Pagans and Atheists

[Rae]

My mom's an atheist, but she doesn't spend much time on-line and I'm not sure she'd be interested in arguing faith with the time she has.

I don't know many female atheists, but I know the president of our UU congregation is one, and Humanista and Gladiatrix on here are female atheists (IIRC).

 

[SquareC]

you tell me then what was the catalyst for the beginning of life?

I attended a tour given by an atheist guide on the evolution exhibit at a local museum, and he claimed that it we are the result of the roll of dice. and that if it happened all over again, we most likely would not have existed.

I asked him, that he insinuated that we are the result of one roll of a die, but in reality for an atheist/evolutionist theory to hold true we would be the result of millions if not billions sequential rolls of dice, and on each roll it would have to result in a jackpot each and everytime.

his response was that during the evolutionary cycle there were cataclysms that set the process back and another series of dice were established.

but that didn't explain no matter what cataclysmic event there would have to be millions of successive jackpots to reach the stage we are.

You lump together two different theories there. Abiogensis and Evolution are two completely different theories. The Theory of Evolution makes no statement on the origin of life, only the progression of life from the forms of millions of years ago to the forms today.

 

[jlujan69]

You need to look harder. I know of quite a few female atheists here off the top of my head.

Since observation #1 is false, you might want to reconsider observation #2.

In what forums do they tend to post? I haven't seen any in the various "Apologetics" or "Non-Christian religion forums."

As for "observation #2, I also don't believe that female Atheists or male Pagans would not have the same interests as their opposite-gendered fellow believers (or unbelievers, as the case may be).

 

[jlujan69]

Wow! I've seen my first female Atheist on this forum--in the N&CE one. Maybe I'll see more in the other forums I mentioned in my response to Irish.

Anyhow, anyone care to congratulate me!?

 

[HouseApe]

Congrats! It's always a good day to find a female atheist! I know I wish I could find one scurrying around my little town!

 

[ServantofTheOne]

You lump together two different theories there. Abiogensis and Evolution are two completely different theories. The Theory of Evolution makes no statement on the origin of life, only the progression of life from the forms of millions of years ago to the forms today.

they both assume millions of sequential events to occur correctly in the correct order to have been true.

can you accept that both theories are related where evolution picks up where abiogenesis leaves off. stating that evolution is different from abiogenesis is irrelevant.

 

[InspiredHome]

Congrats! It's always a good day to find a female atheist! I know I wish I could find one scurrying around my little town!

Scurrying? I read that and immediately thought of my ferret.

 

[SquareC]

they both assume millions of sequential events to occur correctly in the correct order to have been true.

can you accept that both theories are related where evolution picks up where abiogenesis leaves off. stating that evolution is different from abiogenesis is irrelevant.

I can accept that to a certain extent. But in Evolution, there are also millions of other events that, while they would have had different consequences, would have still led to other, different creatures millions of years later. There aren't any "wrong choices" in evolution, only results that don't survive.

My personal beliefs are a combination of creation (although naturally not the Christian creation) and evolution. It's not "Intelligent Design" but a Goddess and God created world Naturally evolving.

 

[ServantofTheOne]

How do you know the roll of the die gave us a jackpot each and every time, and that we're not the result of a bunch of bad rolls?? Maybe we're not as advanced as we could be, yet not as primative as we could be, meaning the roll of the die is about even.

by jackpots i mean survival, not looking prettier, or able to run faster, etc, i was talking about mere survival. jackpot=survival

Do you realize what conditions have to be maintained on earth for the mere survival of life? do you realize the multitudes of characteristics of human life that need to be exactly the way it is for our survival.

 

[Hydra009]

by jackpots i mean survival, not looking prettier, or able to run faster, etc, i was talking about mere survival. jackpot=survival

Right. Anyone here have a parent or grand-parent who died before adulthood? Since you define jackpot as survival, it wasn't jackpot each time - over the course of humanity, plenty of people have died way before old age. They tend not to leave descendents.

Do you realize what conditions have to be maintained on earth for the mere survival of life?

Exactly the conditions that exist right now. Probability of someting happening that has already happened = 1.

do you realize the multitudes of characteristics of human life that need to be exactly the way it is for our survival.

If the Earth wasn't life-supporting, then there would be no life on Earth and we wouldn't be here to talk about it.

A polar bear could say that the arctic is "geared" for polar bears, a lion could say that the savannah is "geared" for lions, and a human with clothes for any climate could say that the Earth is "geared" for humans - but the reality is that the organisms are themselves geared for their environments.

 

[ServantofTheOne]

Right. Anyone here have a parent or grand-parent who died before adulthood? Since you define jackpot as survival, it wasn't jackpot each time - over the course of humanity, plenty of people have died way before old age. They tend not to leave descendents.

what does this have to do with the series of events that needed to occur for our survival.

Exactly the conditions that exist right now. Probability of someting happening that has already happened = 1.

i assume you believe the conditions that exist right now was a product of dumb luck.

roll a die, lets say it lands on 6, now ask what was the probability of it landing on that 6 after the fact, wouldn't it be 1/6 still even if it happened. The question is not what is the probability of the die being 6, rather, what WAS the probability of it landing on 6 before the roll. similarly I am asking what WAS the probability of events occuring before it occured, i hope you can understand the difference. we are not in kindergarten.

If the Earth wasn't life-supporting, then there would be no life on Earth and we wouldn't be here to talk about it.

but we are here, and we have the intellect to contemplate the origin of our existence. you choose to believe in the irrationality of dumb luck or minute probability as the reason why we came to exist.

 

[Hydra009]

what does this have to do with the series of events that needed to occur for our survival.

Think about it: all your parents and grandparents hit jackpot on the ol' D-20 survivability check. You are failing to take into account that a great many individuals didn't hit the jjackpot and didn't survive.

i assume you believe the conditions that exist right now was a product of dumb luck.

You are making two huge mistakes in this thread:

1) Equating evolution with atheism.
2) Equating evolution with "dumb luck".

roll a die, lets say it lands on 6, now ask what was the probability of it landing on that 6 after the fact, wouldn't it be 1/6 still even if it happened. The question is not what is the probability of the die being 6, rather, what WAS the probability of it landing on 6 before the roll. similarly I am asking what WAS the probability of events occuring before it occured, i hope you can understand the difference. we are not in kindergarten.

We might not be in kindergarden, but it sure feels like it from this perspective. I shouldn't have to flesh out such simple concepts.

Here it goes, when you roll the dice, there is a 1/6 chance that it'll land on any number for 1 through 6. No duh. Let's say I do that 10 times and get these results: 1,5,3,5,4,1,6,3,2,2. Now, what's the probability that such a result would happen? Pretty low. Your argument is that there is no way random chance could produce this result, essentially taking odds after the fact. Same thing applies with your probability that there's no way random chance could produce life. The universe is very, very large and contains billions of planets. With even the slightest chance of life arising, chances are good that will arise at least once. Further, biochemistry isn't chance, so trying to calculate the odds of life arising on Earth is futile.

You might want to look over this link: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB010.html

but we are here, and we have the intellect to contemplate the origin of our existence. you choose to believe in the irrationality of dumb luck or minute probability as the reason why we came to exist.

Evolution isn't abiogenesis and it isn't dumb luck. That's strike three. Somewhere down the road, life happened. This is obvious, because we know that because there is life on the Earth now. So trying to calculate the odds of life is irrelevant to the theory of evolution.

Maybe it'll help you see what the theory of evolution is and isn't if I explain evolution. The theory of evolution assumes the existence of life and explains how populations of organisms change over time - individuals with alleles that result in an increased ability to survive and reproduce pass on those traits to their offspring, who repeat the process. The frequency of alleles within a population of interbreeding organisms changes over time. Natural selection pressures and geographical isolation can cause speciation. Also, populations vary genetically because of genetic copying errors known as mutations. Bam, there's evolution in a nutshell. What's so irrational about that?

 

[morningstar2651]

Speaking of polar bears, they may be going extinct within the next decade.

Polar bears are currently threatened, not mainly by hunting, but by habitat loss caused by global warming; for example, the area of ice covering Hudson Bay in Northern Canada in winter is shrinking, limiting their access to seal prey. The sensitivity of the survival rates of the bears to global temperature is attested to by the population bulge in the cohort of bears born during the transient cooling that followed the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

 

[Kris_J]

When I say "Pagan", I'm referring to those who identify themselves as such on these boards. Anyway, when I read the various posts, I happen to take note of some personal items the poster displays such as gender, religion, and age. It's just what I do. Anyway, what I noticed is that those who identify themselves as Atheists are always male. I've yet to see a female Atheist (or Agnostic, come to think of it). When it comes to Pagans, the vast majority seem to be female. So, to those Atheists on these boards, do you know many females who call themselves Atheists? For the Pagans on these forums, from what you've observed, would you say that the majority of those who share your religion are male or female?

Interesting. I'd be inclined to agree, & I'd suspect its a culture & as someone said, that women are more likely to be spiritual (due hormones to & feminine social roles)

 

[tocis]

you tell me then what was the catalyst for the beginning of life?

While science has not yet (as far as I know) settled on a particular option, it has been demonstrated in experiments of all kinds that chemical reactions (which are not random in their nature as every chemist can confirm, hence my comment) in the early earth environment can easily produce molecules of progressing complexity, and when some of these become self-replicating, you basically have the "seed of life", so to say. I don't claim to understand the process in its entirety, but the theory makes sense and is supported by some very good evidence. Any decent book should help you to understand that.

And anyway, is it that important to know exactly how life came to be? We are alive today, should not this be the most important thing (at least for the average joe)?

 

[tocis]

Do you realize what conditions have to be maintained on earth for the mere survival of life? do you realize the multitudes of characteristics of human life that need to be exactly the way it is for our survival.

Anthropic principle fallacy.
Life adapted to the environment. Naturally it's now more or less well-tuned to this environment. Would this environment have been very different, either we would have developed into other lifeforms (who would now wonder why this different environment seems so fine-tuned to us!), or we wouldn't be here to think about it at all.

 

[tocis]

you choose to believe in the irrationality of dumb luck or minute probability as the reason why we came to exist.

*sigh* here we go again, for the zillionth time...

Let's start a game of Rummy, shall we? I'll deal to you 13 cards like the rules of the game state it, then someone else stands behind you, takes a peek at your deck, and exclaims "CHEATER! It's astronomically impossible that you got that deck by pure chance! The chance for this is (very large number) to 1! You must have cheated!"
That's your own reasoning applied to another situation. You say?

 

[ServantofTheOne]

Think about it: all your parents and grandparents hit jackpot on the ol' D-20 survivability check. You are failing to take into account that a great many individuals didn't hit the jjackpot and didn't survive.

i'm talking about on a macro level. the human species, all the characteristics that is needed for the mere survival of the entire species, environmental and physiolgogical factors. jackpot means that at each turn of what atheists claim we developed from, there had to be a jackpot when the dice was rolled. I'm not talking about certain individuals not surviving etc.

You are making two huge mistakes in this thread:
1) Equating evolution with atheism.
2) Equating evolution with "dumb luck".

atheism believes in the combination of abiogenesis and evolution, i'm not stating that atheism=evolution. underlying the belief is that all that occured to get to what we have today, atheists suggest that it was a result of random coincidences and not intelligent design.
random coincidences is a nice way of saying dumb luck.

We might not be in kindergarden, but it sure feels like it from this perspective. I shouldn't have to flesh out such simple concepts.

Here it goes, when you roll the dice, there is a 1/6 chance that it'll land on any number for 1 through 6. No duh. Let's say I do that 10 times and get these results: 1,5,3,5,4,1,6,3,2,2. Now, what's the probability that such a result would happen? Pretty low. Your argument is that there is no way random chance could produce this result, essentially taking odds after the fact. Same thing applies with your probability that there's no way random chance could produce life. The universe is very, very large and contains billions of planets. With even the slightest chance of life arising, chances are good that will arise at least once. Further, biochemistry isn't chance, so trying to calculate the odds of life arising on Earth is futile.

your 1,5,3,5,4,1,6,3,2,2, result is just that.... giberish, it means nothing. and likewise if our universe contained the same giberish result then you would have a point. but the result is not giberish. It would be the same if those numbers represented a musical note and the result of random rolls produces a melody. I'm not taking odds after the fact, i'm asking what were the odds of it occuring by random coincidence. We're not talking about biochemistry, as it has to deal with what is, not where we came from.

calculating the odds of life arising on earth may be futile, but this is the futility that atheist believe to be the cause of existence.

Evolution isn't abiogenesis and it isn't dumb luck. That's strike three. Somewhere down the road, life happened. This is obvious, because we know that because there is life on the Earth now. So trying to calculate the odds of life is irrelevant to the theory of evolution.

atheists believe that random coincidence produced life, and they believe evolution and abiogenesis is the best explanation.
trying to calculate the odds is very relevant when a theory is based on those very odds.

Maybe it'll help you see what the theory of evolution is and isn't if I explain evolution. The theory of evolution assumes the existence of life and explains how populations of organisms change over time - individuals with alleles that result in an increased ability to survive and reproduce pass on those traits to their offspring, who repeat the process. The frequency of alleles within a population of interbreeding organisms changes over time. Natural selection pressures and geographical isolation can cause speciation. Also, populations vary genetically because of genetic copying errors known as mutations. Bam, there's evolution in a nutshell. What's so irrational about that?

thanks for the lesson, but the specifics of evolution has nothing to do with its premise that the catalyst for those changes in environment or life is the result of random coincidence. that is what we are investigating in this discussion.

it is irrational to think that a result can occur without something causing that result.

 

[ServantofTheOne]

if we are the product of random coincidence, then it should be quite easy to consiously put together a condition where you can create a single leaf.

produce a single leaf from non living matter. If it was indeed coincidence then it should be much easier with consious intention that you can put together all your atheist scientists together with their collective knowledge of science to produce a single leaf from non living matter.

 

[tocis]

if we are the product of random coincidence, then it should be quite easy to consiously put together a condition where you can create a single leaf.

Why?
To use an analogy, you can be very familiar with how an automobile works, but will that enable you to build one without the proper tools, and the training how to use those tools?
(That analogy strikes me because I'm at work right now, some 20 meters away from the next factory hall where the minivan "VW Touran" is being built... )

Back to the direct mode, why should science be able to do everything just because, to use your own words, "we are the product of random coincidence" (which isn't true anyway as I already stated)? That's a non sequitur to me.