Collegiate Times

"I've often struggled to understand why people insist on clinging to the outdated belief that there's some omnipotent being watching over us and judging us for every little thing we do." There is something watching over us and judging us every second, monitoring our communications, luckily it's not omnipotent. The entity is the NSA. Maybe if we can get past using scarecrow arguments that Jacob likes to construct, we can actually argue about things that matter; like policies that reduce our civil liberties. Seriously, who is going to disagree with the idea that "faith" shouldn't be used as an agent of "tyranny"?

Why do you need a reason for debating the existence of God? Why do you even need to debate it? Why do you care if other people believe? If you don't believe, fine, but if others do then let them. "It's just false comfort for people who don't like to be uncertain about the world. And who could blame them? Nobody likes to be uncertain." Tell that to someone who is dying of cancer or just lost their 4 children b/c their husband threw them off a bridge! Sorry, it happens! That will provide them a lot of relief. Well, believing in God or some higher power does give comfort and sorry, but there's no shame in that. At the end of the day people can believe what they want to and that's what matters.

Jacob, there is an important distinction to be made in your article. You say that non-believers are those who say "I don't know." I disagree. Atheists have no belief in a deity. This seems different from saying that one "doesn't know" whether a deity exists. Perhaps you are agnostic and just don't know it yet.

God must exist, since only divine intervention could keep me awake through this article. I agree with Alex, there are important and relevant debates in the world and locally that deserve more attention than just lobbing a fireball to try to incite religious-types.

The thing that atheist scientists hate about the argument for a god is that it can be stated as a valid scientific hypothesis. Scientifically speaking, belief in a god may arise as a product of the limitations of science itself. By design, scientists are primarily concerned with cause and effect. Like the stereotypical two-year-old who always asks, "Why," a scientist is always looking to dig deeper to the root cause of a phenomenon. When such a cause is unknown, hypotheses are made and tested. So far, we believe that the big bang created our universe. But, in true scientific form, we must now find a cause for the big bang. It would be scientifically unacceptable to simply not ask why it happened (i.e. why did the singularity exist in the first place). Unless science can answer this question, all we can do is hypothesize. At present, any, if not all, such hypotheses are equally untestable. So why is the belief that something/one "put the stuff there" any more outrageous than any other? This really comes down to a personal view of whether you believe that existence has a cause or not. Interestingly, although science always preaches a search for causation, in the absence of a known cause for the big bang, we are not allowed to consider god within the spectrum of possible causes. Certainly our science is improving, but isn't it possible that science is only taking finite steps to understand a concept of infinite detail: the existence of the universe as we know it?

Jason, let's distinguish the difference between a scientific hypothesis and theory. Why would an atheist scientist hate the fact that the argument for god can be stated as a valid hypothesis? This in itself actually isn’t true, but even if it was it wouldn’t make a difference. In science, many valid hypotheses are verified after experimentation and evidence, and many are rebuked when the experimentation and evidence disputes the results. A hypothesis ultimately means nothing until it has been repeatedly tested, analyzed, and the results have been reviewed by a scientific community. Of course the successful hypotheses turn into theories/laws. The main point here is that a valid scientific hypothesis must be able to be tested. The argument you make for a god hypothesis cannot be tested. There are an infinite amount of possibilities of where the singularity came from. Of course all religious beliefs are among these realms of possibilities, but scientifically that point is moot. This is because there are an infinite amount of other possibilities for the singularity including anything that you or any other person can think of (even things our brains can’t think of must be considered possibilities since we have such slim knowledge on the issue). Thankfully, physicists are humble enough to say they don’t know anything about t=0 in the universe timeline. To say that you could make a valid testable hypothesis about anything at t=0 or before would diverge from scientific reason and current physicists at Tech among the likes of physicists all over the world opinion. If you’ve ever taken physics classes on the subject at Tech or picked up a Stephen Hawking book this should be perfectly clear. Therefore, the atheist scientist would be more concerned if the argument for god could be stated as a valid scientific theory, one which has been validated throughout the scientific community after overwhelming evidence etc. Of course, if this was the case the atheist scientist would cease to exist just as the scientist that doesn’t “believe” in gravity ceases to exist today. But that, as you and I both know, this simply isn’t the case. Also, the atheist scientist as you envision doesn’t actually exist. Even Richard Dawkins has explicitly stated that by scientific measures he isn’t an atheist and isn’t 100 percent sure there is no God. What he says is by public perception he is an atheist because he has a radically different view and admittedly a belligerent on fundamentalists. I’ll paraphrase Carl Sagan on the subject from his book The Varieties on Scientific Experience, where he said that as a scientist he’ll follow where the evidence leads, and on the issue of God it leads nowhere. Sorry for Rambling so much. All the best -abc

Jacob, I can understand your frustrations over those who believe there is a god when that belief seems foolish and outdated. However, please try to understand my position too. I was born into a Christian family, and I rejected it. My dad was “disabled” in a car accident when I was about five. When he was forced to stop working because of his head injury, he became a stay-at-home dad and my mom went to work. It was a rough time for me and I grew up with a dad who was, in many ways, a drugged-out shell of who he used to be. Because of seeing me dad in that state, I totally rejected Christ when I was fifteen and went as far as I could the other way. All I saw in the church was fakeness and hypocrisy, and all I saw in my family was pain and confusion. I was done with it. Funny though, how things work out. It took me awhile on the other side of the fence to realize how desperately I missed my “pre-modern superstition.” Suddenly, life had no answers for me. Was there any point in life? No. Would there be any conclusion that would set things right? No. Did I have any reason to crawl out of my shallow self-pity to try to make a difference in the world? Based on the first two answers, no. I lost my hope, and I had to turn my brain off too. I sometimes get the impression from the atheists that I talk to that Christians must not think things through. It’s like was just mindlessly accept everything we’re taught while never questioning it ourselves. That’s not true. I’ve spent weeks agonizing over things in the Bible that I don’t understand, but I’m certainly not blindly following anything. Coming back to Christ has brought me so much frustration, difficulty, joy and purpose, that I could never totally describe to you the experience. Who I am in Christ is wholly different than who I was without him, and while you could argue that I’ve been brain-washed into the change, I haven’t. You mentioned that the need for religion stems from an inability to say, “I don’t know.” Doesn’t it seem like there are some things in life that are worth investigating when we don’t know? I think that whether there is a god, which god he is, and if there is a purpose to life are extremely important things to investigate. Deciding not to pursue God because you’re comfortable saying, “I don’t know” does not negate the existence of God, nor is cutting short the pursuit of the truth praiseworthy. The truth is that a Jewish carpenter with no background, money, looks, or higher education spent three years speaking to a conquered people in a conquered nation, was killed, and yet changed the world forever. It’s something to look more into, and not something to cast a glance at and say, “I don’t know.”

"abc," I suppose a more accurate statement would be that the existence of god is a valid, though not scientific, hypothesis. I would argue, though, that it does have scientific characteristics. It is a search for causality, for instance. My point is that this non-scientific hypothesis exists in part because of the inability of science to create scientific hypotheses about t=0. On this point I agree entirely with Sagan. I was a physics major at VT, and I realize that many scientists acknowledge that science falls short of answering these questions.

To expound a bit more, common devices that the atheist uses to disprove god include Russell's teapot. Why should we have any more reason to believe a god exists than a reason to believe that an ancient Chinese teapot orbits the earth? The reason is because science leads us to a dead end. All we can do is speculate. In short, whether or not a teapot exists probably has very little effect on the universe we observe. I understand that Dawkins acknowledges a hint of technical agnosticism, but I still cringe when I hear the ideas like "enlightened atheist" thrown around. I have yet to hear an argument for true, pure atheism that is any less flimsy than any argument for absolute faith in God. Whenever reason is used, agnosticism seems to me the only reachable conclusion. This is why I take issue with the author's argument. Reason doesn't provide an airtight defense of atheism.

Jason, i agree with everything you have to say about the ideas of the "enlightened atheist". I also agree with your point on the author. The only issue I had with your post was your admitted misuse of the word scientific in front of hypothesis. All the best.

Jason T - I'm not sure the purpose of the author's statement, "...I don't know..." deals with not knowing whether a deity exists or not. I took it to mean something different: It seems that when one person asks a particularly religious person a question that doesn't have a clear answer, the religious person (in my experience, anyway) likes to answer that the answer (perhaps) 'Isn't for us to know because it is part of God's plan'. So I took his statement to mean that when a nonreligious person is asked a question of the same ilk, the nonbeliever is more likely to say 'I don't know' as opposed to crediting the lack of an answer to their lack of an ability (or desire) to understand 'God's plan'. In my experience, when having a discussion where questions like this are raised, having a person respond with a 'God's plan' sort of answer is frustrating and usually leads to a conversation becoming unproductive, as opposed to an open and fruitful discussion. I agreed with his statement based on this interpretation.

How is a 'God's plan' response any more intellectually stimulating than 'I don't know?' I mean, I could say "Evil pigs did it" and it would have the same ultimate effect. To be fair, I am Catholic and largely believe much of what the church teaches - not blindly, mind you, but a lot of it simply makes sense to me. That having been said, I don't see how a collective 'we don't know' advances open and fruitful discussion any more than anything else. In my experience, people who give a 'God's will' style response don't generally mean "I don't know and we best leave it alone," but rather they indicate that it is a mystery which is, as yet, unsolved - just as an atheist who says "I don't know." This is part of the limitation language imposes on communication.

To "I don't know either," I understand your interpretation, and I agree with it upon rereading. However, I also believe that saying "I don't know" runs counter to everything I've ever known about human curiosity. As Kyle implies, there is an important difference between "I don't know" and "I don't know so why bother thinking about it." The latter, to me, is a detriment to the ingenuity of humankind.