Weak atheism is agnostic atheism. Agnosticism isn’t a position in regards to whether one believes in god or not - it’s a position on knowledge; ie, whether one knows god exists or not. In otherwords, an agnostic can either be a theist (ie, a fideist) or an atheist (ie, a weak atheist/agnostic atheist).
Agnosticism is that the existence of god is unknowable. I don’t believe it is unknowable. I think that there is no reason to believe there is one, based on current knowledge. There’s a huge difference. I’m a strong atheist. But I’m also willing to admit I’m wrong when evidence is presented. We learn new things every day. The existence of a god, at this point, has never manifested itself as anything more than a strong longing for an answer to the Big Question.
Some authors, like George H. Smith, have further defined Agnosticism as not only a position on knowledge, but also a position on meta-knowledge. The idea being that not only do we not know if God exists or not, but we also don’t think that any God would be at all comprehensible to the human mind. Smith may be in a minority holding that opinion, but it was his definition (and espoused by others on various forums) that caused me to change my “religious label” from Agnostic to Weak Atheist.
ETA: Kalhoun is too damn quick for me.
No, its the same old atheism.
Look, this is the very game I pointed out to begin with. Deliberately confusing skeptical claims with positive knowledge claims, turning non-belief in into belief in some vast alternate anti-theist cosmology.
Atheists are non-believers. On top of that, they all have all sorts of different opinions about religion, just like theists have all sorts of opinions about religion. They can all speak for themselves and what specific claims they will and will not defend.
If you enjoy tilting at straw men and the easiest of targets, have at it. But your characterizations of atheism are primarily fantastical and caricatured, not realistic.
I’m not equivocating at all. Everything, whether matter or energy, is the result of something happening that preceded it.
This is exactly the point. Matter and energy had to come from someplace. God, not being bound by the physical laws of the universe would be able to will matter and energy into existence. Can you offer a non-Creator explanation? An infinte loop is one attempt to explain it, but even then, I ask, what started it? And where did the “stuff” come from?
The will of God would qualify as a cause. And as I responded earlier, merely stating that QM involves uncaused events doesn’t make it so. As far as I have read, QM talks about uncertainty, probability, waves, etc. I am aware of no claim about QM involving uncaused events. If you have evidence supporting your assertion, please show it. This keeps popping up, so you would be doing yourself and others a great service. At best, causality at the Q level is not fully understood. That’s a far cry from it embracing uncaused events. I think the notion of uncaused events in QM comes from the concept of randomness. If so, this might help, from Wiki:
Again, where did matter and energy come from? What caused them? That would go to the First Cause. Your question would apply after that.
That is the point. Those things had to be created. Something had to be created out of nothing. That something would have to operate outside the laws of the universe. THAT thing is god.
I’m not sure what you’re asking me to show here. But even in Brane or Multiverse theory, which suggest that universes are multiple and born out of other universes, matter and energy have to come from somewhere. And there had to be an initial event.
Whether there is another universe at the other side of a black hole, or an old universe dying to give birth to this one which happened at the Big Bang, you still need a First Cause.
If we start with nothing, no matter, no energy, there will always be nothing. Since we know that there now is something, that “stuff” had to come from somewhere. Since there was nothing to create or cause it into being, it must have come from a place not bound by the laws of the universe. Something that cold operate outside these laws would be supra-natural. I call that god. I have no idea what god is, only that there is a Creator “god”.
Yeah, I agree. But I see no way around it. There had to be a First Cause. And just to clarify, this does not lead to the Christian or any other flavor of god. That is another, subsequent point entirely.
You keep addressing me for some reason. I think you’re confusing me with someone who gives a fuck about what a dishonorable poster has to say.
I haven’t mastered all of the coding, so I’ll just revert to tried-and-true newspaper style.
Posted by Sunrazor
What Dawkins and other activist atheists fail to understand is that religious belief goes to the very core of the believer’s identity. It isn’t just empty blather when religious believers say, “Without God, I am nothing.” They mean it.
Response by Der Trihs
Letting a religion or any other belief own you that way is sick.
That response indicates a mind as closed as Pat Robertson’s. The devoutly religious dedicate their lives to the service of God, to living what they believe is a just and righteous life. As a result, the overwhelming majority of these people also dedicate their lives to justice, humanity, compassion and leaving the world a better place than they found it. When you issue blanket condemnation of people you don’t know, you reveal yourself to be a bigot.
I don’t believe what my mother believed. I don’t believe what nearly all of my neighbors and relatives believe. But those whose lives are guided by their religion are good people, and they do good things because of their religion. Yes, they probably would do good things even if they weren’t believers, but their faith guides their every action, and they are loving, productive, happy people because of it. Their religion is not a drug, it is not an illusion, it is not detrimental to them or the community in any way.
Yes, there are religious zealots who are cruel and evil, but they would be that if they weren’t religious. Richard Dawkins would summarily destroy all religion, if he could, and that reveals him to be little more than a would-be tyrant. Dawkins’ ideas about religion – at least those he has stated in his book and in his Salon.com interview, both of which I have read – are extremist and destructive.
That’s incoherent when applied to time, don’t you think? Or do you think time could have preceeded itself.
Further, as I pointed out, you are using causation in two different ways. The way we understand it (ie, matter/energy acting on something within the universe) and a completely different way (?). You need to clarify what you mean by ‘cause’ since it’s not obviously the same thing as is meant in normal discourse.
This is your assumption, one that you need to demonstrate - since it’s not entirely clear that it’s coherent.
Again, what does this actually mean? How can something without time do anything? Since to do something would require time?
I don’t need to.
I also don’t hold the universe was caused.
You are asking an incoherent question - as I’ve pointed out and you seem to be ignoring.
No it wouldn’t - is the will of god matter or energy? If it’s neither, then what do you mean?
Then I take your logic and put it back on you; merely stating that god’s will can cause events doesn’t make it so - nor does it make it coherent.
I don’t actually need to support that assertion since, as I’ve pointed out, your argument fails because it lacks internal consistency. Further, I don’t hold the universe did appear from nowhere and notime.
Could be - but again, it’s not essential for me to explain Quantum fluctuations since your argument falls for different reasons entirely.
This is a red herring and irrelevant. I don’t hold that matter and energy came from anywhere or were caused. You do, remember?
Then your argument fails for equivocation and special pleading.
Please demonstrate this instead of baselessly asserting it. Also, clear up the contradiction I’ve pointed out.
Negative - I’ve provided an argument against this and you’ve ignored it.
This is all baseless assertion built on a contradictory argument.
No they don’t - you are assuming things.
Again, no I don’t and again, I’ve pointed out the flaw in this line of reasoning. Please deal with the argument I put forth instead of ignoring it only to assert and reassert your ideas which you have not demonstrated.
Why assume nothing is possible? I see it as contradictory; nothing cannot exist.
Or it could have always existed in some form - or shit, there might be another possibility that we haven’t even imagined yet.
Because nothing could cause it into being - as there was nothing to act upon. You are forgetting this part.
What? The universe hasn’t even been created yet - why assume that it would be bound by the laws within the universe?
Even by what your suggesting - which I don’t think makes any sort of since - it fails because you are appealing to the fallacy of composition. You are applying laws that hold (apparently) within the universe to the universe itself.
Please demonstrate this is the actual state of affairs prior to continuing with your reasoning.
Your reasoning doesn’t hold up as I’ve shown.
You see no way around it because you ignore the problems with it, apparently.
I don’t mean to be necessarily inquisitive of your position, magellan01, it’s just that my problem with theism is that theists tend to think that God is an answer to the deep questions.
IMO, I don’t think ‘God’ is an answer, much less the answer - for some of the reasons you might have noticed in our exchanges. In any event, I don’t mean to come off with you as aggressively as I might appear.
That being said, as I’ve mentioned in other threads, I do think that some theistic arguments have some merit. I just don’t think the Kalam or Cosmological argument is one of them.
Again, magellan01, what’s wrong with saying “I don’t know” to those big questions? It used to be that we didn’t know what caused thunder or the tides - hence Thor, Neptune etc. When we figured those out, we decided God must have at least made us how we are. Despite protestations from a vocal minority, the theory of Evolution has put paid to that.
It’s great that these days the gaps in our knowledge are limited to things like the origin of the universe and the fundamental nature of reality. Those problems seem insurmountable right now but that doesn’t mean it’s any more valid to give up and say that God did it than it was for Newton or Darwin or Einstein.
Right. We can eliminate whole classes of gods (bi-omni ones, for instance) since they are logically inconsistent. But that leaves plenty of others. A theist who says he believes in a certain god has the obligation to define, at least broadly, that god. What many of them actually say, when you get right down to it, is that they can’t tell us what they believe in, but we have to disprove it somehow. I’m sorry to say that the liberal theists do this more often than the more fundamentalist ones.
Definitely - prior to a discussion about god’s existence, it should be made clear what is meant by ‘god’.
If you have actually been reading magellan01’s posts for any length of time, (as you have claimed), then you should be well aware that this is not a “game” that he is playing. He is expressing his honest opinions on the topic and, regardless whether you find his arguments persuasive or just silly, there is no reason to characterize them as a game as though he were arguing from a perspective of disingenuousness.
On the other hand, your insistence on responding to his claims with personal attacks and name-calling of your own do nothing to make your case or to help the discussion proceed.
Both of you: back off; treat your opponent, (and the rest of this Forum), with at least enough respect to avoid name-calling, and concentrate on the exchange of ideas or else just completely ignore the other poster.
[ /Moderating ]
At the very least, can we agree that a god is defined, in part, by the ability to create “something” out of “nothing?” And that he cares about what his creations do and controls fate?
We should just agree to disagree then. I’ve attempted to address all the concerns you raise. You seem to ignore what I write. But I guess you have that same perception about what I’ve offered. Additionally, I tried to engage you in sharing what you might think about certain issues. If you’d rather not, that is fine. I’m glad you added this post because the last one seemed uncharacteristically antagonistic.
Let’s save the efforts for another day. And another topic.
Godspeed. 
Fair enough. Also, I realized I was probably being more antagonistic then I had intended, my apologies for that.
I actually have read an interesting cosmology that I’d like to share if I can find it. I’m not saying I’m totally convinced of it, mind you, but as I said, I found it really interesting.
It was a cosmology that Gott introduced in his book about time travel (the title of which is something about einstein and time travel). His idea was for a self generating universe (it involved a time loop). I thought it was neat. I’ll try to find some sort of online reference to it.
That’s fair enough. But my point is not so much how it happened, but that it happened. That, from a purely logical standpoint, there had to be a First Cause. This goes to the reality of a Creator god, not to any particular deity. I simply do not see a way around it. I have not heard an alternative explanation that makes logical sense, pardon the redundancy.
Sounds interesting. I’d appreciate it if you can find it.
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I think this might be a link to the paper I’m talking about in regards to Gott and a self creating universe.
Until a real physicist gets here, let me address some of the questions.
First of all, you only need to ask about energy. Matter is just frozen energy, frozen as the early universe cooled. Not only that, the distribution of matter matches the models very well.
Now, for energy, it appears that there is a net energy of 0 in the universe. Dark energy is just a placeholder at the moment, so we don’t understand what this means exactly, but the expansion of the universe implies this. Something popping into being with zero net energy doesn’t violate any conservation laws.
Now, for uncaused things, let’s consider radioactive decay. Statistically you can state when half the atoms in a collection of radioactive atoms can decay. However you cannot predict when an individual atom will decay, and, even if you filmed it somehow, you couldn’t find any reason a particular atom decayed even if you rewound the film. Perhaps you want to say that the decay is “caused” by the instability of the atom. Then we could say the universe was “caused” by the impossibility, through Heisenberg, of truly empty space.
magellan01 says that it is a tenet of science that everything has a cause. I’d like to see a cite for that in a quantum physics book. It was also a tenet that time was fixed and immutable. The whole reason why quantum physics is fun is that the deep structure of the universe violates all these common sense tenets. You can’t understand it with the physics of just over a century ago, let alone the worldview from 2,000 years ago.