Atheism -"No God, "religion has no validity"

[robvalue]

Sure yes, that's a good point, we don't know if time really "works" how it appears to.

But the idea of a cause seems to be necessarily bound to the idea of a "before" state, which relies on linear time. I suppose once you abandon that model, causes fail to be a coherent concept in a more complex model.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Got into a small debate with someone over atheism, thought i'd come here for some advice:

I said i'm an atheist. He responds and said he could never be one because atheism says there is absolutely no god and nothing created the universe. I disagreed with that definition and said that I'm pretty sure the only absolute claim that atheism makes is that Religion has no validity, no credibility in any sort of cosmological debate, that religion is made-up and the gods of those religions are made-up. As for cosmology, I said, most atheists leave that question to science.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this argument. Should i not have argued and accepted his definition of atheism? Was I wrong in my definition? Does such a claim warrant a correction? Or were we both splitting hairs?

His definition is a deliberate strawman. There are some atheists who feel that way, but I believe they're in the minority. I'm replying to your OP without having read the thread so I may well be wrong -- at least here -- but if you take one thing away from this thread, I'd say, don't worry about how anyone defines atheism. If he wants to define it unrealistically, let him harvest the fruit of his own poor planting.

If this asshole wants to impute views to you which you don't hold, let him do that, and surprise him with views he hadn't considered, planned for, or perhaps even conceived. Mental judo, in a manner of speaking. Let him overstate his argument, and undermine it by giving it a fair but sturdy hearing.

[wiploc]

I don't know of any reason to believe that eternal things are uncaused.

I don't want to play a semantics game, but my interpretation is that something eternal has no beginning, and so there is no BEFORE to its existence. Thus if something could be eternal, then it would have no cause. Cause necessarily entails a before state.

Here's how I think of it:

I'm here today, because I was here yesterday. My present presence was caused by my past presence.

It would be the same with eternal things. An eternal hamburger would be here today because it was here yesterday. It was here yesterday because it was here the day before. And so on. Each moment of presence was caused by the moment before. So the burger continues.

So, every moment of the thing's existence is caused, except for the first moment. But eternal things have no first moment. Every moment is caused, and we never run out of moments.

[emilynghiem]

Sure yes, that's a good point, we don't know if time really "works" how it appears to.

But the idea of a cause seems to be necessarily bound to the idea of a "before" state, which relies on linear time. I suppose once you abandon that model, causes fail to be a coherent concept in a more complex model.

Hi Rob why can't things be co-causal?

Like if Thomas Jefferson and Founding Fathers meditated and prayed over what Americans would need to have documented in the Declaration and the Constitution/Bill of Rights, to establish a working democratic system of due process that can reform govt over time, so that we the future generations "influenced" what they did in the past and what words they wrote "inspired" by what we need in the future; and likewise what we do in the future is inspired and based on what these ancestors did or said or wrote in the past.

So our relationship can be "co-causal" where past influences future, and future influences the past.
==============================
Personal note:
Sorry I just have a thing for Thomas Jefferson, which I blame on some karma that "he didn't finish" that landed on me. I guess when playing musical chairs, I didn't move my ass fast enough and got stuck with the really bad slavery/Constitutional hypocrite BS to have to fix in this lifetime. Not sure where it comes from, but for some reason I have this drive to resolve "church-state" Constitutional issues that isn't from anything I studied in school, in fact I avoided studying it because I had not interest at all but an aversion to religion or politics and just had it forced on me and had to deal with it.

I may post some things I wrote from this "Jefferson" mindset under Buddhism if it counts as karma from "past life soulmates". I don't think I "was Jefferson in a past life" but just think I have this "spiritual connection" to him or other founding fathers that left some messes that still need to be cleaned up. When I started volunteering in Freedmen's Town, and all the leftover "karma" was still repeating in a vicious cycle, that's when I got consciously drawn into this against my will, really. I keep hoping this "Constitutional kick" is just a fundamentalist phase I will pass through like bad cramps or kidney stones and get it out of my system....

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Sure yes, that's a good point, we don't know if time really "works" how it appears to.

But the idea of a cause seems to be necessarily bound to the idea of a "before" state, which relies on linear time. I suppose once you abandon that model, causes fail to be a coherent concept in a more complex model.

Also Rob, what a monk pointed out using a frog as an example:
the frog's eye is already "designed" to see insects and plants that are necessary for its survival. This starts happening while the frog is still forming in the egg. But the other insects and plants in the ecosystem are forming "simultaneously" not before/after.

So this example is used to explain "interconnectedness" of life.
And no you don't have to believe in any God to recognize how the elements co-influence each other, and the point is to seek balance.

[Lek]

Yeah, things get a bit weird when you talk about eternal things. For something to have proceeded an eternal universe, it must have caused the universe "giving" it an eternal past, or perhaps putting it in a state where it mimics a universe that actually has had an eternal past. Like a saved game state.

I'm not sure how else it could work.

Nothing could have preceded an eternal universe because it never had a beginning to precede.

[Simon Moon]

Got into a small debate with someone over atheism, thought i'd come here for some advice:

I said i'm an atheist. He responds and said he could never be one because atheism says there is absolutely no god and nothing created the universe. I disagreed with that definition and said that I'm pretty sure the only absolute claim that atheism makes is that Religion has no validity, no credibility in any sort of cosmological debate, that religion is made-up and the gods of those religions are made-up. As for cosmology, I said, most atheists leave that question to science.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this argument. Should i not have argued and accepted his definition of atheism? Was I wrong in my definition? Does such a claim warrant a correction? Or were we both splitting hairs?

As far as I know, very few atheists claim to know, with absolute certainty, that no gods exist.

Your friend is creating a straw man by defining atheism his way, then arguing against that definition.

As far as how the universe came into existence, or more accurately, how it got to its present state, is a separate issue from atheism.

An atheist does not have to have any specific explanation for the existence of the universe. Simply not accepting the theist explanation is more than adequate.

[robvalue]

Yeah, things get a bit weird when you talk about eternal things. For something to have proceeded an eternal universe, it must have caused the universe "giving" it an eternal past, or perhaps putting it in a state where it mimics a universe that actually has had an eternal past. Like a saved game state.

I'm not sure how else it could work.

Nothing could have preceded an eternal universe because it never had a beginning to precede.

Interesting. I was trying to help you out So if science demonstrated the universe is eternal, your faith is done?

[Lek]

Nothing could have preceded an eternal universe because it never had a beginning to precede.

Interesting. I was trying to help you out So if science demonstrated the universe is eternal, your faith is done?

I'm open to all possibilities. It would make re-examine my beliefs, since God is eternal and he is the creator.

[Mister Agenda]

The universe may have always existed though, and as such would require no cause.

I don't understand that claim. I know that Christians make that claim about their god, but it seems arbitrary.

Suppose we discovered that a hamburger had always existed: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, all on a sesame seed bun. Wouldn't you want an explanation? Wouldn't you want to know what had caused that to always exist?

It seems to me that something that has always existed doesn't have a cause, by definition.

I don't know of any reason to believe that eternal things are uncaused.

Because there was never a time that an eternal thing did not exist, it must be uncaused.

cause/kôz/
noun
1.a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition.

[Brian37]

Got into a small debate with someone over atheism, thought i'd come here for some advice:

I said i'm an atheist. He responds and said he could never be one because atheism says there is absolutely no god and nothing created the universe. I disagreed with that definition and said that I'm pretty sure the only absolute claim that atheism makes is that Religion has no validity, no credibility in any sort of cosmological debate, that religion is made-up and the gods of those religions are made-up. As for cosmology, I said, most atheists leave that question to science.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this argument. Should i not have argued and accepted his definition of atheism? Was I wrong in my definition? Does such a claim warrant a correction? Or were we both splitting hairs?

I call myself an "agnostic atheist", but the "agnostic" part of that is actually in a strict semantic technical sense. "Technically" I have not lived my entire future so I cant say what evidence might change my mind. I can say currently in my lucid state I don't see myself changing my position. I do currently hold that all religions and god claims are a result of human's flawed perceptions and neither religion or god claims are required to explain anything in nature and all are made up.

Religion is really nothing more than humans making excuses to set up social pecking orders. It turns our natural behavior to be cruel or compassionate and turns it into a cartoon super hero vs a cartoon super villain. Our species ability to be cruel or compassionate is in our evolution, not the human concocted books of myth and invisible sky heros.