The Atheist Book Club discussion

I'd like to revive interest in Graham Greene, one of the great writers of the 20th century, who should have received a Nobel but never did despite being nominated. He is a classic case of a writer who was brought up in a strict Christian tradition, but whose intelligence could never reconcile that faith with the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in it. He managed to illustrate that conflict in terrific plots of human struggle and dilemma - especially in such books as THE END OF THE AFFAIR, THE POWER AND THE GLORY, and BRIGHTON ROCK, (all of which have been filmed) my favourite being the first of those. His writing is an example to all novelists, and his themes are as relevant today as 70 years ago.

I've never read Greene. You've piqued my interest.

Carlos, just thought I should clear something up for you.

Atheists don't pray.

It is the nature of the thing that a person who does not believe in a god would therefore find no need to talk to it.

I generally do not engage theists, no point in it usually, but that was a pretty clear stab at a group of people you clearly don't understand. If it was not intended as such, I politely suggest you review your verbal habits.

... as I said. No point in it usually. I never learn ...

Carlos wrote: ""...with what COULD be called an atheist's prayer..."

I am well aware that atheists don't pray and have just learned that at least one of y'all is irony-impaired.

Thank you however for your kind ..."

The billions of people who are suffering eternal torment for being born in the wrong culture may have something to say about your deity's "mercy and love"...

For what it is worth I enjoyed End of the Affair.

Actually Carlos, Graham Greene was always confused by religion. Although he early on proclaimed himself agnostic, he admitted in his autobiography to being bewildered by school and church teachings, and even when he converted to Catholicism (to reconcile things with his first wife) he said, "My primary difficulty was to believe in a God at all."

Carlos wrote: "Skyler wrote: "Carlos wrote: ""...with what COULD be called an atheist's prayer..."

I am well aware that atheists don't pray and have just learned that at least one of y'all is irony-impaired.

Th..."

Which "GOD" must one reject to "damn oneself"? The populations of most cultures have never heard of 99% of the gods invented by humanity, as I'm sure you haven't either. How does one reject that which one does not know of?

If you want someone to "come at last to the realization that you were made by GOD and for GOD", then you should provide evidence for this claim instead of "praying" that it will happen. This will be difficult, seeing as how embryology is a pretty well understood field without much room left for a supernatural being secretly creating people.

Carlos wrote: "Scott wrote: "Carlos wrote: "Skyler wrote: "Carlos wrote: ""...with what COULD be called an atheist's prayer..."

I am well aware that atheists don't pray and have just learned that at least one of..."

Yes, everyone who believes in a god believes their god to be the one true god, else they wouldn't believe in it. What makes your god "The One and Only True GOD" (a title that many theists claim their gods have, yet they can't all be right) and everyone else's false?

What do you mean by "creation"? Modern physics gives many natural explanations to the formation of the universe, none of which adhere to a supernatural "creator".

If our "mortal and limited minds" cannot comprehend this "illimitable and ineffable" being, how did your "mortal and limited mind" comprehend that this "illimitable and ineffable" being is indeed "illimitable and ineffable"? It seems you've introduced a logical impossibility, and thus refuted your own 'argument', or you may be claiming that you're omniscient.

If there is an omnipotent being who is "loving", why would it allow the existence of the innumerable means of suffering, including deadly bacteria and disease? For example, there is a type of protist called naegleria fowleri, which invades the bodies of sentient beings and eats their living brains. Would you stand by and watch this protist eat the brain of your loved ones? Then why does your "loving" "GOD" do the same, plus countless other horrors?

As I said, instead of "praying" that this being "enters my heart", you should provide evidence that it exists.

Instead of "GOD" "blessing" me, who does just fine without supernatural intervention, it should be blessing the nearly billion people on Earth who are either starving or malnourished.

Carlos wrote: "Just like every other material object in the universe, matter itself needs a previous cause to explain its existence"

But then you go on to give a exception to this rule. If god created everything, then god would also need a creator, and that creator would need a creator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite...

Carlos wrote: "Everyone with the use of reason can easily grasp that everything in the universe (creation) is explained by a previous cause. Nothing begins to exist without a cause. Nothing can cause it's own exi..."

If you think nothing can exist without a cause, then it seems you've certainly ruled out the possibility of a god. In reality, many objects, such as virtual particles, exist uncaused. I recommend you read up on quantum mechanics. Your physics seems to be stuck in the Aristotelian 'first cause' era. Our knowledge of the universe has expanded quite a bit in the last 2,500 years. The formation of atoms is also pretty well understood, and, unsurprisingly, there is no magic involved - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronolo...

"The only answer is that some power outside the material universe created matter to begin with."

Strange how nearly no physicists, who spend their lives studying this stuff, have come to this conclusion. I'm sure you will be awarded your Nobel Prize soon enough for this incredible discovery. You have published your findings in a scientific journal, right?

"Only GOD has that infinite power"

How do you know that? Can you prove it?

Carlos wrote: "Which GOD?

The One and Only True GOD; the Creator of heaven and earth, the GOD of which all creation attests to; the almighty GOD of which all human concepts of the divine are but mere intimations and the crude approximations of mortal and limited minds reaching for the illimitable and ineffable ground of all being. The loving GOD whose miraculous incarnation we prepare for this Advent season...."

okay, you did your bit. you tried to convert the heathens. mark it in your book, tell your congregation what a valiant effort you made so they can all clap you on the back and tsk tsk that we ignorant and damned atheists won't listen to you. and go the fuck away. we aren't buying your shit religion this month or any other month.

Carlos wrote: "Everyone with the use of reason can easily grasp that everything in the universe (creation) is explained by a previous cause.

1) The "first cause" argument is ancient nonsense. If everything needs a cause, then your god needs a cause.

2) If there is a god, which one is it? Yahweh? His wife, Asherah? Zeus? Apollo? Baal? One of literally thousands of others people have invented?

3) For this, I'll assume you're a Christian: Did you know that Yeshua ("Jesus") expected to be the "messiah" - to rule the "kingdom of heaven" - an earthly kingdom, not heaven itself, that "Son of Man" referred to people in general and not to Jesus, that gospel references to "Hell" were actually bad translations of "Gehenna" (an actual place outside of Jerusalem, that "christ" meant "anointed" and not "god," that ancient Jews (including Jesus) thought diseases were caused by evil spirits (not by bacteria/viruses), that they believed the "soul" was a magical thing that thought and experienced and caused the otherwise inanimate flesh to operate because they had no clue what the brain was?

4) Do you realize that Christianity was invented during the 3 centuries following the crucifixion?

5) Do you understand that, before the 15th Century AD, people thought the world was flat, that they lived in the middle of it, that it was the center of everything, that it was a few thousand years old, that the stars were tiny objects affixed to a canopy, that the sun and moon were magical lights FOR us, that the other planets were messages among the gods, that the appearance of comets and other rare astronomical events were "signs" about events on earth?

I could go on for pages and pages... Oh, wait, I already did! I wrote a book about how utterly nonsensical your religion is:
What Your Preacher Didn't Tell You: That You Really Ought to Know

All good points--and they will be ignored by the willfully ignorant.

George wrote: "All good points--and they will be ignored by the willfully ignorant."

Yes. Unfortunately, their willful ignorance impacts politics and leads to really bad public policy that harms us all. Their religion is based on an authoritarian hierarchy, which is anathema to democracy. They're skeptical of scientific and historical facts (e.g., evolution) that contradict their dogma - which, of course means they have to deny virtually all science and history. They can be manipulated into voting against their own interests if they're told that "God" doesn't want the rich to pay taxes, that science is just false liberal dogma, that gays are an "abomination," and that global warming is a hoax.

Again Carlos, you have just broken the rule of "something" needing a creator. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own rules of logic.

If everything needs a creator to exist, then so does which ever god you believe in.

Carlos, Aristotle lived about 2,300 years ago. Surely, you don't get your physics from that? And sorry for calling you Shirley.

"GOD is The Creator. No one made GOD. GOD always existed. He is the First Cause, the Uncaused Cuase, the Transcended and Eternal Cause on which all other causes depend."

How do you know this? Can you prove it?

"GOD is the exception to the rule"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_...

"To claim that GOD needs a creator"

I don't know what "GOD" is, so I am certainly not making that claim. You are the one who made the unproven assertion that "everything that begins to exist has a cause" (while ignoring the numerous quantum objects that ignore this principle). This means that either "GOD" had a cause, or that it always existed. If it always existed, as you claim, then you have created your own infinite regression; there would have been an infinite amount of past events before the creation of the universe, meaning that moment could never even come to fruition. You have, in your own words, created an 'argument' that "reduces logic to mere sophistry and sanity to madness." Further, if you claim this "GOD" always existed, the same can be said for the singularity from which the universe expanded, thereby removing the need for inventing a magical being.

"the GOD I pray blesses you"

Do you think telepathic communication can influence the will of an omniscient being?

About your claim that virtual particles don't exist and anywho who thinks otherwise gets there physics from Star Trek - http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...

"Virtual particles are indeed real particles. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particles in all possible ways. These predictions are very well understood and tested."

"Quantum mechanics allows, and indeed requires, temporary violations of conservation of energy"

"virtual particles are indeed real and have observable effects that physicists have devised ways of measuring. Their properties and consequences are well established and well understood consequences of quantum mechanics."

But I guess Gordon Kane, "an internationally recognized scientific leader in theoretical and phenomenological particle physics, and theories for physics beyond the Standard Model and in recent years has been a leader in string phenomenology" [Wikipedia], gets his physics from Star Trek because he doesn't bow to the authority of someone who lived in ancient Greece?

Why do you ignore 90% of my counter arguments to your claims?

"if we are to understand physics today, particularly fundamentals such as the difference between laws (as in those of gravity and thermo-dynamics) and theories (such as evolution and quantum physics)."

A scientific theory does not magically become a law, just like a law does not magically because a theory. Laws are typically contained within theories, such as the theory of gravity contains the law of universal gravitation, a simple mathematical formula that describes the motion of bodies in space. Theories are ideas that summarize facts; laws are generally compact statements that describe a cyclical process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientif... . If you are waiting for a scientific theory to become a law then you will be waiting for a long time.

Just because the particles come from something does not mean they had a cause (which is what I was arguing), just that they came from some prior state. From what I can tell, nothing caused them to exist. I have been trying to find more information and came across this - http://www.particleadventure.org/virt... . According to this virtual particles come from nothing - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/... . Also, as I said, Aristotelian physics has nothing to say about quantum mechanics, which seems to violate our notions of causality - http://phys.org/news/2012-10-quantum-...

"I do not create an infinite regression, as you say, but quite to the contrary, I cut it short of the abyss by insisting that GOD is the First Cause, that everything begins with Him."

Either "GOD" began to exist, or it has always existed. If it has always existed, then you create an infinite regression of prior moments and can never progress to the beginning of the universe. If it began to exist, then it is bound by your own logic that everything that begins to exist must have a cause. You have already ruled out these possibilities yourself, thereby invalidating your own argument. This is the inescapable conclusion of positing magical beings to explain the universe, which is one reason why practically no physicists accept this position. There is a third option, which seems to be the case, where things can indeed exist uncaused. It would be absurd proclaim that a "GOD" began to exist uncaused, then poofed the universe into existence out of nothing. It is much more logical to assume that the universe itself exists uncaused and is sustained by its own nature, thereby removing the necessity of positing an unobservable supernatural realm.

To summarize:

1. If you say the universe cannot be infinite because it results in an infinite regression, then inventing an infinite god explains nothing because it results in the same problem.

2. If you say that the universe has not always existed and must have had a cause, then inventing an uncaused god to cause it breaks your own rule (this god could not have always existed because of 1).

3. If not everything needs a cause, then it is more reasonable to assume that the universe was uncaused than to claim that a god was uncaused then caused the universe, thus saving us a step and removing ancient superstitions from our thinking.

I am truly impressed at the number of people capable of dancing on the head of this particular pin, but I think, overall, we are forgetting the primary rule of digital life;

Do not feed the trolls.

Also, Scott, if we ever wind up in a verbal debate over any topic whatsoever, please remind me to piss-off. If my mind is a sledge that smashes through walls, yours is a stiletto. You are a logic laser, and my hat is off to you. :-)

1) As I said, even if "GOD" doesn't have a cause, if it is infinite, then its existence still results in an infinite regression because there would be an infinite amount of moments stretching into the past, which would never allow the moment in which it supposedly created the universe come to fruition. Also, if "GOD" can exist without a cause, then so can the universe. Either everything needs a cause or it doesn't. You try to have it both ways by saying it is impossible for "GOD" to have a cause since this results in an infinite regression, but I would save us a step and say the universe doesn't need a cause. Positing a supernatural explanation to natural phenomena invariably adds an extra, unnecessary step. This is why naturalism always beats supernaturalism.

2) "GOD is not of the universe and so is not bound by it's laws, including those of cause and effect."

How do you know this? Can you prove it? When you make positive claims like this, the burden of proof is on you to substantiate them. I can just as easily state that "GOD" is not a part of the universe, and is thus not a part of existence, and thus cannot exist outside of a mind within the universe, making it imaginary. This statement is vacuous because I provide no explanation to how I arrived at this knowledge, nor do I provide any way of verifying the statement. You continuously make similar statements that are equally vacuous. We have also seen that some quantum states are not bound by the cause and effect of classical physics, to which you ignored. The singularity from which the universe expanded existed in a quantum state. I am, as are practically all physicists, missing the necessity of a supernatural being.

3) "Everything in the universe does need and have a cause"

Yet more unsubstantiated claims. You are essentially saying "everything in the universe has a cause, even if all evidence points to it not having a cause, it stills has a cause anyway because my argument relies on it".

Your argument is essentially this: "Everything in the universe has a cause and no evidence whatsoever can ever prove otherwise. I invented a being that exists in nonexistence that breaks the rule that I myself invented." This, to me, is ridiculous. It seems like it is much better to, when something exits the realm of the known, to admit that we do not know. If everyone thought like you, and invented magical beings to explain the unknown, we would be living in total ignorance; gods would still control the weather, the Earth would still be the flat, center of the universe, and the stars would be specs in the firmament. Fortunately, some people decided to admit their ignorance, and because of this, found real explanations based on experiment and observation. Would the world be better if every scientist quit what they are doing and said the explanation to what they are studying is magic? We would never advance again. Blaming magic is not an explanation; it is a concession that we will never find an explanation.

"GOD is indeed infinite and His being infinite does not lead us to infinite regression, to infinite moments stretching into the past. It is your insistence on treating GOD as if He were something finite, just another thing or being in the universe and therefore subject to the law of cause and effect that invariably leads to infinite regression."

Now this is just getting ridiculous. Your 'argument' has just turned into taking whatever I say and answering it by saying "nuh uh!" Repeating the same superstitious nonsense a thousand times will not make it true. Replace the word "GOD" with *anything* to see how vacuous your statements are. "Blargulful is indeed infinite and His being infinite does not lead us to infinite regression, to infinite moments stretching into the past. It is your insistence on treating Blargulful as if He were something finite, just another thing or being in the universe and therefore subject to the law of cause and effect that invariably leads to infinite regression."

You are just making up a magical being and ascribing attributes to it in such a way that it can't be disproven without backing up your assertions with a single shred of evidence. You are begging the question... You're using an unproven assumption as an explanation for natural events.

"I am saying that everything in the universe does have a cause and rather precisely asserting that you have failed to demonstrate otherwise."

Now you are shifting the burden of proof... You can't make an absurd, unproven claim then pretend that it is a fact until it is proven otherwise (even though I did provide a peer reviewed scientific paper proving otherwise which you, again, ignored)... If you make the claim, you are required to provide evidence for that claim; it is you who keeps erroneously claiming that everything in the universe has a cause.

Let's see what the actual science says, something I should have done to begin with - Stephen Hawking and James Hartle's extensive study of probability amplitudes have shown that our universe has over a 99% chance of existing uncaused http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabil... . To put an even greater blow to theism, it is impossible for the universe to have a cause, since there was no time for which a cause could take place (space and time both were created at the Big Bang). Hawking says: "The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a Grand Designer, and revealing how the universe created itself. ... Time itself must come to a stop [at the singularity]. You can't get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator because there is no time for a creator to have existed. Since time itself began at the moment of the Big Bang, it was an event that could not have been caused or created by anyone or anything. ... So when people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth. The Earth is a sphere. It does not have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise." What this means for theism - http://www.philoonline.org/library/sm...

A summary of this by philosopher Qunitin Smith: "The Hartle-Hawking derivation of the unconditional probability of the existence of a universe of our sort is inconsistent with classical theism. The unconditional probability is very high, near to 1. For purposes of simplification, we are saying the probability is 99 percent; there is a 99 percent probability that a universe of our sort—I will call it a Hartle-Hawking universe—exists uncaused.

The universe exists uncaused since the probability amplitude is determined by a summation or path integral over all possible histories of a finite universe. That is, the probability that a Hartle-Hawking universe exists follows directly from the natural-mathematical properties of possible finite universes; there is no need for a cause, probabilistic or otherwise, for there to be a 99 percent probability that a Hartle-Hawking universe will exist.

This is not consistent with classical theism. According to classical theism, if a universe is to have any probability of existing, this probability is dependent on God's dispositions, beliefs, or choices. But the Hartle-Hawking probability is not dependent on any supernatural states or acts; Hartle and Hawking do not sum over anything supernatural in their path integral derivation of the probability amplitude.

Furthermore, according to classical theism, the probability that a universe exist without divine causation is 0, and the probability that if a universe exists, it is divinely caused, is 1. Thus, the probabilities that are implied by classical theism are inconsistent with the probabilities implied by the Hartle-Hawking wave function of the universe."

Since it is impossible for our universe to have been caused, our universe must have been uncaused, again, removing the possibility of a creator. Fortunately, we also have an explanation for this thanks to quantum mechanics; NASA astronomer and Harvard grad Sten Odenwald explains what most likely happened at the Big Bang: "Quantum fluctuations are, at their root, completely a-causal, in the sense that cause and effect and ordering of events in time is not a part of how these fluctuations work. Because of this, there seem not to be any correlations built into these kinds of fluctuations because 'law' as we understand the term requires some kind of cause-and-effect structure to pre-exist. Quantum fluctuations can precede physical law, but it seems that the converse is not true. So in the big bang, the establishment of 'law' came after the event itself, but of course even the concept of time and causality may not have been quite the same back then as they are now."

Astrophysicists L. Z. Fang and Z. C. Wu summarize what our knowledge of quantum mechanics means for the beginning of the universe in their book Quantum Cosmology, "In principle, one can predict everything in the universe solely from physical laws. Thus, the long-standing 'first cause' problem intrinsic in cosmology has been finally dispelled."

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&a...

Philosophical implications: http://www.infidels.org/library/moder...

Amazingly, it turns out the random guesses of our primitive ancestors weren't correct after all! Who would have thought it?!

What Your Preacher Didn't Tell You: That You Really Ought to Know
Christian preachers sometimes challenge atheists to debates about the existence of God and, occasionally, somebody foolishly takes the bait. The topic itself is a dodge because it's impossible to prove that gods don't exist - just as it's impossible to prove that there are no one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters. So when the atheist predictably fails to prove that gods don't exist, the preacher triumphantly proclaims that Yahweh is real, that he’s the “one true god,” that Jesus is his son, that the Bible is the “inerrant” Word of God, that Christianity provides the path to an eternal and beautiful “afterlife” in “heaven.” Even if someone could prove that gods do exist - which, of course, they can’t, none of these Christian assertions would automatically follow.
What we can prove is that people have invented thousands of gods. Many religions have had large numbers of believers for a very long time, but that proves nothing. If somebody could prove that a god exists, it wouldn’t specifically prove which god, so it wouldn’t validate any particular religion. It wouldn’t confirm anything about how souls get to heaven in the afterlife. In fact, it wouldn’t prove that we have souls or an afterlife or that heaven or hell exist. Nor would it prove that Jesus was the one and only son of the one and only God.

Furthermore, we can demonstrate that the notion of the "soul" is the result of an ancient misconception. The ancients had no idea what the brain is, but the brain accomplishes naturally the things that they attributed to the "soul" - thinking, learning, remembering, operating bodily movement, etc.

So, while you apply pseudo-scientific babble to "prove" that the universe was created by "God," remember that it proves nothing about your specific religion, whatever it is.

Are you now quoting someone born in the 19th century as an authority figure to prove your god, whom he didn't even believe in? calling Planck, a deist, a Christian is an outright lie - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Plan...

What are your physics credentials? They must be quite impressive for you to know more about the universe than some of the most famous physicists and cosmologists of all time.

Carlos wrote "Which begs the question, do you bother to read your own links or do you just enjoy shooting yourself in the foot?"

Carlos, did you read the wikipedia link about Max Planck that Scott included in his comment? I did:

"Later in life, Planck's views on God were that of a deist. For example, six months before his death a rumour started that Planck had converted to Catholicism, but when questioned what had brought him to make this step, he declared that, although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe 'in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.'"

Such RUMORS about "conversions" of non-Christians late in life (or even on their deathbeds) is quite common among Christians. I think the feeling is something like "He'll come around when he realizes he's about to go to Hell for not being a Christian." It's rather like the nonsense statement that there are no atheists in foxholes.

Carlos wrote: John, did you read the link? At the end of his life, Planks' s view of GOD was Deistic. He believed in GOD.

Yes, he believed that the universe was created by a deity. But no, he wasn't a Christian (which is what you falsely claimed). Like deists in general, he believed in a "Creator," but not a "personal god." Did you read the quote above that I copied *directly* from the wikipedia article?

Personal gods like Yahweh, Zeus, Apollo, Ahuramazda, Ra, etc. are anthropomorhic projections of human personalities. Planck specifically said he didn't believe in them.

Give up on Max Planck. Obviously, you want to believe that he believed what you believe, but he didn't. Find somebody else to be your standard-bearer. It doesn't really matter to me what Planck believed anyway. There's no real evidence for any god(s), personal or otherwise.