Is Atheism based on Logic or Faith?

[I Ratant]

This can be said of the god of the bible too. Yet generally they are seen to be separate entities at odds or in competition with one another - due of course to the expressions of their supporters (those who believe in them) and while I cannot with confidence comment on the contradictory nature of the Quran, I would not be surprised if it isn't any more or less contradictory than the Bible.

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Actually, Islam is just another Hebrew cult.
Modified a tad, but in essence, uses the same core.

 

[John Jones]

So do you believe the Jewish people to have made this up this whole story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt? Or do you think of it as an actual event in history?

There's nothing in archaeology to support it.

 

[I Ratant]

Yeah. What did God come from?

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Waaaaaaaaaaaay back when, a sharpie with a gift of gab and a reluctance to walk around outside the cave hunting and gathering made up answers to all the questions his tribe would have.. What are stars? the Moon? the Sun? the seasons? Rain?.. the better he got at it the less he had to risk his hide out there with the animules, and the audience would give him the fruits of their labors in appreciation for the "facts".
"Why is life?" got into gods and angels and demons, and the more adept swifties found that flogging those ideas, with the carrot of a "life after death" really brought in the Rolls Royces and jet planes and fancy robes and rent-free housing.

 

[I Ratant]

Just making sure I follow you. So someone brought you a book (The Quran) which they claimed to have been sent down from God. You read it and then deduced one of the following:

This book is the work of:
A) A man.
B) Many men.
C) Some intelligent beings other than men.
D) The book is sincere to its claims and authorship, thus being from God.
E) The book does not exist, logically speaking of course.

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I'm gonna go with B:
.from wiki
"Based on earlier transmitted reports, in the year 632 CE, after Muhammad died and a number of his companions who knew the Quran by heart were killed in a battle by Musaylimah, the first caliph Abu Bakr (d. 634CE) decided to collect the book in one volume so that it could be preserved. Zayd ibn Thabit (d. 655CE) was the person to collect the Quran since "he used to write the Divine Inspiration for Allah's Apostle". Thus, a group of scribes, most importantly Zayd, collected the verses and produced a hand-written manuscript of the complete book. The manuscript according to Zayd remained with Abu bakr until he died. Zayd's reaction to the task and the difficulties in collecting the Quranic material from parchments, palm-leaf stalks, thin stones and from men who knew it by heart is recorded in earlier narratives. After Abu Bakr, Hafsa bint Umar, Muhammad's widow, was entrusted with the manuscript. In about 650 CE, when the third Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (d. 656CE) began noticing slight differences in pronunciation of the Quran, and as Islam expanded beyond the Arabian peninsula into Persia, the Levant and North Africa, in order to preserve the sanctity of the text, ordered a committee headed by Zayd to use Abu Bakr's copy and prepare a standard copy of the Quran.[28][38] Thus, within 20 years of Muhammad’s death, the Quran was committed to written form. That text became the model from which copies were made and promulgated throughout the urban centers of the Muslim world, and other versions are believed to have been destroyed.[28][39][40][41] The present form of the Quran text is accepted by Muslim scholars to be the original version compiled by Abu Bakr."
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"collected the verses"... I will interpret this as "listened to stories" and tossed out what they didn't like.
"within 20 year of Muhammed's death" I will interpret as he wrote nothing that survived to be used. Some say he wrote nothing.

 

[I Ratant]

So do you believe the Jewish people to have made this up this whole story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt? Or do you think of it as an actual event in history?

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Many historians have investigated the Exodus, and abandoned the search.
There's nothing to it.
The basics of the Abrahamic religions were codeified in Babylon about 450 BC during the Captivity, when the Hebrew scholars were exposed to Sumerian and Bablyonian mythology, and adapted a considerable of those myths to flesh out their beliefs.
Anything earlier than that date is just a ripping good yarn. And most of the stuff after is, also.

 

[Robrob]

^ Yep. Probably was some ferocious editing over those two decades. I especially liked this comment;

other versions are believed to have been destroyed.

 

[I Ratant]

^ Yep. Probably was some ferocious editing over those two decades. I especially liked this comment;

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Yeah, those pesky "other versions"....
Seems god can't find a reliable printer to put the "word" out indelibly.
And odd how all these adepts revealing "the truth" come up with different "truths", which conflict.

 

[John Jones]

Contrary to what Mike would have us believe, the compilation of the written Quran spanned several decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Quran

 

[bruto]

.... all three faiths believe in the God of Abraham (Often termed the Abrahamic faiths), and the tenants of Moses.
....

And no matter how hard they all bang on the radiators, they don't get any heat.

 

[Astreja]

[Quran 21:22] "If there were, in the heavens and the earth, other gods besides God, there would have been confusion in both!"

I hate to break this to you, Mike, but there is confusion.

A lot of it.

Not only does the Abrahamic god have three incompatible major divisions, but Judaism, Christianity and Islam have also fractured into a virtual kaleidoscope of conflicting ideas.

And then there are the non-Abrahamic religions, and a lot more gods.

Oddly enough, it seems that the more gods a religion has, the less internal strife and chaos it experiences. For the most part the followers of Vishnu are not beating up on the followers of Shiva, and various heathen assemblies cheerfully drink toasts to one another's patron deities.

Perhaps Allah should welcome back the gods of the Ka'aba and put a stop to all this "one true religion" nonsense. If it saves even one life, it'll be worth it.

 

[Navigator]

By the same reasoning, it's not logical to claim that magical pixies don't exist, because science has found no way to verify their nonexistence.

That would be correct.

 

[John Jones]

That would be correct.

Claiming that pixies and gods don't exist is a scientific statement, because it is falsifiable, and has predictive value.

 

[Megalodon]

Thought this might be relevant to the discussion



This one true god just can't get itself understood properly, can it?

 

[Aepervius]

Your last post suggests that you believe there is no such thing as afterlife based on what is observed physically. However, the concept of afterlife itself is separate from the experience of physical existence, and cannot effectively be measured by physical application, thus the measurements end at the physical.

Therefore it is not logical to believe either way. It is certainly not logical to claim there is no afterlife because science has found no way to verify this as true.

That is why I cannot say for certain one way or another, and for me this is the best place to be. It is not logical to believe there is or isn't. Atheists who chose to believe are doing so in relation to the expression of faith.

Atheists who do not, are being logical.

"Therefore it is not logical to believe either way. " Wrong My post is about there is no evidence for it. Since there is no evidence for it it is illogical and irrational to "make up" after life story. By your line of reasonning you can make any **** up and just say "it is not rational to think either way". No. No. 1000 time no. If you have a claim, you are the one by any logic which has to demonstrate the claim above the null. If you say that there is a pre-life before you are being born, and in that pre-life we are intelligent planet in anotehr universe, then it is not logic to state as you do that because we can't know we have to take both hypotheses as equally probable or logic. Not at all. The logic is to start by what we can observe and know, and then conclude. You are not using logic, you are using faith to try to trump logic.

 

[Arcade22]

Please avoid using arguments which rely on "Infinite Regress" as this has idea has already been deemed as "illogical", and such an approach is now considered to be "old hat" by both theist and atheist alike. I intentionally left this statement at the bottom of the post, based upon the assumption that most people within this community are often quick to post without even bothering to read that which they are replying to.

Merely because you are unable to come up with a convincing answer and is forced to use unjustified special pleadings does not mean that it is "illogical". It shows, quite clearly, that your basis stands on faith alone.

 

[catsmate]

Is Atheism based on Logic or Faith? <much snippage of god botheration>

Logic.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Merely because you are unable to come up with a convincing answer and is forced to use unjustified special pleadings does not mean that it is "illogical". It shows, quite clearly, that your basis stands on faith alone.

He might as well have said, "Faith is a valid and allowable proof of God."

 

[Aridas]

To poke at a multiple posts, now that I have more time...

You guys seem to be the only ones still trying to cling to it. The first video which I posted which soundly debunked the theory was from a Christian, the second one was from a Muslim.

Although I must admit I did not expect people to try to cling to the theory with such force. It's almost like people still wanting to hold onto/argue the theory that the universe has always existed, despite us now knowing that this is something which is in direct opposition to logic and science.

You realize that existence as a whole and our universe are two different things? Either way, the special pleading employed when saying that "my god is the exception to the rule that I propose because I defined it that way and here, let me add on a bunch of other traits that don't logically follow at all" is completely unacceptable when trying to make a valid argument. Accepting that "existence always existed" is more logical than saying that "something came from absolute nothing, which is defined in such a way as to make something coming from it conceptually impossible," is hardly endorsing infinite regression, regardless.

The Bang Theory/The Expanding Universe Theory, are both pretty ironclad. I'm not sure what planet you are living on, to try and argue otherwise.

I'm not sure what planet you live on, then, but the Big Bang Theory/The Expanding Universe Theory aren't the only relevant parts of cosmology, science, and logic to the issues that you're raising.

So now it has gotten to the point that we are literally arguing about "nothing".

Questionable statement. It's not even remotely "now." It's gone on for a while, given that some people actually want to deal with topics relevant to reality directly. Pointing out reasons why something coming from a form of nothing that's defined in such a way that nothing even could come from it is, well, rather pointless and very quickly becomes a waste of time, even moreso because no one is usually supporting it being the case. Learning and pointing out more about how reality actually seems to work, empirically speaking, tends to be much more useful, especially when it tends to also be relevant to answering related questions that seem to keep popping up in these discussions.

Only people who have not bothered to spend any time reading any of the available religious text would imagine such to be true.

There is only One God. Muslims accept all of the messengers of God. They all brought the same message to the people "Worship God".

Jews accept: Adam, Noah, Lot, Moses, David, Abraham, Joseph, (Rejecting Jesus, and Muhammad)
Christians accept: Adam, Noah, Lot, Moses, David, Abraham, Joseph, Jesus (elevating Jesus to the position of God), (Rejecting Muhammad)
Muslims accept: Adam, Noah, Lot, Moses, David, Abraham, Joseph, Jesus (as a righteous messenger of God), and Muhammad

So we can easily simplify this equation by saying that all three faiths believe in the God of Abraham (Often termed the Abrahamic faiths), and the tenants of Moses.

Not only this but the Quran actually clears up any remaining confusion with the following verse, [Quran 2:62] "Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve."

I'm curious where Ahura Mazda and Zoroastrianism falls into this picture. And Sikhism. And Lingayatism. And a host of others. All blasphemous lies, right?

Either way, you've still failed to present valid reason to take the Quran seriously.

So starting from the top, you would accept that a man who was understood as never having been taught to read and write, somehow managed to recite what is widely regarded as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language (by both Arabs and non Arabs).

So... you really like repeating this argument, despite it having been countered on multiple points before and your continued failure to address the counters. Frankly, this alone made me lose interest in the rest of that post, which, when skimmed, sounded like nothing more than people both giving into confirmation bias and seeking out things specifically to feed their confirmation bias, without anything more than maybe lip service to objectivity.

 

[Aridas]

[Quran 21:22] "If there were, in the heavens and the earth, other gods besides God, there would have been confusion in both! but glory to God, the Lord of the Throne: (High is He) above what they attribute to Him!

Handwaving! Gotta love it!

I don't see how this answers the question. It's just a description of what the consequences would be if there were more than one.

It's a claim of the consequences that... doesn't seem to rest on anything and, well, it's not hard at all to see faults in the logic employed to reach the claim, given that it's creating a false dichotomy.

 

[patchbunny]

[Quran 21:22] "If there were, in the heavens and the earth, other gods besides God, there would have been confusion in both! but glory to God, the Lord of the Throne: (High is He) above what they attribute to Him!"

Some have at times asked the question as to why I choose to use the word God, in the place of Allah. This is to keep things simple as possible. Many people are easily thrown off by the use of Arabic words such as "Allah". Even though the word Allah actually translates to "The God" in English (as opposed to "a god"). Who is Allah?

Amazingly, it's also something you'd say to ensure that everyone spends their time kowtowing to your god, and not any others, because there can be only one. So as Brian-M points out, it doesn't answer the question.