It is, however, a common argument used by the ID crowd who have a hard time processing complex concepts. People do need to realize that the universe is a big and complicated thing and its workings are not constrained by the limitations of the ability of the human mind to grasp them.
Actually, I say the same thing about many people’s view of God too. If there were an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful and timeless Creator, there’s no freaking way we could begin to fathom how It’s thought processes work.
Physics has reached the point that one can no longer reasonable accept that. Not only that, but the basic laws of mechanics say that nothing must become something: nothing, in theory, is purely homogenous and in equilibrium, a state that is inherently unstable and will naturally become something. Hence, a deity is entirely superfluous. Now, yes, in nature there are things that seem to be superfluous, so a god could exist, but if if does, it would be a spectator rather than a participant (our gaudience).
All the evidence I have seen strongly favors the position that the universe does not make sense. Why would you think it ought to?
No; adding God does nothing to make the universe more understandable. All it does is kill inquiry; rather than asking “why”, believers say “goddidit” and stop thinking or looking for answers.
How do you know there aren’t, elsewhere? Or the answer could be “it just happened that way”. Or because if they had been different there’d be no intelligent minds to wonder where everything came from; dead universes have no one in them to speculate on their origins.
By all appearances it is set up that way. Believers just handwave that away by claiming that the laws of physics (or usually, logic) don’t apply to their godcritter.
I don’t think your conclusion necessarily follows from your premise - self-organising systems can arise quite spontaneously; disordered systems can become more orderly - subject to a few simple conditions such as net input of energy etc (so one bit of the universe gets organised whilst another bit becomes more disorganised.
As Der Trihs mentioned, if those physical laws weren’t the way they are, we wouldn’t be here to ask that very question- or, if we were, we’d be asking why they are that *other *way. It’s called the Anthropic Principle.
[QUOTE=Douglas Adams]
… imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’
[/QUOTE]
Of course we would be asking that: did I say we wouldn’t? I even mentioned in my post that given a world with a deity as a first mover, there would be no reason to prefer it over a world without one.
I like your example about the Orcs, but it’s all B.S., pardon my Hebrew.
But you live in a theoretical world and not the real world.
In the real world from the time you are born into a family in a certain country and possibly your family belonged to a certain religion. Each of these relationships plus your future family, children, and community create a layer of value to your life.
Over a period of time you idealize your relationship to God, to your country, and to your family. Also, you have a self-image, an idealized image of who you are.
Each of these relationships has responsibilities, whenever you ignore your responsibilities or you feel that God has turned His back on you. The relationship gets weaker until it breaks. When the relationship is lost you’ve lost a layer of value to your life. If you lose enough of these relationships, life becomes less and less valuable.
A common example is it seems that in a long marriage, the death of a spouse often leads the death of the other spouse within a fairly short period of time.
If you take these relationships seriously, then you are no longer acting only for yourself. That is why Christians sometimes say that they are servants of God.
You are not acting by yourself alright, but you are too late and very self-limiting. And IMHO you are the one ignoring the real world.
We are not really back to the days when religion was what defined us, there are other systems that we can use and go over the limitations of the old time religions.
I don’t understand what you mean by “idealize” here. Most of us, as we get more mature, come to understand that our families and friends and countries and perhaps our religions aren’t ideal at all. We come to grips with the fact that they’re they’re imperfect and we love them anyway (in most cases). Or do you mean “we make those relationships closer to the ideal?” I think that’s also dubious. I don’t know where you are going with this.
It sort of sounds like you’re evaluating these relationships based on quantity. That makes no sense at all. Having no bonds with society might be bad, but having a bunch of weak or illusory or harmful ones isn’t good either. In other words I think you’re assuming atheists are cutting off a bunch of connections just because they don’t have one. For most people it’s going to be a balance.
I was raised ABC (a little more laid back than SBC), over time I shed my relationship to god, et al. It just stopped making sense to me. And to me, it was rather a relief, I do not feel as though I lost anything but baggage. I am not saying it is what is right for you, everyone has different needs. Religion is not the right choice for every person, just some of them, which is a problem, because the believers seem to think it always is, one-size-fits-all.
There’s definitely more we can choose from in the modern age. However, the relationships are still important and the more we take our responsibilities seriously the less we think in terms of self-interest.
With relationships it’s better to have quality than quantity that makes sense to me. By idealize, I simply mean that before we get married we have a pretty good idea what we would like the relationship to be (the ideal). However, if the actual relationship afterwards turns out to be quite different, people get divorced.
I’m not sure how many people that get divorced realize it, but in general wedding vows are still religious ceremonies and the union is blessed by God.
It is worth noting that God likes polygamy and thinks the punishment for rape should be a fine and a shotgun wedding. Deuteronomy 22:28-29
Religious beliefs are vapidly stupid in general. And deciding that you’re going to stay married to someone you don’t love because of an imaginary being, is very shitty.
Don’t…don’t even try to understand it, unless “Atheists believe in god because they act the way that people who believe in god do even though people who believe in god don’t act that way” makes any sense at all to you.
Well…it seems like you have me figured out. That’s pretty much the argument. I’m assuming that by the time you’re getting married your values are already in place. So apparently the only value that kept atheists married longer than non-atheists is God.
