The Anti-theist Thread

[Wayfarer]

Sam would say you can't have too much rope...
Macs are evil?
The earth is 30 years old?

Those are all rather amusing. ]: )

Lee- I was undecided between creation and evolution when we were still back at the vault. I was somewhat of a nihilist then- even my osting style has changed a lot.

One thing I find interesting is that, even though I've said this before, nobody seems to believe me. Although the most vehement critics of any doctrine are those who once believed but came to realize it was false.

A preemptive comment here: yes guys, I'm as convinced than you are that your prior religion was wrong. And I'm even more convinced that all humans, to some degree or another, fail to understand and apply the truth.

Anyway: Cirdan.

How is a belief in truth an intellectual weakness? You seem to eqaute 'intellect' with a search for information. I pose this question: is that not mistaking the means for the end? Intellect is, after all, the ability to learn, the capacity for knowledge, or (my favorite) the faculty to know things. So I ask you, is not the faculty to know things (intellect) apart from things that can be known (Facts), completely useless? In any case, it seems to me a rather difficult position to hold. Would you not say that to search for truth, while claiming that there is no truth, is somewhat of a farce?

Looking at it from the other side of the fence, the same problem is evident: Those who make religion their god will not have God in their religion.

I see a difficulty with your black hole idea, but perhaps it is best that I look at it differently:

Let's say we have a large hourglass. When the grains of sand fall the usable potential energy is lost due to friction and whatnot. Now, once all the grains of sand have fallen, the usable energy is all used up, and it takes an infusion of outside energy (picking it up and turning it over) in order to restore it.

I shall not bother with the question of whether gravity is in fact energy or a quirk of space. But I must point out that, like the sand in the hourglass, the matter falling into the black hole cannot move out again without an indescribable infusion of energy. Once all matter in the universe has fallen into the black hole, there will be no usable energy left. So it seems your questioning of entropy results in another example of what it works like.

I think your question was how can I prove god doesn't exist...please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm sure you'll do

With the greatest of enthusiasm!

Even I would not stoop to demanding proof of a negative. What I'd like is for us to examine the possibilities-that everything must have come from SomeThing, and that this something is either a Single Entity, which we may call God, or a Total System, which can be called either Nature, or The Omniverse.

Briefly touching on some nescessary characteristics of this entity, it must always have existed, can never cease to exist, and cannot be contained by anything else.

My question may be stated like this: Since there are several rather troubling difficulties with a Omniverse system, it is much more rational to believe in God. Can you answer these difficulties to a degree that will make an Omniverse system acceptable?

The difficulties that I have already stated are these:

1) If the uni/omniverse has existed for an infinite amount of time, there should be no energy left to perform work. Since there is, it cannot have existed for an infinite amount of time, and cannot be the ultinmate cause of everything else.

2)If everything is a result of the Omniverse, then human behavior is a result of antecedent events, and, given that these events do not change, no other behavior is possible. Thus there is no free will.

3)If everything is a result of the omniverse then, like behavior, human thought is a result of prior causes. This means that human thought is merely a result of the total system, and cannot be taken as having real value. Hence, if we believe in the Omniverse, we are in effect saying that our belief in the same is a result of the system, and has no real value.

And I shall add another:

4)Humans have the idea that there are problems with the universe. When we say this, we usually don't mean that we don't happen to like the way things are at the moment, but that there is something fundamentally wrong. But, if human thought is a result of the Total System, then wherever the universe is wrong, we should be wrong, and thus we should have no idea that it is.

Now, let me stress that if you were able to really answer these difficulties , not only would you be justified in your belief, I would certainly come to share it. However, unless they are dealt with (really dealt with, not rationalized away) the whole concept is absurd, and there is no reasonable choice but to believe in God, whatever you believe about him.

Now, in regard to panthiesm, polythiesm, and the rest. It is a common error to believe that they are somehow different from the systems I have outlined. You can look, for example, at the greek mythology. Zeus and the rest were children of the titans. The titans were children of Chronos, who was a child of Uranus, who was created by Gaia. So we come to a self existent entity-Gaia, who fits the definition of a self-existant God. Alternately, we can look at the norse mytholgy. In the beginning there was Ginnungagap (the void), and then there was Niflheim and Muspelheim- the lands of ice and fire. From these we got everything there is today. Just like the Omniverse system i've stated.

The thing is, these are not new ideas. Anybody who sat down and really reasoned it out would have come to the same conclusion. You and I have had the better part of the work done for us.

Existentialism is very... interesting, but rather pointless.

Human thought is not purely subjective. I agree with you, but I think my metaphysical views are more open to that than those you have espoused. We must discuss this later...