Posted on 10/17/2003 4:04:27 PM PDT by TXLibertarian
Excerpted from a longer op-ed. Author discusses the danger of legal proselytizing by a few firebrand secularists. Worth a read, IMHO.
What Atheists Want
By Chris Mooney
....
Unfortunately, in my experience, the U.S. atheist and secularist communities contain a number of activists who are inclined to be combative and in some cases feel positively zestful about offending the religious. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, easily America's most famous atheist firebrand, wasn't dubbed "the most hated woman in America" for nothing. Despite her landmark 1963 Supreme Court victory in a case concerning the constitutionality of school prayer, O'Hair's pugilistic and insulting public persona hurt atheists a great deal in the long run. A head-on attack on the pledge seems to epitomize the confrontational O'Hair strategy.
....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Only one man who ever lived was perfect--but that gets us into a discussion of religion/God.
If it is true, what does that say about Islam? Does Judaism's (and therefore Christianity's) genesis from a polytheistic nomadic desert tribe corrupt it? Do many of Christianity's roots in local Mediterranean pagan religions corrupt it?
Both of your religions have shed more primitive forms, moving to the modern monotheistic construction.
If you are talking about the Jew Jesus, yes, I have seen enough evidence of his existence outside of Christian manuscripts to convince me that he existed, although some entries are of questionable origin.
For factual evidence, however, this still leaves the question of a god far beyond our knowledge.
OK, I'll try to, but I think a cosmologist or an origins theorist would do a better job than I.
A "steady state" theory of cosmology posits that the universe is infinite in age and in a steady state. That it always was, and always will be. Infinite time makes it very easy to explain away the need for a transcendent creator: because given enough time, even the most "improbable" of events, such as the spontaneous generation of life and its evolution to human intelligence, are hardly improbable at all: given enough time, they are certain to happen.
A similar argument can be made for "oscillation" theories about our universe: if our big bang was just one of an infinite number, then we humans happen to be "lucky" enough to exist during one of those oscillations where the conditions were just right for our spontaneous creation.
That's why the rapidlly coalescing consensus that our universe is finite in size and only 15 billion years old---and that it could not possibly be oscillating, because its expansion is accelerating, not decelerating---causes a genuine problem. First of all, it causes a mathematical problem, because improbable events like the spontaneous generation of life now are genuinely improbable because they have a finite opportunity to occur.
And secondly, it causes a philospohical problem, in that because our universe has a beginning, that it should somehow have a cause. Something that is infinite in duration does not need a cause; something that is not, does. Admittedly I may not be defending that point very well; you may ask, "why must it have a cause just because it has a finite beginning?" Like I said, that's why I say that cosmologists would probably give you a better answer than I.
But even though I'm not defending their position very well, the fact remains that they agree that the finite beginning of this universe is just "not enough" to provide a complete explanation of the origin of this universe. Somehow, there needs to be something more. Thus, cosmologists come up with ideas that connect our finite universe to something infinite and uncaused. One common example is the multiverse theory: our universe is but one of an infinite number of alternate universes, and this one just happens to be the one that produced our existence. This is another way to provide the "infinite" opportunity required for improbable events like the spontaneous generation of life to occur with certainty. After all, if there an infinite number of universes, and they cover all the possible ways that the universe could have evolved, the certainly at least one would turn out the way ours has. Some also hold out hope that perhaps our universe will be proven to be decelerating, eventually moving to a collapsing "heat death." Then they could argue some sort of circular timeline with no beginning or end. Alas, evidence of a "cold death" to this universe seems to be mounting.
So I'm not saying that an atheist must believe in infinity. But the ones who study the universe's origins most certainly seem to.
Beavus, this is a very fair point from our layman's perspective, but for some reason most cosmologists seem to disagree. As I tried to explain in my last post, they seem to need to force this man-made concept of infinite onto their models for the universe, despite the big bang.
I've only got dead tree versions, like Encyclopedia Brittanica. A quick Google pulled up lots of references to this origin though. In looking at some I just found something interesting. It is possible that both have their bases in an earlier pagan deity. Religions in that area were so mixed up back then feeding on one another for ideas, that it may be impossible to ever know.
I don't disagree with this one, and I don't see why you think I should. If you rule out my god but not others, you're not an atheist. You're either a believer in other god/gods, or you're an agnostic who has crossed mine off his list :)
Then there's "You all have fun with your strange beliefs and funny ceremonies. I'll be over here living my life."
This statement is not unique to atheism. It's a perfectly defensible statement under agnosticism as well. Heck, even theists could say this with credibility. I would tend to characterize such a statement as anti-religion, not necessarily anti-God.
Do you believe there is not a God? Yes__ No__
You cannothave it both ways.
Atheism is faith based. It is faith based on materialism.
It takes faith to believe that... Atheists have merely wearied of the hard questions, I believe... and resorted to sticking their heads up someone ELSE'S business..
If ALL religion is not a satanically inspired corporation for slandering a real God or putting words into his mouth ,if he has one, then my reading of history is lacking...
Jesus seems to have made all religion obsolete, or tried to.... Now, theres a man with a unique ministry....
(from: a member of a cult of one)...
For one thing, for atheists to theorize and make issue out of the "probability" of the creation of the universe raises many questions. For one, it raises the question of how such an event could be considered probabilistically. Is it just a conceptual model for uncertainty in the way people usually apply probability, or does it refer to some truly random feature of the physical world, akin to conventional thinking about quantum physics? If the former, what is the mechanism? Then, even if probability could be applied to whether the universe came to exist or not, then of course it would be a nonissue, since if it did not happen, we wouldn't be here to discuss it. That is, however unlikely, if it happens, then here we are.
Then of course for atheists to talk about infinite time leads to a whole problem of identity. The only coherent concept of infinity that I can think of comes from mathematics. But that does not apply to physically observable quantities such as length or time. For atheists to base their metaphysics on the existence of a literally unimaginable, and as far as I can tell totally incoherent, notion such as infinite time rips them as far from reality as any of the self-proclaimed mystics.
Finally, atheists apparently not only put themselves at odds with theists, but also with contemporary cosmologists. You would think that a theory of finite time, which makes the notion of a creator of time absurd, would be acceptable to the atheistic view.
We are fascinating creatures in our flaws. Atheists claiming not to be mystics, like Democrats claiming to help people, are just two examples.
I didn't know that. I can't speak for "most" cosmologists, but the explanations of the big bang theory that I have read say nothing about infinite time. They merely extrapolate the expanding universe backward in time while simultaneously trying to incorporate general relativity and whatever else we think we know of the physical world. As far as I can tell they begin to claim ignorance when quantum effects take over as there is no satisfying unifying theory of general relativity and quantum physics. However, the big bang theory, I guess, is a description of ALL existence. That is, it is absurd to speak of anything BEFORE the big bang. That would be speaking of existence "before", or, more accurately, in the absence of, existence.
I've heard of oscillating big bang theories, parallel universes and such. Physicists that I have read seem to regard such notions as pure speculation (i.e. fantasy) unworthy of scientific comment.
Well beavus, let me be clear (for other's sake---I'm sure you understand me). I don't claim to know "what atheists believe" (beyond the "no god" question), although it's apparent that some believe as I've described. Most atheists probably don't give the more esoteric and scientific origin questions a lot of thought. Nor should they, necessarily. All I'm saying that those that do, those who spend a lot of time dissecting the issue, don't seem to find the big bang theory satisfactorily complete.
And honestly, beavus, I can understand their position. I am not satisfied with an uncaused universe having a finite extent and duration. I do find it unsatisfactory philosophically, too, and I'm pleasantly surprised to come across someone like yourself for whom that's not the case. It makes for enjoyable conversation.
Remember, my original point was simply that both theists and (many) atheists struggle with the notion of infinity. You may have seen this overused quote:
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story [of the big bang] ends like a bad dream. For the past three hundred years, scientists have scaled the mountain of ignorance and as they pull themselves over the final rock, they are greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
[Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. NewYork, W.W. Norton, p. 116.]
You are missing the point, if I lived in a country whose majority were athiest or homosexual, and that was considered the norm, and I used the courts to force my agenda, it would be destructive to that society. And yes I think Christianity is a healthier form of society, both mentally and physically. Reason and logic should persuade the thinking person.
So, Christians are free to express their Constitutional freedoms, but if homosexuals or atheists do the same, you see it as a nihilistic slide into the apocalypse? Or perhaps you're just being melodramatic.
You are living under a Christian based government that jealously guards your rights to express yourself, or did until the advent of the deliberately vague "hate speech" thingy, and places those rights beyond the right of mere mortal man to tamper with. You have every right to express your opinion, and a resonable society weighs the merits of your opinion to incorporate into society or reject. You should not have the right to legislate, thereby forcing an opinion on the majority that they reject as unhealthy.
Athiests are not willing to accept rejection of their unbelief, a belief system that holds no promise of a future and no reason to build, strive for, or attain to, and demand that society not be allowed to believe either. Are you naive enough to believe that the attack on Christianity will stop with it's erasure from the public square? You say over 90% of Christians never question your belief as an atheist, and well they shouldn't, yet you would remove their right to reject your ideals in their own lives, and destroy their ability to share and celebrate the joy of their belief with each other in public situations.
You're perfectly free to believe that, and you should if that helps to affirm your faith. But the atheist can just as easily contend that it was a secular nation free from religious medling, freedom from onerous regulation, and the ingenuity of free men that created the most prosperous nation in the world.
And I suppose you are free to believe that it was a secular nation free from religious medling, freedom from onerous regulation, blah, blah, that created the most prosperous nation in the world, if you wish to fly in the face of the historical record.
My presumption that you are paranoid of Christians being "in charge" is based on a statement in one of your earlier posts. Maybe it was another poster though. I am at a loss as to why you would think Christians have not been in charge of this nation, at least men who held to the Christian moral standard were not only in charge of, but formed, our government.
Please tell me this is a bad joke. This just displays an unbelievable amount of cultural ignorance I'm nearly speechless. Most of South America is staunchly Catholic.
Stop playing around, from the Carribian Islands to Brazil the population practised a mixture of Catholisism and voodoo, sure they are coming out of it now for the most part but voodoo still plays a minor role in many South American nations such as Brazil. At one time one could almost measure the education and prosperity of S. American nations as to how much Christianity they held to, such as Argentina vs Brazil. Everywhere voodoo is the main religion a cesspool exists, Hati for example. The point I ask you to consider is this, while living under a Christian based nation is not ideal to you, as everyone in it is not perfect, we can both walk away from this conversation free people who do not agree, free to practise our beliefs in public or private with like minded people. That will not be the case under totalitarian socialism. And while that may make you happy for a short time, feeling justified through fiat, it will be a short lived joy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.