(August 13, 2016 at 8:54 pm)fdesilva Wrote: Take a dice, 6 is the best number in most games. Fundamental to the belief of atheist is that absolute randomness is what caused the universe.
I wasn't aware that atheism had as a central tenet a particular belief in the origin of the universe, the nature of the universe, etc.. I always thought it was simply some version of non-belief in a god. You're conflating materialism and atheism. No doubt many, if not most atheists are materialist of some stripe, but the two actually have nothing to do with one another conceptually. You can be either one and not be the other. Even physicists don't claim to know what "caused" the universe because no one knows what "caused" the big bang. (This is similar the creationists confusing THE ORIGIN OF LIFE with THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.) I'm an atheist, and I have no belief whatsoever regarding what "caused" the universe. I don't even know what the phrase "caused the universe MEANS."
This is a good time to bring up what I think can be a problem when some atheists get into debates with religious believers. By presenting materialism as being central to, or even identical to atheism, they put believers into the position of being asked, not only to accept that their belief in God is mistaken, but that THE MATERIALIST WORLDVIEW IS RIGHT. They are two different, and not necessarily related things. That's like saying, "Creationism is wrong BECAUSE ABSOLUTE RANDOMNESS IS WHAT CAUSED THE UNIVERSE," rather than simply argue that creationism is wrong. I don't believe that "absolute randomness is what caused the universe," AND I'M AN ATHEIST!
