More Questions for Atheists?

Question

Hmmm I read all of your answers to my last question many were former Christians a few just never bought into religion.Some agnostic. One of the common themes I saw in all of these answers was obviously thinking for yourself but might I say without thinking about yourself.(Now some were not all)
What is the only thing that an Atheist, a CHristian, A muslim , A Buddhist ect.. can really truly validate and know the most about. It is not the Bible, It is not evolution, It is not mythology,philosophy or psychology. It is the Human experience(themselves). Most atheist seemed to look to knowledge and intellectualism outside of themself to validate their conclusion I propose study up on yourself only. Not philosophy or psychology but study you. It may sound stupid to some but if u really see into what i am asking then it won't come off sounding shallow. My idea may seem weak but it is your own minds that will carry this not my somewhat oddly articulated proposal.

Answer 1

"More" questions? One would be good.

Answer 2

"What is the only thing that an Atheist, a CHristian, A muslim , A Buddhist ect.. can really truly validate and know the most about. It is not the Bible, It is not evolution, It is not mythology,philosophy or psychology. It is the Human experience(themselves)."

This seems to be the question in this rambling statement, and you've also provided an anwer. I still don't know what the question really is, but whatever.

If we look only to ourselves for 'answers' then we have the following problems: any answer will be completely subjective. There will be no peer review. Nobody can replicate the experiments/thoughts. There is no validation.

Scientists use models to refer to a description or depiction of something, specifically one which can be used to make predictions that can be tested by experiment or observation (hint: this is an important part). A theory, in the context of science, is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of certain natural phenomena. A physical law or law of nature is a scientific generalization based on a sufficiently large number of empirical observations that it is taken as fully verified.

THIS is why science works, and THIS is why I accept the observations of thousands of biologists who say 'yes, evolution is at work and always has been', and the observations of thousands of geologists who say 'yes, the earth is billions of years old'. THIS is why I don't accept the ramblings of the religious types. None of what you can say be verified, in fact, all of your holy books contain obvious contradictions, glaring errors, and ignorant statements simply because they were written by goat-herders some 2000-odd years ago.

And all of this would be perfectly allright with me, believe whatever the hell you want to believe I say BUT DON'T BOTHER OTHERS WITH IT. Sadly, all your goat-herder books tell you poor souls to go bother OTHER people with your nonsense in order to 'save them'. And in recent years you have tried to subvert science itself by wearing the sheep's clothes with your creationism and intelligent design nonsense and even worse, you have convinced some suckers that there is actual science there when there is none. Hell, last I checked, some idiot schools were even preparing to teach their children this non-science/nonsense.

No. Simply: No.

Answer 3

As an atheist, I am so simply because the evidence to be a theist just doesn't seem to exist. There isn't not a lot of intellectualism needed for it.

I am also a Buddhist. That does entail a great deal of self study and self understanding. In fact that's close to all it is.

Answer 4

You have an extremely good point. When your all alone, no TV, no music, no people and no distractions....there seems to still be a presence within that can be tapped.
Is it God, your own mind, your sub conscience linked to all that is...Om...the sound of the beginning?
In that calm space many things are born and all of them start with an idea...including a belief in a higher power...but is it real?

Answer 5

you might like the concepts put forth by Gary of Selflogy (yahoo group) English is his second language, but he comes off with some rather unique concepts, that may jive with what you have proposed. He has quite a different sense of humor, also.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/selflogy/?yguid=211614232

Answer 6

May I suggest that you read "Why God Won't Go Away," and "Why We Believe What We Believe," by Andrew Newberg?

These are very interesting books about the nature of belief. I'm sure you'd find them interesting.

Answer 7

Academics viewing the universe through a narrow scope should rethink assumptions
Dallas Morning News
By Roy Abraham Varghese
December 15, 2004

Last week, The Associated Press broke the news that the most famous atheist in the academic world over the last half-century, Professor Antony Flew of England's University of Reading, now accepts the existence of God.
Mr. Flew's best-known plaint for atheism, "Theology and Falsification," was delivered in 1950 to the Socratic Club, chaired by none other than C.S. Lewis. This paper went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades and set the agenda for modern atheism.
Now, in a remarkable reversal, Mr. Flew holds that the universe was brought into being by an infinite intelligence.
"What I think the DNA material has done is show that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements together," he said. "The enormous complexity by which the results were achieved look to me like the work of intelligence."
Given the conventional wisdom of some psychologists that people rarely, if ever, change their worldview after the age of 30, this radical new position adopted by an 81-year-old thinker may seem startling.
But Mr. Flew's change was consistent with his career-long principle of following the evidence where it led him. And his newfound theism is the product neither of a Damascus road experience nor of fresh philosophical arguments, but by his sustained analysis of scientific data.
Mr. Flew's conclusion is consistent with the actual beliefs of most modern scientific pioneers, from Albert Einstein to quantum physicists like Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg. In their view, the intelligence of the universe - its laws - points to an intelligence that has no limitation - "a superior mind," as Einstein put it.
Not a few of our men and women of letters, it would seem, have been looking for God in all the wrong places. Those who dismiss God as a product of psychological conditioning or pre-scientific myth-making have not come to terms with the essential assumptions underlying the scientific enterprise.
Science assumes that the universe follows laws, which leads to the question of how the laws of nature came into being. How does the electron know what to do? In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking asks what breathes fire into the equations of science and gives a universe for them to describe. The answer to the question of why the universe exists, he concluded, would reveal to us "the mind of God."
Last May, I helped organize a New York University symposium on religion and science, with the participation of Mr. Flew and others. Our starting point was science's new knowledge that the universe's history is a story of quantum leaps of intelligence, the sudden yet systematic appearance of intrinsically intelligent systems arranged in an ascending order.
Many people assume that the intelligence in the universe somehow evolved out of nonintelligence, given chance and enough time, and in the case of living beings, through natural selection and random mutation. But even in the most hardheadedly materialistic scenario, intelligence and intelligent systems come fully formed from day one.
Matter came with all its ingenious, mathematically precise laws from the time it first appeared. Life came fully formed with the incredibly intelligent symbol processing of DNA, the astonishing phenomenon of protein-folding and the marvel of replication from its very first appearance. Language, the incarnation of conceptual thought with its inexplicable structure of syntax, symbols and semantics, appeared out of the blue, again with its essential infrastructure as is from day one.
The evidence we have shows unmistakably that there was no progressive, gradual evolution of nonintelligence into intelligence in any of the fundamental categories of energy, life or mind. Each one of the three had intrinsically intelligent structures from the time each first appeared. Each, it would seem, proceeds from an infinitely intelligent mind in a precise sequence.
We can, if we want, declare that there is no reason why there are reasonable laws, no explanation for the fact there are explanations, no logic underlying logical processes. But this is manifestly not the conclusion adopted by Einstein, Heisenberg and, most recently, Antony Flew.
Roy Abraham Varghese of Garland is the author of The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God (Tyr Publishing). He helped organize presentations by Antony Flew in Dallas on two occasions. Readers may contact Mr. Varghese through tyrpublishing.com.

Answer 8

What was your question? The only way that the human experience is increased is a higher self-consciousness and we get that from science, not religion.

Answer 9

I think I understand what you're saying, taking time to reflect and think about one's personal experience and personal knowledge of reality.
One person you or others might be interested in reading is Michael Polanyi-- he writes on theories of knowledge.

Answer 10

are you saying we should not be looking for answers from other sources? That is what christians do all the time, blindly follow a book written many many years ago.

Answer 11

I don't see what you are asking. In fact -- you don't appear to be asking anything. It seems like more of a nonsensical rant to me. Can you repeat your question in the form of a question?