Are atheists afraid of judgement?

Originally posted by The MISTER
Something doesn't come from nothing.

To which something and which nothing are you referring?

Originally posted by The MISTER
Treating people the way that you want to be treated is the right thing to do.

I can understand that, as long as you realize it seems to be something to which you adhere only in theory.

Originally posted by The MISTER
Show appreciation for the things you appreciate.

Expressing ourselves is certainly a most human concept.

However, why do you feel these are concepts that humanity could not have figured out on its own? The first one is tricky, the other two seem like a pretty rational conclusion reached by any given human being. Why do these simple concepts need the mythology to which you subscribe in order to exist? Why muddy moral waters with the hateful rhetoric found in so much of the bible? Why subscribe to those parts of it with the same sort of reverence with which you do the more fun, fair parts?

Originally posted by 753
why not?

Originally posted by skekUng
To which something and which nothing are you referring?

I can understand that, as long as you realize it seems to be something to which you adhere only in theory.

Expressing ourselves is certainly a most human concept.

However, why do you feel these are concepts that humanity could not have figured out on its own? The first one is tricky, the other two seem like a pretty rational conclusion reached by any given human being. Why do these simple concepts need the mythology to which you subscribe in order to exist? Why muddy moral waters with the hateful rhetoric found in so much of the bible? Why subscribe to those parts of it with the same sort of reverence with which you do the more fun, fair parts?

As far as treating others the way I want to be treated.... I always do my best. Personally I want people to be sincere and straightforward with me. Political correctness can insult my intelligence sometimes and is "sugar-coating" in many cases so I don't do it much. I hate being patronized as if I can't deal with the reality of situations so I won't waste anyones time pretending as if I'm too smart for other people to understand. That's why I try to refrain from in between the line insults and/or sarcastic remarks. I don't mind being picked on so I'll pick some myself. Bottom line I can agree to disagree with people but I'm always interested in finding out if I'm the one that's wrong. So I'll expose what I think to harsh critique and deal with the conclusion realistically.

I have come to a conclusion. When you said that the other two are pretty rational conclusions that any given human can reach I agreed with that idea. I believe that if you burn every book and say that religion is outlawed, 5000 years from now more people should agree on those ideas.

Lastly the only fair way for me to look at the whole God/gods idea is from the perspective of a person born 7-8000 years ago who knew nothing of reading or writing but pondered this alone.

Originally posted by The MISTER
Because nothing comes from nothing. Something comes from something else. We can understand the idea of something and nothing mainly because barring life after death we have to assume that nothing is what we will be thinking after we die.

Originally posted by The MISTER
Because nothing comes from nothing. Something comes from something else.

You're contradicted by scientific studies. What initially appears to be common sense is not always the best starting point when trying to debate abstract sciences, though it usually holds sway with the scientifically uninformed.

Originally posted by The MISTER
Because nothing comes from nothing. Something comes from something else.

Intuitive but actually untrue.

We can even test this!

If you take two thin metal plates, strip them of any charge, place them in a vacuum and move them to within a few tens nanometers they will pull together. It's called the Casmir effect. Because they are uncharged it can't be magnetic, gravity is too weak (this one was specifically calculated by experimentalists just to be sure) and the other forces in the universe don't reach far enough.

So what could be making them move?

Virtual photons. You probably remember from school that light has different wave lengths. Radio waves can be a mile long, UV waves are smaller than the cells in your body. A man named Paul Dirac did some math which showed that in quantum mechanics all different wavelengths of light should be appearing an vanishing around us all the time, canceling out each others effects. It's called the vacuum energy or zero point energy.

But remember the difference in sizes. When you hold the plates 50 nanometers apart the radio waves can't fit inside, even the UV waves can't fit inside. The vacuum energy between the plates becomes much lower and the huge numbers of virtual photons outside bump into the plates so hard that they they're pushed together! (imagine hundreds of shoppers waiting outside a mall trying to get in)

So not only does something come out of nothing according to our theories but it can be proven. And it's really cool.

ah, if it isn't my old nemesis, high school physics

That's a bit more advanced than high school physics.

not the parts that confuse me 😉

Originally posted by The MISTER
Lastly the only fair way for me to look at the whole God/gods idea is from the perspective of a person born 7-8000 years ago who knew nothing of reading or writing but pondered this alone.

Are you absolutely certain this is how you want to wrap up your thesis on your perspective? I mean, when you think about it, you're admittedly and willfully no further away from the conclusions reached by ancient man of 7000 years ago. When do you think god will get around to actually doing the sequal to the Bible?

Originally posted by Digi
You're contradicted by scientific studies. What initially appears to be common sense is not always the best starting point when trying to debate abstract sciences, though it usually holds sway with the scientifically uninformed.

King Kandy stated that nothingness is not supported by scientific study.

Symmetric chaos states that something coming from nothing can be proven with an experiment.

If I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are both doctors in the field of physics, I would still have a dilemma. Add some more highly intelligent minds that have different viewpoints and you will have disagreements that are more intelligent perhaps, but disagreements nonetheless.

The common sense approach to something vs nothing.... I'll try to present it in a way that shows that I've put fresh ideas to it.

Infinity must exist and it seems to be rational to assume that non-existence would be more consistent with infinity. This idea: " nothing ever happened, nothing is happening, and nothing is going to happen. Nothing existed, exists, or ever will exist.

The alternative idea: Something happened, Something is happening, and something is going to happen introduces a different outlook on the infinity that must exist. Something happened stretches back before the big bang. We can surmise that time as we understand it began at the big bang but something was occurring before it as nothingness is not supported by the existence that we have and the evidence that something is happening. Something will happen also supports infinity as we know it. Nothingness is ejected from our realization of the future.

Conclusion: Something and nothing do not co-exist naturally. Nothing comes from nothing indefinitely. Something comes from something indefinitely.Something will never produce nothing scientifically. Likewise nothing would never produce something. 789,879,678 trillion human years ago something existed. That many human years into the future and something will exist. The problem then becomes the question of what the initial something was as it exists on an infinite plane, and that plane being something that we have overwhelming evidence of when the future is discussed.

I do want to say that I am not delusional and admittedly not a scientist, I'm just extremely skeptical about the something that existed before the big bang being dead/inanimate/non-sentient.

Originally posted by The MISTER
If I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are both doctors in the field of physics, I would still have a dilemma. Add some more highly intelligent minds that have different viewpoints and you will have disagreements that are more intelligent perhaps, but disagreements nonetheless.

...

Conclusion: Something and nothing do not co-exist naturally. Nothing comes from nothing indefinitely. Something comes from something indefinitely.Something will never produce nothing scientifically. Likewise nothing would never produce something. 789,879,678 trillion human years ago something existed. That many human years into the future and something will exist. The problem then becomes the question of what the initial something was as it exists on an infinite plane, and that plane being something that we have overwhelming evidence of when the future is discussed.

I do want to say that I am not delusional and admittedly not a scientist, I'm just extremely skeptical about the something that existed before the big bang being dead/inanimate/non-sentient.

so, you dismiss, entirely, what is a fairly well established physical phenomenon? what alternate theory of zero point energy do you presume is true then?

this is really no better than saying "I don't like these results, therefore they are incorrect, because I'm a skeptic!"

Originally posted by skekUng
Are you absolutely certain this is how you want to wrap up your thesis on your perspective? I mean, when you think about it, you're admittedly and willfully no further away from the conclusions reached by ancient man of 7000 years ago. When do you think god will get around to actually doing the sequal to the Bible?

Originally posted by inimalist
so, you dismiss, entirely, what is a fairly well established physical phenomenon? what alternate theory of zero point energy do you presume is true then?

this is really no better than saying "I don't like these results, therefore they are incorrect, because I'm a skeptic!"

Originally posted by The MISTER
If I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are both doctors in the field of physics, I would still have a dilemma. Add some more highly intelligent minds that have different viewpoints and you will have disagreements that are more intelligent perhaps, but disagreements nonetheless.

Are you trying to say there are people who contest the existence of the Casmir effect? It's been done, repeatedly. This isn't some hypothetical, it's a physical thing that happens.

Originally posted by The MISTER
--bizarre nonsense--

Uh, yeah, sure.

Originally posted by The MISTER
I do want to say that I am not delusional and admittedly not a scientist, I'm just extremely skeptical about the something that existed before the big bang being dead/inanimate/non-sentient.

You can't be that skeptical about it if you think that it was the Biblical God.

And yes, we don't know what happened before the Big Bang but we do know that the common sense rule the "nothing begets nothing" is only true at the macro level, when all the effects average together to be indistinguishable from nothing. It's not a valid argument in this case.

Now you might argue that the pre-universe didn't play by the rules of quantum mechanics, but at the same time why should we think it played by the rules of human common sense? And if it was a world where nothing ever came of nothing then you still have to explain where the universe came from, if you credit it to god then you have to explain where god came from.

Originally posted by The MISTER
I think that it is unfair to use recent texts to discuss the rationality of men and women who had no access to these texts and perhaps had no access to literacy at all.

Their views are perhaps not as informed as ours but not less important. A guy like me believes they have souls that are just as valuable as yours and mine, so I must include their perspective or otherwise a biased view is unavoidable. In short I don't believe that any books are necessary to have faith in a maker. I've learned alot about the ideas that support faith in no maker. I've been interested from the beginning in why each feels the way that they do, especially the intelligent/scientific community.

It seems unfair because it's not relevant; this is why I was not addressing so much their ability to comprehend, but our own.

Informed isn't the point. Rational is. I'm certain they had as much faith and doubt as we do today, we simply are in a much better position to explain ideas and concepts without all the intertwining of arbirary morality and mythology as explaination.

If you are so certain that no books are necessary, then why does your faith in what you believe to be the maker center on one book and the processes and procedures and mythology found in it?

This post is an example of how you twist words and concepts to present your perspective as common sense, when in reality you've ascribed some measure of faith on those who need none and managed to contradict so much of what you've said in earlier posts. There's no real faith in your position, only a rule book to which you point when it suits your argument.

Originally posted by The MISTER
I'm not dismissing anything about the zero point energy theory (even though SC did explain it well) I would just ask questions about the theory. Doesn't the theory suggest that these virtual particles are produced as a direct result of lights existence?

to the best of my reading of the introduction to the Wiki, no, it seems to just be a property of the universe that stuff comes from nothing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

Originally posted by The MISTER
Would they be popping in and out of existence if not for the waves of energy doing what they do?

if zero point energy exists at absolute zero, then I don't think the waves are necessary, no.

Originally posted by The MISTER
Also does this theory support King Kandy's suggestion that "Nothing" is only a human construct, it's existence unsupported by scientific study?

I don't know, that is both an avenue of physics and philosophy I'm not overly familiar with.

though, inarguably, what you or I concieve of when we think of "nothing" is, without doubt, a human construct. Whether the abstract concept is such a construct, or whether there is a nothing, so-to-speak, isn't something I can speak to.

However, thinking about it, I don't think your logic is really even consistent here.

You are claiming:

Nothing can come from nothing, except the prime mover, which defies human logic.

so... The first part of your statement is not absolute. At least one thing can come from nothing (the prime mover). Why, then, couldn't the universe itself come from nothing? What are the properties of God that make it able to defy human logic, but the creation of the universe not?

Basically, why are you privilaging the concept of "God" over the concept of "universe"? Why can one exist without an intelligent creator and come from nothing, while the other necessitates it?

Every argument you use to prove that the complexity of life and the universe implies an intelligent creator could be instantly used to suggest that there must be an intelligent creator of God. Seriously, what is the difference? a book? a cobbled together book over a thousand years old?

Originally posted by The MISTER
King Kandy stated that nothingness is not supported by scientific study.

Symmetric chaos states that something coming from nothing can be proven with an experiment.

I noticed in the link in inimalist's post that the zero point energy is finite. The wiki article kept repeating it plus it referred to debate among the scientific community about the reasons for the casmir effect. A fair question...Is the Casmir effect presented by the scientific community as evidence that something comes nothing?

Originally posted by skekUng
It seems unfair because it's not relevant; this is why I was not addressing so much their ability to comprehend, but our own.

Informed isn't the point. Rational is. I'm certain they had as much faith and doubt as we do today, we simply are in a much better position to explain ideas and concepts without all the intertwining of arbirary morality and mythology as explaination.

If you are so certain that no books are necessary, then why does your faith in what you believe to be the maker center on one book and the processes and procedures and mythology found in it?

This post is an example of how you twist words and concepts to present your perspective as common sense, when in reality you've ascribed some measure of faith on those who need none [b]and managed to contradict so much of what you've said in earlier posts. There's no real faith in your position, only a rule book to which you point when it suits your argument. [/B]