Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
Any objective evidence for any of those claims, Dan?
Ho hum
Good, no reason to worship, pray, or defend this god idea, but simply use the word "god" as a stand in for "we don't know what started the big bang, but we will confusingly use the word "god." Even though it is already in use by a bunch of religious folks as something that has a very very different meaning.
Glad you see that. The 3 O's are very illogical.
How do you know this god concept of yours cares about anything? Why such a human trait for something that you say caused the big bang. Is this "god" concept even still around?
Why would your "god" concept do that? Did it have a motivation to? Does it have the ability to? Is this god concept of yours even still around? Could you prove any of this? Even a little?
I will fully agree that sounds a lot better then most organized religions. They start to lose me pretty quick with in that definition page stuff like: "every human being possesses God-given reason." Uh what? Okay so it is "not like religion" yet this version of god is around to insure every human being posses a "god-give reason." And that god given reason is " the natural state of humanity." How vague, all it adds to that is that it is not "superstition like the rest of them!" And they seek to "replace" active religions, while I agree "active religions need to go, and soon the better, it needs to be replaced by "a vague god given reason that its god given reason of ... god given reason is the natural state of humanity.. wow how circular while remaining vague. Why do we need to replace the active religions with some sort of god idea, that as you say is simply the.. whatever it is that caused the big bang. It says it offers protection from cults, maybe, for those that just gotta have something to believe in. The whole thing sounds like here is a more "sane" god belief system, so join us! I will fully agree it is more sane, and a step in the right direction, but you are going to generate a lot of confusion. You should of stated you were a deist right from the get go, and that your god is merely "the creator of the big bang and nothing else."
You do realize the big bang itself also fits your definition of your god. The big bang is the creation of our universe from whatever it was before. You are aware that scientist have been honing in on that life on earth may have actually started in deep underwater sea vents? No sun, crushing pressures, and then slowly evolved to live on the surface of the planet where it instead changed to rely on the sun for energy instead of the heat of the earth's mass? We are very close to finding life on mars, and it is theorized there may even be rudimentary life on some moons in our own solar system. Seems like complexity like what we call life can pop up a lot easier and is a lot more common then we initially thought. The known universe is incredibly vast, with trillions up trillions of stars. Even if the neccesary ingredients for complexity like life is 1 in a billion, that could well mean there is trillions of islands of life out there. The whole intelligent design thing falls apart, and is more, life, complexity happens because there is all kinds of opportunity for it to happen all by it self no intelligence needed. The universe is vast enough that even with remote chance for everything lining up for this incredibly hardy "complexity" that we call life, happens all the time, perhaps trillions of times, complexity that we like to call life may actually may be more or less inevitiable instead of a guiding "intelligence" to make it possible.
That is good to hear, could of probably shortened this thread a few hundred replies if you stated you were a deist and put that link in your first post. And say hey: I am essentially an atheist (as most theist would see it) except I like to name the big bang or the creator of it, confusingly, "god."
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▮ I am an atheist that always likes a good debate. ▮
▮ Please include @LogicFTW in responses directed to me. ▮
▮ Useful list on forum usage. A.R. Member since 2016. ▮
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
A reasonable atheist! I see Deism as the middle ground between Atheism and Theism. It is in many ways more aligned with Atheism (focus on science) than Theism (focus on spiritualism), but there is the core belief in a benevolent creator God which makes it distinct from Atheism.
"I see Deism as the middle ground between Atheism and Theism."
Then you have misunderstood all three words.
" It is in many ways more aligned with Atheism (focus on science)"
Then we can add science to the other three words you don't understand.
Dan, you wrote:
“A reasonable atheist! I see Deism as the middle ground between Atheism and Theism. It is in many ways more aligned with Atheism (focus on science) than Theism (focus on spiritualism), but there is the core belief in a benevolent creator God which makes it distinct from Atheism.”
Then color me both atheist and adeist.
@Dan
"God probably cares about beings in a general sense without knowing anything about us specifically."
Why?
It is estimated that this known universe has 100 billion galaxies and that there are (on average) 100 billion suns in each galaxy. And our little planet is just one of many sharing this sun. Even if there was a lot of life on other planets, the total combined life would be a small fraction of the entire universe.
Why do you believe that we are so freaking a special that if a god created everything, it would care for what was less than an ant's nest in the middle of the Amazon jungle?
Just the physical process we can discern are mind-blowing. Binary stars, suns with rings that make Jupiter look pathetic, black holes, super massive black holes, neutron stars, supernovas. The presence of life would not be interesting compared to some of the wonders of this universe.
Heck, there is a planet that is basically a giant diamond.
Why would you assume that if there was a creator, it would give a shit about us?
[removed by moderator, read it here.]
How about this?
Good god meets good god, neither destroys the other.
Good god meets evil god, evil god destroys good god.
Evil god meets evil god, one destroys the other.
In each scenario, the evil god has a much better chance of surviving. The good gods know that eventually they will always be destroyed. Thus for any god, it would choose to be evil.
Why should evil be stronger than good? Evil is lazy, corrupt, decandent. Anyway, there would be a power mismatch between the two gods so the weaker one would stand no chance whether he was good or evil. He would have to hop that the stronger god is Good.
@Dan
"Evil is lazy, corrupt, decandent."
Hitler, or Stalin, or any other tyrant have never possessed those qualities. Therefore your assumption that evil is lazy, corrupt, and decadent is incorrect.
Evil and good are just human concepts, and they are bound by circumstance, not your subjective beliefs. Hitler would have died unknown if he had never possessed the power to enact his repugnant beliefs and ideas. Thus people with evil ideas and beliefs who are lay corrupt and decadent wouldn't be much of a threat, certainly not as much as someone whose bigotry and prejudice drive everything they do like Hitler or Stalin come to that.
This is largely irrelevant though, as you can't demonstrate any *OBJECTIVE evidence for a deity, and even if you could the idea it a benevolent deity that created a universe and world with ubiquitous suffering is demonstrably contradictory.
Which god is this? What objective evidence can you demonstrate that this diety is any more real than all the fictional ones humans have created?
Deist are theists (deism is a subset of theism).
I'd sure love to see those calculations!
You have not presented any evidence that a deity is real, just fallacious arguments. I no more need to disprove deities than I do unicorns or mermaids.
"the universe must be compatible with life for us to be here."
Is that why life is ubiquitous in the universe, rather than limited to one infinitesimally small planet? Even if your risible claim were true, it still doesn't evidence a deity at all,, simply calling it the "realm of god" is again, risible.
"other universes are statistically likely to be like this one"
Seriously Dan, I shouldn't laugh this hard, it can't be good for me. Another sweeping unevidenced generalisation from a test group of one.
All you can accurately claim is that earth is fine tuned to support life, anything else is hogwash.
Furthermore, you've offered no evidence to support your spurious claims and have constantly fallen foul of logical fallacies, misunderstanding physics and basically getting aspects completely wrong.
And yet, you've still demonstrated absolutely zero causal links that would demonstrate how one would get from cause and effects of naturally occurring phenomena in the cosmos, to your invisible comic mage pinging stuff into existence, like some half arse David Lo Pan.
I agree, though I think it far more likely that life is fine tuned for the earth's environment than the other way around.
Completely agree Sheldon, I think we've all probably mentioned that on various threads now... my point above was simply that an argument could be more accurately argued if localised to out planet only.
Personally, I'm completely unconvinced by an aspect of fine tuning arguments.
A constant could be change and the likely hood is a dramatic change would occur that would forbid life, but I'm sure a change subtle enough could allow for life in a very similar state to how we currently find it.
@Dan
Your the one making a claim god is real, so you have to provide objective evidence a god is real.
What proof do you have that the universe is fine tuned for life? What objective evidence do you have that there is other life in the universe?
Well is remarkable that stars have formed; a ready power source for our life's needs. Gravity had to be just right for that happen.
And its remarkable that the first generation of stars generated the heavy elements necessary for live.
And the standard model is just remarkable; a few different flavours of quark and the electron form all the diverse matter we see around us; everything has to be just spot on in the standard model forces and particle wise for that to happen.
Not as remarkable as adding unexplained magic from an unevidenced deity as the cause. The main difference of course is what you're claiming as remarkable has actually happened as an objective fact, the same cannot be *OBJECTIVELY* claimed for a magic wielding deity. As no one can demonstrate any *OBJECTIVE* evidence for any deity.. Now for once please do note the word objective in there, as it is a large clue to where your fallacious claims are gong awry.
Your still naively thinking of life as we know it... as a human... you could easily change one tiny thing and a different variant of life may occur, in fact this is likely the case within our current universe.
Is it completely improbable that life cannot evolve on another system which is only subtly different to ours?
No if we change just one little thing with gravity or the standard model we just get particles bouncing off each other endlessly for eternity. Most hypothetical universes are like that; no adhesion, no complex structures. Our universe is very special; look out how complex carbon chemistry is for example.
Dan, you wrote, “Our universe is very special”
How is ‘special’ measured? What are the parameters of ‘special’? What are all the specifics that would make one universe ‘special’ and another not so?
I'd say:
- Ability to form complex structures
- Ready source of power for life
Make a universe special compared to an average universe.
Particularly the standard model is very special, quarks and electrons making up all the different elements; its like a mechanical tool set for construction of complex structures. Most universes would not contain complex structures; not even atoms would form.
Again, you are priveleging that from your view point as an insignificant spec within the cosmos.
How do you know there is not multiple universes and that ours is bog standard by comparison?
More unevidenced bollocks.
Dan,
What is an ‘average’ universe?
How do you know what ‘other universes’ are like.
How do you know they exist?
"I'd say:
- Ability to form complex structures
- Ready source of power for life
Make a universe special compared to an average universe."
How many average universes did you find in your test group?
You're altogether too stupid to bother with.
"Most universes would not contain "
I'm not sure I believe any longer that Dan can't see how asininely stupid that claim is.
If you look a the nucleus of an atom, it is very finely balanced; the strong nuclear force holds together the protons/neutrons, but the electomagntic force is repulsive and acts against this. The strong force is very short ranged so the net effect is you cannot form a nucleus over a certain size (else it decays).
If the strong nuclear for had been a bit less strong or electromagnetic force had been a bit stronger, then formation of a nucleus would be impossible. This is what most hypothetical universes would be like; if you were to choose a hypothetical universe at random, atomic nuclei would not form.
Pages