sleepy jack

Okay like who?

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Astronomer

I'm in agreeance with Ethan here, most modern philosophers don't try to disprove the existence of a god or deity but instead try to disprove the beliefs/ethics of organised religion and religion as in institution. A lot of belief systems like Agnosticism definitely don't attempt to disprove a god or higher being but focus on breaking down religion as an organised authority/institution.

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sleepy jack

I don't really understand why there's such an objection to that end of the philosophical spectrum, even if it were as common as people think. Descartes believed he could prove the existence of god - so god existed to him. No one attacks his, for a lack a better term (this sounds more harsh then I want it to but) intellectual arrogance. If someone chooses to shut that out it doesn't make them anymore insane than you or I, whether they use logic and the strength of that logic isn't really important.

This is why I have a problem with most theistic people I've encountered. They seem to have trouble accepting the validity of atheism, or even agnosticism but they completely embrace theism of all stripes (unless it's Islam of course, but that's a different argument.) It's ridiculous, especially seeing as their fellow religious people tend to be the one making more contrary/extreme claims about reality then they (cue holy wars.) Anyway, what I'm getting at is I don't see the core difference between the propagandist nature of misotheists and many theists, particularly evangelicalism which is basically based off the idea of "were right, you're wrong. Now lets shove it down your throat because we're morally superior."

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SATCHMO

But seriously, what is Judeo-Christian thought? Creationists and fundamentalists would like you to believe that it is representative of a literal translation of the old and new testaments of what we call the holy bible as filtered through over 2 millenia of translation and interpretation.
Furthermore, and I've asked this before, what is god? Do we have an adequate description of What we're seeking to prove or disprove. A description that is founded purely within the bounds of ontological thought. In other words, a description of god as a "being that which created the universe" is still not a description of "his" inherent nature, but a description of an act or occurence that has been attributed to god.
This isn't an attempt to prove or disprove the existence of god, but an attempt to show that we've been asking the wrong questions. The problem with a literal interpretation of biblical scriptures is simply that in our attempt to understand and prove, or disprove, a literal understanding of god as alluded to in ancient scriptures the figurative and the metaphorical often go completely ignored, and that is usually, in cases such as this, where the truth lies.

Inuzuka Skysword

I think that atheists waste their time by trying to show why someone is making a logical error when they believe in a god. That is one end of the spectrum that we won't be able to convince many people through. On the other hand, if people payed more attention to why believing in a god is damaging then one could win there and convince more people. Though some do this, it is the New Atheism movement that is pissing me off. They underhand atheism when people like Bill Maher make a movie attacking straw men and stuff. There needs to be more talk about individualism which is really the basis for good atheism.

Guybrush

Alright, I'll try and stay on topic. I don't believe there is a god and the reasons are many, but some of the more important ones are these two :

First, I don't think our universe needs a god. I believe the universe and everything in it, even our thoughts, is the product of a long chain of fairly predictable events, cause and consequence. I hate it when people say "we're here by accident" - no we're not, the emergence of life on our planet was most likely a highly probable event and it's subsequent evolution is simply a matter of cause and consequence. Believing in a universe that runs without any need for a higher intelligence to govern it puts god out of his job.

Second, I believe religion is also a result of cause and consequence. We have a biology that gives rise to psychology. Most of us are highly inquisitive in nature and have a need for understanding the world around us. In every human culture out there you find religion. It's been with us for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Now, belief can have many extravagant effects - it can flavour people's perceptions, it can alter experiences, it can heal you (which is why you test meds against placebos - belief in a drug is part of what makes it work). I believe religious experiences are internal -- either it's all in their mind or they interpret something non-religious in a religious way.

In other words, the universe gets on fine without any deities and so do religions. The simplest answer to the yes/no-question "is there a god?" then becomes "no".

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Something Completely Different

Astronomer

I too believe that life is a highly probable event and that its evolution was a matter of cause and consequence. But, even before life developed here, where did the universe come from? If you believe in the Big Big Theory, that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past, then where did that come from? Don't think I disagree with you, because I don't, but thinking about how and why the universe came about just really trips me out.

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Guybrush

Maybe I'm just down to earth but these sort of questions don't really bother me. We're here on planet earth and out there are billions of galaxies with billions upon billions of other solar systems. It's rather ambitious to think we people living on earth right now will ever know how everything, even time, first came to be.

However, you get the same sort of problem if you believe in any deity. Most religions have some sort of creation story explaining how the world was made. What was before that? Was the deity ever created or were they always around? And so on.

I think my father actually believes the universe runs in circles. He believes that all matter will lump together in one big black hole and of course we learn that energy never disappears so that big, black hole contains all the energy in the world and somewhere down the line it will explode in a new big bang. I don't believe that myself because I question it's plausibility and frankly I prefer to believe in what we "know" (can be/has been proven by scientific methods) and everything we don't know makes me extremely sceptical, scientific ideas and religion alike .. Not knowing the answer to your question doesn't bother me. At least not much!

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Something Completely Different

Freebase Dali

I assume that outside (or before) our physical universe, anything is possible, because outside (or before) our physical universe, there are/were none of the laws of physical reality that we are currently governed by inside our universe.

I stopped being confounded by the incomprehensible when I realized that.

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Barnard17

We're most certainly not here by accident, and the creation of life was not in the slightest a probable event. It's more the case that considering how many galaxies, within each how many solar systems and within each how many planets ... there's an unfathomably large amount of events happening at any one time. It was bound to happen somewhere, at some point. The fact we only have very limited sensory capabilities and general knowledge of what's going on (on the grand scheme of things) makes it very easy for people to decide some magic is happening, with men in clouds and big beards and lightning.
It's the same as if you tell six people to go out and bet on different horses in the same race. No matter how unlikely the odds are for a particular horse to win, somebody will be a winner. Do it enough times to enough people and as long as they don't know the other people placing the bets they'll be pretty convinced you're some kind of genius (Derren Brown - The System). It's the inestimable ability of humans to see random events that fall to or against their favour and decide something really special is happening because we all look on life with rose tinted glasses.

As for the question asked "well where did the matter come from to cause the Big Bang?" my very simple answer would be I don't really care because it doesn't affect me. There are scientists with IQs breaking the bank and years of research and training, building upon years of research and training from generations of scientists before them. Even they are barely getting to grips with proving the source of our existence but if that's what they want to spend their time doing I say great for them.
They keep finding new ways to test matter and get to the bottom of all this and a continuously divulging new evidence that effects some precise elements of the Big Bang theory. It's a living thing that develops day by day and improves as our knowledge and technology improves. I'm not even going to pretend I can keep on top of it. But that's where the evidence is, so when somebody asks the question of "do you believe in God? Where do we all come from?" I'm going to throw a stone in the direction of science and live happily in my apathetic ignorance.

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