Checkmate, atheists!!!!!

[lxskllr]

Allow people to arrive at their own conclusion, but don't chastise someone for believing in a deity (or for not believing in one).

The problem is a lot(probably most) religious try to inflict their views on others through governmental control. I couldn't care less what other people think, but when their thoughts affect me, it becomes a problem. That gives me, and likely others a hair trigger for bullshit, so the arguments become more strident than they otherwise would.

[Crow]

Athiests are trying to help unite society. We first must get rid fo institutions that are inherently created to divide (religion), and athiests routinely profess that we must give up our old ways and realize that we are all we have, there is no one watching over us, no one will solve the crisises we face except ourselves. We have to be the change we want to see and we don't have time to sit around waiting for a higher power (who is mysteriously absent) to come correct our problems.

You misunderstood me. I was referring to extreme Atheists ("militant", "hardcore", whatever you want to call it). I'm talking about the people that scorn others for believing in a higher power.

The problem is a lot(probably most) religious try to inflict their views on others through governmental control. I couldn't care less what other people think, but when their thoughts affect me, it becomes a problem. That gives me, and likely others a hair trigger for bullshit, so the arguments become more strident than they otherwise would.

Again, a misunderstanding. I'm referring to personal religious beliefs, not institutions. I completely agree that we need to keep religious influence out of the government. I'm simply stating that at the human level, everyone should be tolerant of other's personal beliefs (whether they be Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.), and not condemn others for having a different belief (or not having a belief at all).

[sgreger1]

You misunderstood me. I was referring to extreme Atheists ("militant", "hardcore", whatever you want to call it). I'm talking about the people that scorn others for believing in a higher power.



Again, a misunderstanding. I'm referring to personal religious beliefs, not institutions. I completely agree that we need to keep religious influence out of the government. I'm simply stating that at the human level, everyone should be tolerant of other's personal beliefs (whether they be Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc.), and not condemn others for having a different belief (or not having a belief at all).

I'm an agnostic and havn't made up my mind since we can't say either way if there is or is not a god, but I hardly see what is so "militant" or "hardcore" about people pointing out bullshit when they see it. If someone says "I believe I should blow up the WTC because I will get 72 virgins, any rational person has an obligation to call them a crackpot, a dangerous one at that. Same thing with people who think the earth was created 6k years ago or that evolution somehow isn't real and it's all a giant conspiracy with god placing bones just to throw us off etc. Crackpots.


Some people grew up with the notion that santa claus is real. And as an adult, we should not be tolerant of those who go around stating he is real, you just have to be like "Cummon man, grow up, there is no santa claus in case that wasn't abundantly clear already". Only children believe in such things.

[wa3zrm]

[wa3zrm]

[Ainkor]

The problem with that video is that you could simply have them change roles and it sounds as idiotic coming from the other side :P

I'll not advocate one belief or another on a message board, too hard to get the subtle conversational clues. I do think though that everyone has the right to believe what they want as long as it doesn't harm others. I realize that might be at odds against most organized religions, but that's my angle on it

And just for clarification, many of my earlier statements are just thinking out loud. It would be pretty lame if life was simply about procreation, no matter how much fun it is!

[sgreger1]

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. There are many ways in which the big bang may have started, most likely of which would be the idea that our universe is but one universe in a vast multiverse, and that our universe either got it's energy from elsewhere or that in the larger infinite multiverse the laws that apply to this universe do not necessarily apply, i.e. cause and effect etc. There are literally dozens of viable theories on how the big bang started, and none of them require a god. They all have some level of evidence for them, whereas there is absolutely 0 evidence for a God, so why assume there is one? At least with a theory they can say "well the math seems to point in this direction so this may be true, whereas with a God there is no evidence or math and yet people want to believe in that instead of things more grounded in reality.

Either way, just because you can't prove something does not mean it must be a God who created it. That is a silly silly logical fallacy.

We can not observe the mutliverse as that would be impossible, but we can create a solid mathematical framework to describe it's existence. Something you can't even begin to do with a god. Does science have the answer to every question? No, science is a young thing, since religion oppressed science for milenia and killed anyone who was looking for solid answers instead of what the pope wanted you to believe.

That video, ironically, only furthers the case for why there is no God. But the authors understanding of cause and effect is at a preschool level so I think their big "gotcha" moment was kind of wasted on such a worthless presentation.

[CzechCzar]

Plantinga's argument is far from stupid. A bit from its wiki:

The logical problem of evil emerges from four core propositions:[6]
An all-powerful (omnipotent) God could prevent evil from existing in the world.
An all-knowing (omniscient) God would know that there was evil in the world.
An all-good (omnibenevolent) God would wish to prevent evil from existing in the world.
There is evil in the world.
As J. L. Mackie has highlighted, there would appear to be a contradiction between these propositions such they cannot all be true.[7] Given that the fourth proposition would appear to be undeniable, it can be inferred from the above that one of the other three must be false, and thus there cannot be an all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful God. To put it another way, if God does exist, He must be either "impotent, ignorant or wicked".[2]
The problem, and various solutions to it, have been debated by philosophers since at least the time of Epicurus in the fourth century BC.[8] One of the most historically significant replies to the problem is the free will theodicy of Augustine of Hippo,[9] which has been extensively criticized.[10]
[edit]Plantinga's argument

As opposed to a theodicy (a justification for God's actions), Plantinga puts forth a defense, offering a new proposition that is intended to demonstrate that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God to create a world that contains moral evil. Significantly, Plantinga does not need to assert that his new proposition is true, merely that it is logically valid. In this way Plantinga's approach differs from that of a traditional theodicy, which would strive to show not just that the new propositions are sound, but that they are also either true, prima facie plausible, or that there are good grounds for making them.[11] Thus the burden of proof on Plantinga is lessened, and yet his approach may still serve as a defense against the claim by Mackie that the simultaneous existence of evil and an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God is "positively irrational".[7]
As Plantinga summarised his defense:[12][13]
A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.
Plantinga's argument is that even though God is omnipotent, it is possible that it was not in his power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil; therefore, there is no logical inconsistency involved when God, although wholly good, creates a world of free creatures who chose to do evil.[5] The argument relies on the following propositions:
There are possible worlds that even an omnipotent being can not actualize.
A world with morally free creatures producing only moral good is such a world.
Plantinga refers to the first statement as "Leibniz's lapse" as the opposite was assumed by Leibniz.[14] The second proposition is more contentious. Plantinga rejects the compatibilist notion of freedom whereby God could directly cause agents to only do good without sacrificing their freedom. Although it would contradict a creature's freedom if God were to cause, or in Plantinga's terms strongly actualize, a world where creatures only do good, an omniscient God would still know the circumstances under which creatures would go wrong. Thus, God could avoid creating such circumstances, thereby weakly actualizing a world with only moral good. Plantinga's crucial argument is that this possibility may not be available to God because all possible morally free creatures suffer from "transworld depravity".
[edit]Transworld depravity
Plantinga's idea of weakly actualizing a world can be viewed as having God actualizing a subset of the world, letting the free choices of creatures complete the world. Therefore, it is certainly possible that a person completes the world by only making morally good choices; that is, there exist possible worlds where a person freely chooses to do no moral evil. However, it may be the case that for each such world, there is some morally significant choice that this person would do differently if these circumstances were to occur in the actual world. In other words, each such possible world contains a world segment, meaning everything about that world up to the point where the person must make that critical choice, such that if that segment was part of the actual world, the person would instead go wrong in completing that world. Formally, transworld depravity is defined as follows:[15]
A person P suffers from transworld depravity if and only if the following holds: for every world W such that P is significantly free in W and P does only what is right in W, there is an action A and a maximal world segment S´ such that

S´ includes A's being morally significant for P
S´ includes P's being free with respect to A
S´ is included in W and includes neither P's performing A nor P's refraining from performing A
If S´ were actual, P would go wrong with respect to A.
Plantinga says that "What is important about the idea of transworld depravity is that if a person suffers from it, then it wasn't within God's power to actualize any world in which that person is significantly free but does no wrong—that is, a world in which he produces moral good but no moral evil"[15] and that it is logically possible that every person suffers from transworld depravity.[16]

[CzechCzar]

As for atheists not killing, imprisoning people, look at the 3rd Reich, Lenin, Pol-Pot, Mao, etc. They killed more people in the 20th century alone than did all the religious wars of the past.

The real question is not what the effects of the belief system are - I'm the first to admit that religion, specifically Christianity, has been grossly misused to inflict great harm on people. Same with atheism. The real question is the truth value of the propositions in that belief system.

[CzechCzar]

Regarding big bang cosmology, I refer you to Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin, who proved mathematically that any universe that is in a state of cosmic expansion (as ours is) must have had a beginning a finite time ago. The various theories you referenced are hypothetical - mathematical models. The vast array of evidence we have surrounding the origins of the universe point to a big bang. And, even if one of these various alternative hypotheses is true, Borde et. al.'s theory is still true. The universe, however many iterations it has, must have had an absolute beginning.

[sgreger1]

As for atheists not killing, imprisoning people, look at the 3rd Reich, Lenin, Pol-Pot, Mao, etc. They killed more people in the 20th century alone than did all the religious wars of the past.

The real question is not what the effects of the belief system are - I'm the first to admit that religion, specifically Christianity, has been grossly misused to inflict great harm on people. Same with atheism. The real question is the truth value of the propositions in that belief system.

Lets not pretend that what Hitler did was under the name of Athiesm, because it was not and they were very christian at the time. Many of these leaders believed in a god, if not all.

[sgreger1]

Regarding big bang cosmology, I refer you to Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin, who proved mathematically that any universe that is in a state of cosmic expansion (as ours is) must have had a beginning a finite time ago. The various theories you referenced are hypothetical - mathematical models. The vast array of evidence we have surrounding the origins of the universe point to a big bang. And, even if one of these various alternative hypotheses is true, Borde et. al.'s theory is still true. The universe, however many iterations it has, must have had an absolute beginning.

Our universe yes, but there could be more out there than our single universe. Our universe had a beginning, but it does not = God did it. You think he'd leave us some easter eggs or something if he did built it, he seems like a pretty artistic guy who understand irony and beauty all at the same time.

[Bigblue1]

If there was a god this thread would be about atheist power boat enthusiasts.



Yes that is a checkmate boat for the uninitiated.....

[deadohsky]

As for atheists not killing, imprisoning people, look at the 3rd Reich, Lenin, Pol-Pot, Mao, etc. They killed more people in the 20th century alone than did all the religious wars of the past.

I couldn't help but think of this video. The quoted post is near the end.

[OregonNative]

I'll just add a little something to this discussion.

I'm a Christian. I believe in God. Those who choose to believe or not believe have the freedom to do so. I have a diverse family (Christians, Muslims, and Athiests), we all get along fine because we all realise that fighting over religion is stupid. I have not once stuck my nose (or Bible) in anyones face, or made others feel bad for what they believe. I think Athiests who insult those who choose to believe in God are just as wrong as those who are religious and shove it in other peoples faces.

While there are bad people who claim to be religious, there are equally as many bad people who are Athiest. For every Priest that abuses a child, there are 1000 child abusers who have no religious connection. Yes, there are problems within the Church, but no more so than what is out there already. People can find an excuse to do bad things without religion. The people who use religion as an excuse for evil acts are just as wrong as those who use any other excuse to commit such evil acts. So don't blame religion for all the worlds problems. There are plenty of problems that have no connection to religion at all.

Carry on.