(February 16, 2013 at 8:40 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote:(February 16, 2013 at 7:17 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Don't try to tell us what we believe, Drew. That doesn't work out well for any of us. We'll let you know what we believe. Atheism makes exactly one claim: there is no compelling evidence for the existence of a god yet.
Do most atheists subscribe to the current scientific model of the Big Bang? Yes, but only because that's where the evidence leads. And note that I had to qualify that as "most," because not all atheists agree on that. There's no standard atheist perspective beyond that there isn't enough proof to justify a god, and so blanket statements are more than useless.
Its not a matter of telling you what you believe its a matter of logical consequences. If you don't beileve, or lack belief a Creator caused and designed the universe then consequently you do believe we owe our existence to mindless forces that didn't intentionally create a universe or humans. Let me prove it, do you believe the universe and subsequently humans were caused and created by mindless forces that didn't intend out existence? This is your chance to tell me what you think rather than me tell you what you think.
Let me answer it by arguing against the fine tuned universe argument. The argument states that the fact that the universe is finely tuned for life proves the existence of a creator. The flaw in that argument is that the universe is not, in fact, finely tuned for life. In fact, the vast bulk of the universe is completely hostile to all forms of life. A universe that is finely tuned for life would, by definition, NOT be utterly hostile to said life. The fact that life does exist (at least in one instance that we know of - here on Earth) is a consequence of the laws of physics and chemistry working together randomly and with purpose through evolution. But it could well have gone the other way; in other words, the earth could just as easily never formed at all. The fact that it did is not a testament to a finely tuned universe. It is a testament to the same forces that brought us a nearby asteroid passing the Earth at 17,000 miles from the surface on the same day that another asteroid, coming from a completely different direction entered the Earth's atmosphere and cause widespread injury and damage in Russia yesterday - a completely random, though probabilistic phenomenon.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
