Well…I suppose that an atheist denies God exists while agnostics are undecided.
You’re still having a problem with the definitions, I see.
Atheists don’t believe a God exists. While that’s technically the same as “denying” God exists, the connotation is different (non-belief vs rejection). Atheists don’t reject God, they just put God in the same category as Santa Claus, Batman, or Winnie the Pooh.
Agnostics aren’t undecided. They simply believe there is no evidence for it either way. That’s still a decision, even if it’s a decision you don’t comprehend.
This is not a worthwhile tangent as far as I’m concerned. Atheists and agnostics don’t always agree on what their own descriptions mean and it’s not reasonable to criticize pchaos for not being up to date on that. What matters, I think, is that he’s having trouble with the idea that atheists don’t believe in any gods. They’re not rejecting the idea or denying it because it’s offensive- most of them just don’t think the concept makes any sense and they don’t see any evidence for it.
An atheist has seen no evidence(NOTE: not proof, but evidence) that would lead to even the possibility that a god exists.
Not everything is a metaphor. The sand dune example is a real world situation wherein order arises spontaneously. If random things can only lead to random things, this should not happen.
Therefore, the notion that randomness can only beget randomness is false.
Therefore the notion that our minds could not have ordered thoughts in a universe with an undirected origin, is false.
Let’s address in reverse order:
Jeeezus. Get out of here with your pissy little quibbles.
(1) When one is not a specialist in a subject he is discussing then he may be permitted to qualify his remarks with such phrases as “I believe.”
(2) Any discussion of religion necessarity involves interjection of belief, as opposed to experminental confirmation.
(from Wiki):
Conservation of energy and conservation of matter are equivalent. See e=mc^2
Keep this kind of commentary in the Pit, please. And you (and For You and GIGOBuster) should take this discussion to another thread.
Agreed that it’s probably not an important distinction, though getting atheism straight seems to be important for any fruitful discussion with pchaos. It’s a concept it took me years to get straight.
Atheists don’t reject or hate God any more than they reject Santa or Batman or Winnie the Pooh. Some do actually hate organized religion, but that’s different from hating God. It’s like hating Disney for making Winnie the Pooh movies. You don’t hate Winnie the Pooh (just a fictional character). You hate the company that owns the property.
pchaos, bringing this back to the original topic, it’s an important distinction because your implicit assumption is that atheists (everybody, actually) believe in something and that’s inconsistent with your notion of a random universe. Another assumption is that order is fundamentally proof of some higher power, which has already been shown to be untrue.
I guess since i am being accused of material misrepresentation I should reply,
and your “may have been related to physics” is itself a misrepresentation.
From Albert’s Wiki bio (emphasis added):
"He received his B.S. in physics from Columbia College (1976) and his doctorate in theoretical physics from The Rockefeller University (1981) under Professor Nicola Khuri. Afterwards he worked with Professor Yakir Aharonov of Tel Aviv University.
Albert has published two books (Quantum Mechanics and Experience (1992) and Time and Chance (2000) ) and numerous articles on quantum mechanics. His books are both praised and criticized for their informal, conversational style, but he is routinely credited by both fan and critic as having a talent for communicating difficult, highly abstract concepts in ways that are accessible to the lay science reader."
So he is uniquely qulified to discuss the current, modern, ongoing interplay
of science and philosophy, having been fully educated as a scientist.
You have not read or not understood the article.
:rolleyes:
Easier to ignore than to debate someone who argues for a position with zero empirical evidence and who will not accept evidence to the contrary.
Enjoy the delusion…
And who allows for plague, murder, rape and other horrific crimes upon the innocent. I feel sorry for people under such a delusion in the face of reality.
It happens all the time, like when we’re young and think that are parents don’t understand us. So we take a year off from school and wander around in Europe trying to find ourselves.
It happens when we decide on the weight we give empirical evidence. To some our right hand is evidence of the genius of God. To others, what did God have to do with this? It doesn’t look that much different than the hand a monkey has.
Sorry, but I have seen this before, that is not impressive, I have seen people who were experts on a field that they left after several years to pontificate on the current state of affairs on a subject like Tobacco smoke regarding cancer or computer models regarding climate change. In the most notorious cases they get it wrong, and it is not because they are not knowledgeable, but because they are not aware of how the new research is doing and the new tools they use.
And it usually happens that the expert has moved on and in this case he is now a Philosophy professor, with plenty of experience yes, but his focus is not on doing current cosmology, but defending his philosophical turf.
Sorry, I did early, I have to agree with Krauss (that has oodles of recognition from other physicists and cosmologists) The book reviewer is not really using science but philosophy to counter this.
There’s a logical disconnect here.
I’m pretty sure angry teenagers finding themselves in Europe still believe their parents are real, no matter how angry they are at their parents. How is this supposed to be an example?
OK, I’m sorry, I need to back up a couple pages to this statement by pchaos
**
**
Why??
It’s not more difficult for me to believe, in fact I think this is the ultimate miracle. I DO believe that all this just happened, in infinitesimal steps, over a span of time greater than man’s measly mind can comprehend. The supposition that some amorphous power waved his hands and said Abracadabra, and then poof here’s the world, is silly. The further belief that some unseen power gives a rat’s behind about any human-made endeavor is something utterly foreign to me.
I see it as a crutch, or a better yet a security blanket; something to cling to when the big bad world gets scary and you want to take to your bed and hide.
And on the marriage thing - I am atheist, I am married, and I was married by a priest. That was to appease my soon-to-be MIL, who was a devout Catholic. I am perfectly capable taking part in a theatrical presentation to make others happy. I said my script, the audience clapped, and all’s well. Personally I would have been happy with a JP, but there are other people in this world besides myself, and this seemed to be a small sacrifice.
I DO NOT believe in god, so I don’t believe that my marriage has been blessed by anything other than human love (and a shitload of damned hard work). We’ve been together for 30+ years, and married for 21.
…What? Are you saying “my parents don’t understand me” is similar to “my parents don’t exist?”
I have no idea what you’re saying here.
Actually, thinking more on this, one implication of this example is that you still don’t get it - you believe atheists believe in God but are simply angry at him.
If that’s the case, please just read the responses in the thread. Atheists aren’t angry at God. They think of God like they think of Santa or Spiderman - not actually real, so nothing to get angry at.
The expansion of space is an example of negative energy IIRC, and according to some theories in the inflationary era was the source of energy that matter condensed out of. The expansion of space being negative energy, matter being positive, and it all cancelling out for zero net energy.
I get mad at my husband periodically, but he still comes home every night. And if I get mad while I’m away from home, he’s still there waiting for me.
Empirical evidence does not start with the acceptance of the supposed genius of a supposed god.
In my view, there is no god, so he did not create the miracle that is the human hand (or skin, or heart, or the feathers on a bird, or the petals of a rose, or any other wonderful thing). The fact that humans and apes share so many similarities is part of the empirical evidence for evolution.
And I still don’t get what your point is about all this…
All I’m saying is that empirical evidence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Which “theory” it fits and how much weight you give it depends partly on how you feel about the theory.