Collegiate Times

Thats the problem with you atheists you assume we want to hear your opinion. I don't walk around trying to convert people like you do. If you tried keeping your opinions to yourself you might find people are more tolerant than you thought. The backlash against atheism is really more about you pissing us off by trying to converting us. Show some respect towards our way of thinking and we will reciprocate.

The problem with "you" believers is that you have been charged with spreading your faith. Find one Christian or Muslim who says otherwise. Diffusing free-thinking is nothing more than the same practice in an opposite direction. Climb down from your ivory tower, and let go of the self-righteousness.

Anonymous, as an atheist, I'm more offended by the Christians/Muslims/whatever who don't try to convert me. How much would you have to despise me in order to not care that I'm going to hell? Do you really think I'm such a worthless person that I'm not worth the effort to save from being tortured for eternity? And I'm pretty sure there never has been any atheist missionary knocking on your door trying to reconvert you back to atheism.

What this article fails to address is one of the fundamental questions; was the Being (all of existence and reality) created or has it always existed. An atheist has faith in that he BELIEVES all of existence has always existed and is not in need of a creator.

Anonymous: I was invited to write this article by the editor of the CT, so I think I am justified in assuming that people want to hear my opinion. :) Also, how am I showing any disrespect by issuing a call for respectful discussion?

Eric: Good point. If a person truly believes in hell, they should try to save as many people as possible from it. On the flip side, if a person - like me - truly believes that hell does not exist, they should do everything they can to save people from living a miserable life in fear of a non-existent punishment.

Bradford: There are a couple of inaccuracies in your post. First, I do not believe that the universe (space and time) has always existed. Evidence shows that the universe originated in the Big Bang 13.5B years ago. Second, as far as what caused the Big Bang, we must again turn to evidence, not conjecture. If you believe that God caused it, show me the evidence. In my review of the existing evidence (though I am not a cosmologist), I find the cause of the Big Bang to be an open area of intense scientific inquiry. Theories abound, and the question is very much open. But I would caution you if you wish to apply the God Hypothesis to this gap in human knowledge. This hypothesis has failed every time it has historically been applied. In various religions, the God Hypothesis used to claim that God held up the pillars of the flat earth, that God made the world 6,000 years ago, that gods caused the thunder and the lightning. If the God Hypothesis has failed every time it has been historically applied to fill a gap in human knowledge, why would you think it will hold up when crediting God – and not a natural cause – with initiating the Big Bang? I am sincerely open to evidence here, but I have not found any that is compelling.

Check out the Freethinkers at Virginia Tech website: http://www.freeatvt.org/ . Come to our next meeting Thursday, April 23 at 7:30PM in Squires 147. We will be watching a cool short film called "Here Be Dragons" and talking about critical thinking.

I like how he says "Believers augment...Freethinking non-believers assert..." Can there be any freethinking believers? Are there any non-believers that are not freethinking? Of course not, you're either a freethinker or just a believer. And I bet the believers would like to see the evidence that proves some of those biblical accounts did not happen Mr Scientific Pants. You do that and you might swing some to the other team.

Sean: I put my Scientific Pants on one leg at a time, just like anyone else. :) I’m not trying to start a big fight here, but since you asked, here's a few pieces of evidence off the top of my head that Biblical accounts didn't happen. There is no archeological evidence that supports the account of the Israelite exodus from Egypt. The Israelites then supposedly got lost for 40 years in a desert that can be crossed on foot in 10 days. The Bible claims the earth was created in about 4,000 BCE, when the Sumerians first brewed beer in 8,000 BCE. Genesis 11 claims that in 2400 BCE, there was only one language on the earth, when there were advanced cultures on almost every continent at that time. Joshua chapter 10 claims the sun and moon stood still in the sky to help Joshua finish killing all the Amorites, reflecting not only a mythological outlook on nature but also a belief that the sun and moon both circumnavigate the earth. Matthew 27:51-52 claims that zombies wandered around Jerusalem spreading the gospel, which, to say the least, strains credulity. So there’s a few.

So no proof that something happened is proof that it didn't happen? That doesn't sound too sciency. and your interpretation of the Bible is what leads you to think the Bible says the sun and moon revolve around Earth. It's similar to science. Data in research, or the words in a book, can be interpreted different ways to draw different meanings of the words/numbers.

Jonathan: No, there was no inaccuracy in my post. It is one of the most fundamental questions. This question reaches into the depths of logic and philosophy which i referenced by the 'Being'. You just refused to use your logic and danced around the question. There are only 2 options, either the Being (all of existence) was created or it has always existed. As a proclaimed Atheist you are acknowledging that there is no creator. You mention the Big Bang, but you still have yet to address where the Big Bang came from. Did the 4 forces and all of the matter exist for all eternity as a singularity point before exploding into what is termed the Big Bang; or was it created. Just because you refuse to be a hypocrite and apply your beliefs to all aspects of science and reality does not render my post inaccurate; you BELIEVE reality was created (space and time) for if has to be created if it has not existed for eternity. If you would like scientific theories to support what you coin 'God Hypothesis' i would recommend Quantum Physics. You can not have an action without an observer; a tree does not definitively fall in the forest unless someone or something observes it. Until someone observes an action then both realities exist; the tree fell and it did not fall - parallel in existence in multiple universes.

Sean: Certainly absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But in the case of the exodus - when 1 million people left a country on a trek to a new land - archaeologists would expect them to leave a trace behind. Not leaving a trace doesn't prove it didn't happen, but it strongly calls it into question. On the matter of interpretation, how many of the points that I made are simple matters of interpretation? I am just repeating the words of the Bible. If you want to interpret the Bible as an expression of truth in an allegorical or symbolic sense - not a scientific or literal sense - I believe you are on the right track. But where do you stop? If you think the Bible is not literal in its description of creation, the sun/moon stopping, Babel, and the undead preachers in Matthew, how can you then claim that Christ’s resurrection is literally true? If you can’t trust the truth of the Bible’s words when it is describing things we can test – like its historically and scientifically testable claims – why trust it when it makes claims about supernatural realities, like heaven, hell, and salvation?

Bradford: I am intrigued by your ability to tell me what I do and do not believe. :) My self-description is that I am an atheist with respect to any gods described in religious literature, and I am an agnostic with respect to the general concept of God. I am open to evidence, but unconvinced. If the question is what caused the Big Bang, the answer is that we don’t know. How do beings inside space and time (the universe) perform some experiment or take some observation of what might be outside it? If there is a point of agreement between us, I would suggest that it is this: the question of what caused the Big Bang is an open scientific question. As an answer to this mystery, you offer God as the observer that resolves the quantum mechanical paradox of the being/non being of our universe. In other words, God is the observer that creates our reality. You are advocating the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. God would be acting as the measuring device – which is a classical device in Copenhagen's interpretation. By definition to take the measurement, God would have to exist within space and time, not some supernatural realm. Where, then, is the evidence within this universe – evidence based on classical physics – for a God? How do you resolve the paradox of God being both part of the universe – so as to act as an observer – and outside it at the same time?

"I'm pretty sure there never has been any atheist missionary knocking on your door trying to reconvert you back to atheism." Do an Internet search on "Jonathan Safran vs. the Mormons."

How can one trust the claim about supernatural realities? I suppose one could just treat all the less than questionable events in the Bible as outliers. Where do I stop interpreting the Bible as allegorical and start to trust it as literal? Well I never started since I've never read the book much less tried to make any sense of it. But there are varying degrees to how far people do interpret it given the number of denominations out there. It all just comes down to faith and believing what hasn't be proven. Sort of like the efforts to get Jews and Arabs to live side by side in peace. Every piece of evidence I've seen says it can't happen but others believe it can. For some reason they have some silly faith and believe it can.

To expound upon Jonathan's post, the question of what caused the big bang gets a little more messy than that. Space-time itself began with the big bang, so there was no time 'before' the big bang. No time implies no law of causation, so the big bang could not have been 'caused' (at least not the way we think of the word). It can also be said that the universe has existed forever, even though forever has been for a finite amount of time (13.5 billion years so far). There has never been a time when there wasn't time, so time has always existed. It then follows that existence has always existed, even though it kinda hasn't (confused? me too). If you can't tell me where god came from, then neither of us ultimately knows the origin of existence.

I love how, when discussing religion with theists, the conversation always ends up being steered towards the ("meta"?)physics of the origin of the universe. When, as Hitchens says, they have "all their work ahead of them." Even if, say, a Catholic is convinced God caused the Big Bang, that now makes them a deist and its a far stretch from there to be convinced they should be Catholic - especially when labeling yourself as such and attending mass gives credence to the Pope telling Africa and the rest of the world "AIDS is bad but condoms are worse."

I love it when people debate the origin of the universe as if they are going to whip out a video of what really happened. It's irrational for an atheist to argue against faith while discussing something he can't prove even to himself. That applies to everything from the origin of the universe to the existence of God. All the believer has to do is prove it to himself. If the non-believer is unable to prove God or origin to himself, there is no point using that inability as evidence of anything. Kris, the Pope never said "AIDS is bad but condoms are worse." so your argument about credence has no credence. God will not torture you in Hell. That's not his function. If you go to Hell, you are responsible for that decision. To draw an analogy, it's like blaming the IRS because you didn't pay your taxes.

Just because we haven't yet discovered the actual factual nature of something through science and may never be able to because of the limitations of our nature as humans, does not provide any reason whatsoever to believe in a god. It is perfectly okay to admit that there are things that we cannot and may never be able to explain, and as Jon Graf has tried multiple times to point out, that is an extremely important concept in science. Our complete inability to conceive of or understand something doesn't mean that because it's so insanely complex there must be a being outside of our senses that did it. Where does this argument make sense to theists? And pulling out little tid-bits like that Jonathan Safran thing or the pope vs condoms thing, doesn't help either side prove a point. It's like saying that because Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, all Americans would do the same. It's a totally incorrect statement, and stems from a desire to stir up emotions, not to have a fair, intelligent discussion using logic and reason.

Melissa, tell it to the children who won't know what a condom is until its too late and they are dead from AIDS because of the intolerance of the Pope. Calling that a "tid-bit" is nonsense. I'm an atheist and I don't feel I need to prove that to anyone. What I do feel compelled to do is root out and expose where religion is impeding progress - like the progress to rid Africa of AIDS. And it ALL stems from utter arrogance which Henry shows in his post. I find it entirely offensive and if I were to respond to his post directly, this post would be flagged.

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