Just_An_Atheist

If there's no competing hypothesis that explains a phenomena better than another, then there is no delimma. Furthermore, since every worldview would necessarily face the same "delimma" then there is no challenge to any worldview (unless you want to go so far as to say that knowledge is impossible.) By showing that no explanation can escape it, then our intuitions are completly unreliable when it comes to determine the origins of everything. Therefore, I conclude that no worldview is rendered irrational by your "delimma", not that atheism is the "least" irrational.

Viti

I guess I don't understand that people have an issue with this at all. I am completely comfortable in my belief that the Universe has always existed in some form or another, I don't know what the previous form was, but a singularity sounds reasonable . Why all the incredulity.

thomaq

i understand what you are saying. please dont take what i am about to say the wrong way. if we dont critically examine things like the "feasability" of the universe having always been in existense, then we are just like the religious wackos who only accept things by blind faith. i'm not saying this is what you are doing, but i think it is always good to constantly challenge things, even the things that seem so obvious.

Just_An_Atheist

The article is http://www.qsmithwmu.com/time_began_...less_point.htm if you're interested.

thomaq

so ALL worldviews are rational?

i need to make a clarification on the whole "intuitive" thing. i never brought up intuitivism (not sure if that is the proper term) as a superior epistemology.
i was referring to this idea:
if this is the case, then it seems more rational to appeal to intuition rather than counter-intuition.

Just_An_Atheist

No, not all worldviews are rational, just none of them are rendered irrational by this particular piece of information. And as to your comments about intuition, it seems that we must violate our intuition somewhere along the line (i.e. positing a creater who creates things ex nihilo, or the universe just coming into existence for no reason). This is why I view intuition to be unreliable concerning the origins of everything.

thomaq

according to your comments, no worldview can be seen as irrational. let me explain. you say it is rational to believe that the universe sprang into existence out of nothing. your reason for this is because within "nothing" is the absence of laws such as causation etc. does this mean that it is rational to believe that within this "lawless" state i could believe that 37 married bachelors all appeared out of nothing and each of them were riding on pink 3 horned uni-corns. all of the laws that would prevent this from happening were not present and so it would be rational to believe that this could happen. this all happened prior to our universe existing, the married bachelors not only popped into existence but they also popped out of existence.

now i am not putting together an ad-hoc argument. i am pretty sure this did not happen and i am not suggesting it did. i am just saying that according to your reasoning it seems like it would be rational to think that this COULD happen. or that if our universe "popped" out of existence, then the married bachelors riding pink 3 horned unicorns would pop into existence. one might say, "we have no reason to believe that this would happen." to which i could respond, "we don't need reasons to believe it, because no type of laws would exists to govern such events."

Infidelettante

How can we intuit what is beyond our knowing? How our universe began is a mystery because it is a mystery. Its' beginning is a barrier we can not cross. Neither logic nor science can tell us what existed on the other side of that barrier.

Why should we accept that this universe sprang from nothing? We can not know what was on the other side. Why do you insist it could only have been nothing. You can't know that. Do you assume that because ours is a universe of things there must have been no things before it?

The only way we could know what was on the other side of the barrier is if something from the other side tells us. That would be a god. Only a god can tell us what was on the other side and since there are no gods we reject the avenue of revelation.

The solution to the dilemma for atheists is to not claim to know and to question the claims of those who say they do. And to question those who, at the end of their posts, ask us to forget theism.

JT

Wyrdsmyth

I think it's almost stereotypical to think of something like this as a "dilemma for atheism." These faux dilemmas often begin with "Well, if you don't believe in God, how do you explain X?"

But consider this. You could fill in X with anything that isn't currently understood, or which poses a dilemma for scientists, biologists, astronomers and so forth, and assert that if you can't explain how X came about, then a God must be the answer. But God really isn't just an explanation, here, just a condition of ignorance, a sort of metaphysical spackling used to fill in whatever gaps in knowledge we currently have.

We may never know certain things... such as exactly how life began, or how the universe got "started" (or if it ever "started" at all). Or, to put it another way, these things may never be completely settled in the scientific community. There may always be new theories about some subjects. I fully expect that to be the case. But I don't see how that poses a particular challenge to "atheism," per se. More to the point, I don't see why gaps in our knowledge should persuade us into believing that invisible, undetectable entities that only reveal themselves to ancients or mystics in dubious ways are, in fact, real.

So, epistemological gaps don't pose a particular threat to atheism. They pose a threat, mostly, to those people who are unable or unwilling to accept that there always may be things which we, as a human species, cannot answer for sure. Did the universe "begin" at a certain time? Did it always exist? How exactly did life begin? All we have right now to choose from are the various religious and mythological stories, a few scientific theories, some speculation, and the rather pedestrian, honest answer: "I don't know." Is "I don't know" more palatable to most people than "God did it"? Evidently not. It is not very emotionally satisfying... not very reassuring at all. But here, we are getting into the psychology behind your assumptions about why this is particularly an "atheist" dilemma, aren't we?

ComestibleVenom

Full stop right there. The very idea of "springing into existence out of nothing" is a contradiction within it's own language game. But that language is not the language of physics. The nature of physics is an empirical, a scientific question.

Your initial dilemma is derivative of factually incorrect conceptions of the nature of physical inquiry.

Even if physics was in such a silly bind (in which case we would simply have to let such a physic die), the human ideas about deities have insufficient underlying substance, since all the key questions are whisked under a handsome metaphysical rug.

Tell me, how would you relate your, "Lawless" state to the current state of physics?

Of course you can't.

The evolution of the universe is a scientific question. The nature of time and causality, the commonality and differentiation amongst the parts of the universe are scientific questions.

It's fun to speculate wildly, but the best sort of speculations are those disciplined by skepticism and knowledge.


Nobody is suggesting anything of the sort. What does this mean? Nothing. It's just some wild speculation with no connection to what human knowledge actually has to offer us. I see no argument of any cogency.