Question for Atheists

[Charles_Darwin]

Here is something I find interesting, from a philosophical point of view:

Living things are so drastically different from non-living things.

You look anywhere in the known universe, and there is absolutely no life. It is empty and void of any life.

I guess life sticks out like a sore thumb in this empty universe on our little blue planet.

Are you kidding? We have seen a near infinitely small amount of the universe in any real detail.

 

[Spock]

So, you have this idea of who and what God “ought” to be, and anything other than what you think ought to be should be regarded as not worth considering?

It would be worth considering, if it

1. made any sense,
2. would be internally consistent, and
3. would not contradict our actual experiences.

Christianity teaches us that we must see God through faith, and that God will not give “proof” to us.

As an atheist, you have to realize something: If Christianity is true, and if God is real, there will never be proof that would completely satisfy you.

Since the teachings of Christianity do not fulfill the three requirements I outlined above, it is of no interest.

In other words, if it is true, you will never know it (until it is too late of course ).

Right. When it is “too late”, there will come the actual proof… how conveeenient! That is just a “just” God would do, not give sufficient information, and demand full responsibility based upon the insufficient information. Don’t you realize that this is **exactly **the kind of “reasoning” that makes the teachings unacceptable???

 

[Nebogipfel]

This is going off topic, but I think it deserves a response.

As an atheist, you have to realize something: If Christianity is

 

[Nebogipfel]

Here is something I find interesting, from a philosophical point of view:

Living things are so drastically different from non-living things.

Actually, I don’t think they are. I think this is the point: Living things are composed of the same kinds of chemical elements as non-living things; carbon, iron, hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, phosphorous, etc. These materials are not only common on earth, but they seem to be common in the universe, at least, the parts of it that we can see. So are simple molecules like hydrogen, water, ammonia and methane. Common processes, like lightning or ultraviolet irradation can catalyse chemical reactions which assemble these simple molecules into more complex ones, including things like proteins and nucleic acids, which are the precursors of living matter.

It could be different; it could be that living things contain some special element - “vitalium”, say, which is never found in non-living matter and is present nowhere else in the universe. It be that simple molecules just don’t assemble themselves into more complex ones. Both of these observations would lend powerful support to the view that life beyond the earth is not just unlikely, but actually impossible.

But that doesn’t seem to be the way things actually are.

You look anywhere in the known universe, and there is absolutely no life. It is empty and void of any life.

I guess life sticks out like a sore thumb in this empty universe on our little blue planet.

So, indeed, the question is, where is everybody? I guess there’s a lot of stuff that we don’t know about the origin of life on earth. But we’re working on it…

 

[Nebogipfel]

Do atheists have some kind of vested interest in life being common in the Universe? Am I missing something?

Atheists can argue that both the abundance and the rarity of life are evidence that God does not exist!

1. If life is rare it is a freak and must be fortuitous.
2. If life is common it is inevitable because the environment must be conducive to life.

I don’t understand why you think that atheists use the (im)probablity of alien life (the actual evidence for which, is currently nil) as an argument for the non-existence of a divine being?

What do either of those two statements have to do with the existence of God?

 

[Touchstone]

So, you have this idea of who and what God “ought” to be, and anything other than what you think ought to be should be regarded as not worth considering?

My descriptions were/are not claims of ought for God. If God exists, he exists as he exists, my preferences don’t determine reality. Rather, I was describing scenarios in which we would be reasonable in understanding that God was real, extant. If God exists, he’s adept at “stealth mode”, avoiding detection by reasoning and rational inquiry. God’s under no obligation to be “out of stealth mode”. Reasoning minds just won’t detect him, or be able to distinguish claims of his reality as different than imagination and wishful thinking, both of which are more parsimonious explanations for the claims than supposing such a stealth god is an actual being.

Christianity teaches us that we must see God through faith, and that God will not give “proof” to us.

I think the scare quotes tell the tale, there, and I think you should add them to “see”.

As an atheist, you have to realize something: If Christianity is true, and if God is real, there will never be proof that would completely satisfy you.

It’s worse than that. There won’t be evidence that even tenuously convinces me, apparently. My threshold is NOT “complete satisfaction”. Reasonable conclusions based on critical evaluation of the evidence would suffice, and Christianity fails at this much more forgiving criterion.

In other words, if it is true, you will never know it (until it is too late of course ).

I guess so. This is the wages of “stealth mode”, then.

-TS

 

[liquidpele]

I guess so. This is the wages of “stealth mode”, then.

-TS

I just heard that there is a giant meteor heading our way that will destroy all life, but if everyone here simply transfers $1000 to my bank account it will miss us. I had a vision that this would work. You may say this is a scam, but what if you’re wrong? What’s a $1000 compared to your life and the lives of those you love?

Pascal’s wager is not as serious when you put it into other contexts.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t understand why you think that atheists use the (im)probablity of alien life (the actual evidence for which, is currently nil) as an argument for the non-existence of a divine being?

Because they have done so!

What do either of those two statements have to do with the existence of God?

Absolutely nothing! That is my point!

 

[Kamalayka]

I have wasted enough of my life in fear of postmortem damnation, thanks. A god who will punish me for not pretending to believe something which I honestly cannot believe is no kind of god worth the name.

I didn’t mean it in a bad way.

I meant you will feel the hurt you have caused God and humanity.

It’s has nothing to do about hell.

See how faulty human reasoning can be?

 

[Kamalayka]

I just heard that there is a giant meteor heading our way that will destroy all life, but if everyone here simply transfers $1000 to my bank account it will miss us. I had a vision that this would work. You may say this is a scam, but what if you’re wrong? What’s a $1000 compared to your life and the lives of those you love?

Pascal’s wager is not as serious when you put it into other contexts.

You make the assumption that Christianity is made up.

(Then you or someone else will reply with a cocky remark, and then I will follow with “it is real,” and then you will go off and talk about something else).

Don’t bother replying to this post. I just did for you.

You are welcome.

Peace.

 

[tonyrey]

What do you think looks godless about the universe? How would you expect a created universe to look?

Well, I’d expect some sort of interaction we could verify or measure or somehow substantiate in an objective way.

There is indeed interaction which you reject on principle because it is spiritual. Millions of people have prayed and received answers to their prayers, both spiritual and physical. They experience a sense of peace and joy that the things of this world cannot give.

But a god that interacted with man in a verifiable way would be quite a stark difference from the world we have.

Again you reject on principle the teaching of the world religions.

As I think I’ve said before here, a real Zeus coming down from the mountain, and demonstrating his plenopotentiary control over the universe (not just throwing those cool lightning bolts around!) in a way that objective observers and instrumentation could test and verify, you’d have a demonstrably Godful universe.

You obviously have not considered the consequences of coercive evidence that God exists. The whole point of life is to choose what to believe, how to behave and to shape our own destiny. If we knew for certain that God is observing us we would no longer have that freedom. We would be virtual slaves concerned only about obeying His wishes. Is that the kind of life you would prefer? Obviously not! To leave God out of the picture amounts to total independence… and splendid isolation…

We could have fun listing all sorts of various scenarios in which the God of the universe made himself known to rational, critical minds in that universe, and they’d all be quite different from the world we find ourselves in.

It is significant that you single out the select few with “rational, critical minds” rather than the vast majority of ordinary people…

On another forum we hashed out a scenario where God deigned to reveal himself to man in a real way, and demonstrated his deity and sovereignty by “unlocking” the secrets of DNA, revealing the unimpeachable marks of his “intelligent design” in the front-loading of the genes of all living things. “Showing his math”, so to speak.

I bet they all ignored the consequences of coercive evidence.

But that would be a different world than ours. In this world, the ideas and claims of God’s existence are indistinguishable from claims of a fully imaginary God. If God is real, he does an excellent job of appearing to be imaginary…

Apart from the fact that He has given us the power to accept or reject His existence, to choose good or evil, to live for others or just for ourselves.

Your initial statement that “the picture looks godless either way” presupposes that in a Godless universe there can be rational beings capable of thinking and choosing for themselves what to believe about the nature of reality. You take it for granted that rational beings can emerge from irrational processes. From a totally unbiased point of view that is a colossal assumption to make…

 

[liquidpele]

You make the assumption that Christianity is made up.

(Then you or someone else will reply with a cocky remark, and then I will follow with “it is real,” and then you will go off and talk about something else).

Don’t bother replying to this post. I just did for you.

You are welcome.

Peace.

Whether it turns out to be “real” or not doesn’t matter.
The point was that believing because “what if you’re wrong” is an unreasonable thing to do.

 

[tonyrey]

Whether it turns out to be “real” or not doesn’t matter.
The point was that believing because “what if you’re wrong” is an unreasonable thing to do.

Pascal was making the point that it is unreasonable not to believe in a loving God because by believing you have everything to gain and nothing to lose…

 

[liquidpele]

Pascal was making the point that it is unreasonable not to believe in a loving God because by believing you have everything to gain and nothing to lose…

Except every Sunday of my life, and all the money in donations to the church, and possibly my mind from having to hang out with people that believe it for real instead of just doing it because we figured it was a safe bet. Does Jesus accept non-believers that go through the motions? Seems odd.

What if I told you you could be reincarnated as an X-man if you donated $100 to me every year and/or cleaned my house for 2 hours every week, but if you didn’t than you would be tortured forever in a lake of fire (Honestly I can’t think up anything worse than what the bible already says)? That’s nothing to lose right? Why wouldn’t you do it? Perhaps if you were a child you would. 1 Corinthians 13:11

 

[tonyrey]

Except every Sunday of my life, and all the money in donations to the church, and possibly my mind from having to hang out with people that believe it for real instead of just doing it because we figured it was a safe bet. Does Jesus accept non-believers that go through the motions? Seems odd.

Believing does not entail hypocrisy. It means loving others as persons created by God rather than regarding them as dispensable, biological machines.

What if I told you you could be reincarnated as an X-man if you donated $100 to me every year and/or cleaned my house for 2 hours every week, but if you didn’t than you would be tortured forever in a lake of fire (Honestly I can’t think up anything worse than what the bible already says)? That’s nothing to lose right? Why wouldn’t you do it? Perhaps if you were a child you would. 1 Corinthians 13:11

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
So put away your childish, literal interpretation of Christianity!

 

[liquidpele]

Believing does not entail hypocrisy. It means loving others as persons created by God rather than regarding them as dispensable, biological machines.

You can’t force yourself to believe something. If I accepted Pascal’s wager and became the perfect Christian, I would not believe in in my conscience. That is indeed hypocrisy.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
So put away your childish, literal interpretation of Christianity!

When all Christians put down their literal interpretation of the bible, I’ll consider it.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Believing does not entail hypocrisy. It means loving others as persons created by God rather than regarding them as dispensable, biological machines.

Were do you get dispensable from? Just because you need to invent a god to treat others with respect does not mean we all do. It sickens me that people like you try to infer that because rational people realise and accept their origins (based on EVIDENCE) that they must think life is dispensable.

Maybe you would run about killing and raping if it wasn’t for your belief in a god, that however reflects on YOU, NOT ON ME!!!

 

[StAnastasia]

I have wasted enough of my life in fear of postmortem damnation, thanks. A god who will punish me for not pretending to believe something which I honestly cannot believe is no kind of god worth the name.

Agreed. As a Christian, I have never wasted time worrying about postmortem damnation.

 

[StAnastasia]

Well why would life be so rare in a universe fine tuned for life???

What is “rare” to you? If there are billions of life-bearing planets that we have yet to discover, it’s not very “rare.” In any case, it’s irrelevant to the question of theism.

 

[Shredderbeam]

I have wasted enough of my life in fear of postmortem damnation, thanks. A god who will punish me for not pretending to believe something which I honestly cannot believe is no kind of god worth the name.

I think that atheists are not damned to hell as a punishment, but for not taking advantage of God’s offer to redeem them of their inherent human sinfulness.

Knowledgeable Christians, please correct me if I am wrong.