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This atheist does not believe in :God(s) the soul, an afterlife, heaven, hell, angels , demons, the supernatural, the paranormal .psychics, mediums, alien visitors, conspiracy theories, dragons, mountain trolls, or fairies at the bottom of my garden .,
HOWEVER, I am absolutely willing to believe and would really like to. I will do so immediately I see some proof. Have yet to see any for any of the topics mentioned above, in over 40 years of looking.
Now I truly don't care if you believe the moon is made of green cheese. I only care if you want me to believe. In that case, I demand proof.
Keep it simple, and do not be sidetracked.
When I go to bed at night, I do sometimes wonder if the universe is large enough for an afterlife Though I do not believe in any god, I still sometimes wonder if there could be even the slightest chance there's something after death. There's theories floating about that you get transferred into quantum energy, and the possibilities are endless. If an afterlife of some type exists, then it is infinity open. Where's there's no actual limits to the (Soul) and you can go anywhere you want. If that's the case, then multiple universes are also possible, and this one could have come about by another universe. If that's the case, maybe there is some sort of creator, but it's not any of the ones which any religion on earth could possibly imagine. I don't believe a hell exists, as that's created by man. 99.9 percent of religions are made up by humans, trying to answer why we exist in the first place.
Conclusion is, if there's a creator, that creator has no gender. That creator doesn't even probably have a physical form, and would be so old that we couldn't figure that out no matter how well some peoples math is. Going back so many billions of years, we couldn't even start to calculate how old it is.
That's an opinion, of course my opinion of death is nothing. There's no more me when I die. Nothing at all after death. That's an opinion too.
What is the difference between quantum energy and energy?
@Nyarlathotep
"What is the difference between quantum energy and energy?"
You got me, I really don't know.
@Fievel Mousekewitz
Quantum energy and energy are the same thing. The word quantum just tells us the energy we are speaking about only comes in discrete chunks (and that these chunks are indivisible).
Sadly the word has come to be associated with so much non-sense, that it's usage seems to demand a little skepticism.
@Nyarlathotep
"Quantum energy and energy are the same thing. The word quantum just tells us the energy we are speaking about only comes in discrete chunks (and that these chunks are indivisible).
Sadly the word has come to be associated with so much non-sense, that it's usage seems to demand a little skepticism."
Yes is true.
It is possible that there's a big fat nothing after death. I can live with that, life is long enough, we don't need an afterlife to live forever.
@Fievel Mousekewitz: RE: "99.9 percent of religions are made up by humans." I don't know of any religion that was not created by humans. I would sure like to hear about the 00.1% that was not created by humans. Where can we find it?
@Cognostic
Okay then 100 percent.
I guess I said it in hopes that maybe something is there.
Thanks for calling me on it.
Okay.... I concede the point. We can actually know nothing 100%. All religions I know of, 100% of them, are man made. What if there is alien life and the aliens have created a religion as well? Apparently Neanderthal had some religious rituals and Neanderthals were not human but related cousins. Saying 100% of religions are man made puts us in a "Black Swan Fallacy" so we should not actually go there. The only real issue is "HOW WE EXPRESS OUR BELIEF."
99.9% of all religions are man made. This is a statement of fact. You now have the burden of proof. Since you can not possibly know this, the statement is fallacious.
100% of the religions I have seen are man made. This is a statement of fact but it only includes the set of religions I have seen. The statement is true and correct and it does not imply that there are no religions which are not man made. There could be non-man-made religions.
You can probably assert something like, "We can never know anything for certain but it seems to me that 99.9% of all religions are man made." This merely asserts a belief and a perspective. It leaves the door open to some other possibilities not yet known. There is always something not yet known.
I only challenged you because you have the habit of throwing out percentages as if they are somehow real. In fact they are just beliefs you have about the world around you but you opt to express them as if they are real. The idea that 99.9% of religions are man made, is as far as we know, quite possibly correct as we can not know anything for certain. But we can also not know that 99.9% is real for certain either.
BLACK SWAN FALLACY (All the swans I have ever seen are white. I run about telling the world that all swans are white. Then one day I see a black swan. I have been wrong up to this point.) We run into the Black Swan Fallacy when we assume something to be 100% of the time.
If I made an assumption that there's no religions outside of this world, I could be wrong.
"Okay.... I concede the point. We can actually know nothing 100%. All religions I know of, 100% of them, are man made. What if there is alien life and the aliens have created a religion as well?"
The problem with many things is we just don't know. It is possible I guess that aliens somewhere has come up with their own gods too. So in that perspective, it would be a fallacy to claim there are no other religions other than man made. Nothing is completely known about this universe, but we try to understand as much as we can, is that an okay statement?
In any-case, I do agree.
@Fievel Mousekewitz
"When I go to bed at night, I do sometimes wonder if the universe is large enough for an afterlife"
The universe is huge. Our Sun is just an average star on an average arm of an average galaxy, our Milky Way. The Milky way is so large that if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to travel from one end to another. It is calculated that there are as many as 200 billion stars in our Milky Way. It is estimated that there are over 200 billion galaxies.
This known universe is accelerating in it's expansion. Even right now, if you were at one boundary of this known universe (whatever the F you call it) and began to travel at the speed of light to the opposite boundary, you would never get there because of the rate of expansion.
Our concept of god and religion began in very primitive times when travel was almost impossible, and one's world was what you saw, the ground, the air, and the heavens above. It was a very small world back then, and understandable that early man embraced the concept that we were special, were the center of everything, and had a purpose. But our ability to travel, not only physically and intellectually, but also explore with the telescope, proved that we are not special, we are not the center of the universe.
And one faces one of biggest questions ever, "why are were here?", it was simple to just paste "a god made us". That was the best explanation of the time.
But we have advanced well past those primitive and ignorance concepts.
IMO the first step is to alter one's perception from "there was a creator" to "this universe was created". It may not have been a "thing", but rather just a process of physics. That is how life began, that is how stars form, that is how our galaxy formed, that is how our known universe formed, through the interaction of energy and mass, dictated by the laws of physics.
We know how life, stars, galaxies, and this universe formed, all can be explained without a "god". So why does one need to insert "god" into exploring the big question " why are were here?".
@David Killens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOfi_TaoUt0
At some point the Big Bang happened, and we know it's about 13.8 billion years ago.
If we were the center of the universe we would be 13.8 billion years old instead of the earth being about four and a half billion years old. Leaves plenty of room for the possibility of alien life on some other planet.
I do agree with everything you typed there.
And I like Seth MacFarlane explaining it there.
@Fievel Mousekewitz
"If we were the center of the universe we would be 13.8 billion years old instead of the earth being about four and a half billion years old."
At one time man believed Earth was the center of everything. Then it was discovered that the Earth rotated around the Sun, moving earth from being the center. Then it was discovered that our Sun was just a small part of the Milky way, further removing our Sun as the center of the known universe. Then it was discovered that our Milky Way was but one galaxy in billions, thus once again removing the Milky Way as the center of everything.
To ask where the center of Big Bang was located is a bit of a mind-fuck because the Big Bang occurred everywhere, we are part of it.
After the Big Bang, energy evolved, and matter appeared. The matter evolved, and eventually large clouds of gas formed into the early suns by the process of gravity. Those suns burned bright, then died in violent explosions as supernova, creating heavier elements and spreading that matter far and wide. Rinse, wash, repeat, this cycle went on many cycles, until we arrived at the point 4.6 billion years ago when a large cloud of gas and dust collapsed under the influence of gravity, resulting in our Sun and Solar System.
The possibility of life I rate high. The possibility of intelligent life I have serious reservations about. IMO those are incredibly long odds.
Nanobes and bacteria, yes. Klingons, probably not.
If you keep the "No one knows for sure." in the front of your thoughts as you post, you will be right more times than wrong. This is the main contention Atheists have with Theists. Theists pretend to know shit that they can not possibly know. Atheists are simply asking them for evidence.
Yes, we try to understand as much as we can and belief is always on a scale from zero to one-hundred. We can not prove God's non-existence any more than his existence can be proved. So Zero and One-Hundred are not options without sounding silly. We add up all the facts that we can gather and we apportion our belief to the facts we have available.
You sound more like an atheist in every post. Just keep asking questions!!!
@Cognostic
Currently I am running out of questions, as I understand well this universe did not need a god to create it.
Not like we can prove or disprove a god's existence, if there is a god, it isn't what Christians believe.
I like Seth MacFarlane's explanation. Please click on the YouTube link I posted.
And thanks.
@Fievel Mousekewitz
"Not like we can prove or disprove a god's existence".
True. But we can explain the origin of this universe and the origin of our Sun and Earth without requiring a god.
@David Killens
"True. But we can explain the origin of this universe and the origin of our Sun and Earth without requiring a god."
How true.
And it happened in such a random order as well. We know about the Big Bang today, as science has taught us much about our universe.
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