demiurgent | A brief conversation

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A brief conversation

A brief conversation with a coworker, fortunately where no students could hear:

Him: Well, agnostics are just atheists without the courage of their convictions.

Me: Wow. That was both a lie and offensive. That's a neat trick.

He looked confused. I went on to tell him what I'm going to tell you, right now.

Atheism is not the lack of religion, despite the roots of the word. Atheism is a religion. It is the specific belief, without evidence, that the universe lacked intelligent or motive force behind its creation.

Many atheists refute this, mind. They say that they stand for science, and skepticism, and that any divine presence would need to be proven, and without that proof one must assume there is no divine presence. That, they often say, is simple science and stark reason.

And that's utter bullshit.

Science is agnostic.

Science says "I do not know, until I see. When I see, I can gather evidence and hypothesize. After I hypothesize I gather more evidence. I experiment. I test my hypothesis. I revise my hypothesis. If I and many other scientists perform these experiments and verify and reproduce my results, we might -- might -- upgrade my hypothesis to a theory, but that takes a lot of doing."

Atheism doesn't do any of that. Atheism takes it on faith that there is no god in any form, comprehensible or not. And the evidence for that is just as prevalent as the evidence for Yaweh, Allah, Aphrodite or Manannán mac Lir: absolutely none.

Guys? We don't know. We don't know who or what if anything started the cosmic ball rolling. We don't know if there's something beyond the edge of human perception. We just don't fucking know, okay?

Now, you can be convinced the Christians have it wrong. Or that the Greeks were full of shit. Or that the Wiccans are fooling themselves. You can be personally convinced that the universe is a cold place where everything is essentially chaotic and all things happened because of chance. That's fine.

But don't pretend you have an inside understanding that the religious nuts don't. You have a belief. Nothing more, nothing less. And that's fine. If it makes you happy, power to you.

And if you believe in a god, gods, goddesses, or whatever? Fine by me. Whatever helps you get to sleep, man.

Me? I'm agnostic. I don't have the hubris to think I've got the final answer. I'm still watching and waiting, and I'm keeping an open mind -- to all sides of the question.

And for the record? Don't you fucking dare say I don't have the courage of my convictions. It takes a hell of a lot more courage to admit what you don't know than assert what you believe to be true.

Sadly, it means I don't get to be nearly as smug as certain theists or atheists. But don't worry about me. I usually find something else to be smug about.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dude, you're making shit up.

THEIST: One who actively believes in deities and sentient higher powers.

ATHEIST: The "A" at the beginning denotes that an Atheist does not believe the tenets of Theism.

AGNOSTIC: One who believes that it is not possible to have absolute or certain knowledge of the existence or nonexistence of God or gods.

You state: ...if your version of Atheism is "I don't believe in any of those deities -- if I see one I'll believe in it" doesn't include an active disbelief in any deity or intelligent and motive force behind the universe, you're not an atheist. You're an agnostic.

Again, this is incorrect.

I am an atheist. I do not believe in anything remotely theistic. If I see proof otherwise, yes, I will believe it. I do believe that the existence or non of a deity can be utterly proven - until it is, however, I do not believe in one at all.

The scientific method of stating an Atheist bent would be: There is no proof positive of a deity. This does not give so much as a nod to the possible existence of a deity, any more than lack of belief in ANY unproven concept does so. Examples:

- There is no proof positive that, underneath the antarctic ice, there lies a giant treasure trove of extraterrestrial jellybean farms.
- There is no proof that dreams are actually what happens when your consciousness takes a hike and wanders to an alternate dimension where giant overlord newts sit behind an enormous computer control center.
- There is no proof that the Dinosaurs were fond of a saurian form of gangsta rap, especially the phat rhymes busted by a lone Allosaur under the handle of Grandmasta Auuuuroooorrruuuuuugh.

Under your definition, I am on the fence in how I view these concepts. That's retarded. I do not "give a nod" to any of these ideas. I do not view them as "possible, just unproven." I don't view them at ALL. They have not been proven in any way, and are merely silly things my mind has come up with.

This is, incidentally, why several years ago I finally tipped from Agnostic to straight-up Atheist, mind you: Agnosticism is silly. The idea:

- There is an invisible, unproven and intangible deity that invented the universe.

...Is just as silly as these other ideas.

This is, incidentally, why several years ago I finally tipped from Agnostic to straight-up Atheist, mind you: Agnosticism is silly. The idea:

- There is an invisible, unproven and intangible deity that invented the universe.

...Is just as silly as these other ideas.

Then, and please understand this is acting as the... er... devil's advocate... are you saying that the universe simply always was? That it had no logical beginning?

Not the big bang, by the way. Something had to exist before the big bang.

Where did it come from?

Do you know? Does anyone?

Can anyone?

You don't believe there is an invisible, unproven and intangible deity that invented the universe. I accept that. But are you right? Then where the fuck did it come from? What's the start point, and how did it get to that start point in the first place?

Is it silly to say an intelligent force was involved? I don't know. It makes about as much sense (though not more sense) as saying it all happened purely spontaneously, from nothing, with no initial cause.

If your position is "there was no intelligent force involved," then you're an atheist, it seems to me. If your position is "I don't know what was involved," you're an agnostic.

Eric, actually it isn't clear that there has to be a before. Before and after are, quite possibly, concepts dependent on the existence of a universe. This does not lend itself to human scale analogies, but then neither does most modern cosmology/physics. A claim that there has to be a before the universe treats the universe like a normal every day object, when we know that even normal every day objects are really statistical constructs of things that don't behave in normal every day object scale manners. (I am not actually claiming that there is no matrix in which the universe is embedded, only that the a priori claim that there must be one is based on reasoning from experience that has been shown not to scale endlessly larger or smaller.)

Then, and please understand this is acting as the... er... devil's advocate... are you saying that the universe simply always was? That it had no logical beginning?

I was going to quote your whole post, but this is enough to quote and my response is to the whole thing. Furthermore, this is not in defense of Atheism, per se, but my personal take on your question:

One thing that was liberating as hell was when I realized just how much energy all of humankind expends on these idiotic questions. Where did it all come from? Was it made, or did it just happen? Where do we go when we die? Is there an afterlife? Were we here for a purpose?

These questions take away time and energy that you could spend getting other shit done. Everyone has an idea of where it all began. Everyone has an idea of where it all ends. None of this shit has anything to do with what I'm doing right this minute. In fact, it doesn't have anything to do with anything I will do in my finite and precious life.

Many think that atheists are humorless, dry bastards with no magic, wonder or mystery in their lives. I am living proof that this is not the case. Many are the mysteries that I think we will never be able to answer. I don't give a damn if it all started with the motherfucker of all bangs, or if some weirdo invisible bathrobe god farted it all out. It happened so long ago that the point is completely moot. Sitting around with your thumb up your ass, staring at other people's ideas of where it all came from in the beginning isn't going to help you one iota in life.

Who Cares?
Dude, it is all about spin-off applications. Even false trails can yield useful applications. Magnifying impractically tiny results until they yield every day applications is a major part of what engineering does for us.

Pure research has always asked questions that almost no one cared about, and it has always been the big source of new useful things. Now a lot of paths down to the big cosmology questions don't seem likely to yield applications, but that doesn't mean that no route of exploration in that direction will.

GET GLASSES.

As stated: this is MY TAKE ON IT. I am not defending Atheism. As I am not an engineer, and have no use in my life for an explanation of the source of it all beyond "hey, nifty, that's where the universe came from," I DON'T CARE.

You asked the question "Who Cares?"
I was giving a general motivation for careing about the search, if not the answer.
Unless that was merely a rhetorical flourish not worth including in the text, it is a valid question. My answer is that even if you don't care what the answer to the question is, you stand to gain from the attempts to find said answer. Thus everyone from the most naive egoist onward has something to gain from the existence of said search, even if it doesn't ever yield a final answer.
Anyone having a discussion like this on a media like this most likely spends their life surrounded by the products of research into questions that seemed as unrelated to everyday life as the big question of cosmology is. Many of those applications were the results of lines of research that didn't even come close to coming up with an answer to the original question, but that provided a secondary or tertiary result of "well, isn't that odd?"

Unless that was merely a rhetorical flourish not worth including in the text,

RHETORICAL QUESTION MOTHERFUCKER

DO YOU SPEAK IT

Something had to exist before the big bang.

As you may know, I'm a theist. I'm also a scientist.

Untrue.

"The time before the big bang" is as meaningless a concept as "The space into which the Universe is expanding." Time and space are part of the Universe, not externals against which the Universe is measured. I'm not a good enough physicist to do the math myself, but as I understand it, time curves asymptotically back towards the "moment" of the big bang.

If your position is "there was no intelligent force involved," then you're an atheist, it seems to me. If your position is "I don't know what was involved," you're an agnostic.

It's ironic, but you're making a classic philosophical mistake that creationists make when they posit creation and evolution as an either/or choice, and act as if disproving evolution[1] proves creationism: the two are orthogonal to one another, and can even coexist peacefully.

"There was no intelligent force involved" is nothing more than a perfectly reasonable inference from the utter and consistent failure to demonstrate theoretically or empirically that the hypothesis "There was an intelligent force involved." Believing in divinity therefore has no more scientific basis than believing in phlogiston, aether, or polka-dotted unicorns dancing the macarena in your bathroom only disappear any time you look."

Also, "I don't know what was involved" can exist perfectly well alongside "There was no intelligent force involved." There are tons of phenomena we do not fully understand that have had several explanations ruled out.

[1] Or casting it into doubt

Agnostic here, and a scientist, but only a dilettante in physics and cosmology, but yeah, that's my understanding of cosmology. Time is a property of the universe, so before and after are reliant on the existence of said universe. Before the beginning of the universe is a null concept.

This does not lend itself to nice simple analogies, but neither does any of physics in the last century and some change. Even beginning physics books these days are full of things to which there are no good analogies in the macro-scale world. (Definitely in the micro scale, and I am pretty sure on the mega scale, there are things that don't fit cleanly into planet orbit and bread box analogies.)

I really liked your answer, and was drawn to the comparison with phlogiston and aether (not the polka-dotted unicorns).

I think that's the PERFECT comparison. Those elements were thought up as WAYS to explain phenomena, as theories that made sense and in some cases were close enough to the 'real' thing (where the real things is the current theories, which are not so much 'truth' as 'much better models'). This is why theism isn't 'silly' as flemco is trying to state. It might be very very wrong, but it does attempt to explain something. It's not a spontaneous thought out of someone's head, it's a non-scientific theory that is easy to believe and that will remain strong until a scientific theory comes out that is stronger and understandable.

But this may never happen: We have a very VERY hard idea of grasping the relationship of time and space. The relationship only visibly appears in thought experiments and in scales much greater than our world. It is downright impossible (for now, I guess I should add) for us to get a third-person view of the Universe.

So all in all, it's nice to enlighten theists that the answer to "how did it all start" may be "perhaps it never did", but science is in no position to ridicule theist beliefs. It may be prudent for science to shut up and nod until science has a nice theory on the improbability of God existing.

If it's not scientific, it's not a theory. If it's not scientific, it's not even a hypothesis.

Phlogiston and aether weren't rejected because a better theory came along. They were rejected because hypotheses about phlogiston and aether made testable predictions that were tested, and disproven. People came up with better hypotheses because of that disproof.

Science already has you covered regarding the improbability of God existing: What testable predictions does theism make? What experiment can be performed to test those predictions? If theists can't put any of these on the table, there's no reason for science to treat theism any more seriously than a belief in polka-dotted unicorns dancing the macarena -- phlogiston and aether actually fared better as science!

Assuming theists can put together a test for whatever predictions they come up with, how many such predictions need to fail before theists would acknowledge that theism can be classified alongside phlogiston and aether?

"If it's not scientific, it's not a theory. If it's not scientific, it's not even a hypothesis. "

Note that I did not say 'scientific theory'. Theory, the word, has different meanings. One of them is 'belief'. If you would prefer, I will use that instead.

"Phlogiston and aether weren't rejected because a better theory came along. They were rejected because hypotheses about phlogiston and aether made testable predictions that were tested, and disproven."

The process of disproving a theory and the process of building a different one are distinctly different and often not made by the same person or in the same time period. This has been repeated often, but phlogiston is a good example from Wikipedia: The theory was found flawed, some attempts were made to revise it and it remained the main theory. About twenty years later, the oxygen requirement for combustion was discovered and the theory was finally thrown away when the caloric theory was put in its place. There's no point in rejecting something if you don't have something better to fill its place. The point after all isn't to have something absolutely correct but to have something that explains phenomena and measurements as reliably as possible.

"Science already has you covered regarding the improbability of God existing: What testable predictions does theism make?"

That's why theism is NOT a scientific theory, it utterly fails as one. In a scientific context, it is much more reasonable to immediately reject it as extremely improbable (like you've already stated).

BUT, Science has failed so far to provide any answer to "where did the universe come from" that is any less improbable; if theism was that ridiculous, then any mediocre scientist could come up with theory that is at least a little less improbable. If there is such a theory, I'm not educated about it and would appreciate any and all enlightenment.

Note that I did not say 'scientific theory'.

I did note that. The implication that there is any type of theory other than a "scientific theory" is exactly what prompted my comment.

Theory, the word, has different meanings. One of them is 'belief'. If you would prefer, I will use that instead.

In the context of a discussion of science, theory has only one meaning. "Belief" describes theism with far more accuracy and precision -- without muddying the difference between theistic belief and, say, the theory of gravitation.

There's no point in rejecting something if you don't have something better to fill its place. The point after all isn't to have something absolutely correct but to have something that explains phenomena and measurements as reliably as possible.

If a hypothesis makes predictions that are falsified by observational data, that is sufficient reason to alter or reject it, even if a better hypothesis has not yet been established. If something claiming to be a hypothesis doesn't even make predictions that can be confirmed or falsified by observational data, it is indistinguishable from shrugging and saying "I don't know."

BUT, Science has failed so far to provide any answer to "where did the universe come from" that is any less improbable; ; if theism was that ridiculous, then any mediocre scientist could come up with theory that is at least a little less improbable. If there is such a theory, I'm not educated about it and would appreciate any and all enlightenment.

Google "Big Bang."

Unlike any theistic assertion ever made, Big Bang theory makes quantifiable predictions borne out by observational data accurately and precisely. As such, it is infinitely more probable than theism -- or any other assertion that makes no quantifiable predictions. What's more, theism requires a belief in the existence of something that is neither observed nor observable and Big Bang theory does not. That, too, makes Big Bang theory infinitely more probable than any theistic assertion ever made.

The fact that most people have trouble understanding the math around why "before the Big Bang" is a meaningless concept does not alter the strength of Big Bang theory, it just means we do a shitty job of teaching people math in this society.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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