Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
reply to post by Varemia

 

Not home right now, will post your answer when I get the chance. I might even make a thread about it. Stay tuned.

You have posted 2 threads since you left this comment, and have about 30 additional posts in multiple threads which tells me you have plenty of time . It's been 2 days now. What's the hold up? Why not create the thread you said you were going to create?

Unless....

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
Hes doing a copout. I am 100% sure god exists.

The irony is killing me

I understand the reasoning behind posting this....

but really, no ones opinion is better than any others...just because some atheist is saying that he can't prove God doesn't exist, means nothing to me. Your opinion, each and everyone of your opinions are equally important...I, personally, don't see why this should sway anyone opinion in any which way.

reply to post by ZacharyW


It shouldn't which was kind of my point but I started to go off on a tangent I think. The point is that there is an argument from both sides of the camp.

But there are a few other players here, namely Darwin on whose theories many biologists and atheistic thinkers base their claims and arguments on.

The guy did a lot for science but he was a fruit cake and if you solely base the known living world on his theories you would end up with this conundrum:

"If I were to place a pile of stones and rubble in the middle of a field, how long will it take before there is a house there with four bedrooms and a nice garden?"

Survival of the fittest might be accountable for many of our human advances (and horrors) but it doesn't account for things like bacteria and apes, who are related through evolution apparently...So when will I see the ape turn into a man and the bacteria into tomato ketchup?

Complimentary & Sympathetic Evolution, now that does make sense....Alas I am going off on a tangent again!

Adios!

Originally posted by old_god
reply to post by ZacharyW

 

It shouldn't which was kind of my point but I started to go off on a tangent I think. The point is that there is an argument from both sides of the camp.

But there are a few other players here, namely Darwin on whose theories many biologists and atheistic thinkers base their claims and arguments on.

The guy did a lot for science but he was a fruit cake and if you solely base the known living world on his theories you would end up with this conundrum:

"If I were to place a pile of stones and rubble in the middle of a field, how long will it take before there is a house there with four bedrooms and a nice garden?"

Survival of the fittest might be accountable for many of our human advances (and horrors) but it doesn't account for things like bacteria and apes, who are related through evolution apparently...So when will I see the ape turn into a man and the bacteria into tomato ketchup?

Complimentary & Sympathetic Evolution, now that does make sense....Alas I am going off on a tangent again!

Adios!

Why do people like YOU always repeat ALWAYS use inanimate objects as proof ie not living, it's the watch or a pile of metal becoming a car, now stones becoming a house examples like that are so DUMB.

Now other people with your beliefs may be DUMB enough to take that in just like they believe the bible so what does that show YOU

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
reply to post by petrus4

 

Not surprisingly I don't get in many arguments with pantheists or deists. Your God concept is not falsifiable because it's too nebulous, I can't argue against it.

I'm willing to concede that what I identify as "God," at least as far as things like cymatics is concerned, is actually the mechanism itself by which things get done, rather than an actual intelligence (point of origin) behind said mechanism, if that makes sense.

I'm definitely not a Creationist in the Christian sense of the word, but I do believe that the universe was deliberately put here by something; or more specifically, that it is gradually put here in an incremental way. That fairly simply, is where I feel that the available evidence has led me. I don't see that as having any fundamental conflict with evolution at all; I actually think that evolution is part of that process.

I just got an idea, what if the universe is one big paradox? The whole of existence doesn't exist by accident, because what if at the end of all things, our universe has just gone in one massive cosmic circle? And what if something at the end of our universe is the spark which facilitates the beginning? A big, messy paradox...

reply to post by silent thunder


Interesting. In a book called "Does God Exist?" the theologian Hans Küng says the same kind of thing as Dawkins but comes to the opposite conclusion. The book goes into how philosophers have treated that question down the ages. Call me a coward, but I'm siding with Küng - just in case...

Also interesting to read the discussion about why the number 7. If he's making any reference - conscious or unconscious - to Biblical numerology, it could mean that he thinks his position is almost perfect but not quite (pretty much what he is saying anyway, using any number), or that he has nearly finished his work. If he has deliberately chosen it though, it might beg the question of what tradition is he coming out of in doing that?

back to DAWKINS:

One thing for sure, since Dawkins now believes in the possibility of a god, he no longer is an ATHEIST.

a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

dictionary.reference.com...

I think Dawkins is over-whelmed with scientific advancements. The more that science discovers about the functions and structures of DNA, RNA, proteins and more, the less likely it appears that accidential, undirected, random mutations could ever produce the life that exists today.

And, then there's the business of "how did life start" in the first place. Dawkins, no doubt, is finding it progressively more difficult to proclaim that life just happened. After 150 yrs., since Darwin, and who knows how many billions of dollars, pounds, francs, etc. in research grants, NO ONE has been able to create life in a laboratory.

NO EPIPHANY for Dawkins, not really... he has too much invested in the abiogenesis/evolution business, although he is now permitting "god" to creep into the converstation. Dawkins' concession is similar to that of atheist Antony Flew: they both acknowledge the possibily of a "god". That where the similarity ends: DAWKINS believes "god" to be a statistical improbablity, while FLEW came to the believe, after decades as an atheist crusader, that the existence of "god" is probable.

This 5 min. vid has some clips of Flew speaking in his eary/atheist years and a more recent interview. www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by Cataclysm
back to DAWKINS:

ANO ONE has been able to create life in a laboratory.

Well I have to ask how WOULD you know

reply to post by wmd_2008


Because no such results have ever been claimed by any researcher.

Originally posted by Cataclysm
reply to post by wmd_2008

 

Because no such results have ever been claimed by any researcher.

Let me ask you this address how often will someone say on here we don't know everything that's being worked on, plenty of facts to back up evolution only stories for god(s) and who writes the stories MAN so MAN creates god(s).

Originally posted by Cataclysm
back to DAWKINS:

One thing for sure, since Dawkins now believes in the possibility of a god, he no longer is an ATHEIST.

Yes he is, it's called agnostic atheism.

After 150 yrs., since Darwin, and who knows how many billions of dollars, pounds, francs, etc. in research grants, NO ONE has been able to create life in a laboratory.

Are you sure about that?
www.guardian.co.uk...

Reading a random sample, scares me. It's obvious that some of you people have never read anything by Dawkins before.

This is nothing new, this isn't even noteworthy.

In "The God Delusion", Dawkins points out that there may be a teapot floating somewhere in space and that nobody can prove that the teapot does not exist (because you can't examine EVERY inch of space all at once), and so he would say "I can't be sure the teapot does not exist".

Clearly, there is also a misunderstanding of what Atheism is - it is the lack of belief in something. When a religion claims some knowledge, that religion has the burden of having to provide evidence of what they believe. Atheism is merely not accepting that the religion has met the required burden of proof. Atheists should not be claiming "I know 100% that there is no God", because that is a claim to knowledge that is pretty much impossible to provide evidence for.

Atheists and Theists are actually VERY similar - I'd say 99% similar in what they accept / don't accept. Most Theists these days do not accept 99% of the religions that exist - they refer to gods like Thor, Zeus and Amon Ra as mythology, which is exactly the same as Atheists. The only difference these days is (typically) that Atheists go one God further.

Ummm...

Science never says 100%.. even ads on TV say " Kills 99.99% of germs", science always give possibility for error and learning. I'm an atheist but i can't be sure 100% sure there is no god, however, i am 99.99% sure there is no god.

Silly people, its funny how people want to jump on him without even understand things.

Originally posted by wmd_2008

Originally posted by Cataclysm
reply to post by wmd_2008

 

Because no such results have ever been claimed by any researcher.

Let me ask you this address how often will someone say on here we don't know everything that's being worked on, plenty of facts to back up evolution only stories for god(s) and who writes the stories MAN so MAN creates god(s).

By the word "researcher", I do not mean persons who post on this ATS site (if that what you are getting at). I am speaking of research scientists who do this for a living. The web is full of scientific journals and peer reviewed papers.

Originally posted by reaxi0n

Originally posted by Cataclysm
back to DAWKINS:

One thing for sure, since Dawkins now believes in the possibility of a god, he no longer is an ATHEIST.

Yes he is, it's called agnostic atheism.

After 150 yrs., since Darwin, and who knows how many billions of dollars, pounds, francs, etc. in research grants, NO ONE has been able to create life in a laboratory.

Are you sure about that?
www.guardian.co.uk...

edit on 2-28-12 by reaxi0n because: (no reason given)

My point exactly. Dawkins is not an ATHEIST, he is an AGNOSTIC ATHEIST, two different things.

As far a Venter's work, he took an already living bacterial cell and inserted a synthetic genome into the cell. As groundbreaking as this is, it is not creating life from inorganic matter.

Originally posted by Cataclysm

My point exactly. Dawkins is not an ATHEIST, he is an AGNOSTIC ATHEIST, two different things.

Atheism is still part of that. He still does not believe in god. "Agnostic" is just acknowledging it can't be answered for sure. Doesn't mean he's not still an atheist...

As far a Venter's work, he took an already living bacterial cell and inserted a synthetic genome into the cell. As groundbreaking as this is, it is not creating life from inorganic matter.

You did not state inorganic matter. But that is on its way sooner or later.

www.physorg.com...

www.physorg.com...

Originally posted by Angry Danish
Clearly, there is also a misunderstanding of what Atheism is - it is the lack of belief in something....

Atheists should not be claiming "I know 100% that there is no God", because that is a claim to knowledge that is pretty much impossible to provide evidence for.

ATHEISM is the lack of belief in a diety. en.wikipedia.org...

AGNOSTICISM involves the belief that the existence of a diety is unknown and unknowable. en.wikipedia.org...

Atheism required "faith", agnosticism does not.

Originally posted by reaxi0n

Originally posted by Cataclysm

My point exactly. Dawkins is not an ATHEIST, he is an AGNOSTIC ATHEIST, two different things.

Atheism is still part of that. He still does not believe in god. "Agnostic" is just acknowledging it can't be answered for sure. Doesn't mean he's not still an atheist...

As far a Venter's work, he took an already living bacterial cell and inserted a synthetic genome into the cell. As groundbreaking as this is, it is not creating life from inorganic matter.

You did not state inorganic matter. But that is on its way sooner or later.

www.physorg.com...

www.physorg.com...

edit on 2-28-12 by reaxi0n because: (no reason given)

Yes, I agree... Dawkins does not believe "god" exists.
The atheist would say, "... 'god' does not exist, period."
The agnostic would say, "... I don't know if 'god' exists; it is something unknown and unknowable".
And the agnostic atheist would say, "I don't believe 'god' exists, but it's possible."

Dawkins falls into the latter category.

Regarding the two sources you've cited: Yes, the effort to create life in a laboratory is, and has been, ongoing for well over a hundred years, and the sources are examples of the work being done. Yet, no one has achieved the "holy grail", that is, create organic matter from inorganic matter.

Abiogensis (spontaneous generation of life from inorganic matter) requires a level of faith because there is no proven scientific basis for such a belief. Personally, I think that requires more faith than the faith required to believe in an intelligent designer and/or a god.

Originally posted by Cataclysm

Abiogensis (spontaneous generation of life from inorganic matter) requires a level of faith because there is no proven scientific basis for such a belief. Personally, I think that requires more faith than the faith required to believe in an intelligent designer and/or a god.

Well when it's done, I guess your belief goes out the window.