• Atheist and satanic literature to be distributed in Delta County schools
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[QUOTE=IrishBandit;50022753]From a modern perspective, the assumption that there must have been an original creator is flawed. There is no evidence for extraphysical anything, so assuming that one must exist is an error.[/QUOTE] There are two types of things: contingent and necessary. A contingent thing is something that could logically not exist. So, for example, the cup that I'm drinking out of can logically not exist. It's existence is contingent on other, outside, factors. A necessary thing exists by it's very nature. It must logically exist. Many mathematicians believe, for example, that numbers are necessary. Even if the universe were drastically different numbers would still be the same. 2+2 would always equal 4, even if everything else were to be different. God is also a necessary being. If it is possible for God to exist, then he must exist. The argument is that all physical things within the universe are contingent and that it's reasonable to believe that the universe itself is also contingent. This would lead to the question, "Why does this contingent universe exist as opposed to not existing?" It requires an explanation for it's existence. This would mean that some non-physical necessary being or thing must have existed prior to all contingent things as an explanation for those things. The historical argument has been that this necessary thing is God. Like I've said previously, people like Krauss argue that quantum fields and laws are the necessary thing instead.
I just find logical leaps like yours too great to even entertain. Physics, like quantum science we don't quite understand yet, I can get behind. A being of infinite power and complexity is not something I can get behind as a logical "necessity". The difference in the two ideas is massive.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50022981]I just find logical leaps like yours too great to even entertain. Physics, like quantum science we don't quite understand yet, I can get behind. A being of infinite power and complexity is not something I can get behind as a logical "necessity". The difference in the two ideas is massive.[/QUOTE] Why would you say infinite complexity? The most basic description of God would be very simple. I don't see how a very simple god would be more complex than a logically necessary field of non-deterministic energy that has the ability to randomly create rational universes. [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] And that's assuming they have absolutely equal explanatory power. I would argue that the rational nature of our universe suggests a rational cause as opposed to a random cause.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023013]Why would you say infinite complexity? The most basic description of God would be very simple. I don't see how a very simple god would be more complex than a logically necessary field of non-deterministic energy that has the ability to randomly create rational universes.[/QUOTE] Because the simplest god is still more complex than something that isn't sentient. [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] Aquinas's claims were countered by the WAP(weak anthropic principle) years ago and I have never heard a good argument showing why that counter of Aquinas was wrong. [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] I would also argue that a rational being being the logical first prime mover hardly seems rational
How can we know what is or isn't necessary? We don't know that everything physical needs a mover or that everything has a beginning, this is just how we see things which doesn't mean shit to how things actually are. We build models based on what we consider logical to benefit us, that's how we got rockets and skyscrapers. God is really just another way of saying "I don't know". If we use logic that we understand to try and prove that something we can't understand from our models of logic and physics exists, then what's the point of doing so? It will still not actually be proved to exist and the model that we create will not be of any use to anyone.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50023037]I would also argue that a rational being being the logical first prime mover hardly seems rational[/QUOTE] Why not? Why is it more rational that rationality would come from non-rationality then rationality coming from rationality? [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=maeZtro;50023046]How can we know what is or isn't necessary? We don't know that everything physical needs a mover or that everything has a beginning, this is just how we see things which doesn't mean shit to how things actually are.[/QUOTE] Are you an absolute nihilist? Because this sentiment would only make sense from that perspective.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023053] Are you an absolute nihilist? Because this sentiment would only make sense from that perspective.[/QUOTE] What the fuck are you talking about? Saying "we don't really know, man" is logical, you don't need to be a nihilist to come to that conclusion. Just because you can't imagine a universe in which there is no god doesn't mean that everyone else lacks that ability. There are other explanations and Aquinas's philosophy is incredibly simply... wrong. It's just wrong. It is incorrect. It completely crumbles under scrutiny.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023053] Are you an absolute nihilist? Because this sentiment would only make sense from that perspective.[/QUOTE] I'm not 100% sure what nihilism means or that I qualify, the only nihilist I know of is the character of Matthew McConaughey in true detective and he is a huge downer. I'm agnostic to whether there is some motive behind our universe creation and I'm agnostic to if what we can experience reflects how things actually are. I still get lots of joy out of my life even if it's ultimately pointless so I don't really care either way. My point is that we don't know if what we perceive is "real" so using what we perceive to prove the existence of something we can't understand and use for our own purposes is futile. We will end up with a model that we call God that we can't use for anything. We don't understand God so we are really just saying that we don't understand or know.
[QUOTE=maeZtro;50023154]I'm not 100% sure what nihilism means or that I qualify, the only nihilist I know of is the character of Matthew McConaughey in true detective and he is a huge downer. I'm agnostic to whether there is some motive behind our universe creation and I'm agnostic to if what we can experience reflects how things actually are. I still get lots of joy out of my life even if it's ultimately pointless so I don't really care either way. My point is that we don't know if what we perceive is "real" so using what we perceive to prove the existence of something we can't understand and use for our own purposes is futile. We will end up with a model that we call God that we can't use for anything. We don't understand God so we are really just saying that we don't understand or know.[/QUOTE] The same exact sentiment would apply to the quantum field or any other explanation. What ever is first can't be fully understood, no matter what it is. [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=phygon;50023110]What the fuck are you talking about? Saying "we don't really know, man" is logical, you don't need to be a nihilist to come to that conclusion. Just because you can't imagine a universe in which there is no god doesn't mean that everyone else lacks that ability. There are other explanations and Aquinas's philosophy is incredibly simply... wrong. It's just wrong. It is incorrect. It completely crumbles under scrutiny.[/QUOTE] His sentiment seemed to be that we can't know truth because what we see isn't what's real. He continues to say that we make conclusions out of usefulness, not because our conclusions are really true. That's nihilism if I've ever seen it.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023053]Why not? Why is it more rational that rationality would come from non-rationality then rationality coming from rationality? [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] Are you an absolute nihilist? Because this sentiment would only make sense from that perspective.[/QUOTE] Because you're just moving the prime mover one step before and refusing to explain it as I'm sure you have heard from me before. you're argument essentially is "The world is rational because something rational started it". I don't think that's a very well thought argument. Why must rationality come from rationality? Why isn't rationality just the result of creatures evolving to see rationality and then implying it into everything?
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023182] His sentiment seemed to be that we can't know truth because what we see isn't what's real. He continues to say that we make conclusions out of usefulness, not because our conclusions are really true. That's nihilism if I've ever seen it.[/QUOTE] That's absolutely not nihilism. He's saying that we can't know truth in this case because as far as we know, we don't know it. We're still understanding the nature of reality, and what we can tell changes year by year, evolves, and gets better. We may never know for sure what the nature of reality is but we sure as hell don't know it now, not entirely at least.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50023203]Why isn't rationality just the result of creatures evolving to see rationality and then implying it into everything?[/QUOTE] I feel like there's some misunderstanding here. By rational I mean that the universe is even able to be consistently understood. It acts in such a way that we can make predictions on future actions based on experience of past actions. The argument isn't that the world is rational because something rational started it. The argument is that randomness doesn't lead to rationality. At BEST it leads to a false image of rationality. Imagine a computer spitting out random letters and numbers. If we let this generator continue for a very long time there will definitely be sets of letters and numbers that seem to follow a pattern, but the pattern will be totally false. It will eventually fail. That random generator cannot create a truly rational set of numbers and letters, but this isn't the type of universe we see ourselves in. The universe, as far as we can tell, is actually rational. It is understandable and predictable. We can figure out how it works. [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50023203]Because you're just moving the prime mover one step before and refusing to explain it as I'm sure you have heard from me before.[/QUOTE] I honestly think you're just wrong about this. I'm looking at everything we know and saying, "Hey, everything is based on cause and effect, but we can't have an infinite chain. So there must be something at the beginning. What kind of characteristics would that kind of first cause have?" You're point would only seem to work if you've already come to the conclusion that there is no first cause. If you haven't, then there must be some first cause and your point of "just moving it back one step" would apply to literally every explanation.
I always saw that there were two sides to atheism, there were the assertive-atheists who assert god doesnt exist and then there are the non-assertive atheists who dont beleive in god, and pragmatically live like he doesnt exist, but never assert that one doesnt exist.
[QUOTE=mecaguy03;50023307]I always saw that there were two sides to atheism, there were the assertive-atheists who assert god doesnt exist and then there are the non-assertive atheists who dont beleive in god, and pragmatically live like he doesnt exist, but never assert that one doesnt exist.[/QUOTE] I've always thought of them as atheists and anti-theists.
[QUOTE=mecaguy03;50023307]I always saw that there were two sides to atheism, there were the assertive-atheists who assert god doesnt exist and then there are the non-assertive atheists who dont beleive in god, and pragmatically live like he doesnt exist, but never assert that one doesnt exist.[/QUOTE] That's because there generally is: [t]https://i.imgur.com/F01Uj.jpg[/t] Gnosticism and Theism are both ways of measuring belief.
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[QUOTE=sgman91;50022596]2 points: - Yes, the logic takes what we know to be the requirements and then posits something that fulfills them. That's what literally every hypothesis does, scientific, or not. The thing that fulfills the requirements also just happens to conform to the fundamental idea of the nature of God that preexisted knowledge of the problem of first cause. It's not like people came up with the idea of God to solve this issue. The concept of God already fulfilled the requirements. If anything this could be taken as a successful prediction of religion. It posited those traits long before it knew those traits would be vital to making a logically coherent first cause. [/QUOTE] That's... I'm at a loss for words. Let me take a second. That's not even a leap of logic, it's something else. You do realize that the concept of god as presented answers [b]any[/b] question in existence, right? God is literally The Unknown here, it "solves" any problem presented simply because of its innate characteristic of being completely undefined. God fits everything because it is defined as all fitting, it solves everything because it is defined as all-solving. That's circular. God becomes synonymous with "I do not have the answer for this question/problem"
[QUOTE=gudman;50023403]That's... I'm at a loss for words. Let me take a second. That's not even a leap of logic, it's something else. You do realize that the concept of god as presented answers [B]any[/B] question in existence, right? God is literally The Unknown here, it "solves" any problem presented simply because of its innate characteristic of being completely undefined. God fits everything because it is defined as all fitting, it solves everything because it is defined as all-solving. That's circular.[/QUOTE] But it's not? I'm talking about very specific properties that were established such as a non-physical being. That's extremely specific. The Greek gods, for example, would not fit the prerequisites of a first cause.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50021313]Cool, thanks, now let's go through them: 1) The big bang. The big bang is an action, not a thing. So I'm not sure how that would satisfy it at all.[/QUOTE] How exactly is this a problem? It could simply be an action that stems from a non-physical phenomena. Actually for that matter if we're assuming that the first cause exists outside of cause and effect, why couldn't the first cause be an action? [QUOTE]1) The orangutang Refer to Ted and explain how an orangutang would be effectual in creating the universe. As far as I can tell an orangutang doesn't have the intellectual capacity to design the universe as we see it. If you're positing an extremely intelligent, non-physical orangutang, then all you've done is posit god that somehow looks like an orangutang without any physical features.[/QUOTE] The example was meant to sound intentionally ridiculous but the basic idea is that the orangutang didn't "design" the universe at all, it just burped which coincidentally resulted in our universe, entirely without it's knowledge. You seem to be asserting the need for the universe to have been deliberately designed by an intelligent entity but I don't exactly understand what that must be the case. [QUOTE]2) two extraspace-time kablooies colliding Are these "kablooies" deterministic? If not, please explain the non-deterministic mechanic behind them. If so, then the universe they create will be co-eternal with the "kablooies" recreating the issue of infinite regress of events.[/QUOTE] Why exactly is an eternally existing universe problematic again? I haven't seen any reasoning up to this point other than asserting that it is a problem. [QUOTE]Let me start off and say that if someone is a true, absolute nihilist and doesn't think we can know any truth because we are stuck within our own experience, then your example would work as an alternate explanation. If not, then you would need to provide the mechanism for how the person did that while also showing how they were able to exist prior to their creation. It's really hard, if not impossible, to answer those questions without making the person into some sort of god.[/QUOTE] It really isn't, and in several people already have. You've explained why you believe a first cause must exist (which I don't necessarily agree with) but you haven't explained why that first cause must be an intelligent entity. Again, once you accept that metaphysical entities and phenomena exist, you can make up literally anything and it would be just as (ir)rational as any other explanation that stems from metaphysics. [QUOTE=sgman91;50022596]A key part of Aquinas' work was to separate natural and supernatural revelation. So he would argue that you can't come to the full knowledge of God without the use of both together. These types of arguments are natural only.[/QUOTE] Which is basically just a fancy way of admitting that there is no way to prove that God exists using observable evidence, which means that it is literally just a hypothesis, which begs the question of how one could argue that it is rational to base your understanding of the universe around it and to base actual decisions in one's life around the assumption that it is true. [QUOTE=sgman91;50022839]There are two types of things: contingent and necessary. A contingent thing is something that could logically not exist. So, for example, the cup that I'm drinking out of can logically not exist. It's existence is contingent on other, outside, factors. A necessary thing exists by it's very nature. It must logically exist. Many mathematicians believe, for example, that numbers are necessary. Even if the universe were drastically different numbers would still be the same. 2+2 would always equal 4, even if everything else were to be different. God is also a necessary being. If it is possible for God to exist, then he must exist.[/QUOTE] Not necessarily. I mean if we're accepting hypothesis that break the laws of physics then I could just as easily argue for the possibility of an alternate universe in which quantity does not exist. It really doesn't break any further away from observable evidence than the assertion that specific non-physical entities exist. [QUOTE=sgman91;50023053]Why not? Why is it more rational that rationality would come from non-rationality then rationality coming from rationality?[/QUOTE] I think you need to expand on your use of the word "rational" here, but isn't it just as likely that our understanding of rationality is a result of the mechanics of our universe, not the other way around? [QUOTE]Are you an absolute nihilist? Because this sentiment would only make sense from that perspective.[/QUOTE] We're talking about a phenomena for which we have no information and that at present it is entirely impossible for us to gain information about. I don't see how it's any more or less unreasonable to claim that there is no need for a first cause.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023410]But it's not? I'm talking about very specific properties that were established such as a non-physical being. That's extremely specific. The Greek gods, for example, would not fit the prerequisites of a first cause.[/QUOTE] Greek gods are defined as anthropomorphic, Abrahamic God, on the other hand, goes pretty much undefined. He has all the characteristics, and then some.
[QUOTE=sgman91;50012519] If it is 100% deterministic (like, say, a machine)[/QUOTE] A machine is not necessarily deterministic. [quote=sgman91]Remember that I'm not saying this type of argument leads to the Christian God, just a minimal god that is an intelligent free agent with incredible power to create physical matter from no physical matter.[/quote] Why does he have to be intelligent? Why not multiple agents?
[QUOTE=sgman91;50023260]I feel like there's some misunderstanding here. By rational I mean that the universe is even able to be consistently understood. It acts in such a way that we can make predictions on future actions based on experience of past actions. The argument isn't that the world is rational because something rational started it. The argument is that randomness doesn't lead to rationality. At BEST it leads to a false image of rationality. Imagine a computer spitting out random letters and numbers. If we let this generator continue for a very long time there will definitely be sets of letters and numbers that seem to follow a pattern, but the pattern will be totally false. It will eventually fail. That random generator cannot create a truly rational set of numbers and letters, but this isn't the type of universe we see ourselves in. The universe, as far as we can tell, is actually rational. It is understandable and predictable. We can figure out how it works.[/QUOTE] See, I think you have things conflated with each other. Randomness doesn't preclude rationality. Randomness doesn't preclude patterns. You can have randomness that has patterns, rationality, and understandablity. You can have randomness that is ruled by rational limits in the form of the natural laws of the universe.
Here's another possible explanation that you might find more reasonable, sgman. Suppose that there exists a metaphysical, non-intelligent, non-self-aware entity. This entity, by some metaphysical phenomena as nebulous as intelligent design, is [i]constantly[/i] spitting out new universes. The properties of each universe could be derived from the properties of previous successful universes similar to biological evolution, so as to make a universe similar to ours more likely to occur more often, but for the sake of argument let's just say that the properties of each universe are entirely random. As such, the vast, [i]vast[/i] majority of universes it creates are not coherent, but some very small portion of them are. As beings like us would not be able to exist in a universe that didn't have coherent laws, our universe must be one of the universes that is coherent. Is there any reason you can think of why this explanation is any less plausible than God?
[QUOTE=gudman;50023432]Greek gods are defined as anthropomorphic, Abrahamic God, on the other hand, goes pretty much undefined. He has all the characteristics, and then some.[/QUOTE] Well it's said that we were made in his image so it's fair to assume that he's anthropomorphic.
[QUOTE=phygon;50023771]Well it's said that we were made in his image so it's fair to assume that he's anthropomorphic.[/QUOTE] AFAIK Christian theologians fought this idea for quite some time, the idea being that "his image" doesn't mean literally looking like him. More like, having some of the same characteristics.
[QUOTE=gudman;50023432]Greek gods are defined as anthropomorphic, Abrahamic God, on the other hand, goes pretty much undefined. He has all the characteristics, and then some.[/QUOTE] Greek gods aren't really anthropomorphic beings. The human form is one of their aspects/representations, but they're more than that. Like Ouranos isn't just a guy who rules the sky, he [I]is[/I] the sky personified.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;50007493]How the fuck is their literture for atheism when [B]they don't believe in anything[/B].[/QUOTE] That's a Nihilist, bro
and this is all completely ignoring the perspectives of apatheism (i.e. i don't really give a shit because it's not practically useful) and various related philosophies of "there isn't a reason why the universe exists" (existentialism, some forms of post-modernism, nihilism) [editline]29th March 2016[/editline] well, not completely ignoring, but no-one's brought them up from a supportive or personal standpoint as far as I've seen and personally I religiously fall into apatheism and philosophically adhere to existentialism while noting that it's very much untenable if not abridged for practical concerns and functional society (especially when regarding one particular friedrich whose name I cannot be trusted to reliably spell)
[QUOTE=Kljunas;50025749]Greek gods aren't really anthropomorphic beings. The human form is one of their aspects/representations, but they're more than that. Like Ouranos isn't just a guy who rules the sky, he [I]is[/I] the sky personified.[/QUOTE] Yeah I meant "anthropomorphic" in more ways than just their, well, described appearance. Their attitudes, human-like behaviours etc. They were human characters, while Abrahamic god is incomprehensible and described as such, apart from sharing some features (mostly negative ones) with us.
[QUOTE=shotgun334;50025801]and this is all completely ignoring the perspectives of apatheism (i.e. i don't really give a shit because it's not practically useful) and various related philosophies of "there isn't a reason why the universe exists" (existentialism, some forms of post-modernism, nihilism) [editline]29th March 2016[/editline] well, not completely ignoring, but no-one's brought them up from a supportive or personal standpoint as far as I've seen and personally I religiously fall into apatheism and philosophically adhere to existentialism while noting that it's very much untenable if not abridged for practical concerns and functional society (especially when regarding one particular friedrich whose name I cannot be trusted to reliably spell)[/QUOTE] For the first part, the reason you're not hearing arguments for it is because people who believe in it "don't give a shit" (your words) and don't feel the need. For the second part, that's a very long winded way of wording 'Atheist'.
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