Atheism

[Larry Gude]

It irritated me no end that there are groups and cliques and forums - and back in the lazy hazy days of Usenet, a newsgroup hierarchy - dedicated to atheism. I never could understand why those people gathered together an identified themselves by what they don't believe. I never felt the urge to go into a bar with a group of non-unicorn-believing friends, and chat the night away about how we are logical intellectual powerhouses because we don't believe in unicorns, and how stupid people simply believe in unicorns, because they need a crutch.

I never felt the need to inject myself into conversations of believers and point out their logical fallacies and generally be a atheist flavored douche-bag.


Much like I don't now feel the need to tell atheists they're going to hell, or demand proof that God doesn't exist.




The simple fact is that one's belief, or lack thereof, is an extremely personal thing (to most people). It is often closer to their heart than their very own spouses, and in some cases, their children. And if anyone thinks that showing up and poking at that belief with a rhetorical stick is going to illicit anything but a hostile response is absolutely oblivious to human nature, or willfully ignorant of it.

Please don't read this as it simply won't do to have you exhausted by having your comments challenged.

For everyone else, he makes some interesting points. People discuss things be it atheism or theism or sports teams or restaurants to engage, to share ideas, to explore their own thoughts and, yeah, to be challenged and expend some energy pondering our world. To sit back and have no interest in people who believe in unicorns is just boring, so yeah, whatever dude, but the good part is their faith has no general impact on everyone else. To not want to engage with people whose beliefs include the end of the world being a good thing is quite another matter. Add to that the power to actually be able to do MAJOR things be it the US or Saudi or India or Iran or Russia, we all better damn well have at least SOME interest in one another's ideas of morality and right and wrong. THAT is NOT extremely personal. It is the exact opposite. If religious people kept it to themselves, extremely personal, that would be fine. That's not the case.

To expect people to just ignore that is very much oblivious, or willfully ignorant, to human nature, including self preservation. Far from being some stick to merely provoke, like your usenet story, some of us are curious and do care what others think and why. Especially when the end of the world is concerned. Religions have in common their own supremacy and apocalyptic validation. We ain't talking unicorns here.

Obviously, animals are sentient. I'm still not sure why that point was raised in the first place. We KNOW they are and we KNOW our kinship with animals and plants. We are all one to varying degrees. We all, quite literally, come from the same star dust. That, along with understanding microbiology, geology, astrology and so forth, were simply unknowable when we took our first attempts at making sense of it all. Over time science has given us much better reasons for things than the catch all "because I (god) said so'.

It is human nature, be it god made or evolution, to be curious, to explore, to declare things as the truth or a fact and then to be challenge on that, proved wrong or, maybe the evidence supports you over time, so, we endeavor to evolve ones thinking and ideas.

 

[Larry Gude]

The very existence of a powerful unifying force on one side compels a reaction from the group that doesn't belong to them. .

That is the story of religion, one faith or set of beliefs after another coming and going until we've boiled it down to Christianity being a durable plagiarism of Judaism and Islam being a durable plagiarism of them both. Throughout it all there has always been people asking if there aren't better explanations more often than not being killed or shunned for not joining the flock. Better to go alone to get along. So, it's taking awhile and it's good we can now, in much of the world freely seek better answers and explanations.

 

[littlelady]

I was very much like this before I became a Belieber.

It irritated me no end that there are groups and cliques and forums - and back in the lazy hazy days of Usenet, a newsgroup hierarchy - dedicated to atheism. I never could understand why those people gathered together an identified themselves by what they don't believe. I never felt the urge to go into a bar with a group of non-unicorn-believing friends, and chat the night away about how we are logical intellectual powerhouses because we don't believe in unicorns, and how stupid people simply believe in unicorns, because they need a crutch.

I never felt the need to inject myself into conversations of believers and point out their logical fallacies and generally be a atheist flavored douche-bag.


Much like I don't now feel the need to tell atheists they're going to hell, or demand proof that God doesn't exist.




The simple fact is that one's belief, or lack thereof, is an extremely personal thing (to most people). It is often closer to their heart than their very own spouses, and in some cases, their children. And if anyone thinks that showing up and poking at that belief with a rhetorical stick is going to illicit anything but a hostile response is absolutely oblivious to human nature, or willfully ignorant of it.

This may be my fav post, ever, in my 6 years here. It covers everything from religion to politics and back. Awesome, Tox!

 

[This_person]

What do you think the word "sentient" means?

And what do you think humans are, if not members of the animal kingdom?

Darwin says we are just the smartest of the animals. I, and a lot of others, disagree.

Perhaps sentience is the wrong word. I have more of a Buddhist concept of sentience than a strict Merriam-Webster one, so I probably was using the wrong word.

But, the director of cognitive evolution at Harvard University says

...mounting evidence indicates that, in contrast to Darwin's theory of a continuity of mind between humans and other species, a profound gap separates our intellect from the animal kind.

More specifically:

Hauser and his colleagues have identified four abilities of the human mind that they believe to be the essence of our "humaniqueness" mental traits and abilities that distinguish us from our fellow Earthlings. They are: generative computation, promiscuous combination of ideas, the use of mental symbols, and abstract thought.

1. Generative computation
Humans can generate a practically limitless variety of words and concepts. We do so through two modes of operation recursive and combinatorial. The recursive operation allows us to apply a learned rule to create new expressions. In combinatorial operations, we mix different learned elements to create a new concept.

2. Promiscuous combination of ideas
"Promiscuous combination of ideas," Hauser explained, "allows the mingling of different domains of knowledge such as art, sex, space, causality and friendship thereby generating new laws, social relationships and technologies."

3. Mental symbols
Mental symbols are our way of encoding sensory experiences. They form the basis of our complex systems of language and communication. We may choose to keep our mental symbols to ourselves, or represent them to others using words or pictures.

4. Abstract thought
Abstract thought is the contemplation of things beyond what we can sense.​

My point was that humans are different from animals. Merely "the ability to feel pain" as a concept of sentience means, literally, grass is sentient. I don't think grass is sentient. But, I certainly think humans are significantly differentiated from other animals. I'm not a Darwinian.

 

[Larry Gude]

My point was that humans are different from animals. Merely "the ability to feel pain" as a concept of sentience means, literally, grass is sentient. I don't think grass is sentient. But, I certainly think humans are significantly differentiated from other animals. I'm not a Darwinian.

This is problematic. We ARE animals. That we have more capabilities than a chimp is to say a chimp has more than a goldfish. If we're establishing science and facts to work off of, things unknown and unknowable when the great texts were written, and can't agree on the factual stuff then that makes the faith parts problematic.

 

[This_person]

We can not say 'there is no god'. We CAN say the evidence of it keeps getting displaced and all the evidence we have, and growing, strongly tends to support the contention that there is no god, BUT does NOT disprove it.

Most major scientists disagree.

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."

Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics."

Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."

Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]."

Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed."

Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'."

Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life."

Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."

Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science."

Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique."

There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind Antony Flew (Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater) "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science."​

No offense, but when people spend a lifetime in science, starting as atheists and becoming believers in (at least) a higher power, it seems to me their opinions are pretty important to consider. Most of science supports a higher power, not moving us away from it.

Religion was our first attempts at explaining things and thus our most interesting and, at the same time, worst. Microbiology, geology, astrology, we had no science, no proven out, tested process's of explaining the world around us so, we did the best we could and made stuff up. Humans would rather have a bad explanation than no explanation.

I've heard this opinion many times. I've yet to see any proof of it. I know we considered the four elements to be earth, wind, fire, and water because we had no better scientific knowledge; I have never seen evidence that someone said, "well, golly, Ebenezer, I don't know what's going on so let's say it is a god."

Morality is innate in us. The Samaritan predated Christ. No one had to tell him to care for his fellow man. No one had to tell the Jews that rape and lying and stealing and murder were bad before Moses got his tablets from a burning bush. They'd have never made the trip if they thought otherwise. Atheism finds right and wrong in simple innate human understanding coupled with the ability to reason with one another when the tough choices are to be made.

Again, simply not true. Many cultures allow for WIDE variations on what other cultures think is simply a common moral code. Ancient Romans essentially flushed unwanted live babies down the toilet because they had less care for infants than most western cultures do today. American Indians took slaves of their conquered-tribes wives and children. Muslims kill women for the crime of being raped. Gang members kill people for wearing the wrong color. Democrats and other communists lock people up for having a differing opinion on subjects. The only innate moral is self-preservation. All others are taught.

And, yes, grass is sentient. It knows where the sun is. It knows when it is being eaten by a bug. It's not sentient like us, unless you count some posters, but it is aware, provably aware. We are 99% chimpanzee. 80% with cows. 60% with chickens. That grass is related to us. DNA, the genome project, we answer more and more questions all the time and the more we learn, the more we find out how little we know. One answer may reveal 10 more questions we never thought to ask or ponder.

93% mouse. I'm not sure what the point is, we're also 70% water. We're all 100% electrons and protons and neutrons, so that means we're all exactly the same? Lies, damned lies, and statistics, my friend.

98% of all beings that ever lived are extinct. That's not intelligent design. That's evolution. We live on a harsh planet where much of it is inhabitable. If we were a few million miles one way or the other in relation to the sun, we'd simply not be. Or, no longer be. A galaxy is on it's way to destroy us if some asteroid doesn't do it before it gets here. We're all star dust, all us gods creatures and plants and animals. Human solidarity is at our core, in our DNA. A tree hugger might strike us as a bit nutty but their sense of kinship, of reverence with the tree, or a plant or an animal or a star or the moon all have more scientific basis than religion.

Hogwash. I agree at least 98% of all species that ever existed are now extinct (I think that's what you meant). None of that has a damned thing to do with evolution vs. intelligent design. Frankly, even wording it that way is a bit of an issue - for evolution to have occurred, there needed to be life from which different forms could evolve, and intelligent design says the origin of life is from a higher power. It's like talking about who created the car vs. how cars have changed since they were first created.

Science does not disprove god. It does make it less and less likely as one biblical explanation after another has a competing explanation that we can prove.

Again, I'll ask you to start with nothing, including space, time, or matter, and generate a universe. Have your experiment peer reviewed and repeated, and get back with me.

The real miracle, as we learn more and more and know, percentage wise, less and less, the real miracle is, or, would be, that there is no god.

On this, we can agree. I agree it would be a miracle if there were no god.

 

[This_person]

That, by definition, is not faith.

Ahhh, but it is unprovable, and therefore faith-based.

 

[This_person]

I've always been taught that sentience is owning consciousness and perception. Since a goat, or a whale, or a dog has eyeballs, ears, mouths, and they move around seemingly directed by purpose, independent of direct manipulation - and they seem to possess the ability to comprehend and interact with their surrounding environment, and they possess a tendency to avoid dying when possible, then yeah. I really think animals are sentient.


Some of them.

Obviously things like jellyfish, and other similar mindless creatures are either not sentient or their sentience is negligible.




I would argue that your definition of sentience is closer to what I would call "intelligence".

More metaphysical - "consciousness". A tree tries not to die. A jellyfish moves around with seemingly purpose, independent of direct manipulation. Yet, you said a jellyfish is not sentient.

"The ability to perceive the world subjectively" is one of the many definitions of sentience, and probably closer to what I was meaning. Sentience, as I was meaning it (perhaps incorrectly), is almost undefinable. It is a level of awareness that separates the animal from the plant, the human from the animal.

 

[This_person]

As I understand what's going on here is, sentient is being used to state the ability to reason with your surrounding in an intelligent way; primarily through complex communication. While animals may be conscious of their environment and can discern certain things like danger and who belongs to their pack or clan, I'm not convinced animals actually FEEL love or compassion or the ability to reason. So, we apply those human emotions to what we see them doing; mostly, I think, because it humanizes animals.

Anyone who believes their dog loves them can open the door. The dog will be back when hungry, not lonely.

 

[This_person]

To not want to engage with people whose beliefs include the end of the world being a good thing is quite another matter.

...some of us are curious and do care what others think and why. Especially when the end of the world is concerned. Religions have in common their own supremacy and apocalyptic validation.

Just a side point here - another thing the vast majority of religions have in common is that the end of the world is NOT man-made.

 

[This_person]

This is problematic. We ARE animals. That we have more capabilities than a chimp is to say a chimp has more than a goldfish. If we're establishing science and facts to work off of, things unknown and unknowable when the great texts were written, and can't agree on the factual stuff then that makes the faith parts problematic.

What you seem to be saying is that there are varying levels of intelligence, and that humans are simply more intelligent, which is the Darwinian theory.

This newer theory is that it is something beyond intelligence. Re-read the four listed.

 

[Larry Gude]

I'm not about to engage in a copy and paste war.

I will note you've retreated to 'higher power' when we were talking about religion. So, I guess we ought to restart. So, to quote you're OP;

Since atheism is nothing but the religion of nothingness, I believe it deserves a thread in this community.

I seek atheists to discuss not their understanding of other people's religions, but their understanding of their own. I see many atheists continually ridicule the religious in this community, but fail to ever really explain themselves. I would appreciate as respectful and open a dialogue on atheism as you have on other people's religions.

To start, I would like to ask the atheist on what they base their faith that there is no higher power.

Are we discussing religion and atheism or are we discussing 'higher' power? Is the discussion about one power who cares for us, rules over us, will send us to eternal damnation for disobedience and reward us with the gift of eternally praising him if we behave? Not one of your quoted scientists endorsed, that I saw, Islam or Christ or Juda or any of the Abrahamic stories. Nor Buddha. Or any of the countless attempts at explaining things.

What we talking' 'bout, Willis?

 

[Larry Gude]

What you seem to be saying is that there are varying levels of intelligence, and that humans are simply more intelligent, which is the Darwinian theory.

This newer theory is that it is something beyond intelligence. Re-read the four listed.

My bad; I missed one;

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science."

 

[Larry Gude]

Ahhh, but it is unprovable, and therefore faith-based.

No, it is reason based. I reasonably believe that Mary did not have a child absent a mans sperm. I reasonably believe that the laws of nature were not suspended. I reasonably believe that man thought genocide was a good idea rather than some loving and all knowing heavenly father. I, readily, concede that god almighty can't be totally disproved at this point. In return, it would be nice to hear a concession that we have more and more better explanations for biological incidents, geological happenings and astronomy to explain ever more of the heavens even as it forces ever more questions.

 

[Larry Gude]

Anyone who believes their dog loves them can open the door. The dog will be back when hungry, not lonely.

You've never had a dog.

They show loyalty to individuals regardless of who feeds them more. They feel, they think. They remember.

Maybe best to abandon this line of reasoning as it's been pretty roundly refuted by observation and experience. :shrug:

 

[Larry Gude]

Just a side point here - another thing the vast majority of religions have in common is that the end of the world is NOT man-made.

Well, that's what we're debating, isn't it? None of them work very well, do they, if not for the threat of extermination of the unbelievers.

Another way to look at it is, assuming NO religion to this day, much like the very first time some man said "Hummm. There is a higher power at work here. I shall call him 'god', you'd get nowhere starting any of the great faiths from scratch today. There was far too little known back in the day and we like explanations, even nonsense to NO explanation. Far too much is know today to get an Abrahamic system off the ground.

 

[This_person]

I'm not about to engage in a copy and paste war.

I will note you've retreated to 'higher power' when we were talking about religion. So, I guess we ought to restart. So, to quote you're OP;

Are we discussing religion and atheism or are we discussing 'higher' power? Is the discussion about one power who cares for us, rules over us, will send us to eternal damnation for disobedience and reward us with the gift of eternally praising him if we behave? Not one of your quoted scientists endorsed, that I saw, Islam or Christ or Juda or any of the Abrahamic stories. Nor Buddha. Or any of the countless attempts at explaining things.

What we talking' 'bout, Willis?

Well, the original intent was not to talk about other religions, just the religion of atheism. Again, there is no proof there is no God, god, or higher power, and sans proof there is only belief based on observation, otherwise known as faith, and faith is a religious concept.

If we're going to talk atheism, like the original intent, I'm happy to do that. Atheists, as a general rule (not all, by any means) tend not to talk about their beliefs but rather to distinguish it from what they misrepresent as other people's beliefs. You've done it in almost every post where you talk about damnation and hell and such - is there damnation and hell in atheism? If not, and the goal is to talk atheism (as the OP says), then why talk about other religions at all - sell me on YOURs.

 

[This_person]

No, it is reason based. I reasonably believe that Mary did not have a child absent a mans sperm. I reasonably believe that the laws of nature were not suspended. I reasonably believe that man thought genocide was a good idea rather than some loving and all knowing heavenly father. I, readily, concede that god almighty can't be totally disproved at this point. In return, it would be nice to hear a concession that we have more and more better explanations for biological incidents, geological happenings and astronomy to explain ever more of the heavens even as it forces ever more questions.

All you're doing here is talking about why you disagree with the specifics of various other religious stories. You said not a thing about atheism. Sell me on why atheism is correct, not why you disagree with a few religious stories from other religions.

 

[kwillia]

My bad; I missed one;

I did a quick look to get a feel for the mindset of Frank Tipler... seems that when he talks about "God" he's talking in terms of the Big Bang Theory and not an all-knowing Being... many other highly insightful physicist consider his ideology to be mere speculation and imagination... one of the references is a book called Why People Believe Weird Things and now I know one of the Christmas presents I will be getting my atheist brother...

"The Omega Point is a term Tipler uses to describe a cosmological state in the distant proper-time future of the universe that he maintains is required by the known physical laws. According to this cosmology, it is required for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent that intelligent life take over all matter in the universe and eventually force its collapse. During that collapse, the computational capacity of the universe diverges to infinity and environments emulated with that computational capacity last for an infinite duration as the universe attains a solitary-point cosmological singularity. This singularity is Tipler's Omega Point.[6] With computational resources diverging to infinity, Tipler states that a society far in the future would be able to resurrect the dead by emulating all alternative universes of our universe from its start at the Big Bang.[7] Tipler identifies the Omega Point with God, since, in his view, the Omega Point has all the properties claimed for gods by most of the traditional religions.[7][8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Tipler

 

[This_person]

You've never had a dog.

They show loyalty to individuals regardless of who feeds them more. They feel, they think. They remember.

Maybe best to abandon this line of reasoning as it's been pretty roundly refuted by observation and experience. :shrug:

I've had dogs, cats, birds, fish, hamsters.....any one of them would turn on me if they were hungry enough and able to. True, some are pack animals and tend to instinctively support the pack.