Why do NeoAtheists deny the practice of atheism is a religion?<<MOD WARNING>>

"Interference on the medium"???

Remember that time passes at a different rate in our satellites, necessitating corrections in order to allow GPS to work.

How is that "interference on the medium"?

 

Your argument is that not believing in something is believing and not something you have to prove that.

Shifting the burden of proof is a fallacy.

 

I call it hand-waving. Whenever you can't respond to the argument itself, hand-wave it away as nonsense or irrelevant.

"Hand-waving (with various spellings) is a pejorative label for attempting to be seen as effective – in word, reasoning, or deed – while actually doing nothing effective or substantial.[1] It is most often applied to debate techniques that involve fallacies, misdirection and the glossing over of details.[2]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-waving

I have a "real-life" liberal friend who responds with "Pooh-ba!" whenever I present an argument he can't answer. It usually but not always comes with the waving of a hand.

 

A nice way to avoid the obvious, that living organisms are acting in defiance of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but that's all it is, a way to avoid the obvious. From the same Wikipedia article:

"In the recent 2003 book SYNC – the Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz, for example, we find “Scientists have often been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe. The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings—that have all somehow managed to assemble themselves.” [14]"

Life itself is in fact subject to the 2nd Law and all living things naturally begin to degenerate almost as soon as they begin living, but life continually acts in defiance of the 2nd Law by creating more and more complex and orderly structures. Living things also act in defiance of the 2nd Law every time they create some form of order, such as bees creating hexagonal honeycombs or spiders creating perfect spiderwebs. We are the highest form of defiance of the 2nd Law because we're always creating all sorts of order with our fences and walls and machinery. The refrigerator example is somewhat misleading in that they focus on the entropy within and without but ignore the fact that the refrigerator itself is a form of order that is a decrease of entropy. Redefining entropy away from the idea of order to equilibrium is just another attempt to avoid having to explain the existence of life. It's just a more sophisticated form of the "no true Scotsman" argument.

A: Entropy increases.
B: Life defies entropy.
A: But that's not real entropy.

 

I used this explanation for my nephew, maybe it will help you see it. Space-time is a four-dimensional reality in which we live. We exist in three-dimensional space while travelling through the fourth dimension time. Most of the time, and for most of us, we're limited to travelling through this fourth dimension at a steady clip, the ticks of a metronome or a clock. But if and when we travel at a much greater speed, time slows down. If we could travel at the speed of light (a physical impossibility), time would stop. This is not theoretical or a model of reality, we can show this to be true. To understand how this happens, think of a two dimensional being living on a plane that is passing through the third dimension of space. Every time the two dimensional being encounters another two dimensional construct, they pass through the third dimension of space at the same rate. This they call "time". Now suppose the two dimensional being is pushed through the third dimension of space at a faster rate than all the other two dimensional beings. For him, the third dimension becomes compressed, so that time slows down. He ends up ahead of everyone else in his two dimensional world... they have "aged" by three years while he has only "aged" two years. The same thing happens for us, or would if we could travel that fast. Someone travelling in a space ship at some percentage of the speed of light could be gone for three years in earth time but would only have aged two years on the space ship. Time is not independent of space but a fourth dimension of space, a dimension we are not able to see in its entirety but a dimension we are passing through at a steady rate.

 

72 pages now and atheism continues to remain, by definition, not a religion. Just like not playing baseball is not a sport.

 

Starts a thread about semantics. Refuses to provide a definition when asked. Then tries lecturing people about "viable arguments" while refusing to provide any. Poe's Law strikes again.

 

Thanks for the laugh, but no. Enlightenment values often happened DESPITE Christian foundation, not because of it. And Westerns civilization's values far predate Christianity.

Yes, we've all heard this empty superstition before, and as always it has no basis anywhere in reality.

I love how the people who believe this have to pretend that Christianity is somehow responsible for these values while spending well over a millennium in a half directly attacking these values and praising scriptures that directly contradict those values. If someone can believe that, they'll believe anything.

 

This is not true. The first universities were ran by the Church and it is not a coincidence that the Enlightenment period took place in the West and not in the Muslim World.

Of course it has. 1000 years of Christianity has obviously had its effect on Western culture and in extent on Western thinking and conceptualisation and understanding of reality, society and man. Claiming anything else would be outrageously ignorant.

I love how atheists turn their backs on religion without even understanding what it is or even knowing what Thomism is or even knowing what role the Church played when it comes to advancing the science of economics and education as a whole

 

Actually, the Muslim world is largely responsible for preserving the texts that lead to the Enlightenment while Christians were destroying them. It isn't a coincidence that Chrisitianity did not support these values for the vast majority of its existence.

If Christianity were responsible for these things, then they would have appeared somewhere in that first 1,000 years or so. For over 1,500 years, Christianity violently opposed what we now call Enlightenment values.

And I love how theists make this fake argument. I'm well aware of Aquinas. So what? And you do realize that most of Thomism is just recycled Aristotle . . . right?

Yes, there were many Christians who were scientists and economists . . . and anyone with two brain cells to rub together realizes that's not the same thing as saying that Christianity is responsible for their science or economics. Especially considering the fact that there were very few other religious options out there for them since the same Christians that you want to credit for the concept of religious freedom were out there violently opposing religious freedom.

 

This is pure ahistorical lunacy - The Muslim conquests of what was once Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and Byzanz saw volumes and volumes of books and other treasures burnt because they were deemed as "haram". If you know anything about Islamic metaphysics, you would not make such ostentatious claims.

The fact of the matter is the the Church did not obstruct science, technological advancement and education; in many ways it actually fostered and encouraged it, much due to the fact that Christianity is a religion that believes in capability and progress.

This is yet another blatant claim since all of the Enlightment values are obviously crypto-christian in nature and could not have occured in cultures that have a different view on humanity and history.

Many ideals of today are fundamenally Catholic in nature, ideals we take for granted such as;
* Charity
* Rights and Liberty
* Econimc Science
* Encouragement of human reason

None of these phenomenons are not to be credited to the Enlightenment. It was not as if people of the 18th century just happened to start thinking and questioning things and just happened to come to think of economics, reason and liberty as if those questions had never been raised before.

 

It isn't an "ostentatious claim." It is pretty much world history 101. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Classics

And here we have actual ahistorical lunacy. The Church has repeatedly obstructed science, education, individual liberty, etc.

It is only "obvious" to the self-deceived. In fact, many of these values DID occur in other cultures -- see early examples of freedom of religion in Persia and India that surpassed anything that Christians would come up with over the course of over a millennium and a half. And, once again, if Christianity were really responsible for these values, why are the directly opposed by their scriptures and why did it take them close to 1,800 years to realize "Oh, wait, thaaaat's what our religion says. Sorry, just missed it up until now."

If you were hoping to find someone ignorant enough to believe that Catholicism is responsible for the concept of charity, you have failed. No one is going to fall for that.

Violently opposed by the Church and its scriptures.

Such as?

Violently opposed by the Church and its scriptures.

If Christianity were responsible, it wouldn't have taken the Enlightenment 18 centuries to come about, and Christianity wouldn't have violently opposed these values for most of its existence.

 

No it is not.

Jesuit scientists were so accomplished that more than 30 craters on the moon are named after them and most of our greatest mathematicians were Jesuits too and the Jesuits basically invented the study of earthquakes, but sure, Church did nothing to advance science and only seeked to obstruct it.

And exactly this is my point! These so called "Enlightment ideas" were no secrets to humanity, they were ideas that people had thought of 1000's and 1000's of years before.

How is Christianity in opposition to charity, human rights, equality and the encouragement of thinking?

It is interesting because most Middle Ages Historians of today actually agree that the Catholic Church played a major role in building Western civilisation and laying the very foundation on which the Enlightenment could be built.

Yeah, the 10 Commandments are totally against it, very much indeed.

The Scholastics of the Salamanca University.

Priests, monks and thinkers were often engaged in vigorous debates and enouraged everyone to participate in it.

This is entirely false.

 

Its a faulty analogy.
Time is a constant.
1 second is still a second.
What you are calling time dilation, I call 'weenerstiens observer physics'.
Its unscientific, in fact irrational to measure time with a mechanical device which is affected by outside influences the baseline for time.
The correct scientific conclusion is NOT that time changes but correctly how the environment affects the measurement mechanism used to record time.
Time is not real, it is a pure construct existing in the mind only, however it can be applied to the real world around us like 2+2=4 is absolutely meaningless, its not real, until you assign object to the numbers.
Observer physics allows us to calculate precisely the position of objects in motion taking into consideration the environmental effects on said objects.
Time does not slow or speed up, that is only how its conceptually explained to lay people, not what actually (physically) happens.
Weinerstein tries to lock step time with the speed of light, which is not constant by any stretch of the imagination, close but if we are to split hairs to that extent then we need to understand its 'media dilation' not time dilation.
What you are looking at is defect time 'measuring' devices not defective time.

 

I see that despite me point out what order/disorder means in terms of thermodynamics you insist on applying the words as they apply in general usage.

maximum disorder = thermodynamic equilibrium.

Its not at all a hard concept to grasp.

Life is of course subject to the 2nd law, however life is not considered a closed system. It is considered a cyclical system.

It seems your insistence that life behaves like a closed system demonstrates your lack of understanding of this basic concept of thermodynamics to begin with.

 

yeh see a more detailed response to xsmith

 

Lol, no. Time is not constant. Relativity fail. Time dilation is indeed a thing.

 

physics fail,
What you are looking at is defective time 'measuring' devices not defective time. Time is purely an abstract construct, it cannot be less than perfect, if you think it is real then please pass me a cup of full of time so I can see what it looks like. LOL

 

Some people don't know what they don't know but know enough to look foolish in the face of scientific fact. In this case a profound misunderstanding of relativity and space/time.

 

Time is not just an abstract a solute construct. Relativity proved this. The physics fail is on your side of the glass.

 

I get 15 hits when I search the thread, why are you making **** up?

 

I am not saying the calc does not work, it does, I am saying that the physics manner in which it is understood is all ****ed up, no one here can provide hard evidence that 'time' in fact dilates, only that their machines cannot accurately tell the precise time under all conditions. The rest as I said is observer physics. You do not need weinerstein to solve the problem, it can be solved using newtonian physics, albeit a bit more difficult. Conventionalists go bonkers over that one

 

This is the most laughable and batshit crazy thing I’ve seen you post yet.

You better go tell all physicists they are wrong. Your Nobel prize awaits, lol.

 

and the faithful fall lock step right in line, no proof needed, hey just like atheism, does not matter how wrong their philosophy is, or how many times they are corrected, they simply repeat their fallacies over and over and obnoxiously endlessly.

Show us again!

 

Better go let physicists know. You’ll be a shoe in for the Nobel prize for sure lol