Theist vs Atheist debate Thread.....

[Elroy The Great]

You can stick with it if you want. You will hardly be alone.

If you want to explore the concept further though, I have plenty of alternative ideas which it might be interesting to consider.

one ''unprovable'' theory at a time..... anymore and RIP.

[Elroy The Great]

another clue that tells me theres a higher being.....emotions. these have no place and serve no meaningful purpose in nature.

its no coincidence that theres even a massive discussion. on the surface theres no proof to support this idea yet it will be debated until the sun burns out.

[Thraxox]

No, it didn't.

Firstly, things come into existence for no reason at all, and they do it all the time. Generally speaking, this is happening on the quantum scale - but the underlying principle also explains how the entire universe can have come into existence from nothing.

There is a caveat to that - the 'nothing' refers to a lack of matter, energy, space/time. What the current theories do rely on is the laws of physics.

So where did these laws of physics come from? In the specific sense (why these laws) the answer can be found in M-theory.

In a more general sense of why any laws exist at all? Good question.

Secondly, the idea of a primal cause is one which is rooted in human sensory bias. Our entire experience is filled with cause and effect, cause and effect. For everything that happens, we are pre-programmed by evolution to see some kind of agent behind it, or at the very least, some casual factor.

The problem with this outlook though, is that it relies on the passage of time. Cause precedes event in the temporal sense. You can't have this kind of a cause/event relationship in the absence of a temporal dimension.
The whole 'there has to be something before X which started it all' fails - because there has to be a temporal dimension for the 'before' to make sense; but this renders the whole statement inherently false.

We can't really try to apply the reasoning that we inherit from our sensory experiences to the beginning of the universe. Whatever answers there are will not and cannot satisfy the sense of logic or rightness we get from this.

Consider this - if the temporal dimension was a different 'shape' - or if there was more than one temporal dimension (like we have 3 dimensional space) then what we know of cause and effect would be radically different. And when it comes to the conditions around the beginning of spacetime, these kinds of scenarios could be real.

So what you are saying is the logical stance is agnosticism because we cannot derive the origin of the universe with human reasoning?

[Lomasexual]

So what you are saying is the logical stance is agnosticism because we cannot derive the origin of the universe with human reasoning?

Not quite, although I am sympathetic to this viewpoint.

I'm saying that the person who believes there must be a primal cause preceding the existence of the universe only does so because of the brain being so predisposed towards this kind of assumption.

That doesn't mean that we can't overcome this predisposition.

I have also seen a lot of different interpretations of the word 'agnostic' so I am kind of hesitant to agree with statements invoking agnosticism until I know precisely what the user means.

[Lomasexual]

another clue that tells me theres a higher being.....emotions. these have no place and serve no meaningful purpose in nature.

Have you looked for any explanations for emotions in the evolutionary sense?

Have a google for 'evolution of emotions' and see what you find. There might be something there which you haven't considered.

[Elroy The Great]

Have you looked for any explanations for emotions in the evolutionary sense?

Have a google for 'evolution of emotions' and see what you find. There might be something there which you haven't considered.

will do. i just wanted to put mho out there 1st.

[Thraxox]

Not quite, although I am sympathetic to this viewpoint.

I'm saying that the person who believes there must be a primal cause preceding the existence of the universe only does so because of the brain being so predisposed towards this kind of assumption.

That doesn't mean that we can't overcome this predisposition.

I have also seen a lot of different interpretations of the word 'agnostic' so I am kind of hesitant to agree with statements invoking agnosticism until I know precisely what the user means.

Agnoticism as in a neutral stance, "I don't know whether there is a God or not, so my stance is of ignorant to the topic in disagreeing or agreeing."

[Lomasexual]

Agnoticism as in a neutral stance, "I don't know whether there is a God or not, so my stance is of ignorant to the topic in disagreeing or agreeing."

My personal opinion is that we also need to consider how certain someone is about a position.

We could say that people are considered an agnostic on any given position, provided that there is not 100% certainty in either direction.

The problem is that there is never 100% certainty on anything. Philosophers have struggled with this for a long time. One of the most cliched examples is 'I think, therefore I am' - but even this fails to be an absolute 100% certain conclusion.

So, if there can never be 100% certainty on anything - but if we expect 100% certainty before people can stop being agnostic, then we will only ever had theists and agnostics - no atheists.

Or, in other words - if something seems improbable enough to a person then they are not agnostic about it - whether or not they can ever have 100% certainty (because they technically can't do so).

Agnostics, to me, are those who not only can't prove one way or another, but also hold no degree of certainty one way or the other either.

On many religious topics, I don't think agnosticism is the rational conclusion.

[Furn]

Atheists are also agnostic to some point.

I mean if God, Jesus and all the angels turned up in Times Square and parted the ocean there would be no reason to not believe he exists but as it stands there is no tangible evidence for the existence of any of the 1000s of versions of god people have worshipped and they all have multiple substantial flaws in their stories.

and its not like not would have been that hard to leave such evidence. All Jesus had to do was say something no-one could possible have known 2000 years ago like quote Pi to 15 decimal places or describe the double helix of DNA.

[Thraxox]

Atheists are also agnostic to some point.

I mean if God, Jesus and all the angels turned up in Times Square and parted the ocean there would be no reason to not believe he exists but as it stands there is no tangible evidence for the existence of any of the 1000s of versions of god people have worshipped and they all have multiple substantial flaws in their stories.

and its not like not would have been that hard to leave such evidence. All Jesus had to do was say something no-one could possible have known 2000 years ago like quote Pi to 15 decimal places or describe the double helix of DNA.

The Bible spoke about Atoms. IT said something like,
"The Universe was created at God's command. So that what is seen is composed of things that are not seen." - Hebres 11:3

You can't put the Bible with the standard of a scientific book, because 2000 years ago Words like "Dinosaurs" "Atoms" "evolution" didn't exist back then. YOu can't say "Oh wait, it talked about a behemoth! It is not a dinosaur because it didn't said it was!" Like that, because Dinosaurs wasn't discovered until 1890, and the bible already spoke about an Animal with the tail of a Cedar tree "Sauropod Tail"