Atheist Q and A

You do not know that for sure. This is an assumption.

To talk of the weight of a ball (indenting the cushion) as a cause is meaningless. It's mass under acceleration and it's solidity arising out of quantum principles of electron spin would be more meaningful but of course then we are dealing now with a far more complex situation.

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.

I'm an atheist

Will we one day live in a secular world do you think?

It's not your bet to place. There are well defined probabilities, as Plantagenet Crown says, very unlikely things happen all the time.

Start from QED, all things follow, is what I am saying.

Yeah but in teh science, if God made a cushion wot he can't sit on then teh porridge would er... be something to do with teh ball. Or so it is according to Abraham or some other geezer. And some sheep.

Yes I know but I'm just saying I would think there's more chance of it going extinct at first.



Yeah I see what you mean cheers.

I think you misunderstood, he pointed out that one of the reasons behind Schrodinger's thought experiment was to make the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics look nonsensical. It's certainly a common view when people describe the history behind the thought experiment.




Ok I think we are just talking at each other now, rather than addressing points.

My central point about causation was that you simply accept the straight forward direction of causality, and this assumption is a cornerstone in your points. Take this assumption away and it affects your entire argument. The question of causation, as I argued in my previous post, is a metaphysical question. If you want to argue that it's answerable by science then it seems that you restrict yourself essentially to a Humean view of causation, but perhaps you could argue a few more options. It's clear within the contemporary literature that the direction of causality is a live topic.

With regards to philosophy and QM, i can't see how you can even start to address the true physical interpretation of it without answer philosophical questions, such as epistemological and ontological status for example. The point of mentioning Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was to give an example of how such questions of Epistemology and ontology are inherent in quantum mechanics and the question of causation.

Anyway, it's been a good talk but I can't see us talking the same language anytime soon.




Posted from TSR Mobile

I'm an atheist

Will we one day live in a secular world do you think?

No one ****ing cares, you pretentious pseudo-intellectual narcissists.

Just seen someone quote this post above. I'm intrigued as to whether other atheists might be as pessimistic as I am. But when I look at the world, I see the countries where atheism and secularism are present undergoing demographic declines. Whereas there seems to be a demographic explosion occurring in the more religious nations. Plus with the spread of more extreme interpretations of Christianity and Islam on the rise, I can only seeing things regressing and is something that is currently taking place right now.

Yeah, I'm not hopeful at all. Sometimes I imagine people of the future shaking their heads saying "can you believe there was a time when a few people convinced themselves that there was no God?!".....

I think this is just a classic example of the friction between scientists and philosophers.Yes, I agree then that Schrodinger challenged the CI with this thought experiment. But I still see actual science as the road to one day having an intuitive understanding of what appears to be uncertainty as opposed to a purely mathematical one.


I promise, I do not misunderstand you, nor do I deal in assumptions that can be switched in and out of the theories I have mentioned. I am also not talking at you, I genuinely disagree with some things you say and also think that you may have a misunderstanding of the physics and therefore it's compatibility with philosophy.

I have the issues;

1. Philosophers talk of simultaneity. It does not exist. It is observer dependant.

2. Philosophers discuss the possibility/concept of effect before cause. They casually extrapolate this thought experiment where it doesn't belong. It doesn't belong anywhere in science strictly speaking.

You keep comparing me to Hume, but is it not obvious that I am a Wittgenstein fan?

In physics, for every inertial observer there is no event that can affect past events. Causal influences cannot transfer information faster that the speed of light in spacetime because timelike intervals separate the two in spacetime. So it is always cause then effect. However as I've already said, labelling anything as such is hugely problematic. This is the problem philosophers are doomed to have. Physicists see processes of interaction, in time and so the labels become redundant.Therefore ideas of effect before cause in philosophy are only loosely based on real physics.

This is all very non Hume like, from the way you describe him.

Effect before cause only has mathematical application in areas such as interpreting the implications of E^2 in Einstein's mass energy equivalence equation and it's implication of antimatter, or in understanding abstract spaces like closed timelike curves.Causality and the philosophy thereof is barely useful in understanding physics.

Just seen someone quote this post above. I'm intrigued as to whether other atheists might be as pessimistic as I am. But when I look at the world, I see the countries where atheism and secularism are present undergoing demographic declines. Whereas there seems to be a demographic explosion occurring in the more religious nations. Plus with the spread of more extreme interpretations of Christianity and Islam on the rise, I can only seeing things regressing and is something that is currently taking place right now.

Just seen someone quote this post above. I'm intrigued as to whether other atheists might be as pessimistic as I am. But when I look at the world, I see the countries where atheism and secularism are present undergoing demographic declines.

Whereas there seems to be a demographic explosion occurring in the more religious nations. Plus with the spread of more extreme interpretations of Christianity and Islam on the rise, I can only seeing things regressing and is something that is currently taking place right now.

Why the interest in faith and spirituality?

As I said, I don't think you are really addressing any of the points that I have made, bar theories on cause and effect, which you have repeatedly argued for the general direction of causality. Although I will point out that you seem to be wrong when you said the possibility of other directions of causation don't 'belong anywhere in science strictly speaking'. Physics was actually one argument in the 20th century for backward causation. Wheeler-Feynman theory of radiation, Feynman's tachyon theory and his theory of positrons as electrons moving backwards in time, and de Beauregard's “quantum handshake” explanation of the violation of the Bell inequalities. There's where all used as examples of what could be backward causation. Today, they have little credence in supporting backward causation. But I'm not arguing they are true, but to let you know that philosophical discussions on causation certainly have been involved in science.

As a side note, I think everything you described would still perfectly fit within the parameters of Hume's argument. Though I'm certainly not going to tell you what you philosophical views are. I know little of Wittgenstein I'm afraid! Anyway, I have enjoyed the discussion.


Posted from TSR Mobile

That's very interesting considering Atheism/Agnosticism is the highest growing demographics in the last century. I tried searching that on Google that, but mostly found many religious apologetics websites "claiming" that atheism is in decline. However, I did find this pew research article (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/03/why-people-with-no-religion-are-projected-to-decline-as-a-share-of-the-worlds-population/), which is respectable. Their argument seemed to be centered around the fact that the countries with high proportion of atheists have low birth rates. This is a fair analysis but it ignores why people turn atheists in the first place, its not a race where you can only be born an atheist, so future demographic estimation may not be accurate.
Furthermore, another reason they argue is the estimated population growth of mainstream religions like Catholicism and Islam. Now for Islam, it is true that Muslim-maj countries had very high birthrate in the past few decades, as a result you have a huge young Muslim population (in Iran and Pakistan for e.g.) which is one of basis for population estimation. However, fertility rates in Islamic countries have declined (and trending towards western countries), and there nothing to say that these young people will stay Muslims (or at least fundamental Sharia-loving Muslims) later on. Look at the rising reform movement in Iran, in which the youth population have large factor.
For Catholicism, I don't know whether the surveys are accurate. It depends on how people count a Catholic. Richard Dawkins addressed this vaguely in his speech against Pope Ratzinger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_0kFU7IfPM), a lot of the time the Church uses Baptismal figures (people who are Baptised), not necessarily who are still Catholics. Now one can assume that a respected polling organisation like PewResearch would take that into account but even if it did, birth rates says very little about future Demographics estimations of Catholism and hence atheism/unaffiliated. The higher birthrates in Catholic also seem to be from Sub-Saharan African and Latin-American countries (which are also trending towards "western" countries).

If the secularist/reformist "movements" in countries like Iran, Bangladesh, Ireland, Turkey (before Erdogen) show that having high birth rates, a majority religion and a younger population of a religious sect (compared to non-religion) is not necessarily a justification for saying atheism (or secularism) is in decline.



Surely that could mean "moderate" Christians and Muslims denounce it as result?

Now, a lot of demographics changes seem to be about population growth, not population de-conversion/conversion rates. It is also possible to an atheist/secularist and still be "affiliated" to a religion. It is also possible to be an atheist/secularist and still be religious (although that happens in relatively rare occasions, so that's negligible).