why does this forum care so much about religion

[tpir]

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Ok, you are asking all the right questions, and you are already ahead of the game because you don't pretend like you know all the answers to questions that have been asked and remain contentious for hundreds (and hundreds) of years. All good things. Atheism, in the strictest sense, is simply a LACK of a belief in God. It is not necessarily a firm, confident positive claim that no God could ever exist. For instance, I think it is certainly POSSIBLE for an infinite number of possible Gods to exist. And I think its impossible for us to ever find out one way or another. This makes me agnostic, of course, but it ALSO makes me an atheist. The two are not mutually exclusive. The type of atheist you are referring to above, the one who has a firm belief in the impossibility or non-existence of god, is a gnostic atheist. Gnostic simply means "one who knows" or something very similar to that. I am agnostic because I do not know and furthermore think that we cannot know. The cannot part isn't strictly necessary, and so I am agnostic on a whole host of topics. I am agnostic about unicorns, to keep the same example running. I do not have a belief that they exist, but I cannot say they are impossible. I am an agnostic a-unicornist.

You make a good point about the difference between atheism and a-unicornism. That is, basically, only little girls believe in unicorns. A whole bunch of people believe in God. And you hit the nail right on the head for why this is. God seems to answer a lot of questions and fill a lot of needs. Just as, for the little girl, the unicorn answers some questions and fills some needs, i.e. the need for some magical, beautiful wonderful creature to exist. Once the little girl gets over this need, or finds something else to fill it, she can accept the overwhelming likelihood that these unicorns do not exist. This cannot be PROVEN, of course, but it doesn't seem worth devoting much time to worrying about it.

Your stonehenge question is sort of a rephrasing of Paley's watchmaker problem. You walk along a beach and you see a watch, you don't know who owns the watch but you know damn well that some intelligent force made that watch. Its a fascinating problem. For most of human history, we've considered human beings, dogs, plants, all of these to be different examples of the watch. It was simply impossible to look at a human being, with all its complexity, and think that there was no intelligent designer. But it turns out we were wrong. There really is no intelligent designer. A great amount of complexity CAN arise out of mindless processes. Darwin more or less solved that for us, and although it is STILL incredibly counterintuitive to most people, something as amazing and complex and beautiful as a human being really did come about through random mutations differentially selected and inherited.

How does this apply to your specific question about the beauty of the universe? Well, the short answer is that it doesn't. The universe is still awaiting its Darwin. Maybe its Darwin will never come. Maybe the universe really IS a watch. I do not know for sure. What I learned from the parable of evolution (awesome, LOL) is that my wonderment and my lack of imagination and my "sense" that something must be designed or here for a reason misleads. It is imperfect. It exists for a reason, and that reason is to get me safely through childhood, into adulthood and eventually to parenthood. I do not have this sense as some sort of Ultimate Truth Divining Rod. It is fallible and fallible in predictable ways.

Of course, if you want to listen to all that and then still say that the universe still IS a watch, I have no convincing arguments to sway you. You might even be right. There are some atheists who will say, with far too much confidence, that the universe is here for no reason and that it had no beginning or some other explanation. As far as I know, they are more or less making things up. I think they'd be better off saying "I don't know but past experience has led me to refrain from just making up stories and calling them God."

And of course, going from this potential watchmaker god, who created the universe, to some sort of God that cares about who I marry or what I do on Sundays or intends to send me to burn for eternity is a HUGE step based on nothing. Absolutely nothing. That the universe appears designed is NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER for any specific designer. Its not even a great argument for a designer of ANY stripe.

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I just wanted to say this is a sick awesome post and I will not be posting in SMP about religion/atheism anymore because this covers everything. Seriously. gg.

[scorcher863]

Thanks vhawk, i appreciate all the valuable information. It helped me to better understand my beliefs. I feel like i should pay you lol.
Your teaching style is extremely effective, especially the a-unicornism analogy. At first, an agnostic theist seemed like a contradiction. Now, i think i understand how the two are not mutually exclusive (its funny cause i just learned this concept a few weeks ago in intro to statistics and was just tested wednesday on it.)
Prior to reading this post, i was under the presumption that all atheists are the same and they believe there is no god. I think it's obvious i was only exposed to one side of the story. Thanks again for the clarification.

I heard of the watch analogy while listening to an audiobook of Mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis uses a house and a painting as examples. I like stone henge becauseit is a real life example.

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What I learned from the parable of evolution (awesome, LOL) is that my wonderment and my lack of imagination and my "sense" that something must be designed or here for a reason misleads. It is imperfect. It exists for a reason, and that reason is to get me safely through childhood, into adulthood and eventually to parenthood. I do not have this sense as some sort of Ultimate Truth Divining Rod. It is fallible and fallible in predictable ways.

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This would explain why C.S. lewis came up with the idea that because we "thirst" for a god, there must be a god that exists (based on our thirst for water and food.)

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to some sort of God that cares about who I marry or what I do on Sundays or intends to send me to burn for eternity is a HUGE step based on nothing.

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This is reminds me alot of ppl nowadays. It's kinda like on of those chicken/egg/ conundrums, they have these beliefs which are drawn from their god, who is affected by their beliefs, which are affected by their god and so on and so on.

Thanks again for the lengthy response. I read it over a few times so i would grasp everything.