Is Atheism a logical belief?

What an odd strawman you have concocted here. You got all of this Borg stuff, now extended to this (despite me citing bioengineering in the very post you respond to) from me stating I can't make myself believe I am an elephant or make myself believe in ghosts, faeries, or Gods?

For somebody who constantly thumps his chest and accuses others of poor English comprehension, poor grammar, and building straw men, you sure could use some self reflection, given this level of straw you throw and the fact that you seem adverse to capitalizing the first letter of your sentences.

 

I didn't want the thread to become an Art Bell joke thread.

 

Lol

Well, I did answer your question in my first response. It isn't a difficult one to answer.

 

Ok well - I'll let the other guy's take over the thread and drive it off some absurd cliff into whatever weeds they dream up or are smoking.

Adios.

 

May as well close the thread then. You asked a question and got an answer that you decided not to follow up on.

Just to summarize before leaving the thread myself,

1. Atheism doesn't specify how the universe came to be and most atheists will admit they don't know.

2. Most atheists don't think theists know either.

3. Scientific observation of the universe expanding leads many to believe it came from a single point, the big bang. But there is little to know data to suggest what if anything came before that. Perhaps this universe was caused by another. Perhaps this universe has always existed in a pulsating series of expansions and contractions. We simply don't know.

4. Theist creation stories rarely answer the question you asked. They almost always start with a God being, and don't usually seek to explain how that being came to be.

 

An argument from incredulity, with a strawman fallacy side salad and, for desert, a First Cause question (in proper capitalization, no less).

Using irrational and illogical arguments is not the best way to discuss "logical belief".

Try again.

 

you took the thread completely off topic with your nonsense, as you have mine, apparently thats your function here.

I think he covered the atheist mantra fairly well, he did leave it open that would be revising the OP during the course of the debate that wont occur now thanks to the neoatheist hecklers and neoatheist nonsense.

what is the 'big bang' for 100?

 

"Never argue with stupid people - they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." - Mark Twain

 

Well it’s good that Jolly Penguin is here. He said pretty much what I would have said.

 

Who/what "created" YOUR imaginary "CREATOR"?

Why does YOUR imaginary "creator" get a PASS but the LAWS of PHYSICS do NOT?

Matter/energy can NEITHER be created nor destroyed.

ERGO matter/energy has ALWAYS existed in one form or another and WILL always exist in one form or another.

Given an INFINITE amount of TIME in our SPACE-TIME Continuum the ORIGIN of LIFE is not only possible but also PROBABLE.

We are comprised of SIX of the MOST COMMON ELEMENTS in the Universe.

It is ONLY a matter of TIME before we find EVIDENCE of LIFE elsewhere in our Universe.

The OP's First Cause FALLACY is a Stone Age theist SUPERSTITION.

 

Stone Age SUPERSTITIONS based upon IGNORANCE.

Once we started applying the Scientific Method that "First Cause" FALLACY was EXPOSED as being fundamentally FLAWED because it FAILS to address the "first cause" of the IMAGINARY "creator".

 

It is a very logical position to hold, as is one of creationism (no specific creationism theory is intended here). The key thing is the premise from which that logical conclusion starts from. I happen to agree with you in the general sense that there is too much order in this universe for there to not be a guiding hand. That said, I recognize that if something has a one in a billion chance, that one time can still happen. With our scope of discovery limited, especially with regards to time and what actually happen in the extremely distant past, all we can do is create premises and then run our logic from there.

 

Aristotle disagrees with you.

 

Hawking hit a brick wall that he could not "think" his way around, so his conclusion was that energy just popped into existence, from absolutely nothing, somewhere in a void that did not previously exist, for no reason whatsoever, and thereafter created everything that we think we know - emphasis on CREATED.

That seems impossible, unless Hawking believed in a magic man in the sky that created the energy...

The obvious FACT is that whatever is out there that created Hawking's spark

is so far beyond human comprehension as to make even "thinking" humans no more than feeble idiots.

But even silly superstitious men thousands of years ago reached the exact same philosophical conclusion as Hawking...

It would be nice if atheists could admit that they are as stupid in this regard, as the people they spend their days insulting and degrading simply because they hold a different belief...

 

There is an idea floating around out there that God is the end product of evolution, in which all of humanity, or all of intelligent life if more than one planet of intelligent beings were created, eventually merge into a single gestalt self by the "end of time" and goes back and starts creation. the self fulling time paradox. Of course we still have the question of what happens to God when the gestalt forms and goes back in time. I have stumbled across the idea that this is the origin of the multiverse. In the end, no matter what explanations we manage to come up with, all of them have logic holes in them.

 

Ironically enough, it is that concept that the universe came out of nothingness, not even a void, that lends credence to the computer simulation theory. If you think about the fact that a programmer would indeed start from nothing and begin building from the basics (light, energy, matter, etc) and then build up from there, it's a perfect match for almost all creation ideas, save for the flowery wording.

 

To the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of self-proclaimed atheists do not understand atheism to mean what you've written here.

At the end of the day, we know very little about what happened around the beginning of the universe (as well as the beginning of life). There are many significant unanswered questions about it. To assert that God created the universe doesn't really solve any of those questions, it just sort of puts them in a box and pretends that we don't have to answer them. The origin of the universe is no harder a problem for atheists than the origin of God is for theists. The complexity of the universe is no harder a problem for atheists than the complexity of God is for theists. Asserting that God is the source simply adds a layer of complexity, without justification.

The beginning of the universe is unintuitive to humans, and much of it is simply unknown. For theism to be believable, it is not enough to just list the alternatives we can think of and assess that they're unlikely (because we don't know enough to come up with a full list of alternatives, nor to compare their likelihood in any meaningful sense), we would have to specifically prove that theism is true (or at least believable).

Atheism, as most self-proclaimed atheists understand it, is simply that the idea that theists have not provided enough evidence/justification/similar to warrant belief being formed (and as such, we are left with a lack of that belief).

 

"Where did the first spark that popped into existence, from absolutely nothing, in the middle of a void that did not previously exist, just because it wanted to, come from?"

theist believe a God popped into existence and then created everything

so they just moved the question back some, then the question is, who or what created God?

Where did the first God that popped into existence, from absolutely nothing, in the middle of a void that did not previously exist, just because it wanted to, come from?

if we can say God always existed, then we can say a much less complicated thing like energy always existed

but we also know that (-1) + (+1) = 0 .... so you can get lots of (+1)'s from zero over infinite amounts of time

 

Do you have a source for this?

 

Yeah - I actually READ BOOKS. You should try is so you do not feel left out in the dark and then impose on others to educate you.

 

Claiming there is no god without proof is the same thing to me as claiming there is one with no proof.

 

You were unlucky to have attracted a couple of the forums more obscure trolls to drag your thread way from the core topic. Don't be too disheartened.

In simple terms, the answer to your question is that atheism isn't directly related to the question of the creation of the universe at all. Atheism is just a term that labels someone who doesn't believe in any gods. It is perfectly possible to believe in some intelligent creator of the universe which isn't a god and it is perfectly possible to believe in a god which isn't the creator of the universe.

The actual question of what (if anything) caused the entire universe to come in to existence (preceded by the questions of "What is the universe?" and "What does existence mean?" ) is relevant to all of us. Belief (or not) in gods or any other intelligent creators is merely one side issue and only a consequential one at that.

As for the title (which is a slightly different question); Whether atheism is logical depends entirely why an individual is an atheist (which is equally true of theism and indeed pretty much anything). Eating food because you're hungry and so you don't die is logical. Eating food so the magic pixies hiding under the fridge don't get it is not logical.

 

So this makes it OK to seek out God believers and berate and ridicule them incessantly? Do you think that is going to change their minds? I do not understand why when a person voices their belief in a God, it enrages atheists to the point of hysteria?

 

Exactly my point, Sir.

Again, many Garcias, hombre.

 

There are lots of books out there, such that one may never even stumble across the one(s) you are referencing. So it would be helpful to know which specific book(s) you are referring to for this idea so that others might actually read and learn.