How many of you are atheists?

[hilts]

You will have to be slow with me i'm afraid and you will still probably fail but time flow etc means nothing to me, the universe is there and is tangible but everything has a beginning, absolute nothing is a concept that is hard to get your head around, people think of empty space as nothing but obviously this isn't the case

Not really, that's a very human view of the Universe and quantum physics doesn't really support it.

Why do we think something has to have a beginning? Because otherwise where does it come from?

Why do we think something must come from somewhere? Because we know that cause and effect exists. For every effect (the existence), there must be a cause (the creator).

Why do we think cause and effect exists? Because otherwise it would be possible to receive a message before it was sent.

Why is this a problem? Because information cannot travel faster than the speed of light for the reasons I said earlier - it has to exist in space.

What happens if we were able to travel backwards in time, could we then receive a message before it is sent? Yes but this would just be reversing the problem. It would still need to be created in the past on your personal timeline for you to deliver it for your past self.

So you see that cause and effect, the idea that something must be created before it is received, is actually a function of time itself.

If you throw time out of the window, you throw cause and effect out of the window with it. The Big Bang didn't need a beginning cause because it wasn't an event in time, it was an event that created spacetime

I am not talking about time and receiving messages before they are sent, i cant get my head around physical matter, something cannot have always have been there, things don't just appear

 

[Damocles]

Atheism is all well and good for those that don't believe 'God' exists, but for a civilised life for all of us, there is nothing wrong with the 10 commandments.

You know, don't nick anything, don't kill anyone, that sort of thing.

It seems OK to me.

If you believe it, you believe it, and if you don't, you don't, but it would be a bit of a pisser if you got to the Pearly Gates and St Peter said 'No way, pal'.

Maybe I'm spreading my bets, but it seems easier to believe in it, and at the end of the day, no one can say the afterlife is bollocks or not.

Many in life will rebuke God and all He stands for, but will still want a white wedding in a church,

I have had a tough time over the last few years, and my belief in God has helped me cope.

It may be rubbish, it may be true, I don't know, but it has helped, and that's good enough for me.

Slag me off all you want, but I won't change my belief.

I don't care if it's irrational, maybe it is, but I have drawn a great deal of comfort from an inner belief that won't be shaken.

That's called Pascal's Wager and has two main problems.

1. If a God exists, I'm pretty sure that lip service to faith isn't the same as faith.

2. You have no idea if you're praying to the right God and might just be offending the proper God more and more.

It would be more logical to worship no Gods instead of possibly worshipping a false idol.

 

[hilts]

It's like a goldfish trying to work out the internal combustion engine.
There are many things about the physical world about us that we don't understand , and many things that we have yet to understand , but none of the discoveries and none of the great works of scientists and visionaries from Leonardo da Vinci to Einstein have even come close to demonstrating the existence of a god or a creator or any form of supernatural intervention in the world as we know it.

Science is important and we need people with that mindset to understand our surroundings but simple people like me when they see an apple fall from a tree don't think why is that apple falling down, we just accept it does, what we wonder is where the apple came from, a tree, okay where does the tree come from the earth etc.. and this goes on and on and on

Every answer just leads to another question, everything has an origin so what started it all, this is the point where your head hurts and you just decide it is better to leave it alone

You make a very valid point , but we ask the questions about where the apple or the tree came from - fair questions but again whatever question you ask , the answer will never logically lead you to a deity or creator.
Biology and genetics will give you the answers - logical and rational .
The questions to which we have not got the answers will be answered in time by the advancement and the accumulation of knowledge which will further push back the constraints of ignorance , just as has happened in the past

You misunderstand i find the creator answer as baffling as anything else and we will not find the final answer certainly not in our lifetime and probably never. there is a limit to what we can achieve, we might not be near that yet but it will come

 

[-nibz-]

Something from nothing isn't logical in our heads as that's all we know

Didn't some boff set up an experiment in a vacuum where particles just appeared out of nowhere?

<Answering the question I am an atheist, the whold religion thing is completely mad>

Our Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan with his sponsors :)

 

[Damocles]

I am not talking about time and receiving messages before they are sent, i cant get my head around physical matter, something cannot have always have been there, things don't just appear

But they're the same thing. The idea that something needs a creator to appear is just a consequence of time running in one direction so to speak, and the fact that information cannot travel faster than light. There's no other reason that it has to hold true.

And you accept physical things just appearing all of the time without realising. Say you go and see a small tree in your back garden growing, then go back and look at it again in a month. Where did the physical extra wood come from to make the tree longer?

 

[hilts]

Something from nothing isn't logical in our heads as that's all we know

Didn't some boff set up an experiment in a vacuum where particles just appeared out of nowhere?

<Answering the question I am an atheist, the whold religion thing is completely mad>

but even a vacuum in that sense has matter, as far as i am aware there is no such thing as nothing in it's literal sense

 

[dazdon]

Something from nothing isn't logical in our heads as that's all we know

Didn't some boff set up an experiment in a vacuum where particles just appeared out of nowhere?

<Answering the question I am an atheist, the whold religion thing is completely mad>

but even a vacuum in that sense has matter, as far as i am aware there is no such thing as nothing in it's literal sense

You might be right but the particle physicists will be along shortly to either confirm or debunk the suggestion.

 

[Ban-jani]

Yes I am because even forgetting the scientific argument, there's the flaws in the concept of what god does/is, in the most popular religions.

 

[Balti]

Atheism is all well and good for those that don't believe 'God' exists, but for a civilised life for all of us, there is nothing wrong with the 10 commandments.

You know, don't nick anything, don't kill anyone, that sort of thing.

It seems OK to me.

If you believe it, you believe it, and if you don't, you don't, but it would be a bit of a pisser if you got to the Pearly Gates and St Peter said 'No way, pal'.

Maybe I'm spreading my bets, but it seems easier to believe in it, and at the end of the day, no one can say the afterlife is bollocks or not.

Many in life will rebuke God and all He stands for, but will still want a white wedding in a church,

I have had a tough time over the last few years, and my belief in God has helped me cope.

It may be rubbish, it may be true, I don't know, but it has helped, and that's good enough for me.

Slag me off all you want, but I won't change my belief.

I don't care if it's irrational, maybe it is, but I have drawn a great deal of comfort from an inner belief that won't be shaken.

''St Peter''

 

[NPBlue]

Atheism is all well and good for those that don't believe 'God' exists, but for a civilised life for all of us, there is nothing wrong with the 10 commandments.

You know, don't nick anything, don't kill anyone, that sort of thing.

It seems OK to me.

If you believe it, you believe it, and if you don't, you don't, but it would be a bit of a pisser if you got to the Pearly Gates and St Peter said 'No way, pal'.

Maybe I'm spreading my bets, but it seems easier to believe in it, and at the end of the day, no one can say the afterlife is bollocks or not.

Many in life will rebuke God and all He stands for, but will still want a white wedding in a church,

I have had a tough time over the last few years, and my belief in God has helped me cope.

It may be rubbish, it may be true, I don't know, but it has helped, and that's good enough for me.

Slag me off all you want, but I won't change my belief.

I don't care if it's irrational, maybe it is, but I have drawn a great deal of comfort from an inner belief that won't be shaken.

That's called Pascal's Wager and has two main problems.

1. If a God exists, I'm pretty sure that lip service to faith isn't the same as faith.

2. You have no idea if you're praying to the right God and might just be offending the proper God more and more.

It would be more logical to worship no Gods instead of possibly worshipping a false idol.

Fair enough, I take your points on board.

Like I wrote, I have an inner belief that God, or something, is out there.

I know you love your science and space travel, but can't you also accept that some of us, for whatever reason, believe He exists?

I don't know if He exists or not, it's my choice and if I'm wrong when I die and I face an eternity of nothing, then so be it.

All I was saying was that my belief has helped me cope, and it has. It has brought me comfort.

Science may, in your mind, give answers to everything, but in my mind, science doesn't solve everything, especially when you believe something like God exists.

The big bang happened, but who started it?