Atheism

@Setanta,

Quote:

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.

" With Tyranny, then Superstition joined.
As that the Body, this enslav'd the Mind;
Much was Believ'd, but little understood,
And to be dull was constru'd to be good;"

Alexander Pope.

What could be more tyrannical than an aircraft carrier of the US Navy. A tyranny Setanta sits in his little room feeding and surfeiting upon and passing out his superior witticisms such as "Spurious" or "your boy Jesus" and, lawdy-lawdy, "superstition". Over and over again we can expect until his term is up.

As if superstition is some fault. And as if the surfeit of goodies Setanta wallows in could have been brought to his table by any other method than tyranny and it's handmaid superstition.

What a silly and utterly confused person Setanta is. He is like the heiress of landed estates, gained by a long dead forbear with violence and dastardy, dabbing the smelling salts to her nose at the mention of reality which is a concept he so often speaks of with authority to his audience of dumbed down dimwits.

What heathen ever delivered what Setanta takes for granted? Such things come only from tyrannical Naval officers commanding the finest tools of tyranny ever invented and the superstition is an integral aspect of the manifestation as Pope so astutely observed.

The delicate and refined atheist with his snobbish conceits has never been known to deliver anything worthwhile unless free indulgence of the passions at the expense of the superstitious is considered worthwhile.

And then he suggests that the US Navy protects the oceans from the depredations of other nations.

And what a clumsy sentence he produces to gain our admiration. George's dullness positively glows by the side of it.

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@georgeob1,

The belief in an uncreated universe requires a shorter leap of faith as a belief in god.

If you think the question "what caused the Big Bang?" makes sense, then I admit the answer, "nothing", requires a leap of faith. But you don't shorten that leap by postulating that god caused the Big Bang, because that only raises the next question: "who created god?" If you don't have an intellectual problem with an uncreated god, you shouldn't have had one with an uncreated universe to begin with.

But the question what caused the Big Bang may not make any sense in the first place. There may well not have been a time before the Big Big for its cause to have occurred at. If that sounds weird to you, remember that the phrase "before the Big Bang" would only be guaranteed to make sense if space-time was infinite and Cartesian. But it isn't, just as the surface of the Earth isn't infinite and flat. Just as the surface of the Earth is finite and curved in three dimensions, space-time is finite and curved in four dimensions. You know it's meaningless to ask what landscape lies North of the North Pole. To ask what events happened before the Big Bang could well be meaningless in just the same sense.

So in one case, postulating a god is unnecessary because it closes one leap of faith by creating an even greater one. In other, you're postulating a god to answer a nonsense question. Take your pick.

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Often, when the believer is confronted with the question of "Well then, who or what created God?" the response is that "God" is eternal. The so-called "Occam's Razor" would point out that an unnecessary cause has been added, and the cosmos can equally as well be eternal, without reference to a putative and problematic "God."

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@Setanta,

That Occam dude was one atheist sonofabitch. I'm proud to call him a fellow citizen of Munich.

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@Thomas,

Occam was a prime mover but Aristotle was the first cause.

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@Thomas,

No - he was no atheist and not German either.. He was English, a Franciscan brother and a Scholastic philosopher of some repute. Thomas Aquinas, who lived a century or so earlier would have been very comfortable with him.

However, we have successfully narrowed the question down to the essential issue. Frankly I find the arguments offered in support for the asserted simplicity of the leap to atheism seriously deficient.

A universe that has always existed, but whjch has no creator or designer appears to me to be a contrivance that poses far more questions than it answers. It also leaves us with a problem relative to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

While singularities, such as the 'big bang', don't, in the mathematical sense, permit such questions as , "what came before it?", or "what caused it?"; that is merely the inevitable result of the insufficiently complex or defective mathematical model that yielded the singularity in the first place. The singularity is a feature of our model for the universe, and not the universe itself - indeed in mathematics "singularity" is a term of art for "undefined". Science is actively attempting to examine the details of the "bang" and to consider larger contexts in which it may be comprehensible - it doesn't accept the finality of the singulatity either.

Questions such as "What is north of the North Pole?" are cute, but no more illuminating than "What is in an empty glass?". Moreover, it does seem odd to encounter one who rejects such meaningless questions and then expresses a willingness to accept the meaningless existence of an eternal universe.

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@georgeob1,

when I don't know where I'm going, it doesn't matter which road I take. well, maybe.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

No - he was no atheist and not German either.

Relax. I know he was a Franciscan Monk. And I didn't say he was a German. I said he was a citizen of Munich -- which he was for the last 17 years of his life.

georgeob1 wrote:

A universe that has always existed, but whjch has no creator or designer appears to me to be a contrivance that poses far more questions than it answers. It also leaves us with a problem relative to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

That's an interesting thought. Unfortunately it doesn't apply to what I said, because I never claimed the universe has always existed.

georgeob1 wrote:

While singularities, such as the 'big bang', don't, in the mathematical sense, permit such questions as , "what came before it?", or "what caused it?"; that is merely the inevitable result of the insufficiently complex or defective mathematical model that yielded the singularity in the first place.

I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. Consider the analogy with the Earth's surface again. Our standard mathematical model for describing it is that it's a sphere. And according to this model, the question what lies North of the North Pole is nonsense. Does that mean the "spherical Earth" model is "insufficiently complex or defective" because it can't answer the question? Of course not! It merely means that anyone seriously asking it is still stuck in the unstated, false notion that the Earth is flat. And that's exactly your problem, except that yours is four-dimensional. A big bang that has no "before" needn't be any more esoteric than a North Pole that has nothing North of it. The only reason it's a philosophical problem for you is that your subconscious is still stuck in the false notion that the geometry of space-time is Cartesian.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

However, we have successfully narrowed the question down to the essential issue. Frankly I find the arguments offered in support for the asserted simplicity of the leap to atheism seriously deficient.

There is no leap, George O'Kierkegaard. Atheism isn't making an assumption, it is the refusal of the assumption. You are only able to make your feeble argument by adorning the concept with something which isn't there--i.e., an a priori assumption.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:
While singularities, such as the 'big bang', don't, in the mathematical sense, permit such questions as , "what came before it?", or "what caused it?"; that is merely the inevitable result of the insufficiently complex or defective mathematical model that yielded the singularity in the first place.

I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. Consider the analogy with the Earth's surface again. Our standard mathematical model for describing it is that it's a sphere. And according to this model, the question what lies North of the North Pole is nonsense. Does that mean the "spherical Earth" model is "insufficiently complex or defective" because it can't answer the question? Of course not! It merely means that anyone seriously asking it is still stuck in the unstated, false notion that the Earth is flat. And that's exactly your problem, except that yours is four-dimensional. A big bang that has no "before" needn't be any more esoteric than a North Pole that has nothing North of it. The only reason it's a philosophical problem for you is that your subconscious is still stuck in the false notion that the geometry of space-time is Cartesian.

I have no difficulty with non cartesian geometries, including those that involve time - or the Reimann tensors that express their curvature. You are prejudging my meaning.

However, such a formulation, one that may suggest that time "began'" (say) with the big bang and, as a coordinate in a tensor space, has no meaning "before" (or more properly outside) it; certainly does not even address how the material world and the tensor space in which it resides, came into existence.

You are merely begging the question, but doing so in needlessly complex terms.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

There is no leap, George O'Kierkegaard. Atheism isn't making an assumption, it is the refusal of the assumption. You are only able to make your feeble argument by adorning the concept with something which isn't there--i.e., an a priori assumption.

And that may be what Thomas is suggesting as well. However, that is merely a semantical contrivance. Refusing an assumption, is not the same thing as affirming that the existence of the material world has no explanation. There is a difference, and I may not be clear on just which of these alternatives you and Thomas choose.

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@georgeob1,

I am comfortable with the notion that the existence of the material world has no explanation which any of us can assert to a certainty. That's why i see no need to make an a priori assumption about it. If, as you seem to imply, there is a great difficulty in assuming an eternal cosmos (an assumption i haven't made, either), then you are right back to square one.

If it is too much of a "leap" for you to assume an eternal cosmos, you are left with the question of whence your creator. If "God" created the cosmos, then who or what created your "God?" If you assert that "God" to be eternal, you're right back with Occam's Razor, which would suggest you need to lose the middleman, and simply to assume that the cosmos is eternal. If you do not assume an eternal "God," and cannot answer the question of who or what created your "God," you have needlessly complicated the issue to an even greater degree.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

However, such a formulation, one that may suggest that time "began'" (say) with the big bang and, as a coordinate in a tensor space, has no meaning "before" (or more properly outside) it; certainly does not even address how the material world and the tensor space in which it resides, came into existence.

It doesn't have to, because the concept that it "came into existence" presupposes a time during which the coming-into-existence happened. That's exactly the kind of fallacy that our non-Cartesian model disposed of. You're the one who's begging the question, not me.

On a second reading, it seems I may have been misunderstanding you, and that the question you really want me to address is, "why is there something rather than nothing?" If that's the case, my answer is that I don't know. All I know is that postulating a god doesn't answer this question, either. Whatever this god is, he would most definitely have to be a "something", or else he couldn't cause any of the other "somethings". That, in turn, begs the question why there's a god rather than no god. Hence, by postulating a god to explain that there's something rather than nothing, you would only create yet another infinite regression.

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Well we are successfully narrowing the issue on which we disagree - something that usually doesn't happen in these threads in which too often antagonists merely hurl their rhetorical bombs without even bothering to note the views of their targets. Thank you both for that.

setanta wrote:

I am comfortable with the notion that the existence of the material world has no explanation which any of us can assert to a certainty.

I am comfortable with that as well. I would only add that science is unlikely ever to provide such an explanation " in its own terms.

setanta wrote:

If you assert that "God" to be eternal, you're right back with Occam's Razor, which would suggest you need to lose the middleman, and simply to assume that the cosmos is eternal. If you do not assume an eternal "God,"

Not quite. If the cosmos is eternal, then it is indescribable by science. It is indeed Thomas Aquinas’ “uncaused cause” " it is god.

Thomas wrote:

On a second reading, it seems I may have been misunderstanding you, and that the question you really want me to address is, "why is there something rather than nothing?" If that's the case, my answer is that I don't know. All I know is that postulating a god doesn't answer this question, either. Whatever this god is, he would most definitely have to be a "something", or else he couldn't cause anything. That, in turn, begs the question why there's a god rather than no god. Hence, by postulating a god to explain that there's something rather than nothing, you would only create yet another infinite regression.

That, indeed, is the question I posed. I believe your infinite regression is a bit of semantical sophistry in which you essentially refuse the suggested alternative. God in my definition is the designer and creator, self actuating and beyond our comprehensive description. I don’t assert that our logic should compel you to accept it. However, I do note that there is as much or more magic and faith in your alternative as in mine.

There is another aspect to this question that we have not addressed. Mankind for most of its history has exhibited an inclination toward a supernatural being. This inclination isn’t quite universal, and it has taken many forms. However, the tendency cannot be denied. None of us really know what others think, but I have the strong impression that most people are preoccupied with the meaning, or lack of it, in their lives, and look for something to anchor it. Is this merely a contemptible weakness that the ‘supermen’ (if there really are any) overcome? Or is it evidence of an inborn longing for our creator? I can’t answer this question with absolute certainty either. However, I believe this should suggest something to all of us.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

Or is it evidence of an inborn longing for our creator? I can’t answer this question with absolute certainty either. However, I believe this should suggest something to all of us.

It suggests to me George that mankind finds great utility in the idea and any idea with great utility needs no further justification for its promotion. And especially so when the utility is proved (up to now) using evolution theory and disproved for all those cultures which had other gods and foundered.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

God in my definition is the designer and creator, self actuating and beyond our comprehensive description.

Fair enough -- but if you don't have an intellectual problem with a self-actuating designer and creator of the universe, why do you have one with a self-actuating universe?

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@Thomas,

What utter drivel. Thomas must just like typing words out is the only explanation I can offer.

As if any of us can possibly ever know anything at all about such concepts. Self actuating designers and universes in infinite time and space indeed!!

From a box designed to stop the papers blowing away. Ye Gods!!!

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@spendius,

Quote:

What utter drivel.

Thought the fox as it followed its own scent.

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@georgeob1,

"These threads," O'George suggests that this thread is of a type. In my experience, it is not. This thread is about the experience of being an atheist. Just because you willfully persist in attempting to make it about cosmogony doesn't mean that it is, or was intended to be of that type.

That science doesn't have all the answers is something with which i am also comfortable. It's a refreshing change from religious dogma, which purports to have all the answers, and about 99% of the time relies on a stock phrase something to the effect that "god" moves in mysterious ways.

Whether or not the cosmos is "describable" by science is not relevant to the issue of your abuse of Occam's Razor. If you and Tommy Aquinas want to make the cosmos your "god," fire away. I'll be in the restaurant, looking over the menu. Why don't you two join me there, later?

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@Setanta,

Quote:

I'll be in the restaurant, looking over the menu.

At the Edge Of The Universe

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