Conflicts for Atheism- something to think about
Offline Maybe you can "sticky" this too for the Atheist, seeing that you have anti-Theism and anti-Christian posts along the same lines...maybe even it out a little; if you acknowledge freedom of speech and promotion of thought anyway...
Keep in mind, I'm not trying to convert anyone. I am not trying to argue. I am not even stating my own beliefs. I am simply giving you some things to think about.
Some Problems with Atheism:
The term G-D.
Atheism= greek: A=no Thesim=god; therefore Atheism is No-G-D, not just No-christian G-D, or No-Islam G-D, etc... it is clearly NO-G-D.
G-D=One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed. (American Heritage Dictionary)
So G-D is NOT JUST a creator, and NOT JUST a saviour, G-D is anything you worship, idealize, or follow- if you follow this thing you must also trust it or be submissive to it.
If G-D is anything you worship or follow (submit to or trust) then nobody is an Atheist because everyone follows something. Maybe you obey social laws, therefore social laws are your god.
Maybe you worship Dawkins, then Dawkins is your god, or at the very bottom of the spectrum, maybe you worship or only follow yourself; that means you are your own god, and if you are your own god one thing is clear, you are NOT an Atheist.
You can not simply assume all gods are the same or even supernatural, etc... To do so is to ignore the full context. Maybe you don't believe in a creator, but a creator is not the only type of god.
The Problem of Absolute Knowledge:
In order to be an Atheist or atleast believe there is no Biblical concept of G-D, you must either A) Know there is No-G-D or B) Have faith in atheism.
However this is the oldest argument in the book.
In order to Know without a doubt there is no G-D you would have to know absolutely everything about the entire universe, BUT if you knew everything about the entire universe you would have to be omniscient. If you are omniscient you have now takin on one of the very characteristics you have sought to disprove, therefore contradicting your orignal question.
OR
If you admit it is just a faith, well then how can you criticize a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc... for having faith in a G-D, you have the same type of faith, just in the opposite direction. Therefore to call them stupid for having faith is to call yourself stupidf or having faith. You are both only believing by faith.
The Kalam Argument:
The Big Bang Theory is the top held scientific concept for the Universes Origin.
The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was CREATED sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html
Kalam:
Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
Then one must ask, "What causes an act?" Obviously an agent does. Well then, what causes an agent to act? Even more so in this situation, where did the agent come from? As Norman Geisler noted " To suppose something can pop into existence out of nothing goes against all scientific observance and rationality." The Kalam argument and Big Bang Theory leave us wondering about the initial cause, what agent was there and where did it come from?
The Problem of Purpose:
What purpose does Atheism leave us with? Atheism infact leaves us to look towards nihilism. With no purpose, how does one discern between good & bad, right and wrong? Nothing would be the greater good, but all would be equally meaningless. If everything is equally meaningless, then why even live (nihilism). To continue to live would be in contradiction to your own belief. If you believe that truth is relative then you have an another problem. If truth is relative then everything is right and wrong at any given time. Therefore Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism are all correct and there is no point to say any Theist is wrong. Besides, to hold that truth is relative would mean that the statement that truth is itself relative and therefore sometimes truth is absolute. Otherwise, the statement that truth is relative is an absolute showing again truth is absolute. However, if there are absolutes, then purposeless atheism leaves us without a way to define good and bad, right and wrong.
One may claim that Atheism leaves us with the purpose to evolve. Well how do we know humanity is good? Where does the human get its value? Maybe humanity shouldn't be continued. Perhaps we could take the Nietzschean outlook on it and practice a sort of "Social Darwinism." However, Hitler put this theory into practice and look at how Hitler was responded to and is now viewed. Perhaps one could claim that we are to live for ourselves and do what is good for us, but perhaps for me it is good to kill as many people as I can, but how would this be good for them? What gives me right to kill them and take away their rights? What gives them the right not to be killed and take away my right to kill?
You get the point- Atheism leaves us without Purpose and Ethics...
The Metaphysical Problem:
Nihilism: A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
Science can not answer metaphysical questions. Atheism gives no answers to metaphysical problems other than to be the leading path to nihilism. In short, this leads to the end of
free-thinking, because Atheism concludes that there is no after-life (which can't be scientifically proven either way). Atheism concludes there is no G-D (which also can't be scientifically proven either way). Atheism leads to a lack of purpose, so why even continue to think, it is meaningless to find answers anyway. Relativity of truth or skepticism also leads to the hault of thinking:
Philosophy-from Greek philosophiā, from philosophos, lover of wisdom.
Wisdom-accumulated knowledge or erudition or enlightenment
Knowledge- acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition.
(All American Heritage Dictionary)
The Point: If one believes there to be no absolute truth or no way of knowing if there even is truth; then one can know this for sure, he is not a philosopher. To be a philosopher is to love wisdom, which is knowledge, which is truth. Therefore to be a philosopher you must assume a truth can be reached meaning anyone who is agnostic of truth can not a philosopher because their assumption is that one can not know.
Atheism is unlivable:
True Atheism is unlivable because it leads to nihilism which basically leads to meaninglessness. Why then would we communicate, no truth will ever be found. Why would we attempt to love, love is not even there. Why think, no answers will be found. Why even live, life is simply a meaningless pursuit to nothing that will never mean anything.
Think now: Do you live life this way? If so, how do you make decisions, nothing you can do can be of greater benefit even to yourself, all is meaningless. Why are you reading this, it is pointless anyway... Why do you communicate, isn't communication to get across points and ideas, but if those points and ideas are meaningless, why even bother? You can't say its fun, because what is fun anyway? If fun is whats good and we can't define good, there is no way to define fun... You aren't learning, everything means nothing so you are simply learning nothing.
Atheism is intellectual suicide.
A final quote to think upon:
But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 1909
I will also explain my name, since I am sure you have jumped to a million conclusions by now.
A Fool Curses G-D.
If you don't believe in G-D and you curse Him, you look foolish for cursing what you don't think is there, and yet if you believe G-D is there cursing Him is equally as foolish, because to curse G-D is to curse your very idea of means to a good life.
I'm not claiming these are all the conflicts or even the worst conflicts; but they are some to think about.
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doesn't require omniscience. They have a rational method for arriving at their belief. Faith isn't required. 
Pronunciation: -'lEv
*sigh* I know you're new here, but if you read around the site a bit, arguments like this have already been discussed. I, and most of the people here, DO NOT claim to know beyond a doubt that there is no god.
I don't know much greek, but Theos=god. Theism is a BELIEF in a god or gods. Atheist = no belief in a god or gods. This is the common usage of atheism around here.
Peace.
Not only do you not know what an atheist is, you don't even know what a god is. According to your definition you're a fool for not believing in Richard Dawkins since he is a god to some people. Or are you going to ignore the full context?
Actually your position leads naturally to nihilism. If god is omnipotent he can change the value of anything at any time so everything must be subjective and you have no basis for knowing anything including whether or not god exists. So your life must be meaningless and completely devoid of all value and utterly hopeless because even if you wanted to know anything the existence of god would preclude that knowledge.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Another thing, A Fool Curses G-D. You claim that atheism leads to a meaningless life, a life without purpose, a life not worth living. Well I have some questions for you.
As a theist what do you say the purpose of life is? How would one learn this purpose? If there's no cosmic, god-given purpose for our lives, why do our lives automatically become not worth living? Why can't we give purpose and meaning to our own lives?
I'd really like to know. I'm serious.
What are your own beliefs?
Why do you write it like that? Why not God? or god? or any other permutation of capital letters?
I would hazard a guess that most, if not every, atheist who posts regularly on this site has seen these objections before and found them to be completely lacking in substance. If I had a dime for everytime someone tried to save my soul with bad logic and anti-humanist rhetoric I'd have a house made entirely of dimes.
That is just utter crap. No one uses god in this context. Come on, try to stay within reason. It is undeserving of response.
In this case, it requires faith to not believe that we are all actually dolphins who have been brainwashed by Volkswagon Bugs to think that we are humans and that humans are dolphins, and in reality, Volkswagon Bugs are the most intelligent form of life. Now, since we are non-omniscient this and an infinite number of other things are equally possible and all require faith to not believe. Wow, how could I have missed such a reasoned conclusion?
The big bang is not an explosion. It is an exspansion. There is a difference.
The big bang says nothing about where the universe in singularity form came from only about the expansion of it into what we observe as the universe today. For all anybody knows the universe has always existed. At the very least, since the universe contains all of space and all of time we can say the is everything that has ever existed for all time. We really can't say anything else with any accuracy.
Leaving that aside, can you show me something else that began to exist in the way the universe exists on which we can base the statement that everything that begins to exist must have a cause? Since the universe is everything, I kind of doubt you can and therefor have no reason to take the statement 'everything that begins to exist must have a cause' as a true statement.
It doesn't lead me towards nihilism. Purpose is in the eye of the beholder.
The only way any human can. With their human understanding of the benefits of altruism and selfishness as measured with their natural evolutionary moral compass.
No. Survival is for the greater good. Enjoyment is for the greater good. Happiness is for the greater good. Love is for the greater good. These things we as humans consider good because it is natural for us to do so. There is plenty of meaning in it as far as we humans are concerned and that is the only meaning that can be of any meaning to us as humans.
Everything is not meaningless.
Even if someone thought everything was meaningless it still wouldn't follow that it would be a contradiction of their belief to live. They could believe everything was meaningless and still desire to live without meaning. Meaning is by no means necessary for life. I doubt sponges find meaning.
Truth isn't relative.
Even if everything was relative this assumptiuon wouldn't follow. If everything is relative the only person who can understand a given concept is the person who possesses it. Therefor, everything can be only what the possessor thinks it to be at any given time. It can still never be two contradictory things at once. Who's making this crap up?
Sure there would be. In fact, from the relativist's perspective it would be absolute truth that the theist was wrong.
Even if truth was relative and the statement that truth is relative was relative that would only mean everything was relative. Not impossible, only highly awkward. However, since atheism in no way requires relativism, it is hardly a pertinent matter.
If you are a human then for humanity to exist is necessarily good. If not, humanity would not exist. Humans get there value from other humans because they are human. What other value is needed?
Yes. See what society had to say about Hitler? That is proof that Hitler was not good as viewed by us humans and therefor anyone who acts like Hitler has much less chance of living their life, and enjoyingit, and loving, and being happy, and producing offspring. Yeah, secular objective natural evolutionary morals! You passed the test!
It wouldn't be good for them or you. If you doubt me, try it. You will end up dead from retaliation or imprisoned by society. Yeah, secular objective natural evolutionary morals! You did it again!
Secular, objective, natural, evolutionary morals. It is part of being human and living as a social animal.
Apparently not. Does anyone ever fall for that line of shit?
The rest of this crap seems to be simply repeating points that were already made which failed miserably. If you have any other questions or baseless assumptions or ill supported logic or whatever, just dump it here and we'll clean it up for you. Its like being a mental garbage man.
“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins
You've just demonstrated a problem with language: a single word can have multiple, disparate meanings. Just because the English word "god" has multiple meanings -- six noted in the American Heritage Dictionary (and your choice being the fourth most common, as those numbers do mean something) -- does not mean that the Greek origins of the word "atheist" and "theist" follow to refer to all of the six meanings or even more than just one.
They don't.
While I am not a Greek scholar by any means, "theist" specifically refers to the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary expressed by the first two: a supernatural being "conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions", "the force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being", and "A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality." That is the god meant by the Greek word "theos;" it does not follow that the additional definitions of the word added under English are also meant by the Greek word, just as how just because cleave can mean "to join together" and "to divide" does not mean that joining together and dividing are the same thing.
Your logic is faulty and your cherry-picking of definitions to try to put forth a baseless claim of meaning is morally repulsive to me. Learn the intended denotations of words before you attempt to use them in argument.
My bad on the theism and not theos, i mistyped it...thanks for pointing it out to me.
However, my statement was to either know for sure or at least not believe in the Biblical G-D... so I wasn't assuming you claimed to know anything, but if someone did claim they knew absolutely that would be addressed to them. If you don't believe in the Biblical G-D, the question still applies to you but leaves you with either claiming you don't know for sure about the Bible G-D or that you do know everything and thus contradict yourself.
"Not only do you not know what an atheist is, you don't even know what a god is. According to your definition you're a fool for not believing in Richard Dawkins since he is a god to some people. Or are you going to ignore the full context? "
First of all you have assumed my beliefs.
Secondly, you have merely made my point about defining gods. You are assuming that I am trying to say that anything meeting my criteria of a god is automatically a TRUE god. That is rediculous. All I did was show that ANYTHING can be a god if YOU elevate it to that level. However, I did NOT claim all these ideas of gods are correct.
Actually your position leads naturally to nihilism. If god is omnipotent he can change the value of anything at any time so everything must be subjective and you have no basis for knowing anything including whether or not god exists. So your life must be meaningless and completely devoid of all value and utterly hopeless because even if you wanted to know anything the existence of god would preclude that knowledge.
We dont KNOW whether or not G-D exists right now so you have shown me nothing new here. You are also assuming that G-D wants to hide himself and truth from people, but if this were so, why would G-D even create man...just to hide himself and truth from man?
Finally, how could you ever claim truth is subjective if it was subjective, that statement of truth being sebjective would itself be subjective and therefore not always true. Atheism leads to subjectivity, Theism leads to absolutes, this is why atheism doesn't work.
In reality now, we can know there are Absolutes. We know that the law of non-contradiction does work within reality as we know it and we can test things in different ways to reach our beliefs. My Argument stands...your hypothetical situation does not.
Perhaps we could sticky a replied version?
"Common objections to atheism" for example?
Perhaps "Common misconceptions about atheism" would be more accurate!
Fire away!
Slight mistake there:
Theism = Supernatural God.
Pantheists, for example, call nature 'God' as what is worshipped/idealised. They are still atheist though because they reject the supernatural God.
Nice try! There are a couple of points that your argument hasn't considered:
Weak atheists admit that God is possible but see no reason to believe in him. So they disbelieve in God the same way they disbelieve in unicorns. Somewhere out in the universe there could possible be a unicorn but we have no reason to believe there actually is. This atheist doesn't need to be omniscient for their disbelief.
Strong Atheists say that there is no God.
This also doesn't require omniscience.
I can quite clearly state that there is no such thing as a "square circle" or a "married bachelor". This is because they are self contradictory concepts and are therefore incoherent and do not refer to anything. Strong atheists declare that God is an incoherent word that doesn't mean anything. Whether the concept of God is incoherent is debatable but the fact remains that the Strong Atheist does not need to be omniscient to rule 'God' as impossible.
There are several refutations of the Kalam argument.
One of our forums members ShaunPhilly did a more detailed one.
Here I will offer a briefer argument.
The Kalam argument claims that the Universe (i.e. time itself) had a cause. There is a problem with this. A cause is a temporal concept. It is a relation between two events in time.
The cause must come before the effect. (before being a temporal relation)
To say something 'caused' time is to talk of something 'before' time.
You see the problem here?
If time has a beginning then it makes no sense to talk of what came 'before'. If something came 'before' then there was a time before time started. A contradiction.
So how do atheists see the big bang?
Some see it as the limit of how far back we can look.
There are also theories offered by physicists that it might not be the very beginning altogether. Infact, many physicists reject that the Big Bang requires the universe to have a beginning. (see this article.)
Can you define what you mean by agent?
All the definitions I've come across are of entities in time
How do you define an agent outside of time?
You say it is a 'cause' of things but causes are temporal concepts.
To suppose that something can pop into existence out of empty space might be. All our observations of this kind are of empty space. Pre-big bang doesn't mean "pre-matter before space" it means pre-space itself. All our observations of nothing popping out of existence out of empty space do not apply to non-space.
So what you're claiming is that in order to have truth, values and morality then we need some sort of God? You did not back up this claim. The rest of your argument seemed to assume this and then spell out the consequences.
What makes you think that a God is necessary for us to have truth, values or morality?
A more detailed analysis of this claim and why it is false can be found in this article.
Here's a quick look at the concepts in question:
Truth
To have a concept of truth we need a logical method for distinguishing 'truth' from 'falsity'. To have such a logical method we just need a language. (the rules of logic follow from the rules of the language.)
Anyone who speaks the same language as us will follow the same linguistic rules and therefore be bound by the same logical methods.
What difference would a God make?
Values
Why do we need God for life to have a meaning?
We all have our values that lead us to having our own personal goals. What difference would a God make?
Morality
Morality is about what we 'should' do.
It's a set of values that is required for us to live in society with others. Some people seem to think we need a God to adopt these values but there is a problem with that argument:
Why do we adopt the values that God says we must adopt?
It will come down to a basic value that we must start with.
If we have such a basic value, then it could just as easily lead us to a set of ethical values without God as the 'middleman'.
God makes no difference to ethics.
MrRage- As a theist, I believe there is a truth to be reached. This means life can be lived with the purpose of pursuing knowledge/truth, pursuing G-D, pursuing love, and communicating because communication is meaningful.
Whoever asked about my beliefs: I am a follower of Yeshua.
About the G-D definition: If you would like to look into some more concepts of this I'd suggest reading Ravi Zacharias and some ancient Philosophy too. Unfortunately, most concepts of G-D are erroneously attributed to the Monothestic religions and the other concepts of G-D are defined as idolatry...so check out the term of idolatry too and you'll understand better,
Vessel: Thanks for your opinions, but you contributed nothing. Did you know Hitler was an Atheist? By your own logic then, atheism is seen as bad by your morals. And where exactly did your morals stem from anyway? What initially gave human life worth? What is the measuring bar standard for good and bad? Is it humans themselves? Well then, which human is the ideal human? Who decided they were the ideal human?
Actually you stated your beliefs so I didn't have to assume anything.
This is the first I'm hearing about truth but even if you want to go that route you are elevating your god to the level of a true god based on the same thing that everyone else is elevating their god with. NOTHING. just your own belief. which is equal to all other beliefs because they're all baseless. So the point stands you are a fool for not believing in Richard Dawkins as a god.
You missed the entire point. If god is omnipotent then the law of non-contradiction does not work in reality because reality is defined by god and he can change it any way he wants. If god can't create logical contradictions then he did not create logic so he's not the creator of everything and he's not omnipotent because he doesn't have the power to do everything.That means he is not even god. And if he can then you can't use logic to come to any definite conclusion because logical contradictions can exist so your conclusion that god exists is meaningless, it was based on logic. Face it you're one step away from being a nihilist.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Actually, Fool, did you know that Hitler was not an atheist? While I'd like to claim Thomas Jefferson as an atheist, I cannot because he was not. Similarly, I am glad not to be able to do the same for Hitler for the exact same reasons. Please stop being disingenous.
The question is still the same. Without
G-D, who sets the bars? WHat makes their decisions right? What makes human life valuable other than personal feelings? How do feelings justify a way of life? Sometimes people feel like killing, is it right then? If Humans set the standards, what humans get to set the standard, which humans are the standard, and what gave humans the initial right to make the standard?
I'm just talking and hoping people think...I appreciate all ideas.
Now I see your problem with the Kalam argument. You obviously work from a flawed definition of nothing. (I find your comment rude and will therefor treat you as the idiot you seem to be without my normal attempt at being cordial for the remainder of the conversation)
This is an assertion you need to prove. Show me proof Hitler was an atheist. Even if he was, the statement Hitler was an atheist does not imply atheists are Hitlers. Did you have a point in stating this?
Now I see the problem. Even if Hitler was an atheist the fact that Hitler was bad does not lead to the conclusion that atheism is bad. Are you really that incapable of coming to rational conclusions from the statements that are made?
Did you read what I wrote and not comprehend it, or did you not read it? Morals are social constructs built from hardwired senses of altruism and selfisheness within the human animal.
The fact that we are human. As humans we must see human life as having worth. If not, there would be no humans. Its really not that hard to follow. Put on your thinking cap. If you are looking for why human life has worth to a non-human, you would have to ask a non-human. Good luck with that.
What we as humans consider good and bad is the measuring bar. It is the only measuring bar we can or need to possess. You must be thinking that there needs to be something out there called "good" that floats around and people hold their idea of good up to it and say "look they are similar, so my good must be real good." or"my good measures a three on the good meter so it is true good". Sorry, but that is idiocy. God as a concept of good is idiocy. Good is a concept found naturally in humans that is a means by which we help to ensure our own survival (the gene, the individual, the species) which by the nature of being human, makes it good.
If it wasn't humans how could this good possibly have any meaning to humans? Is this the remedial class?
There doesn't need to be an ideal human. By what would we know ideal? Ideal, or perfection, is a concept with no practical application.
No one.
Now, put on your learning shoes and read it a couple of times until you start to undertand. Its not that hard for most people. They usually seem to catch on fairly quickly.
“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins
You missed the entire point. If god is omnipotent then the law of non-contradiction does not work in reality because reality is defined by god and he can change it any way he wants. If god can't create logical contradictions then he did not create logic so he's not the creator of everything and he's not omnipotent because he doesn't have the power to do everything.That means he is not even god. And if he can then you can't use logic to come to any definite conclusion because logical contradictions can exist so your conclusion that god exists is meaningless, it was based on logic. Face it you're one step away from being a nihilist.
All I see is this
If G-D exists, G-D can't exist.
You have to assume G-D exists in the first place in order to get to the goal you want to reach, so without G-D's existence this fails, you can't assume the existence of what your are trying to prove is non-existent in order to make your claim that being is non-existent. Circular logic and it fails.