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Atheists, perhaps it's you, and not God, who truly do not exist.


^ That....
 

Why must there be someone to thank? Who does this "god" thank for his good health? A quick question for you believers, if a bad man does bad things but confessions and says Hail Mary and ticks all the right boxes the gates of heaven will be opened for him upon his death, but if a good man lives a sinless selfish life but refuses to believe in God will he be granted entry?
 

Yes he will, long before a life time beliver that has lost his path like me!
 
Hi @Fadi;

with regard to Richard Dawkins, he's a bit of a dweeb and is too shrill in his anti-religion crusade. I find his conviction that there is no god to be just as annoying as any fundamentalist religious fanatic (from any religious persuasion).
Can I go all purist and say that the man is a biologist and therefore practically an engineer, not a scientist? full Sheldon mode LOL. I'm just kidding.

Dawkins is not typical of most scientists. As per my earlier comment, below, science and religion are two separate things altogether.
Lawrence Krauss is an atheist BUT he is not trying to "disprove the existence of a god". Krauss maintains the line of what we currently understand from cosmology - as I stated before - that for the universe to be created, a creator is fairly irrelevant. Basically, we didn't need one to create the universe. Whether there is a supreme being or not, is another question. Certainly, one can argue that if there is no need for a creator, then the likelihood of one existing is somewhat diminished. But it falls far far short of a proof.

Krauss is a good guy and like most physicists, is not thinking about gods when he goes about his work. He is trying to understand how the universe works. That is the motivation of every theoretical (and experimental) physicist.

the metaphysical is still difficult ground for science (and all disciplines for that matter), but that does not justify blind faith as a substitute either. If one chooses faith, that is a choice but the inability to decipher the metaphysical is by no means a justification that faith (of whatever religious persuasion) is the appropriate alternative. it remains a choice and a set of beliefs that are generally untested.

Many famous physicists were also men/women of faith. Einstein, Oppenheimer, Madame Curie, the list goes on.

However, I challenge any assertion that one requires a belief in a supreme creator in order to be a good person. That is simply wrong. Morals are not the domain of religion.
 
@chocchillimango; I find Richard Dawkins to be a living metaphor as to be the exact opposite of the rise of superstition and alternative therapies like homeopathy, religion and what other 'supernatural' practices have appeared.

He is a man of extreme belief of empirical evidence, having studied zoology and botany in the past. Most of his public speaking have been based on the theory of evolution
 
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C_T said:
while i don't like the brainwashing religion uses... there is something for traditions.

and i wish aussie family's had more traditions, like i see in my italian friends family's and other nationalities.
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i have this same argument with my italian girlfriend " you aussies don't believe in anything or don't have traditions"

while some aussie families might not have big huge traditions like the italian family , that is not to say that we don't have traditions
 

this is true. he has had some regrettable moments when he crossed the line into zealotry though. My point only being that by doing that, he loses the calm focus on reason in an argument. He can also get nasty.
I have a low tolerance for stupid but one still has to avoid getting too cranky if trying to reason with someone who may be less capable of it - or sometimes, one has to let the battle be lost in order to focus on winning the war, so to speak.
 

Hi Vivian,

I can't thank you enough for giving me/us some of your time, it's not something I take lightly or for granted, especially when coming from someone of your calibre and expertise. So again, I thank you.

Now On the one hand, we have atheists like Dan barker who accuse the theists of using the god of the gaps argument, inserting god where wonder exceeds knowledge so to speak. On the other hand, we have scientists like Dr. Robert Jastrow, an agnostic theoretical physicist, who believed (or rather allowed for a possibility of a belief in) a non-temporal dimension relating to the existence of our universe, based on the Big Bang theory. That is not to say that he was comfortable with such an idea, but at least he conceded to the fact that, “…there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”

General Relativity expert Arthur Eddington and theoretical physicist Stephen hawking have also voiced their dislike for a world that had a point of beginning, with Arthur Eddington admitting that, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”

Having established that we cannot go beyond what is observable; we come to meet scientists like professor Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist who believes in a universe from nothing, that something can come out of nothing. However he does clarify, that there really is something to his nothingness! A scientific nothing that is distinct from that of the theologians’ and philosophers’ nothing; his he tells us, is the “real nothing”!

He goes on to say that his nothing, “could start with absolutely nothing; no particles, not even empty space, no space whatsoever, and may be even no laws governing that space, and we can plausibly understand how you can arrive, without any miracles, without any need for a creator, without any supernatural creation, you can produce everything we see.” So he has basically redefined what ‘nothing’ is as we know it. ‘Nothing’ to Dr. Krauss would be empty space or the quantum vacuum. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who is an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, says in his brief review of Dr. Krauss book's: A Universe from Nothing, “Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is something... ." So now we find ourselves back at square one where we've started, from "something", indicating to a beginning.

Going back to Dr. Jastrow, it’s as if he had predicted that day, when fellow scientists like Dr. Lawrence Krauss would try to get to what is behind the Big Bang event, by using arguments that go beyond the empirical and observable data. Yet, it is still the theist who is using the god of the gaps argument?! I'm happy to be convinced otherwise here, however it just seems to me that professor Krauss is trying to force the idea of his "nothing", and in turn is going around in circles, defeating the very idea he's trying to demolish or dislodge...that of a point of beginning.

Jastrow wrote, “There is a kind of religion in science . . . every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatised. As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications—in science this is known as “refusing to speculate.”

I agree with you that nothing justifies blind faith, or that faith should be a substitute for science. I've said from the outset that I embrace both, even though some or many believe you can not mix the two without arriving at a contradictory conclusion.

As for the testing of someone's set of beliefs, I agree with you that these set of beliefs can not be tested the way a scientist would test his or her hypothesis. However that does not in any way suggests that believes believe blindly, without making use of their intellectual faculties. I understand that there was a day where once scientists and thinkers were tortured before been killed, simply for defying the teaching of the ruling church of that time. I put it to you (as I have in my reply in post #28), that science and scientists (from all over the world) had their best years and flourished at the golden age of Islam, with Islam been the driving force behind the scientific advancement of the time. So (with all due respect to my Christian brethren on this forum), I ask that we don't make the mistake of confusing between the two largest religions on earth, one that discouraged and punished the thinkers and scientists of the day, with one that encouraged and rewarded their achievements and held them in the highest esteem.


However, I challenge any assertion that one requires a belief in a supreme creator in order to be a good person. That is simply wrong. Morals are not the domain of religion.
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You see Vivian, just as you have stated before, that for the universe to be created, a creator is fairly irrelevant, similarly I say, that the belief in a supreme creator (a personal God if you will) is also irrelevant. However my irrelevancy here is not because I do or don't believe in a God, but because I believe the tools that are needed for a person to be good or otherwise, have been intrinsically built within each and everyone of us. Now these are mentioned in the Qur'an, but I promise I won't bore you with it except to say that it's not much unlike what we've learnt from the Psychodynamic theory and/or psychoanalytic personality theory of the Id, Ego, and Superego developed by the Austrian neurologist Dr. Sigmund Freud.
 
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no one should need religion to know right from wrong; 2015 most people have a fair idea.

But I concede, some people/societies still need a doctrine that they can promote in one form or another.
 
I love it when people say they rely upon science for their guidance. Most people don't really understand the purpose of scientific endeavour. Science is not and should not be a rock for people; there aren't really any "laws". The so-called laws are only hypotheses for which data provide strong support and the true purpose of science is to attempt to refute everything and tear hypotheses to pieces.

My first learned profession as a physical chemistry and geology major involved dealing with some of the oldest things on earth. That seems incompatible with the scriptures for which some interpretations provide a different age of the earth and a different view on planetary evolution. But when you stand back and realise your own existence may not in fact be anything beyond that of your own perception, everything and anything could just be a construct of the human mind. Science is one such construct and certainly not a mechanism for providing the answer to the question - "why?"

Perhaps we are all just constructs of the mind of Him above.
 
And I agree that Stephen Hawkins is a dweeb. Other mathematicians let him get away with it because it is politically incorrect to bash a cripple.
 
There is only one modern day false prophet and his name squat.

Ours is not to reason to reason why, ours is but to squat or die.
 
vonfram88 said:
Science is one such construct and certainly not a mechanism for providing the answer to the question - "why?"
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'I do not understand' is the basis of science. It is the process of acquiring knowledge, to understand exactly how something works and to understand 'why it is'.

Science ended the dark ages.
 
yes, that is correct headley.

Before that, the jokers in churches sanctioned a world order top down with absolute monarchies.

Discoveries from science changed all that by challenging stupid assumptions and doctrines.

But, as the great book The Enlightenment by Norman Hampson points out, many still believed in the divine at the end of the 18th century.
 
On reflection i think a 'militant atheist' may believe in something along the lines of 'if you are not using all your faculties then you are wasting your life'.

I dunno.

All i know is there is no 'god' by any definition and the world around me is shaped by me, my own two hands and my mind.
 
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