Theism vs Atheism

[Whiskey1428]

*everything we experience*- the universe in general

Theism- *everything we experience* is the direct result of a higher life form (supernatural, intelligent design, etc...)

Atheism- *everything we experience* is only the result of random chance

This discussion is as old as man and now has extreme prevalence due to man's recent scientific findings and fascination with such.

Atheism has a very strong argument;in that it only pursues that which can be empirically reviewed. Research into the supernatural is superfluous and cannot be neither proven nor denied. That is very understandable. In a sense, "I'll believe it if I can see it." Whereas theism relies on blind faith. Or to put in simpler terms, "Well you can't disprove it!"

I would like to argue that atheism has one major flaw though. It believes in blind faith as well.

So this is atheism's belief: everything is of a natural occurrence. Atheism would believe that, for no reason whatsoever, all the matter contained in the entire universe decided to just "appear" literally out of nowhere. After this "appearance" all matter had a meeting and then decided to explode and form the entire universe. This directly contradicts Newton's third law of motion and the law of the conservation of energy. So in short, atheism would have you to believe, "well even though these theories have been part of the foundation of science, you will just have to give them a pass on this one..."

This is the theist's beliefs: science explains many things. Everything we see NOW is of natural occurrence. The beginnings of time, on the other hand, cannot be explained away through natural occurrences. Basically, "See! There has to be a Creator of some sorts!"

The one difference you get from these two divergent belief structures is this. Atheism is restrained entirely by the laws of physics, whereas theism is not. The belief in theism allows for the seemingly supernatural beginnings of the universe while atheism does not. What you end up with is atheism contains just as much blind faith as theism. So to call one a "religion" and the other "science" is completely pointless. They are both religions and need to be treated as such.

Now for my main point to be made. The only real way to ponder the origins of the universe would be to believe in a higher power. It is literally not scientifically possible any other way.

Josh

[Whiskey1428]

Sorry I am new to this forum and meant for this post to be broken up into paragraphs. I apologize if it seems scrambled. I will make sure to make my future posts less garbled up.

Josh

[Night]

You're completely wrong.

You see, there is a subtle problem with your view of what atheism is. Many people (mistakenly) think that atheism is a belief, which it isn't.

a-theism: "without a belief in god". That means even agnostics are atheists, in the literal definition of atheism. There is a core difference between belief and lack of belief that christians and theists seem to be unable to understand. A lack of belief is not in itself necessarily a belief. It is simply the lack of a belief.

Furthermore, the universe "did not appear out of no where". The universe appeared after the collapse (right word?) of the singularity which originally contained all of the energy present in today's universe. Particles are simply another form of energy. Thus, the entire universe wasn't created out of nothing. The singularity which led to the present universe contained all of the energy there is, and that energy was later converted into everything we see today.

Therefore, atheism does not require any beliefs. It simply requires the lack of a belief in god.

Lastly, an atheist doesn't necessarily have to believe in the big bang. Even so, the big bang does not violate ANY law of physics! I don't know where so many theists get this confused assumption from, but it's wrong.

[finder]

You're completely wrong.
You see, there is a subtle problem with your view of what atheism is. Many people (mistakenly) think that atheism is a belief, which it isn't...

Sigh. You believe things you can not prove. You don't believe in things you can not disprove. You have faith. Atheism takes faith.

[Rex]

Atheism is actually the non-belief in a particular theism. Christians are atheists in respect to Greek mythology. It has little to do with God or a deity.

It actually takes NO faith to be an “atheist”, considering it is the lack of faith that makes you one.


Everyone is essentially an atheist, some just disbelieve in one less god , and they are suddenly ridiculed.

[Night]

Sigh. You believe things you can not prove. You don't believe in things you can not disprove. You have faith. Atheism takes faith.

Atheism is a lack of faith. I do not have faith that god doesn't exist, because I deny the very idea. Atheism is not a belief, it is a lack of belief...when will you understand this???

For example, I cannot say that god doesn't exist. But, I do not hold a belief in god.

[minorwork]

Sigh. You believe things you can not prove. You don't believe in things you can not disprove. You have faith. Atheism takes faith.

And of course you know this, of course, from your being an atheist.

[Jack]

So this is atheism's belief: everything is of a natural occurrence.

I'll begin by restating the obvious; this claim has little to nothing to do with atheism, it's the natural sciences you're addressing. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods and by extension a lack of belief that any particular god created the universe. Atheism does not endorse or rely on a scientific explanation. Some atheists believe aliens are responsible or believe in other non-theological explanations. While many atheists accept science as the best tool for understand the natural world, so do many theists, thus establishing that accepting the scientific method is not a matter of orthodoxy.

Theists have a problem with natural explanations for natural processes because they think that science comes to a conclusion first ("nature did it") then goes out to find evidence that supports their presupposition. After all, that's what theists do when it comes to the existence of their particular god. The majority of them aren't familiar with the scientific method and don't acknowledge that science goes about inquiring into the origins of life and the universe in just the opposite way that they have come to the conclusion that their god exists. The natural sciences have discovered over time and through exploration and experimentation that there are natural laws and processes that indicate the universe and life are the result of those laws and processes. Scientists do not claim to know exactly how all this came about. Science is still in its infancy; only in the last 50 years have we developed tools that allow us to examine evidence imperceptible to us before then.

Atheism would believe that, for no reason whatsoever, all the matter contained in the entire universe decided to just "appear" literally out of nowhere.

That's certainly one theory among many being discussed by scientists. There is evidence that suggests the universe started out at a single point then expanded. Physicists, cosmologists and mathematicians are also debating theories involving strings and super-strings, multiple universes and branes. I don't see how those possibilities are any more fantastic than any religion's creation story. Yet theists are willing to believe those stories with no evidence whatsoever.

After this "appearance" all matter had a meeting and then decided to explode and form the entire universe.

I'm guessing from that you aren't very familiar with the Big Bang theory.

This directly contradicts Newton's third law of motion and the law of the conservation of energy. So in short, atheism would have you to believe, "well even though these theories have been part of the foundation of science, you will just have to give them a pass on this one..."

Ah, the favorite argument of the Discovery Institute and millions of poorly informed theists around the world. It only sounds credible. It's based on a lack of knowledge of physics.

The total energy of the universe consists of the energy due to the motion of all the particles (called kinetic energy), the energy that is stored because of the gravitational forces between the particles (called potential energy), and the energy associated with the mass of all the particles (usually referred to as rest energy).

The key feature to bear in mind is that the gravitational potential energy is a negative quantity. You can see this by realizing that in order to separate two objects, one has to overcome the attractive gravitational force and this requires one to supply positive energy from outside. This is why launching satellites into space requires such huge amounts of positive energy supplied by fuel, in order to overcome the negative gravitational potential energy of the satellite due to the Earth's attractive force.

This negative gravitational potential energy exactly cancels out the positive energy of the universe. As Stephen Hawking says in his book A Brief History of Time (quoted by Victor Stenger, Has Science Found God?, p. 148): "In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero." In other words, it is not the case that something came out of nothing. It is that we have always had zero energy.

Alan Guth, one of the creators of the inflationary universe model, points out that the fact that "in any closed universe the negative gravitational potential energy cancels the energy of matter exactly" has been known for some time and can be found in standard textbooks. (See The Classical Theory of Fields by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz, second edition, 1962, p. 378-379.)

But what made the universe and all its mass come into being at all? The suggestion is that the universe began as a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum. It used to be thought that the vacuum was truly nothing, simply inert space. But we now know that it is actually a hive of activity with particle-antiparticle pairs being repeatedly produced out of the vacuum and almost immediately annihilating themselves into nothingness again. The creation of a particle-antiparticle pair out of the vacuum violates the law of conservation of energy but the Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows such violations for a very short time. This phenomenon has observable and measurable consequences, which have been tested and confirmed. (The Inflationary Universe, Alan Guth, 1997, p. 272)

Big Bang for beginners-13: Does the Big Bang theory violate the law of conservation of energy? | Machines Like Us

[loser]

It really doesn't take ANY faith in order to be a theist. All it takes is the realization that intelligence life does indeed exist (through observation of intelligent life forms such as humans) and that it is entirely possible for these intelligent life forms to not only design but also to CREATE. If human beings have been able to astound us with incredible creations (inventions) in the relative blink of an eye (compared to the age of the universe), it only takes common sense to assume other more advanced (older) life forms (given the sheer size of the universe) have created even greater things than what the infant human race has been able to create. To deny this is to deny our own intelligence and ability and to deny the inherent power contained within our universe and the ability to harness such power.

No faith needed, just common sense...and a rational mind capable of rational thought.

[Night]

It really doesn't take ANY faith in order to be a theist. All it takes is the realization that intelligence life does indeed exist (through observation of intelligent life forms such as humans) and that it is entirely possible for these intelligent life forms to not only design but also to CREATE. If human beings have been able to astound us with incredible creations (inventions) in the relative blink of an eye (compared to the age of the universe), it only takes common sense to assume other more advanced (older) life forms (given the sheer size of the universe) have created even greater things than what the infant human race has been able to create. To deny this is to deny our own intelligence and ability and to deny the inherent power contained within our universe and the ability to harness such power.

No faith needed, just common sense...and a rational mind capable of rational thought.

Funny how you value rationality yet your own statement reeks of irrationality. I don't get how "A means B happened" here. So we exist and we create things. In fact, that doesn't mean any other intelligent life forms exist.

There is no proof of god.

[Dave In Canada]

It really doesn't take ANY faith in order to be a theist. All it takes is the realization that intelligence life does indeed exist (through observation of intelligent life forms such as humans) and that it is entirely possible for these intelligent life forms to not only design but also to CREATE. If human beings have been able to astound us with incredible creations (inventions) in the relative blink of an eye (compared to the age of the universe), it only takes common sense to assume other more advanced (older) life forms (given the sheer size of the universe) have created even greater things than what the infant human race has been able to create. To deny this is to deny our own intelligence and ability and to deny the inherent power contained within our universe and the ability to harness such power.

No faith needed, just common sense...and a rational mind capable of rational thought.

A theist is someone who believes in one God as the creator and ruler of the universe or believes in the existence of a god or gods.

Faith is defined as having confidence or a trust in a person or a thing. It is a belief not based on proof, a belief in a God or in the teaching of doctrines.

It is also quite possible (althougth it is not yet known) as you say that there are older life forms that are more advanced than us. However it is a leap in logic to assume or suggest that there is a sole creator or ruler of the universe.

Therefore you are being intellectually dishonest when you state that you do not need faith in order to be a theist. You need faith because although you have no proof you still trust the existence of a God. I also would assume based on your previous posts that you also follow a set of doctrines which as noted above is part of faith in the existence of a specific God with specific attributes.

[barts]

One of the problems I see with the theory of a supernatural creator is the notion implied that this creator is a higher being of some sort--so beyond human beings as to be worthy of worship, even necessary to be worshiped.

What is there in the theory of the supernatural creator that requires such a being? Is it not reasonable to speculate about what the minimum necessary god would be? I think so. As would William of Ockham. And, in doing so, it seems all that the minimum necessary god needs to do is create an enormous supply of energy, time, a few fundamental forces, and some constants. Nothing else is necessary. With those few fundamental things in place, the rest, as we know from direct observation, will result.

Perhaps a god did do it. I would submit, however, the creator was actually, likely, a much less impressive being than theists like to believe. It did not need to be omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, or omnibenevolent to create the Universe. Indeed, few of the human-like characteristics that theists claim their gods possess would be necessary.

Perhaps, of course, I'm wrong but it seems to me that theists should consider accounting for not only the existence of their gods but also their capabilities and characters, and explain why a more powerful and complex god than necessary would be required.

I submit that if god existed--or still exists--it was-is as primitive as the fundamental forces and energies of which creation is created, because that would be the minimum necessary god. Such a god would be supernatural as the theists demand, but also consistent with what we've observed and determined through scientific investigation.