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Does water have a taste? Is atheism a religion?

Does water have a taste?

  • Yes

    Votes: 17 68.0%
  • No

    Votes: 8 32.0%

  • Total voters
    25
I would say it's evidence that we have scientific laws and that our universe governs in a designed and orderly fashion. But to go even further back. We know that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. It's scientific law that this is true. Something had to create matter and energy that was beyond science (God). To believe that there is no God, one must have faith that something beyond science did not create all that exists. It also means someone must by faith, believe that something against what we know about science for some reason somehow created everything through an unknown and unproven method. For me it would make sense that our universe was created by a designer as it is orderly and is governed by scientific laws. There must have been a will and a reason for its creation as I don't believe that it could have happened without a will and for no reason. My belief indirectly supports God's existence through science. Gleaning from what we know, something supernatural must have created matter and all that exists within our universe.

That's not scientific reasoning, that's personal belief and philosophy. Science would say that we do not know yet.
 
Fundamentally this is an incorrect statement as science relies on measurement to make proof. Gods by their definitions are immeasurable and thus science cannot speak of them.

Depends on what you think a god is.
 
That's not scientific reasoning, that's personal belief and philosophy. Science would say that we do not know yet.

It's developing a belief through scientific reasoning. The fact that scientific law states that matter cannot be created or destroyed demands that something beyond the constraints of scientific law (God) must have created all things in existence.
 
God is provable through science. Science demands a creator and evident through our scientific laws. We can't physically put God in a test tube, but we know He exists.

Then prove God through science. Of course, you realize that will require you to produce objective, testable evidence that does not require a priori faith that it's real first, right? So when you manage to do that, you can win the Nobel prize and be wealthy.

Be sure to let us know when you manage it.
 
I would say it's evidence that we have scientific laws and that our universe governs in a designed and orderly fashion. But to go even further back. We know that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. It's scientific law that this is true. Something had to create matter and energy that was beyond science (God). To believe that there is no God, one must have faith that something beyond science did not create all that exists. It also means someone must by faith, believe that something against what we know about science for some reason somehow created everything through an unknown and unproven method. For me it would make sense that our universe was created by a designer as it is orderly and is governed by scientific laws. There must have been a will and a reason for its creation as I don't believe that it could have happened without a will and for no reason. My belief indirectly supports God's existence through science. Gleaning from what we know, something supernatural must have created matter and all that exists within our universe.

I believe the term 'god' is essentially a redundancy in describing causal relations.
The problem is you're leaving really big holes open, as in, who created god?
 
It's developing a belief through scientific reasoning. The fact that scientific law states that matter cannot be created or destroyed demands that something beyond the constraints of scientific law (God) must have created all things in existence.

That is not scientific reasoning. Science requires measurement. If you want to state knowledge of gods in a scientific sense, you must have a measurement of gods. If no measurement exists, science says we don't know at this point. This is why science and religion are two different things.
 
Water has no taste - the impurities in the water do.

It occurs to me that a pure religion has no detrimental effect on man, it is the impurities that cause all the damage...and we are the impurities...
 
It's developing a belief through scientific reasoning. The fact that scientific law states that matter cannot be created or destroyed demands that something beyond the constraints of scientific law (God) must have created all things in existence.

Actually, it's the argument from ignorance. You look at the world and you can't come up with a better explanation, therefore you pick the one that you find most emotionally comforting. That's not science, that's logical fallacy.
 
Then prove God through science. Of course, you realize that will require you to produce objective, testable evidence that does not require a priori faith that it's real first, right? So when you manage to do that, you can win the Nobel prize and be wealthy.

Be sure to let us know when you manage it.

That'd be like banging your head against a wall or trying to fingerpaint with no paint.
 
I believe the term 'god' is essentially a redundancy in describing causal relations.
The problem is you're leaving really big holes open, as in, who created god?

My belief is that God is beyond the need for creation and is eternal, something our minds cannot comprehend. Matter and energy are finite and required a creation event, God is not like matter and energy and did not. I also believe God constructed time, before this time did not exist. All we can comprehend is what we know in this universe and of finite things, God is beyond that in my belief, and did not need to be created.

Actually, it's the argument from ignorance. You look at the world and you can't come up with a better explanation, therefore you pick the one that you find most emotionally comforting. That's not science, that's logical fallacy.

Incorrect. It's taking what I know about science and believing what is plausible regarding something that no scientist has proven and can study. By your logic, is it not equally true for atheists to believe some kind of self propagation method for the creation of matter and energy?
 
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Incorrect. It's taking what I know about science and believing what is plausible regarding something that no scientist has proven and can study. By your logic, is it not equally true for atheists to believe some kind of self propagation method for the creation of matter and energy?

It's sad how little you know about science then.
 
I would say it's evidence that we have scientific laws and that our universe governs in a designed and orderly fashion.
Laws that may or may not be correct. Personally, I subscribe to chaos theory. After all the research I've done on the universe, I see no "order". I see things that eventually fall into something that could be considered "order" (gravitational orbits, etc), but they sure as **** didn't start that way. In fact, the more I learn about the universe, the more unrealistic a "creator" becomes.

But to go even further back. We know that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. It's scientific law that this is true
Well actually, it can

. Something had to create matter and energy that was beyond science (God).
Something beyond science? This doesn't make any sense. Aside from that, what then created "god"?

To believe that there is no God, one must have faith that something beyond science did not create all that exists. It also means someone must by faith, believe that something against what we know about science for some reason somehow created everything through an unknown and unproven method.
Or we accept that we do not know all there is to know.

For me it would make sense that our universe was created by a designer as it is orderly and is governed by scientific laws.
For me, it makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever as it is not ordered and our understanding of "laws" changes as we gain knowledge.

There must have been a will and a reason for its creation as I don't believe that it could have happened without a will and for no reason.
Why must there be a will and a reason? A meteor doesn't fall from the sky due to will and reason.

My belief indirectly supports God's existence through science. Gleaning from what we know, something supernatural must have created matter and all that exists within our universe.
You mean, gleaning from what YOU know, and how YOU understand it.

That's all well and good. It is easier to just toss your hands up and say "god did it all" than to seek knowledge and understanding. I will give you that. When I read string theory and particle physics, and quantum mechanics, it can be very confusing and difficult to wrap my brain around. But I personally prefer that to just giving up the quest for knowledge and saying some god must have done it. That's what our ancestors did when they couldn't understand thunder and lighting, earthquakes and tornadoes. "God did it."
 
It's sad how little you know about science then.

Offensive one liners mean nothing. I'm a student of molecular biology, not that it matters. Blatant personal attacks will be ignored.

I have to get ready for school now, I'll reply to stuff later.
 
Offensive one liners mean nothing. I'm a student of molecular biology, not that it matters. Blatant personal attacks will be ignored.

I have to get ready for school now, I'll reply to stuff later.

No, it doesn't matter, it only matters what you say and what you can demonstrate through the application of scientific principles and the latter is what's lacking.
 
Offensive one liners mean nothing. I'm a student of molecular biology.

Then you should know how science can speak to systems and when it can't say anything definitive about it.
 
Incorrect. It's taking what I know about science and believing what is plausible regarding something that no scientist has proven and can study. By your logic, is it not equally true for atheists to believe some kind of self propagation method for the creation of matter and energy?

*ding*

Unfortunately science doesnt understand exactly how the universe came about, but you're still reverting to 'God' as an essential argument for things that are not explicable. Just because science doesnt know yet doesnt mean you need God to explain it.
 
We can subscribe to a set of religious beliefs without accepting the "truth" of all those beliefs. I subscribe to a newspaper, but I don't believe all that is printed in it.
The more I learn about science, the more I admire the complexity of life, the more I tend to beleive that there is some sort of supreme intelligence behind it all. At the same time, I acknowledge that it is very likely that we know only the smallest portion of what we consider knowledge. The rest is supposition, wishful thinking, whatever....
I see GOOD religions as a useful tool to apply mankind's benevolence toward his fellow man...and it's "truth" doesn't have to be provable to be worth believing..
 
*ding*

Unfortunately science doesnt understand exactly how the universe came about, but you're still reverting to 'God' as an essential argument for things that are not explicable. Just because science doesnt know yet doesnt mean you need God to explain it.

No, we don't currently know exactly how the universe came about. We have some good ideas, some of which are testable and some of which are not. We may never know exactly because it's likely to be beyond our ability to study directly. One-time events cannot be replicated. However, many people are afraid of admitting that they don't know something so they just invent a comfortable solution to the problem, whether it has any evidence whatsoever to support it. Don't know how something happened? GODDIDIT! It's a nice, convenient placeholder explanation until we find the real solution. Of course, the people who hold these kinds of irrational beliefs to begin with will just move their GODDIDIT explanations elsewhere. Instead of admitting they were wrong and God didn't actually do it, or anything else, they just keep stuffing God into smaller and smaller holes and redefining God to make it harder and harder to disprove.
 
I see GOOD religions as a useful tool to apply mankind's benevolence toward his fellow man...and it's "truth" doesn't have to be provable to be worth believing..

But how is that any better than having a cult of unicorn believers as a useful tool? Why not come up with a tool that does away with all the irrational magical thinking and simply allows people to be benevolent toward his fellow man? Or woman? Accepting a load of crap because it's got a few specks of diamond dust mixed in makes no sense. Get rid of the crap and keep the parts that actually work.
 
No, we don't currently know exactly how the universe came about. We have some good ideas, some of which are testable and some of which are not. We may never know exactly because it's likely to be beyond our ability to study directly. One-time events cannot be replicated. However, many people are afraid of admitting that they don't know something so they just invent a comfortable solution to the problem, whether it has any evidence whatsoever to support it. Don't know how something happened? GODDIDIT! It's a nice, convenient placeholder explanation until we find the real solution. Of course, the people who hold these kinds of irrational beliefs to begin with will just move their GODDIDIT explanations elsewhere. Instead of admitting they were wrong and God didn't actually do it, or anything else, they just keep stuffing God into smaller and smaller holes and redefining God to make it harder and harder to disprove.
The real question is, why does it bother you so much?
 
But how is that any better than having a cult of unicorn believers as a useful tool? Why not come up with a tool that does away with all the irrational magical thinking and simply allows people to be benevolent toward his fellow man? Or woman? Accepting a load of crap because it's got a few specks of diamond dust mixed in makes no sense. Get rid of the crap and keep the parts that actually work.

What does it hurt to allow people to believe whatever it takes to remove fear of the unknown from their lives? Do you really want all the preachers to suddenly become unemployed? You know where they will go next, either politics or Wall Street...:2razz:
The tool you speak of would be magical itself, if you expect the natural man to be benevolent to others. We are born self centered and have to be taught to be otherwise.

Ever see a mining operation that processes thousands of tons of dirt to extract a few ounces of a precious mineral?
We do that because the mineral has value to us. The "diamond dust" has value to mankind. It might be based on wrong thinking, but we are all allowed wrong thinking as long as we don't use it to hurt others. IMO, the day that religions learn to turn inwards and work on their own perfection instead of messing with others will be a turning point in history. Until then, we are stuck with yet another form of agitation in our lives.
 
UtahBill said:
What does it hurt to allow people to believe whatever it takes to remove fear of the unknown from their lives? Do you really want all the preachers to suddenly become unemployed? You know where they will go next, either politics or Wall Street...
The tool you speak of would be magical itself, if you expect the natural man to be benevolent to others. We are born self centered and have to be taught to be otherwise.

What does it hurt? It's useless for one, spending your life on your knees asking an imaginary friend to do things for you is pointless. You're much better served being on your feet doing things to correct your own life. It's like asking Santa Claus for a pony. No matter how many Santa's laps you sit on, you're almost certainly not getting a pony and if you do, it's certainly not coming from Santa.

Further, religion can be extremely harmful, what about parents who would rather pray to God than take their kids to a doctor? You end up with a lot of dead kids that way, none of them have ever been demonstrably healed by any sky daddy. Like it or not, beliefs inform our actions, people act upon what they believe and when you believe in irrational things, you act irrationally. It sure wasn't atheists, acting on their lack of belief in god(s) that flew planes into the World Trade Center. When you believe crazy, irrational things, you're more likely to take crazy, irrational actions.

Simply because it makes you feel good doesn't make a belief any more worthwhile. I'm sure racists feel good about their racism. Does that make racism a good thing? Certainly not. I'm sure the crazy guy who thinks he's Napoleon gets great emotional satisfaction out of believing that, he's still wrong. No matter how much emotional comfort you might get from a wrong belief, it doesn't stop it from being a wrong belief.
 
What does it hurt? It's useless for one, spending your life on your knees asking an imaginary friend to do things for you is pointless. You're much better served being on your feet doing things to correct your own life. It's like asking Santa Claus for a pony. No matter how many Santa's laps you sit on, you're almost certainly not getting a pony and if you do, it's certainly not coming from Santa.

Further, religion can be extremely harmful, what about parents who would rather pray to God than take their kids to a doctor? You end up with a lot of dead kids that way, none of them have ever been demonstrably healed by any sky daddy. Like it or not, beliefs inform our actions, people act upon what they believe and when you believe in irrational things, you act irrationally. It sure wasn't atheists, acting on their lack of belief in god(s) that flew planes into the World Trade Center. When you believe crazy, irrational things, you're more likely to take crazy, irrational actions.

Simply because it makes you feel good doesn't make a belief any more worthwhile. I'm sure racists feel good about their racism. Does that make racism a good thing? Certainly not. I'm sure the crazy guy who thinks he's Napoleon gets great emotional satisfaction out of believing that, he's still wrong. No matter how much emotional comfort you might get from a wrong belief, it doesn't stop it from being a wrong belief.

do you realize that you sound like someone trying to convert others to his religion?
Value of beliefs for others is not for any other person to decide. Why would you want to take away the pain medications for someone who really needs them? It is about the same thing.
 
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