Why Are You an Atheist or a Believer?

[NUance]

Does that mean that before birth non believers were born simply to fill space only to be cast into hell upon death.

Would you prefer that he only created an earth and filled it with people who did exactly as he wanted?

That would be preferable to the vast majority spending eternity being punished for failing to live up to rules that never needed to exist, considering that we should all be in Heaven from the get-go as beloved children.

Maybe they are not punished for eternity, but rather they simple cease to exist. People who don't believe in God believe that they simply die and that's the end. Maybe it is for them.

 

[knapplc]

But yeah. A real head scratcher.

What I can't see is how adding the assumption of an all powerful being no one can detect or communicate with makes this puzzle any simpler. We're just adding an even more complex mystery to the one we already have, and this one comes with the baggage of being both unprovable and unfalsifiable.

I'm taking the development of earth up to this point in time as a given. Regardless of whether God created it, or earth's creation resulted from random happenstance. It happened. And that's not what I'm concerned with. What I'm talking about is the odds of the earth maintaining stability from this point forward. It it was random happenstance that resulted in everything up to this point, then it seems overwhelmingly likely that the complex systems of the earth will fail and life on earth will end. For every earth that continues merrily humming along, there must be a million other earths that flame out in a series of explosive, disease ridden disasters every day. For every earth where the outbreak of AIDs is contained, there must be thousands of earths where AIDs goes airborne and snuffs out all human life in a few short months. Think of the consequence for mankind if the earth somehow heated up by 10 degrees Celsius over the next decade, and stayed that way for a few hundred years. Or got colder by 10 degrees. How is it that every day, we are one of the lucky ones? Why is it that the design of all the incredibly complex systems on earth are so robust that we don't simply break down some day and fall by the wayside?

Going forward, when you consider all of the possible things that could go wrong with the complexity of earth's many systems, I don't see how you could avoid thinking that a higher power may have somehow been involved in creation.

I'm not quite sure how to take this, considering the warnings upon warnings upon warnings we're getting from climatologists about impending climatological disasters we keep hearing about on a weekly basis. If we don't do something to stop our production of greenhouse gases, we could make this planet unlivable.

 

[Husker_x]

But yeah. A real head scratcher.

What I can't see is how adding the assumption of an all powerful being no one can detect or communicate with makes this puzzle any simpler. We're just adding an even more complex mystery to the one we already have, and this one comes with the baggage of being both unprovable and unfalsifiable.

I'm taking the development of earth up to this point in time as a given. Regardless of whether God created it, or earth's creation resulted from random happenstance. It happened. And that's not what I'm concerned with. What I'm talking about is the odds of the earth maintaining stability from this point forward. It it was random happenstance that resulted in everything up to this point, then it seems overwhelmingly likely that the complex systems of the earth will fail and life on earth will end. For every earth that continues merrily humming along, there must be a million other earths that flame out in a series of explosive, disease ridden disasters every day. For every earth where the outbreak of AIDs is contained, there must be thousands of earths where AIDs goes airborne and snuffs out all human life in a few short months. Think of the consequence for mankind if the earth somehow heated up by 10 degrees Celsius over the next decade, and stayed that way for a few hundred years. Or got colder by 10 degrees. How is it that every day, we are one of the lucky ones? Why is it that the design of all the incredibly complex systems on earth are so robust that we don't simply break down some day and fall by the wayside?Going forward, when you consider all of the possible things that could go wrong with the complexity of earth's many systems, I don't see how you could avoid thinking that a higher power may have somehow been involved in creation.

The earth has already undergone five (or six) mass extinctions. The idea that we're lucky is probably nothing more than our own hubris and total inability to comprehend deep time.

 

[knapplc]

Does that mean that before birth non believers were born simply to fill space only to be cast into hell upon death.

Would you prefer that he only created an earth and filled it with people who did exactly as he wanted?

That would be preferable to the vast majority spending eternity being punished for failing to live up to rules that never needed to exist, considering that we should all be in Heaven from the get-go as beloved children.

Maybe they are not punished for eternity, but rather they simple cease to exist. People who don't believe in God believe that they simply die and that's the end. Maybe it is for them.

Jesus speaks of Hell as a reality:

Matthew 13:41-42, 49-50 “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Mark 9:43, 48-49 “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire…where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire.”

 

[zoogs]

How is it that every day, we are one of the lucky ones?

We haven't had a very long run. We'll be lucky if we somehow manage to come even close to rivaling name your now extinct species here in longevity.

 

[NUance]

Does that mean that before birth non believers were born simply to fill space only to be cast into hell upon death.

Would you prefer that he only created an earth and filled it with people who did exactly as he wanted?

That would be preferable to the vast majority spending eternity being punished for failing to live up to rules that never needed to exist, considering that we should all be in Heaven from the get-go as beloved children.

Maybe they are not punished for eternity, but rather they simple cease to exist. People who don't believe in God believe that they simply die and that's the end. Maybe it is for them.

Jesus speaks of Hell as a reality:

Matthew 13:41-42, 49-50 “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Mark 9:43, 48-49 “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire…where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire.”

Yeah, there is a hell according to the bible. And people who don't believe in God will apparently burn in hell. I haven't really studied that topic much, but I think that's the second death. When people will be tossed into the lake of fire and cease to exist. The wage of sin is death.

 

[BigRedBuster]

We use what, like 11% of our brains? Isn't it possible that the parts of our brain we do not yet understand hold the key to our "souls"? If in death, would it not be possible that a part of our brain is opened that releases our "soul" or our memories/mind, could that not be how people envision past lives? Could that not be what "haunts" people, places or things?

That's actually not true. We use pretty much all of our brains.

Back on the main topic, though (and to be clear, only the first part was directed specifically at 1995's post). Why is it so easy to believe that there's a mystical being in a dimension other than our own who created an entire universe, including a race of beings in his image, and loves all these beings, but will punish them eternally if they don't worship him, yet it's so hard to believe that in an infinite expanse of time, the right conditions to create self-sustaining, gradually-evolving life systems could form?

This right here is the crux of a major question in my mind that lead me to believe there has to be a higher power. You simply look at the question from one direction and I look at it from the other.

You find it easier to believe that there was this mass of matter (always has been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing) that exploded and set existence of everything on the path to where we are today with complex life forms that feel, think, move....etc. and it was nothing more than one big chemical reaction and that is all it is still to this day.

I find it easier that the first mass of matter was created by a higher power (that has always been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing). That higher power took that mass of matter and created everything that has been and everything we see today.

I honestly don't see why one is harder to believe than the other one. I fully accept science and what it has proven. I just simply believe there is a higher power that is directing things and what science shows is simply the evidence of that higher power's work.

Both thought processes get to a point where the human brain just can not comprehend and faith in something is required. Now, some atheists baulk at that statement but, it's true. If you don't believe in a higher power that created this world, you still have to have faith in some how that first bit of mass came from somewhere or has just simply....always been.

 

[TGHusker]

Serious question:

Do you folks that have been debating this topic and the changing religion topic and the Stephen Fry meets God topic have these intense conversations with other people in your daily lives or do you just save it for message boards?

I ask because I wonder if I am in the minority when it comes to conversations like this. When someone asks me a personal religious question, I answer it the best I can. If they try to counter point me, I just shrug my shoulders and say good for them. I never argue or debate. It just seems counterproductive to either side's message.

SPH: No one in my 'real life' is as intellectually challenging as Knapp and HuskerX

and everyone else on this forum. Besides, I think most of us are too busy caring on with life and its mundane-ness. Here we actually get to solve all of the world's greatest problems, mysteries, and challenges. One day, we will solve global warming but for now we'll settle the issue about God and suffering.

(I like that smiley face icon as it cracks me up each time I see NUance use it - which is often. - normally following some funny line)

Seriously, I occasionally get into discussions like this but it is often a 'live and let live' discussion. In my work, I deal with and talk to people from many cultures & countries. I always find it interesting to discuss some of these issues with them to get their view point. I fould it extremely amusing that a gentleman from UAE visiting our office thought it was no big deal that ISIS is on the move 'over there' or that Yemen was collapsing "over there". It didn't affect his neighborhood but yet it is all over the news here in the USA wt all of the anxiousness of a cat with a long tail in a room of rocking chairs.

Actually, even though we go on for pages and pages in this forum and probably not change anyone's mind, I think it would be a real neat experience to do what CS Lewis did at Oxford - with his fellow Oxford scholars (believers and non) - sit down at the pub table wt a cigar (I don't smoke but I know some of you guys do), a glass of wine, beer or Pepsi and talk like we do here.

 

[TGHusker]

We use what, like 11% of our brains? Isn't it possible that the parts of our brain we do not yet understand hold the key to our "souls"? If in death, would it not be possible that a part of our brain is opened that releases our "soul" or our memories/mind, could that not be how people envision past lives? Could that not be what "haunts" people, places or things?

That's actually not true. We use pretty much all of our brains.

Back on the main topic, though (and to be clear, only the first part was directed specifically at 1995's post). Why is it so easy to believe that there's a mystical being in a dimension other than our own who created an entire universe, including a race of beings in his image, and loves all these beings, but will punish them eternally if they don't worship him, yet it's so hard to believe that in an infinite expanse of time, the right conditions to create self-sustaining, gradually-evolving life systems could form?

This right here is the crux of a major question in my mind that lead me to believe there has to be a higher power. You simply look at the question from one direction and I look at it from the other.

You find it easier to believe that there was this mass of matter (always has been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing) that exploded and set existence of everything on the path to where we are today with complex life forms that feel, think, move....etc. and it was nothing more than one big chemical reaction and that is all it is still to this day.

I find it easier that the first mass of matter was created by a higher power (that has always been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing). That higher power took that mass of matter and created everything that has been and everything we see today.

I honestly don't see why one is harder to believe than the other one. I fully accept science and what it has proven. I just simply believe there is a higher power that is directing things and what science shows is simply the evidence of that higher power's work.

Both thought processes get to a point where the human brain just can not comprehend and faith in something is required. Now, some atheists baulk at that statement but, it's true. If you don't believe in a higher power that created this world, you still have to have faith in some how that first bit of mass came from somewhere or has just simply....always been.

God as the First Cause behind the univ. An unembodied mind - the intelligent designer behind the finely tuned universe

 

[knapplc]

When I was a Christian, I had this conversation in person many, many times. I was a staunch defender of my faith, but there were several times when I was outnumbered and basically persecuted. It sucked royally. Oddly, most of those instances happened in the workplace, and had I known there were laws against it, I would have had a pretty good case.

Much as I disliked the tenor of those conversations (they were often mocking in tone), a lot of what they said stuck with me, and some of the logic they used made more sense when I stopped ignoring it. It sucks to realize you've been wrong about something, and it sucks even more knowing how adamant you were.

 

[BigRedBuster]

Serious question:

Do you folks that have been debating this topic and the changing religion topic and the Stephen Fry meets God topic have these intense conversations with other people in your daily lives or do you just save it for message boards?

I ask because I wonder if I am in the minority when it comes to conversations like this. When someone asks me a personal religious question, I answer it the best I can. If they try to counter point me, I just shrug my shoulders and say good for them. I never argue or debate. It just seems counterproductive to either side's message.

SPH: No one in my 'real life' is as intellectually challenging as Knapp and HuskerX

and everyone else on this forum. Besides, I think most of us are too busy caring on with life and its mundane-ness. Here we actually get to solve all of the world's greatest problems, mysteries, and challenges. One day, we will solve global warming but for now we'll settle the issue about God and suffering.

(I like that smiley face icon as it cracks me up each time I see NUance use it - which is often. - normally following some funny line)

Seriously, I occasionally get into discussions like this but it is often a 'live and let live' discussion. In my work, I deal with and talk to people from many cultures & countries. I always find it interesting to discuss some of these issues with them to get their view point. I fould it extremely amusing that a gentleman from UAE visiting our office thought it was no big deal that ISIS is on the move 'over there' or that Yemen was collapsing "over there". It didn't affect his neighborhood but yet it is all over the news here in the USA wt all of the anxiousness of a cat with a long tail in a room of rocking chairs.

Somewhat, same here.

Really, I don't have anyone in my "real life" that I have any desire to have this conversation with. Most people get very defensive and nasty (from both sides) when their beliefs are questioned. On this board, we have all had so many discussions before that we understand there is no real reason to get emotional and worked up about anything someone disagrees with us about. Also, if someone on here gets pissy and nasty, it's pretty simple to simply ignore them. In real life, that isn't as easy.

I also live in such a conservative area of the world that they all pretty much think I'm a liberal traitor to reality. Meh....really don't have a desire to have many conversations with them about politics and religion.

 

[zoogs]

I find it easier that the first mass of matter was created by a higher power (that has always been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing). That higher power took that mass of matter and created everything that has been and everything we see today.

"First mass of matter" seems like a bit of a misnomer for singularity. Everything "before" that point is impossible to quantify and has "no observational consequence".

At this time, the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe, would have been on top of itself. The density would have been infinite. It would have been what is called, a singularity. At a singularity, all the laws of physics would have broken down. This means that the state of the universe, after the Big Bang, will not depend on anything that may have happened before, because the deterministic laws that govern the universe will break down in the Big Bang. The universe will evolve from the Big Bang, completely independently of what it was like before. Even the amount of matter in the universe, can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang. --Stephen Hawking

^ That's a pretty illuminating and thorough article from Dr. Hawking. Though I'm not sure when it was published.

It's not really faith to acknowledge that this is outside of the domain of what we can know. As I said before though, atheism and theism on its own aren't important distinctions. Whether you choose to fill in the blank with the "higher power" concept, or just leave it blank...

The big step, to me, is accepting a particular collection of written human works as delineating the full truth. *That* leap of faith seems to me to be extremely meaningful and defining, and is an option that can be declined by atheist and theist alike. Personally, I feel reason supports this declination, while at the same time it doesn't toss out the teachings of Jesus, Paul, Lao Tze, Plato, Kant or anyone else who's ever had their thoughts passed down, probably altered, and immortalized through the ages.

 

[Hammerhead]

We use what, like 11% of our brains? Isn't it possible that the parts of our brain we do not yet understand hold the key to our "souls"? If in death, would it not be possible that a part of our brain is opened that releases our "soul" or our memories/mind, could that not be how people envision past lives? Could that not be what "haunts" people, places or things?

That's actually not true. We use pretty much all of our brains.

Back on the main topic, though (and to be clear, only the first part was directed specifically at 1995's post). Why is it so easy to believe that there's a mystical being in a dimension other than our own who created an entire universe, including a race of beings in his image, and loves all these beings, but will punish them eternally if they don't worship him, yet it's so hard to believe that in an infinite expanse of time, the right conditions to create self-sustaining, gradually-evolving life systems could form?

This right here is the crux of a major question in my mind that lead me to believe there has to be a higher power. You simply look at the question from one direction and I look at it from the other.

You find it easier to believe that there was this mass of matter (always has been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing) that exploded and set existence of everything on the path to where we are today with complex life forms that feel, think, move....etc. and it was nothing more than one big chemical reaction and that is all it is still to this day.

I find it easier that the first mass of matter was created by a higher power (that has always been because our brains can't comprehend the beginning coming out of nothing). That higher power took that mass of matter and created everything that has been and everything we see today.

I honestly don't see why one is harder to believe than the other one. I fully accept science and what it has proven. I just simply believe there is a higher power that is directing things and what science shows is simply the evidence of that higher power's work.

Both thought processes get to a point where the human brain just can not comprehend and faith in something is required. Now, some atheists baulk at that statement but, it's true. If you don't believe in a higher power that created this world, you still have to have faith in some how that first bit of mass came from somewhere or has just simply....always been.

For me, it's not a matter of faith in any sort of belief as to how we got here, because I don't hold any specific belief. At this point, I'm content to simply say, "I don't know".

 

[knapplc]

For me, it's not a matter of faith in any sort of belief as to how we got here, because I don't hold any specific belief. At this point, I'm content to simply say, "I don't know".

That's where I'm at. I engage in this discussion not because I'm trying to sway opinion one way or the other, but because I find the topic fascinating, as much from this side of the aisle as the other. I don't know the answers, but I can throw out probabilities from what we do know. I'm more interested in Truth than anything. If that turns out to be the Christian god, groovy. If it turns out to be no god, groovy. If it turns out to be Zen Buddhism... meh. Less groovy, but OK.

 

[BigRedBuster]

But yeah. A real head scratcher.

What I can't see is how adding the assumption of an all powerful being no one can detect or communicate with makes this puzzle any simpler. We're just adding an even more complex mystery to the one we already have, and this one comes with the baggage of being both unprovable and unfalsifiable.

I'm taking the development of earth up to this point in time as a given. Regardless of whether God created it, or earth's creation resulted from random happenstance. It happened. And that's not what I'm concerned with. What I'm talking about is the odds of the earth maintaining stability from this point forward. It it was random happenstance that resulted in everything up to this point, then it seems overwhelmingly likely that the complex systems of the earth will fail and life on earth will end. For every earth that continues merrily humming along, there must be a million other earths that flame out in a series of explosive, disease ridden disasters every day. For every earth where the outbreak of AIDs is contained, there must be thousands of earths where AIDs goes airborne and snuffs out all human life in a few short months. Think of the consequence for mankind if the earth somehow heated up by 10 degrees Celsius over the next decade, and stayed that way for a few hundred years. Or got colder by 10 degrees. How is it that every day, we are one of the lucky ones? Why is it that the design of all the incredibly complex systems on earth are so robust that we don't simply break down some day and fall by the wayside?

Going forward, when you consider all of the possible things that could go wrong with the complexity of earth's many systems, I don't see how you could avoid thinking that a higher power may have somehow been involved in creation.

I'm not quite sure how to take this, considering the warnings upon warnings upon warnings we're getting from climatologists about impending climatological disasters we keep hearing about on a weekly basis. If we don't do something to stop our production of greenhouse gases, we could make this planet unlivable.

And...at this point, I get back to the question I have in my mind and have discussed on here many times, if there is no God or deeper meaning in life than just a bunch of random chemical reactions, why even warm people about climatological disasters? That massive chemical reaction that ultimately would destroy the Earth would really have no more meaning than what happens with yeast when I bake bread. All it is is a continuation of an extremely long chemical process.