Atheists can you explain ?

Question

1. Painting, poetry, music etc.? If we are simply evolved from primates why do we feel the need to express ourselves inthese ways? They do not seem to have anyhting to do with survival or what is helpful to the species.

2. Isn't everything we do natural? Since we are animals and products of nature isn't everything we do natural then? For instance is an apartment building any less natural than a beehive or a beaver dam? Would they not produce all the things that humans do given the ability to do so ?

3. The Big Bang theory is full of holes. For example:A.If the Universe was all once gas and dust from where did this material come and why would it spontaneously start to condense and then explode? B. What are the boundaries of the Universe and what is beyond it ? Were there others before and are there others outside of it ? Why are there any natural laws, such as physics at all ? Why is there any order?

PLEASE NO GARBAGE ABOUT ME "ATTACKING" ATHEISTS! Just as people of faith should be willing to justify or explain what they believe atheists should be held to THE SAME STANDARD. That is my definition of academic equality. NO ANSWERS PERTAINING TO RELIGION PLEASE. I am asking a secular group of people some secular questions. No bashing of religion is or religious people is neccessary to answer this question. Like wise I do not want religionists to use this as an opportunity to bash atheists. I just want intelligent answers.

TWO IMPORTANT THINGS:
1. Thank you to those who gave intelligent non-hostile responses. I can and hopefully will learn from them . These type of answers are the ones I seek.
2. TO YOU FANATICS OUT THERE I am not trying to prove the existence of God. I am asking for the PERSPECTIVE of those with whom I may disagree. It has been my experience that atheists, often quite rightly, accuse people of faith of being closed-minded and unwilling to hear things that contradict their faith and theology. what I am doing is ASKING for an opinion that may differ from my own. Why that would meet with hostility is beyond me . Perhaps the snide remarks and bogus assumptions say more about the people making them than the person towrds whom they are directed. This is after all a forum for discussion not a place to "preach to the choir"

Answer 1

I'm agnostic - I think that it is the position most 'Atheists' take to be honest. Theist cannot prove there is a God scientifically; atheists cannot prove there isn't a God either. Therefore agnostics understand that to come to a decision on the proof of God is undeniably inconclusive.

To your questions...
1. Painting, poetry, music.
"They do not seem to have anything to do with survival or what is helpful to the species." - This is the flaw in your argument because they do.

1a. No experience we perceive has a neutral influence on ourselves. Some hate the works of Da Vinci, some love it. And for those that love it, they experience the richness of being alive, the richness of being able to experience visual art. The same can be said for literary and auditory arts as well. It gives an indirect purpose to continue existing and therefore it does have a survival value.

The reason why there was a period in our history called the 'Enlightenment' was because there was an explosion of realisation. The fundamental questions where there to be answered distinct from emotion and feeling - things "seeming" to be something would not have been a sensible conclusion to base our understanding of our world.

2. Everything we do natural?
I don't understand the question.

3. Big bang theory...
Big Bang Theory. There must have been a cause to the big bang right? How can matter suddenly just appear? Well, you know what, I just don't know. But it doesn't give anyone reason to make up a God. A God in most theist's minds to be morally sanctioning, who feels anger, who feels joy. Funny, because these are the same qualities of man. So God this 'Superman' existed before this Big Bang. Scientists can hypothesis about the Big Bang (the holes you speak of are more to do with the further detailing of the processes as opposed to contradictory evidence). They do not proclaim it is THE ANSWER. They have a high probability based on mathematical reason that it happened. Why it happened is of their concern, but they don't jump to the notion of a God as a reason.

The role of God in society in the early times was to stem civilisation to a law abiding peoples. It is a societal mechanism for keeping men from murdering one another, men stealing from one another, men from hating one another. All for the betterment of order that you speak of. For the survival that you also mentioned.

But times changed as population increased. Wars are fundamentally a conflict of civilizations - of differing men's ideologies. It was the role of religion backed by 'God' to quell disorder within peoples. But different people of different regions of the world who had sought different (but altogether similar moral positions) religions were now in contact and the conflicts of civilisations were abound.

All wars and hatred are the products of men's differences. God was created to order them. I understand the purpose of this ideology, but I understand that the ideology exists. But whether a God exists is entirely contestable.

Morality has its basis on religion, yes, but that need not be the case. I can reason on many counts why one shouldn't kill another without there being a God catalyst. (The law against murder is one reason, but one could argue that the law came indirectly from religious principles. A better reason, is the pain and sorrow I feel if I kill someone and limit their life and their future. Again one can argue that a society based on religion makes me feel this pain and sadness - but then I would argue that the emotion comes from the understanding I have of a life lived. An even better reason is if I kill someone, there is a danger of retaliation to my next of kin or myself and therefore to my survival.

Ok, I'm digressing. I'll stop.

Answer 2

The answer to your first two questions is our highly developed brain. Art, music, literature, etc. are the byproducts of our intelligence. I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, so I can't tell you why, but there is literature out there if you're interested. My guess without doing the research is that it is related to our capacity for language. In order to have a language, one must have the capacity to represent concrete things symbolically. Hence, we are also able to represent things artistically and metaphorically.

I'm not sure what your second question is driving at. Are you asking why beavers don't build apartment buildings? I'm really not seeing the point of your question. All I can say is that our mastery of tools (and therefore our ability to build complex things) has a lot to do with our brains. They may also be highly dependent upon our hands and our opposable thumbs. Our capacity to manipulate tools allows us a broader range of possibilities for the things we can produce. If a beaver were intelligent enough to come up with the idea of a screwdriver, what could it do with the idea?

3. I don't have the answers to these questions, only hypotheses. Most atheists would probably say the same. However, I believe it is not beyond the ability of science to provide answers to these questions in the future. Even if they don't, I think the idea of an eternal, all-powerful being is much more difficult to believe than hypotheses like the Big Bang theory.

Answer 3

1: The arts are necessary for survival. They unite people, build identity, release stress, and give our "hearts" expression. I agree that it is a part of creation, to have the urge to do these things.
A person can be an atheist and still imagine a soul or spiritual side to life.
2: Apartment buildings are rather like beaver dams aren't they? Who knows what a beaver could do if given a human brain to do it with. Would he still be a beaver?
I rather think that everything is one big thing-a universe/creation/do-hickey, not unlike drops of water are to an ocean.
I have a bag of skin with some really special and glorious stuf going on in my brain and elsewhere. I am amazed and delighted. It is not proof of a personal god.
3: There is some order and some disorder-consider the platypus, and bees. They make no sense. Science helps frame some of the myriad differences and show us how things are alike too.
It is not all the truth available on the planet. it is partof the truth, just as a spritual view is part. There may be other parts, just as confusing and complex.
I prefer to live outside the box. I am on the planet earth, of it, and also different since I am spirtual being, too.
Outside the box, the space between the stars, there is room for all the theories, all the questions, and gods galore.
It is inclusive, lovely, whole and holy. There I sit as often as I can.

Answer 4

1. Now this is an interesting question. I'll hazard a few guesses. Painting comes from a simple desire to be able to reproduce images - pre-camera. Part of our brain thinks visually, some people can express themselves better visually. Poetry is just writing with rythm so it's easier to remember (in a pre-writing society). Music is interesting. I would guess that it's just a way to stimulate the part of your brain that does hearing. I don't really know, but none of this is anywhere near proof of the existence of God.
2. I really don't get what you're talking about.
3. These holes are simply question we haven't answered yet. The Big Bang theory was arrived at by simple logic: The universe is expanding constantly, so presumably, if we rewind the tape, it at one point was packed infinitely small. Also, the discovery of the 3-degrees-Kelvin background radiation was proof of the Big Bang - though I don't remember how; look it up. Where did this material come from? well obviously that leaves room for a god, though it leaves just as much room for anything else as well.

Your theory that because there are some unanswered questions in physics means all physics theories are untrue is ridiculous. people don't just pull these theories out of thin air, they have logical proof.

Answer 5

1) primates do paint and do make music and even have a form of poetry.

2) I dont htink everything is natural. By natural i understand that what is done by most people. For instance most people have the tendency to sleep between 00:00 and 5:00, so that is natural.

3) A lot of questions here.
The universe has no boundery.
If it had a boundery how should we define it ?
A boundery has some point outside the regions the boundery enclose. Since the universe is all by definition it can not have a boundery. At lesst not in the sense i understand it.
Why are the things as they are ?

Answer 6

1. You should familiarize yourself with the art works which elephants, dolphins, and monkeys have completed,but in any case, I fail to see how this is evidence of an invisible spirit god. No animal only does what is necessary for survival, most species can be found doing things for enjoyment's sake.

2. Just because we are a product of nature doesn't mean that our choices reflect RESPECT for the ecological systems from which we evolved.

3. Sweetheart, gas IS matter. It would "spontaneously start to condense and then explode" due to gravity. I thought this was covered in 5th grade. B. I don't know where the boundaries of the universe lie, nor what is beyond it, nor what you're talking about when you say "others before and outside of it". I also don't understand how any of this supports the idea of an invisible spirit god. Physics is the study of matter and its properties. I'm sure these properties would exist regardless of whether we were here to study them. And, again, the existence of these patterns in no way implicates that an invisible spirit god must have created them. That looks like this:

existence of X = proof invisible spirit god created X

There isn't any order. Stars collide, entire galaxies collapse, and people die in freak accidents. Anyone who thinks tomorrow's events are mapped on a spirit god's agenda is seriously not paying attention.

Answer 7

Not an atheist, but let me answer anyway.

1) Art is a blending of empathy and communication, both of which have evolutionary benefits. To greatly oversimplify, it serves to draw large groups of individuals closer together socially, which improves the groups odds of survival.

2)Yes. The difficulty you are having here is a misconception of definition. "Artificial" is not the opposite of "natural", it is a sub-category. "artificial" means "man made", but as you point out, man is a product of nature, so everything man-made is natural. It's a subtle linguistic point, but important.

3)Quite right, there are many holes in the thoery. But the neat thing about science is that EVERY theory is ASSUMED to be wrong. All the messing about with math and experiments is meant to figure out which theory is LESS WRONG than the others. Big Bang is just the best we have come up with so far, it gets better all the time. The current challenger involves multi-dimensional (some think as many as 11 distinct dimensions) "strings" that basically vibrate everything we know into existence. That is a ridiculous oversimplification, but you get the gist of the idea.

The other neat thing about science is that it doesn't claim to have all the answers, yet. (unlike religion, but I'll respect your wishes and not go there)

To the last of your questions, I have no clue. I'm sure that there are scientific theories dealing with such things, but they are well above my head. You would have more success asking an expert. I think a theoretical physicist would be the most relevant discipline.

Good luck.

Answer 8

1.) We evolved big brains, and along with that came creativity. The earliest art developed from very real needs--the need to communicate with others, to create very important tools, etc. Our creativity then branched out. I disagree that it is unnecessary for survival.

2.) I suppose that you could argue that everything that we do is "natural" since it comes from the natural world, of which we are part. That doesn't necessarily mean that everything we do is good for the natural world. It certainly isn't. I don't know if other animals would behave the same way that we do "given the ability." The two animals you describe--bees and beavers--are incredibly highly-evolved to their ecological niche. Beehives are infinitely more intricate than many of our own structures. I rather think that it's arrogant to assume we are the highest level of evolution merely because we're able to be self-conscious.

3.) I am not a PhD in any of the sciences, and so am completely unable to answer these questions. I'm sure we don't know the answer to all questions pertaining to the origins of the universe. Saying "I don't know" is the first step to figuring something out. If you're truly curious, Skeptic magazine did a long piece a couple of months ago on "Why This Universe?" that you would probably find interesting.

Answer 9

hrm, flaw in your question >>> Most who answered, their answers were not even their own thoughts, Maybe from books???? >>> Yes the ideas ARE based upon something that someone has proven and they were read out of books. What is someone just supposed to sit down and say "this is evolution" and just hope it is the correct answer? The point of science is to speculate what if, test the idea, and either prove yay or nay to that idea. And yes those ideas WERE recorded in books, it's called history, and it's good to write down... After all the bible is an interpretation of a story that someone a LONG time ago wrote down.... so you may not buy the fact that some people will read a science book, and "get it" and "buy" the ideas in the book etc.. but that is where belief systems come from, research and ideas of other people that are either proven or expanded upon. (Even your bible is based upon that). The main thing though is that scientists dont just say "this is right and everything else is wrong" however Religion does, and considering there are a few 1000 "religions" in the world (one of which is called scientology) they cannot all be right, so how can you be sure Christianity is the right one if you dont question it?

Answer 10

ooh goody I like these ones...
1. To be able to appreciate beauty, symmetry, language etc (all part of art) has obvious evolutionary advantages. Hunter gatherers that found barren/ugly territories attractive would have quickly died of starvation. Similarly our sense of beauty helps us choose partners that are healthy and therefore better able to pass on our genes via offspring.
2. What is your point here? This has nothing to do with atheism.
3 You have clearly not read in detail any of the theories/papers which discuss big bang/inflation theory.
A) Many theorists argue that the universe is made from the remains of a previous one (cyclical) but that is just one theory. It is called a theory because it can't be proved, but scientist are constantly looking for ways to do this, and making progress too.
B)There is no boundary to the universe. When the big bang occurred, time itself was created. It is nonsense to ask what is outside the universe as there is no time for anything to exist.