i'm sure you guys think theists are head in the clouds, scared of death, end of perception pussies. but really, since this is a poker publication..to me, claiming that there is no god is roughly equivalent to "cross your fingers and push" thinking.

1) doesn't the infinite complexity of life point towards a creator, and not away from it?

2) the natural, understood moral law of human nature- ie justice, the golden rule, etc. where does this come from? if it comes from our parents, then who taught it to our parents' parents 1000 generations ago, or however long it was initially?

i am intrigued by the brave and defiant nature of atheists, but honestly it allows for no posthumous hope. the end of perception doesn't seem like an appropriate summation of all we learn in life.

enough jesus bashing pictures, i want honest viewpoints from atheists please.

we have done this dozens of times before but i have some insomnia so why not one more time

first paragraph is pascal's wager. in not believing in allah aren't you doing the same thing? if you choose the wrong god to worship you are in really bad straights.

1) the complexity of the universe has actually been really well defined by science, there isn't nearly as much mystery in how we got here as many seem to think. the big mysteries now dies are at the edge scenarios. extremly high energy level, extremely small scales, the earliest formation of life, etc. and remember, a creator doesn't imply any personal deity, most atheists don't argue against a deist god, one that created the universe and let it be. you can't possibly disprove that definition of god and it is pretty benign. the idea that there is a creator that actively intervenes in the universe isn't found necessary by any science as of yet.

2) most of those "natural" or "understood" laws either haven't always been around and are pretty recent inventions or are useful for our survival. culture evolves just like genes do. through a TREMENDOUS system of trial and error we have both genetically and cultural come to laws that are pretty useful for our current society. look at the laws of the old testament, most of them would be considered barbaric by todays standard.

really? that's news to me. science fails to explain the absolute origin of anything, and that is what troubles me. If chance chemical reactions in a bunch of ooze sparked by lighting randomly chose proteins in the correct order for life to begin...what caused the ooze? or the lightning? who or what put it there? i mean, as created beings we cannot fathom anything that wasn't created, so maybe that isn't a fair question.

i don't know..imo there is a god, but there is no way he would create a path to salvation that he knew in advance 80% of the world would not choose and therefore go to hell. being raised christian is so tough.
i asked my dad, who was raised by a christian minister, if he was raised muslim: would he have had the courage to switch religions and go to christianity, or would he be a muslim forever and die and go to hell (according to christian belief)? he had no answer, and quite frankly, i do not either. nor do i attend church anymore.

1)The complexity of life is explained by the scientific theory of evolution which has stood over 150 years of scrutiny, testing, and alternative quack pot "theories" such as ID. Which creator by the way? There are 1000's of magic men to choose from.

2) Morality is best believed to be a product of evolution just as lust is.

A good analogy I've heard is to compare it to how we humans have sex in modern times using contraceptives. Our lust or drive for sex is wired into our brains as a product of evolution. Our genes want to continue to get passed on. In modern times we've evolved to the point where we can lust for sex while abusing its purpose or meaning by using condoms, birth control, etc.

When us **** Sapiens lived the lives of hunter gatherers in small groups it was in each of our best interests to be nice or altruistic to those living close to us, because if we hadn't, our group or population was less likely to survive for a number of obvious reasons. While today we walk down the street not knowing anybody who walks by us, the innate sense of morals that have been passed down by our ancient ancestors take their modern form. While we continue to be nice to others it's not for it's ancient meaning or purpose.

Our morals are something we've always possessed and have evolved over time like many other qualities we posses. I would say I'm morally superior to just about everyone in the Bible. Heck, I'd say I'm morally superior to most of those who founded the United States. So no, the magic man didn't give us morals.

And you have to realize most atheists are claiming there probably is no god, or just lack a belief in one of the thousands of deities that have been dreamed up over the centuries due to a lack of any evidence. Nobody is saying there is absolutely no god.

I really do not see what is so brave and defiant about not believing in something for which there is no credible evidence? While theists believe there is more to life after death I believe I will cease to exist just as I did for thousands upon thousands of years before I was born. This is the only life I have, so for me, this motivates me to try to experience everything I possibly can and to live my life with a purpose of obtaining my goals and passing on wisdom to my children and those who might listen.

No, it doesnt point in either direction. Its neutral.
Luck.
I mean....
I like the pictures better.

Morals arose because groups that were decent to each other had a greater chance of survival than those that would lie, cheat, steal, and kill.

If you ask where did the primordial lightning or ooze came from and then say God put it there is it not reasonable to also ask where God came from. If God was always there, why can't the lightning/ooze have always been there. The where did everything start argument doesn't support either case really imo.

my view of theists has nothing to do with me being an atheist.

nope. not in the least.

morality can be completely explained by evolutionary pressures. our duties to one another exist because we have developed along social lines. non social animals have no sense of morality. social animals (even ants) do.
this is the real irony in the theist/atheist discussions. it only seems defiant from the outside. since we dont believe in the existence of a deity, there is nothing we are defying.

as for hope...i think its nothing more than a man-made construct, along with meaning. the universe isnt built around hope and meaning. these are simply things humans strive for. it very well could turn out that the universe is both meaningless and hopeless. this cold fact is the reason there aren't more atheists. its not an easy thing to stomach.
if you actually wanted honest viewpoints from atheists, do yourself a favor and read Sam Harris

Just wanted to point out that this happens over and over again in different threads, debates, whatever, and it's fairly sneaky.

Question #1 makes absolutely no case for the "theism" referred to above it. Getting out of the realm of deism is the entire mission of a theist's argument(s).

EDIT: Furyshade already mentioned this.

No. I think theists are tunnel-visioned, bigoted, macho bullies.

Hope this helps your understanding.

Well, it's also true that 90% of NAS Biologists - those who have the greatest expertise in the "infinite complexity of life" - are atheists.

No. You've got it backwards. Assuming that there *must* be a god is like "crossing your fingers and pushing". Why is this so hard for some theists to understand? You've got god on the brain... You don't know an answer to something, so you overlook all other possibilities and don't bother to assign probabilities to the rest of the range. You just pick one of them (god), and assume you're right. Do you play poker with that same mindset? "I have no idea what my opponent has, but he raised pre-flop so it must be AA. Certainly, it's no worse than 50/50 he's got AA, right?"


Uh, no. The complexity of life is perfectly explained by evolution through natural selection.

Again, this has a perfectly acceptable Darwinian explanation. No need to posit a god.

Questions like this make you look like a fool to anyone the least bit educated or knowledgeable about The Theory of Evolution. Again, the ToE gives us some really good clues as to why we (and other animals) have altruistic traits. Do some reading before coming on here and asking such ignorant questions.

The universe does not "owe" you hope. Even if you thought that a godless existence was the epitome of despair (which I don't, by the way), doesn't mean that a god exists. Preferring something to be true doesn't make it true.

So let's conclude there's a god, because otherwise, it doesn't jive with your sense of appropriateness? Can't you see how incredibly arrogant you're being? There's not a single shred of evidence for a god or anything you said in your post. But let's make things up and bend reality until it all makes sense to grimripper and he's comfortable with it.

This argument is flawed. Why not stop using it? It is easy to postulate that there is one God worshipped in different ways by different cultures and different religions.

That should be the end of it.

Is that a joke? Maybe Hawking or Feynmann. I will go to my grave not understanding why anyone thinks Harris is worth 5 minutes of their time. There are several atheists on this site that I would place far in front of Harris, I would name CG, Tao, and Max Raker to start.

And I will go to my grave thinking that anyone who doesn't see how brilliant Harris is has no ability to extricate an evaluation of intelligence from their personal biases. Harris is an extremely intelligent guy. Some posters here may be smarter, but that doesn't reflect badly on Sam.

Feynmann is wonderful, but not really an anti-theist. Hawking is nothing like an anti-theist. If someone wants to understand the position of those who are opposed to religion, then Bertrand Russell is a good start, and if you try to call him a dummy then you'll lose all credibility.

Edit - Also, Carl Sagan did a wonderful job of expressing the anti-theist position, and was more peaceful than some of the others (including the popular contemporary anti-theists) which may help.

I am not sure that "infinite complexity" is a well defined term; it seems really to be a emotive word for "something I/we don't understand." But for the sake of discussion, using that term without necessarily weighing in on whether or not I think it is totally appropriate in this context...

If you write down and draw a box around "infinite complexity of life" and then somewhere else on your paper write down and draw a box around "the God of the Christian bible," I just don't see anything actually connecting the two boxes.

I don't want to overstate the case, but I think that you could make just about any supernatural claim, or write down the name of any of the thousands of gods, religions, and/or spiritual practices known to man, and you'll have an equally weak/empty link from the "infinite complexity of life" to those as you would to any particular god(s) you or anyone else believes in.

And the thing that all those many boxes have in common is that they are stories invented by people. (I don't state this as a proof that they are false; it is a fact that people invented the stories, even if you happen to believe that the people were magically guided by extraterrestrials).

I just don't see any reason to suppose that some of those stories are "true" or describe real things in a factual way. And I don't mean to reduce all of religion in a serious way to the things that children say, but take for example the case of a bunch of 4 or 5 year olds. Over time, a class full of them will make a whole lot of silly and outrageous claims. I dare say you wouldn't for a minute consider any supernatural kind of claim made by a 4 year old playing with a bunch of other kids as anything other than a (false) story. And I think I can honestly say I'm getting to the real core reason for my atheism -- and I've always suspected it is the original reason for the atheism of many people, even though they may have forgotten it as they grew more sophisticated in the rhetoric of atheism. And that is, not only would I assume the children were just telling lies, but if the things they told me seemed like nonsense or silly talk or magic or impossibilities, I would feel absolutely zero compulsion to investigate their claims ("there is a tiger in my backpack," or "my daddy can fly," or "Sally cut my arm off... but it got better"). I would just think it was children making up stories, and nothing more.

I also know that adults make up stories. And I know that I personally, with no devious intentions or attempts to deceive, will subtly change a story with each telling -- my wife tells me I do it all the time without noticing. And I see things like 7 year olds figuring out death, and being scared by it, and comforted when they are told that (essentially) they will never die, they will just go to heaven. And it all makes sense. Nothing about religions seems mysterious, or particularly explanatory, or out of keeping with the kinds of ways that in my everyday life I see that people without special powers or insights behave.

I'm straying now from the original core reason for my atheism: religions and/or claims about specific god(s) just seem like man-made nonsense to me.

And upon further examination, nothing in it compels me to believe it should receive any special exemptions from the gut reaction guided by logical reasoning that I use to discern fact from fiction in all other realms.

I don't believe there is a God who watches over us, loves us and wants us to be "good." However there very well may be an "Ultimate Creator." I don't know. That's why I'm an atheist.

And I'm not sure why being an atheist assumes I don't have any hope of an afterlife. When we die there might be an end of perception. Or, there might be cookies and naked 16 year old girls who want to listen to my poker bad beat stories. Who knows? I sure don't. Not sure what either scenario would have to do with a God or religion, though.

For the record, I'm pulling for the cookies and the naked 16 year old girls.

This is a stupid theory. No way eternal bliss would have bad beats.

I never said it was eternal bliss. Only an afterlife.

But seriously...any afterlife that doesn't include cookies and naked 16 year old girls, I'm not really interested in.

I don't blame you for not understanding atheists because they inject too much bs into the problem.

After their harping on which religion is right and their harping on hell I simply perceive Christ as calling people to their final incarnation. I want to go to heaven. I don't want to go through another rebirth and life of suffering. But maybe some people aren't as far along in the process as others.

If the bible is to be believed though there is a final end to the whole process and a new perfect world for everyone that completes the process.

If you think Harris is brilliant, then you have described yourself.

I have already named atheists that I respect highly. Why don't you name some theists that you respect highly so that we can see that biased is not a better description of you, rather than me.

Since you challenged me to acknowledge strongly anti-theist thinkers, why don't you go a step further. Lead the way and show me the strongly theistic anti-atheistic persons that you feel are brilliant, so that I can understand how truly unbiased you are.

Didn't see this at first. No bias here.

Who said I'm unbiased? I don't think I significantly let my bias affect my evaluation of the intelligence of others, but of course it will always play a role. All the same, I wouldn't call someone as sharp as Sam Harris "worthless," even if I were a theist. I don't even call C.S. Lewis worthless, and I don't think he was especially smart. He was a good writer with a strong imagination and vivid explanatory talents.

As for your challenge, that's too easy. For one thing, almost all Chriestians believe that atheism does harm, so anti-atheist thinkers include pretty much all Western theists. And for another, just about everyone in Europe through most of the 19th century was Christian. So, uh, Euler, Gauss, Kant, Newton, that good enough for you? There are about a thousand of them.

It sounds like you're trying to understand an atheist viewpoint with a basis of a theist. Most of the underlying premises in your thoughts are not agreed upon by atheists. What you call complexity of life, atheist just see a world of chaos. There are many things that don't point to a creator as is the inhumanity that goes on in many parts of the world.

There's never been just one moral code. It is a part of society and mankind's evolution. The real question is did Man invent God or the morals first?

It's not that atheists don't want posthumous hope, it's just that wanting to believe in something and logically arriving at the conclusions that make it true are two different matters. Beliefs as such are just a a leap of faith. A leap that is necessary for some, but irrelevant in the picture of others.

This was better.

I would say that going back to the 19th century to ID intelligent theists is a bit of a cop out, but your admitted bias probably makes it impossible to do more.

Concerning Harris, I will make one last point. According to his Wikipedia entry, he is a 40 year old graduate student and has openly acknowledged that he gained his insights while under the influence of MDMA. I have earned a PhD and been in graduate departments in physics and engineering. I have known eternal grad students who went down the illegal drug path and claimed to have insights into physics and math while under the influence. I will with all sincerity advise you that these are not typically people I would choose as thought leaders or role models.

That's all I will say on this subject.

Pretty sure he said he just started down his philosophical path while on X. Could this be less relevant?

So you suggest that he be leery of Harris because some other people who resemble him in superficial ways did not impress you.

What were you saying about bias?