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Subject: Fundamental beliefs.

Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer

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Date Posted: 02/24/02 12:32pm
In reply to: Ben 's message, "A fundamental misconception" on 02/23/02 11:29am

>Getting back to some posts I never answered... :)

Indeed, I have been thinking of doing that also. (Damoclese�s posts are a case in point.)

>>>I disagree on all this. But before moving on, I would
>>>like to pose a simple question. You say the universe
>>>is "orderly", and that this order is better explained
>>>by theism than atheism (incidentally, to me the whole
>>>word "atheist" is much like the word
>>>"non-Christian"... you start with the theist and work
>>>backward, and then you get someone who _doesn't_ have
>>>any religious beliefs. It seems that the person with
>>>no religious beliefs would be the default setting, but
>>>this shows the religious nature of our culture. Words
>>>we use every day without thinking about them are
>>>biased toward the idea that God's existence is
>>>rational). Anyway, my question is... what sort of
>>>universe does atheism predict? What would a
>>>non-orderly universe be like? In other words, please
>>>explain what one could expect to see based on the idea
>>>that there is no God. Since you feel that theism much
>>>better explains our orderly universe, show us what
>>>kind of universe could exist that atheism would better
>>>explain.
>>
>>Classical atheism holds to the idea of lots of stuff
>>happening via random chance, something that would more
>>straightforwardly imply a lack of such order that the
>>theists predicted.
>
>And herein lies the problem. You treat atheism as a
>belief system, and it need not be. A person can
>easily fall into the category of "atheist" by simply
>saying, "I see no reason to believe in God."

I could just as easily turn the tables. I can claim that a person can fall into the category of �theist� by simply saying, �I see no reason not to believe in God.� But I am treating this as an intellectual search for the truth. According to Merriam Webster�s Dictionary (10th edition) definition 2b of atheism is �the doctrine that there is no deity.� That is precisely what I mean when I use the term �atheism.� Either God exists or He does not exist. Both atheism and theism are propositions of reality. They make claims about reality that are either true or false and are thus, in this manner, �belief systems.�

>> What sort of universe would
>>atheism better explain?
>
>Again, you say "atheism", when what you mean is a
>specific kind of atheism called "classical atheism".

I was simply using �classical atheism� as an example of atheism that could conceivably explain the data better than theism. Many other things (physical constants not being fine-tuned for life etc.) atheism can explain better than theism, even if one holds to the doctrine of atheism in its more general form.

>I do not think it is fair for you to assume that
>people know what you mean by the word "atheist".

I thought the standard dictionary definition would suffice in the context of these circumstances. If not I apologize. I hope I have made myself clear in this post.

>Surely you must now admit that if I stand here and
>say, "I see no real reason to believe in God," this
>statement in itself does not cause me to think that
>the universe should be non-orderly.

Maybe not, but the fact remains that theism provides explanatory power for the fact of nature consistently operating in mathematical patterns, as opposed to saying, �that�s just the way it is.�

>We make sense of it by applying human terms like "orderly",
>but the universe just goes on, being itself. In many
>ways, I do not find the universe to be all that
>orderly. The clock-like universe of Newton's day has
>long since been rejected.

Many of Newton�s concepts have been rejected, but there is still an order to the universe. The universe does not have to be the way that it is. It is logically possible for nature to behave in completely random and non-mathematical ways, for example. But the universe does exist with certain properties, including the sort of order that I earlier described. These sorts of things cry out for an explanation. I think theism does that better than atheism. The law of propagation (the maximum speed of light) consistently holds in all frames of reference in a way that I think is rather remarkable.

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