The Trouble with Militant Atheist

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I don't understand militant atheists myself, being a staunch agnostic myself. To me, arguing with the faithful is a fruitless exercise, and subtle undermining is far more effective than rhetorical bludgeoning if conversion is your ultimate goal.

Arguing with the idiotful is unfruitful, however, you got to know that the argument is not to convert the extremist, but to make sure he doesn't convert neutral people. And he will shall we let his BS go free without a critical view.

How vulgar. When you say this, you are, without any explanation, shooting down the very concept that scientists have investigated the formation of organic compounds under abiotic conditions. You are implying here that nobody has even looked into this, and you are so wrong.

We have been studying the sundry forces of nature literally since Hector was a pup. Thales of Miletus arguably got many of his ideas while studying in Babylon. Although there is no concrete evidence for it, the fragments that represent his ideas are laced heavily with Babylonian influences. If so, Thales--the putative father of natural philosophy--was only introducing an older tradition of scholarship into the more competitive and vivacious thinking patterns of the West.

The casual thinkers of later centuries were performing simple experiments like swirling water in a drinking vessel to study how the water in it forms into a vortex. This is exemplified in the works of Aristotle, from whom it can be inferred that other philosophers of the time period were performing similar experiments.

Evolution is one of the oldest ideas in systematic thought. It goes back at least to Anaximander, who first proposed the idea of evolution. He had this idea that human beings had arisen from fish. Retrospectively, he was making much speculation out of extremely limited information, but the strength in his thinking is that he helped weaken the somewhat vain assumption that human life has always been around or that human beings are somehow the purpose the world's very existence. It was his disciple Xenophanes, however, who is credited with being the first serious thinker to systematically study fossils with the idea that they can be used to make estimations about the history of the Earth.

In modern times, we have not only studied the possible conditions of Earth before the advent of life, but several elaborate models have been put forward as to what kind of worlds the Hadean and Archean Earths might have been. Scientists are pretty sure by now that they know the kinds of conditions under which the eventual formation of primitive organisms would be inevitable.

But I don't even have to dwell on that when I could simply point out the simple, empirical fact that there are existing fossils of putative extra-terrestrial organisms that seem to have no purpose or rime in their existence whatsoever except as a demonstration of simple principle that, where life can exist, it inevitably will.

http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341 ... 6de970b-pi
Here is a picture of what we're pretty sure is an extra-terrestrial fossil.

http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341 ... 011970d-pi
Here is an image of a living organism from here on Earth.

And that's only some sulfur-gobbling beast that managed to cling to existence in the filth on the back of a space meteor. It's not like those are the most welcoming conditions for life to rise to sentience. We haven't even had time or tools to really explore the moist environments on Mars, which has some volcanic regions that might harbor conditions sufficient for primitive life.

The fact of the matter is that we are not limited, as you suggest, to a few simple, rigid tenants about the nature of life. The subject is extremely fluid, and there are whole libraries full of information on it.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 01 Dec 2011, 8:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There was resistance to the idea at first because of the religious nature of the theory
and its catholic origin. Being Anti-Big Bang is wrong heading for thinking theist (and atheists to boot)

Pay no attention to the beliefs others. Pay attention to what they -do-, not what they say they believe. Belief is an internal and private matter and is not in the public domain. Actions in the public domain are of public concern and interest.

ruveyn

You fail to comprehend both the concept of a theory itself and the Big Bang

No, I don't. Haven't you seen what JakobVirgil posted? That's true. That is why it does take faith to support the Big Bang theory. And that's why I said "Big Bang believers".
The word theory comes from a Greek term that was related to 'speculation'. 'Speculation' is a guess. It relates to observation, of course, but it doesn't change the fact that it is a guess. A guess can be right or wrong. It means that it can't be assumed as a truth.

A scientist's speculation is worth a thousand times more than a layman's certainty.

No, it takes mathematics and physics, and observation of the universe to support the Big Bang theory. It takes faith to believe some guy snapped his fingers and it all began. Leveling "Its just a theory" at anything as a criticism is utter garbage and shows complete ignorance of scientific methodology. Guess what? Creationism *isn't* even a theory!

This is ridiculous. Science makes testable predictions. A hypothesis, which many laypeople seem to have confused with "theory," doesn't get to be called a theory unless it has withstood such tests; e.g., in the case of the Big Bang, observation of the cosmic microwave background. Religion is utter nonsense because on those occasions when it does make testable predictions they are, to the true believers, inherently unfalsifiable. End of story.

That's the reason we call them etymological fallacies.

Mathematics, physics, and observation. Do they explain what happened before this so-called 'expansion' and 'development' of the universe? I'm sorry, but it doesn't explain anything. It's not enough for me. If you're satisfied with a theory started by a Catholic priest, go ahead. This fact, for itself, shows me how scientic this theory is.
And you're right about something. Creation is not a theory. As I said, a theory - based on hypotheses and observation - is just speculation. Creation is a fact.
To conclude, the "guy" didn't snap his fingers. He spoke.




Yes, tests, true believer of the Big Bang theory. Tests that have been proved insufficient to exactly determine many things. A much more simple example: last year some scientists stated that coffee was not good for human health. Last month, another bunch of scientists discovered that coffee was actually very good for our health. Next year other scientists will say that coffee can provoke cancer if being constantly drunk for a long period of time.
I'm sorry, but I can't trust this science that can't even determine precisely whether drinking coffee is healthy or not. Imagine stating the origin of this universe...
Also, what makes you believe that the limited human science - physics, mathematics, whatever you want - can explain anything about this huge universe? Let's suppose there were other civilisations in the universe, much more developed than ours. How on earth would our physics be enough and more precise to explain the universe than their knowledge? By the way, has science definitively discovered if there are other inhabited planets in the universe? It should have, if it is as perfect as you think. That's why, you see, it's such a pretension to assume that this science can explain the origin of the universe. Thinking like this is preposterous. Science hasn't even been able to determine if we are alone here...

We're not as wise as we think we are. The universe is too large for our small and limited minds to fully understand it. We may think that we are something here, that we're important and wise. Actually we're nothing. End of story.




When you have no arguments... By the way, etymology is a science. A more precise one.

An expected outcome of religion being allowed to come up in any topic, period. I think it has about the same effect on otherwise intelligent people's common sense as a sex scandal.

Yes, and doesn't a valid hypothesis also have to be grounded in observation?

The fact of the matter is that religion actually is nonsense, rubbish and horse-feathers, but think in terms of pure, applied pragmatism, not as a rationalist. It doesn't really matter that religion is composed entirely of hocus pocus if it facilitates a desired outcome, viz giving you an adrenaline high from screaming and shouting about it. This is the reason we are calling them "religion addicts" lately.

I myself do not object strenuously to religion if it is used in moderation, but I never touch the stuff.

To the religious (who appear to be mono-theists): I'm christian myself, and I think religious people who call Creationism a scientific theory really aren't doing the church any favours. What comes out of the Bible, or your religious holy-book equivalent, is religious stuff, not scientific theory, because neither the Bible, Qu'ran nor Tulmad are very big on mathematical proofs. Imagine if:

Leviticus would be a horror to read.

Besides: I don't think anybody ever got persuaded into conversion.

To atheists:
- I get the general sentiment that atheists believe in the power of empiricism and falsifiability etc.
- But I reserve the right to be illogical and irrational, because I took several courses on propositional logic/boolean algebra/quantum logic and that stuff was really boring. I reserve the right to be rigidly logical when managing my finances or at work, but switch off the rationality as and when I like. Because I'm human.
- Science is not an atheistic discipline.

That's what I said. Creation is not a theory. The Big Bang is. Curiously, a theory born in a Christian context, started by a Catholic priest. Once more, that's why it takes a lot of faith to support it.

And I definitely agree with you in your considerations to the atheists.

I appreciate your sentiment, but u may have misunderstood me.
Religion takes faith: i.e. I believe in things that I have no rational reason or cause to believe in.

BBT does not, for 2 reasons:
1. If it ever gets disproved somehow, people will say: "okay", and move on to the new theory. Much like how Newtonian physics got shafted when Einstein came along.
2. It hinges on logical extrapolation from empirical observations. E.g. you don't need to know about gravity to learn that falling down hurts. Probably having fallen down sometime in your life, it doesn't take much faith to know that logically extrapolating the phenomena of "tripping over" to "falling from a 10-story building" is going to really hurt, even if you've never actually fallen from a 10-story building before.

The ability to be logical is not mutually exclusive with the capacity to have religious faith. The religious leanings of the originator of BBT is irrelevant. Bertrand Russell, Rene DesCartes, were famous agnostics/atheists, but that doesn't make their work anti-religion.