Ask a Radical Atheist

Piggy said:
Just about anyone who's read my posts in this section of the forum knows that I'm a "strong atheist" or what Douglas Adams called a "radical atheist", or an atheist to the root -- that is, someone who does not merely claim "I do not believe in God", but rather that there is, in fact, no God to believe in.

To quote Mr. Adams: "I really do mean atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god -- in fact I am convinced that there is not a god.... It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously. It’s funny how many people are genuinely surprised to hear a view expressed so strongly."

In fact, I go perhaps a bit farther than Mr. Adams in that I would not even use the word "opinion". By my reckoning, we know enough now to say definitively not only that God does not exist, but that God cannot exist.

Usually, threads on this topic degenerate very quickly, so I've decided to try turning the tables a bit. Rather than attempting to prove my point -- which I've done ad nauseam anyway -- I've decided to let myself be a punching bag of sorts.

Ever want to know what or how a strong atheist thinks?

Just ask.

Get as tangential as you like, as long as the subject is touched upon in some way and not completely abandoned.

PS: Side discussions are welcome, but I'll only respond to questions.
Click to expand...


Do you think it is possible that there are higher levels of intelligent conscious beings in the universe other than humans on Earth?


BTW: Thanks for the thread.
 
Last edited:
Okay, as an agnostic atheist, here are my questions:

1) At what point does (a) being(s) move from having incomprehensible power to being indistinguishable from what we would label God? Do we stick with the big three - omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence - or do we go with something else?

2) If I could invent a plausible situation whereby there would be one or more entities or beings with these powers, would that be enough to move you from strong atheism to agnostic atheism?
 
Piggy said:
I actually won Powerball in Boulder over the weekend, btw. Unfortunately, I only matched the powerball, so my winnings were all of $3, which -- minus my purchase price -- amounts to $2.
Click to expand...

Your not a gambler. Gamblers would count that as a $3 win. :)
 
Piggy said:
My mother fits in the camp you describe. She wants the grandkids taken to church for "social reasons", and they can make up their own minds later.
Click to expand...

Possibly, but this is not to the point.

Piggy said:
My objection is that the young mind is designed to believe what adults tell it to believe, and it's not such a simple matter to abandon belief in mythology, especially when powerful people are telling you it means burning in hell for eternity.

Personally, I can't see how it can possibly be an advantage to believe what's false rather than what's true.

It's kindof like saying there's some advantage to not seeing the cliff in front of you, because it's prettier to think it's not there.
Click to expand...

Your analogy is interesting in that it presents an clear-cut case of easily empirically verifiable fact. Let's try this one...

Suppose we were to take an analogy, say of the economic markets. Now, when it comes down to it, the tendency to buy and sell relies on confidence of the stability of the market. This is a matter of perception.

Now, I'm not saying that confidence in the market is not verifiable. Indeed, the stability of it is a measure of the confidence people have in it.

Is it not in our interests (advantageous) to present the market as stable, even if it isn't, lest we risk a market crash and downward spiral into depression?

One might make an argument that the moral stability relies on the confidence of the people in its status as just, objective (or at least universalizable), predictable and reliable.

Is it not in our interests (advantageous) to present morality as absolute, even if it isn't, lest we risk a breakdown of moral understanding and a downward spiral into chaos?

Being a bastard because you asked for it.... ;)

Surfing the Slippery Slope in Saskatoon...

Congratulations. I never thought anyone would...
Win Powerball!!!
 
Last edited:
Francesca R said:
Wow I'm either 1.59 or 1.6 (it varies). We have so much in common! Let's be best buddies. Come call for me whenever you log on and we'll hang about in threads together OK? ;)
Click to expand...

Wheeee, someone cool wants to be my friend :)
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
Agh. Another thread to see who's the biggest Atheist of them all.

Kind of reminds me those body building contests.
Click to expand...


I've been reading Piggy's posts with respect and interest for years.

I don't think that is why he started this thread.

Keep reading. You'll find it was started for much better reasons than that.
 
Last edited:
JEROME DA GNOME said:
Do you think it is possible that there are higher levels of intelligent conscious beings in the universe other than humans on Earth?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you mean by "higher levels".

Since intelligent conscious beings have evolved here, obviously the universe is capable of producing them. So there's no reason to believe that similar patterns have not occurred elsewhere.

And there's no reason to believe we're the top of the line. Could be some stunningly smart critters many light years away from us.

But I think Dennett is very likely right -- that consciousness results from a particular macro-structure of the brain: build brain A, then build brain B which in effect lives "inside" brain A.

In any case, consciousness depends on an underlying physical structure, and no viable physical structure to maintain consciousness exists at any super-macro level of organization. The notion that the entire universe is conscious, for example, just doesn't fly.
 
-Fran- said:
Piggy, what do you say to Plumjam's comment above that seems to say that atheism is orthodox?
Click to expand...

Nothing. As I said, I'm only answering questions here, not responding to comments.
 
GreyICE said:
1) At what point does (a) being(s) move from having incomprehensible power to being indistinguishable from what we would label God? Do we stick with the big three - omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence - or do we go with something else?
Click to expand...

To me, that's a non-question, since you're talking about purely imaginary beings here, unless you want to propose how in the world such creatures might exist.

GreyICE said:
2) If I could invent a plausible situation whereby there would be one or more entities or beings with these powers, would that be enough to move you from strong atheism to agnostic atheism?
Click to expand...

If there were a viable explanation for how a God or gods might exist, then the radical atheist position would be untenable.
 
JEROME DA GNOME said:
Your not a gambler. Gamblers would count that as a $3 win. :)
Click to expand...

<aside>
Yes, I'm a gambler. But I don't consider lottery tickets to be gambling, because the odds are so bad. I buy one or two tickets a month in my state and consider it a donation to the education fund, and a what-the-heck blind stab at a ridiculous sum of money.

And since I only bought 1 Powerball ticket, I consider that the whole game, and I calculate my earnings as win-minus-loss.

By contrast, at the poker table, I do not count anything I may have already put in the pot when calculating how much I stand to win, because within that narrower frame of determining my pot odds at the moment, nothing in the pot is mine.

But in determining my overall earnings at the game, it goes back to what I've put in subtracted from what I've taken out.
</aside>
 
dglas said:
Suppose we were to take an analogy, say of the economic markets. Now, when it comes down to it, the tendency to buy and sell relies on confidence of the stability of the market. This is a matter of perception.

Now, I'm not saying that confidence in the market is not verifiable. Indeed, the stability of it is a measure of the confidence people have in it.

Is it not in our interests (advantageous) to present the market as stable, even if it isn't, lest we risk a market crash and downward spiral into depression?

One might make an argument that the moral stability relies on the confidence of the people in its status as just, objective (or at least universalizable), predictable and reliable.

Is it not in our interests (advantageous) to present morality as absolute, even if it isn't, lest we risk a breakdown of moral understanding and a downward spiral into chaos?
Click to expand...
No, because absolute morality allows people to turn off their minds.

To use your analogy, it's akin to the application of dogma to the markets -- this is always a good bet, that is always a bad bet. Reality doesn't work that way, of course.

The world is situational.

The notion that there would be a "spiral into chaos" if we remove religious thinking simply is not supported by the facts. In fact, atheists have just as much interest in maintaining an ethical society as everyone else does.

But religious thinking results in all sorts of nastiness. If you believe God wants X, or demands X, you feel compelled to follow that goal, no matter where it leads.

As Katherine Sedgewick wrote, a puritan is one who does good, even though evil shall ensue.
 
Puppycow said:
If we can collectively ask more questions than Piggy can answer, does that mean we win and he loses?
Click to expand...
:D

It's happened on other threads.

Actually, in this one, I wasn't actually joking -- tho having a little fun with the truthers' catch phrase -- when I said I'm just answering questions.

I've done the threads where the point was to fully support my claim.

Here, I really do just want to open it up for anyone who wants to know how or what a radical atheist -- in this case, me -- thinks, or who'd like to see how a radical atheist might handle a particular question.

And on this thread, I just answer from my own little piggy brain. Depending on the question, you might get pure opinion.

And I'm glad to see others chiming in. Side discussions are welcome. And it's a heavy topic, so a little levity has its place. I'd just hope we didn't get into long-running tangents involving chapter-long threads.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom