Atheism - Yet another faith ?

Yossie

bullring wrote:

If a particle has size, what is it composed of? And if the components have size, what are they composed of? and so on, ad infinitum. The infinite regress forces us to accept the counter-intuitive notion that particles have no size and that size is a macroscopic illusion that arises from the way groups of particles interact. If we stop to think about it, is there a law in nature that requires entities to have a size in other to exist? Such a law would be illogical because it introduces the infinite regress problem as seen above. Note that this argument could just as easily be used to prove the non-existence of space.

Sounds like a variation of Zeno's "paradox", which if true then how did you move your fingers to the keyboard to type this?

bullring wrote:

I hope that I have convinced you that time and space do not exist and that you are deluded, but I augur that your headache is now better.

"A round square" WOW i've just created something impossible;) - i must be like a god or something:)

Zillah is right, it's back to school for you bullring. Perhaps start with some basics on limits:D

Ickle Magoo

Rev Hellfire wrote:

I'm just curious as to how you can with total certainly discount something which cannt not be totally disproven.

As you cannot disprove evolution or athiesm and as there is no proof of a super-being, surely believers are as equally guilty of discounting something that cannot be disproven? Personally, I work on the basis of likelyhood.....is it more likely that the universe began at a molecular level and after several millenia of various scientific reactions, our universe evolved into what we know it as today....

Or is it more likely that a super-being created life as we know it? If we follow the line of thinking that everything created must have a creator then someone must have created the super-being who created the universe and so on ad-infinitum.....which is surely the same argument as the something from nothing one? And IMO a lot less likely....:D

Whiskey Priest

Can't speak for any other atheists, but, being neither able to prove nor disprove the existence of any 'higher powers' (and the question having arisen, I had to consider it), and being agnostic thereby, I have become an atheist as a matter of faith.

Am I certain? Of course I am not - that is the characteristic of faith that makes it different from knowledge.

Do I find comfort in my faith? Yes, I do. That there is no higher power watching over us, no grand plan, no other purpose to existence than existence, makes everything we do utterly trivial, and utterly vital, and entirely free.

It isn't that I don't believe in anything, but that I believe in nothing. Bedrock is always cold and hard, but it's the best thing to stand on.

Zillah

^
!
!
!

Post of the month to be honest.

Morbert

I'm reluctant to define atheism as a faith. The word "faith" should be reserved for describing an active trust/reliance on a person or belief.

I.e. "My son is sitting an important exam today. I think he'll do well."
or
"I have to have an operation... I'm nervous, but I trust the surgeons in this hospital."
or
"I have faith in Jesus and the word of God."

And while I do realise that, linguistically speaking, you might get away with labelling the tentative nature of atheism as "faith". Doing so tends to render the term "faith" redundant, and implies a concept of atheism that is somewhat misleading.

Morbert

Just in case anyone gets confused by bullring's crank philosophy.

Time and space do indeed exist, and have been modelled quite successfully.

Dades

Morbert wrote:

I'm reluctant to define atheism as a faith. The word "faith" should be reserved for describing an active trust/reliance on a person or belief.

I'll second that. In fact this was a post I made in the Christianity forum last month...

---

For me, atheism is the rejection of prescribed belief systems, but isn't one itself.

An atheist may or may not develop a belief system, but this would be specific to the atheist in question as it is personal to them. We may share other belief systems, for example humanism, but again this only shows that atheism itself has none.

I would not say a belief is necessarily a "faith". For me a faith requires that there is some element of that belief that directly affects an individual's actions. If I have faith in God, I will live my life by his rules. If I have faith in my wife's driving I will let her drive. If I have faith that my dog will come home again I will let it out on the street.

There is no action associated with atheism. You are simply left with a situation where you can choose to develop or follow a secular belief system, or, as mentioned, live as a nihilist.

bullring

Please excuse my previous post, I didn't mean to be abnoxious, though I feel some of the reactions were a bit over the top, I was taking the piss a bit with my comments, I didn't want to be personal or to insult anyone.
Let me explain what I meant. I believe that time (like colour) does not exits because I believe time is created in the brain, based on impulses it receives, just as it creates colours from different wavelengths.The future and past do not exist, but in the brain there is an expectation of the future and a remembrance of the past. I believe humans invented the concept of time out of mortal fear, the same reason humans invented God; By inventing (imagining) time, immortality would then be within our grasp.
As a concrete example, when you are driving in your car, your speed is relative to the road beneath you. There is no point on your journey that could be called one instant in time. It can only be an interval of time. Even if you took a photograph of the car travelling along the road, the photograph would be an interval related to the speed of the camera, perhaps a thirtieth of a second. It doesn’t matter how much you reduce the time interval, it will always still be an interval, rather than an instant.
The ability to control our physical environment by allocating and referring to time in ‘instants’ is a handy way of dealing with the problem. But it seems increasingly likely that we need to change the way in which we approach, observe and evaluate the universe’s dimensions before we have any hope of understanding any of the universe’s mysteries.
I think that once the concept of time is understood it become clearly that there is no need to create a concept of a God because there would be no need for this, the existence of a God becomes superflous without the existence of time.

Zillah

I see.

That makes no sense.

Good day.

Scofflaw

Morbert wrote:

I'm reluctant to define atheism as a faith. The word "faith" should be reserved for describing an active trust/reliance on a person or belief.

I.e. "My son is sitting an important exam today. I think he'll do well."
or
"I have to have an operation... I'm nervous, but I trust the surgeons in this hospital."
or
"I have faith in Jesus and the word of God."

And while I do realise that, linguistically speaking, you might get away with labelling the tentative nature of atheism as "faith". Doing so tends to render the term "faith" redundant, and implies a concept of atheism that is somewhat misleading.

What do you make of the statement "I believe that there is no God worth worshipping"?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dades

Don't get me wrong, bullring you're more than welcome to expound your views - but I just see this as philosophical toffee. (A Time Bar perhaps?:v:) By this I mean a notion to be chewed upon that will never have any application to reality.

bullring wrote:

I think that once the concept of time is understood it become clearly that there is no need to create a concept of a God because there would be no need for this, the existence of a God becomes superflous without the existence of time.

As long as people grow old and die, a lot of people will have a need for a god. And no new-age notion of what time actually is will ever stop people growing old and dying - as far as our perception of reality is concerned. (IMHO )

Scofflaw wrote:

What do you make of the statement "I believe that there is no God worth worshipping"?

Interesting. Who said that BTW?

Scofflaw

The Atheist wrote:

Originally Posted by Scofflaw
What do you make of the statement "I believe that there is no God worth worshipping"?

Interesting. Who said that BTW?

Just me, as far as I know - it would be my personal view. Looking at Whiskey Priest's post, though, he/she looks like he might say "I believe there is no God" (he's welcome to confirm/deny, obviously), so I may not be entirely alone!

cordially,
Scofflaw

John Doe

Scofflaw wrote:

"I believe that there is no God worth worshipping"?

Heh. Me too. Or is it 'me neither'? Aagh! If there's a God of grammar, help me now and I'll change my opinion! :v: No God worth worshipping doesn't mean no God though.

Scofflaw

John Doe wrote:

Heh. Me too. Or is it 'me neither'? Aagh! If there's a God of grammar, help me now and I'll change my opinion! :v:

'Me too', given it's a positive statement.

John Doe wrote:

No God worth worshipping doesn't mean no God though.

True. Probably means I'm an antitheist rather than an atheist.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dades

Scofflaw wrote:

True. Probably means I'm an antitheist rather than an atheist.

That's an intruiging idea. Though I think there is a slight discrepancy.

"No God worth worshipping" is a phrase compatible with an embittered theist, or perhaps agnostic. An antitheist suggests an aversion to people who believe in god(s).

If anything defineable, you might be a deist.

Though I sympathise with the notion that if god existed, he has an awful lot to answer for.

John Doe

I believe it might also be compatible with someone who believes a God exists but has no interest in the worship of humans, except worship in the form of being nice to each other, which isn't really worship. That's what I think anyway.

Scofflaw

The Atheist wrote:

That's an intruiging idea. Though I think there is a slight discrepancy.

"No God worth worshipping" is a phrase compatible with an embittered theist, or perhaps agnostic. An antitheist suggests an aversion to people who believe in god(s).

If anything defineable, you might be a deist.

Could it also work for someone who has an aversion to worshippers? After all, I've never met any of these gods, but I have met their worshippers.

John Doe's is more compatible with (weak) deism.

The Atheist wrote:

Though I sympathise with the notion that if god existed, he has an awful lot to answer for.

Of course, if the Christian God does exist, I suspect we will both have a lot of questions on Judgement Day. Some of his may be somewhat pointed, of course.

cordially,
Scofflaw

John Doe

Scofflaw wrote:

John Doe's is more compatible with (weak) deism.

Scuse me, what's weak deism? Is there strong deism?

Aporia

I would consider Atheism to be a faith.
After all faith is defined as ''Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.''

No matter what religion you belong to there's no proof of anything so no matter what you believe in it's considered faith.

I'm an Agnotical Atheist. Which is open-minded.

It basically means I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if a higher power exists but I think that there's more than likley none.

Oh, just to add in,

"As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods."
— Bertrand Russell

pH

It basically means I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if a higher power exists but I think that there's more than likley none.

Well the do you believe that Vampires exist?

Are there any agnostis who would be prepared to say both:

"I do not believe in vampires"
"I am agnostic because I don't know if a higher power exists or not"

I can see how you can be agnostic as part of an overall philosophy that universal negatives cannot be proven and that nobody can "know", but in that case it just seems bizarre to pick one thing from a list of billions of things you can't know:
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if Vampires exist ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if Faeries exist ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if Ghosts exist ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if Unicorns exist ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if a higher power exist ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if Bigfoot exists ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if the Loch Ness Monster exists ...
I don't know (and trust me nobody knows) if Squirels who can paint exist ...

Why pick one out of an infinite set and name it, when the set is far more important than one of it's multitude of members.

Aporia

That post was so narrow-minded and ridiculous I don't even know where to begin.:D

Have you heard of a thing called science?
You can prove that sqirrel
s cannot, infact, paint houses.
Vampires and sqirrels who paint have nothing to do with whether or not a higher power exists.

I never said that I don't know about EVERYthing.
Just the existance of God.
The existance of a higher power cannot be proven.

Why pick one out of an infinite set and name it, when the set is far more important than one of it's multitude of members.

Em, since it's RELEVANT in this case.
If I wanted to talk about vampires I would have else where.


Science has yet to prove it.
Until then I don't know.
We don't know.

pH

Aporia wrote:

You can prove that sqirrels cannot, infact, paint houses.

Well then I'd love to see how you can prove this ... please proceed.

Vampires and sqirrels who paint have nothing to do with whether or not a higher power exists.

Correct, but knowing whether or not squirels who paint exist has everything to do with knowing whether a higher power exists.

Anyway I'll be well satisfied with your proof that painting squirrels don't exist.

Dades

Aporia wrote:

That post was so narrow-minded and ridiculous I don't even know where to begin.:D

No more narrow minded than your "everybody is wrong except me" original post IMO.

Your completely missing pHs analogies which (correct me if I'm wrong, pH) suggest that just because something cannot be disproven, does not mean it deserves any creedance.

You're right in that nobody knows anything. But we do have is beliefs, and beliefs are based on evidence, or lack of. To believe something exists in the absence of any evidence is faith, to believe something does not exist in the absence of any evidence is logic - as far as atheists are concerned anyway.

Aporia wrote:

Have you heard of a thing called science?

Since we're talking about science, I might mention the criterion of falsifiability. Put simply this is one of the important concepts in science which states that valid scientific theory or hypothesis must be capable of disproof. I guess atheism works in the same fashion - refuising to give validity to something that cannot be disproven.

Zombrex

Aporia wrote:

I would consider Atheism to be a faith.
After all faith is defined as ''Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.''

Except Atheism isn't a belief, it is a lack of belief.

Atheists don't believe in a God or gods. Not believing in something isn't a belief in of itself, just like not playing football isn't a sport.

Atheists can replace the belief in a God with anything they like, from pure science to the Jedi code of the Star Wars universe.

Aporia wrote:

No matter what religion you belong to there's no proof of anything so no matter what you believe in it's considered faith.

No, if you don't believe something that isn't faith, it is absense of belief

Again, using the above metaphor, what you are basically saying is even if you don't play football (ie believe in God) you must still play some kind of sport (ie have faith in something). But you can't make that leap. Because I am not playing football you can't assert anything about what I am actually doing, you just know I am not playing football. Because someone is an atheist you cannot assert anything about what they actually believe or have faith in, if anything.

Aporia wrote:

Science has yet to prove it.
Until then I don't know.
We don't know.

Not quite true.

Social science, evolution, psychology etc etc can show why we would invent a concept like "God". Combine this with the scientific fact that nothing that shows the existance of a god or gods has ever been proven or even shown to exist in anything close to a scientific manner, then the most logical conclusion is that God does not in fact exist and that we, the human species, invented the concept in the first place.

It then becomes unnecessary to prove or dis-prove the actual physical existance of God because we know (to a large degree) that we invented the idea in the first place, and that it is simply an invention of our imagination, in the same way the Viking or Roman gods were.

Scofflaw

The Atheist wrote:

Since we're talking about science, I might mention the criterion of falsifiability. Put simply this is one of the important concepts in science which states that valid scientific theory or hypothesis must be capable of disproof. I guess atheism works in the same fashion - refuising to give validity to something that cannot be disproven.

Indeed, and since you've mentioned it, where exactly is atheism falsifiable?


cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Social science, evolution, psychology etc etc can show why we would invent a concept like "God". Combine this with the scientific fact that nothing that shows the existance of a god or gods has ever been proven or even shown to exist in anything close to a scientific manner, then the most logical conclusion is that God does not in fact exist and that we, the human species, invented the concept in the first place.

It then becomes unnecessary to prove or dis-prove the actual physical existance of God because we know (to a large degree) that we invented the idea in the first place, and that it is simply an invention of our imagination, in the same way the Viking or Roman gods were.

Actually, "Social science, evolution, psychology etc etc" can only offer an alternative explanation. It is then up to you whether you believe that God invented man, or man invented God.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Aporia

pH wrote:

Well then I'd love to see how you can prove this ... please proceed.


Correct, but knowing whether or not squirels who paint exist has everything to do with knowing whether a higher power exists.

Anyway I'll be well satisfied with your proof that painting squirrels don't exist.

I know squirrels can't paint because because they are physically incapable.
They don't have the intellect in which humans have.
It's factual.

I don't know a higher power exists because it can't be proven or disproven.

You're right in that nobody knows anything. But we do have is beliefs, and beliefs are based on evidence, or lack of. To believe something exists in the absence of any evidence is faith, to believe something does not exist in the absence of any evidence is logic - as far as atheists are concerned anyway.

I never said people don't have beliefs. That's pretty obvious.

Except Atheism isn't a belief, it is a lack of belief.

I disagree. You believe there is nothing.
Just because you don't believe in other religions doesn't mean it's not a belief, you believe that there is nothing.

coffee_cake

Aporia wrote:

I disagree. You believe there is nothing.
Just because you don't believe in other religions doesnt mean you believe in nothing, you believe that there is nothing.

There's "I believe there is no god" and "I don't believe there is a god"
One is a belief, the other isn't

Aporia

No more narrow minded than your "everybody is wrong except me" original post IMO.

Nope just stating my opinion.

Aporia

bluewolf wrote:

There's "I believe there is no god" and "I don't believe there is a god"
One is a belief, the other isn't

Well I disagree I would consider it to be believing in nothing because belief is based on the unknown.