RE: Atheist struggling to answer a question i often propose to myself
August 25, 2017 at 11:10 am
(This post was last modified: August 25, 2017 at 11:21 am by Whateverist.)
(August 25, 2017 at 8:26 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(August 24, 2017 at 9:39 pm)mordant Wrote: Inherently, no creature in this universe can observe or remark on anything or have any knowledge of something outside this universe. The instant we have any actual data about a god, that god then is part of the natural order, and can be observed / debunked. 100% (not 99.999%, but 100%) of everything claimed about gods are simply asserted without valid and admissible evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without consideration of this non-evidence.
That seems like a reasonable objection for many naive god concepts. It doesn't apply when the evidence is ubiquitous such as the fact that beings persist in there being despite change or the general observation that causes have regular effects.
The fact that beings persist isn't an adequate justification for any claim apart from the persistence of beings. Our understanding of what are the necessary conditions for being is far from complete.
(August 25, 2017 at 8:26 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(August 25, 2017 at 5:38 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Well yeah first of all so called First cause says nothing of the nature of god, meaning it can't say if it's Buddha, Medusa, Jesus, Krishna and so on. Second the problem of First cause is that then someone also had to make God and if you don't need explanation who created god then you don't need an explanation of the "first cause" of the universe or in other words why could that cause itself not be natural? Not to mention that we have a highly successful theory of probabilistic causes called quantum mechanics.
When someone brings up "who created god?" I can tell either they haven't thought it through or don't understand the argument.
A clean beginning of everything out of a condition of absolute nothing begs the question of where the capacity for that creation is to come from. If there is something else of any kind whatsoever which can erase the nothingness then there never was a pure nothing to begin with. You haven't erased the paradox by positing an agent to transform your 'nothing' into something. Your agent Agent if existent is still something and if we insist on prior causes must be accounted for. If you are content to allow this eternal potential to exist, that is not one wit better than the claim that it is turtles all the way down. I prefer the turtles claim myself because it doesn't falsely claim to have erased the paradox. It is better simply to acknowledge the paradox and to reflect on what that tells us about the way we are wired.
(August 25, 2017 at 10:54 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: As for whether belief in God is necessary, I would say probably not for everyday living and scientific inquires about natural phenomena. However, taking a stand is a necessary condition for the fundamental things that I think really matter in life such as values, meaning, and purpose.
Really? No values. No meaning. No purpose. That sounds like the perspective of a deeply depressed person.
But why even imagine we have any subjective experience at all? Perhaps without god belief we are no more than automatons. Only belief in god lifts a person up into full consciousness. Otherwise we remain merely objects in the experience of those possessed of true subject-hood by virtue of their god belief. Seems pretty far fetched to me.
