Atheist's corner

[ollieplimsoles]

Can I post this here?

Had a look through some of the other pages and couldn't see anything similar, so starting this off, don't know if ill get many replies but we'll see.

Basically a thread for non believers, skeptics and people who have left religion/ escaped religious cults and turned to atheism.
To chat, friendly respectable debate, and to ask questions. People of faith obviously also welcome!

halfpint your bravery is so inspiring and its great to have you on the thread.

Dione that's very interesting, was it like a click in your mind or was it suffering you observed that led you to believe it was god - was it the god of a particular religion or a deistic god? (bow out at any time if you're uncomfortable with the questions!)

I know what you mean out maybe I'm wrong but I didn't find the quote on Einstein's atheism very clear, he says he does not believe in a personal god, but I presume he was open to the possibility of one existing, given if we could test it scientifically (which we cant)

I love Dawkins and wont lie- I owe a lot of my atheist revelations to him. But ti be honest I found the god delusion a but 'meh' his biology books are much better, the selfish gene is stunning and climbing mount improbable was impossible for me to put down. His strengths really lie in creating beautiful, visual metaphors for complex biological processes.

The cmi fuckers have an atheist page on their shit website, its full of lies based on their presuppositional cuntswollop...

Goody - I mean its kind of irrelevant if you believe there is an impersonal deity who set things in motion but then doesn't interact, doesn't break the laws of physics. It may make some difference to how an individual thinks about the universe, but it has little effect beyond that person's own mind. It doesn't lay down morality or offer 'forgiveness' or promise eternal life. It's just an unprovable, unknowable idea. Does that make sense?

Not so much a "click". More like a light being turned up with a dimmer switch while feeling I was being wrapped in a blanket. There was no suffering and no one turned up at the door with a hair shirt or a cross.

Not a god of any particular religion as far as I could discover. I hit the books pretty hard for a while, looking for answers.

Yes, I see what you mean, Errol. But why assume that if god set everything in motion, god then stood back completely? Perhaps this creator stepped back gradually, over the course of human evolution. Perhaps the creator was more present and involved while humans evolved knowledge of self and society? So our outlooks, ethics and belief systems would all have been influenced by deity, even if deity no longer intervenes.

It's as feasible and as interesting a theory as pan-dimensional mice commissioning Magratheans.

Frankly, the pan-dimensional mouse idea makes more sense of the world as it is...

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Goody - well, we can come up with all manner of unprovable pretend stories for which there is no evidence. However, the effect in the here and now is much the same. There are beliefs that don't really matter much outside an individual's head - and then there are the beliefs with dogma and books and organisation which (unfortunately) do.

Which brings me back to my point about the conflation of religion with belief in God, ritualism and identity. And my opinion that it is the imposition of dogma and ritualism on others that causes the problems.

Dogma, certainly -and that can be political rather than religious. Rituals aren't necessarily so much of a problem, though if imposed or designed to be exclusive they can be. However, I do think that beliefs which depend on irrational thought and ignoring evidence are extremely problematic. The idea that 'faith' is a good thing....really? (non religious examples also exist eg believing in homeopaths as anything other than placebo plus personal attention). And the other thing of course is that religions are one of the better ways of creating 'them' and 'us'.

Thinking about some of these issues together, on a day when the newspapers are talking about Trump 'dumping climate deal' reminds me of this www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/05/29/this-fascinating-chart-on-faith-and-climate-change-denial-has-been-reinforced-by-new-research/?utm_term=.2b98928621ad

Ollie you said you learnt "critical thinking skills" in your 20s. What are tgese skills and how do you apply them in your own life?

Critical thinking is easily googlable, surely?

"The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement."

From the Oxford English Dictionary

I'm not sure google will tell me what skills Ollie learnt and how she applies them to her own life. But thank you for the definition Bert. Definitions are helpful.

Except we do know that he found praying helpful - Dione
Maybe I am incorrect but I would take that statement, on an atheist thread, to mean god has conveyed some information via prayer that has helped. Am I wrong, does it mean something else?

If the statement is as meaningless as saying, "he found eating helpful", "he found thinking helpful", "he found sleeping helpful", then its a goady misleading statement to post.

So what does it mean Dione?
a) he found praying helpful = because god provided him with ideas
b) he found praying helpful = he found meditating helpful as it was relaxing
c) he found praying helpful = as it gave him time to think about his theories
d) he found praying helpful = he was religious and that is what religious people say
e) he found praying helpful = goady misleading statement

His prayers to a god gave him ZERO ideas - me
Given I assumed Dione meant meaning 'a', I could find no evidence that Lemaître himself had ever claimed a god had provided him with part or all of his theories, only that his theories were the result of a lifetimes academic work and study. If I am wrong provide a source! Combined with 100,000 years of no knowledge ever being verified as coming from any god via prayer, I stand by my claim that, 'his prayers to a god gave him ZERO ideas'.

What Dawkins got right is Einstein’s refutation of a personal God and the revelations of organised religions. He found all that primitive. Yet at the same time Einstein did say, ‘I am not an atheist’
Einstein was born and raised in the 19th century German Empire by Jewish parents, went to a Catholic school and he was deeply indoctrinated religious as a child. When he grew up and became more educated that changed. He certainly didn't believe in an afterlife or a personal god and did describe himself as an agnostic and a non believer. Perhaps he did not call himself an atheist but you have to ask what was meant by that word back then. Even now atheist is often used by religious people to mean evil satanist. Most atheists I know mean 'we dont know if there is a god or not but until there is some evidence of one existing we will keep the idea on the back burner with faeries, pixies and goblins'. So pretty much the same as what Einstein believed.

I came to faith very quickly. One day I went into my kitchen an atheist and came out believing in God. Something happened that made me believe and it happened in an instant
Why does a god not do that for everyone? Either he only wants 'some' people to believe in him or the experience was caused by something other than a god.

Even Richard Dawkins describes himself as an agnostic, not an atheist. Technically anyone who believes in the scientific method cannot call themselves an atheist, because without absolute proof, the element of doubt remains. Many people call themselves atheists, though, because the doubt is so small and to be insignificant.

Many people call themselves atheists, though, because the doubt is so small and to be insignificant

Yes, exactly this. Your namesake's teapot could very well exist - I can't prove it doesn't. But it wouldn't make any sense at all for me to order my life around the supposition that it did.

dione, I simply can't imagine what could appear in my kitchen that could convince me that god existed. Even if I believed that god (or a god - because why would it be the Christian God after all?) then there would still be dozens, if not hundreds of explanations of why I believed I'd seen a god that are more credible, rational and likely. I'd start at mental illness, work my way down through accidental ingestion of hallucinogens, all the way down to someone playing a practical joke, and all of them would be equally or more likely than a divine manifestation.

I'm not saying you're lying about your experience, but I'm saying that I think we have different definition both of atheism and what would be necessary to override it.

*even if I believed that I'd seen a god

BertrandRussell - Dawkins calls himself an agnostic and a atheist.
Agnostic - I do not know if there is a god.
Atheist - I do not believe theists claims of a god.
Most atheists and theists I know claim to also be agnostic. They dont know if there is a god but they believe in one based on faith. Or, they dont know if there is a god and they dont see enough evidence to believe in one either.

Don't assume that by rejecting theists belief in a particular god, a person automatically believes the opposite.

There is a smaller number of Gnostic theists and atheists (sometimes labeled anti-theist), who would go beyond belief and claim absolute knowledge that a god does or does not exist.

I like your breakdown of the a-e of possible meanings of "finding praying helpful", by the way, lego. I very much understood the debate to be around Dione have heavily implied a), but then refusing to clarify if she actually meant any of b)-d), which seems to lead to us to e) by default

That chart is interesting, though not surprising. People who have a rigid belief and practice, and who believe that revelation is complete, will not accept something outside their theology. So if their scripture does not acknowledge climate change then climate change - like dinosaurs - does not exist. All part of god's ineffable plan.

I don't think I can agree with you that faith in something unproveable is essentially a problem. Whether I treat you with respect because otherwise God will send me to Hell, or because the Flying Spaghetti Monster likes kind people, or because I'd quite like to be treated with respect, too, doesn't matter. The important thing is what I do, not the theology (atheology? Is there such a word?) that that drives my actions.

Hey all,
Dione
Good question and actually Bert's definition is pretty much how I would define critical thinking skills. Are you after specific examples of how I have applied them in life?
Generally it means asking for evidence and caring about what's true, being pragmatic and considering all the angles of things objectively.

Walking, LeMaitre made journals, those made during his closed retreats were particularly full of ideas and equations. Have you read it?

Pooch, nothing "appeared in my ktchen". I am beginning to wonder why people are seeing things in my posts that I have not written.

Ollie, that is a definition of Critical Thinking. What are the specific skills that you learnt and how/when do you apply them?

I'm not sure what you want from me dione

I suppose I look at things with a critical mind, I'm open to lots of explanations, both rations and irrational. But rationally is the way I try to think all the time.

Like I said in my above post, I look for evidence and I care about what's true

Lets just say I wouldn't walk into my kitchen an atheist and exit believing in a deity.

Pooch, nothing "appeared in my ktchen". I am beginning to wonder why people are seeing things in my posts that I have not written

Oh, I had a feeling you'd pull me up on that. Colour me surprised. You have a real talent for picking out the least relevant part of any post. It's a gift! I am enjoying the mild irony of you accusing people of seeing things that aren't there, in the sentence next to one where you say you didn't see things that weren't there . Actually, I think I'm going to use your trick and say - aha! - but where did I say that anything appeared in your kitchen? I said that I didn't know what could appear in my kitchen to make me think god existed. Who mentioned you?

In terms of an honest answer as to why people seem to see things in your posts that you don't think you've written - I do find your posting style difficult to engage with. You're very...evasive? Abstruse? It makes it hard to have this conversation.

Lets just say I wouldn't walk into my kitchen an atheist and exit believing in a deity

Me neither, ollie. I did just walk in there and see a mouse the size of a badger though . But no deities. Pah. You'd think they'd like the challenge of converting someone so indisposed to believe in them, wouldn't you? Wimps.

DioneTheDiabolist, So its e) he found praying helpful = goady misleading statement.

I have had ideas whilst on the toilet, driving, lying in bed and quite a few other places, it infers nothing as to where the idea came from or the quality of the idea.
So when you say LeMaitre wrote in his journal during a retreat you are meaning absolutely nothing and are just being goady.

But to get more specific LeMaitre didn't even come up with an original thought. Cosmic expansion was demonstrated by Edwin Hubble 2 years before LeMaitre first proposed the idea of the 'primeval' atom. And even then, LeMaitre based it on the static state imagined by Einstein. But even if praying somehow gave him some 'new' information it was already redundant as Alexander Friedmann had already solved the maths for it a decade earlier.

But after a little more digging I find all that is well predated by Edgar Allan Poe who wrote a 40,000 word essay ‘On The Cosmography of the Universe’, (based on work by Humboldt). In it he suggests that the universe came out of nothing and indeed, had an origin, he contended that the universe filled with matter after a single, high-energy particle exploded and that, since the energy of the explosion is pushing matter outward, the universe must be expanding.
He went on to say space and ‘duration’ [i.e. ‘time’] are one thing, that there might be stars that emit no light, that there is a repulsive force that in some degree counteracts the force of gravity, that there could be any number of universes with different laws simultaneous with ours, that our universe might collapse to its original state and another universe erupt from the particle it would have become, and that our present universe may be one in a series.’
Apart from suggesting a Big Crunch, Poe was the first to explain Olbers’ Paradox (the night sky is dark despite the vast number of stars in the universe). Poe claimed, as many do now, that the universe is not old enough to fill the sky with light. The universe may be infinite in size, he thought, but there hasn’t been enough time since the universe began for starlight, travelling at the speed of light, to reach us from the farthest reaches of space.

Unfortunate at the time his work was decried as hyperbolic nonsense.

So we have a god giving a scientist an idea someone else already had, some mathematics that other people had already solved and a concept that someone else had already demonstrated. Why are gods revelations always after the fact?

Sorry for the long post, I enjoy science, and was interested to discover that LeMaitre was in fact an accidental/deliberate? carpet bagger.