The Absurdity of Atheism

[Bradski]

Incidentally, in the first period of the universe’s existence, before matter formed, there was nothing but plasma. Which is opaque. The universe, when it was ‘created’ was completely devoid of light.

The phrase you are looking for is: ‘Let there be dark’.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You can sort that out with Clem.

Let me know when you guys get some sort of agreement.

Clem and I are on the same page.

I say theology has no authority over science.

Clem says science has authority over itself.

Not all science is accepted by science and is hotly disputed.

For a long time Evolution was hotly disputed even among scientists.

Then it became accepted science.

Now Intelligent Design is hotly disputed by scientists.

It’s conceivable that Intelligent Design will become accepted science.

Please, let’s not derail this thread and get it closed.

Don’t want to get into the merits or demerits of either camp’s science.

Today

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Incidentally, in the first period of the universe’s existence, before matter formed, there was nothing but plasma. **Which is opaque. **The universe, when it was ‘created’ was completely devoid of light.

The phrase you are looking for is: ‘Let there be dark’.

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth was without form or shape, **with darkness over the abyss **and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters …Then God said: ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

There’s your opaque!

Good night all!

 

[Aloysium]

In which case, if I should ask you how the universe was created (not why, but how), the answer should be: ‘I don’t know’. Because that is the current scientific answer. Are you OK with that?
Anything that can be explained using the scientific method.
Capitalising words does not imbue them with any mystical meaning.
I think that you’ll find that some people believe that theology accepts the accepted science (I saw it written somewhere). So the answer would be: ‘I don’t know’.

If someone were to ask me, the universe IS CREATED, because whether it was in the beginning or at each point in the infinite tapestry of relationships of which it is composed, it is brought into being by Existence itself. Existence which is relational, transcendent Father of all in every place and every time. This is my take on what I know to be true, seen by the light who is the Light as He has revealed Himself in the Catholic tradition and those of other faiths and cultures. No empirical study can reveal He whose act of love forms the structure of creation. No thought will ever capture the Dreamer by whose “Imagination” we are here all self-directed beings, forging our particular destiny. This likely makes no sense to you, but I would wager that on your deathbed, before the mind disorganizes into delirium, you will realize what an amazing trip it’s been, and falling into yourself, you will know what everyone will know.

Capitalizing words give the object to which they refer the respect it deserves. It may well be that the absurdity of atheism boils down to a disrespect for the truth and the elevation of magic, I.e. the manipulation of matter to get it to do what you want. That is what science is; the world is topsy-turvy.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Interesting.
Because I’ve seen more theists write about being depressed on this forum than I have on any other forum I’ve been on.
And I’ve also seen hundreds upon hundreds ask for prayers that they will suffer something less.

But these people are given a purpose via their religious beliefs.
And they are also taught there is purpose to their suffering.

But still…they are depressed and they do not want to suffer.
.

See, that’s not always true, though. A lot of people have suffered for God and not been depressed over it, knowing about their reward in Heaven. There have been a lot of people of faith with very strong conviction and don’t sit there and say “life is unfair…um, there must be purpose…here?”. The accept their suffering, even as a gift from God. It doesn’t mean they go around and hurt themselves, but it means they accept what comes.

It’s a common misconception, I think, among non-believers, but I find your explanation (I actually really like your posting style—you’re so nice to everyone!) nice in the sense that you aren’t standing there with your arms crossed saying “you just believe in God cause you’re afraid of death or something”.

 

[Lucretius]

Anything that can be explained using the scientific method.

In that case secondary qualities like color are supernatural. So is consciousness and intellection. Even the difference between a living thing and a corpse becomes supernatural!

None of these things can be reduced to quantity, and so must not be natural.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Lucretius]

Wherever you go, science will use the same method. As regards parents and teachers, they are entirely dependent on where you were born.

Wherever you go, Christians believe the same dogmas

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Lucretius]

Clem and I are on the same page.

I say theology has no authority over science.

Modern science actually, historically speaking, needed monotheism in order to kick off, because one wouldn’t expect nature to follow rational patterns when Jupiter and Saturn were fighting?

Religion is the foundation in which philosophy and science can roam freely. Because we have shattered this foundation, science no longer makes sense.

For example, scientists are always vocal on denying teleology, yet they have yet to explain why something would follow “always or for the most part.” Why should we look for order when it isn’t there, according to these theorists? Shouldn’t all be chaos?

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Bradski]

In that case secondary qualities like color are supernatural. So is consciousness and intellection. Even the difference between a living thing and a corpse becomes supernatural!

Perhaps you should take some time out and do some study on the wavelength of light and the biological requirements for the definition of life.

The problem with classing something as natural as opposed to supernatural is that the supernatural is shrinking. Because it is simply described as something for which there is no scientific explanation. So as our knowledge of the world (and beyond) increases, so there is less room for a god to be held up as the cause for thunder, or the seasons, or an earthquake.

We don’t tell children that a storm is supernatural. We don’t tell them that continental drift is supernatural. Or that evolution is supernatural. Or planet formation or the collapse of a star or the formation of black holes or gravity waves are supernatural.

What has always been described thus has now slipped over into the ‘natural’ world. Except for a few weeping icons and a spontaneous remission or two, what is there left?

Ah yes. How the universe came into being.

There is no scientific explanation for this and perhaps there never will be. So those with belief class it as being a supernatural event. There cannot be any other explanation except God. But the question which must be asked is that if there were to be a scientific explanation for it, does that then exclude God?

If not, then the honest thing to say in regard to the creation of the universe is to say that: ‘until such time as a scientific explanation might become available, I suggest that it could have been God who did it’.

Or would you like to bet the existence of God against the possibility of a scientific answer?

 

[Aloysium]

I don’t read anyone other than atheists classifying processes as natural and supernatural. The Divine transcends the physical as the ontological Source of its being. Pagan gods are not so much supernatural as much as they represent a human connection to eternal forces which underlie the world. Poseidon still exists in the weather and the earthquake. Mother Nature, nurturing in one instance, withholding the next, is among a series of capricious gods that we have attempted to understand, worship for their grandeur and in some rather foolish ways have tried to placate. We are better at predicting and understanding the complexities of these natural systems. However, reducing them to blind forces, while perhaps facilitating their study, has changed very little but sterilize our relationship with them. Poseidon does as he pleases and there are things we do that get him really angry like producing megatonnes of hydrocarbons. The “supernatural” as the psychological realm of gods who are personifications of the wholeness that are complex physical systems, has been superceded by mechanistic understandings. This has been to our detriment by isolating components and ignoring their interconnectedness in forming these systems within nature. This has led us to the verge of a potentially quite serious ecological crisis.

 

[o_mlly]

Wherever you go, science will use the same method. …

Scientific atheism is not scientific. Scientific agnosticism is still possibly scientific but the probability of sustaining a reasonable scientific agnosticism is in decline. The odds of the universe explaining itself are astronomical (pun intended). See: magiscenter.com/from-nothing-to-cosmos-study-guide/.

 

[o_mlly]

How do I put this. When something is being tested by the scientific method scientists are trying to prove it false. not prove it true. Yes science got us to the Big Bang and yes we don’t know what happened before that but there is evidence of it happening not faith that it happened.

The null hypothesis:“God does not exist.” The evidence – “We got nothing.” The conclusion: “We don’t know.”

Doesn’t that make you agnostic rather than atheistic?

 

[NM505StKate]

I don’t read anyone other than atheists classifying processes as natural and supernatural. The Divine transcends the physical as the ontological Source of its being. Pagan gods are not so much supernatural as much as they represent a human connection to eternal forces which underlie the world. Poseidon still exists in the weather and the earthquake. Mother Nature, nurturing in one instance, withholding the next, is among a series of capricious gods that we have attempted to understand, worship for their grandeur and in some rather foolish ways have tried to placate. We are better at predicting and understanding the complexities of these natural systems. However, reducing them to blind forces, while perhaps facilitating their study, has changed very little but sterilize our relationship with them. Poseidon does as he pleases and there are things we do that get him really angry like producing megatonnes of hydrocarbons. The “supernatural” as the psychological realm of gods who are personifications of the wholeness that are complex physical systems, has been superceded by mechanistic understandings. This has been to our detriment by isolating components and ignoring their interconnectedness in forming these systems within nature. This has led us to the verge of a potentially quite serious ecological crisis.

What did you just say? Poseidon is no more real then the invisible pink unicorn in my back pocket. The early gods were use to explain natural events before humans could explain them. Once humanity had the tools the gods and monsters started to vanish. Yes we can’t explain everything but we can still look. That is what makes things so awesome.

 

[Lucretius]

Perhaps you should take some time out and do some study on the wavelength of light and the biological requirements for the definition of life.

I have. They ignore the quality of the thing (life is “obviously” a quality, and we have proven it is not a quantity with the soul weighing experiments), and they tend to, by themselves, are arbitrary (the definition of life).

The problem with classing something as natural as opposed to supernatural is that the supernatural is shrinking. Because it is simply described as something for which there is no scientific explanation. So as our knowledge of the world (and beyond) increases, so there is less room for a god to be held up as the cause for thunder, or the seasons, or an earthquake.

The things I mentioned are qualities, and cannot in principlebe reduced to quantities. Some of these things have both quantities and qualities, but you can’t reduce one to the other.

The bigger problem with this sort of thinking, is that your understanding of nature is arbitrary. Measurement is an aspect of nature, and quite honestly secondary in nature’s goals (nature doesn’t work in right angles, and uses irrational quantities). Science has such a narrow understand of nature that it’s hilarious for me when people try to deny the obvious and reduce nature to mechanic

We don’t tell children that a storm is supernatural. We don’t tell them that continental drift is supernatural. Or that evolution is supernatural. Or planet formation or the collapse of a star or the formation of black holes or gravity waves are supernatural.

Maybe that’s because we are fools See above…why is the supernatural against the natural?

There is no scientific explanation for this and perhaps there never will be. So those with belief class it as being a supernatural event. There cannot be any other explanation except God. But the question which must be asked is that if there were to be a scientific explanation for it, does that then exclude God?

If not, then the honest thing to say in regard to the creation of the universe is to say that: ‘until such time as a scientific explanation might become available, I suggest that it could have been God who did it’.

Or would you like to bet the existence of God against the possibility of a scientific answer?

I don’t think science can even in principle determine how the universe was created, but on the fence here. Divine intervention is mysterious, and not mechanical, which is why it’s hard for science to even try and understand it.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[NM505StKate]

The null hypothesis:“God does not exist.” The evidence – “We got nothing.” The conclusion: “We don’t know.”

Doesn’t that make you agnostic rather than atheistic?

Okay let me go slow. You say “God exists” an atheist says “prove it”. That is all. No shifting the burden of proof. You made a positive claim now prove it.

 

[o_mlly]

Science says: ‘This is the best explanation that we have at the moment. We’ll get back to you if we find a better one’.

Peoples with a religious belief say: ‘We know what the explanation is and we will not entertain any others’.

Not correct. People with religious belief say: “We accept the science and we’ll wait for science to catch up.” Reason and faith do not contradict.

 

[Lucretius]

What did you just say? Poseidon is no more real then the invisible pink unicorn in my back pocket. The early gods were use to explain natural events before humans could explain them. Once humanity had the tools the gods and monsters started to vanish. Yes we can’t explain everything but we can still look. That is what makes things so awesome.

That’s a straw man. The gods were used to describe nature in a qualitative sense, not a mechanical sense. Nature is not just mechanical

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[clem456]

I think that you’ll find that some people believe that theology accepts the accepted science (I saw it written somewhere). So the answer would be: ‘I don’t know’.

Theology is never at odds with the accepted science. In fact, a better way to say this is, theology simply doesn’t concern itself with natural scientific inquiry, to the degree that science does not infringe on theology. (theology is a science itself, the study of…)

For instance: Scientists inquire into anthropology, genetics, geology, etc… and discover things about the lineage of human beings.

Theology does not say “yea or nay” really about science, that is, until science begins to say: ""because our science does not match literalist interpretations of scripture…ergo there is no God. “”
Or
““because we can demonstrate a big bang, there is no God””

Theology of course would comment on that overstep.
That is an overstep into what you express above as “I don’t know”. Either we know, or we don’t know. To admit “I don’t know” is an integral part of the expression of who God is.

In fact to say “I know everything, or science knows all reality” would be the sin of pride and/or idolatry in Christianity.

Speaking for Catholicism, theology and natural science are never at odds when they participate in their proper spheres of competence.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Doesn’t that make you agnostic rather than atheistic?

Depending on your semantics the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive to each other.

 

[NM505StKate]

That’s a straw man. The gods were used to describe nature in a qualitative sense, not a mechanical sense. Nature is not just mechanical

Christi pax,

Lucretius

You misunderstand me. Early man had gods and other supernatural things to explain what they didn’t know. As we advanced and learned more we could explain these events and the supernatural went away.