The Atheism Mega-Thread

[Womble98]

So where did God come from?

You can't claim he was always there, or suddenly came to be from nowhere and instantly decry the idea of anything else doing that. The universe at its formation was far simpler than any being that could have created it, by basic logic.

And lucky how God is stuck in the small bits we've not quite 'got' yet. If we knew how the universe started but not how the clouds of atoms and dust from the first stars began to coellece to form planets, you'd claim that's where he was hiding.

God is supposedly the 'unmoved mover'. A power with the omnipotence as God could logically do anything and thus God did not need to be created.

It's either that or infinite regress.

 

[silkyman]

The default response from an atheist when someone questions their argument is that the religious person has been brainwashed. This man was clearly no idiot, and it is quite frankly stupid to suggest he wouldn't have taken the same logical approach to religion as he did to physics. He may have come to a different judgement than you or I, but if Catholicism completely discredited his views or vice versa, he would be seen publically in the academic community as a complete hypocrite.

That intelligent people have retained faith is no proof of God. Especially in a culture where many countries still have atheism as a taboo so someone born in the last century, especially one who worked at a Catholic university, is more likely to have retained that faith.

There are plenty of scientists who didn't.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_science_and_technology

 

[Jonny12]

The default response from an atheist when someone questions their argument is that the religious person has been brainwashed. This man was clearly no idiot, and it is quite frankly stupid to suggest he wouldn't have taken the same logical approach to religion as he did to physics. He may have come to a different judgement than you or I, but if Catholicism completely discredited his views or vice versa, he would be seen publically in the academic community as a complete hypocrite.

Problem is your argument seems to boil down to there being smart people that believe so therefore religions have credibility. Also I haven't watched it yet, but he is a Professor of Maths, so his knowledge and experience would also lack in comparison to say a Professor of Science.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator

Stephen Hawking said there's no god, and he obviously isn't an idiot.

 

[silkyman]

God is supposedly the 'unmoved mover'. A power with the omnipotence as God could logically do anything and thus God did not need to be created.

It's either that or infinite regress.

No, it's the opposite of any logic or scientific thought, that the more complex system had to exsist for ever for the simpler system to be created.

And throws up other questions. Why, if God has exsisted for all eternity (and assuming we're not actively arguing the whole 'young earth' creationism and geocentric model of the universe) has he only actually bothered to pay any attention to the goings on one small blue/green planet at the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy, and only then for a couple of thousand years or so?

Was he too busy to let the pagans, or the Greeks or the early Romans or the Mithrans, Gauls, Vikings know what was what? Why hasn't he smitten the Hindus? He used to love a good smiting.

So we apparently have an all powerful deity who turned up almost 14 billion years ago to kick things off, fucked off for 10 billion years before gluing a few proteins together, then vanishing again until Judaeism had, apparently been getting things wrong for 1,500 years and is now keenly interested in whether I do anything wrong?

 

[Womble98]

No, it's the opposite of any logic or scientific thought, that the more complex system had to exsist for ever for the simpler system to be created.

And throws up other questions. Why, if God has exsisted for all eternity (and assuming we're not actively arguing the whole 'young earth' creationism and geocentric model of the universe) has he only actually bothered to pay any attention to the goings on one small blue/green planet at the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy, and only then for a couple of thousand years or so?

Was he too busy to let the pagans, or the Greeks or the early Romans or the Mithrans, Gauls, Vikings know what was what? Why hasn't he smitten the Hindus? He used to love a good smiting.

So we apparently have an all powerful deity who turned up almost 14 billion years ago to kick things off, fucked off for 10 billion years before gluing a few proteins together, then vanishing again until Judaeism had, apparently been getting things wrong for 1,500 years and is now keenly interested in whether I do anything wrong?

As I have said, I don't agree with these beliefs I am just giving my best account of them.

However.

1: Nothing which physically exists can come into existence from nothing. Laws of physics or conservation of matter/energy or something like that say that this is so. ( I don't do physics correct me if I am wrong).
2: The universe must have come from somewhere.

Do you accept these two points?

 

[silkyman]

Both of those questions about God.

That's the issue here.

 

[silkyman]

And this shows up the fundamental (heh) difference between science and religion.

Posed with a difficult question, science says 'Erm... Good question. We don't know.. Hang on while we build a massive particle accelerator and devote entire fields of physics to work it out. We'll get there though.. Don't you worry...'

Religion says: 'It was MAGIC and you can't prove otherwise (yet) so fuck off. We've got people to persecute.'

As and when someone actually solves it, and assuming that isn't because God pops up and said 'well done.. found me, Now it's my turn to count to 10', will you accept that, or will 'god' have snuck somewhere else to hide when we were busy looking at the last billionth of a second after the big bang?

 

[Womble98]

Both of those questions about God.

That's the issue here.

What do you mean by this?
Edit:Your argument is convincing and I don't necessarily disagree with it, just continuing the argument for the sake of a decent discussion.

 

[silkyman]

I mean that you're saying that it's inconceivable that the universe could have come into being from nowhere so there must have been something behind it.

I'm saying that it's even less conceivable that something with the power and intelligence to create the universe could come into being from nowhere.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

To create the universe everything, unless you accept that everything has always existed which is questionable as it goes against every thing we know from experience.

Cause and effect can't exist without time. If the universe has a finite beginning then time does too. There is no 'before' the universe for a cause to have an effect as far as we know, so what we know from experience is neither here nor there. You can't use the laws of the universe to conclude how something outside the universe must work or exist.

 

[silkyman]

The 'why' thing isn't something I've really thought about before. But if you take the Bible's creation story as true, the whole thing makes sense. The creator bungs everything together in six days and then guides his creations like a cosmic game of The Sims all the way through, with the odd smiting here and there, up to the events of the New Testament. As a narrative, at the time of writing the New testament, that works.

But then, from a modern perspective, even within the 'young earth' timeline it all just stops. 4,000 years of a careful hand on the tiller of humanity - for the entire of human existence - and then nothing for the last third of it.

Throw in current science and it's the same question I asked above. Why did an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being wait 10 billion years before even creating the Earth, another billion before starting life and another three billion before the a species capable of even hosting the concept of a deity arrived? (And then another 45,000 years, through the rise and fall of countless other gods, religions and superstitions) before showing his face again?

Does he really think that 'this'.. The world as it stands, is spot on? The crusades? The dark ages? The inquisition? The holocaust? None of that was worthy of a Sodom and Gomorrah style intervention?