And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because they are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake...
We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.)
We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.
-Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great, 5-6.
26 September 2009
Atheism
It's often argued - by people who feel their beloved superstitions are under threat - that atheists are people without a moral compass, who cannot appreciate the wonders of creation, and whose arguments involve just as much faith as those of the religions they criticize. This view of the faithless is here soundly rebutted by Christopher Hitchens:
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11 comments:
“Our belief is not a belief.”
Only an atheist could be that illogical
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“Our principles are not a faith.”
Nor are anyone else’s
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“we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.”
Oh paleez! Richard Dawkins wrote in his 2004 book "The Ancestor's Tale":
"The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing.”
Ditchens relies on pure faith because to believe that life, LIFE came from inanimate organic and inorganic molecules, which themselves had to have EVOLVED (he’s saying that gases evolved) is to believe something in the complete absence of evidence as it’s defined by the scientific method of inquiry.
To say that the universe EVOLVED out of nothing is not only an incoherent and illogical statement but another example of atheist blind faith since once again there is absolutely no evidence to support let alone suggest that happened. In fact there is a mass of evidence saying that the universe did not and could not come from anything because there wasn’t any Thing, nor any Place for "nothing" to evolve.
This is the same Richard Dawkins who, in the complete absence of evidence tells us that even as I type this, there is life on a billion other planets in our universe.
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“openmindedness,”
Did you know that the Hebrew root for open minded is Empty Headed? It's describing a person who isso lacking in discernment that the person is accepting of any and all ideas no matter how ludicrous.
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We find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Dostoyevsky
Who rightly said, “Without God all things are permissible.
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“We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion.”
Coming from the drunkard Hitchens that’s quite a statement.
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1. Only an atheist could be that illogical? Ha! Good one!
It's the religious who are the masters of abandoning logical thought processes. I mean, take the fundamental belief that you can communicate with an invisible man in the sky, who created the universe and is somehow personally invested in your welfare. No person committed to reason could ever make heads or tails of a fantastical lark like that!
2. The moral principles of religion ARE based on faith. If you are a devout Christian, your belief that it is a sin to covet your neighbor's wife is predicated on your *faith* in the commandments of God.
3. "To evolve", in the broad sense, means to change over time. So yes, of course the universe and the molecules in it have evolved!
And from a human frame of reference, it was out of nothing: the universe exploded from a point that must have been infinitesimally small and dense.
Molecules were formed from atoms, many of which, in turn, were formed by collisions inside stars.
Take a goddamn astronomy class before you start trying to refute Dawkins.
4. Yep, life did evolve from inanimate molecules. It took a LONG TIME. Billions of years. We don't know the details of how it happened, but we know much about when it happened, and the conditions on Earth at that time. That our knowledge is limited doesn't mean we should throw scientific explanations out the window in favor of a childish, bronze-age creation myth.
5. As for Dawkins's assertion that there may be life on a billion other planets in the universe:
It's a simple matter of statistical inference. There are at least a sextillion (10^21) stars in our universe. Because of what we know about star formation, we know that a large percentage of those stars have planetary systems. And from what we know of the conditions needed for life to evolve, we can estimate how many planets would have life.
A billion is still a conservative estimate: that's one star in every trillion having a planet with life. Sorry, but Dawkins is not "in the complete absence of evidence". Many astronomers would agree with him.
6. "Without God, all things are permissible."
In reality, God can give people a powerful and convenient justification for any kind of horrifying behavior. If you have *faith* that God is on your side, the worst atrocities are not only permitted, but rewarded in heaven!
That's true not only for 9/11 hijackers or Spanish Inquisitors; look at the Book of Joshua, where God tells the Israelites to go commit genocide.
7. Calling Hitchens a drunk just makes you look desperate. How does that make him unethical? Many god-favored people in the Bible get drunk. Including Lot, who then has sex with his daughters. (Wow, WITH God, what ISN'T permissible?)
8. "So lacking in discernment that the person is accepting of any and all ideas no matter how ludicrous."
That sounds to me like an accurate description of faith.
"the universe exploded from a point that must have been infinitesimally small and dense."
Oh really? Maybe you could refer back to your astronomy class and tell me, Where exactly was this
"infinitesimally small and dense" speck of matter?
Gladly. The problem is that you're using a faulty frame of reference.
To ask where, specifically, the singularity was is like asking where the universe is now. It doesn't make sense.
You can only describe where something is in relation to other things. Since we don't know what, if anything, lies outside the universe, we can't say where the universe is.
Here's a helpful explanation from http://www.big-bang-theory.com/:
"Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space. According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy." The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we."
And, lest you jump to the triumphant conclusion that cosmological postulation constitutes a kind of scientific faith, consider that the Big Bang is supported by the available evidence. The Big Bang theory is *predictive* of the nature and age of our universe, and how fast it is expanding and cooling. No other theory has come close to providing a rival explanation for the way our universe behaves.
Z's First Comment
"the universe exploded from a point that must have been infinitesimally small and dense."
Z's Second Comment
"Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing."
Please tell me why those aren't contradictions.
We humans exist in time and space, and our definition of existence is dependent on those dimensions.
If time and space began with the Big Bang, then nothing existed prior to that - at least nothing we can presently imagine.
If that doesn't make intuitive sense, too bad - it doesn't have to, just like it doesn't seem to make sense that light is both a particle and a wave. What we don't intuitively comprehend with our five senses, we can understand through mathematical evidence.
Z, this has nothing to do with out "imagination" or "definitions," or "human frames of reference." We are dealing here with scientific evidence, "mathematical evidence" to use your phrase that is confirmed five different ways - so far - and counting and those facts confirm that at one point not just the universe didn't exist, NOTHING existed. And then EVERYTHING existed.
So I would like to know, can you tell me how your two statements are not contradictory?
You seem resolute that something must not have come from nothing. So where did it come from? Something else? Where did that come from? And on and on: infinite regress.
It's no more illogical to think that something just came from nothing, and that's where the evidence points.
Or you can just say that god did it. But then - where did he come from? Nothing? UH OH!
Z - listen carefully as you ask yourself these questions:
When did an eternal / infinite Being begin to exist?
What caused an eternal / infinite Being to begin to exist?
Can you see any problem with asking questions like that?
Oh no! There I am, stymied again by the imaginary characteristics of your imaginary friend!
1. How is an infinite / eternal being any less contradictory than one who was created from nothing? Both ideas are illogical if you accept the premise that everything has a cause.
2. If the universe was not created out of nothing, where did God get the stuff to make it? The Holy Hardware Store? Or did that stuff always exist too? (In which case, see #1.)
"Both ideas are illogical if you accept the premise that everything has a cause."
Oh brother. It isn't Everything has a cause. It's Everything that BEGINS to exist has a cause.
That's why I said, asking "When did an eternal and infinite Being begin to exist?" is flat our stupid.
Look, I know I sound frustrated, and I am. But it's not at you. It's at sooooo many supposedly intelligent athteists not knowing this stuff. It's so basic. Why can't you get it.
We have two alternatives:
. Either matter is eternal, or
. An external non material Cause is eternal.
I'd say, Take your pick except we know from science that matter cannot be eternal so what are you going to do? Honest atheists like Anthony Flew go with the evidence. The rest pretend that nothing can evolve.
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