Comment by kOrsan on September 11, 2012 at 1:43am

@warfaget

at the part where i said if you guys ever thought to yourselves "what if you were wrong?" i mean, what if you DID die and instead of just eternal nothingness, you actually stand in front of God and he asks you "...why didnt you believe in me?"

Someone probably already mentioned this but you're making your way to pascal's wager. You think you can stand your ground on an atheist website with such platitudes? That's just silly. This isn't sunday school, the average IQ is higher. So what if you stand infront of Ra and he asks you why didn't believe in him? Or Allah? Or [insert name of of any other of the thousands of gods here] ?

Comment by Sagacious Hawk on September 11, 2012 at 2:28am

"i've always longed for long lost answers to how the Big Bang supposedly went down, and it just isnt logical. nothing --> something? no offense, but even if you say you have sufficient evidence, what stops this from happening again? and why hasnt it yet? and what exactly 'banged together' if nothing existed @.@?"

Those are excellent questions, but considering that this is a natural universe that follows natural laws, it seems more illogical to me to suddenly make a jump form the natural to the supernatural for an explanation. Just because we don't know what the answer is beyond all doubt doesn't mean that we can't deduce it from the evidence we have gathered and observed. Maybe it has happened again, but we wouldn't have seen it, because we live in this and have no ability to peer beyond it.

You might think it is illogical that our universe's origin appears to be that all energy (and matter because matter is essentially stored energy) comes from seemingly nowhere, but that's because you are using intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking can be correct and it can be notoriously wrong. It seems reasonable that all matter is solid. The desk that I am sitting and the chair that I am sitting on all feel solid. They feel like singular objects, but they aren't solid nor are they singular objects. What I think of as my desk or as my chair is actually countless numbers of atoms all bonded together by nuclear forces. Science has told us that out intuitive thinking is wrong. the objects we use everyday and, wonder of all wonders, our own bodies are made up of all this material. This matter is also comprised mostly of space. Empty, nothing-in-between-not-even-"air" space. Due to the disproportionate size of the electron "cloud" orbiting a nucleus (think soccer ball in the middle of a soccer field size disparity) every atom has a lot of space in it. Consequently, all matter, being built of atoms, also has a lot of space in it. What we feel when we touch an object isn't the object itself, but the nuclear forces repelling the atoms on the surface of our skin. Intuitive thinking would also tell you that you are one singular being, but there are billions upon billions of microscopic creatures living inside of you. Your body is an environment unto itself and everyone's is slightly different! Intuitive thinking would tell you that all the heavens revolve around us, but as discoveries through astronomy over centuries revealed, we revolve about a singular star as one planet of many, that star is part of a galaxy full of millions of stars like ours which is revolving around a super-massive black hole, and that galaxy is part of a universe that is full of millions if not billions of other galaxies just like it. In short, intuitive thinking is pretty terrible at explaining the mysteries of the natural universe; that's where science steps in to tell us how things are.

"at the part where i said if you guys ever thought to yourselves 'what if you were wrong?' i mean, what if you DID die and instead of just eternal nothingness, you actually stand in front of God and he asks you '...why didnt you believe in me?'"

Since I've become an atheist, I've never seriously considered this question. It's like asking me what I'd do if I found a magic lamp with a genie, or caught a leprechaun, or was attacked by a dragon. To me, it seems to be a hypothetical fantasy, but to answer your question... I'd probably tell him that I'm greatly disappointed in him. He's allowed his people to split off in to splinter groups, kill, torture, rape, and maim people in his name for millennia and done nothing to stop it. Where was his intervention then? Where was the fire that brought down Soddom and Gomorah? Where were the plagues that were visited on Egypt? Where were the modern day prophets wielding his power to make their voices heard? Where were the messages by Gabriel sent to the holy people? If all people are his children then why has he done so poorly in protecting them? If children are fighting and coming to blows, a father steps in and stops them. What kind of father allows them to do such terrible things to each other? I'd tell him he owes me an explanation, because for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being, he's done a terrible fucking job.

And for the record, genies are more trouble than they are worth, a leprechaun's gold is actually pyrite, and dragons just look like they want to eat you. They're really just big puppy dogs that feel with their mouths.

Comment by Sagacious Hawk on September 11, 2012 at 2:31am

Oh, and that is all assuming it is the Christian god that I'd be talking to and not say, Hades, or Osiris, or Allah.

Comment by Ward Cressin on September 11, 2012 at 3:16am

Warofages, you asked "I mean, what if you DID die and instead of just eternal nothingness, you actually stand in front of God and he asks you "...why didnt you believe in me?" "

A real Creator wouldn't ask that. It would already know the answer and understand perfectly why we did everything we did. Only a lesser being posing as the Creator would ask such a question and would deserve to be told to go get stuffed.

I didn't just stop believing. I searched for answers and realized that every god you've read about is a poser or a pale immitation of the real Creator. And there are problems even with believing in that Creator. I came up with a comparison of: as an amoba is to a man, so is a man to god, and so is god to the Creator. Any god is a tiny pathetic thing next to what the Creator needs to be to exist.

I have no worries or fears regarding the Creator. Your god however is another matter - something so small and pathetic with such power and such an ego that needs massive stroking. Replusive.

Comment by Reg The Fronkey Farmer on September 11, 2012 at 4:48am

Hi Warofages – I am interested in this “presence” of god you feel. How does it manifest itself? Do you feel a warm glow? Do you speak (pray) to it and does it answer back? If so what does its voice sound like? Could you please also answer my question from my last post above – do you expect this “presence” to make you immortal after you die?

Comment by Reg The Fronkey Farmer on September 11, 2012 at 5:09am

@Unseen – that is a good observation you make re Pascal’s Wager. I also use it as an indicator of someone’s’ understanding of the nature of belief. When I hear someone make the challenge I think to myself “oh no not again” and my will to debate starts to wane. Hitchens

Comment by Unseen on September 11, 2012 at 9:05am

@Dustin

This isn't a criticism but a commentary.

I used to wonder (without being theistic) how the universe could spring from nothing. Now I think it's most likely that there never was nothing, but there was a time when the universe we know didn't exist yet. It sprang into being from a larger reality which has existed forever.

The universe we know isn't a creation, which implies a creator, but is part of a larger process. A super universe or multiverse, if you will. Once one takes that theory seriously, there no longer is any mystery. No longer does something explode into an empty universe that was sitting there waiting for content, rather the universe began with that explosion, for there's no such thing as space with nothing at all in it. Space is created by its content.

This universe we live in had a beginning, in my view, but the super reality in which it and other universes exist is most likely etermal. Thus we no longer need to say that something spring into existence out of nothing, but just that "something happened" that created our universe, and that that event is part of an ongoing process, not a creation.

Comment by Milos Cakovan on September 11, 2012 at 10:36am

@warofages

i mean, why not believe in God? or a god? What is there to look forward to after you die? Do you guys believe in an afterlife or is it just nothing?

Apologies if we came off hostile, but your original post was not very friendly and we simply replied in kind.

Now that you have your questions asked, we are all more than willing to answer.

why not believe in God? or a god?

Why believe in God, or a god? Which one? How do you come to that conclusion and disregard all the others? Why not the FSM, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn? All of them have the same answer. There is overwhelming proof against their existence. Most of the things we used to need God, or gods to explain, are now easily explained by science. The gods that remain, are now gods of the gaps. And those gaps are getting smaller by the day.

I will lump your next two questions into one if that is okay, since they pretty much lead to the same answer, at least from me.

What is there to look forward to after you die? Do you guys believe in an afterlife or is it just nothing?

There is nothing to look forward to after you die, because when you die, you no longer exist. You go back to being the same like before you were born. You can somewhat look forward to being a worm farm for a bit, or mantlepiece decoration, but aside from that, there is nothing to look forward to. Death is the final Game Over. Think of it like playing Day Z, or Diablo on Hardcore mode. No respawns.

These questions have been answered in a different post recently, let me find a link.

http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topics/what-u-atheist-believe-in-...

Same question pretty much.

Now I would like to ask you what I'm sure others already have.
Why do you believe, if you do, and in what? By your profile picture, I would hope not Yahweh or Jesus, because a pentagram is the devil's logo in their books. But whatever it is you believe in, why do you not believe in the other gods?

Why do you believe in whatever you believe in regarding death? On what grounds do you come to that conclusion?

Comment by Keith Murphy on September 11, 2012 at 12:33pm

Someone obviously just hurt your feelems and you are all upset now. We're sorry. Forgive us?

Comment by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on September 11, 2012 at 1:43pm

@Unseen, I agree that the "from nothing" explanation doesn't help us understand much. It's almost as useless as a "GodDidIt" explanation. The whole process of science (and communicating science) only helps us understand things when it explains something. If I were a physicist or cosmologist, I might appreciate the "from nothing" explanation as a metaphor of universal time being reset back to zero. But it doesn't help the layman understand much.

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