Should there be Atheist groups?

[Brick-top]

Hey! Salmon affects your life... its expensive!

Acutally my dad can buy it cheap and have it smoked. As well as ham and anything else you want.

Ever try filleting 50 salmons? My god the joke about cutting the head off stops getting funny.

If he 'actually' passed Health and safety tests he could make a nice profit on it. But he just does it for friends.

[Tiberius]

Hey! Salmon affects your life... its expensive!

As well as ham and anything else you want.

Smoke me some zebra!

[josef rosenkranz]

The thing about destiny is that it could be scientific. Free will is a chemical reaction, and because we don't get to replay choices we have no idea whether our choices are actually "choices" at all. If everything that happens is pre-determined and predictable through the movements of atoms or whatever lies below them, then destiny falls into place perfectly.

Of course it's all speculation so I don't believe in it until I see some evidence. The reasoning is there though.

Give me a break!
You are not convinced that undeterminism and determinism are two factual elements of Nature? Do you?
The law of undeterminism formulated by Bohr/Heisenberg meant initially to be valid only for Microcosm but has been proved as being a general law of the Universe.
Einstein said to it that he does not believe that God rolls dices.
He was of course wrong and that contributed to speculations about him as believing in God ,which was not true.
Now let's get down to our individual life.Make an introspection at this very moment you are at the computer and you'll find that almost every motion of your body,every thought,feeling,reaction, are random .
Ask meteorologists about the weather forecast and you'll get the answer that it is now proven without any doubt that the most
ultra super computer will enable to improve the forecast but never make it exactly.
The cause of it is not the complexity of equations the computer would have to solve but the fact that the weather is governed ,as many other phenomena by statistical laws.
What is a statistical law? A law which has at it's core probable events and at it's end undeterministic events.
We are literally implemented in an ocean of statistic laws
between them being also our personal health or illness.
The unacceptance of undeterminism in Nature is one of the most powerful arms of religions by saying that only God or Destiny is governing our lives .

[Tiberius]

Exactly which bit of "I don't believe it until I see some evidence" did you not understand?

[KRW1612]

When white man arrived in Australia 230 years ago they had never heard of the Christian god or Jesus Christ or Allah or Mohammed. Why? because they had never been taught about these entities. Entities that have been man made by other peoples.

While that statement is true, it does not infer the following:

Therefore we are all born non-believers until such time as some of us are indoctrinated by the teachers of religion, whether they be familly, school teachers, clergy, etc.

Because the aboriginals had, and still have their own religion.

The Australian aboriginals were a very primitive people when Europeans arrived. They had no written language and were very tribal, so much so that there were upwards of 200 different languages for an estimated 400,000 people.

The Dreamtime could be considered some form of religion, however they do not worship a god. They claim to be guardians of the land. A group of Ancestral spirits in the forms of humans, animals and plants came to Earth and created everything.

As we all know, someone makes up the stories that develop into religious dogma.

[josef rosenkranz]

Exactly which bit of "I don't believe it until I see some evidence" did you not understand?

I am afraid that we are on a collision track.
To my opinion one can not be a front stage propagator of the ideas of atheism as you are and in the same time to believe in something very close to Destiny.
In other words God does not exist so he can not decide about the fate of any individual but may be that there are some hidden equations which we don't know, that determine our way in life in all its particulars from the craddle to death.
I am quite sure that you have read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and the way he explains Black holes based on the principle of uncertainity "borrowed" from the quantum mechanics.
Since he wrote this book went by 20 years and physicist have not only confirmed his hypothesises but extended the principle of uncertainity to new astronomic phenomena.

The principle of uncertainity means statistic laws and statistic laws means a dual coexistence of probable events and random ones.

Random events might be partially governed by deterministic laws which are at this stage of knowledge unknown to us but we agree as a basic feature of atheism that we don't know everything and that we don't atribute the things we don't know to God.
Following atheism is in no way in position to agree that the fate of the individual is in the hands of an unknown factor named Destiny.
I propose to bring this discussion to the opinions of as more members as possible.
Will we not agree we cuold ask the opinion of the Guru of atheism Richard Dawson.
I have a request: the problem is too serious so please- no foul language

[StewartP]

I propose to bring this discussion to the opinions of as more members as possible.

I have a request: the problem is too serious so please- no foul language

NEW THREAD! NEW THREAD!

[Tiberius]

Exactly which bit of "I don't believe it until I see some evidence" did you not understand?

To my opinion one can not be a front stage propagator of the ideas of atheism as you are and in the same time to believe in something very close to Destiny.

Again, I have to state:

Which bit of "I don't believe it until I see some evidence" did you not understand?

You keep saying that I have some kind of belief in determinism and therefore that means I cannot possibly be an atheist. Whilst I think you can probably have some kind of belief in determinism and still be an atheist, I am not one who falls into that group. I am neither a "determinist" nor an "undeterminist". The best description of me would be an "apa-determinist" (morphing the words apathetic and determinist). I don't have any opinion on either and I really don't care about them. I haven't read into the subject at all, but it is common knowledge that certain things can be predicted. Science has so far failed to unite newtonian physics with quantum mechanics, so using it to argue against determinism seems a bit off. I would love to hear your opinion on the wikipedia article about determinism which states (in relation to quantum mechanics):

So quantum mechanics is deterministic, provided that one accepts the wave function itself as reality (rather than as probability of classical coordinates). Since we have no practical way of knowing the exact magnitudes, and especially the phases, in a full quantum mechanical description of the causes of an observable event, this turns out to be philosophically similar to the "hidden variable" doctrine.

Whatever your answer, please stop referring to me as though I believe in determinism. I don't and it is rude to suggest otherwise. Ignorance in a subject does not mean I believe in it. I do not have any opinion on either, although that seems to be changing now I have been forced to read into the subject in order to respond to you

[Brick-top]

Hey! Salmon affects your life... its expensive!

As well as ham and anything else you want.

Smoke me some zebra!

FOOD! Sausages, fish, chips, sandles, small children I'M NOT COPYRIGHTING!

[StewartP]

although that seems to be changing now I have been forced to read into the subject in order to respond to you

That's why forums and debate are so cool. In order to try and give an informed opinion on a subject, one first has to get informed. I've learnes so much in this way.