What do you do to combat atheism?

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What do you do to combat atheism? Philosophy
I characterise myself as an atheist. It’s a simple term that doesn’t need to go into shades of gnosticism to have people understand it. You know whatnit means and so does everyone else. The fact that I don’t claim that gods do not exist doesn’t change that. And Dawkins, probably the most well known atheist, self describes as an agnostic. He is a scientist and likes his terminology to be exact. And Pluto…gee, if someone claimed it existed then they must have had a reason for saying so. So the …
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Then is the term “atheist” just newspeak, for a person who really really really wants there to be no gods, but doesn’t have the evidence to prove it? Why not just call yourself an agnostic?

Dawkins is often quite unscientific, despite his reputation, and I view him as muddling the line there should be between philosophy and physical science. He is also often quite bigoted towards people who have a different world view than himself and unwilling the accept the epistemological subjectivity which facts possess. He once referred to Islam as “the greatest force for evil today”.

Le Verrier did in 1840 hypothesize the existence of a planet beyond Neptune based on perturbations of the planets orbit. Though, belief in a Planet X was common at the time, virtually always accompanied by a lack of evidence to prove the existence of said Planet X.
 
An unmoved mover no more gets rid of the contradiction than an infinite universe or zero energy universe. Or, conversely, all are logically equal. How one would ever prove them with epistemological rigor is beyond me.
 
Not that I’m any great lover of Dawkins when it comes to his philosophical views, but he does differentiate between those views and science.
 
PhiriTalk said:
What do you do to combat atheism? - #60 by Bradskii

Then is the term “atheist” just newspeak, for a person who really really really wants there to be no gods, but doesn’t have the evidence to prove it? Why not just call yourself an agnostic?

Dawkins is often quite unscientific, despite his reputation, and I view him as muddling the line there should be between philosophy and physical science. He is also often quite bigoted towards people who have a different world view than himself and unwilling the accept the epistemological subjectivity which facts possess. He once referred to Islam as “the greatest force for evil today”.

Le Verrier did in 1840 hypothesize the existence of a planet beyond Neptune based on perturbations of the planets orbit. Though, belief in a Planet X was common at the time, virtually always accompanied by a lack of evidence to prove the existence of said Planet X.
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I don’t ‘really, really, really’ want there to be no gods. Again, it’s just that the evidence presented is not credible.

And Dawkins has a lot of time for religious people. It’s fundamentalists he despises. I don’t think you have read much of what he has written and are going on other people’s opinions. That’s not fair to the man.

And Pluto? Yeah, whatever…
 
niceatheist said:
An unmoved mover no more gets rid of the contradiction than an infinite universe or zero energy universe.
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This is an assertion. Do you have anything better than that?
niceatheist said:
Or, conversely, all are logically equal.
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How so?
niceatheist said:
How one would ever prove them with epistemological rigor is beyond me.
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What do you mean? If a thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time, then i know that it is either one or the other; it either exists or it doesn’t. That which is only potentially actual cannot cause itself to be actual and therefore requires an existential cause that exists because of it’s own nature in order for the effect to exist at all etc. The metaphysical arguments for God follow this line of reasoning and it cannot be refuted without rejecting the principle of non-contradiction as it applies to the act of a things existence…
 
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What do you do to combat atheism? Philosophy
I don’t ‘really, really, really’ want there to be no gods. Again, it’s just that the evidence presented is not credible. And Dawkins has a lot of time for religious people. It’s fundamentalists he despises. I don’t think you have read much of what he has written and are going on other people’s opinions. That’s not fair to the man. And Pluto? Yeah, whatever…
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Who determines what is and isn’t credible? How do you think this determination should be made?

Why not just withhold the possession of a position one way or the other? Why lean towards one side? Just because you don’t believe in gods, doesn’t mean gods don’t exist. Anthropocentric ignorance is not grounds for taking up absolute positions.

Dawkins doesn’t appear to like any Muslims though. Does he think all Muslims are fundamentalists?

Pluto is excellent example for how unsubstantiated beliefs can turn out to be factual. Same with any gods, just because you don’t personally possess the evidence to prove or disprove the existence of gods, doesn’t mean they don’t still exist or don’t exist regardless.
 
Well, in a zero energy universe, the universe didn’t exist, and then it existed. We’re left with a potentiality problem, which may be infinite, much as an unmoved mover is infinite.

In an infinite universe (at least in the temporal sense), it always existed. I’d say this assertion is pretty much the equivalent of an unmoved mover, and at least in the Deist tradition, may be seen as equivalent.
 
niceatheist said:
an unmoved mover is infinite.
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An unmoved mover is not an infinite string of actualised potential, and yes all materialist explanations are wrong precisely because they have a potentiality problem.
 
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What do you do to combat atheism? Philosophy
You did. But why didn’t you withold the posession of a position one way or the other?
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I did, do. I view the question of whether or not God exists or not as a philosophical question, not a scientific one. I don’t think the question: “Does God exist?” is a testable one. And I don’t think science should concern itself with whether or not God exists.
 
And the only reason the Unmoved Mover doesn’t is because of a rhetorical trick, which attempts to wave the potentiality problem away. I could take that same attribute, apply it to the other two models, and voila, the problem disappears (or doesn’t, because none of them actually logically gets rid of the problem, save by defining the problem out of existence).

As I said, the real problem is that we just can’t fathom infinity.
 
niceatheist said:
And the only reason the Unmoved Mover doesn’t is because of a rhetorical trick, which attempts to wave the potentiality problem away.
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No. It’s not a trick, it’s simply the only way of explaining the existence of things that were at one point only potentially actual. The point is that in principle you have to begin with absolute existence, not potentiality.

The only reason you are saying it’s a trick is because the answer has consequences for your position that you do not like.
 
niceatheist said:
As I said, the real problem is that we just can’t fathom infinity.
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It’s an infinite string of actualised potential. I understand exactly what it is in principle and it doesn’t resolve the problem. Any honest person can see that, don’t you agree?
 
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IWantGod said:
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niceatheist:
As I said, the real problem is that we just can’t fathom infinity.
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It’s an infinite string of actualised potential. I understand exactly what it is in principle and it doesn’t resolve the problem. Any honest person can see that, don’t you agree?
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I don’t see as anything resolves the problem. To be honest with you, I can’t even say it is a problem in and of itself, more than it points to a problem with how our brains work. Any formulation, even the Imaginary Time notion (which Hawking championed in his later years) doesn’t really answer the question in any way we can formulate it. I find it elegant (and thus personally aesthetically pleasing), and if i had to lean in any particular direction, it would be that the further back in time we go, the closer we get to 0 time, the more time curves (much like, say, spatial dimensions curve the closer you get to a singularity like a black hole), so that the curve’s “steepness” approaches 0 time, without ever actually reaching 0 time. But then one does pretty much have to throw 2300 years worth of metaphysical thought out the window (which, no doubt, David Hume would approve of).
 
I’d like to add that the imaginary time scenario does have its spacial equivalent; a compact manifold. A compact manifold is of finite size, but has no defined boundary (a circle is an example of two dimensional compact manifold). Whether it makes sense to extend spacial manifolds to time is another one of those problems for which no obvious test can be imagined. It’s like trying to accelerate to the speed of light. We know what the speed of light is, we know massless particles can travel (or, more accurately, electromagnetic and gravitational waves) can move at the speed of light, but for any object of mass, the closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy it requires to accelerate even closer, and thus you would require an infinite amount of energy to move, say, a proton, to the speed of light.
 
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