The Question that Stumps Atheists
Posted on: March 26, 2010 - 6:30pm
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The Question that Stumps Atheists
Below is a link to an online video produced by PBS's TV series "Closer To Truth". Here, producer Robert Lawrence Kuhn asks atheist philosopher Quentin Smith: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" What follows is Smith's painful struggle to weasel out of a trap that he initially sets up for himself. His response amounts to nothing more than unintelligible babbling. It is truly pathetic.
http://www.closertotruth.com/video/Why-is-There-Something-Rather-than-Nothing-Quentin-Smith-/984
"Scientists animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study." - Alfred North Whitehead
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yup. pulling stuff out of your ass is definitely the best way to enhance your ability to further pull stuff out of your ass.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
furthermore, paisley, if your brand of hoo-ha has enhanced your creative intelligence so much, how come on average at least 50% of your arguments are shit that's been cut-and-pasted?
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Oh, so now it's a club for those "in-the-know". Hey guys, I just got a new idea! It's called "The Gurgle Colored Goblin". You have to experience the color "gurgle" to know it's pragmatic value. Those who "get it" will find it satisfying. Those who don't will be voicing objections about the color "gurgle".
"The Chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. Just no Character."
"He...had gone down in flames...on the seventh day, while God was resting"
"You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You should be taken outside and shot!"
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
This again? From your other thread about the same thing:
If you start with nothing and then* take a small deviation, you'll have something.
Once you have something, you'll have some spacetime for that something to exist in.
Once you have spacetime, quantum effects will ensure that you keep having something
In short, nothing is an unstable equilibrium (if it is an equilibrium at all). Unstable equilibria are, well, unstable. So a state of nothingness is an unstable state.
Alternatively, one could argue that nothingness is logically impossible. After all, with nothing, you wouldn't have the laws of logic, and that obviously contradicts the laws of logic. Therefore nothingness is a logically contradictory state.
*Of course, nothing would also mean no time, which confuses pretty much anything you'd want to say about the subject. By the time** you get to the then, you'd already** have time, which is something.
**See how hard it is to work with timelessness.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
Just because you didn't understand some guys babbling, it does not mean God exists. Tiny particles are actually coming out of 'nothing' all the time. It is not an uncommon occurrence.
Check these two websites out because yes I am too lazy to give a full explanation:
1. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/WHY+DOES+SOMETHING+EXIST+RATHER+THAN+NOTHING%3F-a070650610
Extract: "empty space is not empty at all but is filled with quantum fluctuations. These quantum fluctuations may be likened to boiling water, in which bubbles are continually appearing and disappearing. Such concepts have been used to describe the situation at the origin of the universe"
2. http://www.krysstal.com/quantum.html
Extract: "It is possible for something to be created out of nothing, given enough time! On a subatomic level it is impossible to pinpoint things down to an infinite precision. And not because of any technological failings: this is a constraint of the Universe itself. A zero energy is impossible since it would be a precise state. This is the reason that nothing can be cooled below -273 degrees C (Absolute Zero). An atom must retain at least one quantum of energy and this keeps it from cooling below Absolute Zero. This means that nothing can ever be at rest."
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You cannot disprove the existance of God, but you also cannot disprove the existance of an all powerfull, incomprehesible, pink elephant that lives in the boot of my car.
Presupposing a question invalidates it automatically.
Wow that was easy. You're slipping.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
The answer.. I have it, I don't know. What he wants to suggest is that if we don't know then it has to be god. Oh wow, I'm so enlightened now, we should all stop trying to figure it out because god did it!
Some ancient people thought the sky was as a painted canvas, well we know better now. Some people thought the sun rotated around the flat earth, again, we know better now. Some people thought if you bodily threw something high enough it would not come down, we know better now. Some people thought you could fly in the sky close enough to the sun to melt wax, we know better now. Some people thought leprosy was a curse and there was no cure, we know better now...I could go on and on with this.
I'll say one more thing, a vision from the future: (think of Conan's in the year 2000 skits) "Some people thought a fictional "god" created the universe, we know better now."
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
If god exists then why are we born without the knowledge of god?
If god exists then why is there something rather than nothing? (that one works both ways)
If god exists then why are there unbreakable scientifc laws?
If god exists then why didn't god create a planet for us instead of giving us a hand me down from the dinosaurs?
One nation under Allah....start practicing it now the day is upon us.
I'll answer these for you.
Because we are born into sin even though you didn't actually sin yourself, you must learn about god from the book of ancient desert scribblings.
God has always been.
Man has just not broken them yet, god can break them any time he wants too, Nyah Nyah!
You have not done your creationist study, we walked with dinosaurs, they all died in the great flood and were simply such unworthy things that they were never mentioned in the bible, except as dragons.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
How a quintrillion tons+ of matter came out of nothing is a trivial question? You can wave your hands in the air and casually dismiss one of the profound questions both philosophically and scientificallysince time immemorial in some attempt to dismiss something that cannot and will not ever go away? Unless you have some inside scoop on this, which I and everybody else is waiting to hear, a dropping of the ball doesn't equate into a "win." Does any of this prove a "GOD?" That is such a loaded question as that word means so many different things to so many different people. It can be as simple and anthropomorphic as an old dude with a white beard to something as vague as "original mind" or "bearer of intention" or the "transcendental first-cause" or even Spinoza's God of order and intelligibility. So long as "GOD" isn't a hindrance to science, why should you care if someone believes in something men cannot describe in simple physics? Why does faith so ruffle the feathers of atheists in general? Is it because of the crimes committed in the name of faith? Then address the crimes and the want-go join the PEACE Corps! Volunteer for Salvation Army's soup line. Go overseas and feed the homeless children. The rest of it is post-modern chatter-like what I'm doing right now. What a waste of time for us both.
Can you provide a step-by-step evolutionary procedure of how consciousness was "selected" starting with the first conscious thought and how that ever came about-what it is-how we "feel"? The world is dying to know.