The Great Failure of Atheism
 

There is only one fact that atheists and people who believe in any kind of religion cannot deny. At one point in time humans did not exist and then humans came into existence, even the earth itself did not exist at one point. I will only discuss the creation of humans, i dont know exactly what athiests believe, but i assume they would say evolution or something like that, im not going to pose the question of how the first human was born, since we all start as babies who gave birth to him or how did the first human baby survive without its mother's milk, forget all that.

So atheists would attribute our creation to nature, from single cell organisms and from then step by step to more complicated creations. Okay thats fine, but lets examine how complicated humans are, we have a heart, we have lungs, we have a digestive system and many other organs each with a specific function so humans can survive. Explain to me how nature decided to create all these necessary organs, how did it know. does nature think? Did nature for example create a human without lungs and watched it suffocate to death and then add that function, does nature work through trial and error? These are just some of the questions i have, but this is not my biggest concern, im sure someone will find some scientific way to explain all this. There is one thing however that humans have that is not neccesary for survival however without it we would be extinct and there is no way nature or evolution or anything could assume we need it.

That my friends is eyes, sight is not needed for survival in any way it serves no function, there is no reason nature would give us sight. Single cell organisms, bacteria and so on do not have sight. In order for sight to exist there has to be some sort of intelligence/thinking i dont know but nature itself that would just create creatures to survive would only give them the neccesary functions. What purpose does sight serve? Absolutely nothing, however without it people would be walking off cliffs, nothing would be possible that would allow us to survive, early humans would not be able to hunt or do anything. Its very simple, if everyone went blind today the entire human race would become extinct in no time. So my athiest friends can you find any way to explain our ability to see and how vital it is for our survival yet how insignificant it actually really is if nature alone created us, there has to be a Creator that can think and know that we need sight to create tools, hunt/farm, build houses, avoid dangers and so on. Until someone can explain sight i cannot deny that there is at least a Creator that can think, as for religion well it could be up for debate.

And right of the bat you make a mistake by assuming a 'switch' was made from one species to the next at some point. This is not what happened, it is not how evolution works.
Evolution is a gradual thing that takes thousand of years to produce significant changes to a specie. It is also a thing that is constantly in motion. Here's why:
In short, when we reproduce, the mother's and father's genes (DNA) mix up and form a new set of genes. This set of genes is unique to the child, but is made by copying parts of it's parent's DNA.
-BECAUSE- it is unique it is also slightly different. It is this tiny difference that over many generations causes species to change.

There is no 'first human'. Any attempt to draw a line between humans and our direct ancestors is completely arbitrary and nonsensical. All those species we know in today's world, are a snapshot of a biosphere that is always changing, always evolving.

As for the milk example: every baby drank it's mothers milk. You can trace that line alllll the way back to when mammals first came into existence. I haven't the knowledge at hand to describe the process of the first mammals evolution though.

yerrr kidding me eh? Okay, bring on the reasoning.

Okay I can't (don't feel like) answering this without breaking it up.

Correct.

Actually, through the whole reproduction process, nature randomly tries a whole bunch of stuff. Only the successful stuff has a higher chance of reproducing (due to it being succesful), and thus tends to form a longer lasting part of the gene set.

And you don't see yourself contradicting yourself there?

Still wanna argue that sight serves no purpose?

Right, explain sight. *cracks knuckles and scrapes throat*

Single celled organism are influenced by light. Some use light for some of their chemical processes. Some need it to be able to survive.
That being said, it makes sense to have a way to tell whether or not there is light. A single celled organism depending on light would experience it's biochemical processes going active and inactive in cycles - 24 hours cycles.
Not that the bacteria notices anyway, it doesn't have a brain. At most, some of it's processes are triggered.

Moving on to bigger organisms. Once again, it makes sense to know when it's light (and maybe warm and dry - a hazard) or dark (cool, moist - a safer time to be out). If through evolution a species ends up with a few light sensitive cells, that would be a benefit, thus successful, thus sticking around as a feature in that species.

Long story short: through a process of gradual improvement through random developments and natural selection (ie evolution), eyes evolved. One, tiny, step at a time.

edit: I believe Richard Dawkins was interviewed by some religious guy some time where he tackles the exact same evolution of the eye thing. Can't be arsed to find it now though.

Libra, I highly recommend that you read some of Richard Dawkins works. The God Delusion is a good start, as it covers a broad range of atheist thinking (notice the word 'thinking', rather than 'belief').

You've asked some valid questions, and the answers to the questions are out there. You might come to a question that cannot be answered by science. Yet. Just because we don't have an answer now, doesn't mean that we never will.

Consider that 500 years ago, we didn't know why Apples fell to the ground, or why the earth moved around the sun. If you thought to ask these questions, the answer would have been "God wills it".

"God" is a convenient answer that can be used to explain anything that we don't yet understand. People don't like things that are unknown, and the convenient answer comforts them. It doesn't, however make the convenient answer correct.

You could look at your question about the human eye, and you can consider what an amazingly complicated organ it is. You could be content the answer "such a complicated thing could only have come into existance through God" and not trouble yourself to think about the hundreds of millions of years through which this organ could have slowly evolved.

When thinking about humans and evolution, consider how long an average human would live. Today it might be almost 90 in some countries. But up until 100 odd years ago, it was much closer to 40 and would have got alot shorter.

Consider the way we procreate, and what actually happens. Two seperate unique strains of DNA (which itself is made of 26 pairs of genes) are mixed together to create a unique new strain of DNA.

Consider just your own lineage, and count back how many times this mixing of genes has occured in the last 1000 years. How many times did it occur in 10000 years, how many times did it need to occur in 100,000 years. It's around this point in time that homo-sapiens or human beings, began appearing. Now consider how many times in this chain of conception, which did occur for you to exist, that this mixing of genes occurred in 1 million years. We're not even close to the dinosaur era yet.

Even if the odds of something amazing happening, say for example a planet having the correct conditions for simple proteins to form into single cell life are 1 billion to 1, given theres 100's of billions of stars in the universe, and you conservatively give each star just one planet (for example, our solar system has 8, not even mentioning the moons, some of which could possibly harbour life too) then you still have 100's of planets that that have beaten the odds.

Of course, all we can do is guess at the variables. We have gaps in our knowledge, and this means the odds could be wildly different. But this doesn't mean we will never know.

To be clear, atheism does not suppose anything. Like a Western court will hold you innocent until proven guilty, an Atheist will deem things false until proven as true.

Of course, what this really means in practice is that the existance of things, like God, comes down to probabily given then information present at any given time. So it does no good to suggest to an Atheist that, "you may be wrong", or "there are holes in your theory", because she will shrug and say, "well, what better explanation do you have?".

If you want to win an argument with an Atheist you have to fight fire with fight, showing why or how the the evidence shows a positive alternative. Simply sowing doubt in their position simply won't do.

[...]

Here is the Richard Dawkins video that has been referenced in this thread.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUjd8x-1xM0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffcWK...feature=relmfu

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

A very apt analogy.

Convicting people on basis of guilty until proven innocent encourages corruption and tyranny.

Believing in a god that you have no proof exists encourages corruption and tyranny.

Human history is littered with the proof of this.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

It is perfectly rational to believe in God if you accept that it is philosophy and not science. The failure to make this distinction is the thing that encourages the corruption and tyranny, not the theology itself.

Science is the explanation of the world, not God. If God created the world, then science is an explanation of His creation. Therefore science ought to be seen as a positive thing for both believers and non-believers. The fact that tension exists here is a misunderstanding from both sides.

No, it's not rational at all to believe in something for which there is no evidence, and this is the only misunderstanding between "believers" and "non-believers".

Science is about understanding everything. Including god or gods.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

You can't just throw in the word "philosophy" when you actually mean "let's ignore basic logic". It is not rational to believe in God.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

The idea of God is logically plausible within the context of cosmology.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

Only if your knowledge of cosmology stopped 600 years ago.

Modern cosmology, as in less than 600 years ago, makes any kind of god completely illogical for the simple reason that any god/creator/designer would have to precede the Big Bang, which is logically impossible.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

What a nonsense statement. Unless you need God to explain something, and that explanation doesn't just add more complexity (like "God created the Universe"; what created God?), then it is absolutely not logically plausible.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

Why is the idea of a creator logically impossible?

I would have called it a logical necessity, be it God or the multiverse or something else.

The 'big bang just because' idea is logically impossible.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

I have already said why, and so has Nimon.

The creator would have to precede creation = logically impossible.

There is also the huge logical hole infinite regression. All you are doing is replacing "how was the universe created?" with "how was the Creator created?". Did he too have a Creator? You have to say "yes, the Creator had a creator", or you destroy your own argument, but this is just taking a step back: who created the Creators creator?

If you don't throw up the logically impossible infinity of creators, then one of them must have appeared from nowhere, which is replacing the Big Bang creating the universe with another Big Bang creating a Creator who created a universe, basically inventing a gap that has no rational basis so you can put a god in it.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

If the universe somehow expanded and the collapsed in on itself causing another big bang repeating the cycle in a closed system, I would be happy to leave it at that, but it doesn't.

Since the big bang, the space in the universe is accelerating. This means that there is no return and there is no closed system to speak of.

If you are a student of casuality you would be painfully away that the universe cannot regress infinitely. Therefore there must have a prior 'first' cause.

If all I do is take the logical chain back one step and say 'the universe was created' then I can do that. If I only added one step then so what, it's one magnitude developed beyond your supposition.

So even if a creator is illogical, its less illogical than 'the big bang just because' idea.

1) Closed system is meaningless. There is no 'outside'. The universe is not expanding into everything, and the 'expansion' is purely internal.

2) Since when does any explosion go into reverse and reassemble? Expanding is exactly what is expected from a Big Bang.

3) If it expanding, then it must have been smaller yesterday, and smaller still the day before that. If you go back enough days, it must become a matematical point.

In other words, the Big Bang is entirely logical.


The Big Bang was the first cause, otherwise you are into infinate regression. You 'creator' demands infinite regression, which is exactly why it is entirely illogical.


No, you can't do that. Who created your creator? Answer that.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

You failed to understand what VoR was saying. If you suppose there is a creator, the next question is; "how did that creator come into existence?"

The Big Bang theory doesn't try to suppose what caused the Big Bang, it merely theorises about the start of the universe and the results of that. It doesn't suppose about what caused the start of the universe. As such, it's logic remains sound if there is a creator or not.

The problem with suggesting that a creator existed to create the universe, merely begs the question of "how did the creator come into existence". If you say that the creator just came into existence, then that is no more or less valid than saying the big bang "just happened".

And given the weight of scientific evidence against claims made by various religions, its clear to me that if there were a creator, it's not "God".

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

Actually, I'd say that technically it would be less valid, for the simple fact that you add one more step, one more complication, without actually explaining anything.

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

By 'closed system' I meant that the causes in the universe are self explanatory, which they are not, at least, not originally.

Some physicists have theorized about a 'big crush', which, given thermodynamics, would start another big bang and so on and so forth, which would explain the logic problem of 'big bang just because'. Unfortuantely observations have since indicated this was unlikely.

It is, absolutely. However, while the logical chain going back to the big bang is logical, the event itself is not logical. It 'just happened'.

A creator is the antithesis of infinite regression.

In order to solve this logical dilemma, the creator must be un-caused. That is, transcendent of time or space or casuality, but creative non-the-less.

All casuality must begin from this source lest we infinite regress.

[...]

See above.

Sure, I agree with that.

Wait, wait: theism (religion) is anthropology, deism (creator) is cosmology. I'm only talking about logic and metaphysics, not the retarded cousin, religion. If I ever attempt to invoke religion to explain ANYTHING, please permaban me.

[...]

I have the solution to infinite regression, do you?

Just to make this clear, your argument is:

* The Big bang is illogical because it 'just happened', but everything has to have a cause.

* That means that there must have been a creator to cause the universe

* It is not infinite regression because the creator was caused by... it just happened, without a cause.

Is that what you are saying?

Re: The Great Failure of Atheism
 

But the creator isn't defined by causality, see the difference?