What Is The Positive Evidence For Atheism?

Oh crap. Now I won't be getting any sleep tonight.

What makes you think that matter always existed?Do you have any positive evidence that matter always existed?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No, but folk always ask the question, "How did something come from nothing?"I suppose that what you are asserting is that the most honest answer is simply that we don't know.This whole idea of not knowing really bothers me.I think that many people feel that they have to be believers simply because they feel uncomfortable not knowing.

So you are saying that believing in something that is false is better than simply saying "I don't know?"But you can offer no positive evidence for matter always existing and contend that people claim "something came from nothing?"I assume you have positive evidence that people claim something came from nothing?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, then perhaps you might use the time not spent sleeping by helping Ray find his positive evidence.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Hi, bluegenes. I've participated in and witnessed a thousand debates about the definitions of atheist, agnostic, theist, nontheist, etc. They usually end in acute boredom, with all sides claiming victory, so I prefer to sidestep this semantic brouhaha.Whatever set of definitions one works with, since babies hold no beliefs about gods whatsoever, calling them atheists seems true only in a trivial fashion.I'm not accusing atheists of intellectual dishonesty; however, I do believe there is a significant difference between the beliefs of atheists and agnostics. Further, I believe that whatever definitions one uses, they make sense only in the context of active intellectual consideration.It makes no more sense to call a baby an atheist because she has no beliefs about gods than it does to call a baby an anarchist because he has no beliefs about proper governance: an absence of belief does not equal belief in an absence.So there is no equivalence between me as a babe naive of belief about gods and my early adolescent atheism. Comparisons of beliefs are valid and significant only between actively held beliefs--evangelicals who enter vegetative states, for example, do not become atheists.

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An infinite number of demons under my bed and infinite sleepless nights wouldn't be enough to help Ray--the resulting delusions might help me to understand him a bit though.Thank Baal that there aren't that many demons under my bed (don't EVEN go there!). I have one task today--to make roasted garlic mashed potatoes. I'd better get to it.

Right now, I'm peeling my Yukon Golds while the garlic roasts. Then, I'll bake a pumpkin pie with my secret family recipe; next, sautee celery and onion for the stuffing. After all that, I'll enjoy an anticipatory nap before proceeding.Work, work, work: an epicure's job is never done.Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

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Real things always push back.
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Inappropriate, eh? Well, that has yet to be demonstrated, on that thread, or in this post.Jon

Not necessarily. Atheists like myself do not say there is no god. We say that a universe with a god seem to be identical to a universe without a god.Many years ago, my friends and I had a thought experiment. Could we prove that there is no immaterial pink unicorn in the room we were in? Long story short, we concluded that a room with an immaterial pink unicorn inside is identical to a room without an immaterial pink unicorn. The question then came up. Why didn't we believe in an immaterial pink unicorn standing inside our room right then?We don't believe in a god for the same reason that we don't believe in an immaterial pink unicorn standing in the room we are in.So, it's not that we say there is no room for god in our universe. It's that a universe with a god is identical to a universe without a god.Note that this position does not preclude the existence of god. Until someone can prove that this god can have real influence on the universe we occupy, the belief or disbelief in this god is pointless.For me, personally, I don't believe in an immaterial pink unicorn because it's silly to believe in something that neither can be detected nor has any influence on anything we can detect. Now, replace "immaterial pink unicorn" with "god".

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

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I think what he means is the idea that there was eternally existing matter in some form without need of a Creator.

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Why does eternally existing matter make more sense than an uncaused first cause? (One of the usual explanations for God)

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Well that's something of a strawman. Does "eternal" mean the same as "all time" if time is finite ? And why refer to "matter" when anyone who has a basic understanding of cosmology would know that matter is a form of energy - and that other forms preceded it.Now "mass/energy has existed for all (finite) time" would be more reasonable. And it is consistent with conservation of energy. So it is not obvious that we need a first cause at all.But we have another problem with this argument - an excluded middle. Why can we not have a first cause that is NOT God ? It is a big step to go from there being some sort of first cause to the idea that it is God - so the most important part of the argument is simply ignored, left out of the false dichotomy.

So how does an atheist actively intellectually consider the several billion different Gods of several billion different theists? Because there's no evidence for any Gods, theists are not like people looking at a mountain from different perspectives, they are looking at an apparent nothing from different perspectives, and this inevitably leads to as many views of Gods as there are theists. Gods, you say, correctly. Plural. An absence of belief does not equal the belief in a possibly infinite amount of absences. I don't see how anyone can have the latter. (As for the analogy, having opinions on an observed reality, human governance or politics, is very different from having opinions on an apparent nothing).This thread concerns Ray's God. As with all Gods, someone with an absence of belief doesn't actively disbelieve in it, baby like, because we don't, at first, know what Ray believes in.If the God is defined in some way, then belief in absence could kick in.So, a non-theist cannot actively believe in the absence of Ray's God without knowing anything about it. Then, if Ray tells us something, like his God created the earth 6300 years ago, we can make decisions.You're a self-described agnostic, and I'm a self-described atheist, but we might well come to the same conclusions there, because evidence comes into play.For me, really, being an atheist just means that there isn't a bluegenes God. If there were an Omnivorous God, I couldn't actively intellectually disbelieve in it when in the "baby" position of knowing nothing about it, but could if you described it.Generally speaking, the more specific the description, the easier to disbelieve.Ray is the only person in the world who believes in his God, in my view, and that goes for all other theists. Edited by bluegenes, : wrong word corrected

No God - no universe

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I strongly disagree with this: in a universe with a god anything can happen, the god can suspend the laws of nature whenever he pleases, so they aren't really laws of nature at all. That's a very different universe from the one where there is no god and where the laws of nature are immutable. Admittedly, if the god keeps himself well hidden from us and stays out of our affairs, his universe may well be indistinguisable from a universe without him, but in principle they are not identical.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Only for Pantheists.