Please present positive arguments why you think atheism is true

[Cinjin]

Hey, Asshole....

thats the way you disqualify yourself as someone worth to be debated. Almost 13 thousand posts, and you have not learned this elementary rule ? !!

miss the point much?

Those 13,000 posts Min has have been made going round in circles with you sheep. After awhile, the patience wears pretty fucking thin. We've argued your retarded OP about 1000 times before now. Your side of the debate has long since been found to be completely without merit.

[Minimalist]

Hey, Asshole....

thats the way you disqualify yourself as someone worth to be debated. Almost 13 thousand posts, and you have not learned this elementary rule ? !!

Your opinion is as fucking worthless as your god. This is not a debate. Put up evidence that your fucking god exists or STFU.

Now that should be simple enough even for a jesus freak. If you have no evidence, expect to be shit on at every opportunity. Ask G-C how that works. I'm in this for my amusement. I could give less than a shit about you.

[jess_essential]

They don't rely on facts Min, they rely on fuzzy feelings and misplaced anger. They last out because they refuse to look IN! Hence why they're even trying to say that god created life, and the fucking rain! That was my favorite part.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Now that should be simple enough even for a jesus freak.

Dear old Min, what an incurable optimist.

[FallentoReason]

I stopped following this thread a while back, but I wanted to share something that I stumbled upon on wiki. I'm hoping this will clear up things about what 'atheist' means because in actual fact that term came from the New Testament itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ephesi...atheos.jpg

My first language is Spanish, therefore whenever I see Latin or some Greek words I have a pretty good idea of what it means. The word 'atheoi' is very close to the Spanish word for atheist which is 'ateo'.

'Atheoi' appears in Ephesians 2:12 and its meaning is '[those who are] without God'.

remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

There you go. If only Christians knew Greek then this thread wouldn't be necessary =)

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

There you go. If only Christians knew Greek then this thread wouldn't be necessary =)

Why would they bother? They believe the bible was written in English and that Jesus was a 6 foot blue-eyed gringo.

[Cyberman]

As far as I remember, xtians were the first - or the first recorded, perhaps - to be called atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman (?) gods. Try that one next time you get the "I wish I had the faith to be an atheist" line.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

There you go. If only Christians knew Greek then this thread wouldn't be necessary =)

Why would they bother? They believe the bible was written in English and that Jesus was a 6 foot blue-eyed gringo.

That's not too far off from the truth. There's actually a bunch of Christians who believe that the KJV english translation is an "inspired" translation and the most extreme of them say that it's actually better than the greek and hebrew originals.

[Mister Agenda]

Dr. Monty White:

1. There is no proof that the earth ever had an atmosphere composed of the gases used by Miller in his experiment.

It's true that the atmosphere Urey and Miller used as a model was hypothetical, and based on what was known in 1952. Using a more modern understanding of early atmospheric conditions has resulted in a greater variety of amino acids when the experiment has been duplicated.

[quote='Jireh' pid='278350' dateline='1335562331']
2. The next problem is that in Miller’s experiment he was careful to make sure there was no oxygen present. If oxygen was present, then the amino acids would not form. However, if oxygen was absent from the earth, then there would be no ozone layer, and if there was no ozone layer the ultraviolet radiation would penetrate the atmosphere and would destroy the amino acids as soon as they were formed.

That is, assuming the amino acids were on the surface of the ground or ocean, rather than underground or deep enough to be shielded from UV. Any reasonably intelligent person without 'evolution just can't be true!' blinders on would have had this possibility occur to them as quickly as it did to me.

So the dilemma can be summed up this way: amino acids would not form in an atmosphere with oxygen and amino acids would be destroyed in an atmosphere without oxygen.

Excellent! There's no dilemma then, because the available evidence says there was likely no significant free oxygen in the atmosphere over 3 billion years ago (most atmospheric oxygen was likely in the form of water vapor), and the relevant molecules could have easily formed in conditions shielded from UV, such as underground or underwater, or in underground water, for that matter. Or even in ice, perhaps. The surface of the earth is a very narrow zone. It's likely that even today, most of earth's biomass is in the form of underground bacteria.

3. The next problem concerns the so-called handedness of the amino acids. Because of the way that carbon atoms join up with other atoms, amino acids exist in two forms—the right-handed form and the left-handed form. Just as your right hand and left hand are identical in all respects except for their handedness, so the two forms of amino acids are identical except for their handedness. In all living systems only left-handed amino acids are found. Yet Miller’s experiment produced a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids in identical proportions. As only the left-handed ones are used in living systems, this mixture is useless for the evolution of living systems.

And Dr. White once showed such promise as a chemist. Half the mixture could not have been used in life as we know it, the other half would have been fine. There's no chemical magic that says all the molecules produced have to be used as the building blocks of life. Again, the tragedy is that this is so obvious that no reasonably intelligent person, especially one educated in the relevant field, should need it pointed out. It's exactly this kind of stupidity crippling otherwise fine minds that made me resolve to take my blinders off.

4. Another major problem for the chemical evolutionist is the origin of the information that is found in living systems. There are various claims about the amount of information that is found in the human genome, but it can be conservatively estimated as being equivalent to a few thousand books, each several hundred pages long. Where did this information come from?

If only there were a theory that showed exactly how information in the environment becomes coded into the DNA of organisms. It would surely take the world of biological science by storm (with the normal resistance that is part of the scientific process, of course) and the originator would go down in history.

No. Its that God created physical life.

If God is not biological, this would be an abiogenetic origin.

No, i imagine a eternal God, which is spirit.

Spirits, if they exist, are not biological organisms. The 'bio' in 'abiogenetic' is not life in some generic sense that can include nonmaterial beings, it is life in the biological sense. Abiogenesis is the recognition that at some point, there was no life, and at some later point, there was. There are specific naturalistic explanations for this, you are merely endorsing a supernaturalistic one, but it's still abiogenesis.

But I'm arguing semantics and etymology. I don't really have a problem with reserving the term 'abiogenesis' to the domain of natural explanations, and will use it in this sense from here on.

Do YOU have a grasp of abiogenesis ?

Enough not to mix up abiogenesis with the theory of evoluton.

If you had, you would not make such nonsense assertions, as scientific evidence would point out to a natural origin of life. Truth is, science is completely without answer how life could have had a natural origin.

Completely is such an absolute word. There are actually numerous possibilities, the difficulty is pinning down which natural origin (or which set of them) is the correct one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Current_models

to be self replicating, it needs to have information.

The way you are using the word 'information' is so loose, that all molecules can be said to possess information in just the same sense.

" It just happened " ?

Countless molecules 'just happen', in a chemical sense. They're what happens in given circumstances more complex but not more mysterious than what happens when free oxygen encounters free hydrogen.

If you see a computer progam code, or a Book, like Shakespeares " Hamlet", would you assert also : " it just happened ", without any intelligence needed to write it ?

Of course not, these are the sorts of products that have a clearly human origin.

even the most simple self replicating molecule has more information stored as the enciclopedia britannica.......

The most simple current self-replicating molecule, maybe. The first one would have been very primitive in comparison. It wouldn't need code for a whole cell, just enough to make another molecule very similar to itself.

as expected ?? expected based on what expectation ??

Based on the observations of organic chemisty, where complex molecules are formed all the time.

amazing faith you have in chances hability to produce information. Amazing.....

Again, information, in the sense you are using it, is a property of all molecules, and produced by chance all the time. In half a billion years, a molecule capable of replicating itself only had to appear by chance once. After that, chance takes a back seat to natural selection.

the argument of information in the cell is just a knock down, check mate to atheists aspiration and wishful thinking of naturalism.

Saying it doesn't make it so.

But since they are blind, they do not want to accept it, and cross a red line, from being reasonable, to bein irrational.

I can see simple answers to stupid objections well enough: I'm not the one who can't imagine a way for amino acids to form when there's a lot of UV radiation penetrating the atmosphere. The blindness is on your side of the fence, and easily demonstrated, too. Not to you, of course, but thank you for the opportunity you're providing to our lurking audience to see where the blindness truly lies.

Actually, no. I can conclude it, and be perfectly be justified based on the fact, that it has only been observed human beings to be able to create codified, complex, and specified information.

That line of reasoning is fallacious.

1. Only minds have been observed to create codifed information.
2. Codified information discovered that is NOT created by humans.
3. Therefore, the codified information was created by a nonhuman mind.

is on a par with

1. Only mortal bipedal mammals with hands and brains have been observed to create codifed information.
2. Codified information discovered that is NOT created by humans.
3. Therefore, the codified information was created by nonhuman mortal bipedal mammals with hands and a brains operating within time and space.

When your conclusion is contained within your premise, that's called begging the question.

these fall all either to the category eternal universe in one way or the other, or a universe out of absolutely nothing.

You keep using the word 'absolutely' inappropriately. Is this indicative of a learning disorder? You can divide the hypotheses into two categories if you wish, but both of the categories should actually be what we're talking about.

its not a concept, its just one of the few possibilities.

How is it a possibility?

thats why that is a alternative to the other option of a universe from absolutely nothing.

The only one who seems to consider 'absolutely nothing' to be an option is you.

from the book : a case of a creator

So are you just The quantum vacuum is not what most people envision when they think of a vacuum-that is, absolutely nothing. On the contrary, it's a sea of fluctuating energy, an arena of violent activity that has a rich physical structure and can be described by physical laws. These particles are thought to originate by fluctuations of the energy in the vacuum.

Close enough.

[quote='Jireh' pid='276998' dateline='1335291970']
"So it's not an example of something coming into being out of nothing, or something coming into being without a cause. The quantum vacuum and the energy locked up in the vacuum are the cause of these particles. And then we have to ask, well, what is the origin of the whole quantum vacuum itself? Where does it come from?"

If the author can identify the cause of virtual particles coming into being, there's a Nobel Prize in it for him. Otherwise this is merely an assertion equivalent to 'there MUST be a cause because EVERYTHING has a cause (except God; nudge, nudge, wink, wink)'. I'm not a physicist, but virtual particles come into being because there's 'nothing' to prevent it from happening. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal allows virtual particles to form at the quantum level, and that is what we see. And there's no reason to think quantum vacuum hasn't always existed and thus needs no origin. It may not come from anywhere, it may just be the default state BECAUSE absolute nothingness is impossible.

He let that question linger before continuing. "You've simply pushed back the issue of creation. Now you've got to account for how this very active ocean of fluctuating energy came into being. Do you see what I'm saying? If quantum physical laws operate within the domain described by quantum physics, you can't legitimately use quantum physics to explain the origin of that domain itself. You need something transcendent that's beyond that domain in order to explain how the entire domain came into being. Suddenly, we're back to the origins question."being contrary, as no one is proposing the universe came from absolutely nothing?

Speaking of contrary....

what reason would that be ? and, what is a quantum nothingness?

Try reading what you copy and paste. Even from Stroebel, you might learn something.

i am not making claims. I just present what seems to me to be the most plausible explanation for our existence.

I suppose that's nice for you. Why should anyone be interested in what you find plausible, though?

the issue here is about meta-physics, not about cosmology.

Silly me. Here I thought we'd been talking about the origin of life and the origin of the universe.

So ?

You don't see a problem with beginning something from a place of timelessness?

most scientists take it for granted, that our universe had a absolute beginning.

Funny you keep quoting individuals, when a survey that shows most scientists take it for granted that our universe had an absolute beginning is about the only thing that would support your claim. Which still wouldn't be much of a claim, because what the majority of scientists take for granted is pretty irrelevant: it's what the majority of cosmologists and theoretical physicists think about the origin of the universe that counts when talking about the origin of the universe.

oh, i can give you a whole bunch if you want....

Oh, I have no doubt of your ability to copy and paste other people's statements to the point of tediousness. It's your ability to back up your claim about 'most scientists' that I doubt, and at this point, even understanding what would back it up. Hint: it would have to show that the majority of scientists are in agreement on this matter, which thousands of quotes wouldn't do, and that it's an absolute beginning they agree on. If you had read what you pasted, you might have noticed a singularity mentioned. You know what that singularity is? Not nothing.