Atheism isn't a belief?

Gee CP, you sure know how to confuse an issue (or me at least)! Or do you know how to confuse an issue? And if so, how do you know you know...if you know you know what I know I know you know I know you mean. If you know what I mean...Wonder what Theodoric makes of all this.Is it "I know and I ain't telling" or "I know because...." I'd be more interested in the latter

The tanglible natural universe that supplies you so much natural proof had a beginning. The cause of this (you may agree) most important event is a total mystery. Totally intangible, totally without a naturalistic proof. Totally relevant for all that - given what it produced.If you've no proof for the cause of the most significant event ever, are you not just assuming that the cause was natural. If so, how does this assumption equate to 'knowing'. Knowing (in the non-Chiroptera sense of the word) involves some justification of itself. At least for oneself if no other.

Iano, it would be nice if you could debate in good faith and realise that your reasoning for 'first cause' is flawed. There have been abundant posts detailing to you why there is no need for a 'first cause'. I realize though, that this idea has become a central tenent of your faith and you're unlikely to look rationally at it's dismaissal. Therefore I am holding the vague hope that I can help you look at this issue from another way.As I understand it, you believe in the idea of God being 'first cause'. Perhaps you could sit back and detail to me why you believe "God" HAS to be the one who is the 'first cause' (I mean this figuratively.) It is just as likely to have been any one of the gods that humans have in their pantheon. Why should we believe that it HAS to be YOUR god. Why not any other? Perhaps because you were indoctorinated to believe it was YOUR god (ie. You had limited access to the idea of some other god('s).) If we follow along your reasoning, it could be any god at all. You have no solid evidence it has to be your god. Your 'book' doesn't count, because there are quite a few other religions who have their own special 'books', detailing their own gods special place in the universe.If you continue along your path of reasoning, you would realize that there is no valid reason why it could not have been even multiple 'first causes'. I mean, why not? It could have been the whole Greek pantheon for that matter all working together, all there as 'first causes'. It just happens that while you dismiss other 'first causes', we dismiss just one more, namely "yours".

Did you know that that the mechanism God uses to 'save us' is called "justification" which folk sometimes explain by saying it's "just-as-if-I'd" never sinned. It took me 38 years to come to understand the workings of that justification. Now I'm ready for yours (p.s.And just what we need now CP...an "epistemic minimalist athiest". Why don't you just go throw in a hand grenade there - sheesh. Can you imagine the fun such a being would have debating with an "espistemic minimalist theist. Espitemic? More like Epidemic)

You talking plain English true (ie: it can be backed up) or you talking epistemically here See wot you gone and done CP. Gone and muddied the waters all over the place you 'ave. You are NOT I repeat NOT invited to take any part in "A reasoned proof of God" when/if ever Admin release it. If you do I'll be claiming my proof for the existence of the atom is an epistemic one

Hello, Ian.I guess I don't feel that the distinction between natural and supernatural in important, at least not in this question. Either there is good, unambiguous evidence that a god exists, or there is not. I feel that there is no good evidence for god; at best the evidence for a god is ambiguous, at worst it is nonexistent.So far, most questions about the world have been answered pretty well by completely naturalistic solutions. The questions that remain are relatively few and minor, and there is no a priori reason that a solution for those questions will not be naturalistic as well.Even if the correct answer for some of these questions (like, for example, the ultimate origin of the universe) is, in fact, a supernatural cause, we cannot yet know which questions have a supernatural solution, and which will eventually have a naturalistic one. So, I can say one of two things:The universe is completely naturalisticly, and all questions have naturalistic solutions even if I do not yet know what they are.orThe universe runs mainly naturalistically; but there is also a supernatural deity that is ultimately responsible for it. Some questions will have naturalistic solutions, others will have supernatural solutions.I cannot really see the practical difference between the two statements, so I will go with the simpler one.P.S. I am not an epistemic minimalist.

You seem to suggest that "abundance" equates to "reasonable". If only it were so. Suggestions as to 'no need for first cause' are speculative in the extreme and imply things can happen for no reason. For example, an ever existing singularity, which existed when there was no time for it to exist in and then went Bang for no reason. And it's been a banging and a cruching for time immemorial. Except there is no evidence of anything of the sort except in the minds of the mathematicians who pose the ideas. Matter from no matter, something from nothing. They all ask us to do one thing. Suspend reason. Feel free to do so if you wish. Me, I'll take my chances. After suspending reason, you want that I should go off topic. Can't say I'm enamoured with your debating technique here DB. This is not about me proving God as first cause. This is about an athiest who says "God doesn't exist" or "I don't believe God exists" suggesting reasons as to why they say that. I ask them about first cause. If someone wants to say "No first cause. It was something from nothing" I'll drop first cause and ask them how they believe "something from nothing"If an athiest said "I believe it by blind faith alone" then I'd say fine. But none has to date.p.s. If you want to go have a look at "A reasoned proof of God", you'll find one in the Proposed Topics forum. We can have a ding dong about it there when/if it is released.This message has been edited by iano, 17-Aug-2005 08:51 PMThis message has been edited by iano, 17-Aug-2005 08:52 PM

removed by author.This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 17-Aug-2005 04:02 PM

I dont know enough about the world of physics(quantum, partical or whatever) to explain the creation of the universe. Your question implies a couple things.1)That there is a first cause
(I am not willing to agree that there was a first cause. My feeling is that there always was something and alwys will be something. No end no beginning. I have no proof but there is no proof of a beginning either.)
2) That if a person does not believe that there was a god as the first cause, then they have to say what was the first cause. The lack of a natural explanation does not automatically bring us to the conclusion that "Therefore, there must be a god". It just means we do not know. This is not an either or proposition. Just because something is not explainable (at this time with present technologies) does not automatically mean there is a god.

Clear and unambiguous is what's needed for sure. Well at least one should be able to arrive there. Arrive after a journey. Take science for instance. If you look at how it's done you'll see people striving in the face of no evidence to get evidence to arrive at explanation. What comes before the evidence is a desire to know (unepistemically). Desire to know, THEN evidence, then explanation (unambiguousosity). There are a myriad of things which science admits it is powerless to comment on. "Why there is anything at all?", "What is the meaning of life?", "why do I feel like I am an 'I'?" Science can only tell me that my componants are atoms and energy conforming laws of nature. But not why they are. There is no naturalistic answer to these very central (for many people) questions. Maybe there will be someday, but it looks like you'll be dead before that happens. Then you'll either know unabiguously...or your worm food. If decisions made now affect then, then it will be too late.Assuming the desire was there then a search for unambiguous evidence can commence. But the desire is required first. And the desire, if a true desire must open itself up to possibilites that unabiguous answers can be found outside the natural, given that the natural is limited, is silent, offers no answers.The question I suppose is, how bad does someone want an answer. If they don't then fair enough. Each to their own. They may decide to rest on "no unambiguous evidence". But they rest on a search that was never completed, if even started.(It's uncanny but, God of the bible says "Seek and you will find" Which presumably means "Don't seek and you won't" which like the rest of it... usually makes sense) Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Naturalistic says nothing. Or if it does it does so tentitively - and for good reason. It ain't sure. These are the kinds of questions which one would want, I suggest, a bit more than a tentitive answer to. The existance of the Universe? Something from nothing. Life? It arose from non-life (though we can't demonstrate experimentally how it could happen). These are massive questions along with those above. Are you so completely satisfied with the answers? Forget debate and point scoring for a moment (which I don't think you are doing by the way). Are you really satisfied and comfortable inside, in your heart about "no answers" or "tentitive answers" to these central questions?Quest - ions... I know your not. Seems like a complicated way of describing a emergency escape hatch to me. And that ain't your style CP. That ain't your style...Oops...it's Guinness Time again. Yehaarrrr.You on "for a few dollars more?"

I will make do with the one that I already provided in my last post. I see the major difference between Agnostic and weak Atheist as this.An Agnostic has equal belief in god and in no god. (This could well be none in either case)
An Atheist has NO belief in either. However I would go as far as to say that most, if not all, weak atheists would say (as I did above) that they conclude that there is almost zero chance that god exists so this puts them a little away from the exact center position occupied by the Agnostic.The difference is quite subtle IMO.

Do you believe in IPU?

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But they rest on a search that was never completed, if even started.

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But coming to an incorrect conclusion also leads to a search that is never completed, at least not successfully completed.I am assuming that the goal is not to simply answer these questions, but to answer them correctly.Who am I? Why am I here? What is my place in the cosmos?These are, indeed, important questions, and questions that science cannot answer. But to reason that there must be a god when there is no good empirical evidence for the existence of such a god is to give an answer to these questions that is just as arbitrary as the answer given by any atheist.

iano:

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I said something like " I don't know if your there or not but if you are then I need and want to know you. Nothing else is going to make sense of this life. It must be you or I'll go nuts"

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If you do say some prayer inviting him into your life and you know it was from the heart then that's it. He'll come.

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Of course, there is the other explanation for your conversion experience, suggested at the end of your first quote above: a for my tone, but a serious explanation for my point...Yesterday, in my surgeon's waiting room, I read in Field & Stream about a fellow who was just off a week-long drunk and had been tossed out by his girlfriend and fired by his boss. As he floated on a bass lake, fishing, bereft of hope, he underwent a conversion experience and went dry on the spot. He also waited for God to tell him what to do with his life:God told him to make lures.That's what he does now fairly successfully, making a decent living from handcrafted lures.Belief in the supernatural is rooted in human beings in extremis: desperate, fearful, agonized...the shaman and the witch doctor differ from the pastor and the priest solely by millenia of elaboration: as our understanding of the natural world increases, so too must the subtlety by which the supernatural remains elusive. Even "major" relgions have been compelled to devise doctrinal reasons for why great miracles happened then, but not now.Every human culture devised gods to explain the unknown: Christianity is a Johnny-come-lately in that regard; it is, in fact, an amalgam of its predecessors.I have never witnessed ghosts, goblins, witches, spirits of the dead, things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, or any of the phlethora of supernatural entities once held universally to exist. So I don't believe in them or any other supernatural entity.I observe that supernatural explanations are developed by primitive cultures. I observe that these explanations are elaborated through millenia into "sophisticated" religions. I observe that naturalistic explanations continue to grow in scope and power. I observe that no supernatural claim has withstood credible testing, most, in recent centuries generally being debunked as fraud. I observe that a human personality in extreme circumstances will choose to believe whatever it takes to survive.So, I do not believe there is a god. It is not the case that I believe only naturalistic explanations are possible, merely that no evidence has been presented to suggest that supernatural explanations have merit. The history of our species suggests the origins of supernatural beliefs can be found in ignorance and fear.I do not know (or hold beliefs about) whether the Big Bang was the Big Beginning, though I suspect we will someday know, if our species survives long enough: I am skeptical for historical reasons of present-science claims about future-science limits to knowledge. I find the First Cause query no less (and no more) compelling when put to the supernatural creator than the super-singularity: both yield unproductive infinite regression.In my experience, most atheists are thoughtful people, and their atheism is not a faith but a conclusion.Edit: TypoThis message has been edited by Omnivorous, 08-17-2005 09:26 PM

Why is it "logical" or "safe" to choose the less likely explanation ?

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(funny that a book called the Bible demonstrates all over the place why this should be the case. Not bad for a 2000-4000 year old documnent supposedly written by a bunch of nomads)

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Obviously you don't know much about the Bible. It doesn't explain any such thing, and to the best of my knowledge none of the writers were actually nomads (and none of it is 4000 years old, either).