Why we believe

[Grasshopper]

After some guys made a big deal of my reviving a dead thread I was suggested by some to start a new thread about why I went from not believing to believing. At first I thought it'd be disrespectful to start such a thread on an atheist forum but now I know you guys don't really mind. I'm going here strictly with a deists view so if you have any argument, direct it as you would direct it to a deist.

So why I believe- it's not because my life's empty or that I have a strange fascination with hebrew fairy tales. In fact I never knew that anyone took the entire bible literally until I looked online

It's just that some of us have a sense of wonder about the world and the universe. I'm not talking about myself but for some people I know, the fact that we're on a watery planet going around a ball of gas is miracle enough which I think is a really positive way to look at things like this

As for me, the importance of water, complexity of our body, the eyes and the brain make it seem like it was created by someone intelligent. That doesn't mean we don't try to find out how they work.
Also I feel that the big bang had a cause/source that did it and set events into place. So two theories arose in my mind-

1) There was only a single way our universe would turn out and this led to the formation of life on earth (and maybe other planets).
Since there was only one way the universe could've gone forming over the 14 billion years it shines light on the possibility that it was a creator's intention for life to be born.
Conclusion- We were specially meant to be born. We are not an accident.

2) OR there were infinite ways the universe could've turned out in 14 billion years (because chaos) and out of all those infinite possibilities we got this one- where we come to life and evolved and are having this conversation.
Conclusion- We were specially meant to be born. We are not an accident.

That's my reasoning anyway. I'm not saying theists are right and atheists are wrong. I'm just saying people have different minds and different reasonings with which they make decisions for themselves. You believe it's practical to believe in what we sense with our five senses and what is provable. I believe some things exist beyond what we can sense and hence prove.
Like Rob said in reply to my first ever post-why should we care about that?
You shouldn't. But we do.

Why I chose Christianity of all of them?- later in another thread.

ps- now I realize I should've posted this in the atheism section since this has nothing to do with Christianity. Oh well. I don't know how to copy and paste in my phone so I'm not going to bother retyping everything again

[dyresand]

What stopped me believing is the fact.. when i though about it more as a child it made no sense.
Things made more sense when i opened a science booked compared to the bible which i have read many times
and still couldn't see any point of it really. Even when in history studying about ancient man and the bronze age i looked
in every book i could find to even spot a reference to jesus and was like.. well.... i guess this confirms my suspicions.
I was and still am smart though i guess.. i don't mind going to church i like being around people now and then even though i am
mainly a introvert. It helps i like being social at times too. But hey i guess i would be religious again if it made any sense but
since... there really is no place for me to believe in god i might as well become a Buddhist at this point.

[SteelCurtain]

1) There was only a single way our universe would turn out and this led to the formation of life on earth (and maybe other planets).
Since there was only one way the universe could've gone forming over the 14 billion years it shines light on the possibility that it was a creator's intention for life to be born.
Conclusion- We were specially meant to be born. We are not an accident.

2) OR there were infinite ways the universe could've turned out in 14 billion years (because chaos) and out of all those infinite possibilities we got this one- where we come to life and evolved and are having this conversation.
Conclusion- We were specially meant to be born. We are not an accident.

First off---

Little bit of a red flag when you have two diametrically opposing ideas and they lead you to the exact same conclusion.

Here's the kicker: can you prove any causality? What is the link that gets you from chaos to directed creation? Is it anything more than a feeling you have?

Specifically for #2, aren't you putting the cart before the horse a bit? If an infinite number of other steps in the process had gone a different way, then we might be some other version of intelligent life, looking back on all those steps with reverent awe. It's a bit like rolling a pair of dice a trillion times and recording each outcome, then looking back with incredulity at the odds that this same outcome could happen again.

[Alex K]

Hey ho,

Of course we don't mind, where would the fun be in not letting believers argue for their position! The only thing that's strongly discouraged here is preaching without engaging in discussion.

Anyways - I share with you a strong, almost spiritual (in an emotional, not supernatural sense) wonder at the universe. However, three problems I have with your statement:

I think your 2) is the correct choice, and your conclusion does not seem to follow from it???

Also, I don't buy your argument from ignorance concerning the eye etc., that's such an old chestnut that already good ol Chuck Darwin addresses it in his chapter "Difficulties on theory" of Origin. It's even less of a mystery today.

Finally, my pet peeve: saying that the universe had to come from somewhere is nonsensical if you mean by that time was created. It is wrong if you assume time to preexist. In either case, God does not solve any philosophical problem here, merely postpones it while introducing needless complucation.

[Aoi Magi]

Why I don't believe is because when I look at the universe, I not only am awed by it, I also wish to know and understand it. So I cannot just give credit to a magic sky daddy without proof and call it quits.

When I look at this watery planet, when I look at the creatures on this piece of rock, I see the beautiful product of many accidents which could not have been preplanned or designed. There are too many flaws in our "design" to think we are anything but accidents. And I am not too inclined to believe that a dumb designer triggered a series of accidents leading to our design, when much more plausible explanations exist.

When I look at this tiny planet circling a giant gas ball, and then when I turn to look around the universe and see that so called "giant" ball is pretty invisible when compared to some of the behemoths out there, I realize how tiny and insignificant we are in this universe, and to think we are important enough to actually be specifically designed in such a vast and wonderful place would be the height of arrogance and stupidity.

Even for a religious person, claiming a particular god created us is actually disrespectful. If you see a beautiful painting, and then just give credit for that painting to any random person, it would be extremely disrespectful to the actual artist. Similarly, even if you think there is a designer, you and nobody on earth knows anything about this so called designer, so worshipping a random sky-daddy and giving him credit without knowing things for sure is very bad. Science is trying to find the truth, religion is sitting on it's ass pretending to know the truth.

[Grasshopper]

Well you guys have shared interesting views. I'll try my best to address the faults you find. The only people who responded before I began writing this were dyresand, steelcurtain and alex k so I'll be addressing only them.

Alex- it's good you take theistic opinions kindly on the forums.
Now forget I said anything about the brain and eye. That's just what I found beautiful about creation.
The fact you thought #2 was correct is curious. Atheists elsewhere agreed with #1.
Anyways I didn't say the universe came from anywhere but the big bang.
If #1 was true there is a chance it happened in the way that life would have time to grow. I mean what if the big bang was minutely more intense? The stars and their galaxy would've flown off with much more force and the "dark era" (yes- it's a term) would have kicked off substantially earlier maybe not giving us time for the earth to have been created, since the sun-making particles would've been too far off to collect and create the sun.
Instead we have a working universe full of activity- creation and collapse of stars etc.

All far-fetched hypothetical speculation but still . .
Don't give it much thought.

Now steelcurtain- yes I agree. We could be intelligent beings or we could be slimy octopuses on land. We could also have the earth never existing. But reality (or our version of reality) is that finally we are beings with 2 hands and 2 legs which are intelligent enough to make speculate what is beyond our telescopes view of the universe

---

Aoi Magi that's saying all theists are ignorant of science and don't want to learn about the universe. I've been interested in the origin of the universe and theories on how it'll end. You may find it disrespectful of theists to attribute it to a creator but I'm not going to apologize for it. Who is it disrespectful to anyway? The big bang? Like it has feelings
I didn't even mention a "sky daddy." I kept this strictly deistic

---

Why I don't believe is because when I look at the universe, I not only am awed by it, I also wish to know and understand it. So I cannot just give credit to a magic sky daddy without proof and call it quits.

When I look at this watery planet, when I look at the creatures on this piece of rock, I see the beautiful product of many accidents which could not have been preplanned or designed. There are too many flaws in our "design" to think we are anything but accidents. And I am not too inclined to believe that a dumb designer triggered a series of accidents leading to our design,

To each their own I guess.
Also I didn't get your painter analogy. Do YOU know who the painter is? I'm acknowledging a painter did it. Are you saying you believe it was a series of accidents when paint just flew due to an explosion and accidentally created a beautiful painting
This was only meant for Aoi magi to point out the fault in his analogy not for anyone else. Just a disclaimer

[Esquilax]

I'm going here strictly with a deists view so if you have any argument, direct it as you would direct it to a deist.

May I ask why you'd ask us to do that when your religious views label you an Orthodox Christian?

It's just that some of us have a sense of wonder about the world and the universe. I'm not talking about myself but for some people I know, the fact that we're on a watery planet going around a ball of gas is miracle enough which I think is a really positive way to look at things like this

I have that sense of wonder too, but I see no need to attribute that to a god. Why would I?

As for me, the importance of water, complexity of our body, the eyes and the brain make it seem like it was created by someone intelligent.

Would that be the importance of water, when large swathes of the planet are dry as a bone? The complexity of a body full of structural flaws that make no sense considering a designer? The complexity of the eye that we know evolved on multiple different pathways, that has a blind spot, projects its images upside down and is prone to vision imperfections, for which the squid eye is objectively superior? The brain that easily gets damaged?

It seems to me like you're just looking for reasons to believe, ignoring important details in the process. Especially since the complexity of the brain, the eye, the body... they're all explainable using natural means; we already understand this stuff, and god is not required.

Besides, even taking your claim here at face value, it's nothing more than one big argument from ignorance; you don't understand how such things could occur naturally, and that ignorance leads you to assume the existence of design, without evidence.

That doesn't mean we don't try to find out how they work.

We already know how they work.

Also I feel that the big bang had a cause/source that did it and set events into place. So two theories arose in my mind-

Got any evidence to go with those feelings? Or do you just accept random assertions as good evidence all the time? Because I could tell you some crazy lies right now...

1) There was only a single way our universe would turn out and this led to the formation of life on earth (and maybe other planets).
Since there was only one way the universe could've gone forming over the 14 billion years it shines light on the possibility that it was a creator's intention for life to be born.
Conclusion- We were specially meant to be born. We are not an accident.

Your conclusion doesn't match your premise; there's only a single way water will react when its temperature is lowered, doesn't mean it was magically designed. Single outcomes are not necessarily the result of design, and therefore you're going to need more than the outcome to argue for design.

2) OR there were infinite ways the universe could've turned out in 14 billion years (because chaos) and out of all those infinite possibilities we got this one- where we come to life and evolved and are having this conversation.
Conclusion- We were specially meant to be born. We are not an accident.

Your conclusion doesn't match your premise again: if I draw a hand of cards from a deck, the chances of getting any given sequence of cards in that specific order are very low, that doesn't mean god had to reach down and ordain those cards for me. Low chances are not necessarily hallmarks of design, especially when you don't first establish that there's any significance to the outcome you're examining (and sorry, but you thinking life is special because you're life is not enough to establish significance), so therefore you're going to need more than low chances to argue for design.

That's my reasoning anyway. I'm not saying theists are right and atheists are wrong. I'm just saying people have different minds and different reasonings with which they make decisions for themselves. You believe it's practical to believe in what we sense with our five senses and what is provable. I believe some things exist beyond what we can sense and hence prove.

If we can't sense or prove these things, what reason do you have for believing them? And before you point to your arguments, those would be ways by which we could sense god, since they exist in the observable universe. Isn't it a bit coincidental that deeper examination of these things shows no god?

And before you just reiterate that it's unprovable, I'd remind you that "no no, it can't be proven!" doesn't relieve you of the necessity of proving it, it just means you've failed at doing so.

[Alex K]

@Grasshopper,

Let me guess, they voted for #1 in order to defend against the fine tuning argument? Yet I think there might be a misunderstanding: there's a huge difference between arguing that the laws if physics in the broadest sense have to be the way they are now, and the whole subsequent evolution (cosmically as well as biologically) having to be the same. I've seen atheists argue for the former, as I said mostly in the context of fine tuning, but hardly anyone seriously argues for the latter interpretation. Just for completeness, I personally tend to think there is fine tuning, but that's not strictly a scientific statement.

[robvalue]

First off, I think most people here have no problem with almost any points of view being presented. We ask that the person presenting them is willing to discuss them, hopefully back them up with reason and evidence, and not just endlessly repeat assertions ignoring rebuttals. I'm in no way saying the latter is what you have done, I've been very impressed with your arguments overall compared to most theists. Your restraint in not just shoving Yahweh in at every opportunity from broken compass arguments shows more intellectual honesty than most.

The short answer is that, in my opinion, arguments like this are looking at events entirely backwards. By this I mean we look at our situation, then assign significance to it, and then think how unlikely that is to have happened. A quick analogy: someone wins the lottery. They think they must be special, it must have been preordained, because the chances of specifically them winning just by accident were so incredibly low.

The other analogy is from Douglas Adams. It deals more with the idea of things being designed with us in mind. If anyone is not familiar with that name, fuck off right now and read all his books and don't come back till you do. Right. A puddle thinks to itself, "This hole in the ground fits me absolutely perfectly. Every single tiny part of it is just the right shape for me. It must have been created just for me!"

My third point is based on a reliable source, but I don't know if I can pull up detailed references. Maybe those with a physics background can back me up, or correct me. I have heard it said that the "Big Bang", where the natural laws go utterly mental if you go back that far, was unpredictable. I mean that no matter how well you "set up" the singularity, and what was in it, it would be impossible to predict what the result would be. So if there was intended eventual design in it, then it wouldn't have happened anyway. It would require later manipulation, which science firmly suggests has not happened.

God is coming round for tea at 11, so if there's any more specific questions I can put them to him.

Tl;dr- We are just "what happened". Assigning significance and purpose retroactively is a mistake.

[Aoi Magi]

@Grasshopper No, when a deist or theist starts with the "goddidit" attitude, they are being biased and pretending to know something they don't actually know. And when one claims to know something already, how can they go on to actually know that thing? I am not saying theists or deists are ignorant or not trying to learn anything, I am saying that presupposing the end result is wrong.

As for the artist analogy, every major religion I know of attributes and credits our existence to one or more deities or supernatural entities, whereas the actual artist might be nature itself. Crediting someone or something like this without knowing the complete truth is disrespectful and silly.