Here is a jump start of a thousand words...
Posted on 11/24/2008 12:56:31 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Contemporary atheism marches behind the banner of science. It is perhaps no surprise that several leading atheists—from biologist Richard Dawkins to cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker to physicist Victor Stenger—are also leading scientists. The central argument of these scientific atheists is that modern science has refuted traditional religious conceptions of a divine creator.
But of late atheism seems to be losing its scientific confidence. One sign of this is the public advertisements that are appearing in billboards from London to Washington DC. Dawkins helped pay for a London campaign to put signs on city buses saying, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Humanist groups in America have launched a similar campaign in the nation’s capital. “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake.” And in Colorado atheists are sporting billboards apparently inspired by John Lennon: “Imagine…no religion.”
What is striking about these slogans is the philosophy behind them. There is no claim here that God fails to satisfy some criterion of scientific validation. We hear nothing about how evolution has undermined the traditional “argument from design.” There’s not even a whisper about how science is based on reason while Christianity is based on faith.
Instead, we are given the simple assertion that there is probably no God, followed by the counsel to go ahead and enjoy life. In other words, let’s not let God and his commandments spoil all the fun. “Be good for goodness sake” is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. The question remains: what is the source of these standards of goodness that seem to be shared by religious and non-religious people alike? Finally John Lennon knew how to compose a tune but he could hardly be considered a reliable authority on fundamental questions. His “imagine there’s no heaven” sounds visionary but is, from an intellectual point of view, a complete nullity.
If you want to know why atheists seem to have given up the scientific card, the current issue of Discover magazine provides part of the answer. The magazine has an interesting story by Tim Folger which is titled “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator.” The article begins by noting “an extraordinary fact about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for life.” As physicist Andrei Linde puts it, “We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible.”
Too many “coincidences,” however, imply a plot. Folger’s article shows that if the numerical values of the universe, from the speed of light to the strength of gravity, were even slightly different, there would be no universe and no life. Recently scientists have discovered that most of the matter and energy in the universe is made up of so-called “dark” matter and “dark” energy. It turns out that the quantity of dark energy seems precisely calibrated to make possible not only our universe but observers like us who can comprehend that universe.
Even Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics and an outspoken atheist, remarks that “this is fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident.” And physicist Freeman Dyson draws the appropriate conclusion from the scientific evidence to date: “The universe in some sense knew we were coming.”
Folger then admits that this line of reasoning makes a number of scientists very uncomfortable. “Physicists don’t like coincidences.” “They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea.”
There are two hurdles here, one historical and the other methodological. The historical hurdle is that science has for three centuries been showing that man does not occupy a privileged position in the cosmos, and now it seems like he does. The methodological hurdle is what physicist Stephen Hawking once called “the problem of Genesis.” Science is the search for natural explanations for natural phenomena, and what could be more embarrassing than the finding that a supernatural intelligence transcending all natural laws is behind it all?
Consequently many physicists are exploring an alternative possibility: multiple universes. This is summed up as follows: “Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse.” Folger says that “short of invoking a benevolent creator” this is the best that modern science can do. For contemporary physicists, he writes, this “may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation” for our fine-tuned universe.
The appeal of multiple universes—perhaps even an infinity of universes—is that when there are billions and billions of possibilities, then even very unlikely outcomes are going to be realized somewhere. Consequently if there was an infinite number of universes, something like our universe is certain to appear at some point. What at first glance seems like incredible coincidence can be explained as the result of a mathematical inevitability.
The only difficulty, as Folger makes clear, is that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of any universes other than our own. Moreover, there may never be such evidence. That’s because if there are other universes, they will operate according to different laws of physics than the ones in our universe, and consequently they are permanently and inescapably inaccessible to us. The article in Discover concludes on a somber note. While some physicists are hoping the multiverse will produce empirical predictions that can be tested, “for many physicists, however, the multiverse remains a desperate measure ruled out by the impossibility of confirmation.”
No wonder atheists are sporting billboards asking us to “imagine…no religion.” When science, far from disproving God, seems to be pointing with ever-greater precision toward transcendence, imagination and wishful thinking seem all that is left for the atheists to count on.
bump
Science requires faith.
Imagine…no abortion.
On another note, religious beliefs give people hope and if you take that away then you make them depend on the government for hope alone which is sad.
there’s a reason why all the communists promoted atheism.
As an atheist, I find the billboards mentioned silly. The thing that I always bring up to other atheists is that they are as obsessed with everyone else NOT believing as many believers are obsessed with everyone else believing. I don’t see much difference—the rabid on both sides seem to be nervous about letting others make up their own minds.
That's a bit broad, isn't it? Not sure I get your point there--whose definition of misbehavior?
Repeating that I'm an atheist, I've always found this a moronic ideal. I've seen plenty of good coming from religious folks, and plenty of evil; ditto from atheists.
If there were no religion, I don't see how the world would just automatically be improved.
Frankly, I do not believe there must be a conflict be science and religion. The current generation of scientists has made it so because they are “physicalists” i.e. they are convinced there is a material explanation for everything.
There are few who do not see things this way and are trying find the link. I met this guy: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/hoffman.html
not too long ago and he had an amazing and convincing explanation.
First, he said to imagine the universe as you perceive it to be your “human interface” with reality. Similar to the screen on your computer, it represents what is happening, but is not a true representation of reality. Evolution guarentees that it cannot be. The amount of energy needed to perceive real reality would be a huge waste. Your perception is evolved so that your “hack” into reality is better than the “hack” of what you want to eat or what wants to eat you. Humans may not even have the capacity to understand reality.
Thus, trying to expain the universe by using what we are able to perceive is like trying to explain what is happening in a computer by what you see on the screen. The screen represents reality, but it is not. It is your “human interface” because you cannot communicate with the true reality of the computer.
Scientists can’t explain what the universe is composed of (although there are fuzzy theories) and they don’t even have a theory for what causes human consciousness. Of course if the brain is just a representation of reality, that is perhaps understandable. Could you explain the an icon on your computer if you weren’t willing to believe there was something beyond it?
That much said, there is a lot going on in religion that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Religious doctrine often can best be understood by thinking of it like a file of the pictures of your children on a computer screen. The file is important to you, you would not put it in the “recycling basket” and erase it. But you do not believe that this file really looks like that or really contains your pictures (they are a series of 1s and 0s of course). However, you take the representation seriously, but not literally.
Religios movements are unfortunately filled with a lot of people taking things literally that should only be taken seriuosly. Thus the conflict with science. Those who take things literally are not so open to being questioned. The scientists are equally guilty, but in a different way. Moreover, “faith” is often just an excuse for believing something about which one is uncertain. Scientists have “faith” too, but claim to be open to challenging it if given evidence to the contrary. Religions don’t usually appreciate this, but Christianity has proven remarkably adaptable on questions that scientists have answered (round earth revolving around the sun not in the center of the universe)
Hoffmann believes that scientists will spend another 20 to 30 years trying to figure our the “physical” explanation for things. Then enough of the old school will be dead and perhaps it will be possible to apply the scientific method to some of the ideas that religion has had for the past 10 millenia.
Applying the scientific method to religious concepts would be a revolution of extraordinary proportions. Too few scientists have been willing or able to go down this path. There will be opposition from both science and religion to doing so. But it is probably the only way to really begin to answer those huge open questions.
I think it is because some militant athiests believe that simply because a lot of people kill in the name of God, that if they stop believing in God they will stop killing.
You perhaps understand this is ludicrous because people always find some excuse to kill each other.
My off-the cuff definition of ‘misbehavior’ would run as follows: acting either with reckless disregard or with malice aforethought to harm others who have done no harm to you. A full account of why such behavior is not reasonable in the universe as we currently understand it would not be a quick write. Maybe another time. Note, though, that if someone rejects rationality as a criterion for judging conduct, the conversation is at an end anyway and it’s probably wise to make sure your gun is loaded when you’re dealing with that person.
Allow me to point out one critical difference. A Christian (and probably true for many or even most other religions) believe that there will be a point of judgment, and a salvation from that judgment. By presenting their views as persuasively as possible may lead to the salvation of another. What motive does an atheist have for similar behavior? I submit, nothing similar.
I disagree completely. An atheist's motive is to awaken someone from a delusion so they can actually deal with what IS as opposed to what they wish were so.
Agreed, and religion isn't about rationality.
So if there's no God, then there has to be an infinite number of universes. If there is an infinite number of universes, then pretty much anything that CAN happen will happen. Therefore, if it's possible for a God to exist, he probably does.
The magazine has an interesting story by Tim Folger which is titled “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator.” The article begins by noting “an extraordinary fact about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for life.” As physicist Andrei Linde puts it, “We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible.”
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Coincidence or design? Don’t you just love how hard some work to NOT believe in life being God-breathed? It is so obvious to most people who are not trying to justify their own reasons for their rebellion. It is their choice after all to believe or not believe in a Creator-God, as laid out for us in scripture. It’s all right there, but men striving for knowledge and power will continue to go to any lengths to prove there is NO God. Why is this?
Over and over again science proves that there is a pattern and purpose to life. I guess this goes against the sensibilities of the “Intelligent” who must see to believe. For the Christian, it is much the other way around, we believe. It is because of this belief that we see...
“Faith is believing what we cannot see and the reward for this kind of faith, is to see what we believe.” ~ St. Augustine
I really enjoyed the author’s book “What’s So Great About Christianity.”. I disagreed with him on some points but I consider him to be a brilliant thinker.
The opinion piece is not particularly surprising if you’ve read the book but it does serve as an update on current events in the religion of secular humanism (atheism).
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis makes this statement at the end:
“Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held.
First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.
The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself-I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds.
Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up.
And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense.
Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, “I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,” or, “I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.”
Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science- and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes-something of a different kind-this is not a scientific question.
If there is “Something Behind,” then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.
The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make.
And real scientists do not usually make them.
It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense.”
Could one say that C. S. Lewis is denying not only the scientific legitimacy of the ID “Movement”, but also “independent” natural theology in general?
Re: “Independent” natural theology:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0qXBpoIE_QwC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=independent+natural+theology&source=web&ots=lzRLQ4nHO_&sig=LC-daa499EeMg9ykE-4Oq5_TCJ8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPR5,M1
“Is it reasonable to misbehave if there is not a deity? No”
Respectfully, the term “misbehave” is a meaningless abstraction if there is no deity. If there is no deity then moral relativism is the closest we can get to truth. Relativism is in conflict with itself and, consequently, negates all meaning. For example, can it be both morally good and morally bad to commit rape?
If you wish to answer, please also explain why your answer should be favored over anyone else’s answer.
At any rate, the only reason it would be unreasonable to misbehave in the absence of a deity is because there is no basis upon which to reason about morality without one. In other words, it is not misbehaving that becomes unreasonable in the absence of a deity. Ratther it is the attempt to reason about morality itself that becomes unreasonable.
It is logic like this that leads people to believe in intelligent design.
Posts #11 and 22 were the most “reasonable” I’ve seen on any of these threads lately.
It’s always seemed to me that science and religion address different realms...to believe one is not to exclude the other.
A nice explanation.
“A full account of why such behavior is not reasonable in the universe as we currently understand it would not be a quick write. Maybe another time. Note, though, that if someone rejects rationality as a criterion for judging conduct, the conversation is at an end anyway and it?s probably wise to make sure your gun is loaded when you?re dealing with that person”
In other words, you cannot offer a credible (reasonable) definition of good behavior and you’re going to threaten anyone who asks for one with a gun.
I’m glad I own guns too.
I like the message I’ve seen around on shirts etc. “Friends don’t let friends go to hell.”
One of the most profound words is in John 3:17: “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
One of the saddest verses in scripture is: “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which is right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)
And to all: “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6)
As some have pointed out; you can rightly divide the word of truth, and you can wrongly divde the word of truth: In Timothy 2;15, we read: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God,(an AUG degree)a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly diving the word of truth.”
And religion requires reason. There is no actual conflict between the two.
“I think it is because some militant athiests believe that simply because a lot of people kill in the name of God, that if they stop believing in God they will stop killing.”
Stalin alone killed from 20 to 100 million. Probably closer to the 20 million. Mao killed 20 to 75 million. Probably around 30. Hitler killed 6 million. Pol Pott killed 2 million people. This is just the top of the list.
Just in the 20th century, atheist have probably killed more than religious causes have through the course of human time.
ff
Then let me give you the good news: There absolutely IS, and He is the one, true God.
ping and bump for later
There is only one universe. The idea of “multiverses” or “alternate universes” is stupid.
Q's, no doubt.
Now THERE was Science!!
Here is a jump start of a thousand words...
A sinister and desperate effort to work the laws of statistical probability out of the equation. I luv when scientists grasp at straws. The reasoning should get the "Stanley Miller" award.
“.... if there are other universes, they will operate according to different laws of physics than the ones in our universe, and consequently they are permanently and inescapably inaccessible to us”
Sounds like religion to me
Oh, I get it now. All those self-righteous atheists who don’t even understand their own religion were just trying to help me.
That really clears things up.
You need to look deeper.
One group wants to save souls; the other wants to deny their very existence.
That's a large and profound difference.
Here's a quick "write"; evil.
Live backwards; against the God that made you; evil.
This is a kind of post hoc ergo prompter hoc argumentative fallacy. If the physical constants were any different, we wouldn't be here to notice that they were different, so of course the physical constants are what they are.
Bookmark
Eh - your post is the reason for my tagline.
I concur. I would add an amendment however, that there are those people who like to kill (control, etc.), and justify their behavior - hiding behind an interpretation of an idea of God.
That would be an opinion.
One of the points of this article is the increasingly overwhelming amount of "coincidence" in the universe.
I would argue that it is NOT rational to dismiss this "coincidental" universe as simply a result of blind luck and chance.
Consider a slightly different perspective.
Let’s say you discovered Trader Joe’s, and gradually became more fond of it to the point of generally only shopping there.
Certain joyous perceptions accompanied your involvement with that particular group than any others you had found.
Meanwhile, some others had always shopped at Safeway. Along with their Safeway shopping came soe incentives for them to attract others away from their perceived competition by becoming an even larger store, to the point of monopoly.
You share with some friends how much you find the Organic foods at Trader Joe’s to help your health. Meanwhile an adversary comes along, not only insulting the worth of organic food, but insisting all food is chemical in nature and processed food and farmed fish is healthier anyways, and besides, Trader Joe’s really isn’t unique, they just buy second hand rejects from Safeway and really aren’t an independent store.
Even if the adversary is unable to convince or change your shopping habit, he might attempt to make your testimony appear inconsequential and might succeed in convincing you to shop Safeway for while just to check things out. Meanwhile, his ultimate intention really had more to do with his personal arrogance, seeking a perceived benefit for himself, and really not having any sincere love for his fellow man with integrity.
All along, there were many other shoppers who happen upn Trader Joe’s or Safeway and never communicate with others how they shop.
The parallel is that there exist people who have found God through faith in Christ. They have been exposed to a joy that isn’t artificial, but has such substance that they are amazed and somewhat disappointed they hadn’t been made aware of it sooner in their lives.
There are also some others who openly rebel against God in search for anything worldly, fleshly, and spiritually independent of God. Some believe they will increase their riches by distracting others from God and anything and everything He provides.
There is one last distinction. Christian belief that saves, the stuff of salvation, isn’t something any other human being can give to another. Accordingly, when the real Gospel is communicated to somebody who has never heard it, it isn’t a situation where the believer is trying to get somebody else to share his belief. On the contrary, it is an effort simply to communicate to another person that God provides something not available from anybody else and which we do not have from birth.
It is something very real, allows a perception of a universe not observable by those who have never believed and is quite significant, eternally so. Additionally, those who never get it before they suffer the first death, are on a doomed irreversible track which they will never be able to control, also very real.
Unlike Trader Joe’s, the food provided by God in His Word is good for eternal life. Like Safeway, there’s lots of farmed religion out there which is filling but not very healthy.
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