Re: Can 'Atheism' be truly lived out ?

Dave in Lake Villa wrote:

....
Can you tell us how highly personal traits
came from rocks, dirt, and hydrogen/helium gasses?

Sure: Evolution.

we are NOT just bundles of chemicals!

How would you demonstrate that to be the case?

How did
our will, intellect, reason, abstract thinking, moral oughtness come
from chemicals ?!

In the same way that wings, fins and photosynthesis did - Evolution.

How do Materials reason ?

By undergoing around 4 billion years of evolution.

Not even pridefilled atheists really believe in the absurdity
that raw materials can give us what a human being consists of.

Do you need something more than mere matter in order to fly? An aircraft
does that pretty successfully and I'm sure you'd agree that nothing more
than matter is involved there. What about a bird? Does that have to be
composed of more than matter in order to fly? There's no reason to think
so.

How about learning to follow a maze? We know that animals such as mice can
do this pretty well, and so can robots, so there's no reason to suppose
there is anything more than matter required for that either. There must be
at least a rudimentary level of intellect required to learn a maze, and
something akin to 'will' required to motivate an animal (or robot) to do it.

So, physical things like flying don't depend on anything more than matter,
and at least some intellect and will is possible with matter alone, so how
far exactly do we have to go before we come across something that mere
matter cannot achieve? Is there anything that birds and mice do which
cannot be explained by matter alone? What about chimpanzees? Are they just
bundles of chemicals? Where do you draw the line?

The problem you have is that there is very little that humans are capable of
that cannot also be found in other species. Chimpanzees make tools by
fashioning twigs to the right size and shape for extracting larvae from tree
bark. There must be a certain amount of will, foresight and intellect
involved there. Even single celled organisms seek food and avoid harm.
Does that make them more than matter? Even viruses have the appearance of
will, in seeking to replicate themselves by infecting other organisms. Does
a virus have to be more than mere matter too? Where do you stop?

The fact is, all of life and non-life is made of the same stuff - atoms and
molecules. A human is certainly more complex than a virus and more capable
than a mouse but these are all differences of degree, not differences of
kind. There is no point at which you can say "OK, we've finally found
something that matter alone cannot achieve".

Only Theism offers an explanation from where human personality
traits came from...from another Person with the same attributes.

.... and from where before that? From nowhere and from nothing? I don't
think so. That's why theism has no explanatory value.

1. There is absolutely no evidence for multiple universes . It is akin
to Hawkins 'imaginary time' ... 'imaginary' Universes.

There is absolutely no evidence for a creator either.

2. Due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, we know that there is not
an infinite number of events .
3. We do know that our Universe is reality and in reality ,
mathematical odds do exist and some things/events are totally
impossible of ever occuring.

I agree that it's effectively impossible for a super-intelligent entity
capable of designing and creating an entire universe to just exist from
nowhere, from nothing, with no origin of any kind, no history, no
development, no raw materials to be made of, no universe to exist in,
nothing whatsoever to account for its existence or its nature.

4. Your theory does not account for these 133+ coming into existence
from nothing by nothing since our Universe had a beginning, nor, does
your theory account for how they could all possibly work together
collaboratively and simultaneously (without intelligence and a Will)
.. whereas if any ONE were missing, the entire process would stop and
earth would not be here/ nor could we live on it.

For something to exist that doesn't depend on anything else at all, it would
have to be, by definition, entirely random and entirely uncaused. A random
uncaused universe fits these criteria. An intelligent entity capable of
designing a universe would be the furthest possible thing from pure
randomness, and so could not possibly exist as the source of everything that
exists.

5. Lastly, if Multiple Universes were true, then, we should not be
surprised and alarmed that Terrorists would fly planes into Buildings

You've lost me on that one :-)

Out of all the planets, solar systems examined....NONE have
all the required extremely narrow razor edge precise Anthropics
which we have to live on a spinning planet known as earth.

There are gas giant planets in the habitable zones around other stars,
meaning that any water on solid satellites of such planets would be in
liquid form. The only reason we haven't found rocky planets which also fit
the criteria is that current technology isn't quite capable of detecting
them. It's only a matter of time...

10x99th
power is the chance that the universe would have something like we
do. This has been calculated to be roughly twice the amount of atoms
in the universe. There is no chance .

Let's wait and see, shall we?

Is it ever correct/ok for another person to cheat you or rape
ones wife ...or... is this too just 'subjective' ?

It's not OK in my subjective opinion, no.

Evolution is the
bankrupt process , for, materials and chemicals dont have the
reasoning quotient needed for moral oughtness -- chemicals dont
reason. Niether can raw materials.

Except that all the evidence shows that they can and do. If you disagree,
present your argument and your evidence that something more than matter is
required.

Further, Macro Evolution is taken
on FAITH because it has never been witnessed occuring

Faith means an unjustified belief. An acceptance of evolution is not
unjustified, because it is supported by a huge amount of evidence.

and further,
flies in the face of extablished scientific laws which prevent the
theory from ever being tenable.

Not so. If you have replication, inheritance and selection then evolution
is constant, inevitable, unending and unlimited. Scientific laws *demand*
that evolution takes place.

The fact that we EXPECT and REACT
when others dont treat us fairly, honestly, and with integrity ...
shows an intrinisic moral oughtness written on the fibre of our
beings.

Bestowed upon us by evolution, exactly.

Theism declares that an Intelligent moral Being who didnt
need a beginning (because only finite things need a beginning) , is
infinite and made his most prized creation in his own image ;
personality can only come from Personality.

....which in turn came from nowhere at all, with absolutely no explanation
for how it could exist, according to your view. Isn't it more rational to
have a naturalistic worldview which actually explains where personality
traits come from, rather than a supernatural worldview which has absolutely
no explanatory value?

It is atheism that has to
explain how something rational came into existence from nothing by
nothing...and how NON-material things came from only Material things.

Atheism doesn't explain how rational things came into existence - atheism is
just the absence of supernatural beliefs - but evolution does.

Not only is atheism irrational, but it cant even be lived out
according to the very principles that atheists want to believe in.

Atheism is rational because it just means declining to believe something for
which there is no valid argument or evidence, which is the only rational
position to take.

"It is theism that is irrational, because it cannot account for the
existence of anything at all, as we can clearly see."

REPLY: Atheism is only rational if : A personal Builder/Designer isnt
required for a constructed House

If you're walking through the woods and you come across a house, you know it
had a builder and designer. How do you know? Because you have natural
things to compare it to - trees, rocks, streams, mountains - and you can see
the difference. What is the nature of this difference? It's the fact that
the house is built and designed by an intelligent entity, whereas the
natural things are not. So, the very fact that you can tell a house had a
builder and a designer shows you that the natural world does not.

highly complex systems of physics
can pop into existence from nothing by no one for no reason then
proceed to accomplish the specific purpose of our existence

What purpose? What make you think life has a purpose?

life
can come from non-life which even the co founder of the DNA
structure, atheist Dr. Francis Crick, said was totally impossible ;

Why would you take the word of a scientist who supposedly said this couldn't
happen, rather than the word of other scientists who say it did? It can
only be that it fits your unjustified presuppositions.

an unpurposed one celled organism aka: ; Pond Scum given enough
time, chance, luck , and non intelligence...can turn into a 206 bone
human being with "a brain able to process 2,000,000 bits of
information per second " (quote from Brain Surgeon Dr. Ben Carson) ,
and that Relative Morality (everyone doing what is 'right' in the own
mind) is always best for a lawful civilized society.

Like I said before: Isn't matter amazing? :-)


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