Believers: Why is Atheism Irrational?

reply to post by SuperiorEd


YOU WIN in my book Superior Ed! Ahhhhhh......I love Albert Einstein. The more he dug, the closer he found himself to God! He and I share the same birthday..that makes my opinion worth something doesn't it?

Originally posted by SuperiorEd

You may be confusing Atheism for Agnosticism. Atheism is a strict disbelief in any form of God or deity. Atheism would never say there is a God. If an Atheist says there is the possibility of a God, then he is Agnostic and not Atheist.

Thats only because you do not understand the meaning of atheism

Atheism means no belief in a deity/god.
That is not a statement that there is no god...there is no positive statement from an atheist. saying there is no god is a positive statement...the follow up question then is "ok, prove your claim"

Agnosticism should not be used as a noun and you will find most self proclaimed agnostics are actually agnostic atheists (such as myself).
I used to call myself an agnostic until I became honest with myself. I do not believe in Yehweh, Allah, Zeus, etc etc etc. I see no evidence proving their existance...I am very open to the idea of something greater, but I would like to see proof before I believe..and not subjective evidence, but objective verified proof that cannot be seen in any other way.

Until then, I can speculate until the cows come home and comfortably call myself an atheist (or agnostic atheist)

reply to post by MamaJ


Yes, the atheist known as Albert Einstein managed to find a deity...wait, no he didn't. He was an atheist and the closest he could find to a deity was something in the form of simply labeling everything 'god'.

Einstein is yet another example of God's revelation through the Hebrew people. Israel is called the light unto the nations. Take a look at how many Nobel laureates are Jewish. It's astonishing. It is my belief that humans transmigrate from one life to another. When the Bible says that, "All eyes will see," I think it literally means all eyes, other than the first resurrection, will be on earth to see Him return. Einstein is most likely here today walking around somewhere.

Originally posted by MamaJ
reply to post by SuperiorEd

 

YOU WIN in my book Superior Ed! Ahhhhhh......I love Albert Einstein. The more he dug, the closer he found himself to God! He and I share the same birthday..that makes my opinion worth something doesn't it?

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Did you know him? I have read many and I mean MANY books in regards to Einstein and have a love/hate for Einstein. I think it depends on the reader and the writer as to what he REALLY believed and or believed in. It is definitely as arguable as this thread and I will not argue. I seek peace and Truth!

reply to post by MamaJ


Well...have you ever read anything actually written by Einstein?

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

I am a determinist. I do not believe in free will. Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine. In that respect I am not a Jew.

Definitely not the words of a person that believes in a deity.

reply to post by SuperiorEd

Originally posted by SuperiorEd
Einstein is yet another example of God's revelation through the Hebrew people.

Except that Einstein didn't arrive at his conclusions from divine revelation, he merely worked himself hard at it.

Israel is called the light unto the nations. Take a look at how many Nobel laureates are Jewish. It's astonishing.

That list cites people who were born into a Jewish family but are known atheists, like Hermann Joseph Muller...and I have a question, what does that prove? The majority of Nobel prize winners have also been people who were either rich or middle class. You can draw all sorts of correlations. Hell, maybe the reason is that there was a statistically disproportionate number of Jewish individuals in the sciences.

I'd also like to point out that the Nobel prize is an honor but not necessarily the only way someone can be noted to have been important. There are plenty of 'unknown' pioneers in scientific fields because there works weren't quite as sexy or flashy.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


AGAIN, I will state herein that it depends on what you read! Einstein was not an atheist and I would say in my own opinion that he was utterly confused as his mind and his works were out there. Not of the normal, per say. Indeed a teacher and a seeker of his time.

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Might as well add this as well....He was a believer but not a believer of a personal God whom punishes and rewards. He was more of a mystic in my opinion. I too have read so much and studied to the point of confusion in a sense, yet with the confusion lies the Truth. Its all in your own perception of reality as to what is and what isn't. Here is another quote from my friend and brother of the same birth date! ha! ;-)

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

Michio Kaku talks about Einstein in this video. Einstein did not believe in a personal God, but a God of order and beauty. Einstein did believe in God as not yet defined. My problem with his idea of a non-personal God is that it limits God in His love. If God is loving enough to create the universe, then He cannot be limited in extension of His love to the micro or macro level in any way. My idea of God is all love and all possibility at rest. We are not at rest, as we collapse the wave function of indeterminate probability. We co-create reality as an observer in the material realm. God has no opposite, so He remains hidden to our view. We have nothing to compare Him to except the image of God (reality). We are made 'in' the image of God. Nature is the image. This gives Romans 1 a whole other meaning.

Originally posted by MamaJ
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Did you know him? I have read many and I mean MANY books in regards to Einstein and have a love/hate for Einstein. I think it depends on the reader and the writer as to what he REALLY believed and or believed in. It is definitely as arguable as this thread and I will not argue. I seek peace and Truth!

reply to post by SuperiorEd


In true believer-style, you already from the start introduce less certain elements in your argumentation.

Quote: ["From the believer’s perspective, God makes the claim that He is both Alpha and Omega, beginning and end."]

I take it from the context, that you here are referring to the abrahamic 'god', and that you try to implicate some pseudo-proof of this 'god's reality as a universal creator by bringing up some similarities between contemporary science and citations from the bible.

a/ That things have a beginning and an end is, from a mundane perspective (religious or not, scientifically or not, complex or not) not a very revolutionary observation. Many 'gods' are involved in a beginning and end scenario.

b/ It's remarkable, that the Jahveh-entity from OT (through messing around with the special christian version of the much older and more precise trigunic existence model) in his confused way is a pale derivate of the over-riding 'nameless' ultimate reality mentioned in many other religious contexts.

c/ That the same Jahveh, allegedly creating the universe, doesn't have the slightest idea of its (the universe's) real construction (as demonstrated by gen 1).

d/ That IF a ultimate reality is to be considered an option, the hinduistic BrahmaN (notice the 'n') would be a much more likely candidate.

Quote: ["Science tells us that the vast majority of what is contained in the universe is invisible “Dark Matter.”]

Let's for the duration consider this a reasonable theory.

Quote: ["This invisible dark matter makes up a full 90% of the universe, leaving visible matter—what is seen—to comprise all the substance we can perceive around us on a daily basis."]

Yes.

Quote: ["All material substance is essentially one thing: energy transmuted to what we see as substance, occupying a volume, expressed in its function and meaning to the whole. We know the 10% we see very well."]

Still with you.

Quote: ["As stated in the opening verse of the Bible, "Let there be light." Light is both a wave and a particle."]

So obviously you can already now forget your specially christian-adapted pseudo-science. Dark matter is non-electromagnetic (being exclusively gravitational in character), light is electro-magnetic.

Quote: ["This duality is expressed in the first chapter of John where he says, "In the beginning was the word..." Light and word, both particle and wave."]

I have yet to meet christians, who hijack science to their own purposes, to be discouraged by such small inconsistent details as the one above, so ofcourse you plod on getting into the more traditional christian scholastics.

"Light and word" = "particle and wave". This falls completely outside standard science and logic, but knowing the abrahamic love of pushing inductive argumentation to its limits and beyond, such postulates probably seem reasonable to you.

Quote: ["All of this is interesting, but here is where we make the distinction between faith and reason; religion and science: By faith in a Creator, I examine the meaning behind the visible reality (10% of matter) and realize that it tells a story that can be defined."]

First of all dark matter is only 'invisible' in the meaning, that it isn't electromagnetic, and thus can't be observed visually. But, as far as dark matter exists at all, it's not un-measurable. The theory of dark matter rests on gravitational effects, which ARE measurable, so there's nothing 'mystic' about dark matter, making it a sign of anything 'divine' or whatever, which only can be examined by your home-brewed pseudo-methodology.

Quote: [" This story is not just expressed by religion, but also synchronistically by nature. Each tells the exact same story, like a mirror perfectly reflecting the truth of the other."]

This postulate needs some explanation. It sounds like pure bosh to me, as it stands.

Quote: ["Science, by the same faith, attempts to observe the 90% of what cannot be observed directly. From this observation, science makes up grandiose claims of theory, believing its conclusions within a context of misplaced concreteness of imagined reality."]

Finally we're at homeground, where we recognize the usual christian non-sense argument: When science can't explain everything down to the smallest details, we christians can fill out the gap with any speculation, however wild and unsupported it is.

Quote: ["This means rational Atheists base the totality of their belief within an unseen reality of imagined perception, with largely unproven theory."]

While mixing up science with atheism, and apparantly ignoring the concept agnostic atheism as inconvenient for your 'arguments', I can at least see SOME justification for the scientific approach to dark matter. Whereas the christian approach is pure fantasy without a shred of evidence.

Are you really so naive, that you believe that discrediting competing makes any fairytale the only 'credible' alternative.

Quote: ["At best, anything concerning the 90% of unseen reality can only be ever-changing theory."]

With your practicvally non-existing knowledge of REAL science and its methods, you are in no position to make such claims.

Quote: ["Faith for all of us, then, is the substance of things hoped for, as indicated in Hebrews:"]

If you by "all of us" mean religious ignoramuses living in self-containing bubbles, you could be right. No person with the slightest knowledge of real science/logic would ascribe to your rambling pseudo-reasoning.

I'll skip your bible-interpretations and go to

Quote: [" Why are we here in this story of God?"]

because this 'god' isn't a 'god', but most likely some non-human entity (if this really is some non-fictive character), who on traditional plantation-owner lines tries/tried to run this planet with the usual combination of total power/submission of the natives/fear. Besides his character can best be defined as schizophrenic with elements of multiple personality, manifesting in paranoia/megalomania tantrums.

Quote: ["We do not merit this favor from God."]

Speak for yourself. And in any case I wouldn't dream of asking for favours from a cosmic equalent of Hitler.

Quote: ["We were created for his good pleasure, as observers of His goodness and abundant mercy and truth."]

The rest of us call this grovelling.

Jewish Scientists are outside of the average statistics for achievement. The same goes for all other areas of endeavor. Atheist or not, they are way above average concerning accomplishment.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by SuperiorEd

 

Originally posted by SuperiorEd
Einstein is yet another example of God's revelation through the Hebrew people.

Except that Einstein didn't arrive at his conclusions from divine revelation, he merely worked himself hard at it.

Israel is called the light unto the nations. Take a look at how many Nobel laureates are Jewish. It's astonishing.

That list cites people who were born into a Jewish family but are known atheists, like Hermann Joseph Muller...and I have a question, what does that prove? The majority of Nobel prize winners have also been people who were either rich or middle class. You can draw all sorts of correlations. Hell, maybe the reason is that there was a statistically disproportionate number of Jewish individuals in the sciences.

I'd also like to point out that the Nobel prize is an honor but not necessarily the only way someone can be noted to have been important. There are plenty of 'unknown' pioneers in scientific fields because there works weren't quite as sexy or flashy.

edit on 14/5/11 by madnessinmysoul because: (no reason given)

One statement like, "God is Alpha and Omega" does not prove the point. You are correct. God must be taken in his totality.

In the Beginning (TIME), God created the heavens (SPACE) and the Earth (MATTER). God said, Fiat Lux (Let there be light) in Genesis 1 (ENERGY). Light is the duality of particle and wave, which constitutes energy. In John 1, God says that the Word (LOGOS) designed and created reality and life. A word is a wave. Light is both particle and wave in duality. All of reality is constructed from this duality of electromagnetic energy.

In three verses, God demonstrates all of physics. Man took thousands of years to catch up. When He says He is Alpha and Omega, it is important to know why He says this. Infinity of probability is God at rest. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Infinity can only be this. We are not infinite beings. We must traverse the wave of indeterminate probability while in motion. We are observers in the image of reality, collapsing the indeterminate wave of God into the ever-changing image. Since we create reality, reality does not create us. The observer is necessary for choice between opposites. All of reality is this choice of opposites. Most importantly, we choose between good and evil. This is the choice of bias and love. The Bible calls the observer the witness. God is the Judge. He governs.

Only a book inspired by God can cover all avenues of thought, physics and cognitive processing. The Bible stands firm in light of any amount of science you can throw out.

Originally posted by bogomil
reply to post by SuperiorEd

 

In true believer-style, you already from the start introduce less certain elements in your argumentation.

Quote: ["From the believer’s perspective, God makes the claim that He is both Alpha and Omega, beginning and end."]

I take it from the context, that you here are referring to the abrahamic 'god', and that you try to implicate some pseudo-proof of this 'god's reality as a universal creator by bringing up some similarities between contemporary science and citations from the bible.

a/ That things have a beginning and an end is, from a mundane perspective (religious or not, scientifically or not, complex or not) not a very revolutionary observation. Many 'gods' are involved in a beginning and end scenario.

b/ It's remarkable, that the Jahveh-entity from OT (through messing around with the special christian version of the much older and more precise trigunic existence model) in his confused way is a pale derivate of the over-riding 'nameless' ultimate reality mentioned in many other religious contexts.

c/ That the same Jahveh, allegedly creating the universe, doesn't have the slightest idea of its (the universe's) real construction (as demonstrated by gen 1).

d/ That IF a ultimate reality is to be considered an option, the hinduistic BrahmaN (notice the 'n') would be a much more likely candidate.

Quote: ["Science tells us that the vast majority of what is contained in the universe is invisible “Dark Matter.”]

Let's for the duration consider this a reasonable theory.

Quote: ["This invisible dark matter makes up a full 90% of the universe, leaving visible matter—what is seen—to comprise all the substance we can perceive around us on a daily basis."]

Yes.

Quote: ["All material substance is essentially one thing: energy transmuted to what we see as substance, occupying a volume, expressed in its function and meaning to the whole. We know the 10% we see very well."]

Still with you.

Quote: ["As stated in the opening verse of the Bible, "Let there be light." Light is both a wave and a particle."]

So obviously you can already now forget your specially christian-adapted pseudo-science. Dark matter is non-electromagnetic (being exclusively gravitational in character), light is electro-magnetic.

Quote: ["This duality is expressed in the first chapter of John where he says, "In the beginning was the word..." Light and word, both particle and wave."]

I have yet to meet christians, who hijack science to their own purposes, to be discouraged by such small inconsistent details as the one above, so ofcourse you plod on getting into the more traditional christian scholastics.

"Light and word" = "particle and wave". This falls completely outside standard science and logic, but knowing the abrahamic love of pushing inductive argumentation to its limits and beyond, such postulates probably seem reasonable to you.

Quote: ["All of this is interesting, but here is where we make the distinction between faith and reason; religion and science: By faith in a Creator, I examine the meaning behind the visible reality (10% of matter) and realize that it tells a story that can be defined."]

First of all dark matter is only 'invisible' in the meaning, that it isn't electromagnetic, and thus can't be observed visually. But, as far as dark matter exists at all, it's not un-measurable. The theory of dark matter rests on gravitational effects, which ARE measurable, so there's nothing 'mystic' about dark matter, making it a sign of anything 'divine' or whatever, which only can be examined by your home-brewed pseudo-methodology.

Quote: [" This story is not just expressed by religion, but also synchronistically by nature. Each tells the exact same story, like a mirror perfectly reflecting the truth of the other."]

This postulate needs some explanation. It sounds like pure bosh to me, as it stands.

Quote: ["Science, by the same faith, attempts to observe the 90% of what cannot be observed directly. From this observation, science makes up grandiose claims of theory, believing its conclusions within a context of misplaced concreteness of imagined reality."]

Finally we're at homeground, where we recognize the usual christian non-sense argument: When science can't explain everything down to the smallest details, we christians can fill out the gap with any speculation, however wild and unsupported it is.

Quote: ["This means rational Atheists base the totality of their belief within an unseen reality of imagined perception, with largely unproven theory."]

While mixing up science with atheism, and apparantly ignoring the concept agnostic atheism as inconvenient for your 'arguments', I can at least see SOME justification for the scientific approach to dark matter. Whereas the christian approach is pure fantasy without a shred of evidence.

Are you really so naive, that you believe that discrediting competing makes any fairytale the only 'credible' alternative.

Quote: ["At best, anything concerning the 90% of unseen reality can only be ever-changing theory."]

With your practicvally non-existing knowledge of REAL science and its methods, you are in no position to make such claims.

Quote: ["Faith for all of us, then, is the substance of things hoped for, as indicated in Hebrews:"]

If you by "all of us" mean religious ignoramuses living in self-containing bubbles, you could be right. No person with the slightest knowledge of real science/logic would ascribe to your rambling pseudo-reasoning.

I'll skip your bible-interpretations and go to

Quote: [" Why are we here in this story of God?"]

because this 'god' isn't a 'god', but most likely some non-human entity (if this really is some non-fictive character), who on traditional plantation-owner lines tries/tried to run this planet with the usual combination of total power/submission of the natives/fear. Besides his character can best be defined as schizophrenic with elements of multiple personality, manifesting in paranoia/megalomania tantrums.

Quote: ["We do not merit this favor from God."]

Speak for yourself. And in any case I wouldn't dream of asking for favours from a cosmic equalent of Hitler.

Quote: ["We were created for his good pleasure, as observers of His goodness and abundant mercy and truth."]

The rest of us call this grovelling.

reply to post by MamaJ


You wrote:

["The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is."]


Einstein's lifelong dispute with Niels Bohr was about determination, as expressed in his (Einstein's) famous saying: "God does not play dice with the universe".

Well, eventually he had to give in, and admit that indetermination is a part of universal existence. So whatever his concept of a 'god' (if any) was, his personal main-argument collapsed at the end.

The 'mysterious order' wasn't complete after all, and later REAL scientific models (as opposed to what's been presented on this thread earlier) even indicates a higher probability of a universe created through other ways than the traditional abrahamic creator-god method.

reply to post by SuperiorEd


You wrote:

["My problem with his idea of a non-personal God is that it limits God in His love."]

Yes, it would be a problem for your kind of mindset, wouldn't it? You start with a preconceived idea of an answer, and it's inconvenient, if the facts and observations don't fit with this answer.

Then you'll have to go to all the trouble of re-arranging facts and observations, so they don't threaten your ideas.

Quote: ["God has no opposite, so He remains hidden to our view. We have nothing to compare Him to except the image of God (reality)."]

Sceptics to your rather incoherent pseudo-scientific theories would probably say, that there exist several reference-points to this alleged 'god' of yours. Starting with imagination out of control.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


Main stream religions and atheism are just steps in the growth of a soul. I used to be religious as a kid, I then went crazy about science and slowly turned atheist and many more other levels of though etc etc, now I hold no loyalty to any belief on this planet. Something is wrong when you find yourself grouping yourself in any pre-existing group. Communist, Christian, Buddhist, atheist, white, black, enlightened, straight etc etc. The only time you realize you hold loyalty on some grouping is when you catch yourself defending the grouping.

reply to post by traveller4

e
Atheism means one thing: not believing in a deity.

That is the loosest type of group possible. It's like saying the group of people who aren't in China right now. Or the group of people who are using toilets at this moment. They can be insanely varied, it's just a single issue on which they're all in agreement.

reply to post by bogomil


What you stated all sounded like Charlie Browns lil friend....hahaha. All I have to say to you now is.... PROVE IT!

reply to post by bogomil


Bogomil

I do have to let you in on a little secret... "I" didn't write anything, I quoted Einstein in reply to someone else.

If you knew that...awesome, if not....glad I told ya something you had no clue of.

reply to post by MamaJ


I'm sorry, but if he was a self-described agnostic then he clearly was a nonbeliever. He in no way believed in a deity. You just provided a quote that backed up that point.