Atheism's Burden of Proof

[Tom 1]

The idea of eternity is impossible for the human mind to conceptualise, the concept of eternal life offered by many of the worlds religions is one of the reasons I am an atheist, i just cannot understand how that would work.

As for the universe and how it started, Stephen Hawking has a theory which doesn't require god, as follows:

The Origin of the Universe

Yes I’m halfway through something by Stephen Hawking. Heavy going but he makes it accessible. I’m not suggesting that science doesn’t offer models for the beginning of the universe, just highlighting that it did have a beginning.

 

[KCfromNC]

Natural law as we know it would dictate that nothingness would produce nothingness.

Can you give an example of where one might observe nothingness behaving in such a manner?

 

[Tom 1]

Can you give an example of where one might observe nothingness behaving in such a manner?

You could stare at an empty space for a looonnnggg time

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

Yes but that still misses the big question - where did god come from?

It's always an interesting debate, one which is un-resolvable, if you believe in god, well he just has eternally existed, if you don't believe in god the universe must have had a natural starting point.

To be frank, it isn't a debate. I myself clearly see God in all things. Someone who does not see God, doesn't. There is no grey area to that. You see chaos. I see order. In fact I could even numerically show order to some of the chaos. But I digress, it proves unfruitful to speak about the world in order to show you God. I would have to speak about God in order to show you God. For that, you need an open and willing heart.
As far as the big question, where did God come from?... I addressed that in the post before. He always has existed. There is no "where" that he came from. There is no God planet where creator Gods are made. He made heaven and earth. Heaven is his throne, earth is his footstool. He is beyond everything, he made everything, he is the Almighty God, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. If I make my bed in heaven, he is there. If I make my bed in hell, he is there. The Almighty is not something that can be made up. Though people in the past have tried to describe and even put in a neat little box who God is. It cannot be done.

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

Can you give an example of where one might observe nothingness behaving in such a manner?

the fruits of this thread.

 

[Dave RP]

To be frank, it isn't a debate. I myself clearly see God in all things. Someone who does not see God, doesn't. There is no grey area to that. You see chaos. I see order. In fact I could even numerically show order to some of the chaos. But I digress, it proves unfruitful to speak about the world in order to show you God. I would have to speak about God in order to show you God. For that, you need an open and willing heart.
As far as the big question, where did God come from?... I addressed that in the post before. He always has existed. There is no "where" that he came from. There is no God planet where creator Gods are made. He made heaven and earth. Heaven is his throne, earth is his footstool. He is beyond everything, he made everything, he is the Almighty God, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. If I make my bed in heaven, he is there. If I make my bed in hell, he is there. The Almighty is not something that can be made up. Though people in the past have tried to describe and even put in a neat little box who God is. It cannot be done.

I apologise if I antagonised you, that wasn't my intention.

I don't see chaos by the way, there is order in nature, certain things can be predicted and calculated, and mathematics/ physics can describe scientifically much of what we see.

I accept your viewpoint is that god is eternal, he didn't need to come into existence because he was always there, and I just can't see how that could be the case.

At least we agree that you either believe or you don't, one of us is right, one is wrong.

 

[KCfromNC]

the fruits of this thread.

Or the substance behind apologetics?

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

I apologise if I antagonised you, that wasn't my intention.

I don't see chaos by the way, there is order in nature, certain things can be predicted and calculated, and mathematics/ physics can describe scientifically much of what we see.

I accept your viewpoint is that god is eternal, he didn't need to come into existence because he was always there, and I just can't see how that could be the case.

At least we agree that you either believe or you don't, one of us is right, one is wrong.

I wasn't antagonized. Merely stating the term "debate" is often used interchangeably with "discussion", when they are not alike. Plus, no one ever really debates properly. It's often "let me address this one thing then rant on about something else because everything else made sense". Debate is for intellectually defeating someone, as in a contest. As a Christian, I can't forcibly bring you to God. You have to come to that on your own convicted by the Holy Spirit. All I attempt to do is open your heart with a crowbar, if need be.
Certain calculable things over the years have piqued my interest regarding order out of chaos, and these are actually reflected in biblical feasts, celebrations, and so forth.
Take for example the # of earth's rotations in relation to # of lunar months.
7 sets of 7 lunar months (7 x 7 x 29.53 days) = 1447.00 earth rotations.
Stuff like this can be extrapolated from jubilee calendars etc..
Adam living to be 930 and the Sun roughly 93 million miles away
Enoch (7th from Adam) (one of two people to never die) living to be 365 years old. (days in a year)
So there are quite a few things that are just straaaaange. But have purpose.
I can list a lot of things but those are just random I like to point out for topic, regardless if anyone sees them as cool or not.
In response to how you can't see that God always existed...
What is more likely...
A. The universe created itself, and created life, which is not normal because death exists in the universe. (A rather self-defeating notion from the self-created universe, as the order contained in it is indicative of purpose.)
B. Something created the universe, created the life contained in it, and the death that follows life as judgment for sin. (The order has purpose.)
But if you would hear me out...my own personal testimony is that there have been several times in my life that God "made a house call". I would probably not be alive if he had not interceded. My life at times had gone down some really dark roads.
Then there are other times when "being in the right place at the right time" just doesn't do those times justice. I was able to help someone who needed help and there was no one else and it was like in the middle of nowhere and I was out by chance??
I know there are things that happen, even to a non-believer, that defy what you know. Some that are beyond what your heart can contain. People that always have a place in your heart.
There are things too wonderful, so briefly touched on in this world, that only can described by the notion of a God you cannot see with eyes. He is a spirit... so this makes sense.
If something happened in the past to cause you to walk away from God, or accepting him due to not receiving friends or not getting what you want or disaster or death or something, I urge you to look past yourself to a God who is righteous and just in all his ways. It is ourselves that lead us away from him. Meanwhile, he is always there.

 

[Shadow]

Possibly you don't quite understand what we Christians are about.



I don't need language to do logic.

Huh? To quote Roger Penrose, “The natural numbers were there before there were human beings, or indeed any other creature here on earth, and they will remain after all life has perished. It has always been true that each natural number is the sum of four squares, and it did not have to wait for Lagrange to conjure this fact into existence.”



No. The underlying numerical relationships are exactly the same, across all cultures.

From where I'm standing, it looks a little like this:

I don't think we'll settle this, so I will agree to differ. But Calvin does sum it up well. I love loopholes.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

You could stare at an empty space for a looonnnggg time

Empty space is something. It's not nothing. The very idea of an existent "nothing" is a contradiction.

 

[Tom 1]

Empty space is something. It's not nothing. The very idea of an existent "nothing" is a contradiction.

Yes, that was a joke

 

[Dave RP]

I wasn't antagonized. Merely stating the term "debate" is often used interchangeably with "discussion", when they are not alike. Plus, no one ever really debates properly. It's often "let me address this one thing then rant on about something else because everything else made sense". Debate is for intellectually defeating someone, as in a contest. As a Christian, I can't forcibly bring you to God. You have to come to that on your own convicted by the Holy Spirit. All I attempt to do is open your heart with a crowbar, if need be.
Certain calculable things over the years have piqued my interest regarding order out of chaos, and these are actually reflected in biblical feasts, celebrations, and so forth.
Take for example the # of earth's rotations in relation to # of lunar months.
7 sets of 7 lunar months (7 x 7 x 29.53 days) = 1447.00 earth rotations.
Stuff like this can be extrapolated from jubilee calendars etc..
Adam living to be 930 and the Sun roughly 93 million miles away
Enoch (7th from Adam) (one of two people to never die) living to be 365 years old. (days in a year)
So there are quite a few things that are just straaaaange. But have purpose.
I can list a lot of things but those are just random I like to point out for topic, regardless if anyone sees them as cool or not.
In response to how you can't see that God always existed...
What is more likely...
A. The universe created itself, and created life, which is not normal because death exists in the universe. (A rather self-defeating notion from the self-created universe, as the order contained in it is indicative of purpose.)
B. Something created the universe, created the life contained in it, and the death that follows life as judgment for sin. (The order has purpose.)
But if you would hear me out...my own personal testimony is that there have been several times in my life that God "made a house call". I would probably not be alive if he had not interceded. My life at times had gone down some really dark roads.
Then there are other times when "being in the right place at the right time" just doesn't do those times justice. I was able to help someone who needed help and there was no one else and it was like in the middle of nowhere and I was out by chance??
I know there are things that happen, even to a non-believer, that defy what you know. Some that are beyond what your heart can contain. People that always have a place in your heart.
There are things too wonderful, so briefly touched on in this world, that only can described by the notion of a God you cannot see with eyes. He is a spirit... so this makes sense.
If something happened in the past to cause you to walk away from God, or accepting him due to not receiving friends or not getting what you want or disaster or death or something, I urge you to look past yourself to a God who is righteous and just in all his ways. It is ourselves that lead us away from him. Meanwhile, he is always there.

Thank you for your response.

I thought I'd explain why I'm on this site, because it must seem strange to you why a non believer would be reading a Christian web site. I am currently in a relationship a woman who is a committed Christian, so it raised my interest. I've used this site to ask some questions about what the Christian faith believes, and that has shown me that there is a range of beliefs, from bible absolutists (if you understand my meaning) right through to Christians who do not take the bible stories (old testament) literally.

What I do acknowledge is that the origins of the universe are currently not understood, but I do believe that science has shown that, as the universe is expanding now that at some time in the very distant past the universe must have been incredibly small. If that's correct there was a "big bang" at the beginning of the universe. Now, what caused the big bang?

It may be that science never knows the answer, it may be that it is just beyond our capacity to understand, or it maybe that theoretical physics comes up with a theory which satisfies the scientific community. There is also two other possibilities, there may be a force of nature so far beyond our understanding that we call it God, or there may be a God who started it all.

However even if there is a god who stated the universe, there are several leaps I just cannot get my head around - 1. The god who started the universe 15 billion years ago and formed the earth 6 billion years ago, who created countless galaxies each with countless stars would actually care about a tiny creature on an insignificant planet tucked away in one corner of the universe and then 2. Even if there was a god who did care about humanity, is it the god of the bible or of one of the innumerable religious faiths in the world? If god, as you say, is omnipresent, omnipotent etc. why did he just reveal himself to a tiny proportion of his creation tucked away in the desert in the middle east? 3. Then we have heaven, hell, angels etc. which are described in the bible, where are they and how do they exist without being seen, heard or felt?

Personally I just cannot get past these issues, i just cannot see the logic of religion. I think that is there is a god it would be the god of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Shinto, Buddha , agnostic, atheist etc. but I accept that adherents of each of those religions would not accept that.

I'm not coming out with all this to do anything other than explain why I do not share my girlfriends and your faith, I fully respect the right of anyone to have a deeply help faith, for me it's a personal thing which doesn't have to be and should never be justified. If anyone feels that faith in their heart that is sufficient justification.

I also note that in my experience the vast majority of religious adherents come from a home with religious parents. My girlfriend is from a church going background, her brother is married to a vicar, her mother is very connected to the church. My parents were not Church attenders, I never went as a child, in fact my father was very anti religion from when he met my mother and they went to her local church to talk about getting married and as he was Church of England and she was Catholic they refused to marry them unless he formally changed to Catholic or guaranteed to bring their children in the Catholic faith, which he refused to do.

I hope this explanation helps you to understand what i am up to on this site, I am not being confrontational, I am just letting you know what my thoughts are and why.

Happy Christmas.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

In my understanding, Atheism is the positive denial of the existence of god/a deity and I believe this is in fact the understanding of the majority of Christians as well.

Then your understanding is wrong.

This is not a widely accepted view amongst atheists on online communities even if it has a long history with philosophers such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx and Frederich Nietzsche to its name. This has admittedly been the cause of a great deal of frustration and confusion and my beliefs are therefore not as fully developed as I would want them to be because there are few, if any, people who I can discuss this understanding of atheism with.

Who cares what philolsohers say?

I am, if you wish, a militant atheist and want to know how best to deal with the challenge of proving that Atheism- the cliam that there is no god- is true. It would seem reasonable to ask religious believers, especially Christians given it is the worlds largest religion, what they imagine such a position would look like and what it would have to do to compete effectively in a online discussion.

I suspect that you are a reverse poe, that is, a Christian pretending to be an atheist and posting absurd things online for kicks.

To my knowledge, this view of Atheism relies on at least two assumptions: a) that it is possible to know god does not exist and b) that it is possible to demonstrate it. I would therefore like to ask:

Ridiculous. Prove to me that unicorns aren't real. You can't. And that task is actually easier than proving no god exists.

1) What Christians would expect Atheists to offer as arguments or evidence that disproving the existence of God is possible, either philosophically or scientifically, rather than saying it is impossible (i.e. Strong Agnosticism).

2) What Christians would expect Atheists to offer as arguments or evidence that disproving the existence of God is a statement of fact about the objective world, rather than Atheism being subjective belief, (or faith/dogma/religion) of a single individual.

3) Are there any specific elements of Christian Belief and Theology that would have to be shown to be false to demonstrate that Christianity, is in its entirety, based on natural causes and was not authored by a deity but by man himself.

4) What elements of Christian Belief, such as historical accounts of the bible, the historical existence of Jesus, the legacy of scientific and philosophical christian thought or christian morals, would you say could be independently verified as true regardless as to whether God exists and would therefore continue to have value to an Atheist?

I'm hoping that the "wisdom of crowds" means that collectively Christians drawing on their own experiences and knowledge will be able to give me a picture of areas I will need to research offline to better understand and clarify my own beliefs. I hope the exchange that follows is mutually beneficial and I look forward to your responses. Long and detailed responses are very welcome.

If you can tell me the difference between moral, immoral, and amoral, then you will understand why your definition of atheism is wrong.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

A lot of agnostics call themselves atheists. There are very few real atheists in the world. You know them by their actions. Stalin, for one.

What a despicable thing to say. Ignorant of basic definitions also.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Yep. I have no problems agreeing with you there.

So you think that atheism leads to mass murder?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I would expect scientific evidence as to how the universe came into being or philisophical ideas that show that it is possible for 'nothing' to cause'something' to exists.

If you are talking about disproving Christianity.
Then to demonstrate that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

Conversly the inability to do either of these should make the atheist re examine his/her position on atheism as without a rational bases for it, it is merely wishfull thinking or at best a faith based belief.

If you are talking about disproving Islam.
Then to demonstrate that Muhammad did not memorize the dictation of an angelic being.

Conversly the inability to do this should make the Christian re examine his/her position on Christianity as without a rational bases for it, it is merely wishfull thinking or at best a faith based belief.

 

[Shadow]

Then your understanding is wrong.



Who cares what philolsohers say?



I suspect that you are a reverse poe, that is, a Christian pretending to be an atheist and posting absurd things online for kicks.



Ridiculous. Prove to me that unicorns aren't real. You can't. And that task is actually easier than proving no god exists.



If you can tell me the difference between moral, immoral, and amoral, then you will understand why your definition of atheism is wrong.

So you think that atheism leads to mass murder?

Do you have a reason why I should care what you think?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Speaking as a mathematician, I would deny that. The truths of logic didn't suddenly become true when people appeared on the planet.



Evidence can be misinterpreted, but (P => R & Q => R) => (P \/ Q => R) and 2 + 2 = 4 are unquestionably true.



Admitting that you're rejected logic gets honesty points at least, but it does mean that the last shred of intellectual common ground between us has gone.

Indeed, it seems to me that you're already somewhere in the eighth circle of hell.

I met a guy online once. He said he had a PhD in mathematics. I asked him whether R is countable and he had no clue what I was even talking about.

When you say you're a mathematician, that is understood to mean you have a PhD in mathematics. What do you mean by "mathematician"? How far did you go?

I ask because you're stating falsehoods.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Do you have a reason why I should care what you think?

Are you mad because I outed you?

 

[Shadow]

Are you mad because I outed you?

As a Christian pretending to be an Atheist?