Comments (18)

So that's where he is. Does he know Santa Claus.

There was a pile of mud that was hit by a bolt of lightning -- voila! -- you and I eventually emerged. "Lo and behold!" Keep smiling, and don't hurt your head by breaking prayer boards on it. The whole thing is hilarious! -Anonymous, but sincere

There was a pile of mud that was hit by a bolt of lightning -- voila! -- you and me eventually emerged. "Lo and behold!" Keep smiling, and don't hurt your head by breaking prayer boards on it. The whole thing is hilarious! -Anonymous, but sincere

Reasonable,
thanks for the dialogue.

I'm reading a wonderful book called "Philosophers without Gods" that is a collection of essays by modern philosophers, most of them having been raised in the church or in some religious, sometimes fundamentalist, traditions.

I think you'd like the reading, because it's not particularly in-your-face atheism; it's a very human compendium of experiences that, though their stories, I think reflect much of what I question and struggle with as well. It's very un-HitchensHarrisDawkinsDennett.

There is so much more than the "who created the creator" dilemma at stake, but it's impossible to address it all in this forum.

I would suggest that I don't particularly mind your spiritual beliefs, and, if they are life-enriching to you, would encourage you to go for them.

Where I think you'll see you and I disagree is in matters of policy, of obtaining the best justice and harmony for human beings. But to the extent we can agree on things that move us forward (some of us are only going to have this life, or are predestined to a hellish wasteland for the rest of eternity, so this is all we got...) I would be the first to extend my hand and wallet.

Best to you.
Jeff

Jeff-

Respectfully, I have had the full spectrum of research I need to know including college classes etc on evolution/biology etc.

As far as "who created the creator" the chain has to stop somewhere. You either believe that the universe came to be all by itself, and that matter/anti matter is all there is- or that that the beg. of everything we know came to be by intelligence creating it and that the creator is where it stops. I can't conceive of a world that did not come to be by anything else but God doing it. (And those that say the earth is only 6000 years old do a disservice to the dialogue between religion and science)

Like I said, YOU and others are willing to just ask who created the creator, and come to the conclusion that there can't be when that question does make sense to you. I am on a search for knowledge too- but its within the context of already knowing through my faith that God exists and loves me, the world in fact(the people within it) and that I can't explain everything in this mortal state we are now in.In fact, the possibility of what I believe- that we are actually spirits living in temporary bodies- which is unprovable, I'll admit- gives me hope in a future that is utterly fantastic. I don't know if anyone has absolute certainty when it comes to spiritual things. I do know that like many others that are Christian, I would not deny my faith even under the threat of death.

This does not preclude us attempting to improve our planet, or help the poor, or stop/deter people from killing one another, global warming, etc etc.
Christianity loves life and wants people to live long, productive lives etc. I don't believe Islam has the same make-up within its constructs.

Colleen:
Me too!

If evolution is how we came into being, I wonder what we will all end up looking like as evolutionary cycles progress. I hope we don't end up looking like cavemen again as portrayed by artists.

Reasonable Not Hateful:
Thanks for your responses.

I appreciate your opinions, and we'll just let it rest here (or after your response.)

There are many statements you assume of me (and I can't speak for CoWalker) that are simply untrue. I can't begin to understand--I just have to imagine-- that there really is matter and anti-matter, or that time slows and we get thinner with velocity, or that the visible universe is just about 5% of what is "out there." These are things that are just too big for my mind, so I'll never claim that I have to "believe" only what I see, nor would I suggest everyone believe only what I believe--that's too small of a worldview.

However; Before you comment on entropy, or natural selection, I would suggest you learn more about them. The answers to your questions are out there and very available, but you have to have a willingness to learn about them. There are many good sources out there, and very many people who are experts who are willing to share their knowledge. It's up to us and our curiosity and our willingness to learn about them.

There is very very much in our observable world that is NOT common sense. Most often the ways that nature works are NOT intuitive. You have a misinformed approach--which, by the way, is one of the reasons you'll see atheists on panels like "On Faith," an international site that represents some of the more contemporary thoughts on faith through all spectrums. I ask myself: What information is getting to the world on panels like "On Faith?"

I believe that the very fate of this country will rest on the avoidance of damage done by misinformation. I've seen nothing but misinformation come from our most respected governmental office over the last 8 years, often framed in the "blessings" of the gods. I think my child will suffer because someone will be misinformed, when better and more logical and reasonable knowledge is available. I see him in the twin towers building as a victim of a religious zealot. I am willing to fight for the life of my child and those I love or care about. So in a way, for those willing to dialogue, I'm willing to go to bat for our future.

"Who the created the creator" is of paramount importance, and a very difficult theological question for a believer, and one that if ignored, would lead me personally (if I were still a believer) to the conclusion that I was willing to allow self-delusion into my belief. And it is a question I'd let you work out for yourself. And if it doesn't concern you: "so be it" as you said earlier. But, consider this: your argument to me about "intelligence" necessitates at least considering this question. It's next on your flow of logic--it's the next question to be answered.

And no, I don't think I'm some smarter being than someone who believes, I too am on a search for knowledge. However, there's many ways to approach it, and I might suggest some ways are better than others, it's up to us to figure that out.

As far as wanting everything to be perfect in this world, bring it on! I'm all for it.

As far as wanting to know all the answers about this world now: yep, I'd love to know as much as is knowable, given my little brain. That's a lot different than accepting the fact that we hardly know anything, but you're much more likely to hear that from an atheist than a theist. A theist "knows."

"Reasonable" is a good title, and I don't consider discussion a personal attack. It does become a bit personal when articles like this one generate completely untrue allegations regarding "absolute certainty." That's unfair, untrue, and will generate a response.

Signing off for now, Jeff

Co walker/Jeff P-

You want everything to be explained in the now. Some things can't be explained in this temporary place called "the world" as we know it. You want a perfect world with no suffering? Some day that may just happen, but not in this present state we are currently in.

I think its just common sense. Either the laws of thermodynamics are true(that everything tends towards randomness).Or something, or someone, is usurping this law, making the universe expand and adding energy and mass to it as we post(it is getting larger, correct?)

You seem to defend natural selection like it is not random - then how does it work when its not directed as every other example outside of biology is observed to be? Do cars, buildings, roads, every material thing we depend on in the civilized world, come about by organized planning and direction? Yes.Why would /should biological units be any different? Why should I not conclude that the complexity in my own human body came about the same way?

And not being a young earth person(I agree its very old) I would claim that intelligence put the circumstances in place to have the grand canyon come to be.

You don't think that there is something we don't know that masks that animals at one time did not eat one another?

I find that science is a wonderful thing and that we can ascertain and come to conclusions about many aspects of our world and universe through it. But I see it in the context and perspective of a loving God that I can only understand to a certain
level on this earth. And I accept that we won't know everything about this place called the universe ever. There are some things we will never know , and we don't know what we don't know, if you understand that comment.

Only other comment is that skepticism isn't always a badge of honor in my opinion. We all have to learn to trust our spouses, our kids, our friends, and out colleagues some degree or another. This extends to a personal God too. There is one and I have come to the conclusion he loves us - alot.

It's sad that you have to say -who created the creator. This means you stop at the material world and say that is all I can believe in, and that nothing else exists. So be it.I look beyond that, you can't or won't see beyond that. You are too smart to think God exists due to over-reliance on your supposedly superior thinking and logic. At the expense of your spiritual senses that are overwhelmed by that supposed superior logic.

I actually believe that the atheist mindset is limited and also lacks the ability to think outside the box. But that is just me. If all you can admit to is your material senses when 90% of the planet disagrees with you about the existence of higher intelligence- especially God, then its not me that is lacking.

Please don't take this as an insult.

Best regards

Reasonable Not Hateful: "Evidence you see around you? There is so much to observe that it must have come about from a creator, that you are shutting your eyes to it."

Hi RNH. One problem is that I, for one, can't shut my eyes to the fact that the "circle of life" is based on sentient beings devouring one another alive. Now the question is, am I to try to twist reason into a pretzel and frame this as a good thing because it has to be good because it came from a good creator? Or should I simply employ Occam's razor and say that natural selection resulted in a planet where all populations are controlled by predators, disease, birth defects, old age, the limits of resources and a sometimes violent instinct to reproduce at the expense of other members of one's species?

Suffering is beside the point in the absence of a deliberate creation. If you assume a beneficent creator, even if you claim that humans cause some of their suffering by their own "sins," how does that explain the necessary slaughter of deer by wolves or the "playful" methods used by cats to dispatch mice and birds? What is more likely, that we share the suffering and mortality of our fellow creatures because we are all the results of the same, amoral evolutionary process or that we're special because we have an invisible component that will survive death? And if the latter is true, what justifies the suffering of non-human creatures?

Another option is to assume that wolves and cats and other carnivores and omnivores and critters like sharks and spiders were vegetarians before Adam and Eve sinned. Everything we know about biology, paleontology, anthropology and geology contradicts this. Another option is to assume that the creator is oblivious to the suffering of sentient beings, including children who never reach the age of reason as well as animals. Well, OK, an evil or amoral creator explains it. I have no response to such a being. It doesn't inspire love or worship. It has never tried to engage me.

No creator seems more likely.

Miss McKerney,

You might consider getting your definition of atheism from atheists instead of "Sisters". The vast majority of atheists, myself included, do not hold a position of absolute certainty. I simply see no evidence of any gods. Further, I see no mechanism that could have produced a vast, cosmos-creating intelligence from nothing. The only known process which can produce complex life is evolution. The chance that even a simple lifeform could just pop into existence without an evolutionary process is virtually nil, so the sudden appearance of some super universe-making deity seems incredibly unlikely.

Like almost all atheists I know, I am open to evidence to the contrary. I do suspect that if any evidence is discovered, it will point to something undreamt of by man's silly and egocentric religions.

Faith is not the opposite of certainty.

Suppose I told you that I didn't believe in Tarot card reading, because it's never been demonstrated to have any real value. Now, I am COMPLETELY open to anyone coming and showing that they can use Tarot cards to predict events that an ordinary human could not. But until anyone does, I disbelieve it.

My position on God is exactly analogous -- disbelief as a default in the absence of evidence.

Reasonable not Hateful:

Thanks for your response--I enjoy reading your posts.

As for that issue of "look around you!," I solemnly agree--we should all be in wonder of the things we see! The very idea of colors, molecules, magnetic forces, poetry, feelings, love are astounding. It will take much longer than my lifetime to appreciate and observe what IS observable, not to mention anything beyond our senses or our capacity to measure. If I only concerned myself with the mating habits of ants, it might take a lifetime of study.

But as for "random chance," I think I saw it earlier today on another post: with that in mind, one must think that the gods made the world for plumbers, as the property of water is just perfect to flush within pipes, and the shape and textures of the metal are just precisely exact for working with wrenches.

On the other hand, why would the gods create a world primarily for humans that only allowed humans to exist on a small percentage of its surface? Or in the case of Christy's article, an environment that precludes large numbers of people from living in sub-zero weather for danger of freezing to death?

The Grand Canyon is one of the most beautiful things on Earth's surface, and a team of skilled engineers couldn't come close to producing the grandeur and complexity of the canyons, colors, and schemes of it; it wasn't formed from "random chance" in the sense of absolute chaos producing order. It came from the Colorado River erosion over millions of years.

No one believes that the order found in nature is a result of "random chance." Evolutionary theory is anything but "random chance." Cosmology and Physics and Chemistry and Astronomy are not "random chance." The laws of physics are mathematical expressions of what we are able to observe about nature, and they change, as humans learn more and can refine them. The "laws" are not absolute.

But neither are they professing the whims of the gods.

I know the argument is old, but I'd be interested in hearing your version of the answer to : who then created the creator? It's a legitimate question to the premise that nothing in existence could be existant without a creator.

Why do you think atheists post to a panel called "On Faith"?

That just it , I don't know how atheists can look at the laws of physics and then come to the conclusion that all this beauty and complexity came from random chance.

Evidence you see around you? There is so much to observe that it must have come about from a creator, that you are shutting your eyes to it.

Faith in God only sometimes burdens the common good? That is the only time people will hear from atheists? Either you are being disingenuous or mistaken. Most of the atheism I see on this forum resists religion more often than that.

Here's what I was looking for regarding "certainty" and definitions of faith:

"Months ago, Sister Eileen told me around the dinner table in her convent in upstate New York that "the opposite of faith is certainty."

Hebrews 11
"1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."

Hebrews 11:1 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

I suppose the vehemence of many atheists leads you to conclude that while theists's faith allows doubt, atheists' lack of faith is absolute.

I know from experience that atheists come in as many flavors as theists. Whether Hitchens and Dawkins are as firm in always doubting the existence of god as Billy Graham and Pope Benedict are in believing in a god, only the individuals themselves know. But atheists, like Christians, are human, which means they are sometimes inconsistent, and sometimes they doubt.

I was raised Catholic. When I stopped believing as a teenager, I conscientiously called myself an agnostic, aware that it is impossible to prove a negative--that there is no god. In midlife I had my epiphany. It was the realization that I could call myself an agnostic, but I lived like an atheist. All faiths, from Hinduism to Judaism to Mithraism to Druidism to Christianity to Islam to Santeria to Mormonism to Wicca, etc, were equally unlikely to me. I could believe in none of them, so I made all my life decisions AS IF THERE WERE NO GOD. Even if I wanted to make decisions like an agnostic rather than atheist, it wasn't possible. There wasn't any difference between these two actual life paths except an abstract linguistic distinction.

So, yes, I call myself an atheist now. I still use God's name in vain, and, like Dawkins, I still enjoy singing Christmas carols. I'm not 100% sure I'm right anymore than thoughtful Christians are. But in the meantime I have to live my life according to the evidence I see around me. For the most part the evidence supports the theory that we developed accidentally according to the physical conditions in this universe and on this planet. That's why we feel the same sensations as our fellow creatures and suffer from the same things, such as disease, accidents, old age and death. The difference is that we are conscious of our fate and so we tell ourselves stories about it.

Christy, hope you have a good trip there to Alaska. It's definitely a destination goal for me, prior to my death.

I would ask your readers to re-consider the position you attribute to atheists: "absolute certainty." It is the very thing we despise, and know to be false. There are not many things said with "absolute certainty," and I'm afraid the religious realm takes the award for it.

It is not a claim you'll see written much anywhere except by the pious religious folks who give them the trait by default, and it is an inaccurate accusation. You may see "no empirical evidence", or "no compelling reason," to believe in the gods but please reference me to a place or writing of a well-respected atheist (or at least well-read) who claims or demonstrates "absolute certainty" about a proof of the non-existence of god(s).

"Knowing that a god doesn't exist" isn't the point of a-theism, and generally the atheist isn't concerned about whether or not there is/are god(s). The question is generally irrelevant to a non-believer, and warrants the same energy as "I know and can prove that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist."

What I've seen most atheists concerned about are the very real human consequences of harm done in the name of the gods, or in the proscribing of "salvation". That's where you'll get your battle, and that's where you'll see the burden of "proof" given to the "saved." When "faith" burdens the public good, you'll see resistance from the "unsaved.."

And please, let's not get into semantics regarding words like "faith," or "trust," because they already have good definitions without embellishments. Trust is a wonderful human condition, and doesn't need the gods to bring it into fruition. Don't sell us mortals short!

Happy earth day.

We won't ask about your carbon footprint.