I was reading through Ezra’s blog last night to see if he bothered to dignify Warren Kinsella’s latest rants on him (he didn’t, thankfully!), and came across an extremely interesting post by the author from a few days ago. As nice as it was to see that there are still a few (sadly a minority) of homosexual activists who understand the basics of freedom, what struck me more was the biography that Wikipedia had for deceased filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.
Under his picture, Wikipedia lists his religious views as “Atheist” which isn’t all that interesting in and of itself unless you consider just how fumingly hostile the internet atheist crowd (complete with their own icon) is to the idea of being called religious or having their beliefs associated with the realm of faith.
While it might be true that they aren’t seeking to build any “bridges to the Divine” as a commonly held definition of religion holds, they certainly put a great deal of faith into their beliefs (and in the hostile circles, dogma that they expect the rest of us to follow).
To demonstrate, I borrow from St. Thomas Aquinas, a high Middle Ages philosopher and Dominican friar who contributed a tremendous amount of work to the understanding of the world, universe and existence during his lifetime. In my favourite work of his, titled “The Existence of God” — a document that is still studied today for its significance and logical cohesion — Aquinas gives the following physical arguments:
1) Things are in motion, ergo Someone had to put them into motion. Aquinas wasn’t even aware of the degree to which this is true, with not only the very macro (planets, stars, galaxies) but also the very micro (gamma rays, subatomic particles) participating in motion.
2) In the world, something never brings about its own existence, otherwise it would have to predate itself. Taking things back far enough though, something had to cause the initial object, particle, energy, what have you, and therefore there must have been a first “cause” which Aquinas deems as “God”.
In other words, what Aquinas did was to look at the origins of the universe and realize that whatever the first form of existence was — to satisfy the nihilist, let’s say it was a small particle, A*, from which the rest of existence came from) — that form had to come from somewhere. Apply special theories, like it transitioning from a parallel universe, or another form of existence, or what have you and you will still have to trace things back to an A*.
A* had to exist, because our universe now exists. Therefore, A* had to come from something more than just a simple A**; it had to be created. If it was created then, the creator would be two things:
1) Eternal, since otherwise we’re back to A* again, and
2) powerful enough to call up something out of nothing
We can argue about semantics, such as if the eternal trait was direct or is passed back even further, however we still need a God existing without being created to get to where we are today (and frankly, it’s missing the point here, which revolves around atheistic understanding), or to what extent creation took place (which, again, is another topic for another day!). The point is that you cannot have existence like ours without the two above mentioned traits existing somewhere down the line.
To believe otherwise would be an article of faith, with no physical rationale or evidence to lend credit to it. So, is it wrong to call atheism a religion? Perhaps in the strictest sense, in that some believe religion requires God or a god(s). However, is it a faith movement? Well, between Thomas Aquinas, Wikipedia and the Conservation of Matter and Energy, I’d say the answer is a pretty definite yes!
Lore_Weaver wrote:
There’s a couple concepts that your missing.
There is no concept of time before the beginning of the universe, so there is no concept of before there was something, because time had a definite beginning, and for time to start, there needed to be matter with a density less than that of a black hole.
So there is no “before” motion, or “before” existence of basic particles and atoms, because there was no “before” because there was no “time”.
What started “time” you say? Well, the big bang did.
Well how did that start you say? Or how could it start without time to affect it? We don’t know yet, but that’s no reason to invoke God. The real issue is the joining of Quantum Mechanics with the rest of physics.
Your argument is not proof of existence of God.
Matter and Energy have existed as long as there has been time, and that has been proven to be maintained.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 9:57 am | Permalink
Ken wrote:
There is no faith required in atheism. Just because there are questions that aren’t answered (ie. how existence started), doesn’t mean there is faith. Maybe an individual atheist happens to believe something on faith, but that doesn’t mean it applies to the whole group. An atheist can come up with theories to the unanswered questions, but as long as they are willing to change as contrary evidence is presented, I don’t see how this requires faith.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 9:57 am | Permalink
Lore_Weaver wrote:
What Ken wrote is exactly right. I’m willing to change anything I believe if given enough evidence. Show me evidence of God, and I’ll believe in that too.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 10:05 am | Permalink
Matthew wrote:
The burden of proof is not on me to “prove God” though, if we are discussing Atheism not being faith-based. If it isn’t faith-based, there must be a proof for God not existing. I acknowledge what you state about time though, although it doesn’t change the premise that I stated which is that existence couldn’t have come from nothing (0 + 0 != something). You acknowledge that we don’t know how this works, ergo Atheism is a leap of faith.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 11:23 am | Permalink
dalton wrote:
Atheism is a statement that says: we don’t know. Maybe we’ll figure it out. In the meantime we’ll acknowledge that we don’t.
Raith is a statement that says: we don’t know. So we’ll call that absence of knowledge “God”.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 11:28 am | Permalink
jmorrison wrote:
was it not einstein who said, nothing happens until something moves?
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 11:47 am | Permalink
Ken wrote:
Matthew, saying that I don’t know how something works isn’t relying on faith in the least. A leap of faith is to say you know something to be true without evidence.
You make a good point on how can something come from nothing. I do not know how. However, just because you choose to have faith and substitute something in, doesn’t mean that someone that doesn’t substitute something in has to have faith. You are essentially saying that if there is any question that the answer is unknowable (at least for now), then everyone must have some type of faith. This isn’t true.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 11:57 am | Permalink
Matthew wrote:
Sorry guys, maybe I should’ve clarified that I’ve been working off the definition of Atheism as a statement of there being no God. I would call the “I don’t know” that you speak of as agnosticism. Hope this patches things up.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 5:54 pm | Permalink
Joe wrote:
I don’t think that atheism is so much a matter of faith as it is a state of willfull ignorance. All the logic and theological arguments did not convince me of the existance of God. The atheist in me would not be convinced until one day I met Him. Even now the theological arguments even though I agree with them are not capable of instilling faith in me. I don’t believe in God because someone can use logic. I believe in God because He revealed Himself to me.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 10:59 pm | Permalink
Ken wrote:
Matthew, your definitions of atheism/agnosticism are not correct. You are right that atheists don’t believe in god. I am atheist, I do not believe there is a god. I am not accepting this on faith anymore then when I say there is no invisible pink unicorn in my basement. Everything in the world had led me to believe there is no divine intervention. Maybe I’m wrong and I will allow this possibility. I am an atheist because it is the default position until I am given a reason to take another position, not just because I have some type of “willfull ignorance”, as Joe said above. If “He” feels the need to reveal “Himself” to me, maybe I’ll change my mind.
However, atheism and agnosticism are answers to different questions. There is not a continuum with atheism on one side, belief in the supernatural on the other, and agnosticism in the middle. Agnostics think it is unknowable whether there is a god or not, yet they can still have an opinion on the subject. You can have an agnostic theist, just as you can have an agnostic atheist.
Posted on 14-Mar-08 at 11:52 pm | Permalink
Matthew wrote:
Unfortunately Ken I did some brief research and it seems even the wiki cannot confirm for us a consistent definition of atheism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Definitions_and_distinctions).
Your statement that atheism is a neutral position is curious though (Wiki also talks about this in the definitions section posted above). As you probably know from my arguments of the past, I see such goal posts as being relative and see no reason to believe that the existence of the Divine cannot be the neutral position as well (given, among other things, the issue of the origin of our universe/existence). That, however, leads into more arguments for other days (like whether our governments should be officially atheistic as the ACLU among others argue).
Posted on 15-Mar-08 at 12:07 am | Permalink
Matthew wrote:
Joe, I certainly don’t disagree with you, which probably makes me sound a bit strange for writing this post in the first place. All I can say is that the Spirit sometimes inspires me through my writings and today was one of those days.
Posted on 15-Mar-08 at 12:09 am | Permalink
igloogirl wrote:
Dalton, I call that agnoticsim, not atheism. Atheism is just so…..so…..very….arrogant. Atheism has a look down your nose snobby, superior attitude attached to it.
Posted on 15-Mar-08 at 8:17 pm | Permalink
ThePolitic.com » Militant Atheism: There Is No Grounds!…Is There? wrote:
[…] other day I posted a piece on how no one can say for certain that there is no God without stepping into the arena of faith. […]
Posted on 16-Mar-08 at 8:58 pm | Permalink