Trouble With Atheism

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  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    lucylespian wrote:
    Sounds like I need to do a littel catching up, that's the only trouble with being a drop-out, ya miss stuff !!

    Haha, I'm a drop-out too :p
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Vedderlution_Baby
    Vedderlution_Baby Posts: 2,535
    Sorry, been banned the last two days. But I've been wanting to ask this question since I saw the thread.


    Where did god come from?



    And this isn't a bait question. I've been wanting to know this for a very long time.
  • deadnote
    deadnote Posts: 1,678
    what would be the point of attacking faithful people
    is there something wrong with having your own opinion?
    set your laughter free

    dreamer in my dream

    we got the guns

    i love you,but im..............callin out.........callin out
  • Jeanie
    Jeanie Posts: 9,446
    Vedderlution_Baby! wrote:
    Sorry, been banned the last two days. But I've been wanting to ask this question since I saw the thread.


    Where did god come from?



    And this isn't a bait question. I've been wanting to know this for a very long time.


    Well I probably can't help you with the answer, sorry. I guess there are people who would say that God has always just been. And there are those who would say that the idea of God has evolved over the millenia.

    It's a really interesting question though. I hope somebody else comes forward with a theory. :)
    NOPE!!!

    *~You're IT Bert!~*

    Hold on to the thread
    The currents will shift
  • Jeanie
    Jeanie Posts: 9,446
    lucylespian wrote:
    Yes, definitely retarded, and yes, handwritten illegible rubbish has indeed become typed illegible rubbish as you suggest. !!!! Have a little laugh, go on, I do when I read some of the crap that comes off the keyboard!!!! I think the story might be a littel wrong, cos you can't really map brain activity with an MRI that I know of. Definitely can with a PET scan. I would certainly expect a PET scan to detect changes when someone is having a vision or feeling a preescence, because my interpretation of that is that it is coming from within, not from without. As I have previously mentioned, schizophrenia and other psycohotic illness can be seen on a PET scan. All fits to me.

    Actually lucy, I'm kinda curious to know if I could decipher it!! :D
    It's a bit of a personal skill of mine that I like to hone at every opportunity! :)
    Is PET the one they use when they attach all those wires to epilepsy patients and keep them awake in an attempt to get them to fit so they can read the brain activity?

    Anyway, I tried to find the article, but it's eluded me.
    I think I originally read about it in the MX and then it turned up in The Age maybe. It was a little while ago. I'll keep hunting. It might turn up. :)
    NOPE!!!

    *~You're IT Bert!~*

    Hold on to the thread
    The currents will shift
  • OceansJenny
    OceansJenny Manhattan, NY Posts: 3,411
    macgyver06 wrote:
    Atheists = Quitters :)

    Fine by me, wasting time figuring out if religion is sound or not doesn't appeal to me. I can create my own morals and judgments that I believe are sound without someone else telling me that I'm wrong. I don't have to worry if what I'm doing is appealing to any higher being or w/e. I can just actually LIVE.

    Good post ahnimus
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  • macgyver06
    macgyver06 Posts: 2,500
    OceansJenny wrote:
    Fine by me, wasting time figuring out if religion is sound or not doesn't appeal to me. I can create my own morals and judgments that I believe are sound without someone else telling me that I'm wrong. I don't have to worry if what I'm doing is appealing to any higher being or w/e. I can just actually LIVE.

    Good post ahnimus

    you're not an atheist
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    macgyver06 wrote:
    you're not an atheist

    Is an atheist someone who denies the existence of God, or someone who denies the possible existence of God.

    I acknowledge that it may be possible that God exists, though I very highly doubt it and therefor I believe that God does not exist.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • gue_barium
    gue_barium Posts: 5,515
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Is an atheist someone who denies the existence of God, or someone who denies the possible existence of God.

    I acknowledge that it may be possible that God exists, though I very highly doubt it and therefor I believe that God does not exist.

    You've done a lot of backsliding since your original post.
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  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    gue_barium wrote:
    You've done a lot of backsliding since your original post.

    I'm getting a little bored with hearing that.

    How so?
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • stu gee
    stu gee Posts: 1,174
    Im a lapsed atheist.
    People say im paranoid. Well, they dont say it, but i know that's what they are thinking.
  • gue_barium
    gue_barium Posts: 5,515
    Ahnimus wrote:
    I'm getting a little bored with hearing that.

    How so?

    From your first post, having looked at it again, I find a problem with this part:
    ahnimus wrote:
    Philosophically many atheists do not deny the possibility of the existence of a God, however they view it as unattainable knowledge which belief in corrupts the mind.

    This is the part, coming from you that keeps you battling your disagreement with god. And it is a disagreement with god, not the concept, not the religion, not the philosphy of "some" atheists. It is a fight that suits you because god challenges your ego. In this debate, and in many of these debates, ego is the primary subject, yet psychology is something you rarely google into.

    That is all for now, grasshoppa.
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  • toronado10
    toronado10 Posts: 239
    I'd like to recommend a good book on this subject, its called "is belief in god good, bad or irrelevant", its basically a series of correspondences between Greg Graffin (a Ph.d in zoology who also happens to be a member of the band Bad Religion) and Preston Jones who is a history professor at a Christian college.

    I find myself to be a naturalist/atheist, basically all things can be explained through natural phenomenon.

    there is something strangely peaceful about knowing that this is the only life you get, one shot, when you're done you're done.
    Take time to see the sky,
    Find shapes in the clouds.
    Hear the murmur of the wind
    and touch the cool water.
    Walk softly,
    we are intruders,
    tolerated briefly
    In an infinite universe.
  • gue_barium
    gue_barium Posts: 5,515
    toronado10 wrote:
    there is something strangely peaceful about knowing that this is the only life you get, one shot, when you're done you're done.

    There is, i'll concur with that. On the other hand, I'll have to disagree with the presumption God is there for everlasting afterlife through the mercy of whatever fantasy comes down the pike.
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  • gue_barium
    gue_barium Posts: 5,515
    i just thought i'd give you something to think on before i bow out of here for at least the next 24.

    (sometimes) god=mindful hypothesis
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  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    gue_barium wrote:
    i just thought i'd give you something to think on before i bow out of here for at least the next 24.

    (sometimes) god=mindful hypothesis

    I don't think God can really be defined. Everyone has their own concept of God.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • gue_barium
    gue_barium Posts: 5,515
    and if that isn't enough,
    i've come to wonder sometimes, maybe it's god that believes in you.
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  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Maybe, but I don't have a personal God.

    The most I'll buy into is Spinoza's God.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Spinoza argued that God and Nature were two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that underlies the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect are only understood in part. That humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of their awareness of appetites while being unable to understand the reasons why they want and act as they do. The argument for the single substance runs as follows:

    • Substance exists and cannot be dependent on anything else for its existence.

    • No two substances can share the same nature or attribute.
    Proof: Two distinct substances can be differentiated either by some difference in their natures or by the some difference in one of their alterable states of being. If they have different natures, then the original proposition is granted and the proof is complete. If, however, they are distinguished only by their states of being, then, considering the substances in themselves, there is no difference between the substances and they are identical. "That is, there cannot be several such substances but only one." [2]

    • A substance can only be caused by something similar to itself (something that shares its attribute).

    • Substance cannot be caused.
    Proof: Something can only be caused by something which is similar to itself, in other words something that shares its attribute. But according to premise 2, no two substances can share an attribute. Therefore substance cannot be caused.

    • Substance is infinite.
    Proof: If substance were not infinite, it would be finite and limited by something. But to be limited by something is to be dependent on it. However, substance cannot be dependent on anything else (premise 1), therefore substance is infinite.

    • Conclusion: There can only be one substance.
    Proof: If there were two infinite substances, they would limit each other. But this would act as a restraint, and they would be dependent on each other. But they cannot be dependent on each other (premise 1), therefore there cannot be two substances.

    Spinoza contended that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") was a being of infinitely many attributes, of which extension and thought were two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as two different, parallel "subworlds" that neither overlap nor interact. This formulation is a historically significant panpsychist solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism. The consequences of Spinoza's system also envisage a God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is part of the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, God is the natural world and has no personality.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • gue_barium
    gue_barium Posts: 5,515
    I'm tired worked the overnight with another to come, have to go to bed....this is the best I can do for now:

    You're overemphasizing God, as if you could wish to be a god yourself, (not that there's anything wrong with that). If you are a true realist/atheist then this whole notion of that kingdom is out the window, right?

    So, where does God come in? Think evolution and biology. You know, we are all programmed to procreate (there's your determinism), so...throw the fairy tales out and what do you have? It's still a race trying to succeed in getting its gene passed down to the next generation, isn't it? Forget the vernacular in which it is given, if it is successful then why not go with it? It isn't all that complex. You want to call bullshit every time you see God or Religion but the thing is, if you are so sure of your biological predeterminations, then why does God preoccupy you so?

    as for the "god is a mathematical certainty" . that's a riddle. and nobody has solved it but me.

    I've been too kind. You probably see some sort of philosophical deference to my viewpoint, and that is possible since I'm probably at least 20 years older than you. Then again, I have a 72 IQ.
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