Win Prizes Ask an Atheist II

[Gethelred]

Welcome to the Ask an Atheist thread II.

Previous part:

Win Prizes - Ask an Atheist - Shoe's on the other foot now!

Alright, we're going to have a change of tack. As I'm sure you can see, the thread title has been changed to Ask an Atheist. People who have a question to ask of the atheists who populate this thread - more than the christians do - should feel free to ask questions of them. If you've still got...

www.bigfooty.com

Standard board rules apply.

 

[travelli]

I can't disprove God. Nor do I wish to. God, if it exists at all, is unknowable. By you. And me. However given it is you and your ilk, that are making claims to truth, I ask for supporting evidence for your claim. Otherwise all you are doing on here is proselytizing your belief system. Why should I believe that your belief system has any validity?

you dont have to believe in anything. But is it worth having a crack at wondering? Can you permit a cultures honest attempts to understand the concept of a creator? And explain it to their people?

 

[Total Power]

so you guys keep saying.
who created man?
there we have this perpetual circular argument which all boils down to faith, but when Christians are asked to justify their faith, it is rapidly dismissed by the aforementioned arguments, whereas when atheists are asked to prove that Jesus is not God, and that God does not exist, and could not create mankind etc.... the argument is all about evolution, discovered by....man!

No one 'created' man. Hominids existed in many many other forms before 'man' or modern day Homo sapiens came to be.

 

[western royboy]

He wants every American to have a copy of the Bible. He wants America to be a Christian nation..he said that many times publicly. He is just being a very good evangelist by playing on peoples fears. Oldest trick in the book

Like straight out of a Fletch Movie

 

[Total Power]

so it's only God believing people who inflict atrocities on others?

Israel..the promised land of God, Gaza would have 60,000 less deaths including 20,000 children if it wasn't for that bunch of 'special' people chosen by your God. Also Russia and Ukraine, two very deeply religious countries. Islam..well lets not get there. All examples from the present day.

People who are willing to believe in absurdities are capable of committing atrocities. Religion is just the most common example of this.

 

[Vdubs]

He wants every American to have a copy of the Bible. He wants America to be a Christian nation..he said that many times publicly. He is just being a very good evangelist by playing on peoples fears. Oldest trick in the book

Trump is quite possibly the antichrist

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

I think the term "pure chance" is meaningless. Just as our brains aren't equipped to really understand the world of sub-atomic particles other than by creating mathematical models that require highly specialised knowledge to follow through to their implications, and still don't provide the kind of "understanding" that we feel of the tangible world around us, our brains struggle to comprehend the power of truly huge numbers.

I don't claim to understand how "life" emerged on Earth - though I have read a little about the various conjectures that scientists have proposed and investigated. Once it did, I don't find it hard to believe we got to where we got to, even though where we got to was far from inevitable.

I also believe it is almost certain that there is, or has been, "life" on other bits of rock in the universe. Whether it is (or was) anything we would recognise as luck, there is such a vast number of other bits of rock in the universe that I think it is inevitable that, on some, the precise conditions exist, or existed, to enable "life" to emerge.

I think a lot of people who can’t get their head around evolution are the same sort of people who can’t get their head around really, really, really, really, really, really big numbers, and

really, really, really, really, really, really long periods of time.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Some are more tame than others - Buddhism for instance isn't nearly the threat to world peace that Christianity and Islam are.

The Tamils of Sri Lanka and the Rohingya of Myanmar will get back to you on that.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

who created man?

No-one.

Why this determination to anthropomorphise the origins of the universe?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

you dont have to believe in anything. But is it worth having a crack at wondering? Can you permit a cultures honest attempts to understand the concept of a creator? And explain it to their people?

For my part, I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that Belief in all its forms is a negative human trait and one we need to start moving away from.

I certainly don’t think we should continue to place Belief anywhere near on the same pedestal as Fact and Truth.

 

[Total Power]

Trump is quite possibly the antichrist

Not at all, the concept of salvation comes from telling people they are evil sinners..aka..fear. He is just following the shitty church made doctrine and age old trick of playing the fear card to get the voters. Original Sin does the same thing...you are a god damn sinner unless you seek salvation in me. Same tactic, just different times. It works, everytime, this is why Abrahamic religions are the biggest in the world.

Either way my point was the Gods chosen people (Israel) are quite possibly the anti Christ or Jesus was devil in disguise. There's a big possibility that the escalation with Gaza/Hezbollah will lead to WW3 and a nuclear confrontation that will kill millions.

Again, humanity is better off without religion.

 

[Roylion]

you dont have to believe in anything. But is it worth having a crack at wondering?

Wondering what? That's what science is for.

Can you permit a cultures honest attempts to understand the concept of a creator? And explain it to their people?

Sure. I enjoy reading mythological creation stories from a variety of cultures. But I don't accept any of them as true.

But why should I accept any culture's "attempt to understand the concept of a creator" as truthful, unless it is supported by considerable robust evidence?

 

[Total Power]

you dont have to believe in anything. But is it worth having a crack at wondering? Can you permit a cultures honest attempts to understand the concept of a creator? And explain it to their people?

If you look many indigenous and Aztec cave paintings going back many thousand years it does look like alien cave paintings with very weird heads and so on. Experts do say it resembles extra terrestrial beings. Why is that not a feasible theory? there's far more evidence for it than any God ever. They surely didn't have Hollywood back then to imagine such stuff, so where did those imagination come from?

 

[Chief]

Experts do say it resembles extra terrestrial beings.

I don't even...

Which experts? Art experts? Alien experts?

 

[liz]

If you look many indigenous and Aztec cave paintings going back many thousand years it does look like alien cave paintings with very weird heads and so on. Experts do say it resembles extra terrestrial beings. Why is that not a feasible theory? there's far more evidence for it than any God ever. They surely didn't have Hollywood back then to imagine such stuff, so where did those imagination come from?

Your fixation with life originating elsewhere just shifts the question. It doesn’t answer how life forms emerged from chemical soups.

But while it does seem like the “most miraculous” part of the process, that doesn’t mean scientist have no ideas on how it happened. And it certainly doesn’t necessitate a creator (if only because that concept itself gives rise to the problem of how the creator came to be - a much bigger, harder question to even try and answer).

 

[Vdubs]

I think a lot of people who can’t get their head around evolution are the same sort of people who can’t get their head around really, really, really, really, really, really big numbers, and

really, really, really, really, really, really long periods of time.

You talk about evolution in a mutually exclusive way wrt creation.
Evolution does not exclude God as a likely Creator.

 

[Roylion]

You talk about evolution in a mutually exclusive way wrt creation.
Evolution does not exclude God as a likely Creator.

No it doesn't. But that doesn't mean there was necessarily a "Creator". There is no evidence that a "Creator" exists at all.

 

[Vdubs]

No it doesn't. But that doesn't mean there was necessarily a "Creator". There is no evidence that a "Creator" exists at all.

There is no hard evidence for LUCA 3-4 billion years ago either. You choose to believe that theory.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

You talk about evolution in a mutually exclusive way wrt creation.
Evolution does not exclude God as a likely Creator.

Roylion answered above exactly as I was intending to.

By all means posit that there was a god that created everything, including evolution.

And then furnish proof as solid as the proof supporting the theory of evolution. Which, I might add, just gets stronger and stronger with every passing year.

(And "Well it sure feels real to me" doesn't cut it, and I stress again, as I have many times in the past, if Christianity works for you, I am genuinely happy for you. I mean that sincerely. But it's a mistake to automatically assume that means Christianity is universally true).

 

[nut]

A bit off track … but Can someone explain Instincts? How do animals and insects pass down instincts?

 

[Total Power]

Your fixation with life originating elsewhere just shifts the question. It doesn’t answer how life forms emerged from chemical soups.

But while it does seem like the “most miraculous” part of the process, that doesn’t mean scientist have no ideas on how it happened. And it certainly doesn’t necessitate a creator (if only because that concept itself gives rise to the problem of how the creator came to be - a much bigger, harder question to even try and answer).

Fixation? wherelse have i mentioned it? i have written extensively about abiogenesis in this thread but it doesn't mean abiogenesis at the moment is a theory, cause it isn't, It's a hypothesis. I am here offering ANOTHER hypothesis (maybe a null one but still), which is much more viable than the God claim. For me the important thing is how life originated in our planet, (universe is far too big to answer the question). There are many hypotheses outside of just 'god did it', that's my point, since this is the most common reason given by religious people in this thread.

 

[Total Power]

There is no hard evidence for LUCA 3-4 billion years ago either. You choose to believe that theory.

Everything surveyed falls into 3 domains, Eurkaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria. All three of those groups have shared DNA.
Because every living genome we've ever sequenced has a set of (60?) genes in common.

Their relatedness is pretty far beyond dispute at this point. While there is no fossil evidence, there doesn't need to be.

 

[Total Power]

Evolution does not exclude God as a likely Creator.

While this is true, what would be the point of making and killing 96% of the species before the master species for God (homo sapiens) arrived on earth? was earth some sort of an experimental lab? Evolution is perfectly explained without a God, why do you need one?

 

[liz]

A bit off track … but Can someone explain Instincts? How do animals and insects pass down instincts?

What do you mean by “Instincts”?

 

[liz]

You talk about evolution in a mutually exclusive way wrt creation.
Evolution does not exclude God as a likely Creator.

Evolution doesn’t need “God” or any other creator. Occam’s Razor suggests that if you accept the evidence that all life forms on Earth are descended from the same early life forms, trying to then insert a God into the process is clumsy and unnecessary.

Why does evolution + God make more sense than just evolution? What does God add to the process or explanation if the process?

 

[liz]

Fixation? wherelse have i mentioned it? i have written extensively about abiogenesis in this thread but it doesn't mean abiogenesis at the moment is a theory, cause it isn't, It's a hypothesis. I am here offering ANOTHER hypothesis (maybe a null one but still), which is much more viable than the God claim. For me the important thing is how life originated in our planet, (universe is far too big to answer the question). There are many hypotheses outside of just 'god did it', that's my point, since this is the most common reason given by religious people in this thread.

Post 336.

We’re coming from the same place re the non-necessity of God. I just don’t see the relevance of life originating elsewhere. It’s entirely possible it did, but so what? It doesn’t change the questions that need to be asked or provide any new insights into the origin of life.