As Twitter’s popularity grows by the minute, ever more people and organizations are discovering it as a tool for information propagation. One such group are creationists. I usually don’t engage with them on Twitter as it pollutes the experience and is in the majority of cases a futile exercise. Here’s one example of an instance where I did engage one such individual.
@Religulous Atheism is religion.
@Charlie0 Atheism is the absence of religion & the exclusive presence of rationality and reason irrespective of subjective intuitions
@TheEmperfect @thehideout @TCorp A power natural or supernatural that controls your destiny is religion.
@TCorp @thehideout @TheEmperfect You believe that there is "something" that governs your continued existence.
@Charlie0 What kind of power do you mean? Electric? Magnetic? Kinetic? Gravitational? No single kind of power controls everything.
@TCorp The electrons that orbit the nucleus of the atom are negatively charged and the atoms should repel each other.
@Charlie0 Yes. They do repel. Do you have a point or is this your way of saying you didn't pay attention during physics?
@TCorp It really isn't my question. It is a science question. Scientists have asked the question.
@TCorp Colossians 1:17 Christ was before all things, and in him all things are held together
@TheEmperfect I have to go to a Mensa meeting, will be back later bye.
@Charlie0 yes. And had you lifted your head in physics class once in a while you would have at least heard of Strong n and Weak n forces
Suffice to say he never replied…..
Author: Tanin
Tanin in an information technology consultant specializing in complex heterogeneous environments. He can be reached through multiple social networking sites including Twitter.
You might find that some atheists approach their (dis)belief in a (pseudo) religious or even downright fanatical fashion which mirrors that of some overtly religious people. This can give rise to the accusation that they are ‘religious’ in the expounding of their beliefs, hence the assertion on Twitter that you objected to.
In reality, nobody can prove or disprove creator deity beliefs because the context of those beliefs lies outside science. But then science also can’t explain consciousness. Science can only explain what it can measure objectively and empirically but the human mind can reason beyond science – and, indeed, it can reason about its own reasoning (i.e. being aware of oneself and one’s own consciousness, which is entirely impossible to scientifically describe). Because ‘proof’ lies within the context of empiricism, and ‘belief’ lies without, and ‘reason’ (and/or philosophy) is capable of transcending both, then it should be obvious that relying on science alone to make sense of and understand the universe that defies measurement on many different levels cannot be sufficient to satisfy all of the senses (physical and intellectual) that a human being possesses.
Which – if any – religious beliefs you personally subscribe to is a different matter. It has always struck me that the only honest position for someone who does not accept any of the existing religions and their doctrines is that of agnosticism – i.e. not discounting the possibility of a creator deity or something along those lines.
I’ll close by saying that it is possible to honestly subscribe to the best of scientific rigor while holding religious beliefs that help one makes sense of everything. Did you know that the first person to propose what we now call the Big Bang (then called the ‘primordial atom’) was, in fact, a Belgian Catholic priest by the name of Monsignor Georges LeMaitre? Religion and science need not – and indeed should not – oppose one another.
Tony,
the argument that nobody can prove or disprove the existence of gods because such beliefs being “outside of science” makes no sense to a healthy human mind. Science is just a set of tools for explaining the universe and everything in it. Even hypothetical gods.
But you can’t rationally state that the probability of gods existing and gods not existing is 50/50 just because there are just those two possibilities. That’s like saying the probability of me being a billionaire is 50/50 (I either am or I am not), but in fact the odds that I’m a billionaire are more like 15 million : 1 (calculated by factoring the number of humans on the planet and the actual number of billionaires). That being said, I still haven’t proven anything without showing you my bank account.
My point is that the there are people in this world that claim things about the universe without providing anything to back up their claims.
And of course science can explain consciousness. The lack of your understanding of neuroscience does not turn consciousness into magic.
I don’t know who told you all this nonsense but to use a Dutch phrase you’re sounding like someone that’s hearing the bells but doesn’t know where the church is.
It does not make sense to me to be agnostic about something with such a low probability of being true. The Earth could be going around the sun in a square shape, but I’m not going to be agnostic about it just to be on the “safe side”. Scientific theory and peer reviewed observations demonstrate it goes around the sun in a slightly elliptical orbit.
Science and religion both make claims about the universe, but science and religion are absolutely not compatible.
Science relies on evidence, observation, testable theories, repeatable experiments, peer review of claims, etc.
Religion relies on the gullibility of human beings. It doesn’t even try to explain anything. In religion, the dumbed the explanation, the better because most people will never get a scientific education anyway so remembering some mumbo jumbo you can just make up on the spot is even easier.