Atheism is unreasonable

[His_Majesty]

I'd love it if you christians dropped all the rhetoric, but unfortunately I've read the rest of the thread and I can see that what you really want is for everyone else to stop having their own positions so you can dictate them to us, for us.

Ohhh, so if God is taken out of the equation, life didn't come from nonlife??

And you believe all of that with no evidence whatsoever. Must be fun, just getting to groove with the fantasy like that.

I do have evidence, actually. So I guess I'm not the only one that is "dictating" other people's positions on here.

How do you know Jesus said that?

There is this thing called "Historical evidence", kind of like how historians draw the conclusion that Patrick Henry uttered the famous "Give me liberty, or give me death" thing.

Kinda the same stuff.

Well, as a christian, you have to believe that a cosmic armadillo pooped the universe into existence, and all the galaxies are little chunks of undigested corn, upon which we all live.

See how that is? See how utterly rude, inane and aggressive it is to presume to dictate what other people think to them? Are we going to get anywhere, if we just imperiously command other people to think in a way that's most convenient for our strawman arguments? Quit with the crap and just ask us what we believe. We'll literally just tell you, and then you can proceed from there rather than the dishonest place you're trying to come from.

Its funny, thinking back to almost 15 years of intellectual wars with unbelievers, there is one common denominator that they all share...they all are science advocates (Some more than others)...this is because once you take away the God Hypothesis, science is the only game left in town. Science has to explain EVERYTHING...and if it doesn't explain it now, it will explain it at some point in the future. That is the notion.

But to your point, oh, it isn't rude or aggressive. It is the truth. Either God did it, or nature did it, and contrary to what you people think, there are no in-betweens. If you don't believe God did it, then you believe that nature did it. Plain and simple.

Now of course, there are those that hold the position "I don't know", but in that poll which asks the question "Do you believe in God", with 87% saying no...I wonder whether if a question was asked "Do you believe that nature best explains the origins of life/consciousness", I wonder whether 87% would say no. Probably not.

Now, so far you haven't come across a single atheist that actually believes what you said, so if you persist with that idea, you will be lying.

If they don't believe what I said, then they would be theists...deists at best.

For starters, absolutely nobody- besides, oh, say, christians - believe that the universe was created instantaneously and over a short period of time in its current state.

You are erraneously assuming that every Christian is a young earth creationists, which is false.

The current scientific model grants us several billion years for the universe to develop, for stars and planets and, yes, life to form, and this model has a vast array of evidence to demonstrate this. Even the formation of life from non-life has support, in the form of the Miller-Yurey experiments and others; it's not perfectly comprehensive, but it does demonstrate that in conditions other than current earth ones the components that make life do form naturally over time.

You call it "not perfectly comprehensive"...I call it "not even close to life", a player can almost hit a game winning shot, but when it comes to wins and losses, "almost" isn't good enough...and he wasn't even "almost" there.

Rather than your strawman, this is a more typical atheist belief; the kind that is supported by hard scientific data. Please, try responding to this rather than your boring, childish argument.

Either way you put it, it is life from nonlife, buddy.

Well, it's because that's not the atheist position. Oh, and atheism isn't naturalism either

I wasn't implying that atheism is naturalism, I was linking naturalism in there because naturalism is also the unbelief in a god, and from my experience, most atheists ARE naturalist.

You know, there are plenty of atheists who believe in all sorts of supernatural things. Just not gods.

I don't cut corners, I got straight to the point. When you take away all of the semantic BABBLE that you are spewing right now, it all boils down to atheists disbelief in intelligent design. They dont believe in God. Plain and simple, and not believing in God will put you in the portal of naturalism. Btw, I've never met any atheist that believes in any supernatural reality. Never.

Conciousness arose slowly, across many successive generations, from simpler combinations of sensory apparatuses and cognitive faculties. The ability to react to more complex stimuli is an evolutionary advantage, allowing the organs that encourage that faculty to develop and grow as new species arose.

You have a chicken/egg problem here. When you speak of these cognitive faculties and sensories, you are already presupposing a brain, but this is exactly what needs to be explained.

Try again.

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Probably dropped out in the 8th grade.

Or I could of graduated high school.

Jesus likes them stupid, you know.

I would rather be stupid in heaven, than smart in hell.

[Jenny A]

Glad it's fine, because I can't help it. It is a ridiculous belief in many ways.

Many? Give me one.

Sure: the only way to forgive peoples' sins is to kill someone innocent; three beings are both separate and one at the same time; a god capable of creating the universe exists; sacrifice of a son a good thing; there is life after death; sacrificing a son is a real sacrifice if you can and do just bring him back to life; eternal hell is a just punishment for anything.

I just love it when people tell me what I have to believe.

If the shoe fits.

It doesn't. I don't believe this: "billions of years ago before humanity, dead matter was floating around in space...and for whatever reason, suddenly, this dead matter "came to life". Not only did it come to life, but it came to life and began thinking, talking, and having sex.

First of all, not believing that a god who always existed brought life into being by magic is not the same as believing that anyone knows how life came about.

What are you talking about, Jenny? If the God hypothesis is out of the equation, then it is quite obvious that the only game left in town is abiogenesis.

It isn't as if there are a million different possibilities and naturalism and supernaturalism is just two of the million possibilities. No. Those are the only two games in town.

Yes, but there are three possible beliefs: 1) it was supernatural; 2) it was natural; 3) I don't know.

And life coming out of dead matter is no more unbelievable, in fact less so than either and god said it and puff it happened, or god made us out of clay (dead matter).

I am speaking of which is more plausible. I can conceive an omnipotent being being able to create life out of nonliving material. I cannot conceive of dead matter floating in space for past eternity and suddenly coming to life. If this did in fact happen, you should be able to demonstrate this in a lab, but you can't, which gives me the implication that nature, as mindless and blind as it is, was able to do something billions of years ago that intelligent human beings isn't able to do, and that is create life from non-life, and consciousness from unconsciousness.

The fact that we can't demonstrate something now, doesn't mean it didn't happen. What you are arguing is that if we don't know it must be god. The funny thing about that is that science keeps usurping that position with one thing after another from the age of the earth, how it formed, how man evolved and so on.

Magic on the other hand is never a plausible solution. So far magic has never been demonstrated with scientific rigor.

Secondly, I know of no scientific hypotheses for the origins of life that involves matter drifting around in space suddenly springing to life

So Jenny, before life and earth originated, are you saying that preexisting matter wasn't floating around in space?? Wow. Ok, so what was going on then?

, let alone immediately thinking, talking, and having sex.

Keyword: Immediately. Notice the emphasis placed on that word, because Jenny would have people believe that it happened over the course of millions of years, right? With so much time, anything could have happened, right?

There's a summary here of the current theories about how very simple life may have begun. Wikipedia: Abiogenesis There's a better and broader discussion here: Talk Origins: Abiogenesis

You can theorize all you like...until you can demonstrate it...until it is demonstrated by tests/repeated experiment, then it is just a theory. [/Quote]

And there are only natural theories proves that the explanation must be supernatural? Hardly. There's nothing supernatural proven at all about anything.

Only religions posit instant complex life complete with language and sex. The explanations vary from god said, fashioning out of clay or water, being shit out by god, or carved out of wood. Think about it. It's all magic.

Magic? Consciousness from unconsciousness is worse than magic, because on your view, there isn't even a magician (God), things are just happening for no scientific reasoning whatsoever. "Voodoo science" is what it is.

Prove a god, any god, or anything supernatural and we'll talk.

There always was a being capable of making things spring into existence merely by saying "let there be. . ." Now that's crazy. Think about it.

But it is conceivable, though. Life from nonlife isn't naturally conceivable. I can conceive of it happening, just not naturally. Life from nonlife can not be described by natural law, nor can consciousness from unconsciousness.

Only if by conceivable you mean it can be imagined. But it's just as easy to imagine life just popping into existence out of matter. In other words the fact that you can or can't image a thing has nothing to do with whether it happened.

Whether life from non life will ever be demonstrated has yet to be seen. But that it hasn't yet, or even never will be, in no way proves the explanation is supernatural.

But you believe that the is an uncreated sentient being that can create life by just saying let there be life? Now that's faith.

A being that exists necessarily and therefore was not a produce of something that preceded it, yes.

Show god necessarily exists and that sentence will make sense. Right now it's nonsense.

[Alex K]

No, His_Majesty. He's merely describing natural selection, you just don't understand it. No pre existing brain needed.


Incidentally, or should I say, Ironically, the Chicken-Egg Problem is solved as well. The egg was first. Thank you.

[His_Majesty]

You believe in the trinity, right. God, Jesus, the holy spirit, all the same.

So you believe in god sacrificing himself on the cross to himself.

I wonder how much twisting your brain can actually endure.

Yet another person that misunderstands the Trinity Doctrine. The Trinity is a doctrine which states that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all the same God, but not the same person.

They are three distinct persons which share the same nature of Deity....GOD, kind of like how you, your mother, and your father are three distinct persons, but you share the same nature...HUMAN.

Get it?

[Alex K]

I don't get it. What is nature of Deity?

[His_Majesty]

No, His_Majesty. He's merely describing natural selection, you just don't understand it. No pre existing brain needed.


Incidentally, or should I say, Ironically, the Chicken-Egg Problem is solved as well. The egg was first. Thank you.

He was attempting to explain the origin of consciousness, and you can't logically explain the origin of consciousness by positing a preexisting brain first.

[Minimalist]

There is this thing called "Historical evidence"

Yes there is. And you don't have any. You've got fucking fairy tales.

Grow up, sonny. You're on your own. There is no magical sky-daddy looking out for you.

[His_Majesty]

Nonsense. Theories need not have repeated experiments in order to be validated. Don't take my word for it; look up theories like stellar formation.

Also, the construct "just a theory" in your post leads me to believe that you don't understand the importance of a theory in the scientific hierarchy of understanding. In other words, you're equivocating two different connotations of the word "theory".

Perhaps you should have paid more attention in your high-school science classes.

Ok, so let me just ask you directly...can you give me your best empirical evidence which supports abiogenesis?? If you can't, then you can spare me all the bio-babble.

[TaraJo]

But as an atheist, here is what you have to believe...you have to believe that billions of years ago before humanity, dead matter was floating around in space...and for whatever reason, suddenly, this dead matter "came to life". Not only did it come to life, but it came to life and began thinking, talking, and having sex.

Have you ever heard of 'the God of the gaps?' Because this is the perfect example of it. "I don't know how life began, so God must have done it!"

I wonder what excuse he's going to have for believing in god so adamantly in another 50 or so years when we figure out how life began?

[His_Majesty]

I don't get it. What is nature of Deity?

Deity = God

The nature of God.

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Have you ever heard of 'the God of the gaps?' Because this is the perfect example of it. "I don't know how life began, so God must have done it!"

I can play the same game, accusing some of you of playing "Science of the Gaps".

"Science can't explain it now, but it will some day explain it"

Plugging in your lack of knowledge with the future hopes of science being able to explain it.

I wonder what excuse he's going to have for believing in god so adamantly in another 50 or so years when we figure out how life began?

My point exactly.