Summarising Religion and Atheism
October 6th, 2007 by The Atheist
I came across the image to the right today on the Friendly Atheist. As many people have pointed out, remove the word “magic” and you’re pretty much there. In case you can’t see it (click to enlarge) it says:
Atheism
The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.
I’ve tried to come up with my very description of religion, well really Christianity, just to see how it fits in with the description of Atheism. I’ve posted it below.
How would your definition of Religion read?
Yup! I think you nailed it!
Good one. Now where is that invisible man? I’m still waiting for be shown. Did I mention I’m from the “Show Me” state? 
Of course, even that first image was a response to a picture of a crucified, bloody Jesus captioned:
http://www.voenixrising.com/images/christianity.jpg
Mriana, have you noticed that when people who can see the invisible man he never shows up. Yet they can talk to him at will. Sounds almost like a utility company, the reps claim they have excellent customer service, but you never actually get it…
That’s fantastic Aerik. I thought I’d go down the crude route for mine.
Yes, I have Atheist. Sometimes I wonder if those like say, oh Fat Robotson (Pat Robertson), have Schizophrenia.
Only an fool would say such, without making any deep research for the word Religion. Its Something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience. Atheist: Isn’t the point of conscience to not to believe in God which is called Humanism? Yes it does! Humanism is a Religion. Boy, You Totally Nailed It!
Have you ever seen “The case of Christ”. Lee Strobel, an Atheist journalist, went to the very end to see if Jesus was the Son of God, or an phony. Try to do more research than stalking the same wall shouting “Theres no God”. Matter of fact, we have this in our human nature, we are scared of the unknown. But guess what, That Atheist went to the END! He cracked the code!
ya so the nothing that atheist believe in that nothing exploded into everything and everything arrenged itself perfectly for no reason and made redistributing bits that later became dinosuars. now that makes more sense.
I do agree with The Chritian down at the bottom… so your telling me that NOTHING which started, out made EVERYTHING…. oh yeah… that makes PPEEERRFECTTT sense..
I like the Christian theory a lot better…
IT MAKES MORE SENSE!!
you cannot disprove the existance of god, but you can make a convincing arguement for the existance of “Intelligence beyond our own” or something that transcends the limitations of time and space and holds everything together and brought everything into being. somehow random chance just doesnt explain why carbon levels, gravitational force, the degree of the tilt of the earth, the amount of oxygen, the percent of salt in our oceans and blood streams, the circular (as opposed to eliptical) orbit of earth, hydrogen converting its mass to helium, etc are so so so accurate just so earth can sustain life. if any one of these accurate measurements was just a little bit less accurate, the precision of all the other measurements would not matter. but its because EVERYTHING is just perfect that life exists on earth and that i am able to post this reply right now….. and i suppose the nothing that made nothing is why everything is so perfect?
The Christian, Kheeli - The concept of converting energy into mass is currently being explored and will no doubt be proven through the experiments currently being carried out at CERN using the LHC. The Christian version makes absolutely no sense at all and has no merit.
Underoath - I’m afraid you can’t make a convincing argument for a higher intelligence. And while we can’t currently disprove the existence of God, we can, and are, systematically disproving many of the key facets of religion. Your argument, for example, has fundamental flaws. While life on this planet exists within certain tolerances, we have evolved to live within them. It’s not chance, it’s evolutionary science. You could say that life wouldn’t exist without oxygen, proof that God created us and provided us with something we required. However, life can (and does) exist without oxygen, it’s just not human life. Similarly, humans can only exist within certain temperatures, other forms of life can function outside of those boundaries. So yes, it is remarkable that the sequence of events required to put you in a position to write your reply occurred, but they did. And if some of those events happened slightly differently, you may not be in the position you are now. But no doubt life would continue, albeit in a slightly different form more suited to the environment it exists within. You need to move away from the “I was designed” idea and open your eyes to the world around you, and how we as a species, and other forms of life, have changed and adapted to better suit our environments.
so if amino acids say, magically arranged themselves to make a cell which was magically already “adapted” to the environment to make us, which we are also adapted to the environment, why is this theory not evident anywhere else? say venus? if we can adapt to 23% oxygen, 0.007% of hydrogen converting its mass to helium, 3.4% salt in the oceans, and temperatures close to the freezing/melting point of water around the globe, cant some life get used to the irregularities (of course only irregular to us, im sure life on venus functions just fine cus if there were life it would have sprang out of nowhere already adapted kinda like here)
of course you could also just say we were made unique and have a habitat that was designed uniquely for us. your choice
ever heard of the kalam arguement?
which of the following statements would you disagree with?
1) everything that begins to exist has to have a cause.
2) the universe began to exist.
Yes I’ve heard of the kalam argument and like most people I dissmiss it. Apart from the obvious problems with using it to prove the existence of a God, see Bertrand Rusell’s response, asking someone to disagree with two arbitrary statements based on unfounded assumptions doesn’t really count as an argument in my book.
As for the presence of life on other planets, given the timescale involved (billions of years) and the limited number of plan eta we have access to, it seems highly unlikely we would be aware of any extra planetary life. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist outside of our current reach, nor that it hasn’t existed in the past/will happen in the future. That’s the problem when you’re talking about a series of unlikely events happening over the course of billions of years. Of course, if you believe the bible you can substitute “unlikely events” with “God’s plan” and “billions of years” with “thousands of years”.
How much other stuff are we allowed to dismiss? The universe did have a begining, or so it is now believed by a majority of scientists. So what caused this big explosion of matter just appearing? And what about all the dating methods that do in fact suggest thousands of years as opposed to billions? Do we dismiss the fact that there are discrepancies in dating methods scientists claim to be accurate? Or the cambrian explosion? Or the fossil record which seems to be missing the whole bottom three quarters of darwins tree of life? How bout if i blended up a frog for you. How many billions of years do you suppose it would take for the frog to put itself back together an jump out again? You do have all the essentials for life. Or even come out as something else. And turn into a man.
@Underoath, even if God created the universe, where did God himself come from? ..
@nobody:
But that’s why he’s God! God is God because he is the only thing that doesn’t have to be made. He operates without any rules (he is infinite and has no beginning), and creates the rules that govern the world (everything else is finite and has a beginning). Being in the world, we can only think and operate within those confines, so we can’t measure God by them since he is not confined in the world like we are!
@nobody
Exactly what clearly said!! your question “where did god come from” implies that there was a starting point or a beginning to god which requires him to be stuck in a half dimension of time like we are. obviously such a powerful being, that we christians and other monotheistic religions beleive he is, would have control over his own creation, that being time in this case. he has no beginning, no end, there is no time line that starts or stops for him.
Where did the DNA come from that allowed the first simple cell to reproduce itself? What is the cause for the effect of life? What keeps protons from repelling each other? What is light? What are the requirements for life, and the statistical probability? What is the power source of a gravitational field that causes accelleration? What defined the speed of light? Why in history do we not find developing languages? Why did the human race wait until just 5 to 10 thousand years ago to produce language? Why in the last 50 years has techonology advanced so rapidly (about the time Isreal became a nation in a day . . .).
Answers to all this I could not find in my text books. I did however find them in the Bible. I then became a Christian, unable to maintain my atheism with science. Don’t confuse the truth with religion - they are not all the same. I was seeking the truth, not religion and the only way you will not find it, is if you exclude the possiblity before you look (how scientific!).
Exatheist - Are you seriously suggesting the answers to all those questions are in the Bible!?!? I’ve read the Bible, and I don’t remember any mention of quantum mechanics! And bear in mind, saying “God did it” isn’t an answer at all. Because, by that measure, who/what “did” God? This whole “well it’s God” position that many religious people take really confuses me. You’ve listed a number of areas in science where there may (or may not, I’ll come on to that in a second) be questions. Yet I’ve never met a single religious person who’s willing to even begin to question to creation of their respective God. Hence comments similar to Clearly’s above.
As for the “questions” you’ve raised, well why is the world only 3000 years old? Why is the earth flat? Why is there no reproducible evidence of evolution? Those were all questions at once point, questions that have now been answered by science. Your assumption appears to be that science has plateaued, that it has ceased to progress. But that’s not the case, science is advancing at a staggering rate. And no doubt will continue to answer questions. This is the complete opposite to the Bible, which isn’t changing (as much as people want the sexist, abusive and slavery condoning parts to be removed). Science will always seek out the truth, the Bible is a static work of fiction. And anyone who believes is holds the answers is deluding themselves, especially since many of the “answers” it provides have already been proven to be false.