Existence of God

[SufianBabri]

Well duh frickity duh. Reality obviously exists independent of whether or not we comprehend it, nobody could possibly argue against that. What we're disagreeing on is how to arrive to conclusions using evidence and reasoned argument versus superstition and faith.

Well the simplest thing to do is to keep our faith (atheism, monotheism, polytheism) aside and discuss how did we humans, this Earth, etc came into being. Since nobody today disagrees about established scientific facts, discussion can take place smoothly.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

....our faith (atheism....

It ain't a faith, it's the lack of a faith. Is off a T.V. channel?

Well the simplest thing to do is to keep our faith (atheism, monotheism, polytheism) aside and discuss how did we humans, this Earth, etc came into being. Since nobody today disagrees about established scientific facts, discussion can take place smoothly.

Then what's there to discuss?

[SufianBabri]

It ain't a faith, it's the lack of a faith. Is off a T.V. channel?

Then what's there to discuss?

Atheism is a belief of no god; that is what I meant.
Whenever people are discussing which option is better, they use facts/reasons to support their views. Same can be done with any discussion.

[Taiji]

Atheists are not making any kind of assertion about external reality (there is no assertion except, 'I don't believe in god', which is not about external reality), but theists always are.

They assert the existence of something.

So they need to provide evidence, facts, that back up their assertion or it will be taken as seriously as other products of the imagination.

The atheist has no obligation to provide any facts to support an unconvinced-of-the-theists-assertion stance, and I think this is obvious.

If you're an optimistic theist from a missionary religion like Islam then you should look at the word atheist as meaning 'not a theist yet'.

Upon deciding you want them to believe in the Islamic god then it should be clear to you that you have to do the work of convincing them, and with no help from them.

So then if you're talking to an atheist that needs a science based reason to believe in god, you have to give up because science cannot provide a reason to believe in god as defined in any religion.

You can keep your unscientific views, of course, but you can't convince someone that doesn't want to take on unscientific views.

And probably the worst thing you can do at this point is to pretend that it's scientifically supportable to believe in god. Acting as if you are willing to wreck science for not supporting your beliefs makes your religion look like an enemy of science - In fact an enemy of Mankind.

[Vhaelor]

Atheism is a belief of no god; that is what I meant.

And he was telling you: No it's not, you're using a label and definition of atheism which is not acceptable to many atheists.

[Lord of Lost Socks]

If not playing football is a sport, then I'm a pro athlete.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Hard Atheism is a belief of no god;

Fixed. You bunch us all together, but a lot of us are soft atheists. Us softies don't deny that there is a god. Just don't believe that there is one.

[Vhaelor]

Fixed. You bunch us all together, but a lot of us are soft atheists. Us softies don't deny that there is a god. Just don't believe that there is one.

Well to be fair it's called Weak atheism, and it's a rejection of theistic claims due to the theistic claims not living up to their burden of proof. But soft atheism sounds cool to me, a bit fluffy.

p.s even if Hard/positive atheism is a position where one asserts that no god exists, It still wouldn't qualify itself as a religion as some like to think that atheism is.

[Himster]

Well the simplest thing to do is to keep our faith (atheism, monotheism, polytheism) aside and discuss how did we humans, this Earth, etc came into being. Since nobody today disagrees about established scientific facts, discussion can take place smoothly.

Ok, sure, to figure out how all that leftover gas and dust led from the big bang and later dead stars to planets, astronomers have largely studied the structure of our own solar system for clues. They've also looked to distant, younger solar systems still in varying stages of development.
With the formation of the sun, the remaining gas and dust flattened into a rotating protoplanetary disk. Within this swirling debris, rocky particles began to collide, forming larger masses that soon attracted even more particles via gravity. These particles contracted under gravity to create planetesimals, which collided with one another to become the solid inner planets. Meanwhile, gases farther from the parent star would freeze into giant balls that would build the outer gas giants, like jupiter.

Humans evolved from simpler primates who evolved from simpler mammals who evolved from a kind of reptilian creature which evolved from tetrapods (amphibians), which evolved from synapsids, it goes back simpler and simpler, but ultimately we can't objectively assert how life arose in the first place. We know much of the required components for life are relatively common and that early earth conditions were ideal for fusing many of these components. Most people think there's a supernatural element involved, but I think because eveerything else in the universe is natural, why should life be separate?

[John ''True Grit'' Wayne]

I had a recent experiance where i was in danger and wanted help and i prayed to god as i had no other option (even though i am a atheist) and i got a feeling of euphoria and felt calm again then the danger passed.Is that gods work

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Well to be fair it's called Weak atheism, and it's a rejection of theistic claims due to the theistic claims not living up to their burden of proof.

I was under the impression that weak and soft were interchangable terms.

p.s even if Hard/positive atheism is a position where one asserts that no god exists, It still wouldn't qualify itself as a religion as some like to think that atheism is.

No, it's not a religion, but it's still a faith.

[Taiji]

Well to be fair it's called Weak atheism, and it's a rejection of theistic claims due to the theistic claims not living up to their burden of proof. But soft atheism sounds cool to me, a bit fluffy.

Tiny correction: An implicit weak atheist doesn't care about the burden of proof, he just isn't interested or hasn't been exposed to the god concept.

p.s even if Hard/positive atheism is a position where one asserts that no god exists, It still wouldn't qualify itself as a religion as some like to think that atheism is.

It's almost a theism though, since it's a belief about gods albeit in the negative. Personally I treat strong/gnostic atheists and gnostic theists as using the same same thought patterns - Jumping to conclusions for the same emotional reason.

[Mangalore]

I had a recent experiance where i was in danger and wanted help and i prayed to god as i had no other option (even though i am a atheist) and i got a feeling of euphoria and felt calm again then the danger passed.Is that gods work

No, that's an adrenaline rush.
Or your brain suffered oxygen depravation
Or your drugs kicked in...

It's almost a theism though, since it's a belief about gods albeit in the negative. Personally I treat strong/gnostic atheists and gnostic theists as using the same same thought patterns - Jumping to conclusions for the same emotional reason.

No... currently there is only one conclusion to jump to. That's not emotional, the current empirical data simply doesn't allow any different conclusion at all. The way the universe is composed it does not show any indication of divine intervention and the nature of the universe doesn't show any signs of considering morality a keystone of physics. These seem to be the main themes on which people see reason to shove a God in there somewhere. We could reduce God to the ultimate cause of the creation of the universe but why such an abstract cause would still be something deserving the definition of God is beyond me because the definition of God implies morality such an event wouldn't need.

I find it more interesting why it is physical beneficial for complex hydrocarbon systems to think up such stuff aka in what way organic life follows physics as a sensible path within the event chains.

[John ''True Grit'' Wayne]

I was drowning then prayed then felt calm then just swam even though i had never swam b4.
I guess i just got my together at the right time.Still swimming by remembering just to kick my legs and arms was cool.
I had never swam b4 ever.

That adreneline rush thing happened one time when i broke my ankle it hurt then suddenly my leg swelled and i felt no pain.
I could not move the leg but felt no pain.

[saneel]

Kufr (disbelief): "I don't believe in gravity."

- You can't see it, yet it is.
- You can't prove it, yet everything points to its existence.
- One who ponders enough will arrive at it as a conclusion.
- We are all each of us inescapably bound by it.
- Your belief in or studying of it it does not increase it.
- Your disbelief in or neglect of it does not decrease it.
- One must accept its reality before embarking on deeper study.
- We don't fully understand it, yet we recognise it as a fundamental of existence.
- All objects' existence and intactness are contingent upon it.
- Without it, nothing has any intrinsic weight.
- Without it, there is disorder.

[Blau&Gruen]

You can say the notion God is a product of language. The notion can be described as a result by people having used specific metaphors.

Metaphors i.e. a class of nouns and phrases within a theory of meaning.

Gravitation on the other hand comes from a measurable behavior of masses and can be described within Newton's and modern Physics in mathematical terms.

(An inertial) mass i.e. a quantitative measure of an object's resistance to the change of its speed.

You can describe products of language in mathematical terms, too. But honestly said this is very boring if you start to count.

It should be mentioned further that one in religious language(s) means 'unique for' and not 'a (measurable) item'.

.................................................................................


Isaac Newton's law of (universal) gravitation

Every point mass attracts every single other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

F = the force
m1,2 = the masses involved
r = the distance between the masses
G = gravitational constant (the theoretical factor of the force of gravitation that effects on a surface per mass independant of the involved masses and their distance)
"=" means equal
"_" means 'divided by the factor of ...'
r^2 means the square product of the distance

Henry Cavendish determined G in an experiment 1798 (the Cavendish Experiment).

G is approximately 6.674×10−11 N m2 kg−2 (6.754 × 10−11 m3 kg−1 s−2)



N m2 kg−2 means "Newton (the measure for forces) per square meter (the suface) per kilogram (here for the mass)"

The unit N is equal to the amount of net force required to accelerate a mass of one kilogram at a rate of one metre per second squared.

Cavendish measured G implicitly, using a torsion balance invented by the geologist Rev. John Michell. He used a horizontal torsion beam with lead balls whose inertia (in relation to the torsion constant) he could tell by timing the beam's oscillation. Their faint attraction to other balls placed alongside the beam was detectable by the deflection it caused. Cavendish's aim was not actually to measure the gravitational constant, but rather to measure the Earth's density relative to water, through the precise knowledge of the gravitational interaction. In retrospect, the density that Cavendish calculated implies a value for G of 6.754 × 10−11 m3 kg−1 s−2.

Everything from wiki, see Gravitation, Gravitational Constant and Cavendish Experiment.

[Taiji]

I can just pick something up, let go of it and there - I have proven teh gravity! Rejoice!

If God is like that then presumably I just have to pray and god will appear before me, but no.

Or maybe I pick something up and drop it and god says "Ow!" because he was in it, but no.

[Himster]

Kufr (disbelief): "I don't believe in gravity."

- You can't see it, yet it is.

You can feel it, measure it, experience it, calculate future events based on it, you can resist it, you can bend the rules of it.

- You can't prove it, yet everything points to its existence.

The activity of gravity as a force in the universe has been proven.

- One who ponders enough will arrive at it as a conclusion.

Pondering in that sense is pure and distilled intellectual :wub:

- We are all each of us inescapably bound by it.
- Your belief in or studying of it it does not increase it.
- Your disbelief in or neglect of it does not decrease it.
- One must accept its reality before embarking on deeper study.
- We don't fully understand it, yet we recognise it as a fundamental of existence.
- All objects' existence and intactness are contingent upon it.
- Without it, nothing has any intrinsic weight.
- Without it, there is disorder.

Great.
So what does your half arsed musings on science have to do with the myths about gods, fairies, spooky ghosts and other metaphysical fables? Surely you weren't just posting because you love to copy and paste random things off the internet.

[sumskilz]

You can say the notion God is a product of language. The notion can be described as a result by people having used specific metaphors.

Metaphors i.e. a class of nouns and phrases within a theory of meaning.

Gravitation on the other hand comes from a measurable behavior of masses and can be described within Newton's and modern Physics in mathematical terms.

(An inertial) mass i.e. a quantitative measure of an object's resistance to the change of its speed.

This is comparison reminds me of Mordecai Kaplan:

"In our thinking about God we must avoid all those mental habits which issue in logical fallacies. The most common of these is hypostasis, or assuming the separate identifiable existence of anything for which language has a name. There is a considerable difference, for example, between the way a scientist thinks of gravity and the way most layman think of it. A scientist regards it as property or quality of matter, a descriptive term for the way masses of matter behave in relation to one another. The average layman, however, thinks of it as a force, an invisible something that acts upon masses of matter pulling them together. According to both conceptions, gravity is real and must undeniably be reckoned with, but the layman finds it difficult to regard gravity as real without at the same time thinking of it as a thing, an object, a self-existent being or entity."

Kaplan was a proponent of religion without supernaturalism which he saw as evolved ritual expressing collective cultural values. His own theology (if we can call it as such) was influenced by Émile Durkheim. Kaplan’s ideas are of particular interest to me because of my study of religion (or religious thought) as an evolved trait. Ironically (or maybe not so), I recently discovered that in the early 1900s, Kaplan studied anthropology with Franz Boas who is arguably the father of the modern field.

[Blau&Gruen]

This is an interesting remark about Mordechai Kaplan having studied under Franz Boaz.

Thanks, sumskilz.