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But I know it wasn't some bearded man dressed in white sitting on a thrown.
I don't see a lot coming out of this discussion other than red ears but this is perhaps the best point.
Until it can be conclusively proven that matter can appear apparently for no reason out of nothing, there is always going to be this gap for god.
We can be agnostic about that and 'don't know' is a good enough logical basis for 'don't believe'.
The real point we atheists have to be activist about id the old guy in a beard on a throne. Or to put it more engangingly, the god (gods?) of the Book and all the other personal gods and religions which people are being taught to believe in on no good evidence.
The only path this leads us to is that it isn't possible for anything to exist at all.
My dear chap, until you learn to read, understand and comprehend posts, we are not going to make much progress.
"We can be agnostic about that and 'don't know' is a good enough logical basis for 'don't believe'."
We don't know how the first matter appeared. We only have some indication that it might appear from next to nothing or nothingness with power to keep the other particles in place. We have indications that the (our particular) universe is exlanding, which implies it was once in one place.
We have strong evidence that stars and planets 'evolved' from more diffuse material. We have some indicators about how minerals and chemicals combined to form semi - life and the strongest possible evidence of how it developed from there.
While there is quite a bit we don't know, 'joining the dots', as our chum C34 puts it, shows that it points away from the creation myth of the Bible.
Thus the materialist or natural theory has most going for it and attempts to show intelligent design in nature have been shown to be poor or non - science.
To postulate an intelligence behind it is perhaps not 'not neccessary' as Hawking put it, but pretty darn close and we can regard it as a matter of academic interest.
Those who seem to make a big deal of 'we should all believe it' turn out to have some sort of personal experience of 'god' which they are trying to leave gaps for. But we logically ought to be agnostic about the causes of that, too.
If I can neither confirm or deny something, then I can neither believe, nor disbelieve it, because I simply don't know. It is not enough of a basis for disbelief, when it is entirely possible, but I don't know if is or not.
If the universe is expanding, what is just outside it? Where is it expanding into? Again, it seems most likely that we don't exist.
I don't believe in infinity. I'm human. Infinity is a concept beyond human comprehension because of our desire to compartmentalize things. What contains infinity? Everything we know of can be said to be contained by something else, so something must contain it.
Then you must also believe your 'god' is limited, and doesn't have infinite power. So why call it god?
If I can neither confirm or deny something, then I can neither believe, nor disbelieve it, because I simply don't know. It is not enough of a basis for disbelief, when it is entirely possible, but I don't know if is or not.
If the universe is expanding, what is just outside it? Where is it expanding into? Again, it seems most likely that we don't exist.
I like this explanation. It is a short version. He also gives a longer version.
Quote:
This is a very good question which is not at all easy to give a satisfactory answer to! The first time I tried to write an answer to this, we got so many follow-up questions from people who were still confused that I decided to try to answer it again, this time much more comprehensively. The long explanation is below. However, if you just want a short answer, I'll say this: if the universe is infinitely big, then the answer is simply that it isn't expanding into anything; instead, what is happening is that every region of the universe, every distance between every pair of galaxies, is being "stretched", but the overall size of the universe was infinitely big to begin with and continues to remain infinitely big as time goes on, so the universe's size doesn't change, and therefore it doesn't expand into anything. If, on the other hand, the universe has a finite size, then it may be legitimate to claim that there is something "outside of the universe" that the universe is expanding into. However, because we are, by definition, stuck within the space that makes up our universe and have no way to observe anything outside of it, this ceases to be a question that can be answered scientifically. So the answer in that case is that we really don't know what, if anything, the universe is expanding into.
If I can neither confirm or deny something, then I can neither believe, nor disbelieve it, because I simply don't know. It is not enough of a basis for disbelief, when it is entirely possible, but I don't know if is or not.
If that's your take, then you are entitled to it, but it is not logic, because not knowing means that not believing is the logical default. If you don't buy that, you are using a different set of logical rules to those normally used in reasoning.
Quote:
If the universe is expanding, what is just outside it? Where is it expanding into? Again, it seems most likely that we don't exist.
What difference does it make? This universe of ours might be expanding into empty space or into a cosmic condom. Who knows? The fact remains that strong evidence indicates that it is expanding and current knowledge implies that it was at one point concentrated at one locale. We can really only come to conclusions about the world and universe that we know of. The information we have about it is reliable, repeatable and verified. What else we don't know we can have no opinions or beliefs about.
The repeatability and predictability of the effectss of this illusion of particles we call matter is evidence that it has reality (to a given value of 'real'). The fact that the unexpected happens is evidence that it has reality beyond what any one or any group of us might imagine. This 'we might all be non existent' stuff is counter to the evidence and seems to serve no purpose other than to discredit knowledge so as to enable foolish claims that any whacky sci -fi plot, fringe - science theory or ancient myth is equally believable.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 11-29-2010 at 09:29 AM..
Atheist: Did god create the first life?
Believer: Yes.
Atheist: Was he alive when he did it?
(checkmate)
Reminds me of the chicken/egg argument.
Believers are not going to change their mindset. They have that mental crutch in the form of god that they can't let go of. Debating a believer is futile. Like trying to convince me to go with solid state guitar amps instead of tubes. Aint gonna happen.
Last edited by axemanjoe; 11-29-2010 at 10:56 AM..
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