Atheists is there life after death

[danydandan]

31 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Now he didn't shoot himself in the foot at all, I think you did. 

Right there you compound the issue. Two paths. It wasn't religion or faith that was the path to realising the big bang. It stood to the side to make way for discovery,  Ryleh is 100% correct. 'Belief' did nothing here. Belief was sidelined for discovery. 

I don't think it was sidelined, they were two parallel paths looking for the same answer in my opinion.

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, danydandan said:

I don't think it was sidelined, they were two parallel paths looking for the same answer in my opinion.

Belief didn't lead to the discovery though, astronomy did. Nothing religious contributed to that early hypothesis. 

Edited April 6, 2018 by psyche101

[Only_]

7 hours ago, Podo said:

A theist who was able to put his faith aside in exchange for reason.

He didn't set aside his faith. For him, there was simply no compatibility problem.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[psyche101]

3 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

He didn't set aside his faith. For him, there was simply no compatibility problem.

I can't agree with that. 

2 paths to the truth sounds like a compatability problem as only one is correct. He might not have seen compatability problems with religion and science in his time, still, it was not religion that gave him the answer. 

[Only_]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

Belief didn't lead to the discovery though, astronomy did. Nothing religious contributed to that early hypothesis. 

That's not the claim though.

Ryleh stated that 'believers' were not contributing to the advancement of knowledge/science. That is simply not true.

George Lemaître, father of the Big Bang Theory is one notable exemple. There are many others.

In recent times, what about Francis S. Collins, an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and lead the Human Genome Project? He is a vocal Christian and believer in God. 

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

That's not the claim though.

Ryleh stated that 'believers' were not contributing to the advancement of knowledge/science. That is simply not true.

I don't believe that's the case, the only quote I can find Ryleh making is this one:

23 hours ago, Rlyeh said:

Isn't that always the case when reality contradicts the believer's world view? The Big Bang, Evolution? Nonsense. God did it.

That's nothing like what you are saying. 

He is more than obviously referring to people such as yourself who use the God of the gaps argument. And Collins for that matter. 

It does not say a person with belief has never contributed. 

1 hour ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

George Lemaître, father of the Big Bang Theory is one notable exemple. There are many others.

What on earth makes you think anyone is oblivious to the choices some people in science have made? 

How many times have I mentioned Simon Conway Morris to you now? He's ten times the scientist to almost all the crackpots you have offered up as examples of this. 

1 hour ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

In recent times, what about Francis S. Collins, an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and lead the Human Genome Project? He is a vocal Christian and believer in God. 

 

Again, this has nothing to do with science, and he is not getting inspiration from faith, he's just another who deploys the God of the gaps argument to fend of sensibility. It does not mean science and religion compliment each other, it means some people forsake real world evidence and convolute it to self validate their beliefs. 

[danydandan]

4 hours ago, psyche101 said:

I can't agree with that. 

2 paths to the truth sounds like a compatability problem as only one is correct. He might not have seen compatability problems with religion and science in his time, still, it was not religion that gave him the answer. 

He didn't see science and religion as incompatible. He seen science as a way to prove what religion already knew. So in his mind religion asked the question and science attempted to answer.

[Rlyeh]

12 hours ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

That's not the claim though.

Ryleh stated that 'believers' were not contributing to the advancement of knowledge/science. That is simply not true.

Where did I say such a thing?

I said believers such as yourself like to claim various scientific theories as being an Atheist dogma because they don't entertain your world view. 

[StarMountainKid]

What about all those who didn't get a chance to be born? What I mean is, before you were born, what were the chances of you being born? 

If there's God's Plan for the Universe, somehow God arranged for you to be born when you were. If there is no Plan, then you're here by a throw of the dice, by random chance. 

If you're alive right now just by blind luck, what does that mean for you? In this sense you should be an atheist and glad of it. If you think your birth was ordained from Above, how do you know what this Above thing is? It seems to me you can't know, because for some inscrutable reason, the Above thing won't tell you, or doesn't want you to know. I've looked around all my life and have discovered no evidence for it.

Blind luck seems to me to be extremely unlikely, as well. I wasn't born in the several hundred thousand or whatever years in the past, and won't be born in the millions of years in the future, so what were the odds I was born now at all?

Doesn't make sense to me that I exist here and now. Either I'm almost infinitely lucky, or something else is going on.. 

 

 

[Only_]

On 06/04/2018 at 12:45 PM, Rlyeh said:

 

I said believers such as yourself like to claim various scientific theories as being an Atheist dogma because they don't entertain your world view. 

If the universe did indeed have a beginning as the Big Bang Theory has proved, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it. So there is absolutely no contradiction with the Christian faith, in fact it suggests a Creator.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[Only_]

Atheist-turned-agnostic astronomer Fred Hoyle, who coined the term “Big Bang,” famously stated:

[StarMountainKid]

19 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

If the universe did indeed have a beginning as the Big Bang Theory has proved, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it. So there is absolutely no contradiction with the Christian faith, in fact it suggests a Creator.

Of course, the BB could have been a spontaneous event emerging from some prior configuration of some existent configuration.

This prior configuration could have been created, but also it could be just what is. What is is as mysterious as a Creator, but has the advantage that we can't read into it our own personal beliefs, thus twisting it into something it isn't. 

What is just serenely continues its existence, and doesn't worry about what we think of it. We can compose all sorts of theories about it, but it stands secure in its knowledge of itself. It doesn't question itself, in other words, and become neurotic trying to think of reasons for its own existence. 

It just is, and is quite satisfied with this conclusion. See, now it has time to think about more important things. 

[Rlyeh]

4 hours ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

If the universe did indeed have a beginning as the Big Bang Theory has proved, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it. So there is absolutely no contradiction with the Christian faith, in fact it suggests a Creator.

If it was separate it wouldn't have any effect. Anyway you're invoking a god of gaps.

[XenoFish]

Wouldn't an afterlife make this life meaningless? Considering you'd have a second chance regardless. Same goes for reincarnation.

[Only_]

11 hours ago, Rlyeh said:

If it was separate it wouldn't have any effect. Anyway you're invoking a god of gaps.

Whilst invoking 'God' for something we don't understand could be determined a 'God of the Gaps', equally proposing 'not God' for something we don't understand when God could be a valid option becomes an atheism of the gaps – i.e. when I can't explain it, it definitely wasn't God.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[Only_]

37 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Wouldn't an afterlife make this life meaningless? Considering you'd have a second chance regardless. Same goes for reincarnation.

Unless what you do here in this current life and Universe can have repurcussions in the afterlife or the next incarnations. Hindus and Buddhists calls this karma, Christians have this concept of salvation.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[XenoFish]

3 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Unless what you do here in this life can have repurcussions in the afterlife or the next lives. Hindus and Buddhists calls this karma, Christians have this concept of salvation.

And yet there is zero guarantee that such a things exist outside of a spiritual framework. I consider such concepts are being nothing more than a self-regulation device.

[cormac mac airt]

16 hours ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

If the universe did indeed have a beginning as the Big Bang Theory has proved, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it. So there is absolutely no contradiction with the Christian faith, in fact it suggests a Creator.

Actually it makes no such conclusion as to suggest a Creator that initiated our universe “with intent” thus it contradicts the Judeo-Christian faiths.

As to being separate and apart from the effect it could be that whatever the “creator” is is part of the unknown processes occurring in 11th dimensional spacetime. 

cormac

[Only_]

14 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

And yet there is zero guarantee that such a things exist outside of a spiritual framework. I consider such concepts are being nothing more than a self-regulation device.

It all depends on your worldview, I guess. I consider this life, in an imperfect world, as a kind of transition. As beings doted with intelligence, I think it's our duty to use our God-given reason to work on achieving moral transformation to the best of our abilities in this lifetime.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[Rlyeh]

24 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Whilst invoking 'God' for something we don't understand could be determined a 'God of the Gaps', equally proposing 'not God' for something we don't understand when God could be a valid option becomes an atheism of the gaps – i.e. when I can't explain it, it definitely wasn't God.

You're trying to defend your argument from ignorance. Ask yourself, when has "God did it" accurately explained anything?

Edited April 8, 2018 by Rlyeh

[XenoFish]

5 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

It all depends on your worldview, I guess. I consider this life, in an imperfect world, as a kind of transition. As beings doted with intelligence, I think it's our duty to use our God-given reason to work on achieving moral transformation to the best of our abilities in this lifetime.

While I will not disagree on being moral, though as subjective as that might be. I do not see this world as a plight. It is simply what it is and what we've chosen to make it. I do not set standards on perfection, because I do not believe such a thing has or will ever exist. For something to be perfect is for it to be stagnant, dead. No room for growth or change. Perfection is an illusion at best.

[Only_]

19 minutes ago, Rlyeh said:

You're trying to defend your argument from ignorance. Ask yourself, when has "God did it" accurately explained anything?

The problem with the "God-of-the-gaps" objection is that it can have unintended consequences for atheism. Specifically, it makes atheism impossible to falsify, in the same way that most religious beliefs cannot be falsified. Rather than rely on science, "God-of-the-gaps" pushes atheism far away from being a scientific belief.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[Rlyeh]

1 minute ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

The problem with the "God-of-the-gaps" objection is that it can have unintended consequences for atheism. Specifically, it makes atheism impossible to falsify, in the same way that most religious beliefs cannot be falsified. Rather than rely on science, "God-of-the-gaps" pushes atheism far away from being a scientific belief.

That doesn't make sense. How do you falsify someone's disbelief in God? That's what Atheism is.

The god of gaps fails the scientific method so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

[Only_]

4 minutes ago, Rlyeh said:

That doesn't make sense. How do you falsify someone's disbelief in God? That's what Atheism is.

The god of gaps fails the scientific method so I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

My point is, there are certain things that we do not understand, and we do take it by faith. For example, Christians believe that God caused the Big Bang or that God is the uncreated Creator. It is technically impossible to prove that scientifically as far as we know, and it is equally as impossible to disprove that statement. However, there is a very interesting presupposition made by the atheist that needs to be taken into account. The atheist is making the claim that there must be naturalistic explanation for everything. That is a large assumption that is on very shaky philosophical ground.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Clockwork_Spirit

[Rlyeh]

3 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

My point is, there are certain things that we do not understand, and we do take it by faith. For example, Christians believe that God caused the Big Bang or that God is the uncreated Creator. It is technically impossible to prove that scientifically as far as we know, and it is equally as impossible to disprove that statement. However, there is a very interesting presupposition made by the atheist that needs to be taken into account. The atheist is making the claim that there must be naturalistic explanation for everything. That is a large assumption that is on very shaky philosophical ground.

Considering the naturalistic explanation's solid track record it's hardly on shaky ground.

When has God did it as an answer accurately explained any phenomena?