(July 13, 2011 at 8:03 pm)Alastor Wrote:

(July 13, 2011 at 7:04 pm)DaveD Wrote:

(July 13, 2011 at 6:41 pm)Alastor Wrote: As I've said, ignorance is pretending you know what you do not know.

Oh, the irony.

One thing is certainly ironic, atheist are just as prone to sarcasm and close-mindedness as religious people as your cowardice response, and ridiculously immature and offensive signature pic as well, have shown.

If you're referring to anything I've said that implies I think know something, when I know I do not, then back up your remark with a quote and explain how it shows I'm ignorant by my definition.

In your OP in this very thread you made some assumptions about what atheists "believe", and kept waffling about a " choice of atheist to deny the existence of God", and other assorted drivel. You appear to ignore what others tell you, and continue to appear condescending, including calling me a coward.
As for my avatar, you may have given the game away there. You claim not to be religious, but why then would you find it offensive?

(July 11, 2011 at 11:53 pm)Alastor Wrote: Far as i know, atheist choose to believe that God does not exist. My question is why? I, myself, am spiritual and am not really affiliated with any religion. I choose to believe God exist because I think the laws of physics just randomly or coincidently happenening the way they did out of the infinite other possible options is rediculously unlikely. So unlikely that i choose to believe in some intelligent design instead. As far as what God is like don't know. Is he an individual, a collective, or more like a computer with no real consciousness as we might call it? I couldn't answer with as much conviction as believing in God, but I do have my beliefs about his nature.

Well when I find out more about the universe (which is something I do a fair bit of), it confirms my belief there is nothing beyond nature (natural things, forces, and causes of the kind studied by the natural sciences). Hence there is very likely no higher being or god/s. As a consequence of that that we very likely don't have an immaterial soul which survives beyond death. Although I could be wrong and I would be still happy if I were proven wrong. It is not like I have not given this a lot of thought, in fact quite the opposite.

(July 13, 2011 at 8:28 pm)DaveD Wrote:

(July 13, 2011 at 8:03 pm)Alastor Wrote:

(July 13, 2011 at 7:04 pm)DaveD Wrote:

(July 13, 2011 at 6:41 pm)Alastor Wrote: As I've said, ignorance is pretending you know what you do not know.

Oh, the irony.

One thing is certainly ironic, atheist are just as prone to sarcasm and close-mindedness as religious people as your cowardice response, and ridiculously immature and offensive signature pic as well, have shown.

If you're referring to anything I've said that implies I think know something, when I know I do not, then back up your remark with a quote and explain how it shows I'm ignorant by my definition.

In your OP in this very thread you made some assumptions about what atheists "believe", and kept waffling about a " choice of atheist to deny the existence of God", and other assorted drivel. You appear to ignore what others tell you, and continue to appear condescending, including calling me a coward.
As for my avatar, you may have given the game away there. You claim not to be religious, but why then would you find it offensive?

This is wrong,

Assuming what atheist believe was based on the definition I read from a dictionary. This is not ignorance because I'm not pretending to know something I know I don't know. Furthermore, this is a terrible example of ignorance because the meaning of a word is relative the one who is using it, regardless of the general consensus a words meaning. This is why one must always fully define any concept one bases an argument on, which is also why I made sure I explained the definition of atheist I was basing this thread on; that way, if the definition was incorrect, and it was, someone could tell me.

You say I ignored what others were telling me. When? In each response I have tried to understand the quotes of those who I have addressed to the best of my ability. If I have misunderstood them, then this would self-evident in my post, but I've not flat out ignored anyone.

If I appear condescending, it is because you are not the first person to make some negative, and unnecessary, baseless claim about me without backing it up. Frankly, its getting annoying. Even though this thread is over, the fact still remains that, in general, if anyone has something to say, then say it constructively. Present your claim, back it up with facts and/or reason, and take out all the unnecessary negative undertones. This is how I originally expected atheist to be, but clearly that is not the case. I've only been here a short time, but I've looked at some of the responses to religious people in other threads and the outward negativity from atheist was somewhat shocking compared to how I expected atheist to act.

Lastly, I never said i was offended by your avatar. I actually found it somewhat funny. Its just that I respect other peoples beliefs, at least, enough to not so outwardly disrespect their God or gods. Despite this being an atheist forum, you must expect and welcome religious users as well, and some of them will be greatly offended.

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(July 13, 2011 at 8:39 pm)Ziggystardust Wrote: Well when I find out more about the universe (which is something I do a fair bit of), it confirms my belief there is nothing beyond nature (natural things, forces, and causes of the kind studied by the natural sciences). Hence there is very likely no higher being or god/s. As a consequence of that that we very likely don't have an immaterial soul which survives beyond death. Although I could be wrong and I would be still happy if I were proven wrong. It is not like I have not given this a lot of thought, in fact quite the opposite.

I understand, everyone faces this dilemma to some extent. The choice to believe in God or an afterlife is currently a matter of faith and, possibly, self-discovery which no one could really help you with. However, what "theVOID" said about string theory was interesting. There could possibly be 10^500 possible universes. This has to, in some way, assert the fact that "more we learn, the less we know" and what we currently know may not be much at all. Only thing we can really do is keep searching and sit on bench or pick a team and hope you made the right choice. I currently major in electrical engineering so I don't really have time yet to learn advance physics. I stopped at quantum mechanics.

(July 13, 2011 at 3:00 pm)Alastor Wrote: The fact that the universe even had a chance to become this specific even in one universe demonstrates an incredibly specific bias. Why was one universe even possible to begin with? Why wasn't it the case that no universes could be formed at all; because of some mechanical bias that allows universes to be created, however, rare. Also, the fact that an event could be rare. shows mechanical bias in itself.

No it doesn't, for instance flipping a coin and getting heads does not demonstrate a bias towards heads. With regards to the universe it's as if you're watching the result of a single coin flip and then declaring that outcome was more likely than any other one when in reality we have only seen one outcome of the coin flip and thus only a sliver of the spectrum of possibilities - We have only seen one universe, we have no idea whether or not this mechanism would produce the same/similar universe if it was active again, it could even be the case that this mechanism has run multiple times and our universe is just one of many that are significantly different - Honestly, we have no idea, so claiming that the mechanism must have been biased towards this specific universe it nothing more than a logical gaff.

Why wasn't it the case that no universes were formed? It might have happened, the mechanism that produced our universe might have produced many events, some of which resulted in something that we couldn't consider a universe. The fact that we have only observed one universe means we cannot presuppose anything about the mechanism other than the outcome we observed was possible.

Are you familiar with blast patterns? Consider the geometry of the debris to represent the relationship between the fundamental constraints of this universe; space, time, electromagnetism, gravity, strong force, weak force, higgs fields etc - The distribution of debris from each blast, being very different from the last, would yield different ratios between the forces and result in different universes, some of which would fly apart, some of which would collapse instantly, some of which would form stars, some of which could support biology and some of which would never be able to form at all - You are essentially coming along after a single blast pattern and then claiming that each blast must have a tendency towards this specific debris ratio.

theVOID Wrote:This argument is accurate in describing what I have stated. You are appealing to particulars and admittedly so was I.

Appealing to particulars? I'm not sure what you mean by this... What I did was demonstrate that your argument is a non sequitur, it's not a valid argument.

Quote:However, it is not necessary for my argument to stand. For example, I'm don't have to necessarily say Y(unknown mechanisms) had more of a bias toward X(universe) than anything else it could cause, for example other universes. I only need to acknowledge that the existence of a universe itself demonstrates some kind of bias in mechanics to begin with, no matter how far back you may go, the universe formed for some reason and that reason follows some kind of rule and therefore is demonstrates a bias against, say, the opposite of that rule. It would be wrong for one to assume a bias towards bosons in your example (the particular) but not wrong for one to assume a mechanical bias which existed to allow for the formation of a boson.

Okay, I get the confusion, you're not using the word bias in the same way I'm familiar with it, perhaps you could describe to me what you are trying to say when you use the term?

Take for example a cause that will produce every single possible thing; every single possible universe and every single possible non-universe, if you would still say that this cause is biased towards our specific type of universe then we are using the word in fundamentally different ways.

The way I see it is as follows; The existence of a universe only demonstrates that universes are possible, the existence of this type of universe only demonstrates that this type of universe is possible, for it to be a 'bias' would imply that this result is more likely than any other result. We can acknowledge that some mechanism follows some rule that can produce universes but we can't say that this type of universe is more likely than any other type of universe or even that it is more likely to produce universes than non-universes.

Meh, I strongly believe this to be a waste of time. You have baseless assumptions, you respond to criticisms of your baseless assumptions with more baseless assumptions.

Cut to the chase, post your scripture.

(July 13, 2011 at 11:57 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Meh, I strongly believe this to be a waste of time. You have baseless assumptions, you respond to criticisms of your baseless assumptions with more baseless assumptions.

Cut to the chase, post your scripture.

I don't think he's saying anything too unreasonable at all, I suspect his use of the word bias leads us to assume he is saying something he is not.

Quote:Lastly, I never said i was offended by your avatar. I actually found it somewhat funny. Its just that I respect other peoples beliefs, at least, enough to not so outwardly disrespect their God or gods. Despite this being an atheist forum, you must expect and welcome religious users as well, and some of them will be greatly offended.

So...let me get this right....you think I should show respect to their beliefs when their beliefs tell of not just me being sent to hell to be tortured, but my loved ones also? Get stuffed!
Respect is earnt!

Fuck their god, their bible and their whole religion.

I've been using this avatar for several years, on various fora, with only fundies complaining, and I know one Christian who is so unoffended that, when I started my blog, not only did he not have a problem with me adding his site to my blogroll (and he was the first person I considered BTW) but he reciprocated without any hesitation, even though I told him I'd fully understand if he didn't. He's earned my respect over the years, but his religion hasn't.
And I don't respect people who presume to tell me what I think.

Repect is earned, not demanded.

Religion can go suck a horse's bollock.

Unintelligible, unsupported, unaccepting: When he states that atheists on an atheist forum should show respect for religion, he's unreasonable and undone.