The problem with atheism.

[hawkeye]

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

What I would like to hear from any atheist is not only an explanation to why they are right but what their faith gives them in terms of self conception, how they view others i.e. are atheists humanists in another way, do they feel the need to protect others integrity in general, do they do charity? Do they feel they have a responsibility for others in general as would any believer?

The burden of proof is on those making the positive claim.   If it isn't, then give me proof of why every other religion's God is false and yours is the true one.  And a book is not proof of anything, btw

Do an atheist think about if their ethics of right or wrong is distinguishable from say Christians?

Do they catch themselves, once in a while, urging for meaning or is life just a crazy party on top of a burning building?

Do atheists screw around more, as from a biological viewpoint being a guy, multiple female partners makes more sense than trying to raise a few children and working hard on transferring your values onto them? Do atheists disregard ideologies to a greater extent and how do they defend their values because if you are living in the western world a lot of ethics and social norms are rooted in Christian tradition, so do they need to find other arguments for say civil rights?

Can't speak for other atheists but I have never committed a crime.  Don't screw around personally, but am fine with consenting adults doing whatever they want.   Treat other people the way I would like to be treated because that's the only fair thing to do.  We are all equal in this life and no-one is above anyone else.

It amuses me all this talk of ethics.  Anecdotal only, but personally, I have found the atheists in my life to be generally far more ethical than the Christians.  Perhaps it's because Christians assume they can absolve their sins every week in the confession box?

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[Mike Christ]

Atheist: there is no god
Christian: maybe there is no god

On the contrary, it looks more like this:

Weak Atheism: There probably is not a God
Strong Atheism: There is no God

Agnostic Theism: There probably is a God
Gnostic Theism: There is a God

So as we can see, claiming that there is no God or that there is a God as absolute certainty is always irrational, for we cannot know this.  OTOH, we can argue whether what's more likely, while keeping our doubts that either must be true.

The problem, then, is the fact that the big three (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) are Gnostic religions, as they claim God created the world and space and everything in it.  If you will argue the existence of God at a rational level, I recommend taking a stance with Deism.

[pedrog]

Atheist: there is no god
Christian: maybe there is no god

Here, I fixed it:

Atheist: I don't believe in gods because no evidence supporting such hypothesis was presented to me.

Christian: There's only one true God, and a holy spirit and Jesus and they all are watching you masturbate and you're going to Hell, also a talking snake! And angels...

[Luno]

Great thread great answers.

About absolution, I'm no catholic i.e. no sins, no hell and not a helluva lot preoccupied with heaven i.e. European protestant.

[wormbog]

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

Why would believing in God make you a better person? There is one answer: fear. Deep down, those who believe in God are afraid that their "bad" behavior is being observed and will be punished. It's the exact same relationship that young children have with their parents.

Rejecting God is the final stage of growing up. It represents your acceptance of full responsibility for your actions, independent of any reward or punishment from a higher power.

[ronimacarroni]

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

Why would believing in God make you a better person? There is one answer: fear. Deep down, those who believe in God are afraid that their "bad" behavior is being observed and will be punished. It's the exact same relationship that young children have with their parents.

Rejecting God is the final stage of growing up. It represents your acceptance of full responsibility for your actions, independent of any reward or punishment from a higher power.

On the contrary.
Atheists tend to reject the concept of sacrifice.
They want everything and the want it now before they die and rot in the ground.

[Spendulus]

Atheist: there is no god
Christian: maybe there is no god
Greek polytheistic culture:  gods have lots of fun in bed with humans

Which belief is the most rational? .....

I rest my case.

[pedrog]

Atheist: there is no god
Christian: maybe there is no god

Here, I fixed it:

Atheist: I don't believe in gods because no evidence supporting such hypothesis was presented to me.

Christian: There's only one true God, and a holy spirit and Jesus and they all are watching you masturbate and you're going to Hell, also a talking snake! And angels...

We all know that religions have a lot to answer for, but that doesn't make Atheism less guilty of its own crimes against scientific thought. 80 years ago, Gödel did his Incompleteness Theorems, basically debunking the entire Monist / Logical Positivist / Physicalist / Epiphenomenalist schools of thought, all in one roundhouse kick.

However, now it seems everyone has forgotten (or not heard the news) because:
-a lot of people still seem to be holding out for a Grand Unified Theory of Everything.
-The Big Bang Theory only seems to have 2 things going for it: the red shift when looking at distant galaxies, and it's a great story with explosions and everything.
-Most people seem to actually believe the "AI" fantasies in pop-culture that robots will eventually attain sentience and become a legitimate new life-form. They just need a couple more GHz of x86-based processor speed to get those "convincing behavioural algorithms" passing the Turing tests more reliably. *Cough-Qualia-Cough!* Say what? I don't know what they're talking about!..

Sorry, I cannot see what that has to do with atheism.

[ronimacarroni]

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

Why would believing in God make you a better person? There is one answer: fear. Deep down, those who believe in God are afraid that their "bad" behavior is being observed and will be punished. It's the exact same relationship that young children have with their parents.

Rejecting God is the final stage of growing up. It represents your acceptance of full responsibility for your actions, independent of any reward or punishment from a higher power.

On the contrary.
Atheists tend to reject the concept of sacrifice.
They want everything and the want it now before they die and rot in the ground.

welp I always end up saying things i regret on religious debates.
Now I feel like a hypocrite...

[C10H15N]

I'll take quantum entanglement for ∞ please Alex...   

[icem3lter]

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

Why would believing in God make you a better person? There is one answer: fear. Deep down, those who believe in God are afraid that their "bad" behavior is being observed and will be punished. It's the exact same relationship that young children have with their parents.

Rejecting God is the final stage of growing up. It represents your acceptance of full responsibility for your actions, independent of any reward or punishment from a higher power.

Never thought about it this way, you may be right

[Spendulus]

.....
This link may help. Excellent article that explains things really well, though I don't fully endorse the conclusions drawn because they're just stretching things too far in the direction of stereotypical Christian ideas about god. They could just as easily have appealed to spiritualism without 'god' per se, solipsism, some Hindu beliefs and so on.

I may have been too broad-sweeping in my earlier criticism. I've been an atheist for most of my life, and only fairly recently have drifted to being more theistic/spiritual.

Actually, your link doesn't help one bit, it confuses the issue considerably.  Typical theocrat trying to apply his own principles to cosmology. 

This kind of garbage from your article...

The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.

Is FALSE and represented an unsubstantiated conclusion based on the prior argument and facts presented.

In other words, Godel's incompleteness theorum doesn't help the argument that god does exist.  Or that God does not exist.

[Foxpup]

At this point i think it is you who doesn't understand the halting problem.  Nowhere does the halting problem suggest that the final state is *undetermined*, merely that it's *impossible to predict* the final state.  See the difference?

What difference? That's exactly what I said. I said, and explained why, brains are deterministic but at the same time unpredictable. Nobody, including yourself, knows what you're going to do before you do it. Ergo, you have free will. Your will cannot be predicted by anything less than omniscience, and an omniscient being who did predict it is powerless to influence or constrain your will.

[Spendulus]

.....
This link may help. Excellent article that explains things really well, though I don't fully endorse the conclusions drawn because they're just stretching things too far in the direction of stereotypical Christian ideas about god. They could just as easily have appealed to spiritualism without 'god' per se, solipsism, some Hindu beliefs and so on.

I may have been too broad-sweeping in my earlier criticism. I've been an atheist for most of my life, and only fairly recently have drifted to being more theistic/spiritual.

Actually, your link doesn't help one bit, it confuses the issue considerably.  Typical theocrat trying to apply his own principles to cosmology. 

This kind of garbage from your article...

The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.

Is FALSE and represented an unsubstantiated conclusion based on the prior argument and facts presented.

Seemed pretty well substantiated to me. Now if you want to argue that he's got the style of god all wrong, then go right ahead, but I don't see much point in arguing about what isn't outside of the universe. Similarly, it would be unscientific to claim that space aliens do not exist because you haven't met any yet.

The author of that article seems to expose a bit Atheistic hypocrisy: they basically believe that the universe is 100% knowable from within the system, despite not knowing everything yet.

What is outside the universe is not definable in the terms and concepts used within the universe, for example the 3 physical dimensions, and time.  These do not exist outside the universe.  I believe it's reasonable to say that if God(s) did exist, they exist within the universe.

[crumbs]

At this point i think it is you who doesn't understand the halting problem.  Nowhere does the halting problem suggest that the final state is *undetermined*, merely that it's *impossible to predict* the final state.  See the difference?

What difference? That's exactly what I said. I said, and explained why, brains are deterministic but at the same time unpredictable. Nobody, including yourself, knows what you're going to do before you do it. Ergo, you have free will. Your will cannot be predicted by anything less than omniscience, and an omniscient being who did predict it is powerless to influence or constrain your will.

The difference is obvious:  You may not know the outcome, but the outcome is nevertheless predetermined.  Illusion of free will != free will.  I thought we were debating something far subtler.

Illusion of free will [acting as if you have a say in the outcome, because you do not know the outcome] is enough to make the game fun, because it *appears* functionally equivalent to the players, and tugging on the veils of Maya is a fool's errand.  Still, we're on pretty touchy-feely theology turf, so these distinctions are important.

[phelix]

[...]
A creator gives something a meaning, purpose, etc. If you don't acknowledge a creator of yours or don't acknowledge his ownership over you, making you his slave, the concepts of meaning and purpose do not apply. If you acknowledge both, then voilà, your meaning and purpose is what your religion commands.

The end. This type of discussion only proves that way too many people need to check their definitions and formalism.

+1 Do you happen to know of a nice writeup of this concept (meaning can not be inherent but can only come from outside)?

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

Why would believing in God make you a better person? There is one answer: fear. Deep down, those who believe in God are afraid that their "bad" behavior is being observed and will be punished. It's the exact same relationship that young children have with their parents.


Rejecting God is the final stage of growing up. It represents your acceptance of full responsibility for your actions, independent of any reward or punishment from a higher power.

interesting idea

Let me start by making it clear that I am an atheist.

The problem I have with the atheist agenda is that is stops at 'the non existence of God' - the same logic is not applied consistently to the whole of the human condition.

If I examine my life and use this same 'spaghetti monster' logic, I am drawn to the same conclusions about all my actions and activities - they are all as equally pointless and irrational as worshiping God.

If I rationally examine my sense of self I realize that it is just a genetic innovation - it encourages self preservation - genetic selfishness creates a genetically induced illusion of self worth.

My desire to survive is itself as delusional as a belief in God - pain and my fear of pain are a genetically induced survival mechanism I am in thrall to.

If I believe in God and survive then it is no different to not believing in God and surviving - nature will select for survival.

But my actual survival is meaningless whether I believe in God or otherwise.

This is the only conclusion that can be logically formed from a real examination of life.

Atheism is merely another tribal display - a peacock's tail trying to attract a mate through a verbal display of intelligence.

So you are looking for the answer to the biggest question: "What should I do?"

Basically you can either do random stuff or continue looking. If you decide for the latter the next question is "How?"

[rini17]

Believing in God makes sense to me on many levels making me a better person in relation to others, which is good for my local community my family  and myself.

Why would believing in God make you a better person? There is one answer: fear. Deep down, those who believe in God are afraid that their "bad" behavior is being observed and will be punished. It's the exact same relationship that young children have with their parents.

Rejecting God is the final stage of growing up. It represents your acceptance of full responsibility for your actions, independent of any reward or punishment from a higher power.

In other words, final stage of growing up is actually a recognition that you give a meaning to the universe (not the other way around), and that you actually have the tools to realize the meaning in your life and to refine it. Worrying whether there exists or does not exist someone who set it up in this way and what is their intent is then besides the point. Both points of view (God does exist/doesn't exist) may help different people to achieve this goal if they are persistent enough in their inquiry.

[Mike Christ]

In other words, final stage of growing up is actually a recognition that you give a meaning to the universe (not the other way around), and that you actually have the tools to realize the meaning in your life and to refine it. Worrying whether there exists or does not exist someone who set it up in this way and what is their intent is then besides the point. Both points of view (God does exist/doesn't exist) may help different people to achieve this goal if they are persistent enough in their inquiry.

I believe you're correct; the existence of God is not important, what's important is that the individual can express a healthy amount of doubt toward not only with his foe's beliefs, but as well his own.

[RodeoX]

What God(s) are best to worship? There are so many to choose from, how does one go about deciding?

[balanghai]

There is no atheist agenda.

Atheism simply means "without god". There is nothing to "do".

All your activities, in the long run, are probably pointless.

Yes and Atheism is also a religion. I quite sure some of you have noticed it already.