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Only if it is necessary that both the universe and God be created. The universe with its one-dimensional timeline is pretty clear to have had an origin (with the big bang), it's unclear if it is necessary for an entity existing outside of time to be created.

That's rubbish. First of all, whether the universe has a "one-dimensional timeline" or whether this term even makes sense is not at all clear. Why the big bang occurred (if it did indeed occur: "all signs point to yes", as they say, but let's not forget we weren't there, so it's only our best current theory - and I'm using the word "theory" on purpose, full well realizing what it does and doesn't mean) is an interesting and very much open question, and waving your hands and saying "goddunnit" doesn't help.

Similarly, the part about god being an "entity existing outside of time" is just claptrap. What does "existing outside of time" even mean? You're not saying, and indeed, I think you don't know, either; you're just using a rhetoric device.

FWIW, all your argument here boils down to is a classical "god of the gaps", too. In the past, it was thought that god literally created Earth and all that in seven days; then people found out how it really happened (again, for all we know), and now god is just being pushed further back, as it were. Instead of having created the Earth, or the universe, he's only responsible for creating conditions surrounding the big bang and pushing the button anymore.

Beyond all this, your argument also fails to address one crucial question that many christians conveniently ignore: why christianity, why the christian god? If you assume for a moment that god really dunnit, then why was it the judeo-christian god? There are many creation myths in the world, and if you want to single out any as being more plausible than the others, you'll have to provide some sort of reasoning. You're not, though; you're pretending that there are only two possible choices, namely atheism and christianity.

In fact, why theism at all? Even if you were right, why would any of the attributes typically ascribed to god apply? The god in question, for all you know, might just as well have set in motion the big bang and then disappeared for all practical purposes, never interfering in the universe in any way. Jesus, just like all other prophets, would then just have been a lunatic: one with some good ideas about morality, certainly, but a lunatic nonetheless. Where is your argument to counter this? You have made none.

In other words, it's not an especially compelling analogy between the two.

It very much is. In fact, if you argue otherwise, then no offense, but you're either stupid or intellectually dishonest. You yourself have used an argument that goes like this: "1) everything needs a reason. 2) The universe is something. 3) Therefore the universe needs a reason", and then called that reason "god" (and conflated it with your judeo-christian god along the way). But it's entirely fair to apply this same reasoning to "god" afterwards, which is exactly what the GP did: if everything needs a reason, and god is something (read: not nothing), then god needs a reason, too.

It's obvious to see that this can be continued ad infinitum and does not provide any satisfactory answer to the questions at hand.

So obviously, there must be a flaw in the reasoning, but once there is, your own argument with which you concluded the existence of a reason for the universe also collapses like a house of cards. It might well be that there is a reason for the universe, but either you haven't demonstrated that there needs to be one, or you must accept that your argument can be applied to your god as well.

The main problem with most of the defenses of theism (that I've seen, anyway) is that they put the burden of proof on atheists to prove that no such thing as "God" exists. Which is, frankly, impossible. No, the burden of proof must rest with theists.

Unfortunately, all theists provide are circular logic (i.e. "faith"). It's quite easy to reason your way out of the necessary existence of a god. Not so easy to reason your way back.

No, you don't think theism is wrong, you think it is false. However, let's test your tolerance a little further. Is it ok if someone believes that it is their right to kill their wife if she makes them unhappy?

Sure, they are allowed to BELIEVE it, provided that they don't actually ACT on it. And acting on it includes using that belief to mentally abuse, threaten or oppress their wives, in addition to any actual physical assault. Are you suggesting that we need to be thought police to be a moral society? The dude may be a murderous douche in his own head, but if he's not acting on those beliefs, who cares? And, indeed, who would even know?

And I think that theism is both wrong(as in it is detrimental to private and public life) and it is false(there are no gods or other supernatural entities). However, if it's not having an impact on society, those beliefs are immaterial to me. You keep trying to paint me into a corner, and frankly, I don't even know what corner it is. I don't think that I've been in the least unclear in the fact that I'm not a relativist, but you keep beating on that horse.

No, you don't think theism is wrong, you think it is false. However, let's test your tolerance a little further. Is it ok if someone believes that it is their right to kill their wife if she makes them unhappy?

Tolerance is allowing something you believe is wrong. You don't believe that anything is wrong except for believing that something is wrong.

Actually, no. I believe that theism is wrong. It makes a lot of completely unsupported statements, and conditions people to accept faulty logic. I consider it to be foolish and unbecoming of a rational adult. That being said, I don't care if my neighbor holds those beliefs, as long as they are not using them to try to exert control over others. The same goes for other irrational beliefs. So, no, your attempt to paint me as a relativist is completely off base. I do believe that lots of beliefs are just flat out wrong, but I am not going to act as the thought police. You can believe whatever you like, even things which are obviously incorrect, and as long as you aren't trying to inflict your delusions on society, I'm content to ignore you.

Unlike you, I do not fear being wrong. "Wrong" is one of only two outcomes in a system of oppositional thinking, but it is the default and most probable outcome of most meaningful research and theory. In fact, most theories from which we develop applications have been inadequate and subsequently subsumed or supplanted by more accurate and useful theories with different dependencies. Look at the histories of medicine, mechanics, cosmology, chemistry, theism, justice, sociology, and any other field of endeavor for long lists of obsolete but at the time definitive and functional theories that rightly evoke "WTF?" today.

Being wrong and acknowledging that fact is the only way we arrive at new knowledge. Please join those of us working for the new science of tomorrow, while acknowledging the accomplishments of the past.

Knuth, and several hundred million other people of his time, invented and discovered all sorts of wonderful things. But to claim that no other discoveries can be made without using his inventions and discoveries implies that his work represents the final and correct summation about those particular aspects of the universe on which he worked.

Every human advance in history has been shown by further advances to be obsolete. Newton's theories were considered almost reality for 300 years, and continue to help us to generate reasonably good approximations of the physical world. But then relativity provided a much more accurate and powerful theory about the physical world without reference to Newton's kinematics, yet we do not consider that strange. We continue to use both for different purposes. But then again, we no longer practice blood-letting, nor burn witches, around which elaborate theories and self-consistent sciences were developed.

I take no issue with individuals worshipping particular texts; I simply prefer to live and explore the real world in addition to the models (however elegant) recorded in the cannon.

Why are you afraid of being wrong?

Deism is harmless. Theism is a deadly evil.

Spot. Fucking. On.

"deism is harmless. theism is deadly"

no.

people are deadly.

scientists generally lead comfortable lives. if you turned everyone into a scientists the world over, with the snap of your fingers, all 7 billion of us, then the playing field would be level, and that comfortable life goes away.

then you get to see 7 billion scientists behave much in the same manner that the rest of humanity has.

The problem is that most people are not 'Einsteinian' or 'Spinozan' deists, content that 'god' is some amorphous force out there. Most 'religious' people believe in divine revelation, which is the source of all the 'paltry' conceptions of divine environments, behaviors, and figures. And of course these divine revelations are not limited to descriptions, but include many imperatives at odds with each other and with secular society.

If we can't know 'god', fine, the problem is most religious people think that they know god, know what 'he' wants, and feel that they are justified above any structure of society whether that is law, culture, or common morality (genocide is bad, except when GOD does it or people are commanded by him to do it!) to act on 'his' imperatives as they conceive them to be.

Deism is harmless. Theism is a deadly evil.

But your religion, or any other religion is kosher, I take it. That would be my problem.

I don't have a religion, and the state shouldn't be discussing any religions with students. That's a personal issue that the government should not be involved in. Don't even start on the "atheism is a religion" crap either. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in theism. It's not an affirmative claim that there is no God of any kind, as that would be a ridiculous claim as well. Sure, there are some nutters that make that claim, but they can't support it with anything.

I'd prefer that any culturally relevant religion be teachable even in a public school. Again the Constitution is about freedom from oppression which is an inclusive, rather than exclusive, position. This point is subtle, I guess, but not at all a "does not follow" if you can try and overlook the nits and get to the meaning behind it.

I'm sure you would prefer that, but that would be the government giving preferential treatment to "culturally relevant" religions. Of course the religion that actually gets taught will be determined by whoever gets a majority on the school board, as we've seen in Texas lately, so it won't just be "culturally relevant" religions anyway. The only way to prevent one religion from getting preferential treatment over others is to not allow the government to get involved. Religion is a personal issue and keeping the government out of it is why we are still able to practice whatever religion we like today, as opposed to most other countries that are less free than we are to do that.

And even if I had done it stupidly, you can't compare a stupid little thing done on faith (like buying lottery tickets) with something as terrible as religion. Not quite on the same level, you know?

Do you have a lot of experience with how other people relate to religion? In my experience, there are many, many people for whom religion is more or less "a stupid little thing done on faith". They celebrate holidays (because they enjoy the social aspects), perhaps go a few times a year to pray in a church or synagogue. They choose to celebrate personal life changes likes births, coming to maturity, and marriages within a religious framework without any deep belief in the religion. Do you revile these people just as much as religious fanatics who, I agree, in the most part damage society by lobbying for ridiculous restrictions on others?

I ask because the impression I received from your posts in these and other threads was that, yes, you revile them just like the fanatics. I received the impression that your ability to grade how bad or good religion might be on a continuous scale was limited, and you were stuck in a false dichotomy with respect to religion (or, even more strangely to me, non-religious theism). Perhaps you need to be a bit more specific in your criticism of religion/theism rather than a blanket "Religion is bad. Bad, bad, bad. Evil."?

It would probably increase your audience in the long run if you would better characterize the particular things which are bad about religion and justify your grouchiness better.
 

Theism: deals with belief
Gnosticism: deals with knowledge

Agnostic atheist: I do not believe in any gods, but I don't think I can prove all possible gods non existence (most atheists - even Dawkins - fall into this category, because we acknowledge one could define "god" to be meaningless, yet impossible to prove/disprove)
Gnostic atheist: I do not believe in any gods, and I think I can prove any god presented as false
(few and far between are actually like this)

Gnostic theist: I believe in (a/some) god(s), and can prove his existence
(Descartes)
Gnostic Atheist: I believe in (a/some) god(s), but don't think I can prove his existence
(most believers)

>> 1. That the null hypothesis is that there is no deity. This is demonstrably false. The null hypothesis is that we don't know whether there is a deity or not. You don't actually know what a null hypothesis [wikipedia.org] is.

Actually I have a major in statistics and have in fact taught the statistical method at a university level, so I'm guessing that I'm familiar with the concept of a null hypothesis. What I did do is to overlook your invalid use of the term to foreshorten the argument, which was pure laziness. But never mind. You've attempted to game the statistical method. You've done this by proposing a hypothesis without a valid test.

To demonstrate the semantic trick that you are playing, let me apply the same trick:

I hypothesise that no deity exists. I sample, there is no evidence to support the hypothesis in the available data. Therefore the default hypothesis: that one or more deities exist, is proven.

Saying, "We don't know if there is a deity or not" is functionally equivalent to saying, "The null hypothesis -- there is no deity -- has not been disproven." "We don't know if there is a deity or not" isn't a hypothesis, much less a null one.

No it isn't, because observation is only a useful test of the things that are observable. If 100 years ago I had said "there are no extra solar planets" I would have been wrong. Extra solar planets existed despite the fact that we had no capacity to observe them.

Nobody has any obligation to convince me of anything, so long as they have no say in how I live my life. But to the extent that they want their beliefs about the will of God to influence the laws I have to obey, the material that gets taught to children, or anything else, then It. Is. On.

Firstly, the vast majority of people act out of self interest, and you know, we live thrown together with our shoulders rubbing, so other people trying to tell you how to live your life is inevitable. That is not a function of theism, it's a function of society, of living in a community. Notably, I don't have go far to find a book by Richard Dawkins which attempts to tell ME what I should believe and how I ought to conduct myself in society. And secondly, well, I'll just say that i wonder if you really understand your society and the worldviews that influence it as well as you think. But I don't know that I can speak with authority on you situation.

I'm not interested in spending any more time debating your hypothetical believer with his untestable and unspecified beliefs about what may or may not be a deity. Like creme soda, it's unpleasant after the first sip.

Well, we are speaking about atheism, and atheists, and you are appear to be an atheist, so I would have hoped you were entertained, but, whatever. As for the creme (creaming) soda, I'll agree on that - I prefer the brown type to the red type, but neither really aid me in my quest to stay on good terms with my pancreas.

I wonder what people meant when they answered atheist or agnostic. These two terms describe two very different things: the former deals with the belief in the existence or nonexistence of deities, while the latter deals with claiming to have knowledge about the existence or nonexistence of deities. This page really puts things in perspective.

I would say most people who call themselves atheists fall in the agnostic atheist camp: they do not believe in gods, but don't claim to know they do not exist, just as almost no one (hopefully) believes in a teapot orbiting the sun, although it is impossible to prove it's nonexistence.

According to the story posted in beliefnet.com, these are the statistics regarding the religious beliefs of scientists who answered the survey:

- Atheist: 34%
- Agnostic: 30%
- Having no doubt about god's existence: 9%
- Having some belief in god: 27%
---
Sum is 100%.

I wonder, if the questions asked clearly mentioned the four combinations of (a)theism and (a)gnosticism, would the results come close to this:

- Gnostic atheist : 34% - 04% \ split the 64% how you see fit
- Agnostic atheist: 30% - 60% /
- Agnostic theist: 27%
- Gnostic theist: 9%

Let's not forget that the results overwhelmingly show atheism/agnosticism and 'liberal' religious attitudes to dominate the "elite" scientists' opinions, whereas the societal context has overwhelming theism and a huge amount of religious conservatism. Yet the author is stressing the amount of religion among scientists? It just keeps decreasing and decreasing, *despite* the society in which scientists were raised. I haven't read the book, but the choice of emphasis in these articles is very silly.

I always found a lot more "spiritual beauty" in masses of a pre-Vatican II nature myself--no audience participation, the whole thing in Latin, etc. On the whole, however, I prefer Symphony tickets. When you're down to defending the existence of religion based on its value as an art form, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. If people were only in religion for the "spiritual beauty," it wouldn't be such a problem.

I have found this interview with Daniel Dennett interesting. Unfortunately Charlie Rose was on vacation at the time, and instead Bill Moyers repeatedly bombards Dennett with inane questions. Moyers illogically tries to make an argument for theism on the basis that people universally appreciate the "spiritual beauty" of (Catholic) cathedrals, and Dennett makes the hilarious rejoinder that he found Aztec temples quite moving as well. If only it weren't for all that human sacrifice...Dennett nevertheless attempts general apology for religion--in a futile attempt to appear non-threatening to the mainstream audience, I think--on the grounds that it gives people purpose, and mobilizes large groups in a way that secular institutions never do.

That's the best he can do, and it isn't even a particularly good argument. You know what secular phenomenon similarly mobilizes large groups of people? Nationalism. If people aren't convinced by rational arguments, I would argue that it is probably not a good idea to mobilize them in the first place. Science has shown that people aren't particularly good rational decision makers, but it doesn't follow that decisions made on an irrational basis are superior. "A social glue that can be perfectly benevolent," you say. Well, I could say the same about radical jingoism, but I don't see anyone around here advocating that.

There is a difference between tolerating religion, and respecting it. If one's religion has any meaning at all, it has to influence one's worldview. The moment this leads to justifying a position because [God said so], rationality has been abandoned. "Respecting" that is a violation of your scientific worldview; you are implicitly condoning the very worst sort of argument to authority. If all such positions can be and are justified on other grounds, however, then why bother with the religion in the first place? It's superfluous cognitive dissonance.

I always thought it was weird that Gardner defended theism, but to say that he was a crackpot because of this one belief despite the many contributions he has made in promoting math, science and skepticism is absurd. A man isn't measured by one mistake he makes. I'm sure your pencils have no erasers, so we can't call you stupid and weak and say good riddance when you die.

Mao was actually confusionist, and Stalin was christian, but you don't have to be an atheist and the people of soviet russia were forced into state-theism, obeying the state as a god. That is not atheism. Just as christians tend to dismiss people who were not good enough christians, atheists will dismiss people who didn't even claim to be atheists.

The crime rate among atheists is incredibly low. In the US we account for only 2% of those in prison, yet 16% of the general population. At the same time, christians account for 73% of the population, but 84% of those in prison. Few good atheists? Mostly good atheists, with a few people who were misguided and needed help, or were driven to terrible crimes by the persecution of the ultimate bully-christians.

I don't have time for a long post now, but look, I am generally open to arguments anyone makes. I am not open however, to arguments I have spent hundreds of hours disproving, just to have them parroted at me again, and my arguments against them ignored in favor of more standard crap.

Hitler was most certainly a christian, he went to church regularly and he, like all politicians, spent a great deal of time talking about god in his speeches. History is an absolute science, not one which you can dismiss parts of as you please just because your pastor lied to you. We know history, and if you look it up in scholarly sources, you will find me right. and what of the crusades and dark ages?

the language is not insulting just because it says you are wrong, it also says why. Maybe if you spent more time reading and less time parroting back mindless bullshit, then you would learn something and people would not get so mad at you for saying the same stupid things to them.

Whether you like it or not, humanistic morals help many people, and christian morals drive many into such a deep depression that they kill themselves. They are bullies, haters, and cruel when derived from the bible. Atheists have no such problem, only working out logic and reason, along with compassion. Atheists like me are eagle scouts, servers of the community, and christians who follow closely morals are bullies. That is the simple fact of the situation, and you ignore it and detract from it with everything you say, as if your pointless arguments about that stupid book make a difference. One of the main reasons I left religion was when I realized how many people were using it as an excuse to be cruel to others, in addition to all of its logical and scientific failings.

To pretend the Founders were not Christians is anti-truth and makes you no better than the Texan book-writers.

With all due respect, you have an extremely simplistic view of history and you're using that as the basis of a diatribe.

Some of the founders were Christians; there is no doubt of that. Many of them were not. Most of them were theists; it takes a special kind of arrogance that only Christians seems to hold to equate theism with Christianity. Jefferson is generally considered a Deist, as was Franklin and Thomas Paine, probably the most influential of our founders aside from Jefferson. A handful more (perhaps Jefferson here as well) were considered Unitarians. The reality is that it is hard to tell, not only because of the passage of time but because of how people--quite on the topic actually--all want to claim great people. It's much the same as both parties claiming that Thomas Jefferson would belong with them if he were alive today. It's hard to separate the truth from the fiction. Suffice it to say that there were many different religious leanings among our founding fathers.

However, it is also undeniable that whatever their personal beliefs, most wanted to keep them away from government. They put it in the first damn amendment, without which the Constitution would not have passed. When one claims a "Christian backing," even insofar as many of them were personally Christians, it paints a different picture than history seems to support.

It is also worth noting two things: One, that people wrangle over the very definition of Christian such that it may include everybody under the sun or not--usually those pushing Christianity as the great truth, I suppose. To me the definition is simple; it's what separates the major religions of the planet: Was Jesus Christ the son of God and God himself? It is called Christianity after all. Under that definition you can throw aside the Deists and the vast majority of Unitarians (those who believe he was a supernatural power is a gray area to me) out from under the umbrella. And the second thing to note is the claim of many Christians that, essentially, everything good comes from them. Many Christians even claim that morality comes from Christianity, as if it never existed for the first several thousand years of human history or those of us (myself included) who do not believe are barbarians answerable to no one. I mention this because many people claim the country was founded on a "Christian morality" despite the idea that so many of the most influential founders were not, themselves, Christian.

So no, even acknowledging that many of the founders were Christians and most were theists, I don't think it is "anti-truth" to say the country was not founded on a Christian base. It was founded primarily on the belief in reason and free thought, on the backs of Jefferson and Paine who were probably among history's biggest advocates of both. Jefferson, for example, is famously quoted as entreating us* to "question with boldness even the existence of a God." Regardless of his personal conclusions, it's pretty clear he valued thought above them. (As a personal aside, I find religion--not belief--to be the antithesis of that, which I could pull another Jefferson quote about but I'm sure you know it.)

* "Us" through the lens of history. I think the quote actually comes from a letter written to his nephew, but I cannot recall for certain.

FACT:
deism = God set everything in motion, then did nothing and currently does nothing but maybe watch
atheism (me) = No god exists, or existed
theism = God exists and is still a big player in our lives today
agnosticism = Any of the above three could be true, we don't know and we may never know
scientism (me a bit) = The methods of the natural sciences are the only way to gain knowledge about the universe
logical positivism (me) = Knowledge can only be gained about the world through experimental study, or that which can mathematically or logically derived through logical study
materialism (me) = There exists no sprits or souls or other immaterial objects, the universe is governed by a set of laws although we may never know those laws
mechanism (I would like it to be true) = The universe is a fundamentally mechanical system, and the materialist laws are very Newtonian (many QM interpretations are not mechanist, but some are)

deism != atheism != theism != agnosticism
scientism != logical positivism != materialism != mechanism
All mechanists are materialists but not all materialists are mechanists.

OPINION:
Deism is not watered-down theism, it is watered-down atheism. Since God does not interfere with life, to you, he in a sense does not exist. Keep in mind that evolution, QM, GR, the big bang, the germ theory of disease, and many many other scientific theories were not known back in the day, and people filled in "God" to fix the gaps. Today, we know we don't need God, at least past the big bang. I think if our founding fathers knew what we know today, they would be atheists and we would no be having this debate.