A Polite Question for Atheists?

Question

I do not understand atheism at all. I respect it as a viewpoint, as all people are certainly entitled to freedom of religion and speech. But I do not understand how there could be no higher power at all. Could you please explain that?

It just does not follow in my mind. If some things are good and some things are bad, then there must be an independant standard by which to judge things. And the laws of conservation of energy and matter state that neither of those things can be created or destroyed, but neither are eternal... so something outside of science must have created it.

I am not trying to make you believe in a higher power or look dumb, I would just appreciate some solid insight. A lot of what I hear is "You're stupid!" which doesn't explain anything.

By the way, I mean this in the most respectful manner possible, and I am not a religious person, so please don't bash me on that.

Johnny_Zondo, I do not see what is so logical about it. It seems to defy logic.

You're right, bc_munkee, in that good and evil are philosophical constructs and therefore not subject to science, but that's not what I meant. I just mean that there has to be a beginning somewhere.

Eduarodi, some things *are* universally good or bad. For example, it is never right to kill innocent people. That is essential.

I agree with you, Claire_O, in that nature is very very important. In fact I think that god is probably just another name for nature... I don't mean to prove a literal, omnipotent Judeo-Christian God.

Answer 1

Firstly, no matter whether people believe or don't believe in God, we're left with something -- potential, process, etc. -- always existing. The mystery of Existence is there no matter what.
Now, as far as a higher power, I think the point is that, yes, there is one but all the images of it are so ridiculously absurd that atheists like me reject them. The images are ALL about preserving inviduality and the ego -- the 'god' that is worshipped in most religions and thought of by most people is an exact projection of people's egos: it's a god that recognizes our individuality/personality, rewards this 'self', etc. And we talk to it as if it does so -- making 'god' into something that supports the thing we want most: our individual, psychological personality. Even when we think of heaven, we think of it where our individuality and personality are maintained. Now, what people experience when they have an enlightenment experience is something that completely transcends this personality and individuality. And this is an overwhelmingly joyous experience (it literally answers the problems of life and death). However, when someone comes to tell us the good news, our minds either unintentionally misinterpret it or intentionally change the message because it means the end of who we think we are. And that's why I'm an atheist -- I don't subscribe to any of the ego-based images of god & realize that they're all hiding the 'real god'.

Answer 2

I appreciate your polite question, I'll try to provide a polite answer.
First, I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic. That's someone who accepts that the existence of god cannot be proven one way or the other (which is a fact), but since there is no evidence that there IS a god, can safely ignore the small possibility that one does exist. If there is a god, he or she or it doesn't make any practical difference in our lives, and so the existence of god or not doesn't matter. I feel atheism, which denies the existence of god, is as much a logical fallacy as religion that claims god exists. Neither can be proven.

Now, on to your questions...
If you work logically through your statements, your conclusions are not supported by their premises. For example, you said that energy and matter can't be created or destroyed, so something outside of science must have created it. The conclusion is not supported by the premise (even though the premise isn't quite correct). You yourself said that energy can't be created, then you said something created it -- how can that be?
It can't. What you left out, however, is that while energy and matter (which are interchangeable according to Einstein's proven theories) can't be created or destroyed, they *can* change form. Energy can be converted to mass, mass can be converted to energy -- we see this happening every day when we look at our sun, which converts hydrogen gas to energy by fusion at a prodigious rate.
Do I know where the "stuff" that eventually became all of the matter and energy in our universe "came from?" No, not yet. However, not knowing doesn't mean "god did it." It just means we don't know. And like many things we as humans didn't know at one time, there's a good chance that with further study we can find out :)
110 years ago we didn't know that matter could be converted to energy as in the sun, 100 years ago we did thanks to Einstein. 180 years ago we didn't know how humans (or any other life) came to be on this planet, thanks to Darwin we not only know how we know by what mechanism -- and in the 160 years since we've refined his great idea and shown conclusively that it is indeed how we got here.
My point is, I see many people who believe in god very frequently say things like, "We don't know how this happened, so it must come from god" -- which is a logical fallacy. As I said, if we don't know, it only means we don't know -- it doesn't mean that a god had anything to do with it. And given time, we'll probably find out.
Some of the silliest of these logical fallacies have to do with the Intelligent Design movement...one of their favorite statements is "the human eye is so complex and so well-designed, there must have been a designer for it." Do you understand why that's a logical fallacy? First I don't agree that it is well-designed (do some research on it -- it's actually a poor design), but even if it was, knowing that it's complex and works well does NOT lead to the conclusion that it was designed. Why don't ID advocates say the same thing about the human heart? It's complex, works well, and lasts a lifetime...they don't use the heart as an example because there is clear evolutionary evidence to explain how it is the way it is. There is for the eye as well, but it's not totally complete yet -- which only means that we don't quite know everything YET, not that there has to be a designer. IDists used to claim that whales had a designer because there had been no "intermediary form" fossils found between whales and cows-hippos (their closest land relatives)...until whales-with-legs fossils were found, then they dropped that example :)

The point of all the above is to show you that we agnostics/atheists work by logic and reason. That we want to find out the true nature of things, and not just go by what some ancient wandering nomads came up with as myths to explain the world to their ignorant selves. That given enough time to learn, we believe humans can find natural explanations for all of the "big" questions about our origins -- the track record is awfully good so far. That there's no need to invoke a supernatural being to explain things, natural (without god) methods are quite sufficient.

Look, I *know* that a belief in a loving god, a wonderful heavenly afterlife, etc. can be very comforting. It's a rough world we live in, that can sometimes fill you with fear. Believing that there is always someone who loves you (even when you're treated horribly here on earth), and who will welcome you into a wonderful place when you die is a very nice thing, and it can calm some of your fears. I get it. Trouble is, there's no proof that any of it is real. None. Throughout thousands of years of beliefs such as this, absolutely no proof of any kind. So while even I admit that such a belief would be nice and comforting, I can't bring myself to assume it's real without evidence. Perhaps you can, and that's fine. I hope it comforts you. Just please don't give up logic and reason, which are outstanding tools for learning how things really work, to have that comforting belief. The price is too high to pay in my opinion.

Peace.

Answer 3

I'm not being rude in any way but atheists are the way they are as far as higher powers go for the same reason that you may believe that there is one,i guess you would have to be atheist to understand,the science/higher power argument will be argued forever,since no one truly knows what is and what isn't.the independent judging of whats bad and good,well for me it came through my upbringing,and that was no fun at all but at the same time i came out of it with some deep morals,the difference with atheists is that morals are not religion rooted.common sense and rational thinking have more to do with morality than anything.people call atheists stupid because they cant fathom that some people just don't go with what they have been brought up to believe or they are so sure of their own beliefs that if someone doesn't believe like they do,well then they must be stupid.true atheists don't believe that believers are stupid,most just really don't care.

Answer 4

You are trying to come across as all logical and all, I'll give you that.
You've got the "If some things are good and some things are bad" as a logical statement, fine, but we are the judges, all seven billion of us are the judges of what is good and what is bad.
A thing in itself is not good or bad. A gun is not bad, policemen/women carry them all the time. You might judge all guns to be bad but that is just your opinion.
Your next logical point that things cannot be created nor destroyed goes a bit astray right there. What you seem to be saying, in the light of my last statement is that your opinion, your judgement cannot be created nor destroyed. I know that you are talking about bad 'things', but I can't see how you would define any 'thing' as bad or good.
Suddenly, you invoke the supernatural here. You say that there MUST be something 'outside of science' which created these good and bad things. It just doesn't follow.
All that you are really saying here is that a higher power must exist, well just because it must, that's all... it must.
To jump to the conclusion that there is an intelligent supernatural being that just decided to create everything because he/she/it happened to be bored one day doesn't seem very logical, reasonable or sensible to me at all, and it shouldn't to you either.

Answer 5

I think if you get into the whole 'how was the universe created' thing, it's just going to give you a headache. I do believe in the big bang theory, to an extent, but then how did the rocks and the gas get there? But then just leads me to question 'if there is a God, who made that God'?

Even God isn't finite. I don't know why I don't believe in a higher being....I just don't. Everything can be explained by science and logic.

Answer 6

The reduction back to God as a supreme creator is unsatisfactory because then it opens another question as to what came before God. I think it is very difficult to believe that some higher power created the universe because of the inherent complexity required.

Morality resulted as a byproduct of the development of societies. Ants even have a social system where they look out for each other albeit because they are all sisters!

Answer 7

I think your answer to this problem lies in the question. It will be very hard indeed for you to perceive things as an atheist does - assuming you want to - unless you take a radical shift in perspective. For one thing, you will be hard pressed to find an atheist who will agree with you that "some things are good and some are bad" and that "there must be an independent standard by which to judge things" (and in what possible sense is any kind of God "independent", anyway?). There are not things that are good and bad, and that includes killing. You and I will agree that murder is wrong, but we may have different views about killing in war, self defence, for food, the death penalty, abortion or whether it is right to shoot a full passenger jet out of the sky if it's been taken over by terrorists. See, nothing is that simple.

I am afraid your understanding of the laws of the conservation of energy is underinformed. With respect, you seem to have accepted a version of it that it suits you to believe in order to fit in with your faith. According to that version, refrigeration would be impossible. You might want at least to question why the sorts of people who work closely with the mathematics of conservation of energy tend, mostly, to be atheist. They have nothing to gain if they understand their field correctly, by denying God.

And as for whether there is a higher power? For atheists, there simply is no need for one. The circumstances of our existence are better explained by scientific and materialist explanations than they are by religion. It may not be a complete explanation - science does not have the hubris to claim that - but if it's complete explanations that count, we look at science, and we look at religion, and we think about which is less incomplete. You can guess which we side with. As far as morality is concerned, we realize that morality is a relative thing and that 200 years ago it would have been considered immoral for a black man to shake hands with a white woman in public. Morality constantly changes. So the wise person thinks about what it is to be moral rather than looking for a guidebook, and asks how s/he might go about life causing the least harm to others while still enjoying freedom. This results in lots of moralities. On some things we agree, on others we don't. But there is no recipe by which all people all act in exactly the same way all the time. If you're not afraid of someone being different, it's not something you worry about demanding of them. You may have to change your ground slightly - not change your mind - before this makes any sense. But I hope it helps.

Answer 8

I was an atheist as a teenager, so I'll try to give it a shot.

Basically, one accepts what is tangeable and provable about the world; intangeables are subjectives extrapolated from the tangeable. If you love someone, for instance, you care about them as deeply as a religious person, but you understand that feelings are rooted in biochemistry and interpersonal interactions, not some abstract external force. Consciousness is rooted in the biochemistry of the brain; not an ephemeral soul that survives the the demise of bodily functions.

One questions everything, and judges what is credible based upon the supporting evidence at hand.

Answer 9

I believe nature derives from mathematics not some invisible magical sky fairy.

The observation of conservation of Mass/Energy only states that total mass energy is apparently constant. This is mathematically equivalent to stating that the laws of physics do not change with time. But maybe what you don't realize is that Gravitational Potential Energy is negative. And including the Gravitational Potential Energy resulting from inflation, the total Mass Energy in the universe is likely to be zero.

Time is not thought to be something the universe is embedded in, but is instead a property of the universe. So in a very real sense the universe is timeless. Mass and Energy, Space and Time are likely not fundamental anyway but are based on something else such as pure mathematics which exists out of necessity.

I define evil, as that which causes unnecessary harm. It doesn't take any cosmic judge to determine if something causes harm or not.

Answer 10

The formation of the universe from nothing need not violate conservation of energy. The gravitational potential energy of a gravitational field is a negative energy. When all the gravitational potential energy is added to all the other energy in the universe, it might sum to zero (Guth 1997, 9-12,271-276; Tryon 1973).

Our standard of which to judge morals came from us evolving as social hominids. In fact, much about morals can be explained by evolution. Since humans are social animals and they benefit from interactions with others, natural selection should favor behavior that allows us to better get along with others.

Fairness and cooperation have value for dealing with people repeatedly (Nowak et al. 2000). The emotions involved with such justice could have evolved when humans lived in small groups (Sigmund et al. 2002). Optional participation can foil even anonymous exploitation and make cooperation advantageous in large groups (Hauert et al. 2002).

Kin selection can explain some altruistic behavior toward close relatives; because they share many of the same genes, helping them benefits the giver's genes, too. In societies, altruism benefits the giver because when others see someone acting altruistically, they are more likely to give to that person (Wedekind and Milinski 2000). In the long term, the generous person benefits from an improved reputation (Wedekind and Braithwaite 2002). Altruistic punishment (punishing another even at cost to yourself) allows cooperation to flourish even in groups of unrelated strangers; the abstract of Fehr and Gächter (2002) is worth quoting in full:

Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.

Finally, evolution does not require that all traits be adaptive 100 percent of the time. The altruism that benefits oneself most of the time may contribute to life-risking behavior in some infrequent circumstances.