How does one become a professional atheist? Are there any professional atheists about?
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How is creationism DISPROVED?
by sabastious 376 Replies latest jw friends
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NoStonecutters
I believe professional atheist cards are available at 7-Eleven for a $50 fee and three-day course
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rather be in hades
These are generalizations that someone can read and accept as fact. However, there is no detail behind it. I'm not necessarily saying that they are untrue, but they are so overly generalized that there is nothing to take away from comments like these. Very simple minded, it seems.
what's simple minded is not taking the time to actually learn and look at the evidence.
that's on you. no one can force feed it to you, this isn't the matrix, you can't just plug in. it takes work. it's not always pleasant, but you'll either affirm your faith, or come to some rather obvious conclusions.
you can either chose to sit there and refuse to do some investigating while refuting something you know nothing about, or you can take the time to understand the evidence put forth.
all the evidence is right there in textbooks.
you can perform the experiments yourself. heck you can extract dna with household chemicals.
you are not entitled to having someone type out entire textbooks teaching you this stuff. you need to put in the work like many others have
1+1 =/= 5
your move.
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Christ Alone
This isn't an insult, so I hope it doesn't come across that way. But we are a group of exJWs that were forbidden to go to college. Many (or I could probably say MOST) here do not hold college degrees. Yet, there is so much authority that many hold as if they were actual scientists.
How do you become a professional atheist? Study and research. Many have done that, and I fully respect their position. But many are armchair atheists and armchair scholars (the believers), and they claim to be an authoritative figure regarding these issues. Many here are high school or college dropouts. Yet we sit around and talk about how much we know.
I'm not meaning to tear down anyone in particular. It's just sort of laughable that we were not allowed to go to college and we sit around talking like we are the most intelligent people around.
Some can't even use proper captial letters at the beginning of their sentences. Some of the grammatical and spelling errors (as well as a lack of proper punctuation) give away the intelligence level of some expert scientists or theologians. I'm guilty of alot of this as well.
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Christ Alone
Again with the 1+1=5 fallacy?
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Marvin Shilmer
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"1+1=5 fallacy"
What is that referring to, or supposed to mean?
Marvin Shilmer
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Satanus
Christ
True, many of us haven't gone to universities. We had to eduate ourselves. But still, would taking college courses qualify a person as a professional atheist? How would a person make that grade?
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Christ Alone
But still, would taking college courses qualify a person as a professional atheist? How would a person make that grade?
No, and I sort of apologize for that. I didn't mean to insult anyone's intelligence. I was including myself in that I sometimes think I'm better at theology and scholarship than I really am.
I was just saying that while we sit around talking like we are experts, many here never got a higher education. I was just thinking of how we would look to the outside academic world. It might sort of be like the way I look at young teenagers discussing something academic. I think, "Awe...how cute. They're pretending like they know something."
Sorry if that post came off as insulting and saying that everyone here is uneducated. I know plenty here went to college. And plenty more have educated themselves on their own time.
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Christ Alone
Marvin, rather be in hades likes to use the 1+1=5 to describe anyone that believes in a creator. They just aren't listening to scientific fact, according to him. Anyone that believes in a creator is delusional and is no different than one that belives in fairies or unicorns.
I was just bringing up the fallacy of comparing a persons position to something ridiculous in order to weaken that position.
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Qcmbr
I'll have a quick go:
- Creationism is a purely human concept.
- All definitions of creationism are limited by the culture that created them and carry that cultures motifs ( Middle East creationism references concepts such as the firmament, Tasmanian creationism has knee less humans with kangaroo tails and so on.)
- All the cultural stories are radically different ( creation as the result of war, creation due to a stomach ache, creation due to escaping an egg etc.)
- All references to the god(s) portray them as very limited and anthropomorphisised , they are angry, play tricks, use very primitive tools like swords and axes, they are easily tricked and often the human end result is an afterthought ( no helpmeet was found )or a mistake.
- All creation myths rely upon magic and a pre existing space in which they themselves reside. No element of any creation myth tries to explain how the events occurred but why. The creation myths are about motives not mechanics.
- Where creation myths mention specific testable elements those elements are physically impossible ( the order of creation in the Hebrew myth is a typical example .)
- The creation myths are universally supernatural but actually produce the natural. No natural laws are used to produce natural things. Instead body parts, lotus petals, tree trunks are all alchemically converted into humans and mountains etc.
- Creationism describes sudden change over immediate timescales. Nothing then planets, dust then human, baby born fully armed etc.
- Creationism is always aimed at describing the macro world. It has no concept of the microscopic.
- Creationism does not establish any laws of physics and maintains no predictive power. Nothing in any part of any creative story is required or determines that the world would look as it does. At any stage creationism can wipe the slate clean and start again. Nothing in any creation myth explains what will happen tomorrow.
What does science reveal about physics that is incompatible with an intelligent creator:
- Natural intelligence at the level beyond pure chemical reactions at the cellular level requires a brain. No intelligence has ever existed in the observed natural world absent a physical, mechanical form. Even creation myths frame the creative force in physical form prior to the creation event.
- The expansion of the universe is not predicted by creationism but it is by a singularity expansion event.
- Quantum physics, which deals with the very area creationism does not, predictes that particles can exist at a given location as long as they cease to exist to maintain an overall balancing zero sum energy equation. No intelligence is required to generate these virtual particles, they are an emergent property of the universe, in effect it is self causing. This quantum turbulence also allows for an uncaused quantum singularity that can be the start point for a universe - note this does not in and of itself mean this is how it occurred only that nothing in the physics precludes it.
- The complexity of the universe occurs through relatively simple physically laws occurring over vast periods of time using vast energy gradients and unclosed energy systems. Evolution is one such complex system that relies upon gradual change over vast timescales and with a steady energy gradient ( sun). No feature of the universe indicates design from chaos but everything indicates sorting from chaos, thus we still have entire galaxies colliding, vast clouds of gas igniting under the forces of gravity and lifeless planets, moons and proto planets swirling around as left by eons of collisions and simple gravitational laws gradually sorting the dust and atoms of supernovae.
- Each element observed in nature is formed by giant stars that have exploded. No intelligence is required to make stars explode just a certain size, timescale and amount of fused elements.
- No observed intelligence has ever been able to subvert or alter a law of physics. All laws of physics must be obeyed and no amount of intelligence suggests that those laws can be replaced by simple will.
- All observed ordered systems can be resorted and improved by intelligence. Unintelligent weathering and carbon sequestration can be improved by human intelligence such that concrete can be made and complex structures can be formed that could never form by chance ( no watch could ever simply form regardless of time or energy inputs as it requires an organisational force to be applied by the use of tools .) Nothing in the observed natural world requires the use of tools - the hallmarks of design.
- Evolution has been experimentally proven.
- With the exception of abiogenesis processes have been observed, measured and theorised to show how physical laws can account for everything observed.
- Physics has predictive power. That which occurred in the past according to a physical law resonates on through eternity propagating at the speed of light. A pebble dropped in a pool will affect the universe in an expanding causual ripple at the speed of light. Beyond that event horizon it can have no effect on the universe at all ever. No intelligent effect can propagate faster than the speed of light nor affect all things simultaneously. Causative effects are limited by the speed of light. The laws of physics can predict what is likely to happen tomorrow based upon probabilities and enough input data.