Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:07:09 +0100

how can you be a religious nut or compared to one when all your doing is being critical of claims made by belief systems. It sounds more like you are not able to answer and respond to critiques about religous dogma so you resort to name calling. grow up child. :)

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:03:54 +0100

Sam didn't even really answer the question, but rather went a whole different direction. The question "Is there a possibility of a creator?" can only be answered 'yes' by any intellectually honest person. To say, "is there any possibility" leaves the door wide open. The only way one could say 'no' to that answer is if they have some vantage point from outside our reality and the ability to be all knowing. And I guess that would make you some type of god.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:45:27 +0100

Sam makes very good points and couldn't be more right, as usual. For those who said Atheism requires faith, you are misunderstanding the word faith, which is ironic because you undoubtedly consider yourself to be chalk-full of the stuff. Humans owe it to themselves to be intellectually honest, as we are the first species that has evolved with an advanced capacity for logic and reason. Attribute mankind's accomplishments to mankind, and our failures to mankind as well. Live your life without expectations of divine punishment or reward at the end of it. You will find yourself valuing your existence a whole lot more than if you believe in some sort of magical entity is watching over you in a stalker like fashion. Think the garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies in it, or that a super fairy created it.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:32:07 +0100

I like and respect matiasinino's position.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Sat, 17 May 2008 07:50:14 +0100

RevJulie

1. Religion and personal spiritual experience have a lot in common. Their claims can not be proved or verified independently.
2. Our heart bumps blood. No one has ever proved it capable of anything else.
3. What is True for you may not be True for someone else.
4. I dont think that Sam Harris is physically big enough to encompass the whole universe.

RO

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:46:34 +0100

Sam in his effort to to discredit "all Holy Books" confuses religion with personal spiritual experience. All sacred scripture is a story about one person's personal Spiritual experience as percieved through their unique human consciouness. Let us discover in those stories the inspiration to go deep within our minds and heart to what is True for us. It is in our own hearts and minds we the Divine Spirit that connects us to All that is. It's time we shift our focus from outer books to inner wisdom. I hope Sam finds that place within him where the whole Universe resides.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:06:03 +0100

Sam makes the same mistake the religious nuts do, he takes things literally.

As far as I'm concerned he's as narrow-minded as any religious nut.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:29:32 +0100

Sam, as ever, has it spot on. What is so alarming to me is just how obvious a falacy religion is. There is no need for a superior attitude from Atheists, it takes no degree of thinking at all to deduce that religion is entirely man-made, and by man i certainly mean male. It is clearly - the warped response of primitive peoples to weild power over equally primitive illiterates. The men who created this rubbish can't even be blamed really - they had none of the benefits that reason and science has afforded us with - and more is the pity. Again, to rubbish the nonesense of religion takes no thought - just an open mind and a bit of common-sense.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:46:34 +0100

I find it absolutely amazing that, with so many atheists responding to this video, and agreeing that religion is clearly incorrect, not a single person here has gone to provide any factual evidence that helps support this claim. As a Christian, I never once seek to provide proof to any man that God is real. I see him in everything that I do, everywhere I go, and in everyone I encounter who shares a love for him as I. Yet, it is not my desire to provide proof, because I have faith. Faith requires no evidence, because it ceases to be faith with such evidence. Atheism, on the other hand, is something that would indeed require some evidence. Every atheist points to science for the answers, saying that certain things undoubtedly prove that God must not be real. Do none of you find any errors in your convictions? To say that you do not shows atheists to be just as dogmatic as the dogmatic religious people they vehemently speak out against. Unlike many of my Christian brethren, I have read the atheist books, from The End of Faith to The God Delusion to Why Darwin Matters. I have read pretty much all of the important ones. And I still look to the bible as my source for information, because those books did absolutely nothing to give me the most certain answers on anything. Mr. Harris did nothing in this video to say why God can not exist, and be convincing enough to change any religious person. The fact of the matter is, as Dr. Rick Warren states, it takes a considerable amount of faith to be an atheist. Moreso, than it does to be a person who follows God.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:01:33 +0100

Illusio: "This would actually not have a problem with infinite regress."

It hasn't been refuted if you consider the universe, regardless of its infinite cycle of the big bang and big crunch, to be contingent, which you seem to have missed in my argument. This is a crucial aspect of the argument that people who think they've refuted it fail to see. If the universe is contingent, there must be something upon which it is dependent. That something is God.
Now, there are plenty of other objections to this in the field of formal logic, but your appeal to science does little to object to it..

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:26:40 +0100

Well stated Illusio...
if Harris merely had to put the magician/sky-god creator to the sword (who looks just like us!) he would barely have to be awake. The problem is very many theists descend into the mists of metaphor, and end up with a very esoteric version of creation, and this is also what he's alluding to I think.
God me be 'love' to some, 'everything' to others, but their question remains where did that energy come from?... a repeating cycle model is a convincing way of solving this conundrum.
non-sentient and fully automatic... beautiful.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:19:39 +0100

'Is it just me, or does Sam Harris completely fail to answer the question "is there a possibility of a creator"?'(cerenziam)

He obviously doesn't think the question is worth much time, but he did address it by saying that there is an infinite number of silly ideas we shouldn't consider.

In effect, what this means is that the existence of a possibility of a creator is not enough to give mankind a reason to both assume that one exists and attribute all kinds of provincial and human characteristics to him without solid evidence.

In short, the literal version of the question is too stupid for words. He therefore answers the extended version, "Is there a possibility that any of the existing creator myths are true" and mentions how we really can't tell them apart(or tell them apart from no god) due to lack of evidence, among other things. This particular attribute makes the very concept meaningless to us humans(except as a placebo) as we can gain no knowledge from religion.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:03:38 +0100

"Thus, there is a first cause that is self-sufficient, self-caused. This cause is the fundamental definition of that being which we call God." (cerenziam)

The first cause argument for God is utterly refuted. One way to do it is to say that time could be a two dimensional phenomenon without a beginning(circular for instance). This would actually not have a problem with infinite regress. The universe would simply be an eternal repeating cycle.

There are other ways as well, for example you can replace the eternal "being" god with a naturalistic cyclic phenomenon that causes the recreation of spacetime every time spacetime collapses in a big-crunch. It would not be part of the time dimension, so causality, in the sense of "happens before", would be meaningless.

This is in effect the simplest creator bot you can imagine. Non-sentient and fully automatic, as well as performing exactly the same creator tasks as the personal creator gods. =)

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:15:36 +0100

maybe that religon is a path for people who are too afraid to take there own

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:38:49 +0100

(Who "created" the "creator.") - Michael Gill

I hear this far too often. The truth is one of these: It's either an infinite chain of cause and effect, creator and created; or there is eventually a self-sufficient cause. We and everything in the universe are all contingent beings, so positing an infinite chain of contingent beings wouldn't answer anything about our existence - that very infinite chain itself must then be contingent on something (You can add chocolate onto a pile for infinity, but it's still chocolate). Thus, there is a first cause that is self-sufficient, self-caused. This cause is the fundamental definition of that being which we call God.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:56:19 +0100

This is a great refutation to general religious dogma pertaining to a "creator god", but I'd also like to see a refutation to the more general concept of a creator; or "creation" in general. It has been my assertion for some time that the very IDEA of creation is in itself an intrinsically relative one, and thus worth an analysis. If we are to honor that "creation" is in and of itself an ultimate idea, don't we find ourselves at a dead end when we follow it through to it's logical conclusion? (Who "created" the "creator.")

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:33:04 +0100

Is it just me, or does Sam Harris completely fail to answer the question "is there a possibility of a creator"? It doesn't matter that there are many theories/beliefs, and giving an explanation of the prominent ones doesn't address the question. How did video get rated high at all?

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:22:11 +0100

Gregge,
It's not that atheists feel superior, or that we want to 'convert' anyone necessarily, but if something is patently ridiculous it needs to be challenged. I don't mind the faithful being in thrall of the fairies at the bottom of the garden, but for hundreds of years, if you couldn't agree on the stripe of said fairies you were in danger of all sorts of bad things flowing your way. Find comfort where you will, but now that the godly with stone age, tribal philosophies are on the verge of having space age weapons in Iran, when the leader of the 'free' world is being told his military ambitions in the middle east equate with Biblical prophesy, then we should not remain silent out of mis-placed respect for a set of supernatural beliefs.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:00:39 +0100

Overthink

The entire discussion ultimately revolves around personal belief and can never be anything more until god turns up and holds a press conference. The history of religion is an appalling litany of hate, persecution and distrust all in the name of this god and still continues today, creating a stark lacuna in the thinking of any person who argues that this god exists. There is absolutely no reason why people shouldn't have a god to believe in, but every reason for them not to think that this somehow gives them moral ascendancy or is fact. Equally atheists should refrain from inferred disdainful intellectual superiority over those who seek comfort from a belief in their god, however illogical it may appear from a modern scientific viewpoint, which clearly suffers from overthink.

Comment on: Re: Is there a possibility of a creator?

Bigthink — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:04:29 +0100

I could not disagree more. Although each religion is comprised of its own belief system , they share very similar tiers. I might concede that religion as a whole is a product of society and represents the host culture. So that when a religion moves from one culture to another, it evolves in unusual ways. But why is there a core feature to all of a creator or creators. Is it ludicrous to suppose that something can be believed without proof? Don't we do this all the time outside of religion? Some scientists even believe that observation is proof, when anyone in science knows that no observation is unflawed.

I cannot convince anyone there is a God. Nor would I want to, but why should that stop me from my belief? Don't I believe there is more to life than cruel, senseless logic? And are not our actions fruits of our beliefs? If I believe we all possess a spark of the divine and that we all share the same existence, then won't I at least attempt to treat people around me better? We could also use the same argument for treating people poorly. The point is this: science alone does not and cannot prove or disprove everything, and in all matter, faith plays a role whether you admit it or not. I believe logic and mathematics both have some obvious flaws, but I have faith in them to show truth. Isn't that a kind of religion?