Common Atheists' Myths

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheists_myths.html ^

[truthfinder9]

Introduction

I know that Christians are supposed to be the ones who believe a lot of myths. However, the vast majority of atheists believe myths such as religion is the primary cause of wars, and the vast amount of atrocities have been caused by religious people, the Bible has been vastly changed over the centuries, Paul invented Christianity, and the list goes on and on. Find your favorite myth below and read the article so that you won't embarrass yourself in the future.

Atheists' Myths

• Atheists have Proven God Does Not Exist. Right? - Only if that god is not the God of the Bible
• Religion is the Cause of All (Most) of the World's Problems - Religion is not even close to being the leading cause suffering in the world. In fact, atheists have been responsible for most of it within the last 100 years.
• Are Most Wars the Result of Religious Belief? - Religion is implicated in less than 7% of all wars over the entire written history of mankind.
• Is Christianity a Made-up Myth Written by the Disciples? - Now really - would the disciples write about all their shortcomings, make the Christian church into a female, design heaven with no sex in it, and say that they were going to be married to Jesus in heaven? I don't know about you guys, but this is not what I would have written if I had made up the Bible!
• Paul Invented Christianity? Is the Founder of the Christian Religion Paul of Tarsus or Jesus of Nazareth? All Paul's core teachings were also taught by Jesus and the disciples, and are even found in the Old Testament.
• Misquoting Jesus: Does Bart Erhman Prove the New Testament is Corrupt? - Contrary to Erhman's claims, the New Testament canon was established in the early second century, and scribal errors/changes did not affect any significant Christian doctrine.
• The Christian Church Was Never Really Persecuted - Were all the reported persecutions of Christians were made up by the Christian church?
• The Bible Has Been Changed Over the Centuries From the Original? - Sorry, the manuscript evidence doesn't support this idea at all.
• Jesus Christ as God and the Trinity Was Not Invented Until the Fourth Century? Contrary to the claims of The Da Vinci Code, even secular sources indicate that Christians worshipped Jesus Christ as God no later than 113 A.D.
• This Joyful Eastertide: A Critical Review of The Empty Tomb (2006) - Has the resurrection been proven false? )
• The Universe Just Happened Without Any Need For a Designer - For all those who expect to win at lotto!
• There is No Evidence For the Fine Tuning of the Universe - The cosmological constant (dark energy) shows this belief to be false
• "The Lost Tomb of Jesus": Have the Bones of Jesus Christ Been Found? Only if Jesus had his ossuary inscribed when He was 2 years old!
• Omnipotence is Logically Impossible? Atheists attempt to define God out of existence through illogical arguments
• The Universe is Eternal - Contrary to atheist's claims, the majority of scientists state as fact that the universe had a beginning.
• Only Stupid People Believe in God - A large number of famous scientists believed in God, many being devout Christians
• The Roman Catholic Church's Condom Policy is Responsible For the Spread of HIV and the AIDS Crisis in Africa - Actually, HIV infection rates are lower in Catholic-dominated countries!
• The Myth of the Flat Earth by Jeffrey Burton Russell - The "history" that Christians taught a flat earth was not invented until the 19th century. (off site)
• People are Basically Good - Proof to the Contrary
• Jesus didn't really die on the Cross? - The old swoon theory doesn't hold up to historical/medical reality.
• Hitler was a Christian? - This seems like a no brainer, but there are free-thinkers who think he was. (off site)
• Jesus and Adolf Hitler - The new (and improved?) German Jesus (off site)
• Are Atheists and Theists Morally Equivalent? Aren't atheists morally superior to theists?
• Atheism Doesn't Lead to Immoral Behavior - Or Does It? In theory it doesn't, but in practice...
• Atheism and Humanism Provide Hope for the Future - The ultimate "hope" of atheism is eternal entropy as the universe loses all ability to perform work, and all life, consciousness, and knowledge is eternally destroyed.
• The Bible Teaches a Flat Earth Covered by a Solid Dome
• Teaching Religion to Children is a Form of Child Abuse? Dawkins's hypothesis is falsified.
• BLOODLINE: Serious Documentary or Hollywood Hoax? - by Gordon Franz MA
• Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 1: A deeply religious non believer - Deception, lies, and misrepresentations.
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 2: The God Hypothesis - Failure to support debunked assertions, quoting out-of-context, and a desire to escape moral accountability.
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 4: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God - Richard Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 argument is shown to be formally fallacious.
• The Universe Just Created Itself Out of Nothing - Why Stephen Hawking is wrong about God not creating the universe.
• Book Review: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris - Sam Harris claims that science can determine human values, but just resorts to ranting about religion.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

More Answers

• Answers for Atheists and Agnostics
  • Criticisms of God's Character from Atheists and Agnostics
  • Criticisms of God on the Basis of the Existence of Evil and Suffering
  • Religion is Stupid
  • Bad Christians
  • Bible and Science Criticisms
  • Answers to Bible Contradictions
  • Skeptics' Objections to Christianity
  • No Evidence of the Supernatural?

[circlecity]

"Stenger has argued that quantum mechanics disconfirms the first premise of the argument, that is, that something can not come into being from nothing. He postulates that such naturally occurring quantum events are exceptions to this premise, like the Casimir effect and radioactive decay."

Stenger also acknowledged there are least 10 other quantum postulates which would refute his argument and conceded that there is no consensus as to "which is the right one". Further, the others you cite all require an infinite regression to make sense of their arguments. I don't know where wikipedia got its information on Al-Ghazali but it is the exact opposite of what he argued in his Kitab al-Iqtisad fi'l-I'tiqua where he stated that an infinite regression of past events is impossible because, essentially, it would be impossible for the present to arrive. Ghazali went on from this to acknowledge that the universe must have had a beginning the cause of which he ascribed to God, the Eternal. And he came to this conclusion centuries before our knowledge of the expanding universe and residual cosmological radiation. The consensus among physicists and metaphyisicists is that infinite regression ultimately renders logical inference an absurdity and is generally considered an argument stopper. Kant fails to explain why the universe should be considered a necessary object and in fact fails to identify any "necessary object" apart from abstractions such as numbers or sets. To merely assume, a priori, the universe to be a necessary object merely begs the question in favor of atheism.

[kosta50]

Of course I can [I can prove it]. It's been established for some time now. The Hoyle eternal steady state theory of the universe was rejected over 50 years ago. Science has established that the universe had a beginning

Oh please, don't start with that. Cosmology doesn't prove anything, least of all some godlike being. The Big Bang doesn't prove that there is a beginning.

It shows that there was an event from which certain things proceded, a starting point; it doesn't prove what preceded it!

Nor does it "prove" how it got to be where it was or "who" or "what" caused it to be there.  It even doesn't prove that this starting point is the initial event or that before it nothing existed.

If you can assume an eternal uncreated creator why not just do what the Greek did—imagine an eternal universe, or one that eternally oscillates between big bangs for no reason (accessible to our minds) whatsoever? It's an equally valid assumption (but not a proof) as assuming some eternal being that exists "outside" existence.

Using cosmology to "prove" some godlike being is like the ants in my back yard being convinced I created the back yard for them!

[kosta50]

["Raise a human being from infancy in your back yard, give him water and food and shelter and let him fend for himself. He will lack all social normals of modesty, morals, language, reading and writing skills, etc. He will have no clue where he is, how he came about, or anything we know; he will be a beast."]

That's nonsense. Please provide a single shred of evidence to prove this.

Apparently you are not familiar with how humans come tom "know" things. For me to prove to you this would require more than FR. I suggest you start with experimental psychology. Human beings are not  instinctively "human" in their behavior or language. Everything we know as "human" must be learned, such as language, social modesty, reading, morality, etc. If you require proof for that, I have no clue what planet you are coming from!

Fraiser's "Golden Bough" found this not to be the case over 100 years ago. Basic moral values are innate - a society's socialization process is what works to suppress them

I don't know who Fraiser is, but I do know that science does not find anything "innate" in human beings except some simple reflexes manifested in infants (grasping, sucking, etc.) that are common to other related species. Perhaps you need to update your study materials. Usually biological science books from a hunders ago are not a good source.

Thus, the muslim example is islamic society teaching to suppress the innate moral prohibition against killing one's sisters

What evidence do you have human beings have an "innate moral prohibition against killing one's sister"? Please show me one study that established such "innate prohibition"?

If this were not the case nobody would care that muslims slaughter their wives and sisters.

We do because it 's not in our culture. The ancient Jews didn't mind killing their own children for disobeying their parents. Supposedly God told them to do that. What happened to our "innate prohibitions"?

Because God in the person of Jesus explicitly repealed the ceremonial, dietary and theocratic Mosaic laws. It's called the new covenant. Jesus also retained the moral laws. Have you even read the Bible?

How can God repeal his own eternal Law? The Law was written, according to Judaism, before the foundation of the world, it is eternal,  and must be observed forever and therefore cannot be "fulfilled" (according to the Old Testament)!?

You have got to be kidding. Have you even read the Bible? In Matthew 19 Jesus specifically says marriage is one man and one woman

That's about divorce, not how many wives you can have. Show me where the Law prohibits more than one wife. It establishes that "marriage" is onotlogically and physically a union between a man and a woman, not how many women one cna marry.

 David and Solomon were punished for their adultery/polygamy

David was punished for his adultery (God slowly killed his son, and had David's neighbor rape publicly his other wives!), not for polygamy.

Do you even know what these words mean? Epistemology and philosophy are nothing but attempts to logically quantify real world observations

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge and emipricism is a philosophical theory which stipulates that we acquire knowledge though sensory experience. There is nothing in any of this that requires "real world" observations because our "sensory experience" does not necessarily corresponds to the real world.

The scientific method is based on the logic which underlies them.

The scientific method is a way of making working models which may or may not correspond to the real world just because they "work." Example: Ptolemaic system of navigation. Totally false as regards the real world, but works.

Working models obviously approximate some degree of reality, but do not describe it fully. Besides, "reality" is something that has to do with our physical makeup. To insects gravity is about as much of reality as surface tension is to humans—negligible.

Empiricism is the belief that the only things we can know are those thing we can observe and quantify with our five senses - this is very "real world" although not the exclusive real world.

LOL! By this definition, empiricism doesn't apply to, say, radio waves because we cannot detect them with our five senses. Have you ever "seen" a radio wave? You need to work on your definitions.

[kosta50]

Stenger has argued that quantum mechanics disconfirms the first premise of the argument, that is, that something can not come into being from nothing

With the help of instruments we are able to detect "other reality" which is outside the scope of our "five senses" and become aware of broader existence. Obviously what we perceive as reality is not all of what is out there. When we say "nothing" it may be "nothing" or "nonexistenct" to us (because out five senses do not detect it) but it density mean it's not out there. So, "something out of nothing" is not necessarily something out of nothing. As the Taoist wisdom says "the world is the way it is, whether we understand it or not."

Our limitation prohibits us from formulating theological or any other type of absolute truth simply because we don't know everything there is to know. And the more we know the more we discover of what is out there resembles less and less what human fancy imaged it to be.

[kosta50]

I'd be interested in you providing a reference to a society that accepts murder, stealing or lying as a norm. I believe there has been numerous non-Christian studies showing there are basic moral values

That's like asking for examples of people cutting off their noses to spite their face. It's counter productive. These prohibitions are not based on some "innate moral value" but on the fact that what seems to be innate in organisms is to preserve rather than destroy. Societies formed because they tend to preserve, to protect, where there is strength in numbers, where survival has a higher chance.

Murder, stealing, lying, etc. are all counter productive to the purpose of the society, any society, so it's universal just as the purpose of the society is, because a society doesn't function well when such habits become a norm. In fact the society tends to break up.

So, these prohibitions are not moral in absolute sense, but in a pragmatic, purpose-dependent sense of what is good for the society, the "common good," which supersedes all cultures and religions and is found in even the most primitive human gatherings.

The last five of the Ten Commandments deal with property (and yes wife was a property), and inheritance, all of which stem from social environment because an isolated, lone primitive human being would no concept of stealing or lying or cheating. He would naturally take what he needs, what is out there, without asking whose is it.

But I am curious. The Eastern Orthodox teaches that homosexuality is sinful. I would assume they believe murder is sinful. Now the question is how did they arrived at this conclusion besides social values?

Orthodoxy teaches that homosexuality is a sin because it is a Christian religion. Nut I can see the social roots in that prohibition. The primary purposes of sexuality is to procreate because and homosexuality leads in the opposite direction. The OT speaks of prohibition against two men lying in the wife's bed. Why? Because no family will result from that! It's contrary to its intended purposes.

Murder is likewise counterproductive to the society. A society where murder is commonplace is a nonfucntioning or poorly functioning society and tends to break up.

By codifying these social vices into religious prohibitions was an attempt to make people compliant out of fear, piousness, whatever. If we made speeding laws into moral prohibitions then maybe more people would observe them. :)

Are you saying that sin is not universal? This would present a problem for Eastern Orthodox.

Not only for the Orthodox but for everyone. And no, sin is not universal. Sin is as relative as any other human value. It has no value outside of society.  Genesis doesn't say anything about stealing or incest or adultery because it was meaningless in a society made up of two people.

[reasonisfaith]

The tough thing for you, it seems, is the ability to ponder the existence of an intellect higher than ours. An intellect which can explain how yesterday, now and today is not the ultimate order.

I shouldn’t blame you—after all, toads can’t contemplate the minds of dogs, nor dogs the wisdom of chimpanzees. But we, recognizing the hierarchy, can extrapolate the existence of an upper level.

All we can do is think of time as yesterday, now, or tomorrow. And we really can’t define “now.” All we can do is say “Einstein showed time is relative.”

I’ll make it easier for you. The creation of time couldn’t possibly be a time-dependent action, nor could it be created by a being lacking the ability to understand the full dynamics of temporal nature.

(Hint: We must accept reality as it is. We cannot mold it to fit our static view of the universe. Copernicus, Galileo and Einstein all understood this very well.)

Scientists tell us the physical laws—mathematical constants and basic physical forces—didn’t exist prior to the Big Bang. To think time didn’t start until then is not a stretch.

[reasonisfaith]

“But using ‘he’ in your statement is a bit too ‘anthropomorphic’ for my taste!!”

Not in the least.

We were created God’s image. Calling ourselves “he” is the reverse of anthropomorphism in this context. That is, we call ourselves he because God is the first He.

[reasonisfaith]

The underlying problem is that an artificial separation was established between empiricism and “pure reason” (science and philosophy).

Aristotle knew the importance of both for the purpose of finding truth in an academic sense.

But philosophers of the past half millenia or more have fooled themselves into believing pure reason can enlighten. So we have people like Hegel proposing that altruism can’t exist in the absence of civilization, and Kant trying to convince himself that reality is the creation of subjective mind.

They are fools, I daresay.

[James C. Bennett]

There is not as much problem in allowing leeway for the chance that there might be “higher intelligence” that has an effect on the orders of the known universe, as much as there is in claiming that particular Middle Eastern mythologies ARE indeed what comprise this claimed “higher intelligence”. There is a leap of faith between the transition, and believers hesitate (and refuse) to acknowledge that.

The ethical case for the god(s) of this tradition has been argued about earlier in the thread, anchoring around this particular video, which I insist that you watch and critique:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI

---

Regarding time, as Kosta50 mentioned in his detailed reply earlier, nothing is known about the events prior to the Big Bang, so to say that time didn’t exist then, is an unjustified extrapolation. The recent article regarding the physical evidence for events prior to the Big Bang was also mentioned in the thread.

---

An interesting article from today:

Q & A: ‘Universe is not defined by one beginning and end’

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Universe-is-not-defined-by-one-beginning-and-end/articleshow/7152047.cms

Dec 24, 2010, 12.00am IST

Cosmologist Roger Penrose of Oxford University and author of the recently released book, The Cycles of Time, was in Delhi to deliver the Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Centennial Lecture (Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science) on a new view of black holes and the universe. He talks to Narayani Ganesh on his new theory of the origin and future of the universe:

What your view of the universe?

My conformal cyclic cosmology theory is a departure from the Big Bang theory of the universe that is generally perceived to mean that the universe burst forth in a Big Bang from an infinitesimal point and then expanded by inflation. However, what i’m saying is that the universe is not defined by one beginning and end but goes through an infinite succession of beginnings and endings into the remote future, without a reversal or what is called crunching. It never collapses, it goes on expanding and it’s a cycle.

Could you explain this cyclical process?

The cycle from the infinitely expanded universe to the Big Bang of the next aeon is better explained with classical mathematical equations. However, you could say verbally that the universe is undergoing accelerating expansion. This is best understood in terms of what Einstein referred to as the cosmological constant (he used this term in 1917 though for the wrong reasons) - he was hoping to have a universe that was static in time. He later withdrew his idea but it could help us best explain the expanding, remote future of our universe where, following a succession of Big Bangs in different aeons, there is hardly anything left because particles now have little or no mass. No mass, no scale, right? As it continues to expand, it becomes indistinguishable from the Big Bang of the next aeon; the universe comes to lose its memory - it `forgets’ how big it really is. So the big and small, long-term and short-term, all become equivalent. In my scheme of things, there is no collapse; one universe leads to another. One way of discerning this is to find traces of energy bursts that get released when two galaxies collide and their black holes merge - as it might one day happen with the Milky Way and the Andromeda! My colleague Vahe Gurzadyan of Yerevan State University in Armenia studied the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and found signals in a circle that seem to corroborate my theory. However, you do need to see more of these concentric circles and perhaps more studies and analyses would reveal more of information of previous Big Bangs and universes.

Would studying concentric rings on the CMB help ascertain timelines of the universe’s previous incarnations, much like tree rings reveal the age of the tree?

Come to think of it like that, perhaps! There’s an awful lot of information in the CMB and it requires study. My model is driven by the Second Law of Thermodynamics that says randomness is increasing all the time.

How different is your view of the universe from that of Stephen Hawking’s?

Hawking is playing a crucial role; the original idea he put forward is that black holes will eventually swallow all the randomness; that the black holes will radiate and disappear and when they disappear - what they call the Black Hole paradox - he says information swallowed by black holes is lost. He later said that the information comes back with radiation and here I disagree.

---

Regarding time and the consequences for a being that exists outside it, you haven’t resolved the paradox that was mentioned earlier: For someone to be in an existence which didn’t have time as a dimension, everything that was done, will be done, and is being done, have either all happened, or not happened at all. This problem is impossible to resolve logically. If you’re aware of Einstein or anyone else having reconciled with the paradox, kindly explain how.

[kosta50]

For someone to be in an existence which didn’t have time as a dimension, everything that was done, will be done, and is being done, have either all happened, or not happened at all. This problem is impossible to resolve logically.

The ants in my back yard will never, ever know how they got there, or why, why the yard exists, or who crated it, what else is in the their "universe", etc. They will never know that the yard is in the a state of a country called America, which is part of other land masses on a planet called earth, one of several planets (depending how you wish to define them), circling an average yellow star called the sun, which is one of billions of stars that make up an island universe called the Milky Way galaxy, which takes time 100,000 years to cross lengthwise at a speed of about 160,000 miles/second (the distance to the moon!), which is part of a small groups of galaxies, the local group, and one of billions and billions of others visible groupings of stars in a universe whose end is nowhere to be found, hurdling through "space" at mind boggling speeds and going around in circles. We have no more answers than the ants in my back yard.

[James C. Bennett]

Even if the ants had been “made” in your image?

;^)

[kosta50]

...and likeness! Does that mean they used to look like me? :)

[reasonisfaith]

Sorry I didn’t have the chance earlier to save you from wasting time on this video. I’ve already viewed it, many months ago.

Respectfully—the answer is simple and you shouldn’t need me to explain it. (By the way, the intellect and the passion of the lead character are painfully mediocre. Comments which follow on the youtube website are embarrassingly shallow.)

Apparently the answer to the riddle “Is God Evil or Does He Not Exist” is one that’s so ridiculously easy that it becomes very difficult. Think about it carefully, and tell it to others who perchance have intellectualized their wisdom away:

Man’s justice is not God’s justice. Man’s idea of “good” is not God’s idea of good. This is common sense. Please read Isaiah 55:8. And the First Commandment.

(Fascinating, how the concept of “good” suddenly gains absolute value when it can be used by leftists against God.)
_________________________________________________________

“For someone to be in an existence which didn’t have time as a dimension, everything that was done, will be done, and is being done, have either all happened, or not happened at all.”

I would say the error in calling it a paradox is that you are speaking of the “paradox” from a context which has time as a dimension. So it’s not really a paradox, but another version of an uncertainty principle. A non-Heisenberg one.
So the fact that it’s not a paradox means we can speak, in a way consistent with logic, of God creating time and having the ability to act outside the realm of time.
_________________________________________________________

Yes, the answers coming from Hawking and Penrose truly are a lot like those coming from ants. What good has their cerebral cortex done for them? They should take a closer look at the Holy Spirit.

I would say the biggest problem, whether for Hawking, Penrose or anyone, is that we often forget that science is the process of explaining what we see—after we first see it. Instead, we try to see what we first explain, when our explanation is not really there to see.

What we should have learned from empiricism is that reality will be out there no matter what we do. (Schroedinger was ultimately wrong, because the death of a cat by poisoning is an event which occurs on a level of Newtonian physics.)
As for “allowing for leeway for the chance that there might be ‘higher intelligence,’” let’s go with that. Once we allow for it, the scientist in us is strongly inclined, as with many questions, to further investigation.

Further investigation would include questions like, if the higher intelligence is the Omnipotent Creator kind, then would we expect this Creator to have, in addition to a higher form of cognition, a higher form of emotion?
And would it seem more likely that this Creator would take a position of neutrality relative to his creation, or that he would have some level of passion regarding it? And would we expect him to give us at least a little evidence, at one point or another in human time, of his presence? Would it seem likely that the evidence he provides would probably not be concrete, faith-killing proof but that it would appear to be either all pervasive or completely absent, depending on the bias of the human observer?

If he is Omnipotent Creator, would it make more sense that he is also the origin of morality, of ultimate good?

And would we expect no sign, no evidence of all this within our field of vision, and no ability for any human to see it—or would a more likely scenario be that one of the existing “cosmologies” is in fact that which has grasped the truth given by this Creator? And what if we were then to investigate the evidence favoring this particular cosmology?

Frank Morison and Lee Strobel, among many others, have done just that.

[kosta50]

By the way, the intellect and the passion of the lead character are painfully mediocre

 

I must agree with that assessment, but at the same time recognize that it is no different that that of most preachers.

 

Man’s justice is not God’s justice

 

How do you know that?

 

Please read Isaiah 55:8. And the First Commandment.

 

You are using a book which you decided to believe is holy as "proof" of what God is? Why should I believe you?

 

Fascinating, how the concept of “good” suddenly gains absolute value when it can be used by leftists against God

 

Not all agnostics or atheists are leftists. There are many believers, such as Nancy Pelosi, Joihn Kerry, Joe Biden, etc. who are leftist believers.

 

I would say the error in calling it a paradox is that you are speaking of the “paradox” from a context which has time as a dimension

 

The same logic holds for those who try to prove God using anthropomorphisms.

 

Yes, the answers coming from Hawking and Penrose truly are a lot like those coming from ants. What good has their cerebral cortex done for them? They should take a closer look at the Holy Spirit.

 

You have seen the Holy Spirit?

 

I would say the biggest problem, whether for Hawking, Penrose or anyone, is that we often forget that science is the process of explaining what we see—after we first see it

 

That is patently false. Einstein predicted the "gravitational lens" effect, i.e. the bending of light by gravity, without ever first observing it.

 

Instead, we try to see what we first explain, when our explanation is not really there to see

 

As far as I know, none of the believers today has witnessed a single thing in the Bible and yet they speak of them as "facts." At least science has enough humility to call believing something without seeing a theory, not "truth."

 

the scientist in us is strongly inclined, as with many questions, to further investigation...if the higher intelligence is the Omnipotent Creator kind, then would we expect this Creator to have, in addition to a higher form of cognition, a higher form of emotion?

How do you jump from "investigating" higher intelligence to Omnipotent Creator? On what basis do you assume that higher = omnipotent? Rather, you seem to be confusing higher for the highest. How do you know there are no gradations of "higher intelligence"? How do you know this world is the ultimate creation?

we expect this Creator to have, in addition to a higher form of cognition, a higher form of emotion?

Why? This is beginning to look more and more like any other "reasoned faith" building a God in the image of man.

 

And would it seem more likely that this Creator would take a position of neutrality relative to his creation, or that he would have some level of passion regarding it?

 

"More likely" based on what?

 

And would we expect him to give us at least a little evidence, at one point or another in human time, of his presence?

 

Why?

 

I really do not understand the believers' mindset. Most of them are fairly intelligent, rational people. Some are well educated individuals who display a remarkable ability to  function successfully in the real world. They would never try to leap off of tall buildings believing that if they pray real hard God will float them gently to the ground, nor do they attempt to cross a river by walking on it convinced that their faith will prevent them from sinking. They never attempt to touch a hot stove top because they know it will hurt. They know reality and act accordingly.

 

Then they enter a church and something happens. All of a sudden talking donkeys and snakes become real, a man can survive three days in a belly of a fish and talk about it, dead people get up and walk away, the congenitally blind people suddenly see (and recognize things as if they have had sight all their lives!), demons jump out of people and into the pigs, etc.

 

What happened? Did they leave their brains at the doorstep? It's as if someone flipped a switch and a Harry Potter-like world enters the stage, and everyone is acting like it's perfectly normal.

By the way, the intellect and the passion of the lead character are painfully mediocre

I must agree with that assessment, but at the same time recognize that it is no different that that of most preachers.

Man’s justice is not God’s justice

How do you know that?

Please read Isaiah 55:8. And the First Commandment.

You are using a book which you decided to believe is holy as "proof" of what God is? Why should I believe you?

Fascinating, how the concept of “good” suddenly gains absolute value when it can be used by leftists against God

Not all agnostics or atheists are leftists. There are many believers, such as Nancy Pelosi, Joihn Kerry, Joe Biden, etc. who are leftist believers.

I would say the error in calling it a paradox is that you are speaking of the “paradox” from a context which has time as a dimension

The same logic holds for those who try to prove God using anthropomorphisms.

Yes, the answers coming from Hawking and Penrose truly are a lot like those coming from ants. What good has their cerebral cortex done for them? They should take a closer look at the Holy Spirit.

You have seen the Holy Spirit?

I would say the biggest problem, whether for Hawking, Penrose or anyone, is that we often forget that science is the process of explaining what we see—after we first see it

That is patently false. Einstein predicted the "gravitational lens" effect, i.e. the bending of light by gravity, without ever first observing it.

Instead, we try to see what we first explain, when our explanation is not really there to see

As far as I know, none of the believers today has witnessed a single thing in the Bible and yet they speak of them as "facts." At least science has enough humility to call believing something without seeing a theory, not "truth."

the scientist in us is strongly inclined, as with many questions, to further investigation...if the higher intelligence is the Omnipotent Creator kind, then would we expect this Creator to have, in addition to a higher form of cognition, a higher form of emotion?

How do you jump from "investigating" higher intelligence to Omnipotent Creator? On what basis do you assume that higher = omnipotent? Rather, you seem to be confusing higher for the highest. How do you know there are no gradations of "higher intelligence"? How do you know this world is the ultimate creation?

we expect this Creator to have, in addition to a higher form of cognition, a higher form of emotion?

Why? This is beginning to look more and more like any other "reasoned faith" building a God in the image of man.

And would it seem more likely that this Creator would take a position of neutrality relative to his creation, or that he would have some level of passion regarding it?

"More likely" based on what?

And would we expect him to give us at least a little evidence, at one point or another in human time, of his presence?

Why?

I really do not understand the believers' mindset. Most of them are fairly intelligent, rational people. Some are well educated individuals who display a remarkable ability to  function successfully in the real world. They would never try to leap off of tall buildings believing that if they pray real hard God will float them gently to the ground, nor do they attempt to cross a river by walking on it convinced that their faith will prevent them from sinking. They never attempt to touch a hot stove top because they know it will hurt. They know reality and act accordingly.

Then they enter a church and something happens. All of a sudden talking donkeys and snakes become real, a man can survive three days in a belly of a fish and talk about it, dead people get up and walk away, the congenitally blind people suddenly see (and recognize things as if they have had sight all their lives!), demons jump out of people and into the pigs, etc.

What happened? Did they leave their brains at the doorstep? It's as if someone flipped a switch and a Harry Potter-like world enters the stage, and everyone is acting like it's perfectly normal.

[grey_whiskers]

Not all athiest are leftist and not all athiest think religion is bad, however, an athiest gets tired of religious folks, just like homosexuals, pushing their beliefs on people that don’t care to listen to them.

<SNIP>

Those that holler the loudest about their religion being the true way are usually the ones that have a deep conflict about their faith.

Interesting juxtaposition there -- since you compared religious people to proselytizing homosexuals.

One of the stock claims of the homosexuals is that "rampant homophobia is the attempted self-suppression of the homophobe's own latent homosexual impulses."

In other words, the more one rails against queers, the more likely one is to *be* queer.

And I see that you are hollering the loudest about your LACK of faith: and comparing believers to homosexuals.

It's enough to make me wonder if you used to be an altar boy, or something. ;-)

Seriously, though, the flaw in your argument is simply that you implicitly assume "disbelief" is "more likely" to be true than belief.

But there are false negatives as well as false positives: and you haven't yet explained why you are so much more concerned about one type of error than another.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

This could be the reason you are so confused, put the damn book down, get to know real people and use you own mind to decide what is real.

So you reject peer-reviewed professional journals?

(Incidentally, what about the ~50% of the population with an IQ under 100? Should they use their own mind to "decide" what is real? Thinking like that on a societal level is what gets people like Obama elected.)

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

(Smacks disputant upside the head with a recently-deceased mackerel)

Hey, Einstein, WAKE UP!

Women USED to be able to walk home alone unescorted late at night in the US, to a much greater extent than now.

Until the (anti-Christian, Gramsci-inspired) liberals Communists started rotting our society.

It isn't the increase in number of faithful adherents to traditional, historical Christianity which have made the incidence of rape go up.

(By contrast, look at the rape rates in the last few years in Scandahoovian countries: almost ALL the rape is of natural-born citizens by recently-imported immigrants professing the ROP.)

Incidentally, since you mentioned Japan -- their society is going extinct, since they've fallen below replacement birthrate.

*Something* about their beliefs is failing to give "survival advantage."

Mayhap you should hie over there and start impregnating women like a crazed weasel, in order to remedy the situation.../sarc>

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

What is the meaning of definition?

Oh, that's what YOU call definition, not me! (infinite regression/autofellation fallacy)

Incidentally, you ought to know better, and I suspect you do, that you're just trying to troll here: the proper question is not "What is God?" but instead "WHO is God" and the answer is "I AM."

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

With the atheists I’ve come to know the issue was never one of unbelief, the underlying issues were always: REBELLION.

In my experience, the rebellion has had its roots (when admitted) in one of three areas:

1) Intellectual pride
2) A personal tragedy, or bad relationship (lousy parents, divorce, death of a child)
3) Sexual immorality

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

In your mind. You have no proof that that is God's definition of himself. It's what you and some people choose to believe.

Selected Projective Solipcism.

As Calvin said, "I declare you Null and Void."

Cheers!