Atheism and the Celestial Teapot!

[SusanDoris]

But can't you see how you are investigating something, yet deciding in advance what the conclusion must look like?

I have been investigating, reading, learning, following all sorts of leads, reading all the books on the, e.g. von Daniken, Graham Hancock, astrology shelves, mysteries of Ancient Egypt, you name it, I've read it!  and have belonged to discussion groups as often as possible and, at 80, I think I know what I think!  However, I can't see myself losing interest in the subjects and will continue to be on the look-out for the one fact which will change the world's atheists to believers or vice versa. In the meantime, I continue to enjoy reading discussions like these ... ... wel, most of them anyway!
How do you decide, for yourself anyway, what is true?

[Leonard James]

I have been investigating, reading, learning, following all sorts of leads, reading all the books on the, e.g. von Daniken, Graham Hancock, astrology shelves, mysteries of Ancient Egypt, you name it, I've read it!  and have belonged to discussion groups as often as possible and, at 80, I think I know what I think!  However, I can't see myself losing interest in the subjects and will continue to be on the look-out for the one fact which will change the world's atheists to believers or vice versa. In the meantime, I continue to enjoy reading discussions like these ... ... wel, most of them anyway!
How do you decide, for yourself anyway, what is true?

Unlike you, Susan, I haven't read many books on the subject, but like you, I have never seen any argument strong enough to convince me of the existence of any "god".

The chemical and electrical properties of the physical world, on the other hand, convince me that nothing else is needed to explain the existence of the universe and us.

Where it all came from we don't know ... yet!

[SusanDoris]

Unlike you, Susan, I haven't read many books on the subject,

It is possible that I exaggerated there, just the teensiest bit!

but like you, I have never seen any argument strong enough to convince me of the existence of any "god".

The chemical and electrical properties of the physical world, on the other hand, convince me that nothing else is needed to explain the existence of the universe and us.

Where it all came from we don't know ... yet!

Agreed, as always!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But at the moment, I'm not going to do that, i.e. word the post differently to make it correct - it makes it too easy for the believers to talk as if their views are the more probable, or that there is a sort of 50/50 balance either way.

So, so far you are saying believers make up their beliefs and that their beliefs are less probable than yours.

If any of your atheist colleagues have any decency they should be persuading you to a) Demonstrate that believers make up their beliefs b) give the figures of probability for their beliefs and yours showing working out.

I do not include the very wonderful Nearly sane who has taken you to task for this.

[jeremyp]

In a sense SwordoftheSpirit does have a point.

The burden of evidence really depends on the audience. In an abstract setting, yes, the burden of evidence is on the person making the positive claim. So, in a debate where the "jury" is some putative unbiased entity that will be swayed by the arguments put based on their objective strength, an argument like "you can't prove there isn't a god has no validity.

However, in the situation where you are trying to persuade an actual person to change their belief, the burden of evidence is on you. It's no good telling them that the burden of evidence is on them because they don't believe they are making the positive claim. A Christian believes that "there is a god" is the default position. The fact that they are wrong about the default position is irrelevant.

[bluehillside Retd.]

If you are saying like Bluehillside does ''prove your God is not something made up'' then you are in fact suggesting that a person is making something up in a rather tricksy fashion knowing full well that the claim that God is made up is a positive assertion and thus carries a burden of proof.

In other words, you have to demonstrate that there is any making up going on.

Just to note that I have retired from this board in part because of unremitting dishonesty of this type. bluehillside never has and never would have said this. What bluehillside did do though was to examine the arguments made for god and when they were fallacious bluehillside said so - and moreover bluehillside explained why they were fallacious. That's not to say that someone somewhere does not have an argument for a god that isn't fallacious but - so far at least - none have been presented here and nor, so far as bluehillside is aware, anywhere else.

In short: bluehillside merely asked whether theists here had an argument to distinguish their claims from guessing.   

Oh, and whether Russell's teapot is made up, ridiculous or anything else remains utterly irrelevant to the point he was making - namely that the argument, "you can't disprove it, therefore it's true" is a very bad argument.

I wish you all well.

[jeremyp]

Just to note that I have retired from this board in part because of unremitting dishonesty of this type. bluehillside never has and never would have said this. What bluehillside did do though was to examine the arguments made for god and when they were fallacious bluehillside said so - and moreover bluehillside explained why they were fallacious. That's not to say that someone somewhere does not have an argument for a god that isn't fallacious but - so far at least - none have been presented here and nor, so far as bluehillside is aware, anywhere else.

In short: bluehillside merely asked whether the theist had an argument to distinguish his claims from guessing.   

Oh, and whether Russell's teapot is made up, ridiculous or anything else remains utterly irrelevant to the point he was making - namely that the argument, "you can't disprove it, therefore it's true" is a very bad argument.

I wish you all well.

You're letting Vlad's dishonesty drive you away from the board? Everybody would have read that and known straight away that he is talking bollocks as usual.

[Sebastian Toe]

Just to note that I have retired from this board in part because of unremitting dishonesty of this type. bluehillside never has and never would have said this. What bluehillside did do though was to examine the arguments made for god and when they were fallacious bluehillside said so - and moreover bluehillside explained why they were fallacious. That's not to say that someone somewhere does not have an argument for a god that isn't fallacious but - so far at least - none have been presented here and nor, so far as bluehillside is aware, anywhere else.

In short: bluehillside merely asked whether the theist had an argument to distinguish his claims from guessing.   

Oh, and whether Russell's teapot is made up, ridiculous or anything else remains utterly irrelevant to the point he was making - namely that the argument, "you can't disprove it, therefore it's true" is a very bad argument.

I wish you all well.

Just ignore the arseholes and carry on as if they don't exist?
You could try it for a while to see if that works?

[wigginhall]

Ignore the trolling, blue.   That's all it is.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

I have been investigating, reading, learning, following all sorts of leads, reading all the books on the, e.g. von Daniken, Graham Hancock, astrology shelves, mysteries of Ancient Egypt, you name it, I've read it!  and have belonged to discussion groups as often as possible and, at 80, I think I know what I think!  However, I can't see myself losing interest in the subjects and will continue to be on the look-out for the one fact which will change the world's atheists to believers or vice versa. In the meantime, I continue to enjoy reading discussions like these ... ... wel, most of them anyway!
How do you decide, for yourself anyway, what is true?

(emphasis mine)

Before I get picked up on it, I’ll make it clear that what I am saying is a belief about what is true, not a certainty.

You seem to have had an interesting journey! Some of my best friends are Muslims and Sikhs. From a belief perspective, we could all be wrong, but we can’t all be right. I wrestle with that one sometimes because I see a commitment to their religion that has to be respected.

You said, “and will continue to be on the look-out for the one fact which will change the world's atheists to believers or vice versa” My journey on this revolved around looking for explanations for the something. Do I go for natural only explanations or do I go for a non-natural explanation? I had arguments for both but the deciding factor for me going for non-natural explanations was when being presented with naturalistic explanations that were contradicted by what can be observed. The biggest one for me was anything that relied on something being caused by nothing, e.g.
•   Life from non-life
•   Functionality (in living organisms, e.g. senses) from non-functionality.
•   Intelligence from non-intelligence
•   Morality from non-morality
•   Laws from non-laws
My favourite science displine at school was Physics and the one thing you learn very quickly is that you do not get something for nothing, for example Newton’s conservation of energy/momentum laws, the work-energy principle, etc. I also observed in Chemistry that under certain conditions, order could come from disorder, but something had to be given up, e.g. the orderly static structure of water molecules, or the beautiful patterns in a snowflake comes at a price: giving up heat energy (i.e. the dynamism of the water molecules). Again, no something for nothing.

Ok. So why the creator route? Human beings design and make things. What are the attributes of these? Is there anything comparable in the world? In my opinion, absolutely. Having a creator therefore solves the something from nothing problem.

So what is the nature of the creator? Over to religious belief. I was brought up in a Christian environment, so it made sense to start there. I spent much of my teenage years trying to get away from it because I didn’t have any say in whether or not I could attend church. So I kind of went along with it. Ultimately, it came down to whether or not I could believe that Jesus rose from the dead. When I was 18, I came to the conclusion that I needed to decide one way or the other, so made a decision to commit to it and take the Christian faith more seriously.

So, to answer your last question (in bold), it was an inductive approach that led me to the conclusion that there was a creator, a step of faith based on believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and if that is true, then there is no reason for me to doubt other things that are said in the Bible, and in terms of what is true with regard to the Christian faith, I try and take a deductive approach based on what the Bible says.

[Sebastian Toe]

(emphasis mine)

Before I get picked up on it, I’ll make it clear that what I am saying is a belief about what is true, not a certainty.

You seem to have had an interesting journey! Some of my best friends are Muslims and Sikhs. From a belief perspective, we could all be wrong, but we can’t all be right. I wrestle with that one sometimes because I see a commitment to their religion that has to be respected.

You said, “and will continue to be on the look-out for the one fact which will change the world's atheists to believers or vice versa” My journey on this revolved around looking for explanations for the something. Do I go for natural only explanations or do I go for a non-natural explanation? I had arguments for both but the deciding factor for me going for non-natural explanations was when being presented with naturalistic explanations that were contradicted by what can be observed. The biggest one for me was anything that relied on something being caused by nothing, e.g.
•   Life from non-life
•   Functionality (in living organisms, e.g. senses) from non-functionality.
•   Intelligence from non-intelligence
•   Morality from non-morality
•   Laws from non-laws
My favourite science displine at school was Physics and the one thing you learn very quickly is that you do not get something for nothing, for example Newton’s conservation of energy/momentum laws, the work-energy principle, etc. I also observed in Chemistry that under certain conditions, order could come from disorder, but something had to be given up, e.g. the orderly static structure of water molecules, or the beautiful patterns in a snowflake comes at a price: giving up heat energy (i.e. the dynamism of the water molecules). Again, no something for nothing.

Ok. So why the creator route? Human beings design and make things. What are the attributes of these? Is there anything comparable in the world? In my opinion, absolutely. Having a creator therefore solves the something from nothing problem.

So what is the nature of the creator? Over to religious belief. I was brought up in a Christian environment, so it made sense to start there. I spent much of my teenage years trying to get away from it because I didn’t have any say in whether or not I could attend church. So I kind of went along with it. Ultimately, it came down to whether or not I could believe that Jesus rose from the dead. When I was 18, I came to the conclusion that I needed to decide one way or the other, so made a decision to commit to it and take the Christian faith more seriously.

So, to answer your last question (in bold), it was an inductive approach that led me to the conclusion that there was a creator, a step of faith based on believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and if that is true, then there is no reason for me to doubt other things that are said in the Bible, and in terms of what is true with regard to the Christian faith, I try and take a deductive approach based on what the Bible says.

Something from nothing?
Who is advocating that?

[SusanDoris]

bluehillside

Nearly all of us here will be saying - as per posts above - and thinking:
please do keep on reading here and joining in topics that interest you; your absence would leave a large empty space.

Sword of the Spirit

I will come back to your post in a minute (or tomorrow).  Asking bluehillside to stay is much more important just at the moment.

[torridon]

Ok. So why the creator route? Human beings design and make things. What are the attributes of these? Is there anything comparable in the world? In my opinion, absolutely. Having a creator therefore solves the something from nothing problem.

No it doesn't.  It only leaves us with a very much bigger problem of where the creator came from.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No it doesn't.  It only leaves us with a very much bigger problem of where the creator came from.

How is God being eternal any greater a problem than the universe being eternal?
The problem with an eternal universe though is that at the moment it seemed to come into being with the big bang.

The irony is that a creator of the universe allows the universe to be more natural as it avoids having the universe having the supernatural properties of either creating itself or being eternal.

[Leonard James]

My dear bh,

Please, please don't let the moronic posts of some members of this board drive you away.

Most thinking people recognise the non-existence of the god brigade's "arguments", but much work still needs to be done to detox the minds of those still infected.

Your contributions are some of the most cogent and persuasive to achieve this.

Sincerely,
Leonard.

[Gordon]

The biggest one for me was anything that relied on something being caused by nothing, e.g.
•   Life from non-life

The jury remains out on abiogenesis, and no doubt investigations continue. That in the absence of knowledge you can't envisage abiogenesis without 'god' is a fallacious argument from personal incredulity.

•   Functionality (in living organisms, e.g. senses) from non-functionality.
•   Intelligence from non-intelligence
•   Morality from non-morality
•   Laws from non-laws

These are emergent properties that arise from the evolution of species - that you can't envisage the emergence of these traits without 'god' is also a fallacious argument from personal incredulity.

So, to answer your last question (in bold), it was an inductive approach that led me to the conclusion that there was a creator, a step of faith based on believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and if that is true, then there is no reason for me to doubt other things that are said in the Bible, and in terms of what is true with regard to the Christian faith, I try and take a deductive approach based on what the Bible says.

Which is a fallacious argument from authority unless you can demonstrate the reliability of the Bible without recourse to circular reasoning or the relativist (its true for me) fallacies.

You seem keen on adopting a philosophical approach yet you seen unaware of the logical fallacies you keep falling into. 

[torridon]

How is God being eternal any greater a problem than the universe being eternal?

Sword's claim was about something from nothing.   Complexity arises from simpler origins.  Human mind is complex, and it has taken 14 billion years of cosmic evolution for it to appear.  Theism claims a creator being even more complex than human mind just existing out of nowhere with no provenance.  That is a more fantastic claim than simple matter starting to exist out of nowhere which then goes on to evolve complexity; after all this happens all the time in the quantum field.

[SusanDoris]

I see that many of the points you raise have been dealt with but I will post this as is.

(emphasis mine)

Before I get picked up on it, I’ll make it clear that what I am saying is a belief about what is true, not a certainty.

Okay. To be absolutely precise, those of us who, like me, are totally lacking a belief in any god whilst acknowledging that there is just the remotest possibility that one might be found one day, disregard that  chance.

You seem to have had an interesting journey! Some of my best friends are Muslims and Sikhs. From a belief perspective, we could all be wrong, but we can’t all be right. I wrestle with that one sometimes because I see a commitment to their religion that has to be respected.

Why ‘respected’? acknowledge, understood, both historically and culturally, but since there is zero evidence for anything supernatural – call it what you will – why, ‘respected’?

You said, “and will continue to be on the look-out for the one fact which will change the world's atheists to believers or vice versa” My journey on this revolved around looking for explanations for the something. Do I go for natural only explanations or do I go for a non-natural explanation? I had arguments for both but the deciding factor for me going for non-natural explanations was when being presented with naturalistic explanations that were contradicted by what can be observed.

The Theory of Evolution  deals with much of your list. I will comment on the moral point:

•   Morality from non-morality

the word ‘morality’ is simply a label to cover behaviours that were advantageous and pleasing to our species and assisted their survival. When civilisation and language development formed them into a code they simply became a set of rules, but that was not the start of morality.

Ok. So why the creator route? Human beings design and make things. What are the attributes of these? Is there anything comparable in the world? In my opinion, absolutely. Having a creator therefore solves the something from nothing problem.

No, it simply adds the question of infinite regression – who created the creator, etc.

So what is the nature of the creator?

All attributes and characteristics ascribed to any kind of god or creator come from the imagination of humans.

Over to religious belief. I was brought up in a Christian environment, so it made sense to start there. I spent much of my teenage years trying to get away from it because I didn’t have any say in whether or not I could attend church. So I kind of went along with it. Ultimately, it came down to whether or not I could believe that Jesus rose from the dead. When I was 18, I came to the conclusion that I needed to decide one way or the other, so made a decision to commit to it and take the Christian faith more seriously.

I don’t know how old you are, but for those of my age, there was really no option. However, I consider myself fortunate in one way – the only part of belief in my family was that of belief in God. All other ideas, myths, legends, biblical stories, miracles etc were, self-evidently, simply stories, many aimed at promoting goodbehaviour and showing why anti-social behaviours were wrong.

So, to answer your last question (in bold), it was an inductive approach that led me to the conclusion that there was a creator, a step of faith based on believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead …

I really have to stop you there. In the face of everything we know, and that humans have known for thousands of years, however much they may have wanted to believe otherwise, all living things die; why do you wish to suspend your disbelief to such an extent to believe that a person can be resurrected?  Do you think that people 2,000 years ago were better informed than we are today?

…and if that is true, …

The word if has a lot to answer for here – there is overwhelming evidence that it Is vanishingly unlikelythat it  is even remotely possible, so why is it more believable to you that it could happen? What logic do you use to arrive at that idea?

…then there is no reason for me to doubt other things that are said in the Bible, and in terms of what is true with regard to the Christian faith,…

If you only believe those bits, then you are being very selective I think.

I try and take a deductive approach based on what the Bible says.

Why would you do that? Do you think that the words and stories written down pretty much 2,000 and more ago are more worthy of belief than our up-to-date knowledge of our planet, our galaxy, space, the universe, etc

[bluehillside Retd.]

Just to say thank you for the various kind comments that have been posted here. I came here because I’m interested in religion generally as a phenomenon, and because I enjoy the discussion of ideas. Increasingly though I’ve found that I’m repeating the same rebuttals to the same arguments, that what some of us say quite plainly is too often misrepresented, and that the fruit loop proselytising and conspiracy theory stuff is antithetical to the very idea of discussion.     

I could for example counter Sword’s post by explaining that it’s one long argument from personal incredulity, that it rests on a straw man (no-one says that the phenomena he lists do come “from nothing”), that he could read about how complexity emerges from simpler components without external intervention by reading a book (Steven Johnson’s Emergence for example), that his personal “leap of faith” is not an argument for a “true for you too” fact for others etc.

What though would be the point? In the Christian’s shoes I’d think, “blimey – I’d better think about this as it appears to unravel the very basis of my belief” and if I found that it did I’d either try to find some cogent reasons for retaining it or I’d abandon it.

What actually happens though with some posters is that the same arguments are repeated over and again, or we get a “so you think the moon is made of cream cheese then do you?” type reply, or the fallacies that have been attempted (circular reasoning, category error etc) are just thrown back with no basis and with no understanding of what they mean.

And for me at least that’s a bit dull.

I will look in from time-to-time, and if someone posts an argument that I do find interesting I’ll engage with it. For now though I feel I haven’t much more to say without becoming dull myself, and that would never do.

My best wishes to you all.

[floo]

ALL gods are invented entities, imo. The Biblical god is not very credible; it appears to be the figment of the human authors' imaginations.

[torridon]

Just to say thank you for the various kind comments that have been posted here. I came here because I’m interested in religion generally as a phenomenon, and because I enjoy the discussion of ideas. Increasingly though I’ve found that I’m repeating the same rebuttals to the same arguments, that what some of us say quite plainly is too often misrepresented, and that the fruit loop proselytising and conspiracy theory stuff is antithetical to the very idea of discussion.     

I could for example counter Sword’s post by explaining that it’s one long argument from personal incredulity, that it rests on a straw man (no-one says that the phenomena he lists do come “from nothing”), that he could read about how complexity emerges from simpler components without external intervention by reading a book (Steven Johnson’s Emergence for example), that his personal “leap of faith” is not an argument for a “true for you too” fact for others etc.

What though would be the point? In the Christian’s shoes I’d think, “blimey – I’d better think about this as it appears to unravel the very basis of my belief” and if I found that it did I’d either try to find some cogent reasons for retaining it or I’d abandon it.

What actually happens though with some posters is that the same arguments are repeated over and again, or we get a “so you think the moon is made of cream cheese then do you?” type reply, or the fallacies that have been attempted (circular reasoning, category error etc) are just thrown back with no basis and with no understanding of what they mean.

And for me at least that’s a bit dull.

I will look in from time-to-time, and if someone posts an argument that I do find interesting I’ll engage with it. For now though I feel I haven’t much more to say without becoming dull myself, and that would never do.

My best wishes to you all.

Haste ye back now, as the Scots like to say

[Enki]

Just to say thank you for the various kind comments that have been posted here. I came here because I’m interested in religion generally as a phenomenon, and because I enjoy the discussion of ideas. Increasingly though I’ve found that I’m repeating the same rebuttals to the same arguments, that what some of us say quite plainly is too often misrepresented, and that the fruit loop proselytising and conspiracy theory stuff is antithetical to the very idea of discussion.     

I could for example counter Sword’s post by explaining that it’s one long argument from personal incredulity, that it rests on a straw man (no-one says that the phenomena he lists do come “from nothing”), that he could read about how complexity emerges from simpler components without external intervention by reading a book (Steven Johnson’s Emergence for example), that his personal “leap of faith” is not an argument for a “true for you too” fact for others etc.

What though would be the point? In the Christian’s shoes I’d think, “blimey – I’d better think about this as it appears to unravel the very basis of my belief” and if I found that it did I’d either try to find some cogent reasons for retaining it or I’d abandon it.

What actually happens though with some posters is that the same arguments are repeated over and again, or we get a “so you think the moon is made of cream cheese then do you?” type reply, or the fallacies that have been attempted (circular reasoning, category error etc) are just thrown back with no basis and with no understanding of what they mean.

And for me at least that’s a bit dull.

I will look in from time-to-time, and if someone posts an argument that I do find interesting I’ll engage with it. For now though I feel I haven’t much more to say without becoming dull myself, and that would never do.

My best wishes to you all.

I certainly hope you will look in from time to time, Blue. I generally don't bother with those posters like NM or Sass who just seem to proselytize by continually repeating what I see as unadulterated assertions and which are a world away from my experiences and thought processes. I always read your posts however because I often find them thought provoking and interesting and never dull.

[SusanDoris]

I certainly hope you will look in from time to time, Blue. I generally don't bother with those posters like NM or Sass who just seem to proselytize by continually repeating what I see as unadulterated assertions and which are a world away from my experiences and thought processes. I always read your posts however because I often find them thought provoking and interesting and never dull.

Ditto of course. I don't know - although probably mods do - how many times posts here are read by lurkers and browsers, but I hope that the sensible posts are noticed andmaybe some of those people might have cause to think about and bringtheir own beliefs forward to a non-religious one..

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

Something from nothing? Who is advocating that?

It is an inherent problem with a philosophy that takes a bottom-up approach (e.g. explanation for diversity of life), rather than a top down.

If you take a top-down approach, that which is created has the ability to diversify. There is no which came first? The chicken or the egg (seed or the plant) problem to solve.

If you take a bottom-up approach with gains of functionality coming from something simpler (e.g. compare the functionality in and of human beings or plants with the single common ancestor all life is supposed to have descended from), then you are getting something for nothing, a notion contradicted in Physics.

[SwordOfTheSpirit]

No it doesn't.  It only leaves us with a very much bigger problem of where the creator came from.

This statement is a brilliant quintessential illustration of the problem I see some atheists here running into time and time again. You are not going where the evidence leads. You are dictating what the results should look like. If you were doing Statistics and took that approach, you would find that you are introducing bias, e.g. A student who wants to find out what type of music young people listen to, and they give the survey to students in their class.

Anyone can look on this very thread and see a huge contrast with the approach taken to abiogenesis. I don't see anyone here saying, "We can't say how life developed because we don't know how it started", which in my opinion, is a much bigger problem! If abiogenesis can be divorced from any common-descent evolutionary theories, why can't the nature of a creator be a separate study from life being created?

Human beings design and make things. If those attributes and characteristics are present elsewhere then why shouldn't it be seen as evidence for a creator? It appears to be such a big problem (especially when you get the likes of Richard Dawkins talking about the illusion of design in his book The God Delusion, yet I can bet those looking for evidence of life on Mars are using the same kind of inductive techniques based on what they know about life on earth!!