Dear Atheists..

[Grassland Blue]

The confusion of definitions isn't just with religion either...it goes right across the board into politics and other common issues of the day. Labels cause wars.

All a bit Marmite if you ask me.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

The burden of proof lies with the fantastical claims that there is life after death and god created the universe.

As an atheist I'm comfortable just getting on with my life until there are further developments.

I'm not holding my breath, time is short. Death is a hard deadline.

Not for everyone, apparently. ;)

 

[I'm With Stupid]

No, 'genius', "Higher Power" in reference to any of the 3000+ type 'gods' that isn't classed as Abrahamic. Not a reference to celestial bodies.

I'm not bothering with the rest of your word vomit as it's just nonsense that amounts to "atheism bad".

Well yeah, it's pretty obvious that you haven't bothered with it if you think I was arguing against atheism. But thanks for keeping up the traditional good-natured atheism-religion debate where no-one ever jumps to conclusions or acts like a dick.

 

[johnny crossan]

The burden of proof lies with the fantastical claims that there is life after death and god created the universe.
As an atheist I'm comfortable just getting on with my life until there are further developments.
I'm not holding my breath, time is short. Death is a hard deadline.

Most folk (+85%) would think being an atheist is a pretty fantastical claim.

 

[johnny crossan]

As per @GortonBlue62 above what you’re describing is the strongest possible definition of atheism. But that’s not related to agnosticism.

Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive positions. Gnosticism describes knowledge, and theism describes belief, these are two different things. Atheism is the de facto opposite of theism. If you don’t believe in god, you are an atheist, your level of certainty has nothing to do with whether you believe something or not.

Dawkins describes the definition you provide as “strong atheism” or “gnostic atheism”. That is an affirmative assertion that there is definitely no god, taken from a position of holding some absolute knowledge. It is a position that not even Dawkins himself associates with. He says that he is a “de facto atheist”, somebody who sees god as tremendously improbable but has a non-zero chance of existing.

Frankly if being an atheist meant saying you knew 100% there was no god, then many of the people who are renowned atheists would not be classed as atheists. Very few hold this position. In fact I don’t know a single one. All the ones I know of are agnostic atheists.

With respect to you and Dr Dawkins, agnosticism is a term specifically coined by Huxley to distinguish his position from atheism. It is not a step along the road to belief or non-belief in God but characterises both creeds as either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.

 

[GortonBlue62]

Most folk (+85%) would think being an atheist is a pretty fantastical claim.

I'm honestly not taking the Micky but would you tell me what you believe in one shortish paragraph?

Seems fair as I asked the question that I go first...

I believe that my life is bounded by the moment of conception (before which I didn't exist) and the moment of death (after which I will cease to exist). I am absolutely confident that no theistic god exists. I am 99.9999% sure that there is no deistic god.

No arguments or justifications on either side just a statement of what you belive to be true.

 

[johnny crossan]

I'm honestly not taking the Micky but would you tell me what you believe in one shortish paragraph?

Seems fair as I asked the question that I go first...

I believe that my life is bounded by the moment of conception (before which I didn't exist) and the moment of death (after which I will cease to exist). I am absolutely confident that no theistic god exists. I am 99.9999% sure that there is no deistic god.

No arguments or justifications on either side just a statement of what you belive to be true.

I'm a paid up member of the God club now friend, at my age it's prudent. For many years I think 'agnostic' in the sense of ' uncommitted interest' best described my approach but definitely a militant atheist when at uni. At that time Anthony Flew was my go to authority and his much later conversion (although controversial) certainly influenced on my own thinking.

 

[tonea2003]

Ah yes, 2012 and the same issue, proving a negative. Still think you can :-)

https://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/conversations/re-the-missing-thread.238039/

ah the old switcheroo,

the onus is on you

you are well versed with sagan's extraordinary claims

 

[tonea2003]

Most folk (+85%) would think being an atheist is a pretty fantastical claim.

no more so than being a deist

 

[GortonBlue62]

I'm a paid up member of the God club now friend, at my age it's prudent. For many years I think 'agnostic' in the sense of ' uncommitted interest' best described my approach but definitely a militant atheist when at uni. At that time Anthony Flew was my go to authority and his much later conversion (although controversial) certainly influenced on my own thinking.

But do you believe Jesus is the son of God? Or is your god Einstein's non dice player.

Again, not taking the piss, just genuinely curious.

 

[johnny crossan]

But do you believe Jesus is the son of God? Or is your god Einstein's non dice player.

Again, not taking the piss, just genuinely curious.

Yes an Anglican - all 39 articles are a bit of trial but I'm getting there.
Not familiar with your description of deism but the god of the philosophers is not one that exists as far as I can work out.

 

[tonea2003]

Yes an Anglican - all 39 articles are a bit of trial but I'm getting there.
Not familiar with your description of deism but the god of the philosophers is not one that exists as far as I can work out.

bet its a trial, you must have issue with most of them
out of interest have any been updated since 1571?
our knowledge has advanced a tad since then

 

[GortonBlue62]

Yes an Anglican - all 39 articles are a bit of trial but I'm getting there.
Not familiar with your description of deism but the god of the philosophers is not one that exists as far as I can work out.

As far as I understand it, theistic gods intervene in the the universe they created (so that includes all the major religions we have today) but the deistic god doesn't (he's the guy who might have set things in motion with the Big Bang, Einstein's non gambler).

Anyway we have diametrically opposed views on this topic but can at least respect each others position.

Over the next 10 months or so I'll be praying to a god I don't believe in for a goal, or an equaliser or a final whistle on far too many occasions.

 

[calumdown]

his name escapes me...
he said why should there be a name for someone who doesn't believe in something?
he's a right boring **** who makes a living by banging on about there not being a god.
he never shuts up about it and i don't like him,
but he is correct.
we don't have a name for someone who doesn't believe in santa.

anyroad...

if the earth was created one year ago,
the dinosaurs died out 5 days ago,
homosapiens turned up about a minute ago
and god was created seconds ago.



edit:
it came to me...
richard dawkins.
tosser.
but he is correct nonetheless.

 

[Kinkladze 1]

How is it that cavemen survived the asteroid but dinosaurs didn't ?




Just askin'

What’s this got to do with whether you refuse to believe there’s an invisible man in the sky who decides how your life goes?..

 

[Bill Walker]

his name escapes me...
he said why should there be a name for someone who doesn't believe in something?
he's a right boring **** who makes a living by banging on about there not being a god.
he never shuts up about it and i don't like him,
but he is correct.
we don't have a name for someone who doesn't believe in santa.

anyroad...

if the earth was created one year ago,
the dinosaurs died out 5 days ago,
homosapiens turned up about a minute ago
and god was created seconds ago.



edit:
it came to me...
richard dawkins.
tosser.
but he is correct nonetheless.

People who don't believe in santa are called adults ;)

A God is different, it isn't really a fairy tale like the tooth fairy or santa, they were made up for children.
A God or the possibility of such a being goes much deeper. As Quantum theory originator Max Planck believed that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature [because] we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. The first is matter — stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances.

The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place.

So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things — awesome, beautiful, violent — but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions.

The instinctual question is where all the matter, energy, and space came from — a question we hadn’t been able to answer with more than mythological cosmogonies until the early twentieth century, when Einstein demonstrated that mass is a form of energy and energy a form of mass in what is now the best known equation in the history of the world: E=mc2. This reduces the ingredients from three to two, distilling the question to where the space and energy originated.

Generations of scientists built upon each other’s work to deliver the answer in the Big Bang model, which holds that in a single moment around 13.8 billion years ago, the entire universe, with all its space and energy, ballooned into being out of the nothingness that preceded it.

But as Stephen Hawking stated before his death, science may never explain where these ingredients came from so the possibility of a force (or a God) remains a possibility, nature is ruled by laws, which are constant and cannot be broken (unlike human laws).

What’s this got to do with whether you refuse to believe there’s an invisible man in the sky who decides how your life goes?..

I don't know if a God or force ever existed, I'm simply not clever enough, none of us are, even Hawking wasn't. My question about dinosaurs was me being a bit daft and starting a kind of light hearted thread about God and why he allowed humans to carry on but not the dinosaurs. A joke thread. ;)

Albert Einstein himself stated "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings".

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

People who don't believe in santa are called adults ;)

A God is different, it isn't really a fairy tale like the tooth fairy or santa, they were made up for children.
A God or the possibility of such a being goes much deeper. As Quantum theory originator Max Planck believed that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature [because] we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. The first is matter — stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances.

The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place.

So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things — awesome, beautiful, violent — but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions.

The instinctual question is where all the matter, energy, and space came from — a question we hadn’t been able to answer with more than mythological cosmogonies until the early twentieth century, when Einstein demonstrated that mass is a form of energy and energy a form of mass in what is now the best known equation in the history of the world: E=mc2. This reduces the ingredients from three to two, distilling the question to where the space and energy originated.

Generations of scientists built upon each other’s work to deliver the answer in the Big Bang model, which holds that in a single moment around 13.8 billion years ago, the entire universe, with all its space and energy, ballooned into being out of the nothingness that preceded it.

But as Stephen Hawking stated before his death, science may never explain where these ingredients came from so the possibility of a force (or a God) remains a possibility, nature is ruled by laws, which are constant and cannot be broken (unlike human laws).



I don't know if a God or force ever existed, I'm simply not clever enough, none of us are, even Hawking wasn't. My question about dinosaurs was me being a bit daft and starting a kind of light hearted thread about God and why he allowed humans to carry on but not the dinosaurs. A joke thread. ;)

Albert Einstein himself stated "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings".

I actually really like this response.
I swore I wouldn’t, but my sister’ eldest is quite clever. She’s married to Albert’s great great great grandson. I may have one extra or one short of ‘great’ in there but you get the picture.
He’s quite an intelligent dude himself and I’ll see him next week as the whole family are coming home for a wedding.

Anyway I digress. I’m nowhere near as intelligent but look forward to my coming discussions with them both and their kids who by all accounts are carrying on the family inheritance of a high IQ.

What I get from Einstein’s last statement from your post above is that our concept of what god is, is man made and ultimately the earth will live on long after we’re gone.

The dinosaurs never worried about whether there was a god or not a we’re probably the only living things past present and who knows into the future, that ever will worry about it.
We will burn ourselves out and be gone. The earth will live on and evolve. Our history here will be relatively short.

So enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[KS55]

People who don't believe in santa are called adults ;)

A God is different, it isn't really a fairy tale like the tooth fairy or santa, they were made up for children.
A God or the possibility of such a being goes much deeper. As Quantum theory originator Max Planck believed that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature [because] we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. The first is matter — stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances.

The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place.

So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things — awesome, beautiful, violent — but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions.

The instinctual question is where all the matter, energy, and space came from — a question we hadn’t been able to answer with more than mythological cosmogonies until the early twentieth century, when Einstein demonstrated that mass is a form of energy and energy a form of mass in what is now the best known equation in the history of the world: E=mc2. This reduces the ingredients from three to two, distilling the question to where the space and energy originated.

Generations of scientists built upon each other’s work to deliver the answer in the Big Bang model, which holds that in a single moment around 13.8 billion years ago, the entire universe, with all its space and energy, ballooned into being out of the nothingness that preceded it.

But as Stephen Hawking stated before his death, science may never explain where these ingredients came from so the possibility of a force (or a God) remains a possibility, nature is ruled by laws, which are constant and cannot be broken (unlike human laws).



I don't know if a God or force ever existed, I'm simply not clever enough, none of us are, even Hawking wasn't. My question about dinosaurs was me being a bit daft and starting a kind of light hearted thread about God and why he allowed humans to carry on but not the dinosaurs. A joke thread. ;)

Albert Einstein himself stated "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings".

Max Planck was a plank. His aphorism is nonsense.

 

[tonea2003]

ricky sums it up quite nicely

• If we took something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand year’s time that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years time, they’d all be back.

 

[Brightwell’s left peg]

People who don't believe in santa are called adults ;)

A God is different, it isn't really a fairy tale like the tooth fairy or santa, they were made up for children.
A God or the possibility of such a being goes much deeper. As Quantum theory originator Max Planck believed that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature [because] we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”

Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. The first is matter — stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances.

The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place.

So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things — awesome, beautiful, violent — but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions.

The instinctual question is where all the matter, energy, and space came from — a question we hadn’t been able to answer with more than mythological cosmogonies until the early twentieth century, when Einstein demonstrated that mass is a form of energy and energy a form of mass in what is now the best known equation in the history of the world: E=mc2. This reduces the ingredients from three to two, distilling the question to where the space and energy originated.

Generations of scientists built upon each other’s work to deliver the answer in the Big Bang model, which holds that in a single moment around 13.8 billion years ago, the entire universe, with all its space and energy, ballooned into being out of the nothingness that preceded it.

But as Stephen Hawking stated before his death, science may never explain where these ingredients came from so the possibility of a force (or a God) remains a possibility, nature is ruled by laws, which are constant and cannot be broken (unlike human laws).



I don't know if a God or force ever existed, I'm simply not clever enough, none of us are, even Hawking wasn't. My question about dinosaurs was me being a bit daft and starting a kind of light hearted thread about God and why he allowed humans to carry on but not the dinosaurs. A joke thread. ;)

Albert Einstein himself stated "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist ... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings".

God of the gaps right there. Just because we can’t explain it (yet or ever), doesn’t mean a god created it.