild speculation told over a campfire to a story which feels like it’s conveying the reality of things would go but a few generations, if any at all.

Have you ever thought that there might be a reason why History started appearing at a certain time and only through that of Religious texts? Sometimes seeing the “other view” opens ones eyes to a question.

It does make some sense, seeing as Christianity itself is clearly an evolution of the Judaic model.

But Chance had no interference?

 

[pocaracas]

Why should we try to pick apart your atheism? Why should we make the effort? Are you ready/open to consider what we’d write? Are you disposed to actually credit our evidence? That’s what I’d like to know before writing a lot of words if you just want to brush us aside. If your mind is made up–what do you hope to gain except to confirm what you already believe by dismissing anything we’d write? Sounds like an exercise in futility to me.

I always consider everything people write to me.
I may disagree with it, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t consider it.

Disposed to credit your evidence? certainly. If the evidence proves to be credible. This is one detail that seems to be an Achilles Heel for most (if not all) religions… but perhaps you have some extra bit that I’m not aware and is a real game changer.

 

[Della]

I always consider everything people write to me.
I may disagree with it, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t consider it.

Good.

Disposed to credit your evidence? certainly. If the evidence proves to be credible. This is one detail that seems to be an Achilles Heel for most (if not all) religions… but perhaps you have some extra bit that I’m not aware and is a real game changer.

Okay, but what evidence will you accept as credible? There are several kinds of evidence, you know.

 

[simpleas]

 

[JM3]

If anyone claims to know, they’re making it up.

Yet, science also ‘makes it up’ and calls them theories.

Consider this.

The fact is, however, that except in the very weak sense, Prigogine has not shown that dissipation of energy in an open system produces order. In the chaotic behavior of a system in which a very large energy dissipation is taking place, certain temporary structures (he calls them “dissipative structures”) form and then soon decay. They have never been shown—even mathematically—to reproduce themselves or to generate still higher degrees of order.

So, provided no God is available, why do people believe in them? How did that happen?

God interacted with His creation, to the point that He joined human nature to His own.

but my general guess is that, at some point, the frustration of not knowing many answers to questions that were burning their early curiosity-ridden minds led them to speculation…

Sounds like a good definition of science.

 

[Sola_Catholicus]

The typical narcissistic atheist thinks we care about his thoughts enough to “pick them apart.”

Entertaining.

 

[pocaracas]

So, by believing in Chance, you are giving a lot of credit to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, who, for the most part, are not well accepted among common philosophers and scientists. The belief in Chance is interesting, as it denies Order.

I think much has been discovered about the Universe, since those pre-socratic philosophers…

And I don’t follow how chance denies order…
Chance is a concept developed to express our own ignorance of how things happen.
Some things seem to be purely random, like what happens at the quantum level… but maybe they’re not really random… maybe there’s some inherent order to it… I don’t know.
According to what we do know, some things do seem random.
In quantum mechanics, the randomness follows some pattern, thus enabling us to attribute a certain degree of probability to a few different outcomes.

To call this a “belief in chance” seems to me to be a bit of a stretch… it’s more an embracing the unknown.

To deny Order is to deny basically anything and everything that has existed, is existing, and will exist. We cannot say that a stack of logs next to a house happened to be there by Chance. If they did, then the next pattern of logs should not look the same as the first and it also should never happen that way again, for Chance is sporadic and never the same.

You know the odds of winning the lottery? staggeringly low, right? And yet, week after week, someone does win it.
Never the same person, though…

And you cannot say that Evolution created this order because in a sense, Evolution itself is flawed by Chance. Actually, Chance contradicts evolution, because Chance denies the possibility of Order.

Now, I’m going to assume right now (yes assume ) that you will respond something along the lines of “Well Chance created the Order.” Well, no that’s not exactly true. For if the universe Started by Chance, then there can never be any order (Read any of Aristotle or Plato on Nature and you will see my argument, especially Physics and Parts of Animals). You would also be denying your initial argument of everything Happening by Chance, because when does Chance end? Or does it?

How about if I say “the Universe started by some unknown mechanism”?

That’s all I got for now before Class hahaha

Enjoy!

Have you ever thought that there might be a reason why History started appearing at a certain time and only through that of Religious texts? Sometimes seeing the “other view” opens ones eyes to a question.

“only through religious texts”? Are you sure?
I was under the impression that they were for telling stories, record keeping and stuff like that… of course, one may include theological stories in the mix… and they certainly have been included in the ancient Sumerian texts that have survived.

But Chance had no interference?

Luck, I’d say…

 

[pocaracas]

Okay, but what evidence will you accept as credible? There are several kinds of evidence, you know.

Depends on what you wish do show, I guess.
There’s that old saying “extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence”…
Ordinary claims, on the other hand, can the evidenced by simple things.

Take Socrates… for all we know, he may never have lived… he may have been a figure from Plato’s imagination. But it’s far easier to accept that he did exist, given how extensively Plato talks about him and of what he allegedly taught.
It’s an ordinary claim, backed by ordinary evidence. It may be a lie, but it’s harmless, at this distance…

Now take Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. Are we to accept that he communed with an angel and got all the Qur’an from that angel… and he got all the strength to take over all the Arabic Peninsula from Allah himself?.. or something else happened in there?

 

[Convert1]

I have a friend that is an atheist. I love her. She has helped me when I needed her and we have had numerous heart to heart discussions on why I am Catholic and why she is atheist. I have often asked her how she makes it without a belief in God? She always says just fine, because she doesn’t think there is one. I am puzzled by this, but of course, she is also puzzled by me.

She has asked me time and time again, "There is no real evidence for what you believe, why do you hold to such ideas that have no credibility? I explain that I do not think the Holy Bible or the Torah was just a compilation of papyrus someone threw together over a few hundred years just to have a “good and moral story”. I also do not believe that the ideas of Judaism or Christianity would have existed for two thousand years if there was absolutely no substance to any of it. She always says the same thing, “But how do you know what you feel is truly a belief in God, not a belief in a created idea?”

The discussion always seems to wind down with my final explanation to her: I tell her I have Faith. It is Faith I have held to when I had nothing else. It is this Faith that foregoes any proof, or evidence, or anything else. The true essence of my Faith is as strong as any feeling I have ever experienced. That includes loving my husband, or my children.

This may not be the answers or discussion you were looking for, but I can only relate my own experiences.

 

[Lou2U]

The typical narcissistic atheist thinks we care about his thoughts enough to “pick them apart.”

Entertaining.

Shouldn’t you care, though?

If you have been called to evangelise by your faith, shouldn’t you care what an Atheist thinks? Shouldn’t you want to try and show your faith and explain why you believe in it instead of calling the OP and other Atheists “narcissistic”?

I call myself Agnostic because I do not have enough knowledge to say either way if there could be a God or not. Threads like this help me to see both perspectives and allow me to explore my own beliefs more deeply. So thanks, OP, for starting it.

Lou

 

[pocaracas]

Yet, science also ‘makes it up’ and calls them theories.

Consider this.

yep, that’s true.
No need to go for chaos theory… Einstein made up his general relativity… mathematically. Only then was it shown experimentally to be accurate… well, accurate enough to explain certain phenomena.
Quantum mechanics was also something of a conundrum.

But these hypothesis sometimes provide a model which can be consistently applied to the world… and provide consistent positive results. The model then becomes a valid theory. One that may be updated to accommodate new evidence, or utterly reformed.
Take Newton’s gravitation… it’s good enough, but fails for high speeds and high gravitational fields - enter Einstein’s general relativity… but that, too fails at the very small scale… enter QCD… and I don’t know where that one fails… but it must have its limits.

Things are made up, tested against reality, to the best of our ability. If they succeed, they’re kept as worthy models of reality.

God interacted with His creation, to the point that He joined human nature to His own.

That’s pretty… but how would you know that?

 

[pocaracas]

The typical narcissistic atheist thinks we care about his thoughts enough to “pick them apart.”

Entertaining.

Some seem to care… do stick around!

 

[pocaracas]

I have a friend that is an atheist. I love her. She has helped me when I needed her and we have had numerous heart to heart discussions on why I am Catholic and why she is atheist. I have often asked her how she makes it without a belief in God? She always says just fine, because she doesn’t think there is one. I am puzzled by this, but of course, she is also puzzled by me.

She has asked me time and time again, "There is no real evidence for what you believe, why do you hold to such ideas that have no credibility? I explain that I do not think the Holy Bible or the Torah was just a compilation of papyrus someone threw together over a few hundred years just to have a “good and moral story”. I also do not believe that the ideas of Judaism or Christianity would have existed for two thousand years if there was absolutely no substance to any of it. She always says the same thing, “But how do you know what you feel is truly a belief in God, not a belief in a created idea?”

The discussion always seems to wind down with my final explanation to her: I tell her I have Faith. It is Faith I have held to when I had nothing else. It is this Faith that foregoes any proof, or evidence, or anything else. The true essence of my Faith is as strong as any feeling I have ever experienced. That includes loving my husband, or my children.

This may not be the answers or discussion you were looking for, but I can only relate my own experiences.

Thanks for sharing! I really liked that.
If you feel that Faith helps you in your life, by all means, endeavor to keep it close.

Personally, I have no need for it.
I think those holy books were compiled over time by people who really believed their contents… it is likely that those who wrote each individual papyrus also firmly believed what they were writing. But that doesn’t mean it has much bearing in reality outside of people’s minds. Maybe it does… maybe it doesn’t.
You feel good by thinking that it does, so stick to it!
I feel good by thinking that it doesn’t, so I stick to that.

 

[pocaracas]

I call myself Agnostic because I do not have enough knowledge to say either way if there could be a God or not. Threads like this help me to see both perspectives and allow me to explore my own beliefs more deeply. So thanks, OP, for starting it.

Cheers!

I too have no way of knowing either way… but, if I had to bet, I’d go for the no-god ballot.
I see no god operating… I do see people claiming that a god does operate (right now, I’m using small ‘g’ god to denote all gods). I read books written by people with such claims.
However, the main guy seems remarkably absent, to me.

The idea of a god itself is an amazing psychological draw, so I can understand why so many people follow it.
Ever since I realized that psychology may account for all the religious experiences, I became very very skeptical of all those experiences as representative of an underlying reality where a divine being is always working.

Still, if people feel good with that belief, who am I to take it away from them?
(even if I were to try it, I don’t have the charisma to convince people of such things )

 

[Della]

Depends on what you wish do show, I guess.
There’s that old saying “extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence”…
Ordinary claims, on the other hand, can the evidenced by simple things.

I’d be careful what you classify as ordinary things. There are quite a few ordinary things we can’t explain and for which there is no evidence that would convince the materialist, and yet they exist and have deep meaning because they exist.

Take Socrates… for all we know, he may never have lived… he may have been a figure from Plato’s imagination. But it’s far easier to accept that he did exist, given how extensively Plato talks about him and of what he allegedly taught.
It’s an ordinary claim, backed by ordinary evidence. It may be a lie, but it’s harmless, at this distance…

This can be said of any historical figure, but again, the existence of any person, any liivng things, even simple blades of grass, are not ordinary things–they are extraordinary when looked at closely.

Now take Muhammad, the Islamic prophet. Are we to accept that he communed with an angel and got all the Qur’an from that angel… and he got all the strength to take over all the Arabic Peninsula from Allah himself?.. or something else happened in there?

He may have communed with an angel. Many have claimed to have done so. It proves nothing, really. And we know that he conquered the Arabian Pennisula by means of the sword–nothing odd about that. What he inspired in others that makes them better people is fine. But that doesn’t require anyone to follow his teachings or his beliefs, does it?

So, what is good for people to believe and why? Perhaps that might be a question you’d like to explore.

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

God created the Earth and everything else, including us humans.

How do you account for our bodies having the same parts (except for the obvious male versus female differences)? How an egg and a sperm fertilizing it becomes a living being at conception and develops into a being with two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, etc.? It is a miracle and it is because of God that this happens.

There is A LOT that goes into a woman becoming pregnant. The right timing, egg, sperm, environment (in the woman’s body), etc. There is way too much to list in a thread. The way that this happens: God’s will!

 

[Bballer32]

Chance is a concept developed to express our own ignorance of how things happen.
Some things seem to be purely random, like what happens at the quantum level… but maybe they’re not really random… maybe there’s some inherent order to it… I don’t know.
According to what we do know, some things do seem random.
In quantum mechanics, the randomness follows some pattern, thus enabling us to attribute a certain degree of probability to a few different outcomes.

Your view of Chance sounds like a god, for in the place of your ignorance you place chance where someone might place God. Kind of a like a “God of the Gaps” kind of argument (just stick a god in the place where we can’t know, except in your case we would insert chance).

The fact that “randomness” follows a pattern means that it isn’t randomness anymore. Nothing that follows a pattern is random, even if it is random in and of itself. That defies the law of non-contradiction

How about if I say “the Universe started by some unknown mechanism”?

So a God? hahaha