Atheism

Holy smoke....!

You really are too easy to impress Olga.

2,500 --Hot demand...? What's the population of Australia.

Were there any Aboriginies at the gig? I gather your PM has been sympathising with them and shooting a photo-op with them as extras despite their high infant mortality rate which one has to assume is their own fault.

I read that Dawkins had accused Fielding of having less brains than an earthworm. And you can't get much more desperate than that. Dawkins can't even do "cool".

Coronation Street has just blasted abortion with a thunderbolt.

I really don't need (or want) your "welcome".

Congtatulations anyway, Unlike Eorl, you got the point.

You conveniently broaden the "beyond doubt" by adding "question or further development". But certainly you can't be saying there's any doubt that quantum mechanics is real. Every time you start an engine on an atomic submarine, you're testing the theory of quantum mechanics. And every time your engine starts, the theory stands triumphantly confirmed. Apart from the soundness of this theory, there's no reason at all to expect that nuclear reactors will work at all.

It is true that there is some argument about details, but quantum mechanics itself is a fact. In exactly the same sense, there is some argument about the details of evolution. But evolution itself is a fact, too.

I fully agree. However, in the absence of any explanation for the ultimate origin of the observable universe, the exploitation of natural science in any of its disciplines to assert that they "prove" the non existence of a creator is simply illogical.

It would be helpful if Thomas explained why "quantum mechanics is itself a fact" rather than just asserting that they are.

I think he means that its predictions, where they have been tested, correspond to observable facts. I don't think the distinction is relevant to the point in discussion - so his assertion is OK.

As I understand it George Einstein wasn't so sure. But I'll accept it might have been a professional spat.

Thomas has me on Ignore I'm told so I don't suppose that has any relevance to the discussion either.

I'm dying to have quantum mechanics explained by one of those persons who think using the expression signifies their intellectual excellence.

I once taught a four year old girl the expression and got her to ask her parents about it. It was quite funny.

I agree. That's why I never bothered with disproving the existence of god. Or the existence of Zeus, or of the tooth fairy, or of the flying spaghetti monster.

Then do you believe that Richard Dawkins created the universe?

I don't believe anyone created the universe.

But I do believe in the existence of Richard Dawkins.

How about the Big Bang? (Good grief, has that been discussed to infinitium here?)

It created itself? Nothing couldn't create something! Anyhow, why is that an argument? We are here, and who doesn't want to be as good a person as possible. That's the only focus. How would it help us to be a better person, should we know what or who created us?

OK. Which is the greater leap of faith?

We're just friendly folk around these parts.


I hope you get the point.

Creationism attempts to explain the origins of the universe, life, and diversity of the earth's species. One concept to explain everything.

Science on the other hand has multiple theories that are independent of each other that address specific phenomenon.

Big Bang - Origin of the universe.
Ambiogenesis - Origin of life.
Evolution - Diversity of life/genetics.

If tomorrow we found out everything we knew about genetics was wrong, it wouldn't mean anything to people studying the big bang.

They are separate.
K
O

Stated incorrectly. Science has not need to disprove a god or gods. Similarly, science does not need to disprove unicorns. Why should I bother disproving something that you can't prove?

T
K
O

Easy. Creationism requires a much greater degree of faith.

T
K
O

Jesus Christ . . . O'George is still trying to convert the heathen ? ! ? ! ?

Your Jesuit masters would be proud, O'George, but in case you didn't notice, the topic of this thread is the experience of being an atheist, not O'George's feeble arguments in favor of his personally preferred superstition.

Who is Richard Dawkins?

Didn't our culture create him? Is he a "typical" biological male? Or is he a Christian culture male? A specific type. Biologically derived from some original for sure but nothing like it except in extreme circumstances of physical pleasure or pain.

A pure production of the Christian God. From what we see before us--lock, stock and barrel. From top to toe. Working in buildings derived architecturally from the Christian God. Using a language deriving from the same source. Having concepts of feminine beauty derived from our God.

Structured like the good little Christian he is and not a chance of him being any different--ever.

I believe there's a naked man (ape if you prefer) who there has been an agreed convention to label, to name, Richard Dawkins. He takes off his pygamas and there he stands. Then he gets into his underpants and starts his day being as Christian as you and me, probably moreso than myself as he has more to lose than I have, and to protest the inconsistencies he leaves out his tie. That's his bow to being feral.

His body is, according to modern physics, almost entirely empty space.

What he is comes under fresco's cognitive semantic field of subjectivity and who he is depends on who is looking at him and when and on what they want to see which is sure to serve the particular observer's complacencies.

On the video from the opera House he is disembodied into frames of electronic events arranged to strike optic nerves sensitive to electromagnetic radiations between 390 to 750 nm (nanometers) or for the technically minded 400 to 790 THz (terahertz) which is at its most sensitive at 555 nm (540THz) or for the amateurs "green" a bit like well watered grass such as we will see at Augusta when Tiger makes his "comeback". There are gaps between the frames but, like the gaps in the fossil record, they can't be seen such is the nature of time.

Such an existence is managed carefully unlike the existence of him putting his underpants on , or taking them off, or any other of his daily actions which are screened out for reasons of Christian delicacy so that only his ghost appears to the public. And it looks a nervous ghost.