decalog10

It is turning into a diversion isnt it. Somewhere along the line someone said that it is invalid to ask you all to simply take God as a hypothesis, I thought even if you didnt believe in God, you could at least imaginatively say to your selves "If God existed....then the following would be true.....an answer to lifes eternal questions......,"...... I hear your objection already which is that God is not the answer to lifes deep questions, or that there are no deep questions, but that is not the issue at this point. The issue is the unreasonable demand, requirement, request, that I should somehow derive the God hypothesis empirically, with observational evidence, before you would accept it, at least provisionally. I then went on to point out that not even Newton derived his Laws from experiment.

decalog10

Well, sorry if I offended, I was only trying to wake a few from their dogmatic slumbers. By the way, have you noticed the times that I have been treated with not alot of respect?

decalog10

You missed the whole point. God bless you.

Mageth

Well, you more or less clarified what the whole diversion was about above, I suppose. I think the point, what there was of one, was quite lost in the great cloud of smoke and sparks that the Newton sidebar was causing.

decalog10

We have a meeting of the minds.
Peace.

Weltall

I've noticed. Don't be so surprised; considering some of the things you've been saying you're being treated very nicely.

decalog10

I have been blessed by your patience.

RAFH

You made the following statement as your OP:
Question: How do atheists justify their trust in reality?
It's clear that atheist trust reality, believe that it has value and meaning but at the same time reality as a whole is uncertain, all that is can also not be, existence is fragile, transitory and ultimately futile, ending in nothingness.
Given this uncertain reality, how do atheist justify their trust in reality?
A Nihilist is someone who doesn't trust reality, who believes that reality as a whole has no meaning or value.
It seems to me a religious person trusts reality, despite all its uncertainty, and he know why he trusts it, his trust is ultimately justified, unlike the atheist.

In that statement, you asserted atheists trust in reality. You stated further reality is uncertain, that existence is fragile. You then asked how can atheists justify their trust in that (uncertain) reality, (that fragile existence) you asserted. You then stated theists trust reality despite its purported uncertainty, and theist know why they trust it, because their trust is ultimately justified, unlike the (poor, stupid) atheist. The implication (which was later explicitly stated) was belief in god justifies that trust in (uncertain) reality.

During the subsequent discussion it was determined (despite your retreat to using the terms) reality itself was not so much uncertain, but rather existence was uncertain. And that was refined to life was uncertain because people die and the only way they can have certainty is to have an eternal afterlife as promised by the xian god.

Eventually it boiled down to whether or not the expectation of an afterlife is realistic. That depends exclusively on whether or not said god exists.

Then you wanted to stipulate god exists so your argument holds and your justification for said stipulation is god's existence is an assumption and assumptions are somehow holy and sacred and can't be questioned because if you do there wouldn't be any discussion and Newton would never have figured out his Laws of Motion. You based this claim on the claim Newton didn't derive said Laws from experimentation or experimental data obtained by others.

The fact Newton didn't just wake up one morning with the Laws of Motion and then looked about to see if anybody was searching for such doesn't seem to be a problem. The fact Newton formulated said Laws as the result of:
a) Copericus' theory of heliocentricity, based on the ever more complicated calculations needed to make geocentricity work for predicting the locations of the planets and thus determining the correct date of Easter less and less certain, which
b) led to Brahe obtaining massive numbers of observations of the planets the plots of which prompted Kepler to formulate his Laws of Planetary Motion, and
c) meanwhile, Galileo had performed his numerous experiments on falling bodies and balls rolling down inclined planes which established the motion of a body falling towards earth was not influenced by the mass of the body and it was described as a second order function, in other words, the bodies accelerated on the basis of time squared, and,
d) discussions in person and by letter with Hooke, Halley and others pressed the need for a general mathematical solution of the nature of motion and,
e) Newton was rapidly becoming a master mathematician, developing Calculus which turned out was perfect for solving the riddle. It showed (experimentally) the planets and the moon behaved in a manner similar to Galileo's falling bodies, and,
f) Newton's own experiments with Optics and Alchemy suggested to him the possibility of action at a distance, a pretty novel physical notion but certainly not very novel for supernaturalists, everything they do is action at a distance, which,
g) led Newton to propose an attractive force inherent in matter which was proportional to the mass of the bodies and inversely proportional to the distance between them. Voila! Newton didn't sit around assuming this and that, he was led to the conclusion by hard, experimentally gained data. Yes, once he was on the track, he hypothesized a universal force inherent in matter and then he tested his hypothesis.

What you want to do is have your 'assumptions':
a) the xian god exists,
b) the xian god controls the universe,
c) the xian god grants an eternal afterlife to those who believe in the xian god,

Therefore, because you believe in your assumed xian god and your assumed xian god's gift of eternal afterlife, you are justified in trusting in your assumed uncertain reality and because atheists do not believe in your assumed xian god and your assumed xian god's gift of eternal afterlife, they are not justified in their trust in your assumed uncertain reality.

Yeah, if you accept all of your assumptions, you have a good point there and we atheists are the stupidest shitheads in the world.

However, if I assume:
a) your xian god doesn't exist, therefore,
b) there isn't going to be any eternal afterlife and,
c) you are going to die and your consciousness will cease to exist and your body will rot to nothing or get burnt to ashes or, being so pumped full of preservatives nothing could live in it it will lay for years in a box in the ground, so,
d) it doesn't really matter if you believe in some imaginary friend, its a complete waste of effort.

And yeah, if you accept all of my assumptions, you are the fool.

Can you explain to me the difference?

I can tell you what difference I see. Mostly its that my assumptions when compared to reality are not invalidated and enjoy fairly good empirical support, while yours are also not invalidated directly, they do not enjoy any empirical support and indirectly, there are adjacent assumptions that go with the xian god that are invalidated.

Plus, in general, with a lack of clear invalidation and only limited positive support to rely on, one defaults to nothing rather than something. Occam's razor.

Otherwise I start assuming I am the King of Hawaii as well as your xian god's new representative on earth. Can you deny me? I simply assume I am and by your argument, you must accept it.

Craigart14

RAFH: You're not the king of Hawaii. I'm the king of Hawaii. And Jessica Alba, Charlize Theron, and Stephanie Miller have agreed to take turns as my queen.

Craig

Smullyan-esque

Accept the God hypothesis provisionally? Atheists? What say you? Haven't all of you done this at one time or another?

----------------------------
Speaking for myself, I do this quite a lot, actually. I start by hearing some religionist say something about their God, like "I know the God of the Bible is real!"

Then I run the logic. "Ok" I say to myself "IF this Bible God existed, THEN there would be an afterlife (whopeee! no death for me!) and there would be a Big Boss in the Sky who would answer my questions and I wouldn't need to figure stuff out for myself any more. I could just read the Bible, and follow the directions. I'm good at following directions..."

It seems like you think that is ALL I should do. Discover there are some positive things that are consequences of the God hypothesis, and then just STOP. Is that what you do, decalog? You like the first impression you get, and so you keep it?

You see, ME? I do more than that. I go on from there. "Of course, if the Bible God existed, then the universe would only be something like 6000 years old, but the scientific evidence says otherwise. So, this God must have fabricated false evidence, which means this God is perfectly willing to lie. If God is willing to lie, then why is it that I would believe this Bible thing?"

You see, if you KEEP GOING with the logic, you sometimes find out that the hypothesis is WRONG!