Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Ok. I agree with him, that Einstien did believe in a god of order in the universe but not a persoanl god of the Biblical type or any other religion. I don't know his views on cosmic origins - whether he supposed steady state, something out of nothing or a intelligent creator.
Now Einstein we know refused to accept Quantum and spent the latter part of his life trying to find an alternative. He was wrong. Relativity is right and somehow a 'Theory of everything' needs to reconcile Quantum and relativity. I believe the recent discoveries at CERN, including the Higgs -Boson field, goes some way towards doing this.
So Einstein was a great scientists, but he was wrong about Quantum, as Newtion was a great scientist but was misguided about Astrology, Alchemy and prophecy.
Hawking is also a great scientists and he thinks that a god is not nesser-sarry and neither do I.
Aczell may draw a lot of diagrams asserting that a big bang or quantum foam has to come from somewhere, but the bottom line is that he does not know and nobody knows for sure and efforts to try to prove that a cosmic origin theory without a god is impossible is just theism trying to make a case out of nothing.
If he is saying that we do not know for sure and a god is still possible, perhaps he is right. Something from nothing is not proven or explained. It is just looking a lot less impossible than it used to.
Arequipa, This is what I have been trying to tell people, but maybe not saying it correctly, science is not always right about everything. We can't rely on it 100 percent. I have heard atheists tell me that they believe in science, not God, as if science were God. Who knows how wrong Darwin is? We all know, at least most of us here, that the Bible isn't the truth, but there are some things in it that are right. Maybe this is why you are an agnostic. Einstein's God is the kind I believe in. Not the personal God that answers prayers. I do think that Hawking is wrong, but that means nothing really.
You said:
Quote:
Aczell may draw a lot of diagrams asserting that a big bang or quantum foam has to come from somewhere, but the bottom line is that he does not know and nobody knows for sure and efforts to try to prove that a cosmic origin theory without a god is impossible is just theism trying to make a case out of nothing.
If he is saying that we do not know for sure and a god is still possible, perhaps he is right. Something from nothing is not proven or explained. It is just looking a lot less impossible than it used to
Arequipa, This is what I have been trying to tell people, but maybe not saying it correctly, science is not always right about everything. We can't rely on it 100 percent. I have heard atheists tell me that they believe in science, not God, as if science were God. Who knows how wrong Darwin is? We all know, at least most of us here, that the Bible isn't the truth, but there are some things in it that are right. Maybe this is why you are an agnostic. Einstein's God is the kind I believe in. Not the personal God that answers prayers. I do think that Hawking is wrong, but that means nothing really.
Of course science is not always right about everything. But what science is, is the only reliable method of finding out facts. Religious speculations have turned out to be consistently wrong, whereas, science, essentially, since the Ptolemaic theory was turned inside out (against the express displeasure of the church) no scientific theory has been found wrong, but rather has been improved. Copernicus is still right, so is Newton and Einstein. I have always suspected that something from nothing would turn out to be the answer and 'God' at best would be a sort of cosmic sized computer program that runs the universe, though inherent physical laws of matter should do that well enough.
Darwin was right. Nothing he said has been disproved, but rather confirmed. The DNA discoveries and the more complex branches of the tree of life have just been further developments, like Quantum added to Einstein.
Quote:
You said:
That is about what he says.
Indeed? well, it seems strange that he writes a book contesting Dawkin apparently trying to dismiss Einstein, since Dawkins must know as well as I what Einstein was right about and what he was wrong about, and Aczel's arguments trying to make a 'God' feasible by insisting that the Big bang must have come from somewhere is flogging a dead horse. I think it is obvious that it had to come from somewhere, but 'God' is not an explanation and never was.
Hi, What I meant by evidence was not "evidence" in getting proofs, but that they don't read both sides.
Most atheists have actually been a member of both sides. It's fairly rare to meet an atheist who was always an atheist - especially in this country.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
They often just read Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and etc. and believe what they say instead of reading evidence to the contrary.
The "evidence" to the contrary is pathetically weak, Mattie. Now, I'm one of those atheists who have not discarded certain unexplained or unknown possibilities such as ghosts or an afterlife. It's the entire "god" paradigm that I surgically removed from the rest of the meat.
Too many people have hitched god to the afterlife wagon and made them both inseparable - I don't see it that way. There is no need for there to be a god overseeing the next stage of existence. I just think a lot of people are more comfortable and secure with someone telling them what to do, so the idea of a divine, inescapable cosmic dictator is something they actually want.
The big difference between "their" side and "our" side is that "their" side requires way too much faith and arbitrary belief. Just believe it because you wanna. Believe it because it makes you feel good. Believe it because everyone else is. "Our" side, the side with Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris most often DO provide evidence and demonstrate impeccable logic - and I'm a mighty big fan of logic. Gods always seem to act illogically - just like many humans - which betrays the human origins of the divine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
Such as showing how these New Atheists have twisted science to meet their needs, and so the book, "Why Science Does Not Disprove God."
In case you haven't noticed, Christianity is in decline. In response, religion has been trying to push back with a lot of media events - and there are plenty and plenty of books that attempt to disparage atheists.
Who even came up with the term "New Atheists?" Whether one realizes it or not, the term "New Atheist" is a pejorative term representing atheists who aggressively counter the influence of religion. It is not a "movement" of any kind and atheists rarely self-describe as "New Atheists." Sure, some atheists took the pejorative term and ran with it in the same way some women have taken the pejorative word for a female dog and now wear the insult as a badge of honor. But by and large, atheists do not call themselves "New Atheists."
That is mostly a term used by the religious to make a distinction between atheists who behave themselves by keeping their mouths shut and letting religion do whatever it wants ... and those atheists (like myself) who actually speak out against undue religious influence in our schools and in our politics.
Thus those rotten New Atheist scoundrels will, of course, "twist" science, an accusation often made by non-scientists who took non-contextualized pieces of science and cobbled them together to create junk science praised and championed by the apologetics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
There is no evidence for a God or for their not being a God.
This is the biggest of all conceits of religion.
If you were to line up 100 or a 1000 or 10000 sane adults and asked them if they believed in Santa, all of them would likely say they do not. And rightly so. No one is going to raise objections like, "But ... there is no proof that Santa doesn't exist!"
Most of the things concocted by the human imagination have not been proven not to exist. Does that mean we should give serious consideration to the idea that maybe they DO exist? Of course not.
Only when it comes to the existence of gods do we suddenly reverse ourselves and say "faith is a virtue" and "maybe gods do exist because it's never been proven that they don't." Why should we give God this kind of latitude without giving the same latitude to every other unproven character in literature?
This is why it is a religious conceit to suggest that we ought to give the existence of God a lot more leeway than the existence of fairies or balrogs or wookiees.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
I am not an agnostic because I have experienced God in meditation, and this experience has erased all my doubts.
Of course you realize that anecdotal experiences are very unconvincing. There are too many other possibilities for what you experienced than a magical being that personally came to see you. But, since you cannot share the experience, it all comes down to simply taking you at your word. While I have no doubt you experienced something, humans just love assigning "meaning" to every little event and feeling, and those biases always get in the way of finding the truth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
Richard Dawkins is an ethnologist and evolutionary biologist but that doesn't qualify him for everything that he has written which has been twisted.
What science has been "twisted" by New Atheism? Give me an example.
And why would a mathematician know anything more about God than an ethnologist and evolutionary biologist? I'm pretty sure that your mathematician wrote about things in his book that he wasn't qualified to write, as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattie Jo
Nor does it qualify him to decide what Einstein really meant when he talked about God. Amir Aczel in his book "Why Science Does Not Disprove God" says of Dawkins, "he misuses concepts from mathematics and physics."
No one can actually be an atheist ever, human life runs on the law of Belief. it is impossible to keep our mind without a belief system.
There is a great difference between a belief system based on logical reasoning and validated evidence and a belief system based on Holy books and faith.
In fact atheism isn't a belief system at all. It is simply non -belief in one particular claim: the God- claim. So whichever way you slice it, the assertion that you picked up (it isn't a new one) that it is impossible to be an atheist, is a false one, based on a misunderstanding of what atheism is and a misuse of language. specifically the favourite logical fallacy of theism - equivocation. Using one word to describe two different things and pretending that they are the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AyushBhat
yes,the thing is, we are all parts of God. everything is ultimately God, God isnt a thing of a person lol, its a system by which this universe runs. so, if u have belief in anything( like in yourself) then you are no more an atheist. this is my theory!
I think that's still equivocation, at best. at worst it is insisting that this postulated invisible human exists and we are fools if we don't believe in it. However, you don't fall into that trap, I think. You are using the word God to describe the universe and its workings. Atheist physicists have sometimes used the same term. When Stephen Hawking said: "I want to understand the mind of God", he was saying in a poetic way that he wanted to know how the universe worked on a physical level. There is no way that makes him a theist!
I fully agree that we we are all part of that cosmic reality. We are made of atoms that once were part of stars, and specifically stars that went Nova, because that is where biochemicals and heavy elements come from. That alone gives the lie to the 6 day creation idea - as anything with credible evidential support, at least.
But there is nothing in my view or Hawking's that militates against us being atheists who do not believe in a cosmic mind with an intelligence beyond the orderly working of inherent laws of matter and certainly not one who planned our existence or sent any messages to favoured people to enable them to dominate and oppress others.
That sort of God is one that we would reject utterly and I rather wonder whether you do too, if your theory is more of a physical cosmos reality. You and I may be closer in thought than it first seemed.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 12-05-2014 at 05:13 AM..
AREQUIPA, what do you think about prayer? Is it important? and does Atheists pray ?
I don't pray. It does no good (from personal and empirical evidence), except in a meditational sense. I do meditate sometimes, for therapeutic effect. As far as I know atheists don't pray, not to a god anyway, since by definition (the only one that applies to atheism as such ) we don't believe there is a god to pray to.
There might be a god (and that means a sort of invisible thinking deity, not just the workings of a physical universe) but we logically can't believe in it until we know there is through convincing evidence, and even less can we credit the idea that it has any particular interest in our prayers, let alone planning the domination of our human lives through some religion or other.
P.S and that neatly brings us onto topic. While there may be an afterlife, though generally atheists would apply the same logic they apply to the god - claim and conclude that the evidence isn't good enough to believe there is one - even less (than prayer) would we think it likely that any one god was deciding who got it and who didn't. What god would answer some prayers (sometimes they don't get answered) only from those of a particular religion, while not listening to prayers from those of the wrong religion?....except sometime it seems they do get answered.
Why, even I have had things happen that, if I HAD prayed, I would think that I had been listened to.
The conclusion is obvious; the incidence and distribution of answered prayer is not distinguishable from the incidence of things turning out well by luck - if there was no god there at all.
The same applies to afterlifes. If prayer was answered (and the evidence is dubious) and there is an afterlife (and that's doubtful, too) then no god is answering or dishing out entry tickets on the basis of what particular religion one believed in.
The result and conclusion is also clear: if prayers are answered and there is an afterlife, it doesn't matter a damn' whether you belong to this religion or that, or none at all. Succinctly, you have lost nothing by being an atheist (so there is nothing to be afraid of in being one) and gained nothing by being a theist.
On the other hand, an atheist gains everything if there is no god or afterlife, because we make the most of the one life we know we have. The religious believer risks wasting this one life through thinking too much about what they need to do to qualify for the next one.
Therefore it is better to take the wager- and be an atheist. There is nothing to be afraid of.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 12-05-2014 at 07:01 AM..
yes,the thing is, we are all parts of God. everything is ultimately God, God isnt a thing of a person lol, its a system by which this universe runs. so, if u have belief in anything( like in yourself) then you are no more an atheist. this is my theory!
It may be your theory, but it isn't what any of us believe.
For one thing, why would you want to call this system "God," knowing as I'm sure you do the amount of baggage that word carries? Few people will EVER perceive God as being anything other than a supreme, all-powerful entity who is going to give them paradise after their deaths. As you suspect, atheists do believe in things, but we don't believe in super-beings who created the universe and directs the course of lives.
No one can actually be an atheist ever, human life runs on the law of Belief. it is impossible to keep our mind without a belief system.
Having a belief system is not the same as believing in a higher power. A belief system can be as simple as extending credibility to plausible ideas without proving every single one, saving the proofs for the implausible ideas.
Many athiests believe in the practice of science - not as a religion, because science is not a "power" higher or not - as a means of explaining the world they observe around them. Their belief arrises from the understanding that the scientific method will generally give them the most accurate explanation for what they observe. I'm sure a theist or two will start picking at that one - saying that this must be admission that science is just like a religion.
Many non-theists simply don't worry about these things at all, accepting what appears to be the cause and effect nature of reality without questioning it.
It may be impossible to imagine atheistic or non-theistic people existing in your culture, but it is quite common in mine.
Atheists do not pray - they do not believe in a higher power to which they can pray. That is theism, it is just a question of what the words mean. What I am calling a non-theist may pray when under some kind of stress - perhaps that is agnostic instead, but I've chosen non-theist to denote someone who simply never thinks much about these questions during their day to day life.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
) we don't believe there is a god to pray to.
