Belief... or lack thereof

[Bradski]

So the result is that there must have been a beginning to the universe, and thus and outside cause. “But who created God then” you probably ask.

Whoa, back the truck up a little. That’s quite a leap you’ve made there. If I may paraphrase:

I don’t know how the Universe started…therefore God did it.

It’s understandable, because that’s what people have been saying for as long as people have been…well, saying things. That is:

I don’t know X, therefore Y.

Where X is anything they don’t understand, such as lightning, death, earthquakes, how the Universe began etc and Y is the god of their choice. You can say that everyone else is wrong, but if they are using the same argument as you are, then you have a problem.

 

[Bballer32]

I must disagree.
I think people can’t choose their beliefs.
They just believe what resonates the most with them… and, usually, that will be what they are taught as children.

Actually, anyone that has a belief has chosen it. It’s like a language. I may have grown up with English, used it all the time, and I might even prefer it, but I still have to choose to use English because I could easily choose to use Spanish or Latin or heck even gibberish.

Or let’s look at school. Your parents sent you to school (let’s say) and you did that for quite some time and then at one point let’s say your sophomore year of high school the thought of choosing to continue on or not came into your brain. You could just as easily choose to run away from school, but let’s say you decided to choose to stay in school.

Or let’s look now at beliefs. Your profile says you were raised Catholic, but now you are “nothing”. Clearly you had to choose to be Catholic or Not.

At some point in time, a person chooses to do something.

 

[ericc]

I think you meant to say ‘…to believe there are no gods’.

No, I meant God, just one Supreme Being will do . If folks already have a mental block problem with one, why add more? They can’t handle it.

 

[Bballer32]

Chance plays a critical part, but natural selection is not random. And if it’s not random, then you end up with order. Hence weeping willows and incisors and molars etc.

Yes, Natural Selection is not random, I can agree to that. The point that neither of you has made is how Chance can suddenly become ordered.

Also, I would like to add this. How the heck did Chance bring about Life from Lifeless Things at Random, but for some reason our modern technology and ability to create synthetic elements and the likes cannot bring about Life from Lifeless things.

And you know why? Because every single philosopher and scientist who actually thought things through with reality knew that it is utterly impossible to bring about life through lifeless things. It’s because Ancient, Classical, and Modern Skepticism has clouded our minds with doubt and has ceased to focus on what really matters on how to find the beginning and nature of things.

We must Look at the Final Cause first and work your way backwards; efficient and material causes are a secondary focus. Skepticism switches the two focuses around, which is where all the confusion on First Cause sets in.

 

[ericc]

Yes, Natural Selection is not random, I can agree to that. The point that neither of you has made is how Chance can suddenly become ordered.

Also, I would like to add this. How the heck did Chance bring about Life from Lifeless Things at Random, but for some reason our modern technology and ability to create synthetic elements and the likes cannot bring about Life from Lifeless things.

I can tell you that the standard answers would be :

1. Scientists have already created the rudimentary elements of amino acids in the lab.( but they won’t tell you how unnaturally they got these results)
2. One day science will get there. (kicking the can down the road again)

And items continuing to be outstanding is the inadequacy of the scientific method to explain

a) existence. Some how before the Big Bang , stuff/energies just exist. And that is a miracle in itself to accept that as permissible scientific method.
b) life and how it was put together. There is not enough time in randomness to get there.
c) consciousness/self awareness
d) religion and the supernatural

And in addition , the inability to comprehend that not all knowledge must be science -based. There are the arts, philosophy, sociology etc which qualifies as knowledge too.
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard of a convincing reason as to why the scientific method is the only acceptable method.

The answers to a,b,c,d is refer to 2 above.

 

[Bradski]

Actually, anyone that has a belief has chosen it. It’s like a language. I may have grown up with English, used it all the time, and I might even prefer it, but I still have to choose to use English e Catholic or Not.

Sure. You choose to speak English. But you don’t ‘believe’ English. The comparison is non existent.

Let me put it this way. It is literally impossible to believe something unless you have received some information about it. You have a choice as to whether accept the information as being valid or not. That is, you accept it or reject it and THEREFORE believe it or not.

If that is not the case then there would be things that you believe about which you have no information (literally impossible) or things that you believe despite the fact that you have rejected the evidence for it. To prove your case, you are going to give me an example of that. Otherwise, that order, that sequence stands.

You are given information.
You accept it or reject it.
You THEREFORE believe it or not.

It cannot happen any other way.

 

[Bradski]

How the heck did Chance bring about Life from Lifeless Things at Random, but for some reason our modern technology and ability to create synthetic elements and the likes cannot bring about Life from Lifeless things.

Let’s agree that there was a Big Bang. Let’s say that God did it. He started everything up so that galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets formed as a result. Then continents, seas, mountains etc. And we have scientific evidence for how most of those the processes occur. We describe them as natural processes.

Are you suggesting that God could set things up so that the universe and everything within it formed naturally but He couldn’t work out how to include life? That He had to stop whatever He was doing and get it going after it had all been ticking over lifelessly for a few billion years?

What you are saying is that if we know how things occurred we can call them ‘natural’ and if we don’t then they must be unnatural. If you want to argue that there is no answer to how life started, and that therefore there is a God, then can we agree that if an answer is found we can say that therefore there is no God?

Sounds risky to me. Sounds like a God of the Gaps argument.

 

[Bradski]

No, I meant God, just one Supreme Being will do . If folks already have a mental block problem with one, why add more? They can’t handle it.

But atheism doesn’t mean you don’t just believe in God. Otherwise someone who is Hindu would be an atheist. So ‘gods’ is correct.

 

[pocaracas]

I would like to challenge you to read a book on the power of chance or lack thereof, by R.C. Sproul. The title is “Not a Chance”. I would send it to you, but I’m living away from home for now.

Thank you for the suggestion.
It’s on my to-read list. I can’t promise I’ll read it within the next week, though… books take time… too much time, and I already have a backlog of them to read.

I’ve looked at a few reviews on amazon and some people praise the book, some people point out some nasty “mistakes”… this’ll be interesting…

 

[pocaracas]

So, the next part of the question is a two part-er.

#1: Are you genuinely seeking to discover the nature of reality and existence. (The assumed point of making this topic, asking us to engage you.)

#2: Do you believe that the potential for an eternal afterlife warrants consideration in this life?

Given that you’re posting here, I’m going to assume that the answer to each of these questions is “yes.”

With that in mind, if God could reveal himself, it then becomes important to consider whether or not He has. (Again, this assumes that the question of an eternal afterlife warrants consideration, which I’ve assumed you think it does due to making this topic.)

From here, we can begin considering the basic nature of a god who would create this universe through the observable features of our reality. And so, I would put forward the following premises on the nature of God: (Please note, these rely on the premise that an entity cannot create something that he does not first contain. Essentially, a programmer can’t make a program do something the programmer does not understand. I think this is a fairly reasonable assumption to make)

#1: God is rational and ordered. I arrive at this conclusion based on the fact that nature is ordered in such a way that we can make sense of it. It has a logical foundation from which we are able to discern the principles that govern it. (Mathematics, physics, etc.)

#2: God is loving. I arrive at this conclusion because the act of creation for its own sake is an act of love. You do not put real time and effort into something you don’t care about (well… maybe your job ). Given the vast complexities of our universe, it is reasonable to assume that a great deal of “thought” would be required for it’s creation in order for it to be so well ordered (clause 1), which would imply a great deal of care and consideration.

From clauses #1 & #2: God HAS chosen to reveal himself to us. This is not a “could he,” this is a positive assertion that by His very nature (per points one and two) He would be compelled to reveal Himself. Any act of genuine love desires to share itself with the object of its love. When I create a piece of artwork I admire it; when I make a program to do something, I use it. When I love my wife, I share myself with her in everything I do. If God does love His creation, then He would desire to share himself with it. Since we would be part of His creation, this means that He would desire to share himself with us. As such, I again make the positive assertion that He has revealed himself to us.

Well… all my answers are given… don’t even need to answer!

I agree with you for the most part.
There’s a tiny detail that, for an infinitely powerful being, any complexity of our Universe should be considered infinitesimal… not something that would take that much “time and effort”… so maybe the loving part is missing a bit, unless we’re not discussing an “infinitely powerful being”…
Actually, we haven’t defined what you mean by “God”… but I was working with the standard “all powerful” bit.
Some people have added “All loving”, suggesting that these are not necessarily two features that depend on each other, as you said.
Perhaps they arrive at the “all loving” conclusion by some other means… I’m curious about those…

Sorry, have to run, so this will be my last post for the night. I’ll check in in the morning, or I’d be happy to continue over pm.

Hehe… I too had to sleep.
Now, I’m “working”… while the program runs, I read and reply…
PMs are overrated… and my PM box is way too limited, for some reason…

 

[pocaracas]

This is a tricky question. On the one hand Rm. 1 says that God has sufficiently revealed Himself in creation that no one has an excuse. Ps. 19 says that “the heavens are revealing His glory” You can get a much better explanation of how if you You Tube “gospel in the stars”.
On the other hand, Jesus said no one can come to Me unless the Father draws him. Jn.6:44.
However, there is no one that God will not reveal himself to if they would only ask.
I would challenge you to ask Jesus to reveal himself to you . Just explain your problem to Him. He can handle it.

Once, a priest told me to start with a “hello”.
So I did.
I said hello.
It’s been over 5 years, now… still waiting for the hello back. Simple handshaking in communications is only polite, don’t you think?
How would I go about explaining my problem to “Him”? Talk to the air? Inner thinking?

The “hello” was talking to the air…

 

[pocaracas]

Atheism is also a “religion” that requires an enormous amount of faith to believe there is no God.

Aww… no… don’t do that.
Come on…
I started the thread with the definition that an atheist is a person who disbelieves that there is a God or gods. It’s not the belief that God (or gods) don’t exist.
There’s a small difference that is crucial for my own intellectual honesty.

This lack of belief leads, in my case, to the acknowledgement that we don’t know a lot of things we’d like to know…

• We don’t know how the Universe got started.
• We don’t know how life got started on Earth.
• We don’t know what happens to our consciousness after the biological death of the brain where it seems to reside.

We can speculate on these and other unknowns… but we should be aware that we are only speculating and not providing definite answers.
Sometimes, a speculation provides a working model which is backed by evidence, so it becomes an answer… but those are rare events…

 

[pocaracas]

While the reasons I believe in God are mostly personal reasons that don’t do well for evangelizing to others, there is a scientific reason that I think does fairly well. So here I go…

It’s for things like these that I started this thread.
Everyone pooling their ideas together! I’m loving it!!

Everything we know has had a beginning, and nothing happens without a cause. If the universe had a beginning, then it had to have an outside cause. Now, some scientists say that the universe had always existed, but if this is so, then we wouldn’t be alive because the universe would have suffered heat death by now.

I think I may have spotted your first problem, here…
“everything we know has a beginning”… You shouldn’t extrapolate the things we know about within the Universe to the Universe itself… that is most likely not a valid extrapolation… but could be valid, yes. Just keep in mind that the validity of that step is not automatic.

Another thing is the definition of “beginning” we’re using here.
A chair begins to exist since it’s put together by a carpenter (or ourselves, if it comes from IKEA), but the components of the chair, the atoms, protons, neutron, electrons, etc . in the chair… those were already existing before the chair was put together. If it’s a wooden chair, those elements were existing in the wood, that came from a tree, that got them from nutrients and CO2 in the air, those ultimately came from the Solar system’s accretion disk that made up our planet, this disk came from the remnants of some star that went nova… now this star, as it was going nova, did something we call nuclear fusion, generating all the heavier elements (carbon, oxygen, etc…) from the lightest available - single protons, or Hydrogen. The protons on this first generation star came from the coalescence of 3 quarks, shortly after the big bang, these quarks came from… the big bang? I don’t know…
So, when did the chair begin to exist?

Now, I probably screwed up big on my science somewhere, so feel free to point anything out. But this is pretty much the extant of my scientific knowledge, although most of it probably got screwed up by relying on wikipedia and simplified articles.

Yes, big-bang/Big-Crunch yo-yo Universes seem to be out of the picture, given the latest measurements of the current expansion rate of the Universe.
The timeless mass… honestly, it’s the first time I hear that notion… interesting, but yeah… weird and doesn’t seem clean enough to be realistic.

I’ve heard of another option, based on quantum foam and virtual particles that pop up in complete vacuum. This still requires space-time to exist, but that’s not so much of a stretch of the imagination… an infinite space-time continuum that (as far as we can tell) randomly generates particles here and there… virtual particles can, according to the QCD theory that is way above my pay-grade, under certain circumstances cross over to real particles. It’s possible that such an effect happened in a cascading way that generated countless particles in a very localized point in space-time… This could cause a very sudden contraction of the space-time “tissue” followed by the decompression which we see now as the expansion of the Universe.
I like this option, but I’m fully aware that we may have no real way of checking it.
So it remains speculation.

One cool thing that can come out of this notion is the fact that, given an infinite space-time (existing prior to our Universe) if it generates one Universe like that… then it seems possible that other universes exist out there… possibly infinite Universes.
But, of course, we have no way of verifying this…

 

[pocaracas]

Actually, anyone that has a belief has chosen it. It’s like a language. I may have grown up with English, used it all the time, and I might even prefer it, but I still have to choose to use English because I could easily choose to use Spanish or Latin or heck even gibberish.

Or let’s look at school. Your parents sent you to school (let’s say) and you did that for quite some time and then at one point let’s say your sophomore year of high school the thought of choosing to continue on or not came into your brain. You could just as easily choose to run away from school, but let’s say you decided to choose to stay in school.

Or let’s look now at beliefs. Your profile says you were raised Catholic, but now you are “nothing”. Clearly you had to choose to be Catholic or Not.

At some point in time, a person chooses to do something.

I wouldn’t say it’s like language or school at all…
But I can’t come up with any way of conveying how…

As for me, well, at some point in my life I had an epiphany… it was a stupid one, in hindsight, but it gave me the kick required to think out of the box, to give me ability to doubt what others were telling me about the God they believed in.
I was 10 years old, or so… listening to the news, they claimed there were cameras in some chinese village recording something that happened. I remember thinking “man, they have cameras everywhere, nowadays”… and then… “hey, you know what else they say is everywhere? God… how come cameras and God never met? Could it be that one of them isn’t there?”
That turned me into a skeptic of what people say about any god… and what people write about them…
Basically, I stopped believing those things and started building alternative reasonings to account for the world around us (science helped a lot) and for what has made people believe as they do.
I am satisfied with my present views on these things… but I’m open to considering alternatives.

 

[thistle]

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!

Modern Catholic Dictionary:

ATHEISM. Denial of a personal God who is totally distinct from the world he created. Modern atheism has become so varied and widespread that the Second Vatican council identified no less than eight forms of disbelief under the single term atheismus: “Some people expressly deny the existence of God. Others maintain that man cannot make any assertion whatsoever about Him. Still others admit only such methods of investigation as would make it seem quite meaningless to ask questions about God. Many, trespassing beyond the boundaries of the positive sciences, either contend that everything can be explained by the reasoning process used in such sciences, or, on the contrary, hold that there is no such thing as absolute truth. With others it is their exaggerated idea of man that causes their faith to languish; they are more prone, it would seem, to affirm man than to deny God. Yet others have such a faulty notion of God that when they disown this product of the imagination their denial has no reference to the God of the Gospels. There are also those who never enquire about God; religion never seems to trouble or interest them at all, nor do they try to see why they should bother about it” (Church in the Modern World, I, 19). In the light of this array of infidelity, it was only logical for the Council to declare that atheism is one of the greatest problems facing mankind in the world today. (Etym. Greek atheos, denying the gods, without a god.)

 

[ericc]

Aww… no… don’t do that.
Come on…
I started the thread with the definition that an atheist is a person who disbelieves that there is a God or gods. It’s not the belief that God (or gods) don’t exist.
There’s a small difference that is crucial for my own intellectual honesty.

Help me here. Can you highlight the difference between:

a) A disbelieve in God/gods
b) Believe in no God/gods

What would be the difference that affects your intellectual honesty? And why would you prefer a) over b)? Does the difference makes a difference in your choice of a) over b)? Meaning how did you come to the conclusion that a) is correct and not b) and on what basis, scientific or otherwise you discern the difference.

My Oxford dictionary say an atheist is a person who belief that there is no God. Your initial exuberance sort of display you didn’t really care about labels, but apparently you do.

 

[pocaracas]

Yes, Natural Selection is not random, I can agree to that. The point that neither of you has made is how Chance can suddenly become ordered.

Chance is a word used to describe our ignorance of all the factors involved.
It doesn’t mean that the underlying cause for the event isn’t ordered, it just means that we don’t know enough about it to understand the order of things.

Also, I would like to add this. How the heck did Chance bring about Life from Lifeless Things at Random, but for some reason our modern technology and ability to create synthetic elements and the likes cannot bring about Life from Lifeless things.

No one was there to see it happening.
It must have happened, using the available building blocks whatever those were…
I was once given this link as a way to settle that: theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

We must Look at the Final Cause first and work your way backwards; efficient and material causes are a secondary focus. Skepticism switches the two focuses around, which is where all the confusion on First Cause sets in.

The problem of working backwards is that we can think up of many potential “first causes” and many of them can account for the Universe as we know it… And not all of these first causes are sentient beings.

 

[ericc]

But atheism doesn’t mean you don’t just believe in God. Otherwise someone who is Hindu would be an atheist. So ‘gods’ is correct.

Hindus believe in one supreme spirit Brahman. The rest are ordinary human souls that have been “promoted” because they believe each soul is a god too. (This information may possibly be wrong and Hindus can and should correct me if I am in error)

 

[pocaracas]

I can tell you that the standard answers would be :

1. Scientists have already created the rudimentary elements of amino acids in the lab.( but they won’t tell you how unnaturally they got these results)

All results in the lab are unnatural… although they do try to mimic what the natural condition are for the particular experiment.
Sadly, we do not have millions of years to run an experiment where things just happen naturally.

1. One day science will get there. (kicking the can down the road again)

Or not… there are somethings that will likely remain unknown forever.

And items continuing to be outstanding is the inadequacy of the scientific method to explain

a) existence. Some how before the Big Bang , stuff/energies just exist. And that is a miracle in itself to accept that as permissible scientific method.

Why would it be a miracle to consider that space and time exist before the Big-Bang?

b) life and how it was put together. There is not enough time in randomness to get there.

Chemistry, geology, and physics may have played a role in it… not so random after all, huh?

c) consciousness/self awareness

Are those not made in a working brain?

d) religion and the supernatural

Couldn’t those also be made in a working brain?

And in addition , the inability to comprehend that not all knowledge must be science -based. There are the arts, philosophy, sociology etc which qualifies as knowledge too.
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard of a convincing reason as to why the scientific method is the only acceptable method.

The answers to a,b,c,d is refer to 2 above.

Obviously, not all concepts that exist are prone to be investigated by science.
But we’d expect that something that allegedly interacts with humans would have some measurable footprint

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

The only walking, talking apologetic God intended was the flesh and blood Pope Francis is always on about, the smiling mother (I just read a thread about a mother), the people unafraid of mess, the people who are “the mess”.

Why do we think anyone will let us win an “argument” with them!

If we ask people “are you an intelligent design?” they might say “well, I’m intelligent-ish, and I’m a thrown-together sort of design as it happens” but they don’t know how or why to integrate, compare or contrast it with what is usually grouped in religion or faith.

(For those squeamish about the vocabulary “design” let’s borrow the term “intentional” - do you get out of bed intentionally of a morning?)

So let’s radically reshift the entire “debate” - I mean really really radically - and make it existential.

Let’s also make it 100% pro everything and 0% anti anything. Let’s frame it as “the best of belief or lack thereof”.

What do your beliefs do for those around you? What have others’ beliefs done for you. For your soul, your heart, your wellbeing as a human being.

To show you what I mean I’ll start.

When I was 13-14 my schoolmate who was an atheist, probably from an atheistic family:

• kept me good company (not something I could take for granted generally)
• played wonderful piano for himself and me
• talked enthusiastic science
• shared with me the priceless gift of verbal humour

He understood words, he understood music, he understood science (supplementing my lessons), he hadn’t given up hope so he (probably without thinking about it) understood relating. He literally and simply brought those things into my life. For him, atheism was part and parcel, not an uneasy add-on.

There is even the aspect of what do you mean to you, what do you do for you. What are you glad of about you? What do you appreciate about you? That doesn’t mean you have to be exactly big-headed. A doormat is not the opposite of big-headed.

Because “belief” is part of a person’s core I think “lack of” either is a euphemism for a real belief or is a signal that a person is in some form of collapse.