# Atheism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 4, 2013, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288 "2013-02-04T04:58:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 27
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/521 "2013-02-23T12:04:46Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > We have a word for existence, and that word is “existence”. Likewise, we have words for “cosmos” and “universe”, so why do we have to bother with the word “God” at all if the definition is already covered by an already existing word? Many people call the first cause God, but if they mean a Supreme Belng, then they need to explain who created the place for this being to be, there is a big difference between A being, and Being. As I see it if the creator was a being, it would have to be in existence and who created that? I don’t claim to know the answers,just try to understand the explainations. Many years ago people thought the sun was God etc. and worshipped it! ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/522 "2013-02-23T12:11:01Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, no… The word “precede” is the problem here. How can existence precede everything, if existence is everything? Existence precedes itself? Something came before everything? > > It is entirely possible (in metaphysical terms) that “everything” and “existence” came into being at the same time. It’s might have been sudden, or it might have been gradual. A big bang…or a slow dissolve. It might have been piece-wise: a big chunk of “everything” over yonder might have come into existence before all the other big chunks. Or it might have been all-at-once, with everything coming into existence at the same time. Who can know? I’m not completely sure the terms here even have definable meanings! In a way, existence takes in everything,because what is not in existence doesn’t exist. It isn’t everything it is just the place where anything that exists must be. Non-existence means it is nothing, and it is impossibe for nothig to exist. If it exists it is something, it doesn’t have to be A being but Being! ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/523 "2013-02-23T16:23:42Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > In a way, existence takes in everything,because what is not in existence doesn’t exist. It isn’t everything it is just the place where anything that exists must be. > > Non-existence means it is nothing, and it is impossibe for nothig to exist. If it exists it is something, it doesn’t have to be A being but Being! I have noticed this misuse of the English language by religionists many times before on this board and in real life, where they try to claim that “non-existence” is just another category of “existence” and/or that “illlogic” or “outside logic” is just another way of thinking that works with its own set of rules to follow. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/524 "2013-02-24T00:24:41Z")
**monavis** : I have to agree with **Czarcasm** here. You’re using terms that simply aren’t defined. Reading it as carefully as I can, you seem to be saying that “existence” is a kind of meta-reality, something that permits reality to function. Sort of like saying that even in empty space, there are still “laws of nature.” However, the argument that “nothing can’t exist, because if it exists it is something” is meaningless sophistry. You might just as well argue (and people have!) that nothing can’t exist, because if there were “nothing” then no-one would be around to observe it and name it. The Big Bang might have been preceded by “nothing.” Who can say? Again, can anyone even define the term rigorously? [If this is the way it ends](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/MacLeish/The_End_of_the_World)…why not the way it began? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/525 "2013-02-24T07:44:04Z")
Well, it does hark back to how Genesis was written. “The Earth was without form, and void” or howsoever the language plays out. The entire logical structure of human language in general lacks the tools to express concepts related to nothing, and most humans are not mentally equipped to entertain these things. I mean, true “nothing” would not be empty space, because space is still something. Nothing would be dimensionless, which means it would be timeless, which leads to headaches and drinking. The boundary between infinites (such as nothing would qualify as) and non-infinites is really difficult to resolve, how does that which is infinite yield that which is finite? How does that which is timeless generate temporality? Mathematics can use things like limits to renormalize terms that are threatening to become unmanageable, but basic logic runs into traps and conundrums for which those kind of tools are not available. Declaring a solution (such as might be found in a book) may make you feel better, but it does not actually resolve the question. For an atheist, an actual solution is often not even important. Life itself is rife with uncertainties, metaphysics is just another of those legion. Not having answers is not a defect (I do not know, with certainty, whether it will rain here tomorrow), and it is most assuredly better than relying on an answer that is patently incorrect. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/526 "2013-02-24T13:17:57Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > **monavis** : I have to agree with **Czarcasm** here. You’re using terms that simply aren’t defined. Reading it as carefully as I can, you seem to be saying that “existence” is a kind of meta-reality, something that permits reality to function. Sort of like saying that even in empty space, there are still “laws of nature.” > > However, the argument that “nothing can’t exist, because if it exists it is something” is meaningless sophistry. You might just as well argue (and people have!) that nothing can’t exist, because if there were “nothing” then no-one would be around to observe it and name it. > > The Big Bang might have been preceded by “nothing.” Who can say? Again, can anyone even define the term rigorously? > > [If this is the way it ends](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/MacLeish/The_End_of_the_World)…why not the way it began? As I understand you, Nothing existed, then became existent? If there is nothing, then there was nothing existing. so as I see it, existence has to be something that was always there. Do I understand it No…but I do know that there is existence, and if there was nothing in existence, neither you or any one would be on this board, so we must exist, and can prove we are in existence. I make no claim that I know it all, and never will, but I do like to learn and I try to learn from others. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/527 "2013-02-24T13:22:14Z")
As a poscript the big bang had some atoms etc. that caused it. just like spontanious Combustion of a Haystack in a barn, the heat from the damp hay causes a chemical reaction that starts the fire. Am I right… I don’t know, nor claim to know. I know for a fact that there are a lot of people and even many on this board who know a lot more than me. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/528 "2013-02-24T18:55:51Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > As a poscript the big bang had some atoms etc. that caused it. just like spontanious Combustion of a Haystack in a barn, the heat from the damp hay causes a chemical reaction that starts the fire. Am I right… I don’t know, nor claim to know. I know for a fact that there are a lot of people and even many on this board who know a lot more than me. Not _quite_ accurate. The precursor to the big bang is thought to have been a singularity, an infinitely dense point full of stuff, like the heart of a black hole. Therein, none of what was there was differentiated into particles, at least as far as we know. Of course, the logical problem is that the singularity itself was something, not nothing. At least, as far as we can guess. Nothing is dimensionless, as would be a singularity, so the big bang could well mark the cataclysm of nothing becoming something. We could theorize about what preceded the singularity, except that it presents us with an observational boundary beyond which we are heretofore unable to probe. Og could be there, on the other side of it, we can only guess. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/529 "2013-02-24T19:26:05Z")
I have my doubts that a state of absolute “nothingness” can come about naturally given _any_ amount of time, and that, while in the beginning we may have had matter and/or energy and/or singularity and/or gleeblespokken, we did not and could not have had absolute “nothing”. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2013, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/530 "2013-02-24T21:28:37Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > As I understand you, Nothing existed, then became existent? If there is nothing, then there was nothing existing. so as I see it, existence has to be something that was always there. . . . > [@Czarcasm](#): > > I have my doubts that a state of absolute “nothingness” can come about naturally given _any_ amount of time . . . in the beginning we may have had matter and/or energy and/or singularity and/or gleeblespokken, we did not and could not have had absolute “nothing”. I like **Czarcasm** ’s answer: the response to **monavis** ’ paradox is that, yes, there always was some form of “something,” some level of basic meta-level “potential,” a higher space, perhaps, in which our space is embedded. There were “rules of nature,” although perhaps very different rules, and a very different nature. Perhaps. On the other hand, there might simply have been an utter, absolute, perfect, total, timeless, spaceless nothing, with no rules, no laws, no nature. Then, one day, it “broke down” in some way. Such a perfect state of “nothing” doesn’t “exist” in the conventional meaning of the word. It doesn’t “have existence.” You can’t point to it, because you aren’t there…and neither is it. This does not justify the linguistic ploy, saying that it “must have existence” because “it was, and all that is, is part of existence.” That’s just medieval word play. (“God must exist, because I can envision a perfect entity, and if it is perfect, it has no faults or flaws, and ‘not existing’ is a fault and a flaw.”) Hell, there isn’t an elephant in my living room. It doesn’t exist. But I’ve just used the word “it,” and that can only be applied to real things. I used the phrase “elephant in my living room,” and so such a thing has to be. It exists, because I referred to it with an existential label… Nope: you can’t bootstrap these things with tricky language. Our language is simply not built to deal with such referents. Nouns exist because things exist, and naming them is convenient. But we can also name things that don’t exist, such as unicorns and gods. And nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/531 "2013-02-25T02:56:20Z")
I saw my first atheism billboard, alongside the 94 Freeway in San Diego! It had a big blue curtain, being lifted by a stack of books, showing a picture of the sky beyond. It read “Atheism: a personal relationship with reality.” [Here’s a pic of it.](http://atheistbillboards.com/2013/01/atheism-a-personal-relationship-with-reality/) Now, personally, I don’t see much point in it. As we’ve been saying all along in this thread, atheism isn’t a viewpoint, but the lack of one. We don’t proselytize; we don’t “witness.” The billboard seems to be unnecessarily trolling. It’ll anger the “usual suspects,” and stir a letter-writing campaign among them. What’s to be gained? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/532 "2013-02-25T03:43:18Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I saw my first atheism billboard, alongside the 94 Freeway in San Diego! It had a big blue curtain, being lifted by a stack of books, showing a picture of the sky beyond. It read “Atheism: a personal relationship with reality.” > > [Here’s a pic of it.](http://atheistbillboards.com/2013/01/atheism-a-personal-relationship-with-reality/) > > Now, personally, I don’t see much point in it. As we’ve been saying all along in this thread, atheism isn’t a viewpoint, but the lack of one. We don’t proselytize; we don’t “witness.” The billboard seems to be unnecessarily trolling. It’ll anger the “usual suspects,” and stir a letter-writing campaign among them. What’s to be gained? Looking at the pictures, the visual message seems kind of pointless. The curtain, showing blue sky with white clouds, is lifted to reveal… blue sky with white clouds! Both pictures have the same tones and the same kind of Windows-desktop-landscape fake look to them. It certainly isn’t reinforcing the idea that the atheist worldview is somehow more “reality”-based than the theist one, because in the billboard, the “real world” looks pretty much just like the “curtain”. And personally, as an atheist, I find some atheists’ rhetoric about “reality” or “reason” being somehow comparable to (except better than) a deity to be kind of weaksauce. Saying you have a “relationship with reality” sounds kind of like calling an inflatable sex doll your “girlfriend”. A god or a girlfriend is understood to be some sort of _person_, with whom a personal relationship is actually possible. Even if your god (or your girlfriend, for that matter) is totally imaginary, it’s still in theory a person. A material universe or an inflatable sex doll, delightful though each of them may be in their different ways, is not a person. Talking about it as though you have a “relationship” with it tends to sound pathetic rather than exciting. However, if some atheists want to buy advertising space to evangelize their views about their “relationship” with reality, I say meh, it’s a free country. My town’s got a pro-Mormon billboard and a fundamentalist “marriage is one man and one woman” billboard and ads for various churches on the buses. If some of my fellow atheists want to join the longstanding American politico-religious tradition of getting all up in other people’s business about what they believe, knock yerselves out. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/533 "2013-02-25T03:43:24Z")
Perhaps reality _is_ something worth advocating. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/534 "2013-02-25T04:03:44Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Perhaps reality _is_ something worth advocating. For dealing with reality, we also have drugs. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/535 "2013-02-25T04:57:05Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > It certainly isn’t reinforcing the idea that the atheist worldview is somehow more “reality”-based than the theist one, because in the billboard, the “real world” looks pretty much just like the “curtain”. I think that’s the point: reality is WYSIWYG… there is no man behind the curtain. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/536 "2013-02-25T12:07:24Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I like **Czarcasm** ’s answer: the response to **monavis** ’ paradox is that, yes, there always was some form of “something,” some level of basic meta-level “potential,” a higher space, perhaps, in which our space is embedded. There were “rules of nature,” although perhaps very different rules, and a very different nature. Perhaps. > > On the other hand, there might simply have been an utter, absolute, perfect, total, timeless, spaceless nothing, with no rules, no laws, no nature. Then, one day, it “broke down” in some way. Such a perfect state of “nothing” doesn’t “exist” in the conventional meaning of the word. It doesn’t “have existence.” You can’t point to it, because you aren’t there…and neither is it. > > This does not justify the linguistic ploy, saying that it “must have existence” because “it was, and all that is, is part of existence.” That’s just medieval word play. (“God must exist, because I can envision a perfect entity, and if it is perfect, it has no faults or flaws, and ‘not existing’ is a fault and a flaw.”) > > Hell, there isn’t an elephant in my living room. It doesn’t exist. But I’ve just used the word “it,” and that can only be applied to real things. I used the phrase “elephant in my living room,” and so such a thing has to be. It exists, because I referred to it with an existential label… > > Nope: you can’t bootstrap these things with tricky language. Our language is simply not built to deal with such referents. Nouns exist because things exist, and naming them is convenient. But we can also name things that don’t exist, such as unicorns and gods. > > And nothing. As I understand it,an elephant isn’t in one’s living room just a matter of one’s mind. An idea exists about an elephant. It would still need a place. It is possible for a flaw to exist and that needs a place before it can be a flaw wiether it is a dent in a Car or a flaw in someone’s thinking. There seems to be a place for anything to exist.What that is I do not know, nor does my mind comprehand it. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/537 "2013-02-25T21:51:16Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > . . . There seems to be a place for anything to exist.What that is I do not know, nor does my mind comprehand it. The joy of all of this is, yes, you’re right, the “place” where something must exist is, itself, part of existence. You aren’t wrong! (I mention this, because I don’t want you to think I’m disagreeing with you too much, or that I don’t respect your ideas.) The only thing I really wanted to contribute to this sequence of ideas is that I don’t believe it is necessary for the “place” to exist before the things that exist inside it, as you have said a few times. In my opinion, the “place” and the “things” it contains could arise at the exact same moment. I don’t see any need for the potential for existence to precede existence. It might be that things existed from the very first instant that they could exist. And, again, I think that our language simply ain’t geared for this kinda talk! I never could get through Plato’s “Being” and “Becoming” either! ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/538 "2013-02-26T20:31:24Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I like **Czarcasm** ’s answer: the response to **monavis** ’ paradox is that, yes, there always was some form of “something,” some level of basic meta-level “potential,” a higher space, perhaps, in which our space is embedded. There were “rules of nature,” although perhaps very different rules, and a very different nature. Perhaps. > > On the other hand, there might simply have been an utter, absolute, perfect, total, timeless, spaceless nothing, with no rules, no laws, no nature. Then, one day, it “broke down” in some way. Such a perfect state of “nothing” doesn’t “exist” in the conventional meaning of the word. It doesn’t “have existence.” You can’t point to it, because you aren’t there…and neither is it. > > This does not justify the linguistic ploy, saying that it “must have existence” because “it was, and all that is, is part of existence.” That’s just medieval word play. (“God must exist, because I can envision a perfect entity, and if it is perfect, it has no faults or flaws, and ‘not existing’ is a fault and a flaw.”) > > Hell, there isn’t an elephant in my living room. It doesn’t exist. But I’ve just used the word “it,” and that can only be applied to real things. I used the phrase “elephant in my living room,” and so such a thing has to be. It exists, because I referred to it with an existential label… > > Nope: you can’t bootstrap these things with tricky language. Our language is simply not built to deal with such referents. Nouns exist because things exist, and naming them is convenient. But we can also name things that don’t exist, such as unicorns and gods. > > And nothing. They exist in the mind of a, or some humans but not in reality,If there were we could prove it. At least that is how I understand it! ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/539 "2013-02-26T20:43:33Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The joy of all of this is, yes, you’re right, the “place” where something must exist is, itself, part of existence. You aren’t wrong! (I mention this, because I don’t want you to think I’m disagreeing with you too much, or that I don’t respect your ideas.) > > The only thing I really wanted to contribute to this sequence of ideas is that I don’t believe it is necessary for the “place” to exist before the things that exist inside it, as you have said a few times. In my opinion, the “place” and the “things” it contains could arise at the exact same moment. I don’t see any need for the potential for existence to precede existence. It might be that things existed from the very first instant that they could exist. > > And, again, I think that our language simply ain’t geared for this kinda talk! I never could get through Plato’s “Being” and “Becoming” either! I can’t really disagree with the possibllity that existence and all it contains always was, but perhaps in a form of some kind of energy we don’t yet know about. That may be many millions of years before we are able to figure that out, if the earth and humans still exist, as we do today. Perhaps the atoms etc. of which we are made up just continue to survive? If I remember righty Carl Sabin said our atoms are always changing. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2013, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288/540 "2013-02-26T20:52:27Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I don’t see any need for the potential for existence to precede existence. It might be that things existed from the very first instant that they could exist. > > And, again, I think that our language simply ain’t geared for this kinda talk! Inasmuch as language, like existence, is temporal, it it certainly not well suited for discussing _nothing_ in a meaningful way. _Nothing_ is ex-temporal, lacking at least four dimensions (all dimensions). There can be no “potential” for existence in the context of _nothing_, because potential is a temporal concept. Similarly, there can be no instant in which existence was first possible, because no instants could have preceded that instant. The boundary between _nothing_ and existence is not easier to resolve than the boundary between finite and infinite numbers, if there is one. Existence just is. Kind of like the aspirin I now need for the headache these thoughts are giving me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288.md?page=26) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheism/649288.md?page=28)