Nature's Laws

[Thumpalumpacus]

"Some people" should probably study the theory they're making gals claims about.

Also, I notice you're still trafficking in circular reasoning.

And finally quit telling others what they believe and why. It's obnoxious, arrogant, and rude.

[nihilistcat]

Hello everyone!  I'm a new member to AF.  First, a tiny introductory note just to let you know a little about me.  I was an atheist from about age 15 to 27.  I came from a very strict baptist family background, and I guess you could say that I was somewhat oppressed by my strict religious upbringing.  So I rebelled against my parents, my religion, and God.  At the age of 27, one of my friends loaned me a book called "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" by Josh McDowell.  That book changed my views completely.  Since then I've seen lots of additional reasons to believe in the God of the bible.

The universe is orderly and purposeful in certain ways.  How could impersonal stuff like matter and energy "obey" laws of any kind?  Where do the laws of nature and the laws of logic come from?  If there is no god, why do so many atheists care so much about the non-existence of a supposedly fictional deity?  Please don't take any offense to my words.  I'm not trying to offend anyone here.  I'm just asking a few questions that seem to be fair.

Where do laws of nature come from? Well, from man of course. At one level, science is descriptive (not prescriptive). We make observations, like everything undergoes entropy, and we use that observation to formulate a law. How can impersonal things (inanimate matter) obey laws? Well, there's uncertainty in nature (we even devised a theorem called the uncertainty principle to describe this feature of nature). So matter doesn't always obey fixed laws. Sometimes particles jump in unexpected ways, but we can calculate the probability of these occurrences. In other cases, like entropy, violation of the law has never been observed (so we call it a law). 

What is a gram? God didn't tell us how to quantify nature, we simply made up measuring techniques. So in the case of the gram, it's one cubic centimeter of pure water. Again, this is something we just contrived. 

Where did the universe come from? We have some ideas (very good ideas in some cases), but at the moment we're not completely sure. Past generations channeled their uncertainty into ideas like supernatural agency. But then as science demystified one thing after the other, we stopped attributing what we do not yet understand to supernatural agency (i.e. a god of the gaps fallacy). 

So your reasoning here is pretty common. It seems like the universe is a well oiled machine, but most astronomers would disagree (the universe is actually quite chaotic). Do you know that a black hole can sneak up on us, undetected until it's almost swallowing our solar system, and we would not be able to do a thing to save ourselves. But was it god who created the black hole? God is certainly not necessary (we understand how black holes are formed, no supernatural intervention required). 

Likewise, we contrived laws of logic (thinkers like Aristotle basically invented logic). Yeah there's intuition behind logic, so where did our intuition come from? Well, intuition is not a magical force, and it can be explained by natural selection. I can go on and on here, but hopefully you see my point? 

[Simon Moon]

No, I'm not saying that what only some atheists do is to be considered diagnostic of all those who call themselves atheists.  The word, "atheism" (until fairly recently) used to mean:

a :  a disbelief in the existence of deity

b :  the doctrine that there is no deity

In recent years, it seems that a different definition has appeared:

a lack of belief in deities.

I'm not sure that I understand the meaning of the second definition, but under the "old" definition, "atheism" is clearly a dogmatic belief in stark contrast with skepticism.

How does the first definition contradict 'lack of belief'?

Lack of belief is disbelief. 

The second definition is used mostly by theists to try to define atheists positions for them, instead of listening to atheists themselves. The main reason why it is incorrect, is because atheism has no doctrine.

By the way, you do know that the original use of 'atheist' was by the Greeks to describe Christians, right?

[Mudhammam]

  Religions are quite often just another powerful means by which to control people. 

What is religion if it isn't that? If religion was just some privately held belief that inspired a person, even if it was a delusional or patently false belief, it wouldn't be correct to call it 'religion' in my view. It's when this belief, without justification, demands that everyone else recognize it as fact, that it becomes religious---and this is the case with every single "holy" book that man has ever produced.

---

By the way, you do know that the original use of 'atheist' was by the Greeks to describe Christians, right?

I don't think so; maybe the Romans used it against the Christians' impiety towards the state religion but as far as I know the first accusations of "atheism" go back to 5th century Greece. Anaxagoras and Socrates were accused of atheism (the latter most definitely falsely), and then there was Theodorus the Atheist (possibly in the true sense) and Diagoras "The Atheist" of Melos, who, according to Cicero,

when Diagoras, he who is called ἄθεος, having come to Samothrace, was asked by one of his friends whether he who thought that the gods were careless of human affairs, did not perceive from so many painted tablets how many there were whose vows had enabled them to escape the fury of the storm, and to make their way safe into port, “That is so,” he replied, “because there are no pictures anywhere of those who have been shipwrecked and have perished in the sea”. Once also when he was on a voyage, and the passengers, alarmed and terrified by adverse storms, said to him that they deserved to fare as they did for having taken him on board the same ship, he pointed out to them several other ships struggling in the same course, and asked whether they believed that those also had a Diagoras on board.

 ἄθεος  - http://biblehub.com/greek/112.htm

[Whateverist]

If my agnostic leanings mean I have to give up the "atheist" moniker, perhaps I'll coin my own. Put me down as an "a-give-a-shit'ist".

[Simon Moon]

---

By the way, you do know that the original use of 'atheist' was by the Greeks to describe Christians, right?

I don't think so; maybe the Romans used it against the Christians' impiety towards the state religion but as far as I know the first accusations of "atheism" go back to 5th century Greece. Anaxagoras and Socrates were accused of atheism (the latter most definitely falsely), and then there was Theodorus the Atheist (possibly in the true sense) and Diagoras "The Atheist" of Melos, who, according to Cicero,

when Diagoras, he who is called ἄθεος, having come to Samothrace, was asked by one of his friends whether he who thought that the gods were careless of human affairs, did not perceive from so many painted tablets how many there were whose vows had enabled them to escape the fury of the storm, and to make their way safe into port, “That is so,” he replied, “because there are no pictures anywhere of those who have been shipwrecked and have perished in the sea”. Once also when he was on a voyage, and the passengers, alarmed and terrified by adverse storms, said to him that they deserved to fare as they did for having taken him on board the same ship, he pointed out to them several other ships struggling in the same course, and asked whether they believed that those also had a Diagoras on board.

 ἄθεος  - http://biblehub.com/greek/112.htm

You're are correct, Romans, not Greeks.

"It is ironic that in the Roman Empire, one of the accusations brought against the early Christians was that they were Atheists," Historian Dr. Augustus Neander and Historian John L. von Mosheim commented. 

[Freedom4me]

Dude, "Darwinism" isn't a thing.  It's a word made up by people who don't know anything about evolutionary biology.

Also, since I literally lack belief in gods, what would you call me if not an atheist?

I'm still not sure that I understand the concepts of "lack belief".  

---

No, I'm not saying that what only some atheists do is to be considered diagnostic of all those who call themselves atheists.  The word, "atheism" (until fairly recently) used to mean:

a :  a disbelief in the existence of deity

b :  the doctrine that there is no deity
. . . . . . . . .
I'm not sure that I understand the meaning of the second definition, but under the "old" definition, "atheism" is clearly a dogmatic belief in stark contrast with skepticism.

Which you were referring to is unclear, but even under the old definition, 'a', atheism aligns with skepticism.  Skepticism is the withholding of belief until such reason is given that compels assent.  The 'a' definition is just the codification of the skeptical result, namely disbelief.  If that's true, it seems you are spreading a partial definition to cover a whole.  Beyond that, words change over time; why are we stuck on a previous definition of the word?  That's courting the genetic fallacy.

I think I understand the older definition and so I tend to use it to the exclusion of the other definition.  

[Cyberman]

It's similar to lacking anything else. This may be tmi, but at the moment I am lacking clothes - it's perfectly above board, it's nearly 4 am and I'm in bed. We were all born lacking clothing; that's something which we adopt later. If you lived in a culture in which nakedness was the norm, you would probably find the idea of clothing as much an alien concept as I and many atheists find the idea of belief in gods.

[robvalue]

I go into a lot of detail on my website here, about exactly what atheism means:

http://robvalue.wix.com/atheism#!what-is-atheism/c57k

[rexbeccarox]

Dude, "Darwinism" isn't a thing.  It's a word made up by people who don't know anything about evolutionary biology.

Also, since I literally lack belief in gods, what would you call me if not an atheist?

I'm still not sure that I understand the concepts of "lack belief".  

"Lack belief" totals two really simple words. I can't possibly explain it any more simply.