Posted on 09/09/2024 9:39:13 AM PDT by MosesKnows
Atheism is the absence or rejection of belief in deities. That definition makes it easy to understand an atheist thinking.
What is difficult to understand about atheist thinking is their position on creation. I know neither the atheist nor the believer can refute the self-evident fact that we are part of a creation. Any discussion that begins in agreement stands a chance of progressing.
What issues arise after we agree there was a creation? Why was there a creation? When was there a creation? Where was there a creation? The spine-tingling question when you put the issues together in a pile; who was the creator?
Perhaps a better question we should next ask is; was creation random or by design?
Was creation random or by a design?
Design. Answers in Genesis is a great resource for this type of information.
Atheism is a religion. It requires the same leap of faith as any other religion.
Atheists too seem to have a vendetta against a particular religion which might be valid. Religions and churches and religious organizations can be very corrupt.
Churches can be their own worst enemies.
Yet, it is the message and not the messenger that is important.
My experience has been that most people who claim to be atheists are actually people who prayed for something and it didn’t happen.
They are angry because of that.
Then they tell everyone they are atheists because they are angry.
To acknowledge God as our creator would be to admit to themselves that they aren’t the perfect beings they think they are.
How could God not give them what they prayed for because they are perfect.
Perhaps a better question we should next ask is; was creation random or by design?
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Even if creation was random, what or who started this random process?
It’s kind of irrelevant. When I was an atheist, I was convinced that humans came from outer space. We are a unique species. No other animal has made an MRI machine. When I became a Christian, the Creation idea made sense.
And then success must follow success and success must follow success and over again and again a million times. Well a huge number of times to get to very complex beings like ourselves.
The statistical probability of a million successes in progression is an impossibility or an extremely low probability.
Well “creation” implies “creator” so no.
As for how it all came to be, dunno. Doesn’t matter. It’s fun to watch the scientists try to figure it out. But knowing that it’s a very challenging science, gleaning evidence from billions of years ago, I don’t expect any answers. Just neat space pictures and cool theories.
Yeah but it’s a big universe. There’s billions of stars in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the universe. Even something as rare as the winning lottery numbers (1 in 300 million) can happen, more than once, with that many throws.
‘Intellectualism and atheism are religions too, and their followers are often the biggest zealots.
I think you are confusing an atheist with an anti-theist.
Atheist is a term that is never used in the Bible. There is one scripture that defines a person who says there is no God.
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
If you do not believe in the Creator you are not an atheist, you are a fool.
Atheists would say we, sentient beings, are simply consequences of abiogenesis - random chemical reactions and energy changes in matter, which has always existed, randomly combining to create “life.”
Personally I find it very empty and logically meaningless. No atheist can explain how the natural world makes this jump from pure chemical reactions to “life” and sentient beings.
As a side note, the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens once said the only scientific fact which troubled his atheist belief system, was that the atoms and molecules which combine to create organic life ALL must to be exactly the weights and polarities they are. If they were different in the slightest, the “chemical reactions” of life simply could not exist at all. It seems there is some kind of non-random, “intelligent design” in even the most basic and fundamental building blocks of the universe.
He’s dead now, so we have no idea if by the end he overcame his stubborn pride and if his ideas changed.
Maybe God explained it to him before he dispatched him to Hell.
The atheist position is that existence arose out of natural, material processes that did not involve a creator.
Everything is so fine-tuned that it’s impossible for a chance happening.
That would be the definition to put in a dictionary, just that one word.
Interesting. You are so sure that there is no creator that you say no. But then you say you dunno how it all came to be. You either know or dunno. Can’t have it both ways. This is atheistic logic summed up.
Most philosophers who have reviewed his book have determined that he failed in his attempt. His fellow scientists don't care, because they think philosophy is nonsense, and so they believe that Krauss has sent the knockout blow to theists.
Like most materialist theories, Krauss just assumes that the Laws of Physics existed from all time and that those laws show that a universe like ours will eventually pop up given enough time. But who or what set the initial Laws of Physics? Why are they the way they are?
String theorists claim that there can be up to 10^500 different sets of Laws of Physics based on how their strings are wriggling. So they claim that we just happen to be in a universe that works for humans. However, if String Theory is true (and it is increasingly being thought that it is NOT) who or what created these Strings or the laws that guided them?
Their arguments are really similar to the arguments the ancients made about what is holding up the Earth. An elephant. But what is holding up the elephant? A turtle. But what is holding up the turtle? It's turtles all the way down.
A lot of the materialists have decided that the existence of the universe is just a "brute fact" that we have to accept, i.e. shut up and do the math. They might even admit that the existence of the universe is not in their purview, but when asked what IS in the purview of this question, they will have no answer. They can't give any respect to philosophy or religion for fear it will undermine their materialist project.
BINGO!!! A few years ago I had this discussion over lunch with my former teaching colleague who was, sadly he passed, Gerry Nadler’s twin Richie. Richie tole me he was an Atheist. I complimented him on being a Believer. He was a bit confused but I told him I could not prove the Existrnce of God and he could not prove that God does not exist. So we were both Believers, though from different sides. He was stunned. He told me he had never looked at it that way. He then declared himself agnostic. I jokingly told him we’d have more in common if he remained an atheist. He laughed and we continued our lunch. For those who want to know Richie was a staunch Libertarian which caused much conflict with Gerry.
Perhaps. In my experience, most atheists come from 3 camps of thinking.
1) I know God exists but don't want to change my lifestyle. So I'll pretend He doesn't exist.
2) I like being part of the "smart people" clique, and they say God doesn't exist. So I'll conform to the clique's demand.
3) (Since I've had a career among fellow programmers) I don't want to admit that someone, somewhere, is smarter than me and better and designing complex systems than me. That means God doesn't exist.
Sometimes a person is in a combination of the 3 groups above. It's rare that I've been able to persuade someone to rethink his position, even with knowing a lot of apologetics material from groups like Reasons to Believe.
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