Main Reason For Atheism

[AnAtheist]

john doran:

i don’t understand this. a “cause” is a thing, and a “beginning” is a moment; how can those things be identical? especially since a beginning needs a cause independent of it in order to begin in the first place…

Yeah, that sounds right. Actually without time or time “flowing” in one direction a cause cannot by identified. The very nature of a cause is that happens it before the effect.

Thus the “creation” of time must be without caused.

 

[AnAtheist]

Chris W:

If however, you make assertions which you cannot prove (i.e. there is no God) then you indeed have faith in something you cannot prove…

But is that the definition of faith? I mean, the term faith raises a lot of associations far beyond the mere “thinking something, that cannot be proven”.
Actually most atheists do not really bother with that (ie it needs faith to claim there is no god). The agitation arises, because they think it is a tu quoque accusation, like “See, you do the same like us.” implying that there is no difference in believing in a god and not believing in a god. But as the first usually includes worship, praying, in short practical religion, there are differences between both positions, though they are perhaps similar when it comes down to prove them.

 

[TTM]

Hi!

AnAtheist:

But is that the definition of faith?

Let’s find out. Here’s one entry on it (from the World Book dictionary in my comp’):

faith, noun, interjection, verb.
noun 1. a believing without proof; trust; confidence.
Ex. We have faith in our friends. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).
(SYN) reliance.
2. belief in God or in God’s promises, religion, or spiritual things.
Ex. Faith without works is dead (James 2:26).
3. what a person believes.
Ex. Faith that he was on the right track supported him through all his research.
(SYN) doctrine, tenet, creed.
4. a system of religion.
Ex. the Christian faith, the Jewish faith.
5. a being loyal; faithfulness.
Ex. Good faith is honesty of intention; bad faith is intent to deceive.
(SYN) fidelity, loyalty, constancy.
interj. truly; indeed.
Ex. I’d rather be in old John’s chimney corner, faith (Dickens).
v.t. (Archaic.) to put faith in; trust.
expr. break faith, to break one’s promise.
Ex. If you break faith once, you won’t be believed the next time.
expr. in bad faith, dishonestly; insincerely.
Ex. The swindler’s offer was in bad faith as he never expected to honor the agreement.
expr. in faith, truly; indeed.
Ex. In faith, man … I was never so sorry (Sir Thomas More).
expr. keep faith, to keep one’s promise.
Ex. She promised to pay her debt next day and she kept faith.
expr. keep the faith, (U.S. Informal.) to remain faithful to one’s convictions; refuse to retreat or give up.
Ex. The Journal … explained rather lamely that it had been concerned about libel charges. “The Journal couldn’t keep the faith,” retorted the mayor (Time).

Actually, for an atheist, it would be the very first definition; that is, “a believing without proof”. For a Christian, the term is inclusive of but not limited to that definition, because for Christians “faith” is trust in a person - that person being Christ. You see, it is not enough “believing” in God’s existence (for Satan believes, or better yet, knows of God’s existence!). A follower of Christ must place his trust in Him. I think C. S. Lewis had something to say about this in one of his collected essays - perhaps someone here can point it out for me.

God bless!
TTM

 

[TTM]

Just a disclaimer for the previous post though: I’m applying the term “without proof” in a very strictly existentialist manner (or at least, what I understand of it). It’s impossible to prove if the keyboard you’re typing on exists or not, for example (if it is, I guess I don’t know about it).

God bless!
TTM

 

[TTM]

Yeah, that sounds right. Actually without time or time “flowing” in one direction a cause cannot by identified. The very nature of a cause is that happens it before the effect.

Thus the “creation” of time must be without caused.

But time and space are relative, and we know that matter came into existence, so time must have a cause, right?

Blessings,
TTM

 

[TTM]

AnAtheist:

There are surely a lot of delusional people out there, but imo the notion of atheist, declaring themselves to be godlike is a simple category error.

I’m sure there are a lot of delusional people in both camps - I know I can be one of them sometimes, but admitting that is the beginning of wisdom, isn’t it?

I guess it’s safe to say that for Theists of any kind, their god is the most important thing in their life.

Not necessarily. For a person who believes in a “watchmaker” god, I don’t think such a god would mean anything at all. In the end, I think love is ultimately what makes God most important for a Christian.

Now God does appear in the list of things that are important to atheists, thus the place of the most important thing is occupied by something else. It is psychological understable that someone, who cannot think of a life without God, imagines that something replacing the place of God is treated like a god by the atheist.
I guess I make the same category error, when I treat the Creator as just another Big-Bang theory. That works in my mind, but not in the mind of a theist.

I’m guessing you meant “does not appear in the list of things that are important”. I guess it was a bit like that for me too, except that for me Truth was what was most important for me - and I would dare say that ultimately that’s what people want the most (when they’re sane), because none of us likes to live a lie or a made-up story. So, I think personally I’m happy if people are not only open to the Truth, but in active pursuit of it, because life’s a journey.

God bless!
TTM

 

[john_doran]

Yeah, that sounds right. Actually without time or time “flowing” in one direction a cause cannot by identified. The very nature of a cause is that happens it before the effect.

Thus the “creation” of time must be without caused.

i’m pretty sure we’ve had a go-round on this point before…

you assume that causal priority entails temporal priority, but there’s nothing about the causal principle (“whatever begins to exist has a cause”) that implies any such thing. cause and effect can be simultaneous without thereby impugning the causal priority of the cause. if you search the philosophical literature, you can find essays dealing with the epistemological problem of determining causal asymmetry in cases of simultaneous cause-and-effect transactions, so you see that the phenomenon isn’t all that recondite. mackie’s done some work on it, for one.

 

[john_doran]

AnAtheist:

Actually most atheists do not really bother with that (ie it needs faith to claim there is no god). The agitation arises, because they think it is a tu quoque accusation, like “See, you do the same like us.” implying that there is no difference in believing in a god and not believing in a god. But as the first usually includes worship, praying, in short practical religion, there are differences between both positions, though they are perhaps similar when it comes down to prove them.

for sure the word “faith” has religious connotations, but the way it is used by chris and by myself in these sorts of contexts is in its essential semantic form of “believing that which cannot be demonstrated”.

and the point is to make a tu quoque accusation: whenever it happens that someone asks for a demonstration of a proposition (e.g. “god exists”) and objects to all of the responses on the basis of a failure of deductive certainty, it is an absolutely legitimate move to point out that they themselves hold other beliefs on the basis of equally uncertain evidence. and that, if the thesitic arguments fail and theistic belief should therefore be discounted, then so should all of those other beliefs, as well.

actually, it’s more of a reductio than anything else.

 

[AnAtheist]

TTM:

But time and space are relative,

That has nothing to do with it.

and we know that matter came into existence, so time must have a cause, right?

Does that differ from “everything that exists has a cause”?

 

[AnAtheist]

AnAtheist:

There are surely a lot of delusional people out there, but imo the notion of atheist, declaring themselves to be godlike is a simple category error.
world. I guess it’s safe to say that for Theists of any kind, their god is the most important thing in their life. Thus “God” and “most important thing” is somewhat identical and synonymous. Now God does not appear in the list of things that are important to atheists, thus the place of the most important thing is occupied by something else. It is psychological understable that someone, who cannot think of a life without God, imagines that something replacing the place of God is treated like a god by the atheist.
I guess I make the same category error, when I treat the Creator as just another Big-Bang theory. That works in my mind, but not in the mind of a theist.

 

[AnAtheist]

TTM:

Not necessarily. For a person who believes in a “watchmaker” god, I don’t think such a god would mean anything at all. In the end, I think love is ultimately what makes God most important for a Christian.

Ok.

I’m guessing you meant “does not appear in the list of things that are important”.

D’uh. Of course I did.

 

[Chris_W]

john doran:

for sure the word “faith” has religious connotations, but the way it is used by chris and by myself in these sorts of contexts is in its essential semantic form of “believing that which cannot be demonstrated”…

Exactly. My point in this line of reasoning is not to annoy atheists. Rather, I see the arguments between atheists and theists freqeuntly follow a disorganized flow of thought. In my experience it usually goes something like this, but not necessarily in this order:

An atheist says “there is no proof”
A theists describes an evidence, perhaps a series of conclusions based on what he perceives as logic.
The atheists responds with something like “that can hardly be considered proof”
The theists responds with "well then prove to me God doesn’t exist, (i.e. there must necessarily be naturalistic answers).
The atheist responds with “science does not attempt to answer the question”
…and round and round we go.

So it seems worthwhile to me to try to set the framework for discusion that has at least the potential to be productive or meaningful. I attempt to do that by saying “Okay, let’s all agree that science cannot answer the question. And let’s all agree that our respective world views rely at least in part on some beliefs that cannot be proven (what I call “faith”).”

Without these fundamental agreements, my experience is that the discussion will jump from topic to topic, one-liner digs at the others faith and so on, with the end result being both parties leave with the conclusion the other is unreasonable. Yet we keep coming back to attempt a discussion again, don’t we? Why? Because we all consider ourselves reasonable people, just unable to communicate with the others in a way that is pursuasive.

My hope then, is that we can all agree that what the question really comes down to is “which belief system (neither of which can be demonstrated conclusively) is more reasonable to believe?” And to answer that question, we must turn our attention to more productive arguments about evidences that fall outside the realm what can be known exclusively through scientific endeavors. Each party then must make their case based on what “circumstantial evidences” exist which they believe supports their world view (like the current ongoing discussion between An Atheist and John Doran).

It should not be that atheists require theists to support their world view, and are given the opportunity to ciriticise the arguments, while atheists make no attempt to support their world view and merely state “there is no proof God exists” or “science does not address the question”, as if their world view was based exclusively on what can be demonstrated conclusively (which is not the case).

Make sense?

 

[TTM]

AnAtheist:

But time and space are relative

That has nothing to do with it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you not arguing that time does not have a cause? In which case, it has everything to do with it, since time cannot exist apart from matter (this is what I meant by “relative”), and therefore it has to have a cause.

 

[TTM]

Chris W:

My hope then, is that we can all agree that what the question really comes down to is “which belief system (neither of which can be demonstrated conclusively) is more reasonable to believe?”

Yup, good point.

It’s reasonable to believe that the keyboard I’m typing on actually exists, but that can never be proved. So every belief system, including atheism, is faith based - Christianity just happens to be honest about it.

That’s why Socrates was wise in knowing that he did not know everything - humility and a thirst for Truth are the beginning of wisdom.

God bless!
TTM

 

[AnAtheist]

TTM:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you not arguing that time does not have a cause? In which case, it has everything to do with it, since time cannot exist apart from matter (this is what I meant by “relative”), and therefore it has to have a cause.

Ok, I was blinded by my profession. “Relative” in terms of relativity means, there is no absolute reference frame, for example the time period between two incidents measured in different reference frames are not equal.
Time cannot be separated from space, that is fact. If and how time has a similar relationship with matter, is not at all clear.

 

[AnAtheist]

Chris W:

Make sense?

That makes a lot of sense.
That is exactly, why people like me are obsessed with empirical proof. There may be truth without empirical facts but not against it.

Let me tell you a little story, that happened to me a few weeks ago. On a birthday party I started my usual rant against superstition, this time astrology. Luckily an astrologer was there, and we started a little argument about my star sign. As you might know, your star sign is the one the sun is located at your birthday. I was born in mid November, that makes me officially Scorpio, but the sun was actually located in Libra, which is due to the fact, that astrologers use outdated tables that do not regard the precession of the Earth orbit.
Now, how do we determine the truth? I proposed, the astronomer should make a horoscope, predict some of the constellations for this night, and then we go out in the night and have a look, as the sky is for everyone to see. The test was never made.

Does this test prove the influence or non-influence of stars on our psyche? No, it doesn’t, but it does show, that astrological practices are errorneous. That is enough for me to not consider the other claims it makes.

 

[AnAtheist]

TTM:

It’s reasonable to believe that the keyboard I’m typing on actually exists, but that can never be proved.

.
I believe you, I am using a keyboard too. I’d believe you, if you claimed you use a speech recognition system, a drawing device, or a morse code (name removed by moderator)ut device.
I won’t believe you, if you claimed, that you telekinetically imprint the letters on the forum’s hard disk.

In 6AD a man was born, who later became a great preacher and teacher. After his death his followers glorified him, and based a a power- and successful relgion on him. That is a reasonable claim.

That he was born by a virgin, walked on water, rose from the dead, went to hell and came back - that is another story.

 

[TTM]

AnAtheist:

That he was born by a virgin, walked on water, rose from the dead, went to hell and came back - that is another story.

The question is “is there a God?” - if there is, all those things are easily believable. If not, not. All too often, miracles are ruled out from the outset, when there’s no philosophically defensible reason for doing so. C. S. Lewis and Lee Strobel, both formerly staunch atheists, came to believe that it is reasonable to believe in His existence, and that He entered human history. I think there is definitely evidence enough (circumstancial, scientific, philosophical, empirical, etc.) to believe in God, if one is willing to seek the truth, but also room enough to disbelieve in God if one wants to do so as well.

God bless!
TTM

 

[TTM]

[owever, eye witness testimony **is

worthy of consideration, even if it alone does not prove the case (even in a court of law). Fortunately there are many more evidences with which to build our case…eye witness testimony is just one of them. There are historical accounts which support those eye witness testimonies even from secular historians and the enemies of Jesus and the Apostles. There is the problem of miracles. There are questions about our universe and mankind that appear to be unanswerable by naturalistic means. There is the problem of the life if Jesus fulfilling over 300 prophesies written long before he lived by multiple people from multiple places, the fulfillment of which depended on the actions of others, even His enemies. There is the issue of the continued existence of the Catholic Church spread to billions of people all over the world maintaining a consistent message, having lasted over 2000 years, and outliving nearly every civilization known to man (is it reasonable to conclude this is the result fraud by a few Gallilean fisherman?). There is the question of why the followers of Jesus would engage in the fraud when the only thing to gain was persecution and death. There is the problem of so many saints who have literally given their lives suffering gruesome deaths for these truths. And on and on.

So I am fine with considering the testimony of the eye witnesses as heresay. The case is made on the convergence of evidences.

Good point. No sane bunch of people would die for a lie. No insane religious systems would survive through such a persecution.

The Gospels were written too soon after the events to form a legend - any false details could be easily spotted by eye witnesses and persecutors alike. Luke was a meticulous historian too. As for the Bible, no library of books written over so many hundreds of years form such a coherence.

Blessings,
TTM

 

[AnAtheist]

TTM:

Good point. No sane bunch of people would die for a lie. No insane religious systems would survive through such a persecution.

No, that is not a good point. A great deal of people die for nothing or a lie or whatever. Take Muslim suicide bombers for example.
If you have nothing worldly to loose but everything heavenly to win, you are willing to die. If you furthermore believe, the end of the world is near anyway, even better.