Question

Semi-blind post (I skim-read).

Everything that has a beginning had a cause. If God is eternal he doesn't need a cause. If the universe is eternal it doesn't need a cause. The problem is the scientific evidence points toward the universe having a beginning, hence something must have caused it. Defining what or who that something is is a whole other question though.

Now, some atheists subscribe to the multi-verse theory. For example, the universe may be in a constant state of flux (bang-crash-bang-crash-...). The problem here is there is absolutely no evidence for this. It must be believed by pure blind faith.

JasperJackson said:

Semi-blind post (I skim-read).

Everything that has a beginning had a cause. If God is eternal he doesn't need a cause. If the universe is eternal it doesn't need a cause. The problem is the scientific evidence points toward the universe having a beginning, hence something must have caused it. Defining what or who that something is is a whole other question though.

Now, some atheists subscribe to the multi-verse theory. For example, the universe may be in a constant state of flux (bang-crash-bang-crash-...). The problem here is there is absolutely no evidence for this. It must be believed by pure blind faith.

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The primary reason i put out the effort--through intense prayer and seeking--in order find God, or, rather, allow Him to find me, is that i never could muster up enough "pure blind faith" to accept the atheist assertion that there is no God.

Given the common accusation by atheists that theists in general and Christians in particular, are the victims of childish self-delusion, i find it more than a little ironic that it takes much more faith to be an atheist than it does a to be a theist and to form and develop a vibrant living relationship with God!!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

ephraimanesti said:

The primary reason i put out the effort--through intense prayer and seeking--in order find God, or, rather, allow Him to find me, is that i never could muster up enough "pure blind faith" to accept the atheist assertion that there is no God.

Given the common accusation by atheists that theists in general and Christians in particular, are the victims of childish self-delusion, i find it more than a little ironic that it takes much more faith to be an atheist than it does a to be a theist and to form and develop a vibrant living relationship with God!!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

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Let's take a look at the bolded part of this tired little canard -

"it takes much more faith to be an atheist than it does a to be a theist and to form and develop a vibrant living relationship with God!!"

The obvious reason this is wrong in a general sense is that atheism is a lack of a belief in gods, not a positive assertion that a god does not exist. If it requires faith to lack belief in something for which there is no evidence, then there are an infinite number of things which we all require faith for. Consequently the idea of faith is so watered down as to be completely trivial and not at all the type of faith that is being referred to in this canard.

It is specifically wrong in the context of this thread because
1) Atheists do not claim that they know the ultimate origin of the universe (eg. precursor to big bang, multiverses etc).
2) Atheists freely admit to not knowing but being open to evidence should it be uncovered, and able to change their mind based on new evidence.
3) 1 and 2 require no faith.

4) Theist's claim to know the ultimate origin of the universe, however the origin story it is purely an invention, which requires faith.

So to recap. The atheist's position require no faith and the theist position requires faith.

No faith < faith

Therefore: anybody who trots out this old piece of garbage is embarrassing him or herself.

SpaceCliff said:

Let's take a look at the bolded part of this tired little canard -

"it takes much more faith to be an atheist than it does a to be a theist and to form and develop a vibrant living relationship with God!!"

The obvious reason this is wrong in a general sense is that atheism is a lack of a belief in gods, not a positive assertion that a god does not exist. If it requires faith to lack belief in something for which there is no evidence, then there are an infinite number of things which we all require faith for. Consequently the idea of faith is so watered down as to be completely trivial and not at all the type of faith that is being referred to in this canard.

It is specifically wrong in the context of this thread because
1) Atheists do not claim that they know the ultimate origin of the universe (eg. precursor to big bang, multiverses etc).
2) Atheists freely admit to not knowing but being open to evidence should it be uncovered, and able to change their mind based on new evidence.
3) 1 and 2 require no faith.

4) Theist's claim to know the ultimate origin of the universe, however the origin story it is purely an invention, which requires faith.

So to recap. The atheist's position require no faith and the theist position requires faith.

No faith < faith

Therefore: anybody who trots out this old piece of garbage is embarrassing him or herself.

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In reality atheism can be defined as a rejection of theism, or the position that deities do not exist. In the Broadest sense it the absence of belief in deities. This lack of belief has little to nothing to do with the evidence available. Just like in any of life's philosophy's one will obtain or ignore evidence according to what it is they want to believe. Because as you have stated the Atheism is not an assertion that God does not exist, it can be reasoned that it is a system of belief centered around the idea that the evidence available is insufficient to disprove the atheist's central doctrine. So it is with in this system of belief that your faith can be found. You have faith, in that your life's philosophy, and it's central doctrine being built on popular reason and logic, does in fact supersede the evidence God has left of His existence.

Whether you believe in God or you do not, it does takes the same measure of faith to assert, and implement your system in your life. It take even more faith in what you believe to present your doctrine to those who seek it. And it take a missionary or Saint's level of faith to go out into a place looking to spread your good news to those who openly oppose the way you think.

1)Theists do not all claim they do indeed know how the universe was created. At best all one can do is point to the account of Genesis. Just like at best all an atheist can do is refer to someone else's work in the scientific version of origins.
When it comes down to true Origins both sides will in fact have to rely on Faith.

2) True Atheists will only ever admit the existence of God when they are kneeling or lying prostrate on the ground in front of him. Because again Atheism is a life philosophy, one that can be changed and amended to exclude any new evidence presented. If this were not already true then why do you not consider any of the evidence presented?? (rhetorically asked)

3) Faith is required in whatever it is you choose to believe, it takes a blind eye and alot of denial to not see that.

4)No matter what version of Origins you take to heart, and because no one was there to satisfactorily record those events. we can consider all accounts an "invention." Which mean if you believe one account or another it is your FAITH that makes it real to you.

No faith, or Faith= same effort.

Anyone actively searching for an opportunity to personally discredit another person belief, based on their own personal life's philosophy or interpretation of how the universe and all in it work, can quickly and accurately be labeled a fool.

Searching_for_Christ said:

My question stemmed from the fact that Christians will scoff atheists and such for believing we all came from nothing, while we have the same belief of God's existence. I found it contradictory, and while reading some stuff of Agnosticism I was reminded by this oh familiar question, which I then asked you guys.

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I think the ultimate answer to these 'Why' questions - 'Why is there something rather than nothing', 'Why didn't XYZ - God, the universe, etc. - need a cause' lies in the idea of infinity.

The finite starts from '0' and works its way up to potential infinity, never reaching actual infinity any more than someone can think of the largest possible number. On the other hand, the infinite is unbounded, limitless - it starts from 'infinity' and ends with 'infinity' - it never changes and has always been infinite.

So in infinite reality these 'Why' questions will either not make sense, or will be answered, because you're starting position is the infinite rather than '0'.

Christians of course believe that this 'infinite' is God, that the infinite is a person, in a manner of speaking. This stops the 'Why' regression partly as described above. Here's a diagram of some of this.

SpaceCliff said:

Therefore: anybody who trots out this old piece of garbage is embarrassing him or herself.

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Stating the Truth when surrounded by lies is indeed often as embarrassing as it is necessary. A bond-servant does what he is told.

A lack of faith has led to the conversion of many Christians--myself included. It has been the experience of many of us that not having enough faith to swallow atheistic hyperbole forces one to seeking more concrete Truths and Realities to base one's life on--God for example. Then the grain of mustard seed can be put to good use indeed!

ABBA'S FOOL,
ephraim

drich0150 said:

In reality atheism can be defined as a rejection of theism, or the position that deities do not exist. In the Broadest sense it the absence of belief in deities. This lack of belief has little to nothing to do with the evidence available. Just like in any of life's philosophy's one will obtain or ignore evidence according to what it is they want to believe. Because as you have stated the Atheism is not an assertion that God does not exist, it can be reasoned that it is a system of belief centered around the idea that the evidence available is insufficient to disprove the atheist's central doctrine. So it is with in this system of belief that your faith can be found. You have faith, in that your life's philosophy, and it's central doctrine being built on popular reason and logic, does in fact supersede the evidence God has left of His existence.

Whether you believe in God or you do not, it does takes the same measure of faith to assert, and implement your system in your life. It take even more faith in what you believe to present your doctrine to those who seek it. And it take a missionary or Saint's level of faith to go out into a place looking to spread your good news to those who openly oppose the way you think.

1)Theists do not all claim they do indeed know how the universe was created. At best all one can do is point to the account of Genesis. Just like at best all an atheist can do is refer to someone else's work in the scientific version of origins.
When it comes down to true Origins both sides will in fact have to rely on Faith.

2) True Atheists will only ever admit the existence of God when they are kneeling or lying prostrate on the ground in front of him. Because again Atheism is a life philosophy, one that can be changed and amended to exclude any new evidence presented. If this were not already true then why do you not consider any of the evidence presented?? (rhetorically asked)

3) Faith is required in whatever it is you choose to believe, it takes a blind eye and alot of denial to not see that.

4)No matter what version of Origins you take to heart, and because no one was there to satisfactorily record those events. we can consider all accounts an "invention." Which mean if you believe one account or another it is your FAITH that makes it real to you.

No faith, or Faith= same effort.

Anyone actively searching for an opportunity to personally discredit another person belief, based on their own personal life's philosophy or interpretation of how the universe and all in it work, can quickly and accurately be labeled a fool.

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You just posted that last paragraph on a christian outreach message board. I hope the irony is not lost on you.

Anyway, there are many errors in your post but I'll focus on one of the last ones.

"...Which mean if you believe one account or another it is your FAITH that makes it real to you."


This is a false dichotomy. I don't claim to know the ultimate origin of the universe, which is neither "one account or another". I don't require faith to hold that position.

Regardless, the way you are characterising faith here is so broad as to be trivial, so of course will require the same amount of effort regardless of your "life philosophy" (I'm not sure why effort matters particularly).

The sense in which it is used in the original sentence I was criticising was "that which is believed without proof" in regards to whether specific claims are true. This thread has been about specific claims.

So my original criticism stands. If faith is "that which is believed without proof" and I don't believe in something, I'm not displaying faith. And if you want to claim that "not believing" is equivalent to "believing", you'd need to explain why the positive word is in the definition in the in the first place.

You're welcome to define belief in other ways and come up with convoluted reasons why this reasoning would fail in those circumstances. You would not be using a definition that is pertinent to this criticism.

You choose to only look at one aspect of Faith in order to sell your personal doctrine. when the word "faith" encompasses so many different aspects of belief, and/or trust. Most of which have little to do with your favorite definition of the word.

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I made a specific criticism of a specific sentence which was written in the context of this thread. I did not abruptly choose the definition. It was you that chose to equivocate faith for your own advantage and talk about something else entirely.

Even a system of belief in nothing, is still a system of belief. And a system of belief makes you one of the faithful.

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As I said that's trivially true, so I don't find it interesting.

The irony, yes it seems it is lost on you. Your thoughts on what that irony might be is not what I had in mind. I'm surprised though, it should be staring you in the face.

I would suggest if you were so inclined to avoid such confusion. when you are narrowly using a word with such broad meaning.. Open with your definition instead of hiding it two posts into the conversation.

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- you

If it requires faith to lack belief in something for which there is no evidence

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- me in my first post.

I would suggest you read things before making your argument.

One question. Do you believe in unicorns?

If not, then according to your argument you have faith that there are no unicorns. And you also have faith that an infinite number of other things don't exist. "Belief" and "non belief" are not the same thing. I actually addressed this already in an earlier post in this thread, but you mustn't have read it.

Searching_for_Christ said:

Umm yes..I would agree that I have faith that there are no unicorns. Of course belief and non belief aren't the same thing! yet faith is not only belief, but its a practice as well!! Tell me.. do you believe that the chair you are sitting in right now will not colapse on you? you believed as you prepared to sit down that your chair would support you, but in the act of sitting down you then exercised a little something called FAITH! you took your belief and through faith put it into practice thus goes with your unbelief..which can really just as well be translated into you BELIEF of no God! you take your belief and put it into practice (faith) by rejecting and form of deity! belief is the intelectual part..faith is DOING part.

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I'm not sure that you've read the whole thread. But in one of my posts you will find that I wrote that atheists (most) do not make the positive claim that a deity does not exist. Atheism is usually the lack of belief in a deity. It is a non belief.

You could just as easily claim that every time I sit down on a chair I am testing a hypothesis that it will hold me up. I'm confident that my hypothesis is correct due to past experience and my knowledge of the physical world. Of course I could be wrong and it may collapse proving me wrong. You could call this faith, but it wouldn't be of a very interesting kind.

I'm fully aware of the other definitions of faith. Unfortunately many people will equivocate the different meanings in order to shift goalposts within arguments. I'm not suggesting that is what you are doing however.

Hey now......did you use my chair-faith example??

I made a specific criticism of a specific sentence which was written in the context of this thread. I did not abruptly choose the definition.

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But you did when your "criticism" did not allow for any other interpretation of the word faith.

Your thoughts on what that irony might be is not what I had in mind.

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It seems even the definition of irony has a special meaning that goes beyond the boundaries of a good dictionary.

I would suggest you read things before making your argument.

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you know I posted what I said as sort of a litmus to see where this conversation was going. It seems as if we have exhausted all legitimate points of discussion, and are only left with the primal need to win an argument. this is made evident in what you have evidently extrapolated from my last paragraph. If your intent was to avoid confusion, you would have made it clear that you would only be looking at one singular aspect of the word faith and would not entertain any other definitions of the word. But as your OP and your last post read, your looking to simply best whom ever it is your speaking with.. to which, I will leave the rest of this conversation with you.

Because who is the Greater fool? The fool, or the fool who argues with him?

I did make it clear what the definition was, you just chose to use an interpretation that I clearly wasn't talking about.

I criticised the sentence "it takes much more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a theist".

I was clear in the sense I was using the word faith.

You shifted the goalposts by using a different definition, one which I would more than happily discuss, but why should I considering you had ignored the post I had made?

I clarified my definition even further and there have been no responses to my argument still. There have been responses to some other argument that I didn't realise I was having, under the guise of the same argument. If that's where you'd like to leave it then that is fine with me.

As for the irony. I'm sure it will pop into your head in a few days. No further dictionary definitions necessary.

Another irony is that arguing with fools can be quite enlightening. You may well agree.

I skimmed through this thread and think that I could add something useful to the first question that was asked.

For all of you Christians, is it ridiculous in your opinion to believe that something out of nothing exploded (big bang) and created our universe?

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Christians (at least well-informed ones) don't actually believe that "something came out of nothing." They believe, as I'm sure you know, that everything came from something: God. The Big Bang Theory indicates that not only material, physical matter came out of the explosion that began our universe, but also time and space. Whatever caused the universe, then, would have to be immaterial, and outside of time and space; it would have to be transcendent to these things. You see, if space, and time, and matter caused the Big Bang and the matter, time and space of our universe, then you must ask, "Where did that matter, time and space originate?" You can say again that there was time, matter, and space that caused the time, matter, and space, that caused the time, matter and space released by the Big Bang. And so you can go on forever (if you were so inclined) always asking what started it all and never arriving at an answer because the cause provided as the source of the effect is, by its nature, subject to the same question: where did it come from?

Only God provides a final, satisfactory, logical answer to the question of where everything came from. He is the First Cause and as such must be necessarily and fundamentally different (for the reason I just gave above) than what He has caused. If we say that God is material - made up of matter - and that He is subject to time, and confined within space, then we end up asking again, where did God get His form and who (or what) made the space and time within which He exists. But when we say, as the Bible does, that God is immaterial, and that He exists outside of time and space, then the question "where did He come from?" no longer applies. A Being who is outside of time is logically and necessarily without a beginning; for the idea of having a beginning (or an end) arises out of the concept of time. A Being who is immaterial is without need of a physical source. "All cells come from pre-existing cells" does not apply to an immaterial Being. A Being who exists outside of space truly exists in nothing; there are no physical boundaries within which He exists, so there is no reason to ask where He came from, or within what does He exist. And only a First Cause such as this could have produced time, space and matter.

Here's a very simple (and admittedly imperfect) analogy of what I'm talking about:

Can a clay pot make another clay pot? Obviously not. The very nature of the clay pot makes it impossible for it to have produced another clay pot. A Potter must make a clay pot. And the Potter can do so only because he is very, very different from the clay pots he fashions.

Hope this helps.

Peace.

Hey, that post wasn't directed at you, it was directed at another poster who I was conversing with. Sorry for the confusion, I should have been clearer with who it was directed at.

Here is my response to your last post.

A non belief still falls into the realms of belief.

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I don’t agree that it does, although I do realize there is a subtle (but important!) distinction you are missing. I think you are confusing a non belief, which is the lack of a positive belief in a claim, with a belief in a negative claim.

It becomes easier to see this if you talk about beliefs as truth claims.

If you replace the term “belief” with “claim that” you get

“I do not believe in x” becoming “I do not claim that x”. This is not a truth claim, and is the equivalent of a non belief.

“I claim that x” is a positive truth claim.
“I claim that x is not the case” is a negative truth claim.

Let’s put these into some sentences and see what we get (of course people don’t really talk in this manner )

“I do not claim that there is a tiger in my car” – not a truth claim.
“I claim that is there is no tiger in my car” – negative truth claim.

In everyday language usage, the statement would be more likely to something like “I don’t believe there is a tiger in my car” for either case, but the distinction is lost without further context.

Notice the statement “I do not claim that there is a tiger in my car” does not deny that there is a tiger in the car, and is compatible with (although not equivalent to) “I don’t know whether there is a tiger in my car”.

If this distinction did not exist, then it would not be possible to answer “I don’t know” to anything. If I were to ask you “Do you think that right at this second there are precisely 15 people at the top of the empire state building?”, you have three possible answers. “Yes”, “No” and “I don’t know”. Other answers, such as “What a stupid question”, are really opinions about the question rather than attempts to try and answer it.

Not claiming to know the answer is a legitimate standpoint, and shows a difference between belief (positive and negative) and non belief.

I make no truth claims about a deity, either positive or negative.

Opinions are obviously beliefs, using the definition “Opinion: A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof”

Of course you could ask me directly “what is your opinion on whether a deity exists”. My answer would be “I don’t know”. Not knowing is a perfectly reasonable place to stand.

.who says faith must be interesting or impressive? I don't think that should change the fact at all.

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[FONT=&quot][/FONT][FONT=&quot]That’s a fair question. What I’m really getting at here, and I could have explained this better, The reason I don’t think this is a particularly interesting example of faith is that it is clearly a testable example. You can turn it from faith to knowledge simply by sitting down. Faith in things for which I think there is no evidence is more interesting to me personally.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

but they are all part of the same thing..so no..there are no different definitions..just people that emphasis different aspects of faith more than the other aspects.

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You can call them facets rather than definitions if you like. The important things that meaning of a word doesn’t “shift facets” within discourse unless agreed upon. This is the equivocation I was talking about.