this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
335 points (91.6% liked)
Atheist Memes
5452 readers
31 users here now
About
A community for the most based memes from atheists, agnostics, antitheists, and skeptics.
Rules
-
No Pro-Religious or Anti-Atheist Content.
-
No Unrelated Content. All posts must be memes related to the topic of atheism and/or religion.
-
No bigotry.
-
Attack ideas not people.
-
Spammers and trolls will be instantly banned no exceptions.
-
No False Reporting
-
NSFW posts must be marked as such.
Resources
International Suicide Hotlines
Non Religious Organizations
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Ex-theist Communities
Other Similar Communities
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Ok that is your opinion. I wonder how you reached it and I also wonder if you started out neutral and came to that conclusion from what you learned or if you came from a religious tradition first.
It comes from the fact that there is no empirical evidence that a creator doesn’t exist (because evidence of a lack of existence is illogical) and from the fact that there is no explanation for the beginning of the universe that is logically sound (at least not yet). An infinite timeline doesn’t make more sense than an external being setting the timeline in motion
First off evidence of non-existence is not illogical. It is just hard to get access too. Here is evidence of the non-existence of a largest prime: well I tested the first billion numbers and I kept on finding primes. Now this is empirical and not very good but it is still evidence. I can do the same with say the Loch Ness monster. Setup sonar in the lake and find nothing. Again this isn't killer evidence but it is evidence. Additionally any god you advance that has contradictions in its properties is illogical and all I need to do is point those out. For example the Christian god is a clear violation of the law of identity.
Secondly not being able to disprove something doesn't mean we accept it. It means we mark it as possible and do something else. I can't disprove that there is a teacup orbiting between Mars and Saturn that doesn't mean that there is one or that I should believe that there is one.
Gods of the gaps. Not having an explanation doesn't mean we get to advance a supernatural one. In every case in history we have done this we find out we were wrong eventually.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. And you are just moving the problem around. You reject an eternal universe and fix it by adding an eternal being.
Nothing new here.
You're missing my point even though you're so close to getting it. Because we lack sufficient evidence for both the purpose of proving there is a creator/creative force/god AND for the purpose of proving there is no god, it takes faith to believe in either. I suppose you could claim to believe in neither. I suppose agnosticism doesn't really take faith.
I get "your" points fine. It was argued over a thousand years before you or I were born.
We have no evidence of X that doesn't mean we have to have faith to believe in not-X. Not-X is the default, X is what must be demonstrated.
We have no evidence of unicorns, we have no evidence that there isn't unicorns. So I am not convinced that there are unicorns. I have to do nothing. If you want unicorns you get me the photos.
Also you are mixing up agnostic (a statement about knowledge) with atheist (a statement about belief). An agnostic atheist is someone who admits they can't be completely certain but believes there is no god. It is not the halfway mark between atheist and theist. I am an agnostic atheist. I concede that there could be some alien somewhere that is powerful enough that the word god applies to them, I really don't think there is one but I can't disprove it.
And anyway this is being nice. In reality we do have evidence against your skydaddy it is hardly neutral.
Please, tell me what evidence there is because most people seem to enjoy withholding it
Sure. We have the existence of evil, we have a solid set of physical laws that leave no room for the supernatural, we have an explanation for how we got here from the Big Bang onward that shows no evidence of intelligence operating behind it, and we have the violations of logic that most gods that are worshipped today violate.
The only types of gods we can still pretend exist are diest ones that haven't done anything since the beginning of the universe and small random gods living on another planet.
I truly understand the belief that the existence of evil contradicts the idea of an all-knowing and/or good creator, but I firmly believe that it doesn’t. The definitions of “good” and “evil” are so difficult to nail down that I don’t think the existence or perception of these concepts can disprove the existence of something that caused the big bang or something that guided evolution to the conception of humanity. Evil itself is a concept of morality and morality itself is extremely nebulous.
I agree our physical laws don’t leave room for the supernatural but that’s because we can’t reproduce the supernatural under the experimentational parameters which produced the definitions/theories of our physical laws.
The explanation for the big bang doesn’t explain how the rules of logic by which we theorized its origin came into existence.
I don’t understand your final point about violations of logic. I don’t think any explanation for the origin of our universe and the logic that exists within it can be explained using the rules of logic that are contained within our universe.
I understand that what I believe is not what everyone will or should believe, but I’m fairly certain what you listed is not evidence in the concrete sense.
Argument from mysticism is your first paragraph. Pretty common. Why don't you deal with the evil instead of telling people they don't have the ability to understand that their kid dying of cancer is a good thing?
Your second paragraph is an argument from ignorance.
Your third paragraph is not really relevant. I never claimed to know where the Big three in logic came from.
Fourth paragraph:
Ex. God is unlimited. Can God die? No. There is something it can't do. Therefore God is limited.
Ex. A = A, God is fully human fully spirit and fully human. Therefore God is a violation of the law of identity
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I never said that any god or creator that exists must be "good." I also never said that kids dying of cancer is a good thing. I'm just saying we don't have concrete definitions of "good" or "evil" so it doesn't really make much sense to try and understand the origin of the universe and/or the cause of the big bang by comparing it to morality. I also am not trying to convince you that a god exists. I'm trying to establish that it takes faith to believe this universe was not created by something.
Ignorance of what? The laws of physics are defined as such because of our limited ability as humans to run experiments on their consistency. Humans obviously lack the ability to cause supernatural events so how could we possibly run experiments on their consistency? Once we run experiments that prove something inconsistent in the laws of physics, their definitions will be adjusted to appropriately account for them. However, an event caused by a supernatural being's will would obviously not be representative of or fit into the definition of a law, it would be an exception to the law that we as humans could not replicate, so how could we possibly define a natural/physical law based on an exception?
My point in responding to this was mainly to say that one of our physical laws state that matter an energy can neither be created nor destroyed so where did it come from initially? If it was always there, fine but we don't really have evidence of that.
My point about the rules of logic applies here. Something that created this universe and the rules of logic that this universe follows would not need to abide by the rules of logic that it created in a contained setting like this universe.
See my previous point about the rules of logic. But also, I have not been trying to make an argument about specific characteristics or specific actions of a creator of this universe. If you want to argue against the Christian definition of God and the Trinity, go for it, but I won't argue back. I can't make any argument that the Christian God is the creator of the universe that isn't wholly based on faith.
Got to say you are being very dishonest. You said no evidence I just mentioned the basic ones repeatedly endlessly and you respond like you have already heard it. It isn't that you were given no evidence, you just don't like it. Whatever I am sure skydaddy will forgive you lying.
A. Your solution to the problem of evil is an appeal to mysticism and hardly original. Instead of dealing with the problem you claim we are too dumb to know that there isn't a problem. Sorry not sorry I am smart enough to know children getting cancer is a bad thing. If your skydaddy is so alien that it does not then to hell with him. Good thing it doesn't exist.
B. You are putting up walls on science and haven't proven the requirement for the wall let alone where they should be. First you must demonstrate the existence of the supernatural then you can argue science can't deal with it.
C. Your next argument is the ridiculous strawman of ex nihilism. That the universe came from nothing. A view that no one except theists hold. I have no idea where the stuff came for our universe, you are trying to make me claim it came from nowhere and I wont agree. Me not knowing is not me saying it must be thus. And as I mentioned before even if your skydaddy made everything from nothing you are just moving the problem back a step. Where did you skydaddy come from? Oh it's enteral? Cool. Why can't the stuff of our universe be eternal?
D. Your next argument is that logic doesn't apply to your skydaddy. Cool. How did you determine that? I will wait. Because as far as I can tell everything we see does follow it. If you want to plead for a special exception you need to justify it.
I don’t see how I’m being dishonest. I have not claimed to provide any evidence, I’m just trying to explain why what you’re saying is not actually concrete evidence. You said all of your arguments are proof that a creator doesn’t exist when they are just arguments that a very specific kind of god does not exist. I have made no statements about what kind of creator does exist, but you keep arguing that this “skydaddy” doesn’t exist because of characteristics that you are assuming about it. If there is an accepted description of a creator or creators that I’m missing please educate me because I have never heard of a singular definition that everyone agrees is the correct definition of a creator.
Maybe the universe has just always been, I don’t see why that couldn’t be the case. Maybe the universe began out of an absolute void, I don’t see any evidence that can prove otherwise. Maybe the universe was created by a being that exists beyond it, I have no evidence to disprove it. You don’t have to believe any of these theories. You don’t have to believe any other theory about it either. But to assert so certainly that one of these theories is incorrect is a faith-based assertion because there is not concrete, proven, tested, logical evidence that says one of these theories is less plausible than another.
You said no evidence is ever provided. I gave you evidence. I am positive others have as well. You decided that it doesn't count and thus never get any. Evidence doesn't have to be defeating to exist even bad evidence is still evidence.
No. I already explained this to you. If you want your diest skydaddy provide evidence.
Is any form of faith valid?
And if your statement that no god could possibly exist because one concept of a god is nonsensical, then my evidence that an intelligent creator exists is that the second law of thermodynamics states that matter and energy settle into systems of lesser complexity, not greater complexity, which is the opposite of how the theory of evolution works. Dirt evolving into simple single celled life forms and progressively getting more and more complex until fully fledged multi-celled organisms, and ones with sentience at that, violates the law of entropy. I don’t personally think this evidence is rock-solid since it all depends on how wide the scope of your defined system is, but if “skydaddy doesn’t exist because children die of cancer” is your argument against the possibility of an intelligent creator, I don’t see why this evidence is any less valid.
Faith is the belief in what you don't have evidence for. It is never knowledge. At best you can happen to be correct but never claim to know.
Pedantic I know. The second law doesn't state that. It tells you that the entropy doesn't go down for the universe. The universe is getting more complex not less. Because complexity is proportional to the time derivative of entropy. It tells you nothing about what happened prior to the Big Bang, or if prior has any meaning. If you could model entropy of a given universe by t^3 the complexity would follow 3kt^2. You will notice that as t rises (time passes) both values go up, not at the same rate but they both increase.
Take a drop of black ink and put it on a wet page. Take pictures of it over time. First one is pretty simple, easy to compress, not complicated at all. Later pictures are a rainbow very hard to describe, very complex, hard to compress. Eventually your whole page is a blur of colors and you will notice it isn't getting any more complicated. Entropy is now changing very slowly which means complexity is changing even slower than that. I am mentioning this because it is an easy to replicate thing you could do now vs abstract things or expensive things.
Entropy rises and things get less orderly and they require more information to describe and they become more complex. As I said proportional to the derivative. Which is why we should see complexity take off in early universe and start leveling off. You know the exact result we do see.
You need to stop getting your talking points off intelligent design blogs. Even if entropy did work that way it wouldn't mean jack and shit to evolution. Earth is not an isolated system. It orbits this freaken low entropy star blasting energy at it and has been for billions of years. Even if the complexity of the universe was going lower there could still be areas getting more. You can also see this in human society. I assume you are willing to admit that our technology and economic systems has gotten more complex over time. How is that possible under your, less than conventional, understanding of entropy?
Do you really think if you were right the various scientific authorities would have missed something this obvious? Statistical mechanics of gases and energy transfer was the major development of physics of the 19th century. The wrote thick tombs on entropy and kinetic gas laws. And yet no one noticed the most famous biologist of all time was dead wrong? You are acting like this was all figured out last week when they were really still using leaches and telegrams. And no one freaken noticed except the Christian apologists who got degrees from a diploma mill?
Really? All these Biology majors forced to take a section on thermo in school didn't make this connection? Not a single physicists stepped out of their lane to point this out?
¯\(ツ)/¯