What are the Atheist's views of....?

Question

A. The beginning of the Universe...Was there a beginning to everything? What caused it to begin?
B. Life and its complexity. How did life begin? Why are the odds of life so small?

((I often hear these are proof of God's existence, I just wanted to know your thoughts))

Yoda Green: Your intellect was almost lost in your sarcasm. I'm not a Christion, I am honestly seeking the truth abot whether God exists or not....Hope that's not too crazy for you to fathom ;-)

Answer 1

A. We don't know. We may never know. Making up answers like, "God did it", really doesn't resolve the question.

B. Abiogensis and Evolution. Carbon molecules tend to form chains. It's really not that improbable. Chains tend to make other chains, and so on... For a better discription of how this is not as improbable as it sounds, read some books by Richard Dawkins like, "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "The God Delusion". They are very well written and explain things very well.

Answer 2

In short:

A. big bang
B. evolution

But I must admit there are many things about it that we don't understand. For example, we don't know (yet?) how life really came into existance at all. There are scientific hypothesis' about it, but none of them is already an accepted theory. I am biologist and I had a look at scientific publications on this matter. About the beginning of the universe I can say even less, but I know that physicists are still doing research and with every answer there come more questions. A question like "What caused it to begin" is highly philosophical.
As you see I am not one of these atheists who say they already know everything. No one who knows a bit about science can think that.
This might be an argument for the existance of God, but for me assuming there is a God who did all that doesn't solve the problem, because the question remains, why is this God there? What caused him to be? Then people say he just is and he is eternal, but can't the same be said about the world as such and all that is so amazing in it? If you define God as some kind of "impersonal creative force" I might not be an atheist, but I consider myself an atheist because God is always defined as a personal being, that I consider to be highly unlikely to exist.

Answer 3

1. Before you can cite anything as "proof" of the existence of a "mysterious invisible superbeing" called "god" you are going to have to totally eliminate - with "Proof" - all possibility that any other element could be the cause of what YOU say this God is responsible for. If you cannot DISprove Evolution, then you are up against a very tall wall. The interesting - and usually overlooked - reality is that the overwhelming majority of atheists don't give a chocolate- coated horsefeather about "converting" believers to their way of thinking. It seems to be the "believers" who are twisting themselves into a pretzel out of sheer frustration that atheists just don't want to accept their "deity"

2. Atheists do not claim to have "all the answers". They simply refuse to accept other people's. If you come to me and tell me that it is an absolute indisputable fact that this and this is true, I am going to ask you for your evidence. If you reply "Well, isn't it obvious?" I'm going to respond "Not to me. YOU give me the evidence" If you can't do that, then sorry, I don't buy any "pig in a poke".
3. Not all, but the overwhelming majority of people grow up believing what they believe because that is what was conditioned into their receptive childhood brains from a very early age; put there by parents, family, church, school, the social environment in which they were born and raised. By the time they are adults, that conditioning is hardwired in there, to the point where they no longer know the difference between what they themselves have decided freely, and what has been put there by others. Then they set about trying to convince everyone else of the same thing. I don't make my determination of things based on what others tell me I HAVE to believe, and because something horrible is going to happen to me if I don't believe it. I am a free-minded individual with my own brain and my own powers of deduction, and I believe one thing with the most powerful conviction..... that ever single human being has the inalienable right to be the owner of his own mind, and the master of his OWN thinking and believing.

Answer 4

A. Yes, it's impossible for anything to exist if it never began.
B. You can get a good idea of the beginning if you'll take the time to read Origin of Specie by Charles Darwin. Why are the odds of life so small ? Sorry, I don't understand the question.
Nothing is proof of God. Still unproven.

Answer 5

First, they are not proof of god's existence. Only credible proof of god's existence is that. And you have none.
As for the beginnings of the universe, I would direct you to a book called "a short history of time" by Hawking.
And the complexity of life is easily explained by Evolution. I know it's a rough thing for you, thinking and all, but try. Get some education and you'll soon see that religion is an utter waste of time.

Answer 6

A) Current theory is the big bang. However, we don't know what caused the Big Bang. We're still working on it.

B1) Life evolved.

B2) Why it evolves is still open to discussion.

B3) Are they so small? I'm not sure. On the one example (Earth) that we have studied in depth the odds seem to be 100%. I suspect we will need to exam at least 100 planets before we make a determination of what the odds of life evolving are.

Good questions!

A

Answer 7

On a simplistic level, asking why you're here comes to a fork:

-Because it was planned we were here
-Because if I weren't here, I wouldn't be here to wonder this

The second is a rather simplistic argument but outlines the point rather well. Why does there have to be a god figure with the intention to create us?

The ID argument doesn't work, Palley's watch is a fraud, because first you have to prove the existence of a God to have done this, but you're using this as a proof of existence in the first place, thus it's circular. This is the problem of inductive proof.

Answer 8

A.) Don't know for sure and am happy to admit that. I do think we'll find an explanation eventually, but with our current amount of knowledge and technology, we don't know. The Big Bang seems the most likely explanation at this point, though.

B.) Don't know that for sure, either. I don't tend to focus on abiogenisis much, though - it's kind of out of my range of knowledge. I enjoy learning about where life went after abiogenisis more.

Answer 9

I think we'll have an answer someday, even if we don't now. We're working on it. If we just gave up and said 'goddidit' 50 years ago, we wouldn't have computers, cell phones, calculators, or pretty much anything else we rely on today. We should never stop looking for answers and be content with 'goddidit'.

Answer 10

im not sure about other atheist but im for the big bang theory (it is a theory and leaves room for error) and evolution led to lifes complexity. when a mutation occurs in an organism that proves usefull to it in life, that change will be passed on to its offspring. if it doesnt work then the organism dies.