Do atheists have any evidence to support their beliefs?

[Ken-1122]

I'm not talking about the flimsy opinions of people that believe they're atheists. I'm talking about the worldview of atheism. And atheism doesn't believe in absolutes which pretty much refutes the atheistic belief that there are no absolutes. I'm not trying to play word games here, atheism is simply an irrational and illogical worldview when one dissects its reasonings if atheism were true.

You seem to create a definition of Atheism that only exists in your head, then you proceed to tell us what's wrong with Atheism.

 

[MoneyGuy]

I also assume there is no god, because I haven't seen any evidence of one.

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

 

[Non sequitur]

Cite? I always thought the only contribution to an object's gravitational effect was its mass.

Mass and distance (r)

F =Gm1m2/r2

Diameter has no bearing.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Mass and distance (r)

Diameter has no bearing.

Yeah. Gravity is due to mass. Distance determines how much you feel it.

 

[Non sequitur]

Yeah. Gravity is due to mass. Distance determines how much you feel it.

Since gravity is the force between all things, you have to have the distance.

Gravity is "due" to mass and distance, which determines how much you "feel it".

 

[Non sequitur]

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

I'll beat this dead horse!

The issue you will find is others don't find that evidence sufficient enough to warrant a belief.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Since gravity is the force between all things, you have to have the distance.

Gravity is "due" to mass and distance, which determines how much you "feel it".

OK.

 

[Strathos]

Cite? I always thought the only contribution to an object's gravitational effect was its mass.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...lanets-size-really-affect-its-surface-gravity

Surface gravity.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

Arguments for incredulity are fallacious, and therefore to me aren't evidence at all...

 

[Non sequitur]

https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...lanets-size-really-affect-its-surface-gravity

Surface gravity.

The surface gravity can be different, on the 2 planets with the same mass and different diameters, but they would have the same gravitational force (to each other).

 

[Ken-1122]

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

How do you make the "leap" that the wonders of nature is evidence of God?

 

[Tinker Grey]

The surface gravity can be different, on the 2 planets with the same mass and different diameters, but they would have the same gravitational force (to each other).

These are the terms I was thinking in, however fuzzily.

 

[Belk]

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

Are you familiar with the fallacy of false dichotomy?

 

[AirPo]

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

That's not evidence.

 

[AirPo]

How do you make the "leap" that the wonders of nature is evidence of God?

Your assuming he actually started with the wonders of nature.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Actually the gravity of two planets with the same mass can be different, depending on their diameters.

Right, surface gravity.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Eudaimonist]

I’ll challenge you that. I think you have seen evidence. Look around you at the vast, wonderful, tremendously complex universe. Or look in the mirror at your similarly wonderful, complex body. I believe in a creator because I don’t believe that those things could have happened by chance. There is the evidence you seek.

You might not realize it, but that sort of claim (that complexity requires intelligent design and can't emerge naturally) has been soundly refuted by science. Yes, you can declare complexity as "evidence" for your view, but it's not convincing evidence to scientifically literate people.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Abraxos]

That is misrepresenting Aristotle. The Aristotelian "God" was not something transcendent to the Universe, for instance, something that had created the matter of the Universe. He wasn't a "Creator God", if that is what you mean by "God". So, it is NOT another way of saying "God".

The Aristotelian prime mover almost seems like a primitive theory of gravity or inertia, causing motion in material things. Yes, he seemed to think it had some sort of intelligence. I suppose that is "godlike", but hardly "God" in the sense used on these boards.

I hope that you are aware that Aristotelian physics has been soundly refuted. There is no need for the motion of one thing to cause the motion in another, which makes Aristotle's argument for a Prime Mover scientifically pointless.

Aristotle stipulated that causes can be understood and explained in four ways. The material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. The "efficient cause," interestingly is what modern science focuses on almost exclusively, and it is the primary source of a change. For example, if someone asks us, "Why is this building here?" We would say "the builder, the architect and/or the planner put it there." "Why did the domino fall? Because someone pushed the first domino. Point is, there is an argument for the Prime Mover that is consistent within the Law of Cause and Effect. Rationally, this cannot be denied - except when necessary in order to prop up a deficient worldview (ie. atheism).

In regards to "Aristotelian physics has been soundly refuted," that is a misunderstanding of scientific inquiry. Aristotle set the groundwork for scientific thought through the organising and classifying of human thinking into categories such as biology, physics, zoology, and epistemology. Sure, these were later expounded on as we grew in knowledge, (as physics in Greek literally means nature or knowledge of nature), he played a part in providing the mortar for this means of inquiry which essentially welcomed it.

Can Nietzsche be mistaken on some issue? Or was he correct about everything? What is the point of name dropping?

Nietzsche believed it was permissible to go "beyond good and evil" because without God, there really is no such thing as good and evil as these concepts are merely human inventions. What makes something good or evil is determined solely by whether or not it serves our own personal, practical purposes. That's why Nietzsche urged his followers to become Übermensch - or Supermen - individuals who could understand that good and evil are simply artificial restrictions imposed by religion in order to prevent the strong from dominating the weak.
Indeed, Nietzsche scorned the weak. He enveloped a sense of social Darwinism that opted what most are familiar with as the evolutionary natural selection of ideals and superiority of the animal. And since the weak are only the product of natural selection, why care about the weak? If God doesn't exist, how can there be any kind of objective moral law to protect the weak? How can any kind of objective moral law exist at all?

So what I'm saying is, unlike the Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and other atheists of today, the old atheists were not afraid to be honest and proclaim the necessity for a Supreme Being and hence a supreme law for a fixed morality.

Yes, so what? No one cares about this. It isn't an important point.

I agree in that atheism is merely a footnote to my worldview, and hardly important in its own right. I don't require it to be important. It's just a matter of being honest.

It should be a matter of importance to people that call themselves atheists, for if the worldview of atheism is true, then it would not require to leech off theism, and be a prominent force in how we make sense of reality. However, atheism is not so obvious with our interaction with reality, and because of that it carries many problematic situations when one delves into the worldview of atheism if it were true.
And ultimately, it isn't honesty that drives it to be part of someones mental and emotional character, it's more of a need for a hallucinogenic drug for false pretenses and temporal relief from hurt and unhappiness. Another aspect could also be due to hubris.

Not so. The atheist does not shoulder the burden of presenting a positive argument, but certainly may be called out on their critiques of that positive argument.



That is not the reality.

I'm not a materialist if you really mean a reductive materialist. I'm not an ethical relativist. I'm not a social Darwinist. I'm not quite sure what you mean by a "culture of secularism", but I'm actually pretty okay with religious cultures as long as they support individualism and free societies.

I'm an emergentist. Meta-ethically, I'm an ethical naturalist (NOT a relativist or a subjectivist). Ethically, I favor virtue ethics. I'm in favor of the scientific fact and theory of evolution, but that doesn't make me a social darwinist, and I am certainly not one.


eudaimonia,

Mark

There is no question that atheists can't be good people, or that they can't act in a morally responsible way, or that they can't act to protect the weak. Of course they can. A person doesn't have to accept the existence of God in order to be against killing or lying or cheating.
But that's not the point. An atheist who says it's wrong to kill is voicing there own personal convictions, and nothing more. He may find killing repugnant and may firmly empathise with the suffering of others. He may think that for society to survive, killing must not be permitted. There are probably a hundred different reasons for believing that killing is harmful or counterproductive to society, but none of these reasons are morally binding. None of them are the logical result of any existential or objective standard of morality. None show that killing is wrong in and of itself. Therefore, none can serve as a permanent basis for obligating people to obey laws against killing.

Ultimately, an atheist may act ethically virtuous, but not because he/she must. Without God, moral precepts are simply personal rules of conduct and behaviour. These ideas are simply subjective attitudes depending on what the person ascribes to, like the decision between being an Adolf Hitler and a mother Teresa is like choosing between Burger King and McDonalds, it's just a matter of personal taste. These are not objective imperatives that are not morally binding on all people. This is a recognisable problem within meta-ethics.

This is a logical and consistent way of thinking if atheism were true - and the atheists of the 19th century understood it.

 

[Ken-1122]

It should be a matter of importance to people that call themselves atheists, for if the worldview of atheism is true, then it would not require to leech off theism, and be a prominent force in how we make sense of reality.

Atheism is philosophical position pertaining to one particular belief - the existence of God While it may or may not be encompassed within one's worldview, it is definitionally insufficient in and of itself to be called a worldview.
As a point of comparison, a person can be a communist in the question of economics, but 'communism isn't their 'worldview', just their position on a specific topic. It is an aspect of their worldview

The problem with you guys is, for you your religion IS often your world view; it’s the center of your culture, the structure you build your life and beliefs around; the most important thing in your life. And no matter how much we tell you otherwise, you guys seem to want to believe atheism is as important to us as theism is to you. For me, atheism is about as big of a deal to me as my birth date meaning I am a Scorpio. Ya see; for most atheists, our lack of belief is no more than a side note. Until you can understand this, you will never understand atheism.

There is no question that atheists can't be good people, or that they can't act in a morally responsible way, or that they can't act to protect the weak. Of course they can. A person doesn't have to accept the existence of God in order to be against killing or lying or cheating.
But that's not the point. An atheist who says it's wrong to kill is voicing there own personal convictions, and nothing more. He may find killing repugnant and may firmly empathise with the suffering of others. He may think that for society to survive, killing must not be permitted. There are probably a hundred different reasons for believing that killing is harmful or counterproductive to society, but none of these reasons are morally binding. None of them are the logical result of any existential or objective standard of morality. None show that killing is wrong in and of itself. Therefore, none can serve as a permanent basis for obligating people to obey laws against killing.

How are things different for the theist? The only difference I see is as an Atheist, I am my moral dictator, and as a Theist, your God is your moral dictator. Granted not a lot of people are going to do everything I say, but then not a lot of people are going to do everything your God says either; so what’s the difference?

 

[Abraxos]

Atheism is philosophical position pertaining to one particular belief - the existence of God While it may or may not be encompassed within one's worldview, it is definitionally insufficient in and of itself to be called a worldview.
As a point of comparison, a person can be a communist in the question of economics, but 'communism isn't their 'worldview', just their position on a specific topic. It is an aspect of their worldview

The problem with you guys is, for you your religion IS often your world view; it’s the center of your culture, the structure you build your life and beliefs around; the most important thing in your life. And no matter how much we tell you otherwise, you guys seem to want to believe atheism is as important to us as theism is to you. For me, atheism is about as big of a deal to me as my birth date meaning I am a Scorpio. Ya see; for most atheists, our lack of belief is no more than a side note. Until you can understand this, you will never understand atheism.

I merely explore the rationale of atheism if it were true through reason, as did others including atheists of the past. Though atheism may appear to be just a footnote to the modern atheist, the consequential logic behind it is really quite remarkably illogical and irrational and unreasonable. It may make one question why modern atheists pride themselves in facts and logic and reason when they are antithetical to it. Nineteenth century atheists were serious about their atheism, and were well aware of the things I have pointed out, yet they didn't coddle and baby their followers by lying to them about the logical implications of their own beliefs.

Treating atheism as not that big of a deal, alludes to modern atheism being merely based on feelings rather than logic - and when convenient, atheism is all about reason and logic and is rational. It's basically intellectual cowardice, and Nietzsche would've most likely spit in contempt on the atheists of today. Though Nietzsche was wrong in his anti-God philosophy, in the end, became an insane and tragic figure; but at least he was courageous enough to be honest.

How are things different for the theist? The only difference I see is as an Atheist, I am my moral dictator, and as a Theist, your God is your moral dictator. Granted not a lot of people are going to do everything I say, but then not a lot of people are going to do everything your God says either; so what’s the difference?

There are no differences when we recognise that there are good and evil. How we interpret good and evil are also no different. For example we both agree that child abuse and racial discrimination is wrong, or, in the case of ISIS and it's structure of morality where women are counted as less than human, it's wrong. These are fundamentally, objectively, and inherently prevalent in us. However, without God (atheistic perspective), every person is the sole arbiter of what's right, meaning no one can actually be wrong, even ISIS.

Reason is, atheism cannot account for good and evil, but Christianity can.