Atheist Q and A

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I agree. But only considering it was alive and had the necessary environmental conditions to grow and replicate. Hence, if this did happen I would place my bet on the cell going extinct many times before giving rise to sufficiently more.

P.S. Didn't you just say it 'is' likely and you tried it in a lab, but now there's a maybe?

Well the fact we're here and that thousands of other living things exist proves the cell didn't become extinct, rather it survived. Once it developed RNA and DNA then it could duplicate and pass on genetic information.

I don't think you've understood my point about the lab. I have made the molecules in prebiotically plausible conditions proving they can be formed, meaning they could also have formed on the early Earth.

Reply 381

champ_mc99

Original post by Plantagenet Crown

No I understood what you meant. But I was referring to the chance of this happening on its own.

Anyways what I meant was it must have suitable conditions for the cell to duplicate. And we know climate was different back them. So the very first cell to be made may not have been able to start a colony. It 'might' have taken a few tries. Don't know if you get what I mean.

Reply 382

Plantagenet Crown

Original post by champ_mc99

If a cell has DNA and RNA then it can duplicate. Yes, you're right, it may have taken a few tries but I don't think that's the majority consensus though.

Reply 383

frankieboy

Original post by Sciatic

You got it. There's no way to actual prove anything.

Legions upon legions of scientists over centuries and centuries of time coupled with an unimaginable amount of controlled experimentation and results-driven data would strongly and logically disagree with you here.

Original post by Sciatic

You just gotta have trust and believe (faith).

Trust is very different from belief. Which in turn is very different from faith.

Reply 384

frankieboy

Original post by Scrappy-coco

Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty

FTW!

Reply 385

Copperknickers

Original post by Scrappy-coco

Contradictions can be perfectly fine in history, and we can still piece together the big picture. [...] Historians differ between the big picture and the details.You'll find historians expecting apparent contradictions and divergences in the details. Such discrepancies do not affect the overall picture unless the contradictions are real (as opposed to apparent) and are so extensive that they undermine all of our sources.

If the only source you had for John Smith's death was a madman yelling:

"Behold! John Smith was killed on Wednesday by an eagle with the head of a badger, and then two small elves danced upon his corpse and sang songs about the great war between the moles and the proud wildcats,"

Then you'd be within your rights to disregard everything he said in favour of a better source. So when a similar madman claims that the son of God came down to earth, turned water into wine, healed lepers with his hands and raised people from the dead, and then was himself raised from the dead and taken up into the sky, you'll excuse me if I don't take his testimony too seriously as historical evidence.

The apparent contradiction between Matthew and Luke on the genealogy of Jesus.

Matthew 1:16 - . . . And Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Luke 3:23 - Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about 30 years of age, being the son of Joseph (as was supposed), son of Heli . . .

The assumption here is that both accounts are giving ancestry of Jospeh's family.

Perfect plausible response - the assumption is false and Luke gives a genealogy through the ancestry of Mary. A few clues can be alluded to support this.case. In the Greek, it does not say "son of Heli" but simply "of Heli". The word "son" is not repeated after the first usage. More importantly, the location of the qualifying phrase "as was supposed" and the omission of the possessive definitive article before Joseph's name make it clear that Joseph is not part of the lineal descent being given. There's a parenthesis and there's actually a case where Herodotus gives almost the same Greek phrase in a similar context.

That is very arguable. The Greek says:

'Kai autos én Iésous arkhomenos hósei etón triakonta, ón huios, hós enomizeto, Ióséph, tou 'Éli...

"And this Jesus, who began his ministry at the age of 30, was the son, as it was assumed, (of) Joseph, of 'Eli"

My suggestion would be that at some point, possibly after the Council of Nicaea (I don't know the history of the manuscript so I may be wrong) the 'as was assumed' (hós enomizeto) was interpolated into the text to make it clear that Jesus was not Joseph's actual son. So it is possible that the original text simply read:

'Kai autos én Iésous arkhomenos hósei etón triakonta, ón huios tou Ióséph, tou 'Éli...

However when the new phrase was added, it would have appeared as:

'Kai autos én Iésous arkhomenos hósei etón triakonta, ón huios, hós enomizeto, tou Ióséph, tou 'Éli...

which when written 'scriptura continua' (i.e. without breaks between words, as was the custom in the ancient world) would look like this:

'kaiautoséniésousarkhomenoshóseietóntriakontaónhuioshósenomizetotouióséphtouhéli'

It is very common for mistakes to be introduced in manuscripts when one word ends with the same letters as the next word starts. A 'tou' before 'Ioseph' could easily have been deleted, leaving the very ambiguous sentence that remains to us. Just a theory, and even then it would be entirely possible that the 'tou Héli' could be translated as 'son-in-law of Eli' rather than 'son of'.

Indeed I don't know what the whole song and dance about definite articles and misplaced parentheses is in aid of, since the above is all you would need to argue that it is a genealogy of Mary and not Joseph.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 386

TheRealLifeBane

How on Earth was I an atheist?!?!?!

It is simply illogical.

Reply 387

Scrappy-coco

Original post by frankieboy

Strange.

Merriam Webster defines faith as a trust in something.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

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Reply 388

Kholmes1

Original post by Leviathan1741

We can't really be 100% sure that there is no god, however we can still lack belief in one, hence agnostic atheism (not believing in god but not claiming to know that god doesn't exist) :smile:

I think thats what I would describe myself as tbh. Im agnostic, because no one can really know if he exists. But I don't "Believe" in him even if he is real.

Reply 389

chemting

Original post by HumzaAsad97

You can make empirical tests for light. The trust in empiricism is faith based

Depends what you mean by that... I guess sure I could test a hypothesis by empirical means.

To test a hypothesis, you have to test the likeliness of an "event" happening if your original hypothesis is true, and the likeliness of an "event" happening if its not true. The likeliness of the first instance must be much greater than the likeliness of the second instance if we are to accept the hypothesis (and reject the null).

Let's put that into context... I have a hypothesis and say that light is a particle and I use, for example, the photoelectric effect to show that...(Note that the photoelectric effect is that metals emit electrons when light shines upon it, and it shows light has quantized energy which is transferred to the electron).
Let's point a "light source" at a metal, have an "electron detector" opposite (the metal) and measure the outcome. If light was a wave, the intensity of light will effect the amount of electrons ejected. Now let's pretend we are in 1880s (when everyone thought light was not a particle) doing this experiment, and we find that intensity has no effect. Now what is the likelihood of that happening if light was a particle, and what is the likelihood of that happening if light was not a particle. We find that it cannot happen if light was only a wave, and it is very likely to happen if light was a particle as well. So the probability of 1 is very much larger than the probability of 2. So we got to a conclusion by empirical means.

Now let's apply it to testimonies, so there is a patient who needs a life-saving operation and the doctors aren't optimistic. The patient decides to go ahead with it and s/he and the respective family prayed and did their thing. The surgeons then started the operation, which was going badly. They were losing the patient (and the beeps were going faster...) but family kept on praying. Miraculously the operation as successful. Later, one of the nurses claimed that she "saw a light in the shape of Jesus". On related note, let's pretend that this happened in Texas, and not Sweden. Now if my hypothesis is "Jesus exists and he helped"... how likely is it that the patient would have survived if Jesus in fact does exist within us, and what is likelihood of the patient surviving if Jesus does not exist and its all hogwash. I'm sure you find that the probability are equal (or similar). So, of course you can derive a conclusion that "Jesus exists" by this empiricism, but you are in serious risk of having a type 1 error.

You can argue the flaws of empiricism (vs rationalism) and the scientific method, but you can't say empiricism based on testimonies and empiricism of the scientific method are equal. One is based on apophenia and confirmation bias, and the other is built around avoiding that as much as possible.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 390

Racoon

Original post by frankieboy

Everything is multi-dimensional. I don't think it's really possible to look at something in one dimension.

What do you mean "spiritual"?

God is 'outside of the box' with regards to our thinking about who and what He is.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/xdimgod.html

What I mean is we are mind, body and spirit, not just body.

Reply 391

Ascend

Original post by Scrappy-coco

Strange.

Merriam Webster defines faith as a trust in something.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

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From your link:

a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

Reply 392

Scrappy-coco

Original post by Ascend

And your point is?

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Reply 393

frankieboy

Original post by Racoon

God is 'outside of the box' with regards to our thinking about who and what He is.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/xdimgod.html

What I mean is we are mind, body and spirit, not just body.

How very convenient.

Also, the mind and the spirit are the result of brainpower. Software, if you will. Contained within our brain. We are in fact just body.

Reply 394

frankieboy

Original post by Scrappy-coco

Strange.

Merriam Webster defines faith as a trust in something.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

I'll give you that one. Although it does seem that faith is a certain type of trust. Trust being the umbrella term.

Reply 395

Ascend

Original post by Scrappy-coco

And your point is?

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That, contrary to your misleading use of the MW definition in rebutting frankieboy, faith is indeed different to trust. Tentative and conditional trust versus complete trust (especially a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence or proof) are worlds apart.

Reply 396

Scrappy-coco

Original post by Ascend

How is it misleading when both the simple and full definitions state faith is a type of trust?

And your point wasn't consistent, if faith is different to trust then why are you describing it synonymously with tentative and Conditional trust? Unless you want to argue that isn't a type of trust? Then why describe it as such? Perhaps an email to the editors MW is in order! They've falsely defined faith as a type of trust :facepalm:

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Reply 397

Scrappy-coco

Original post by frankieboy

I'll give you that one. Although it does seem that faith is a certain type of trust. Trust being the umbrella term.

Yeh, don't worry though. Its becoming very common for people to try and redefine it without any allusions to trust. Not sure why.

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Reply 398

Ascend

Original post by Scrappy-coco

How is it misleading when both the simple and full definitions state faith is a type of trust?

Type of trust, not simply "trust in something" as you initially said.

And your point wasn't consistent, if faith is different to trust then why are you describing it synonymously with tentative and Conditional trust?

Because, again, the type of trust where faith typically goes (complete, certain, especially without evidence or proof) is very different to the type of trust we put in other things that is based on evidence, being conditional on the veracity of the evidence and therefore tentative and not absolutely fixed. This is the point. They are complete opposites in that regard.

Reply 399

The Epicurean

Original post by Ascend

Type of trust, not simply "trust in something" as you initially said.

Because, again, the type of trust where faith typically goes (complete, certain, especially without evidence or proof) is very different to the type of trust we put in other things that is based on evidence, being conditional on the veracity of the evidence and therefore tentative and not absolutely fixed. This is the point. They are complete opposites in that regard.

A lot of religious people do claim to have proof or evidence of some sort. The other day I seen someone in the I-Soc state, after seeing a verse of the Quran, state how they cannot fathom how one could read the Quran and not believe it to be the word of God. For them, the Quran is proof that God exists. Others may talk of being touched by the Holy Spirit or some such event.

Ultimately though, maybe you might disagree with me here, I don't believe in doxastic voluntarism. I don't believe one can make themselves believe in something without evidence. For example, most kids will generally believe Santa does exist. They have quite good reason to believe this. Why would their parents lie? How is it they receive a present from Santa every year? Who eats the cookies and drinks the milk that is left out on Christmas eve? Maybe they have even seen Santa. So kids obviously don't believe in Santa for no reason.