Sir Anthony Hopkins: I couldn’t be an atheist
- Thread starter Mind Over Matter
- Start date
I disagree. Not believing in God is perfectly aligned with every scientific observation. We will not know anything when we die because the brain is what does the knowing.
Oh almighty Atheismo, not this "not believing in god takes just as much faith as believing in god" crap again. I thought that this had already been laid to rest and we'd never have to see it's fallacious face ever again.
It doesn't take faith to reject a claim, and that's what atheism(at least, the atheism that some 99% of atheist profess) is. If I claimed that there was a fire breathing dragon in my garage but refused to, or couldn't, show you evidence of it, would it take any faith on your part to reject my claim? No. If I did present evidence then it would take faith to reject my claim(assuming, of course, that my evidence was independently verified), but until evidence is presented to support any claim no faith is needed to reject it.
Any claim that can be made without evidence can be rejected without evidence.
It doesn't take faith to reject a claim, and that's what atheism(at least, the atheism that some 99% of atheist profess) is. If I claimed that there was a fire breathing dragon in my garage but refused to, or couldn't, show you evidence of it, would it take any faith on your part to reject my claim? No. If I did present evidence then it would take faith to reject my claim(assuming, of course, that my evidence was independently verified), but until evidence is presented to support any claim no faith is needed to reject it.
Any claim that can be made without evidence can be rejected without evidence.
There are many factless pronouncements about things that cannot be seen, such as God, astral planes, UFO abductions, OBE/NDE places, the workings of astrology, reincarnation, the soul, etheric forces, the tooth fairy, and so on.
1. Pronouncements without facts are dishonest. Fail.
2. A retreat to saying they could be and might be has the same problem, for this, too, is just a declaration. Fail.
3. Since they are not shown to have any manifestation at all by science or even to have any effect anywhere, some believers may further retreat to saying that they act invisibly; yet, this is still just a pronouncement without substance. Fail.
4. Science does not care about all these untestable hypothesis and so neither do people who require anything to to go on. Failure due to irrelevancy.
5. Believers then say to believe by reason of faith, yet ‘faith’ is defined as being about unknowns, so there is no reason or of anything known “by faith”. Fail.
6. Believers have nothing to show and yet keep on repeating the claim. This still goes nowhere. Fail.
7. All are free to have their wishes and fantasies, but do not tell us that they are truth and fact. Fail.
8. Believers cannot claim that God is GOd and thus able to be undetectable by having super power, be outside of time, and the like because God has not been proven in the first place and so these conclusion cannot be used, for they are just more factless statements.
9. It ends here, but anything that can be said against these claims is just a yet another detriment to the factless fiat.
10. Something like a God that is actually supposed to be everywhere doing everything is disproved by finding anything super, extra, or beyond anywhere. Failure to show beyond the natural.
11. And even any old kind of God is disproved because not even any complexity even as minor as an atom or a molecule cannot be First, much less some totally ultimate complex entity such as God. Fail.
12, There cannot even be a creation point for the basis of all because for it to be the all it must be eternal. Thus is had no creation and so their is no Creator. Fail.
13. There is nothing to make any of the basic things of and things cannot infinitely come from lesser things, so, it is ‘nothing’ that must be the basis of all, and nothing is certainly the opposite of God. We even see a balance of nothing in the basic nature via the opposites of pair production and the negative well of gravity’s potential energy canceling the positive kinetic energy everywhere. Failed again.
14. And there’s no 50/50 chance of God reasoning because God and not God are not at all equi-probable, the possibility of God even being zero from the disproofs. Fail.
15. Preaching then goes nowhere and is frowned upon at science forums because no basis can be shown. Fail.
16. Since there is nothing for believers to push forward with, then can then only push against science and reality, and this only clutters up the forums and the world because they run up and against the facts of science and reality.
17. Their last resort is to get angry and hurl insults, and this only shows the poverty of their position all the more. Fail.
18. In large movements wars are caused, even against other religions because their non guaranteed concepts stated as truth need to be protected against anything contrary, lest they lose credibility to themselves by the mere existence of alternatives. Anything against their concept of right is labeled ‘evil. Fail.
19. They are unreachable and unteachable and so they must get ignored and bypassed, and if doing violence then most likely they will reach a bloody end. Fail.
20. They try to overcome the separation of church and state and thus can affect everyone. Fail.
21. Their stuff doesn’t submit to being falsified nor can it be even used in science formations leading to anything useful, and this is a further demarcation of science from pseudo-science, not that they even have any science in the first place. Fail.
22. The proof is in the pudding and they have none to show and so there is nothing there to be even concerned with at all. Baking failure.
Total failure.
1. Pronouncements without facts are dishonest. Fail.
2. A retreat to saying they could be and might be has the same problem, for this, too, is just a declaration. Fail.
3. Since they are not shown to have any manifestation at all by science or even to have any effect anywhere, some believers may further retreat to saying that they act invisibly; yet, this is still just a pronouncement without substance. Fail.
4. Science does not care about all these untestable hypothesis and so neither do people who require anything to to go on. Failure due to irrelevancy.
5. Believers then say to believe by reason of faith, yet ‘faith’ is defined as being about unknowns, so there is no reason or of anything known “by faith”. Fail.
6. Believers have nothing to show and yet keep on repeating the claim. This still goes nowhere. Fail.
7. All are free to have their wishes and fantasies, but do not tell us that they are truth and fact. Fail.
8. Believers cannot claim that God is GOd and thus able to be undetectable by having super power, be outside of time, and the like because God has not been proven in the first place and so these conclusion cannot be used, for they are just more factless statements.
9. It ends here, but anything that can be said against these claims is just a yet another detriment to the factless fiat.
10. Something like a God that is actually supposed to be everywhere doing everything is disproved by finding anything super, extra, or beyond anywhere. Failure to show beyond the natural.
11. And even any old kind of God is disproved because not even any complexity even as minor as an atom or a molecule cannot be First, much less some totally ultimate complex entity such as God. Fail.
12, There cannot even be a creation point for the basis of all because for it to be the all it must be eternal. Thus is had no creation and so their is no Creator. Fail.
13. There is nothing to make any of the basic things of and things cannot infinitely come from lesser things, so, it is ‘nothing’ that must be the basis of all, and nothing is certainly the opposite of God. We even see a balance of nothing in the basic nature via the opposites of pair production and the negative well of gravity’s potential energy canceling the positive kinetic energy everywhere. Failed again.
14. And there’s no 50/50 chance of God reasoning because God and not God are not at all equi-probable, the possibility of God even being zero from the disproofs. Fail.
15. Preaching then goes nowhere and is frowned upon at science forums because no basis can be shown. Fail.
16. Since there is nothing for believers to push forward with, then can then only push against science and reality, and this only clutters up the forums and the world because they run up and against the facts of science and reality.
17. Their last resort is to get angry and hurl insults, and this only shows the poverty of their position all the more. Fail.
18. In large movements wars are caused, even against other religions because their non guaranteed concepts stated as truth need to be protected against anything contrary, lest they lose credibility to themselves by the mere existence of alternatives. Anything against their concept of right is labeled ‘evil. Fail.
19. They are unreachable and unteachable and so they must get ignored and bypassed, and if doing violence then most likely they will reach a bloody end. Fail.
20. They try to overcome the separation of church and state and thus can affect everyone. Fail.
21. Their stuff doesn’t submit to being falsified nor can it be even used in science formations leading to anything useful, and this is a further demarcation of science from pseudo-science, not that they even have any science in the first place. Fail.
22. The proof is in the pudding and they have none to show and so there is nothing there to be even concerned with at all. Baking failure.
Total failure.
Yes please!
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
How could somebody "reject theism" while simultaneously continuing to believe that "God" exists? That looks like a contradiction. If somebody believes that 'God' exists, then he or she would seem to be a theist simply by definition.
Assholism is assholism. It doesn't suddenly smell like a rose when it's an atheist asshole.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I agree. Anthony Hopkins can believe anything that he likes and express his opinion about it. I strongly support his right to do that. That doesn't mean that I need to agree with what he believes. In this case, I don't.
Maybe, I'm not sure what it is. We also need to remember that while 'faith' is taken to be a special virtue within the Christian tradition, it might not appear quite so virtuous outside that tradition.
Sure, everybody does. But that doesn't mean that all objects of faith are equally well-justified.
No, I don't agree with that.
Probably a lot depends on how we are interpreting the word 'God'. 'A transcendent power'? It probably doesn't take very much faith to believe in something as vague as that. 'Yahweh from the Bible' or 'Allah from the Quran'? Far more specific claims that require a lot more faith. The more conceptual details we pile on, the more faith it takes to believe that all those details are true.
Or not.
@Yazata --
That's a false dichotomy, there are more than just those two options. Remaining neutral or open to evidence are two of those options you omitted.
So when theists had not only the ability to speak up but the power to rule uncontested for thousands of years they roasted us alive and chopped us to bits. Now that we finally have the ability to speak up we're suddenly the assholes? Explain to me, exactly please, how this works, because I just don't get it. All the so-called "militant" atheists have done is write a few books and give speeches. They haven't called for anyone's rights to be taken away or argued that they are inherently inferior because of their beliefs(even Hitchens doesn't go that far) and they've never called for anyone's death. How, exactly, are we being assholes?
That's a false dichotomy, there are more than just those two options. Remaining neutral or open to evidence are two of those options you omitted.
So when theists had not only the ability to speak up but the power to rule uncontested for thousands of years they roasted us alive and chopped us to bits. Now that we finally have the ability to speak up we're suddenly the assholes? Explain to me, exactly please, how this works, because I just don't get it. All the so-called "militant" atheists have done is write a few books and give speeches. They haven't called for anyone's rights to be taken away or argued that they are inherently inferior because of their beliefs(even Hitchens doesn't go that far) and they've never called for anyone's death. How, exactly, are we being assholes?
I've seen it said Belief kills. Untrue. People who wish to kill find a reason then twist it to fit what they want to do. Religon is one of the easiest to do so with. And I am sorry to say but Atheism is a religon just as much as christianity or Hindusim. It's a set of beliefs.
Be as sorry as you like. You're also incorrect to say it.
Wrong. It is, by definition, a lack of belief in god(s).
It's that simple.
Does it take a lot of faith on your part to not believe in Xenu? Zeus? Jesus? FSM?
Actually in the realms of Science both Theism and Atheism is nothing more than a hypothesis or Belief.
We simply do not have enough evidence to confirm atheism. First of all have you analyzed the entire universe? Hell have you even amalyzed your entire continent? Do you know absolutely everything about every being in the unvierse, let alone your own town? If you can't answer yes to every question then you claims that you have founf no evidence of a God is pointless. It's like standing in Death Valley and commenting that you find no evidence of penguins being real.
Second while there is no hard evidence of a God,, of any type. We do have anecdoctal evidence. Now again in Science unless disproven by physical evidence anecdoctal evidence does lend some credibility. Of course it is in itself not a proof of anything. So again it like claiming you know all about Penguins from watching Happy Feet.
In the end Atheism is as much a belief system as any religion. Anybody who claims otherwise better be equipped to prove they know everything about everything.
@LoRaan --
The bullshit, it floweth like a river.
I don't need to know everything to know that something is wrong. When someone posits an omnipotent being I don't even need to look for it in order to reject it because omnipotence is an impossible trait, such a being simply can not exist in a logical universe(or even touching a logical universe). Further claims can be rejected because they are either self-refuting(a benevolent god who created evil) or are inconsistent with the world that we observe around us(every single theistic god claim can be put here).
Beyond even that though, if someone tells me that god exists and then offers up no evidence, then it is not a belief requiring faith to reject their claim. They have not fulfilled their burden of proof, and neither has the theist who uses "evidence" which has already been falsified(the efficacy of prayer) or adequately explained by science through naturalistic means(near death experiences). Again, any claim which can be made without evidence can be rejected without evidence. No faith or belief required.
No we don't. Every single bit of anecdotal evidence for a god not only can be countered by anecdotal evidence against god(leaving us right where we started) but they all have naturalistic explanations which are infinitely more parsimonious. Even our naturalistic explanations for the origin of life and the origin of the universe are more parsimonious than "god did it". For starters we don't have to explain god as well.
But if you think that you've got some evidence, anecdote or otherwise, that I can't give you a naturalistic explanation for then be my guest and bring them up. But I highly doubt that you do, I've been in this game a long time and it's very unlikely that you have anything I haven't seen and rebutted before. Still, I love a challenge.
You know, for someone who talks about science a lot, on a science site no less, you sure don't know a lot about science.
This might be true in medical science maybe, but even that is iffy. However, in no realm of science will testimony be enough to establish an existence claim or even lend it credence, that's just not the way that science works. For an existence claim to be established nothing less than observation(direct or indirect) will suffice. All else is a fart in the wind.
Especially not when we already have naturalistic explanations for the phenomena in question.
For some it is, though they are an almost nonexistent minority(I've only ever met one). For most atheists though this is pure tripe on a bike. It takes no belief to reject a claim for which there is no evidence, it takes pure faith to accept one. Besides, you didn't actually answer my question, what are the common beliefs that atheists share that makes them a religion. Because even if you count all atheists as having a belief in no gods(which is a gross miscalculation and mischaracterization on your part) then that's still one belief, not enough for it to be classed as a religion.
Case in point, buddhists are, by and large, atheists. They don't believe in any gods at all. There are atheists who believe that no gods exist, in spirits, ghosts, ESP, homeopathy, anti-vax BS, and all sorts of woo-woo. Literally the only trait that all atheists share is that they don't accept the claims of theism. A rare few merely take it a bit farther than that.
Again, the BS is flowing like a river here. Like I said, you don't need to know everything to know that something is wrong, applying a little logic is usually enough to figure it out. However, you do seem to be laboring under the delusion that absence of evidence is never evidence of absence, and this is just incorrect. Absence of evidence is usually not evidence of absence, unless the evidence is supposed to be there, as is the case with theistic god claims.
The bullshit, it floweth like a river.
I don't need to know everything to know that something is wrong. When someone posits an omnipotent being I don't even need to look for it in order to reject it because omnipotence is an impossible trait, such a being simply can not exist in a logical universe(or even touching a logical universe). Further claims can be rejected because they are either self-refuting(a benevolent god who created evil) or are inconsistent with the world that we observe around us(every single theistic god claim can be put here).
Beyond even that though, if someone tells me that god exists and then offers up no evidence, then it is not a belief requiring faith to reject their claim. They have not fulfilled their burden of proof, and neither has the theist who uses "evidence" which has already been falsified(the efficacy of prayer) or adequately explained by science through naturalistic means(near death experiences). Again, any claim which can be made without evidence can be rejected without evidence. No faith or belief required.
No we don't. Every single bit of anecdotal evidence for a god not only can be countered by anecdotal evidence against god(leaving us right where we started) but they all have naturalistic explanations which are infinitely more parsimonious. Even our naturalistic explanations for the origin of life and the origin of the universe are more parsimonious than "god did it". For starters we don't have to explain god as well.
But if you think that you've got some evidence, anecdote or otherwise, that I can't give you a naturalistic explanation for then be my guest and bring them up. But I highly doubt that you do, I've been in this game a long time and it's very unlikely that you have anything I haven't seen and rebutted before. Still, I love a challenge.
You know, for someone who talks about science a lot, on a science site no less, you sure don't know a lot about science.
This might be true in medical science maybe, but even that is iffy. However, in no realm of science will testimony be enough to establish an existence claim or even lend it credence, that's just not the way that science works. For an existence claim to be established nothing less than observation(direct or indirect) will suffice. All else is a fart in the wind.
Especially not when we already have naturalistic explanations for the phenomena in question.
For some it is, though they are an almost nonexistent minority(I've only ever met one). For most atheists though this is pure tripe on a bike. It takes no belief to reject a claim for which there is no evidence, it takes pure faith to accept one. Besides, you didn't actually answer my question, what are the common beliefs that atheists share that makes them a religion. Because even if you count all atheists as having a belief in no gods(which is a gross miscalculation and mischaracterization on your part) then that's still one belief, not enough for it to be classed as a religion.
Case in point, buddhists are, by and large, atheists. They don't believe in any gods at all. There are atheists who believe that no gods exist, in spirits, ghosts, ESP, homeopathy, anti-vax BS, and all sorts of woo-woo. Literally the only trait that all atheists share is that they don't accept the claims of theism. A rare few merely take it a bit farther than that.
Again, the BS is flowing like a river here. Like I said, you don't need to know everything to know that something is wrong, applying a little logic is usually enough to figure it out. However, you do seem to be laboring under the delusion that absence of evidence is never evidence of absence, and this is just incorrect. Absence of evidence is usually not evidence of absence, unless the evidence is supposed to be there, as is the case with theistic god claims.
Wrong again.
One more time: atheism is a lack of belief.
Atheism doesn't need "confirming". It's a LACK of belief.
Wrong. What belief is involved in atheism?
As opposed to, say, you? Who appears to know nothing about anything...
What do you desire, when you lie awake at 3AM, again, if not confirmation?
Sleep, mostly.
Confirmation of what?
Certainly not "confirmation" of my lack of belief in god.
Why should I want confirmation of that?
I don't exactly believe that in the first place.