What Do Nontheists Believe in?

Only humans can solve human problems. This is probably true, but I can think of hypotheticals. I assume this is saying there are no gods or supernatural forces that will take care of our problems, in which case I only have a problem with the wording of this.

The one I definitely disagree with is the idea of prophecy being even less plausible than a god. Prophecy could happen and still have natural explanations, but a god is very unlikely to. A god makes NO sense according to what we know; future predictions could easily fit into what science tells us about time and the possibility that everything was pre-determined, etc.

I would disagree with the second and the last point – with the caveat that my disagreement might be due to misunderstanding as I haven’t read the book.

Perhaps Niose has an especially broad understanding of “speculation” but barring that I think we can do more. There are exciting prospects in the work – though admittedly still theoretical – for a scientific cosmological account of what brought about the Big Bang. However, even barring any new scientific advances we can still do more than merely speculate; there is plenty of sound philosophical reasoning to be made.

As to only humans being able to solve human challenges that’s just a plain empirical falsehood. Lots of animals have shown themselves quite capable in many “human” endeavours. We aren’t as special as we think. But maybe that wasn’t the point Niose was making. If he was picking at the fact that angels and deities can’t solve human problems, I withdraw my complaint.

Everything since the Big Bang can be explained naturally
I’d rather say that “everything natural has a natural explanation” and that we haven’t discovered anything outside nature. But I generally agree.
We can only speculate about what “caused” the Big Bang
For now, sure. There are lots of unanswered questions, I don’t contend that they are forever unanswerable.
The idea of prophecy is even less plausible than a God
No way. Predicting the future is common and easy. Predicting it with sufficient specificity and reliability as to suggest actual advance knowledge would be amazing, but not impossible. It’d by definition have to be more plausible than a god though, because a god should be able to engage in prophecy plus many additional and more unlikely qualities. What he seems to actually mean in the article, is that the reliability of those claiming divine revelation is implausible.
Only humans can solve human challenges
I wish. My damn hamster keeps beating me at Scrabble. At first I though he was making up agranulocytoses, but it turns out he watches a lot of House.

 Maybe it’s just me but I would be disinclined to consider an accurate inference to a future state of the universe from deterministic laws a proper “prophecy.” The concept of a prophecy seems to me to imply something more than an infallible weather-forecast, say. If it implies divine revelation, then a prophecy is less likely than God for no other reason than that the probability of A&B is always less than or equal to the probability of A alone.

No, as far as I know (and I love astronomy and cosmology), scientists know a great deal about what happened at the Big Bang and what probably happened after and how that lead to everything that we know to be right now. But they don’t know what made the ‘singularity’ ‘bang’. — They don’t even know what that ‘singularity’ is. Something happened to make the ‘singularity’ expand rapidly (faster than the speed of light at first), but what that cause is is unknown.

Whether we can actually figure it out or not, well, I have no idea. Maybe we can get evidence for it, maybe not. The article is just saying that we can’t say for sure, and so theists can’t say, ‘Yes, it was a god.’ I agree that that point is debatable.

Seems like semantics to me. If prophecy does indeed require divine intervention, then I would agree with you.

Because I’m far too lazy to get a real dictionary at the moment, Dictionary.com’s first definition says it’s just about predicting the future. It does also have the definition you are proposing. So, I agree with my first point, but, as I said above, if you include divine intervention, then I agree with you too.

For the purposes of my comment, I am assuming you mean prophecy of god.  I do think prophecy is less plausible than an the idea of god.  Many of the religious folks that I know believe in god, but reject prophecy.  Then again, perhaps they are just cafeteria believers.  For me, I rejected the concept of god before I even thought about the plausibility of prophecy.

I disagree with the main concept that  non-theists need to believe in anything.

Some of us don’t believe in capitalizing the word “god” (or “he” or “him” or “lord”), because we don’t believe in hijacking the rules of the English language in order to pay undue deference to mythological beings.  Besides, it isn’t a proper noun.  It’s not his name, it’s his job title.

From what I understand, the idea of the singularity has been out of fashion in physics for a couple decades. I know Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, who developed the idea, now both reject it. You might want to read some stuff on the possibility of the multiverse.

‘Singularity’ is just the term used to describe what happened before the Big Bang, the thing that ‘exploded’. No scientist that I know of has ever proposed that it’s anything specific, but that it’s simply a word to use for something we don’t understand (like ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’) so that we can talk about it. If there are multiple universes, these universes would start with a ‘singularity’.

I have done research on the multiverse. As far as I know, the term is usually used specifically to refer to parallel universes, and not many different universes in one space, and came about because the hypothesis formerly known as ‘String Theory’, now currently dubbed ‘M-Theory’ said that membranes (called ‘branes’) sit parallel to each other. These branes undulate, and every time they ‘clash’ together there is a Big Bang.

But M-Theory is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. There isn’t any real evidence for it, nor is there for a multiverse, whether in the parallel universe sense or not. I think it’s plausible to have multiple universes, considering there are so many planets, solar systems, galaxies, etc. But ‘singularity’ is what is the accepted term when talking about the Big Bang, so it’s the word I used.

Sorry, but the singularity is different than the Big Bang. The Big Bang can’t be traced back to a singularity. Hawking and Penrose both now reject the idea, even though they were the ones to develop it, because the idea came from them erroneously applying relativity on the quantum scale, leading to incorrect conclusions.

You might also want to read Brain Greene’s book on multiverses. I never said it was firmly established, but there are multiple lines of evidence that point to some type of multiverse being possible, maybe even likely.

Also, is the book you mentioned called ‘The Hidden Reality’?

The singularity is not a general term used to describe whatever happened before the big bang. The singularity is a term that when used to describe the big bang (extremely simplified) means that there was an infinitely small point of infinite large gravity at the very, very start of the Big Bang. It is based on misapplying relativity to the quantum level. The singularity idea is often quoted by Christian apologists like William Lane Craig to cast doubt on the multiverse, pretending that Hawking still holds to this idea. I’ve heard the physicist Victor Stinger say numerous times that this is outdated science.

If you want to use the term singularity as a general term describing “whatever” was before the big bang that is your prerogative, but that is completely different than how physicists use the term, where it is referring to something very specific. So if you try to redefine the term you might run into some confusion.

Yes, the Greene book is The Hidden Reality.

I would disagree with the notion that “The idea of prophecy is even less plausible than a God”. The possibility at least exists that we live in a determinist Universe (I’m agnostic on the matter myself). If we do, it’s at least possible that, given enough knowledge the intervening factors, extremely accurate predictions could be made about the future.

Mind you, I don’t think that it’s very likely, but at least it wouldn’t violate all laws of physics and can theoretically be explained within a naturalistic Universe. This puts it well ahead any god in the plausibility race.

No impossibility is any more plausible than any other impossibility.
 Possibility is binary – it’s either possible, or it isn’t.

That’s just plain false on nearly all accounts of possibility I can think of, save, perhaps, on certain versions of actualism. And even actualism can accommodate shades of epistemic plasubility.

Well, actually there is God, which is the Christian god. His name is God, his title is also god. It’s confusing, yes. Do you capitalize Athena, Anubis, Thor, and Quezalcoatl?

I’ve been using the word “implausible” lately to explain my atheism.  It’s such a neutral word, it catches theists off guard!

I disagree with the whole list.  I don’t “believe” any of those things, I think them.   The term is ill defined at best and I avoid it like the plague.  ‘I believe in pixies’ is not semantically the same as ‘I believe in democracy’.  One means “I think something is true with no evidence” while the other mean “I think something is important”.

 I, too, am feeling mean.  Make Niose go back and define ‘human.’

What do I believe?

I believe I’ll have another drink…

Yea, probably…

But I can imagine none of them would say “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” except within a group of a large number of other Jewish terms.

… And some of us know that no one ever should use capitalization of the word god when the phrase “a god” is used. Not even theists capitalize in that case.

Please explain. I didn ‘t think his statement was responsive to what he was criticizing because plausible and possible are two different things. I interpreted his statement as injecting the new assumption that all gods are impossible. The sentence you quoted I believe is true even if his entire chain of reasoning isn’t valid. Something is either possible or impossible. If possible there can be shades of plausibility or probability. However if you are claiming something is impossible it is not possible, and if possible it is not impossible.

“Only humans can solve human challenges”

What about seeing eye dogs and helper monkeys?

It’s only a pet peeve for me when people try to use it as an indication for whether something is good for you or not. Like thinking that herbal medicine is good because it is natural and forgetting that many plant poisons are natural. Or assuming human activities are bad merely because on one definition of the word natural it distinguishes man made from occurring by the forces of nature.

LOL”acne” was supposed to be “dance”. Thank you IPad for helping me with that typo. It is so much better than missing the D in “ance”.

I stand corrected by google.

“natural” as in “the natural world vs. the supernatural world”, not as in “artificial vs. natural”. Artificial vs. natural is a extremely sketchy line to try to draw, anyways. I’ve never liked it.

Can we add “be a decent human being” to the list?

While we’re on the subject, I offered to ask around for a philosopher on another blog. She’s doing a study on people’s perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of a number of arguments for& against the existence of god. Off the top of my head, Anselm’s ontological argument is in there, Pascal’s Wheel of Forever, Paley, Hume’s Argument From Poor Design, and others.

I found that my smattering of first&second year courses in religious philosophy were adequate to assess most of the arguments. She prefers to hear from philosophers at the grad level and above, but she’ll take non philosopher respondents as well; atheists, agnostics and theists alike.

The main difficulty that she’s discovered with approaching on-line philosophers is that the overwhelming majority of them are male. I decided to try gathering some respondents here, because Hemant has a refreshing number of female commenters on this blog. I am also pleased that so many people from so many levels of education can discuss views with real-world relevance, without any of the pedantry and social one-upping that happen in other debates about religion or the lack thereof.

The questionnaire is here:

http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/anyone-want-to-take-a-survey

Thank you 🙂

So if we find something from the supernatural world, like God then he’d be have to be like any other force in the universe? I’m pretty sure he’d be considered “outside nature”.

Yes, possibility and impossibility are mutually exclusive. I wasn’t disputing that.

Prophecy is less plausible than God makes little sense. The Hopi prophecies are interesting, for example. They are more of a mass psychology with prophetic elements. (Of course, REAL atheists will probably roll their eyes at any such mention and disregard this post without actually considering it – that’s called ‘science’ these days, unfortunately).

The Hopi say that if all humans forsake the way of peace, then there will be terrible war. It’s a virtual tautology, but in this deluded and myopic age, it IS prophecy.

There are more specific elements, which are interesting. When spiderwebs across the land (electric wires?), rivers of stone, horses on wheels, and a ‘dwelling place will fall from the heavens’ (skylab fell in 198?). Maybe it’s bunk, but a real, open-minded scientist will look into it, rather than knee-jerk reaction. Unfortunately, most scientific atheists are pretty closed-minded these days.

Check out the blog/book Buddha is an Atheist – misterkel.wordpress.com for more discussion on similar ideas.