Top Ten Reasons I'm An Atheist

[PaulSacramento]

Living beings.

So, before there were living beings, there was no intelligence?

Yes.

So, it came to be only when living creatures came to be?

Yes; only after living creatures came to be.

So the properties of what it is to be intelligent existed in living creatures?

[Philip]

Ken: Are you are assuming material beings were created and designed rather than evolved from non-intelligent materials that may have always existed?

Yes I am, Ken. Because non-intelligent things have NO abilities to do anything, much create or design anything. Your seeming speculation for what non-intelligent things might be able to do is unwarranted to say the least.

Correct my memory - I thought you don't believe in what most physicists do about the Big Bang and what began happening in mere moments?

[Kenny]

So, before there were living beings, there was no intelligence?

Yes.

So, it came to be only when living creatures came to be?

Yes; only after living creatures came to be.

So the properties of what it is to be intelligent existed in living creatures?

Eventually; yes.

[Kenny]

Ken: Are you are assuming material beings were created and designed rather than evolved from non-intelligent materials that may have always existed?

Yes I am, Ken. Because non-intelligent things have NO abilities to do anything, much create or design anything. Your seeming speculation for what non-intelligent things might be able to do is unwarranted to say the least.

Non intelligent things evolve/change all the time!

Correct my memory - I thought you don't believe in what most physicists do about the Big Bang and what began happening in mere moments?

I don't believe they know what happened prior to the singularity that expanded in what is known as the Big Bang. Do you?

[Nicki]

Colors, like blue, red, yellow, etc., are adjectives that describe nouns. Intelligence is a noun. Nouns do not describe other nouns, unless it's an attributive noun, which intelligence is not.

Basic grammar.

Intelligent, and Conscious are adjectives that describe nouns.

I can kind of see where Kenny's coming from here - intelligence is just a property living beings can have; if someone's brain works well and that results in accurate and helpful communication and efficient actions (I can't think of better words!) from them, we say they're intelligent. I'm not sure what that implies for theism vs atheism though.

Does that make any sense?

[Kenny]

Colors, like blue, red, yellow, etc., are adjectives that describe nouns. Intelligence is a noun. Nouns do not describe other nouns, unless it's an attributive noun, which intelligence is not.

Basic grammar.

Intelligent, and Conscious are adjectives that describe nouns.

I can kind of see where Kenny's coming from here - intelligence is just a property living beings can have; if someone's brain works well and that results in accurate and helpful communication and efficient actions (I can't think of better words!) from them, we say they're intelligent. I'm not sure what that implies for theism vs atheism though.

Does that make any sense?

Yes that makes a lot of sense.

[Philip]

Nicki: if someone's brain works well and that results in accurate and helpful communication and efficient actions (I can't think of better words!) from them, we say they're intelligent. I'm not sure what that implies for theism vs atheism though.

What it implies is that a being is designed to have intelligence and THAT takes an intelligent designer to create that being so designed. Non-intelligent things did not brilliant begin assembling an astonishing universe in mere minutes. Read about the Big Bang's first three minutes alone - there is not time for evolution, etc. And non-intelligent things cannot create anything - and yet, in mere minutes, upon the Big Bang beginning, we see physical things, non-existent mere minutes before, come into existence and being functioning with immense precision, interaction and on a vast scale. These first things are so sophisticated, that our best scientists and researchers, after nearly a century, can scarcely understand them. So the Intelligence that designed and began assembling and controlling those first physical things has to be brilliant beyond any intelligence known to man! That's what it implies!

[Kenny]

Nicki: if someone's brain works well and that results in accurate and helpful communication and efficient actions (I can't think of better words!) from them, we say they're intelligent. I'm not sure what that implies for theism vs atheism though.

What it implies is that a being is designed to have intelligence and THAT takes an intelligent designer to create that being so designed. Non-intelligent things did not brilliant begin assembling an astonishing universe in mere minutes. Read about the Big Bang's first three minutes alone - there is not time for evolution, etc. And non-intelligent things cannot create anything - and yet, in mere minutes, upon the Big Bang beginning, we see physical things, non-existent mere minutes before, come into existence and being functioning with immense precision, interaction and on a vast scale. These first things are so sophisticated, that our best scientists and researchers, after nearly a century, can scarcely understand them. So the Intelligence that designed and began assembling and controlling those first physical things has to be brilliant beyond any intelligence known to man! That's what it implies!

Nicki
You’ve asked the wrong question dear. All questions require the per-determined answer of “God did it” and the way your question was asked, it had little to do with God and was more about how the brain works, how we label beings who think this way, blah, blah, blah...
It a little difficult to insert per-determined answers when people insist on asking the wrong questions as you have done. Perhaps you should ask your question again, but phrase it in a way that the pre-determined answer “God did it” fits neatly into the answer column.
Care to try again?

[Philip]

Ken: Nicki, you’ve asked the wrong question dear. All questions require the per-determined answer of “God did it” and the way your question was asked, it had little to do with God and was more about how the brain works, how we label beings who think this way, blah, blah, blah...

NO, Ken - at this point in our discussion, I didn't say GOD did it - I said it requires an Intelligence to create, design, control, assemble the things, their designs and functions that immediately came into physical existence, upon the Big Bang beginning. But you fail to address this obvious point - as you are attempting to avoid this obvious point you have no answers for, by immediately making it a question about God. Again, one can argue over WHAT that creative intelligence was, but no one can credibly argue over the necessity that it must have had key attributes revealing what only an intelligence can produce. As well, if you insist no intelligent agent was required, then you should attempt to refute the fact that non-intelligent things have ZERO ability to do what only an intelligent being could. You cluelessly mention evolution, as if that would provide an answer, and yet we are talking astonishingly complex things forming within mere minutes, and began operating with astounding and necessarily precise interactions and orchestration. And yet, no human has such immense intelligence or capability. And no non-intelligent things has ever show even any simple creative abilities. And science teaches that, within moments of the Big Bang beginning, on a vast scale, extraordinary physical things of remarkable, brilliant designs immediately appeared and begin assembling themselves in ways still barely understandable to all of the physicists who have researched and studied the origins of the universe. So incredible, that no one has any idea how a universe, moments old, immediately included such amazing things with such wondrous functionalities.

Ken, by immediately bringing up God as an objection, and not answering the critical questions as to why and what non-intelligent aren't capable of, or at least acknowledging that, things showing incredibly complex designs require a designer, aren't possible otherwise, you have nothing to support your contentions - other than an absurd belief in what you appear to believe non-intelligent things can produce. And you think you are being clever by dodging the questions by interjecting the "impossibility of God being the Designer" - but you've offered zero reason to believe SOME source of great intelligence wasn't necessary for what only an intelligence could have created.

[Kenny]

Ken: Nicki, you’ve asked the wrong question dear. All questions require the per-determined answer of “God did it” and the way your question was asked, it had little to do with God and was more about how the brain works, how we label beings who think this way, blah, blah, blah...

NO, Ken - at this point in our discussion, I didn't say GOD did it - I said it requires an Intelligence to create, design, control, assemble the things, their designs and functions that immediately came into physical existence, upon the Big Bang beginning. But you fail to address this obvious point - as you are attempting to avoid this obvious point you have no answers for, by immediately making it a question about God. Again, one can argue over WHAT that creative intelligence was, but no one can credibly argue over the necessity that it must have had key attributes revealing what only an intelligence can produce.

Ahh.... Looks like we've come full circle huh? I think the last time I've answered this question was post #239.

[Philip]

Ken: Ahh.... Looks like we've come full circle huh? I think the last time I've answered this question was post #239.

Ken, you haven't even remotely credibly addressed my questions!

From your post 239: "Just because in our daily lives everything that exists seems to have been created and therefore has to have had a creator, doesn’t mean that is the case for all entities within the Universe, including the Universe itself."

Because what you are effectively saying in that quote is, somewhere in the universe, it is possible for non-intelligent things to create beings (or ANYTHING else) capable of having and utilizing intelligence, or for them to create and assemble things of massive complexity and functionality. Astounding what you seem to think things, capability wise, akin to unconscious rocks, can do.

But enough of your disingenuous babble about this topic - as, at this point, you've well exposed the laughable things you (apparently, and desperately) believe possible per non-intelligent things, even if they existed eternally - while I've appealed to reason, logic and the history of scientific testing and observation, as well as the immense mathematical improbabilities of just the huge number of required parameters / exact things and conditions existing would be. Which, as mind-blowing as those improbabilities are, it doesn't even touch upon the necessary self-assemblage and orchestration you apparently insist to be possible of non-intelligent things. As there are only two possibilities here - either a universe came from an intelligent source, or non-intelligent ones.

And, btw, all these powerful things from science only reveal the necessity for an intelligence; it doesn't prove that creative intelligence was the God of the Bible. For that, we would need to turn to other evidences.

No, science doesn't say anything - ONE WAY OR ANOTHER - about God. Because the evidence, though powerful and overwhelming, is indirect, and because science cannot test for this. But what science does show are connections per sources, causes and effects of ALL known things, and observations. It also reveals statistical probabilities / improbabilities of various things existing, self-orchestrating or functioning as they do. And thus, various scientists take these observations and, for many of them, it plays a powerful role in leading them to believe in God or at least a deist type of god. And these same incredible, otherwise, immensely / statistically improbable things have led a very significant percentage of scientists (many of them Christians) to their belief in some higher Intelligence that is responsible for the universe. This is what happened to Einstein as well - scientific discoveries led him to belief in a creator/designer for the universe.

[Kenny]

Ken: Ahh.... Looks like we've come full circle huh? I think the last time I've answered this question was post #239.

Ken, you haven't even remotely credibly addressed my questions!

From your post 239: "Just because in our daily lives everything that exists seems to have been created and therefore has to have had a creator, doesn’t mean that is the case for all entities within the Universe, including the Universe itself."

Yes that’s what I said.

Because what you are effectively saying in that quote is, somewhere in the universe, it is possible for non-intelligent things to create beings (or ANYTHING else) capable of having and utilizing intelligence, or for them to create and assemble things of massive complexity and functionality. Astounding what you seem to think things, capability wise, akin to unconscious rocks, can do.

How on Earth did you conclude I meant anything like that??? Bruh; if I made the (absurd) claim that rocks and other non-intelligent things could create (create meaning to bring into existence) intelligent beings, that would still be creators creating stuff; right? My point was that you have no proof that anything was ever created.

[Morny]

And thus, various scientists take these observations and, for many of them, it plays a powerful role in leading them to believe in God or at least a deist type of god. And these same incredible, otherwise, immensely / statistically improbable things have led a very significant percentage of scientists (many of them Christians) to their belief in some higher Intelligence that is responsible for the universe. This is what happened to Einstein as well - scientific discoveries led him to belief in a creator/designer for the universe.

Bringing in Einstein may not be helping your argument. From where you're standing, Einstein is indistinguishable from Kenny and me.

Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind that sold for half a million dollars:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

Letter to Morton Berkowitz:

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

"My Credo", Einstein, 1932:

I do not believe in free will.

To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.

In a 1947 letter:

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously.

Letter to Beatrice Frohlich, 1952:

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Letter on 1954 to Joseph Dispentiere, who despaired that that Einstein was conventionally religious:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

[Nicki]

astonishingly complex things forming within mere minutes, and began operating with astounding and necessarily precise interactions and orchestration... And science teaches that, within moments of the Big Bang beginning, on a vast scale, extraordinary physical things of remarkable, brilliant designs immediately appeared and begin assembling themselves in ways still barely understandable to all of the physicists who have researched and studied the origins of the universe. So incredible, that no one has any idea how a universe, moments old, immediately included such amazing things with such wondrous functionalities.

Can you clarify what you mean specifically? I've done a bit of research - according to what I read of the theory there were only subatomic particles in existence for quite a few thousand years after the Big Bang, until it was cool enough for atoms to form. That doesn't take away from the unlikeliness of anything existing at all, or the complexity of how everything turned out.

[Philip]

The first 20 minutes of the Big Bang per present physics thinking and research:

From: https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/intro.html

Sources Page (from the best current science): https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/sources.html

Planck Epoch (or Planck Era), from zero to approximately 10-43 seconds (1 Planck Time):
This is the closest that current physics can get to the absolute beginning of time, and very little can be known about this period. General relativity proposes a gravitational singularity before this time (although even that may break down due to quantum effects), and it is hypothesized that the four fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity) all have the same strength, and are possibly even unified into one fundamental force, held together by a perfect symmetry which some have likened to a sharpened pencil standing on its point (i.e. too symmetrical to last). At this point, the universe spans a region of only 10-35 meters (1 Planck Length), and has a temperature of over 1032°C (the Planck Temperature).

Grand Unification Epoch, from 10–43 seconds to 10–36 seconds:
The force of gravity separates from the other fundamental forces (which remain unified), and the earliest elementary particles (and antiparticles) begin to be created.

Inflationary Epoch, from 10–36 seconds to 10–32 seconds:
Triggered by the separation of the strong nuclear force, the universe undergoes an extremely rapid exponential expansion, known as cosmic inflation. The linear dimensions of the early universe increases during this period of a tiny fraction of a second by a factor of at least 1026 to around 10 centimeters (about the size of a grapefruit). The elementary particles remaining from the Grand Unification Epoch (a hot, dense quark-gluon plasma, sometimes known as “quark soup”) become distributed very thinly across the universe.

Electroweak Epoch, from 10–36 seconds to 10–12 seconds:
As the strong nuclear force separates from the other two, particle interactions create large numbers of exotic particles, including W and Z bosons and Higgs bosons (the Higgs field slows particles down and confers mass on them, allowing a universe made entirely out of radiation to support things that have mass).

Quark Epoch, from 10–12 seconds to 10–6 seconds:
Quarks, electrons and neutrinos form in large numbers as the universe cools off to below 10 quadrillion degrees, and the four fundamental forces assume their present forms. Quarks and antiquarks annihilate each other upon contact, but, in a process known as baryogenesis, a surplus of quarks (about one for every billion pairs) survives, which will ultimately combine to form matter.

Hadron Epoch, from 10–6 seconds to 1 second:
The temperature of the universe cools to about a trillion degrees, cool enough to allow quarks to combine to form hadrons (like protons and neutrons). Electrons colliding with protons in the extreme conditions of the Hadron Epoch fuse to form neutrons and give off massless neutrinos, which continue to travel freely through space today, at or near to the speed of light. Some neutrons and neutrinos re-combine into new proton-electron pairs. The only rules governing all this apparently random combining and re-combining are that the overall charge and energy (including mass-energy) be conserved.

Lepton Epoch, from 1 second to 3 minutes: After the majority (but not all) of hadrons and antihadrons annihilate each other at the end of the Hadron Epoch, leptons (such as electrons) and antileptons (such as positrons) dominate the mass of the universe. As electrons and positrons collide and annihilate each other, energy in the form of photons is freed up, and colliding photons in turn create more electron-positron pairs.

Nucleosynthesis, from 3 minutes to 20 minutes:
The temperature of the universe falls to the point (about a billion degrees) where atomic nuclei can begin to form as protons and neutrons combine through nuclear fusion to form the nuclei of the simple elements of hydrogen, helium and lithium. After about 20 minutes, the temperature and density of the universe has fallen to the point where nuclear fusion cannot continue.

Now, the Big Bang was no chaotic explosion taking billions of year to form the extraordinary building blocks of the universe and all life today - it was an event of great precision and control of an expansion that went from the first particles to nucleosynthesis in just 20 minutes. ANYONE who thinks this is possible without just the right incredible things forming and immediately functioning with unfathomable precision - amazing things revealing design, breathtaking interactions of cross functionalities and synthesis - all things requiring an intelligence to create, assemble and orchestrate WITHOUT AN INTELLIGENCE BEHIND IT - well, such belief in non-intelligent causes defies all common sense, all scientific observations of causes and effects, and has immense statistical improbabilities of "just happening" / uncaused/unguided by non-intelligent things. And the world's best minds, researching the Big Bang for a century, have scarcely understood the components of it!