Talk:Atheism/Archive 4

Mintguy's comment

64.24.38.99 please explain The Cosmological determinism argument -- this argument states that there is nothing for a creator to do after the big bang Hawkin. A quick googling finds no reference to this Mintguy 13:17 Dec 12, 2002 (UTC)

Shaun's response to Devotchka

(See older archives)

In response to Devotchka,

Yes, I agree with the first part of your post, but anyone who has convictions of any kind is essentially pious. In this belief, I essentially agree with Nietzsche; the man of conviction can never be a "free spirit" (Cf. Human, all too Human or The Gay Science). Atheism is a belief, a conviction about the state of the universe which is unprovavble, just like theism. Now while we may think it is the more reasonable, it is still a conviction and a result of some small amount of piety.

Shaun
http://www.geocities.com/shaunphilly

Dated March 28, 2003 by User:144.26.160.165

"God is an empty concept"

It seems quite obvious that God, or god, is an empty concept, and one is wasting one's time by discussing whether it exists or not. It is "empty" on several levels. First, one will never get a good definition that is accepted by all who wish to discuss, or use, the concept. Second, given someone's definition, it enevitably leads to logical inconsistencies. Thus, God as creator explains nothing, for one must posit that one does not have to create God; one might equally well have said that one did not have to create nature. Who is willing to describe God's various characteristics in any definite way, so how can it be reasonably discussed? God as "love", a concept used by various theologians, is nebulous to say the least; love is presumably characteristic of living things, esp. human beings, so who needs the God. We just get bound up in semantics.

I suggest that somewhat consider this aspect of atheism, the belief that the whole argument reduces to nonsense. Is this what characterizes positivists? I'm not expert enough to know. MKB

Dated July 8, 2003 by User:12.221.66.63

Comment by unregistered user on his/her edits

66.82.116.82 extensively edited/rewrote the article. Some of the edits were simply tightening and streamlining of the text. The long "Definitions" section was removed, and replaced by a couple of short paragraphs containing definitions of the terms "atheism" and "agnosticism". I found most of the material in the former definitions section to be very much out of proportion to what is basically a short article, and it presented too much terminology and points of view that are too argumentative for a short article on atheism.

Based on the discussion in the Talk section, and one of the referenced external web sites, I did add a sentence or two on "strong" and "weak" atheism, but I think a general-purpose article might be better without introducing terminology that is not in common usage; so I might remove this paragraph some time. The links to arguments for and against God were removed, as there was already a more succinct link to them later, and I didn't see an incomplete and telegraphic enumeration of these arguments to be especially helpful. A lot of gratuitous links (for example, to the "United States") were removed.

Dated August 14, 2003 by User:66.82.116.82