Welcome to the Rational Response Squad
Submitted by RationalRespons... on January 7, 2008 - 1:48pm.We're your friendly neighborhood atheist activists! If this is your first visit here, you should create an account and join us on our forums. (Make sure you read the rules first!) You can find the most active topics by using the Recent Posts link on the left. Your name and password will give you access to any of the RRS Network sites listed to the right. We welcome theists to create an account on our website and post to our forums. Our Atheist Vs. Theist forum is here, but we also have a Kill em with Kindness forum in which the discussion between opposing sides is more tame. If you're in a scientific field we could always use your wisdom in our Science forum as well as the Evolution of Life forum.
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Stephen Hawking writes that the Universe came from nothing
Submitted by Sapient on September 2, 2010 - 5:58pm.
HARDCOVER EDITION:
Stephen Hawking has a new book on the way, and it's about to add weight to arguments that atheists have been making for many years. During my interactions with Ray Comfort he once posited that I as an atheist believed that everything came from nothing. I had never made that claim. Most arguments for a Universe without a God are based on the notion that our Universe is infinite that it's all existed forever in some form. If Christians posit that their God has existed forever, this concept should be easy for them to understand however they're rarely willing to accept it. It's not easy for them to accept because they are so entrenched in belief that most of the time they'll merely respond with some form of dishonest or illogical argumentation. Enter Stephen Hawkings new book.
In his new book, The Grand Design Hawking argues that "the universe can and will create itself from nothing." The collective heads of all the dishonest Christians who have argued that atheists claim that everything comes from nothing have just imploded.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing," the excerpt says. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to ... set the Universe going."
"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he writes in the excerpt.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going," he writes.
How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? Over twenty years ago I wrote A Brief History of Time, to try to explain where the universe came from, and where it is going. But that book left some important questions unanswered. Why is there a universe--why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why are the laws of nature what they are? Did the universe need a designer and creator?
It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal. And by the time I had begun writing A Brief History of Time, there were still several key advances that had not yet been made that would prevent us from fulfilling Einstein’s dream. But in recent years the development of M-theory, the top-down approach to cosmology, and new observations such as those made by satellites like NASA’s COBE and WMAP, have brought us closer than ever to that single theory, and to being able to answer those deepest of questions. And so Leonard Mlodinow and I set out to write a sequel to A Brief History of Time to attempt to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The result is The Grand Design, the product of our four-year effort.
In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a "model-dependent" theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse--the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. And we assess M-Theory, an explanation of the laws governing the multiverse, and the only viable candidate for a complete "theory of everything." As we promise in our opening chapter, unlike the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life given in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer we provide in The Grand Design is not, simply, "42."
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HARDCOVER EDITION:
Why is atheism so important to you?
Submitted by Adroit on February 25, 2010 - 1:48am.I was having a conversation with my girlfriend (atheist), and i made the statement that i consider atheism the most important cause that i support.
She is a vegan and she supports ethical treatment of animals. I agree with her, but i don't feel like making that big of a sacrifice to support it if such a large majority of Americans believe in the bible which says they are superior to animals.
Similarly, I don't pay too much attention to politics when so many people are voting Republican for the simple fact that they are against abortion.
I tend to focus entirely on atheism because theism prevents many other causes i would support.
I was just wondering what you thought of my view and also...
Why is atheism so important to you?
dont grow up too fast, and dont embrace the past, this life's too good to last, and Im too young to care.
don't kid yourself, and don't fool yourself, this life could be the last, and we're too young to see.
You know all those videos you like to post here? video.rationalresponders.com
Submitted by RationalRespons... on November 25, 2009 - 10:57pm.POST YOUR VIDEOS HERE: http://video.rationalresponders.com/
I just got done an overhaul of Rational Tube and it's ready to rock and roll. There have been tons of spammers there so unfortunately any new membership is pending approval. If you're currently in the pending status, just make a post in this thread and let me know and I'll activate you.
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