Systematically Dismantling Atheism

[pocaracas]

"Then you didn't read the definition I so helpfully quoted and linked for you. Atheism is a lack of belief in god not necessarily a belief that god does not exist"

Not believing there is a purple monster under the bridge = believing there is not a purple monster under the bridge
Not believing the moon is made of cheese = believing the moon is not made of cheese
Not believing species were intelligently designed = believing species were not intelligently designed
Not believing invisible unicorns exist = believing invisible unicorns do not exist

And this grade school principle of semantics can be demonstrated true in all other cases. Its only when the atheist adds the term God to the sentence, that they suddenly lose the ability to understand semantics 101. Which tells me atheists are not that bright to begin with, or they really don't believe God does not exist, but lie to themselves for personal reasons

I think you're mixing belief with reality.
Yes, in reality either the cake exists or it doesn't.

However, my belief over the existence of the cake has more than two states.

I'll give you an example straight out of Quantum mechanics.

In QM, particles exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behaviors.
But you can only experiment on one kind of behavior at a time and, when you do, that particle then always exhibits that same type of behavior.
This means that you can't test for both behaviors in series, because the second experiment in the series will fail. And does fail.
Because of this, it is said that each particle has, simultaneously, both behaviors, until an actual experiment is performed which then attributes only one behavior to the particle.
To try to convey this strange concept to the rest of the community, Schrödinger came up with the cat in a box thought experiment.
This box is closed and contains a cat, a living cat. in the box is some apparatus that can, at a non-deterministic time, kill the cat. It doesn't really matter how the cat is killed, all that we know is that from out of the box, there is no way of knowing if the cat is dead - no sound, no movement, no nothing.... we have to open the box and see if it is dead or alive. This is the experiment part which then settles the matter.

Now, suppose we have our cat in the box. Without any experiment that I can be aware of, you tell me that the cat is dead.
I have no way of ascertaining if it is dead or not. I know you also have no way of ascertaining that. So I cannot believe your claim that the cat is dead. This does not mean that I believe the cat to be alive.
Had you claimed that the cat was alive, I would also not be able to believe it.
I'd be in a state of unknowing whether the cat is dead or alive.

The reality is twofold - either the cat is dead or alive.
The belief in the claim made by a person with no access the the information regarding the state of the cat is not so twofold - I can believe it, if I see you as an expert way beyond my abilities; I can see you as a rookie, while I know better that, after a given amount of time, it is likely that the cat is in a particular state, hence I'd believe that it is in that state... or I can withhold judgement and believe neither.

Considering the inability to actually know about the cat's health, it seems that the more reasonable approach is to withhold judgement until experimentation yields an answer.

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we all know the cake is a lie!

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[ManMachine]

Let me first define true atheism

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Atheism is a complete and total rejection of all theistic claims. If theists assert God (creator of the universe and all life in it) does exist, atheists must assert the contrary , i.e. God does not exist. The only middle ground in this true dichotomy is agnosticism (undecided), which is not true atheism.

The Incremental Intelligence Theorem

A.We have observable empirical evidence of a wide range of sentient life, all with varying degrees of intelligence/attributes, existing here on earth

B.Therefore a wide range of sentient life, all with varying degrees of intelligence/attributes existing elsewhere in the universe, including other possible dimensions, is a logical possibility and can not be ruled out

Therefore If A is true then B is logically possible and can not be rejected

Atheists will easily accept the existence of a sentient life form (lets call it life form 1.1) that is 1% superior in intelligence to humans, and they will accept this possibility by blind faith using nothing more than logical inferences. So then we must assume life form 1.1 could exist, therefore can not be ruled out of existence. And life form 1.1 would also logically assume the possible existence of life form 1.2., and life form 1.2 would also logically assume the possible existence of life form 1.3 etc. etc.

And at every step along the way an intelligent life form that is 1% superior in intelligence/attributes can logically & rationally exist from the perspective of the life form that is 1% inferior, and at no point along the way does this chain of slightly superior life forms become an irrational concept (i.e flying spaghetti monsters) from the perspective of the preceding slightly less intelligent life form. Therefore in this chain of logically possible life forms, the existence of life form 100000^100000 (i.e creator of the universe, thus God) becomes as logical a concept as life form 1.1 is.

The concept of a God-like intelligence is only rejected by narrow minded subjective atheists that are incapable of mentally grasping the existence of BIG LIFE, when in fact there is no rational, logical or mathematical basis to reject a God-like intelligence from existing. Just as single celled organisms and trillion celled organisms have the same mathematical chances of existing , humans and a God-like sentience also have the same mathematical chances of existing

Understand, the "SIZE OF INTELLIGENCE" has absolutely no relevance what so ever to the potential existence of a sentient life form. Therefore unimaginably small life has the exact same chances of existing as unimaginably big life does as far as logic is concerned, and the IIT proves it at every incremental step.

Once the atheist opens the door of possibility to the existence of life form 1.1, he then must produce a reason to stop this incremental intelligence from reaching Godhood in a stepwise fashion. And the atheist can never produce a valid reason to stop the progression of this incremental intelligence other than he can't mentally comprehend a God-like intelligence existing. Therefore the atheist is forced to compare the concept of God to absurd concepts like flying spaghetti monsters to justify his reasoning in what should be a perfectly logical concept.

Atheists illogically and irrationally put a cap on the intelligence/attribute levels of all life that can possibly exist, and do so without ever giving an explanation why a God-like intelligence can not exist or is highly unlikely to exist. In fact the only logical reason someone has to put a cap on the intelligence levels in the universe, is if a life form knows all that can be possibly be known, thus is all knowing and can't know any more

Therefore true atheism (not agnosticism) is an illogical concept

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Any post that begins ... 'Let me first define true atheism' is nothing more than pseudo-intellectual masturbation.

Bin.

MM

[Bad Wolf]

IDscience I asked this a few pages back but you must have missed it.
Lets say there is a jar of sweets, neither of us knows how many are in there.
If I told you that the amount of sweets in the jar was even, would you believe me?
If you don't believe my claim, then does that mean that you think the amount of sweets is odd?

[Whateverist]

Now, suppose we have our cat in the box. Without any experiment that I can be aware of, you tell me that the cat is dead.

See, if you'd made it a dog in a box you would have elicited some fucks from me. But I'm afraid my apathy toward the status of the cat is only surpassed by my disinterest in the status of 'gods'.

[pocaracas]

Now, suppose we have our cat in the box. Without any experiment that I can be aware of, you tell me that the cat is dead.

See, if you'd made it a dog in a box you would have elicited some fucks from me. But I'm afraid my apathy toward the status of the cat is only surpassed by my disinterest in the status of 'gods'.

pfffff.... dog-people!

[Esquilax]

Yes I do know what you believe if you adhere to proper definitions, and I can prove it

Only if you completely screw up in recognizing what you're actually defining.

Atheism is famous for equating the concept of God with flying spaghetti monsters, invisible pink unicorns, etc.. Now if this comparison holds valid in your own mind, you should be able to positively assert the same thing about God as you do about theses other fictional characters, or anything else you claim you don't believe

You understand that the reason that comparison exists is because there is the same level of evidence for god as for those other things, right? It's an illustrative point to show how ridiculous the excuses people use for believing in god are, once you remove the veneer of social acceptability that religion has. It's not some literal position.

But as you've consistently failed to recognize, when we're discussing atheism and theism we aren't talking about the literal existence of god, which you've rightly pointed out has only two positions. We're talking about our belief in that being, of which there are multiple additional positions you seem desperate not to see. Lacking belief being just one of them, in addition to belief and denial to varying degrees.

Instead of simply understanding this relatively easy point, you insist on screaming that other people just believe what you want them to, as though you can actually change a person's mind just by telling them what would be easier for your argument. But surely you're smart enough to know it doesn't work that way, or am I being too optimistic there?

Your problem is, you either lie to yourself about Gods existence, or lie about the absurd comparisons to
known fictional characters. I believe its the former, you believe God exists, but willfully lie to yourself for convenience sake.

Rejecting somethings existence equates accepting its non-existence, and vice versa. because the law of non contradiction dictates something can't both exist and not exist at the same time.

But when we're talking about my beliefs, we aren't talking about whether god exists. We're talking about whether I believe that god exists, a position of opinion, not objective reality. How hard is that to get through your skull?

Therefore according to the law of non contradiction, God can't exist and not exist at the same time, therefore if you don't believe God exists -Just as with spaghetti monsters and invisible unicorns- you must believe God does not exist because the final outcome of your equation equates GOD DOES NOT EXIST.

The law of non contradiction affects objectively real objects, not one's opinions or beliefs about them.

Yes it is my criteria, because the only thing that is needed to prove (the belief in) theism correct and (the belief in) atheism incorrect is an intelligence capable of creating a universe and all life it in, nothing more. And you have given no argument against a God-like intellect from existing, therefore your post is nothing more than arrogant insults with no explanatory value. Angry rhetoric is not competing in a debate

So, you're intent on just shifting the burden of proof? You don't have to demonstrate your claim, but if I can't refute it then I'm irrational for not believing it?

Oh, no wait: I'm irrational if I hold your strawman version of atheism- which I don't- and don't believe it. I guess since I'm a real person capable of defining my own beliefs and not your fucking puppet, I'm in the clear.

Lets reword that to. "I don't need to provide any positive evidence for other superior life in the universe, but unless you can provide comprehensive evidence that other superior life in the universe does not exist, your position is irrational!"

That's still a true statement; believing in a thing without evidence is irrational.

Now you should see where your argument falls apart. You don't need positive evidence to believe in other life in the universe, and you don;t need positive evidence to believe in other superior life in the universe. You use logical inferences and mathematical odds to make that leap of faith. The difference between theists and atheists is, theists don;t irrationally cap intellect and attribute levels of all life that can possibly exist, so that it is less than God-like

Oh, you're one of those.

Sorry, but logical inferences and probabilities derived from zero data beyond the number of planets is not sufficient justification for believing that aliens literally exist. It is sufficient to justify accepting the possibility that they exist, but without some demonstration of objective reality, bridging the gap between a possibility and true belief is irrational. The same is true of god, and your problems with atheism are based around your dishonest misrepresentations of that position, and not what we actually believe.

Just as the unimaginably small atom was proven to mimic a solar system -a concept that would have been laughably ridiculous 200 years ago-, the entire universe can also be a "single cell" in a much larger system. Your problem is your mental scope is extremely narrow and limited in its ability to comprehend the fact that, SIZE HAS NO RELEVNCE at all to the potential existence of a system or a life form or intelligence. Now expand your mind and comprehend what I just said. And you can start this mental expansion by researching “universal fractals”. Everything that exists, patterns, systems,, and life, exist on unimaginably small and large scales.

And when you can actually demonstrate this to be a real, true thing that is actually happening and not some inductive postulate, guess what? I'll believe it. Same deal with your god. You're just totally failing to provide the same level of evidence that you could easily provide for, say, a pack of playing cards.

First, I don't need evidence for my claim for it to be rational.

Yes, you do.

Just as the multiverse of inflationary cosmology and the “many worlds” of quantum physics do not need evidence of their existence to be a rational concept.

Yes, they do. That's why they're merely hypotheses right now, because they don't have a sufficient level of evidence to justify belief. They may not even be rational concepts, once we know more, which is why nobody believes in them to the extent that you believe in your god.

If one universe exists, many or endless other universe all with different attributes/constants can also logically exist, and this is based solely on inference

How have you determined, beyond your own baseless flight of fancy, that there are no limitations on the kinds of universes that can form?

And I have logical inferences for my position, a fact that has blown right over your head. Life exists here, therefore life can exist elsewhere.

Whoa, hold on. That absolutely does not follow at all. Life existing here is only indicative that life can exist here, but since we have no idea of how life formed on earth it could very well be that the conditions that led to the beginning of life no longer exist anywhere in the universe. There are plenty of additional checks you'd need to do, you can't just leap from "life exists on earth," to "life could therefore exist elsewhere." Aside from wishful thinking, what reason do you have to believe that?

Varying degrees of life with varying degrees of attributes and intellects exist here, therefore varying degrees of life with varying degrees of attributes and intellects is a logical possibility and can't be ruled out of existence.

How have you determined that omniscience and universe creating, two skills that we have no reason to believe are even logically possible- and omniscience in particular is not logically possible- but are attributes of god, can actually arise?

Incidentally, I think I've spotted yet another flaw in your plan: life arising requires a universe to already exist. Which means that any god that exists, under your own arguments, did not create the universe, but arose in it. Therefore, not god, as universal origins are a definitional part of god. Unless you're going to assert that god didn't need a universe to exist, or existed in a different one, in which case your inductive arguments can be used against you; we've never seen a being exist without a universe, therefore we can't imagine that it's possible. We've never seen life arising in another universe, therefore we can't imagine it's possible.

If all your inferences, which your position hinges on, are about things taking place in this universe, then by necessity any god you want to posit must also have arisen within this universe, or else falls victim to the problem of what we haven't seen, according to your own premises.

If we find an statue of an elephant on mars, do I need observable evidence of the potential designer or the design process to assume a designer could exist?. No I do not. And proving the existence of the elephants designer is unfalsifiable, yet ID is not rejected based on logical inferences of design. Now if you want to be inundated with "appearance of design" quotes from evolutionary science, ill be happy to give them to you.

How do we recognize design? Because I bet your answer to that question will be really revealing.

Did I say that?. No. I said because its logically possible, it can't be rejected as atheism does. If God is logically possible, it then goes without saying to reject what can be logically possible is illogical in its self, just as rejecting all other possible life in the universe (big or small) is illogical.

But according to your own argument, god is not logically possible.

And atheism doesn't necessarily reject god anyway, beyond your outright lies. You may want to watch it, with lying like that; see, we have a thing called Rule One here, you can see it on the rules page, and if you keep breaking it you may end up reported. I'd hate for that to happen, in place of a productive conversation. So just... stop lying about us, maybe?

Oh but you do, because you believe a primordial soup gave rise to a single cell, and a single cell gave rise to progressively more intelligent life forms with a wider range of attributes. Therefore your own theory (if true) indicates it is "physically possible".

When did I tell you my position on the origins of life? Oh, I didn't? Then I guess you must be talking out of your ass, huh?

Besides, you're making another enormous leap of logic here. "Abiogenesis is possible," does not lead to "omniscience and creation ex nihilo are possible." How the hell are you even getting there? What makes you think that intelligence can scale up to the point of knowing everything? What in the universe even hints at that being the case? You only have one species of human-like intelligence to even go off of; one example is not a sufficient sample size from which to draw these conclusions.

I observe a wide range of intellects co-existing, thus logically assume a wide range can exist throughout the universe, and beyond. Which is independent of how they became a wide range of intellects.

Using that logic one could just as easily assert that since the wide range of intellects that we see never surpasses human intellect, that human intellect is the upper end of that range of intellects. See how inferences based on extremely limited observations can bite both ways?

[downbeatplumb]

If you don't believe Santa exists, you must believe Santa does not exist

I have a twin brother, or do I.
What do you "believe".
No clues.

[LastPoet]

Let me first define true atheism (...)

All we wanted to know is an understandable definition of god (or gods)...

[Mister Agenda]

To pick a nit, not all agnostics are atheists. Many are theists.

How can you lack belief in a god and be a theist?

The definition of 'agnostic' is not 'lacks belief in a god'. That's the definition of an atheist. An agnostic lacks knowledge of a god. Belief is a different axis. An agnostic atheist doesn't know and doesn't believe. An agnostic theist doesn't know but believes anyway. There's no requirement that a theist be without doubt or even be very sure, only that they think a god at least probably exists, even if they acknowledge that it's something of which they can't have knowledge. Reading the Bible didn't make me an atheist, it made me an agnostic theist: I still believed in God but no longer believed the Bible had good information on that being, and I didn't consider it a fact, just my opinion. Just as I now consider there probably being no God my opinion, not a fact.

To pick a nit, not all agnostics are atheists. Many are theists.

How can you lack belief in a god and be a theist? Or do you mean they believe in god but aren't sure?

Pretty much, yes. There are a lot of people willing to admit that they believe on faith, not knowledge. We have a tendency to get theist visitors who aren't content with that, but millions are fine with that uncertainty.

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I can prove the philosophy of atheism is an invalid proposition, because nothing prohibits a life form with the attributes of a God from existing, other than the atheists inability to comprehend the concept of BIG LIFE.

Atheism is neither a philosophy nor a proposition. It is a state of being. The state of not having a belief that any deities are real in the sense of being actual entities with supernatural powers.

Therefore my argument does not make theism true, but make atheism irrational.

You can't even comprehend what atheism is, which isn't exactly rocket surgery.

Just as its irrational to reject any other life in the universe. But this also does not mean there is other life in the universe, but only proves rational and irrational propositions about what life forms can and can not exist.

It's irrational to reject the possibility of other life in the universe, because we know it happened once. But it's not particularly ratonal to be 100% certain it exists, given that we do not know the odds of abiogenesis. It's reasonable to think it's more likely than not given what we already know, but certainty is not yet warranted based on only one example: life on earth. Certainty is even less warranted in the domain of other extant civilizations existing. We have no idea what the odds of a life-bearing planet giving rise to a technological civilization are, it could be one in a billion, or one in a universe for all we know.

Regarding God, I am an agnostic nonbeliever, regarding life elsewhere I am an agnostic believer.

[ManMachine]

Not believing there is a purple monster under the bridge = believing there is not a purple monster under the bridge
Not believing the moon is made of cheese = believing the moon is not made of cheese
Not believing species were intelligently designed = believing species were not intelligently designed
Not believing invisible unicorns exist = believing invisible unicorns do not exist

And this grade school principle of semantics can be demonstrated true in all other cases. Its only when the atheist adds the term God to the sentence, that they suddenly lose the ability to understand semantics 101. Which tells me atheists are not that bright to begin with, or they really don't believe God does not exist, but lie to themselves for personal reasons

I think you're mixing belief with reality.
Yes, in reality either the cake exists or it doesn't.

However, my belief over the existence of the cake has more than two states.

I'll give you an example straight out of Quantum mechanics.

In QM, particles exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behaviors.
But you can only experiment on one kind of behavior at a time and, when you do, that particle then always exhibits that same type of behavior.
This means that you can't test for both behaviors in series, because the second experiment in the series will fail. And does fail.
Because of this, it is said that each particle has, simultaneously, both behaviors, until an actual experiment is performed which then attributes only one behavior to the particle.
To try to convey this strange concept to the rest of the community, Schrödinger came up with the cat in a box thought experiment.
This box is closed and contains a cat, a living cat. in the box is some apparatus that can, at a non-deterministic time, kill the cat. It doesn't really matter how the cat is killed, all that we know is that from out of the box, there is no way of knowing if the cat is dead - no sound, no movement, no nothing.... we have to open the box and see if it is dead or alive. This is the experiment part which then settles the matter.

Now, suppose we have our cat in the box. Without any experiment that I can be aware of, you tell me that the cat is dead.
I have no way of ascertaining if it is dead or not. I know you also have no way of ascertaining that. So I cannot believe your claim that the cat is dead. This does not mean that I believe the cat to be alive.
Had you claimed that the cat was alive, I would also not be able to believe it.
I'd be in a state of unknowing whether the cat is dead or alive.

The reality is twofold - either the cat is dead or alive.
The belief in the claim made by a person with no access the the information regarding the state of the cat is not so twofold - I can believe it, if I see you as an expert way beyond my abilities; I can see you as a rookie, while I know better that, after a given amount of time, it is likely that the cat is in a particular state, hence I'd believe that it is in that state... or I can withhold judgement and believe neither.

Considering the inability to actually know about the cat's health, it seems that the more reasonable approach is to withhold judgement until experimentation yields an answer.

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we all know the cake is a lie!

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You have so missed the point of the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment.

The point is to establish the existence of a superposition, the cat is in a state of being both alive and dead at the same time, not one or the other.




MM