Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
@ Ryan
I will keep this one short:
This movement is for people that do not understand large numbers. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. That is over 5 trillion days. 300 trillion hours and so on. Earth's age is roughly 1/3 that. So 100 trillion hours. You do not have to be very intelligent to "design" everything that seems like intelligent design on earth if you spent 100 trillion hours at it. You could even screw up, a lot, like billions of times an hour, and still easily make what appears to be intelligent design to the casual observer 100 trillion hours later.
Evolution essentially says, hey for every trillion times we get a step along the way wrong, we only have to get it right once. A trillion is a big number, hard for most anyone to grasp. Here is one way to think of it. With a trillion tries, you can win the next 3424 powerball jackpots in a row. At 2 a week, that is 104 a year That is almost 33 years where you are guaranteed to win the powerball lottery jackpot, twice a week, every week without fail.
LogicForTW,
I'm well aware that the popular myth is that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. I'm calling BS on that because there's no way to verify how old the universe is. We don't know how large it is or what it is. And you can't use distance to determine age.
This is what $1 Trillion looks like stacked in $100 bills = http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html
@Diotrephes
While the evidence for 13.8 billion year old universe is there and fairly compelling, you are right in the sense they are not sure, because not all of the universe is viewable. It may be older, a lot older.
A better statement may be: based on the viewable universe, the universe is at least 13.8 billion years old.
I thought I was done but I’m not. Reading back over these posts I am impelled to answer a question or two you put and to ask a question of you.
You said “You say, that I say “well God did it” are you not saying the same thing when you say we don’t know but we will figure it out someday?”
Not at all. I am saying we haven’t got all the information yet. We may not have enough evidence to prove many things about this reality, however we continue to build on the foundations of knowledge that we do know to be true. I make no plea to any supernatural agency here, for me there are none.
I’m say, we know many things, but not everything, we glean errors that show up with new information, but we are only in error, we strive to learn more.
That’s different to we don’t know, so we have to believe in God.
You wrote, “You don’t have an answer for the vast improbabilities of life just like I can’t introduce you to God.”
I don’t have an answer for everything, no, but I have made a commitment to trying to understand by learning. The more I learn the more curious I get, so the more I read and learn. If I had the time, place, space and resources I could show you things that would astound you, take your breath away, make you feel absolutely physically tiny, make you feel deliriously happy and proud to be human.
But one thing you cannot do for me is introduce me to your god.
I met god when I was nine years old.
I took myself to church and began reading my bible every day back then. I was genuine in my worship of god. Twelve years later I realised I had not discovered very much about myself or the world around me and god seemed no closer despite my devout prayer and belief.
I took up a suggestion from a most unusual source and took a different path and never looked back. It was immensely hard, emotionally and intellectually, but worth the effort. I did not set out to be an atheist. I set out to discover the world. It was a gradual dawning of awareness. When I was 40 I still sometimes thought of myself as a deist, but in time that meaningless title passed. I am an atheist. There are no gods.
I would like to stress here that there really is no controversy between science and religion. They are not related fields of thought. Science’s aim is not to prove or disprove god. It is to discover through reasoned experimentation the reality of this universe.
I am not an atheist because I understand science. I’m an atheist because no gods exist.
Ryan, you said “I am not interested in just saying God did it and that’s it.”
Several sentences later in the same paragraph you insist
“I have to believe there is a creator”.
So I ask, which is it? Do you want to understand how and why the natural world came to be and how it works and doesn’t work? I have christian friends who accept the mechanisms of evolution, one, I think, understands it better than I. There are millions of christians who accept evolution. It doesn’t affect their view of their god, it just means they accept the bible is not meant to be taken literally. The Vatican has already declared evolution to be a fact. What holds you back?
I really like what you have to say, I must say I am probably your biggest theist fan. After listing to tons of debates your views align very well with what our modern day science community thinks. I don't come from the standpoint "I don't know I just believe God created it". I come from the point that I look at both models and choose the one that seems most probable to me. I would say to me its more about probability than anything else. So to me the probability factor is so unlikely to be caused by natural causes that I must believe there is a creator, and then who is that creator?
you discounted the Boeing 747 analogy. I don't think that is to far off from reality. I want to put a, non Christian, non theistic, video on here so you guys can actually see what I am talking about and keep in mind what I am referring to is only the cell. Many other vast improbabilities are still required for us to have what we have. Do you see these other mechanisms that I was referring to earlier, like hearing as something that could have happened by natural causes? Each mechanism even in its simplest form must work first, then it can evolve and become more advanced with time. A mechanism that doesn't work doesn't give you an advantage over your population serves you no increased likelihood of survival.
Make sure you post their calculation so we can check it, otherwise it is just someone trying to pull a fast one. And let me be forthright: I already know it isn't possible to even estimate the value. So it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to figure out what is wrong with anything that you post. But by all means give it a try.
Ryan,
The Boing 747 analogy does not work because the first life was not a cell like the ones we see around now. One of the most fundamental features of life is reproduction. Living things should be able to duplicate or multiplicate. However, duplicating chemical systems can arise spontaneously, so the basis for life is already present in abiotic materials. You can find experiments about it here:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05872.pdf
http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/12/23/new-study-brings-scientists-closer...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26435376
So, there was no need to assemble a Boeing 747.
@ oldmanshouts
Are getting an inkling of how silly your OP was?
Honestly yes and no. I think even if I was to come in with something very profound and robust and with a high degree of intellect, I think you WOULD take is seriously but I don't think you would believe it. I think you could meet GOD himself and he could perform amazing miracles right in front of you would probably believe it was some kind of magic trick or I spiked your cool-aid with acid (no pun intended).
I was thinking something at work today that is a compliment to all of you. I do appreciate you guys OWN this topic. What I mean is most of my friends are not Christians and if I was to bring it up they just don't care. They don't want to think about it and they don't want to "waste" an ounce of energy on what is real and what isn't. That is one thing I can't say about you guys. Although I don't agree with you, I respect that you decided to put effort in seeking the truth and so little people give a shit.
@ Ryan
"I think you WOULD take is seriously but I don't think you would believe it"
I detect the unspoken thought here that you now realise you have no evidence at all for the existence of your god. None.
I already gave you the answer to the "meeting god" question. You really didn't want that one did you? It is making you really think hard about your own reality.
Sorry about that , but then you sought us out, All I have done is respond and give you pointers.
"effort in seeking the truth and so little people give a shit."
So few people give a shit because it is irrelevant to their daily lives. Bringing religion up in conversation is a no no in many places and opinions such as mine could get me killed in hundreds of countries around the world including the US, though they might just prosecute the perpetrator.
I hope you really are seeking truth Ryan. It will set you free from that prison of fantasy you inhabit. But I warn you it is a tough road of self discovery. Ask most people here, Mykocob, David Killens, Sheldon, CyberLyn, Nyar, Tin Man, all products of Christian upbringings, all now free of that subtlest of conditioned prisons. Their stories are inspirational.
Good luck my friend.
Give Ernie a pat.
I am definitely not afraid of the meeting god thing. I am just having troubles keeping up and I am a horrible writer it takes a lot of effort for me to produce what I have.
I am still waiting for the answer to my question. How would you know Jesus is God? What would constitute knowing?
chimp3,
It's easy to prove that Yeshua is a God. Simply walk outside and command a tree to uproot itself and to jump into the nearest body of water. If it does as you command then that indicates that Yeshua was real. Other Gods don't give a method to prove that they are real.
The thing is that no one in human history has ever been able to do that test so Yeshua was just full of BS.
@ Ryan
"I am definitely not afraid of the meeting god thing"
Nobody said "afraid" . I said "unexpected" as in "did not expect" that response.
I can understand your feeling of "not keeping up" a theist sparring partner of mine ( debate sparring not boxing) used to complain that he had to take a break because his brain was forcing new channels of thought where before it had run in deep comfortable ruts.
I suspect that you are experiencing that.
@ Ryan
I strongly urge you to respectfully ( And I mean respectfully) ask others on this forum about their experiences in seeking their truth, you might find some commonality.
I was lucky I was never programmed as a child.
Well I tried to do that:
Prophets are professionally trained to hijack subconscious.
The place to start any discussion is not with a particular god, Christian, Hindu or whatever. Define the god and then offer supporting evidence. "I can't see how else..." or "why else are we here..." are no reasons for believing anything. The religion into which a person has been indoctrinated is no place to start any discussion.
Ryan just spouts a typical version of religionist superstitions.
Humans have only existed for three million years and modern society for a few hundred, at most. We are at the start of a journey from this one point in space-time. We've much to learn and religions only illustrate the dangers of superstition.
Chimp keeps asking the vital question - any evidence please?
Pages