### Here's Why Religion Debate is Nonsense ### - I Origins (2014) Discussion

[–] Magic93 9 years ago

Atheists don't try to disprove anything, they just reiterate that there is no proof.

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That's putting it mildly, OO7

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[–] MrJJay 9 years ago

Then those people are not atheist, they are agnostic instead.

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[–] DrWhen 9 years ago

That's just what I was going to say. People seem to confuse agnostic (logical) with atheist (a nihilist religion) a lot.

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[–] MrJJay 9 years ago

Not trying to be cocky but the notion of atheism being a religion is wrong. :)

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[–] DrWhen 9 years ago

How is it wrong? It's a faith based philosophy as proof of a negative isn't logical. It's something you must believe in with no observable proof just like any other religion.

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[–] MrJJay 9 years ago

If that's a troll attempt it's a good one man. :D
Otherwise, your every single word is so wrong and nonsense that i'm not gonna even bother saying anything. :)

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[–] demianmcmenimon 8 years ago

He's arguing from strict narrow definition of "Atheist" while you're arguing from the perspective of a broader interpretation of the word. A theist (root word) is someone who believes in a god or gods. Putting the "a" in front of "theist" means someone who believes there is no god. In modern usage the meaning of "atheist" has broadened (not among everybody though as evidenced here) to mean someone who believes there is no proof of any deities so there's point in believing either way. A problem that people have with this is that they think there was already a word describing that viewpoint, agnostic.

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[–] walkenschvitzen 9 years ago

It takes faith not to believe that there's a teapot floating somewhere outside Saturn?

It takes faith not to believe that human suffering is caused by thetans that were created when the evil overlord Xenu dropped his enemies into volcanoes and detonated thermonuclear bombs to make good and sure they were dead millions of years ago?

It takes faith not to believe that the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago, and human suffering is due to a woman listening to a talking snake and eating an apple from a tree?

It takes faith to look at the mountains of evidence that every religion ever practiced is man-made, and the complete lack of evidence of anything supernatural ever happening, and come to the conclusion that the existence of the supernatural is vanishingly unlikely?

You can go ahead and say, "I have no opinion on the question of whether there is a teapot floating somewhere around Saturn."

But then, who knows? Maybe our bodies are being used, Matrix-style, by an incredibly advanced alien civilization, as a source of energy and information, helping them to conduct a genocide against another alien species, and our lives are actually a computer simulation being fed to us. Who's to say that killing off the entire human species wouldn't really just be ending a computer program, and saving billions of sentient beings from annihilation?

After all, when there's a complete lack of evidence that something exists, it takes a great deal of faith to believe that that something really doesn't exist.

Who's to say that Scientologists are actually doing real harm to people when they claim that all of psychiatry is bunk? After all, we can't definitively prove that thetans don't exist.

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[–] user-24723 8 years ago

Very well said. I totally agree. A lot of these so called atheists have no problem in believing in something like the matrix. Which also has no basis in reality. Whats the difference? I know loads of atheists who believe in weird sci fi stuff but cant get on board with ideas that are 1000s of years old. Im not religious by the way. I just think its hypocritical.

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[–] Magic93 9 years ago

atheist (a nihilist religion)

 Well this thread is unsalvageable... I won't even bother trying.

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That's putting it mildly, OO7

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[–] DrWhen 9 years ago

Why? Proof of a negative is not logical therefore is must be based on faith. A religion is a belief based on faith. That's pretty straightforward reasoning.

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[–] SweetD19 9 years ago

Lol NO, ahh delusional

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[–] Basiclife_0 9 years ago

Yes, but by the same token, I don't believe in the spaghetti monster, teapots orbiting other planets, etc...

The list of things I don't believe in is extensive and I don't feel the need to take a middle ground because I've never seen evidence against the spaghetti monster et al.

Yes, technically I'm agnostic but agnosticism is so much closer to atheism than theism, that the difference is negligible.

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[–] florink3 9 years ago

agnostic is not some middle ground between atheist and theist.

do you believe there is a god? if the answer is not "YES", then you're an atheist. it's that simple.

atheism deals with belief while agnosticism deals with knowledge.

an agnostic is a person who believes the truth that a god exists can't be known..

so you can be a gnostic theist, agnostic theist, gnostic atheist or agnostic atheist

hope that clears up any confusion

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[–] coasttech 8 years ago

I was just going to say that lol

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[–] mykemu 9 years ago

Nothing is finally proven, real scientists know that. Atheism is just one of many philosophies, not really anti-theism - it is based on a belief system. For most atheists it just material reductionism but they don't even realize it-they should read Hume or learn about quantum mechanics. Most religious people know a lot more about science than atheists know about theology or philosophy. You can tell by their silly troll initialing arguments they propose and the lack of serious counter arguments to people who reply.

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[–] MrJJay 9 years ago

Didn't read after "Atheism is just one of many philosophies". Lol, was that a troll attempt? If it was then that's a nice subtle one, i'll give you that. :)
Otherwise, you've tried to be a pseudo-intellectual but it turned into an EPIC FAIL. Next time you try to be a smarty pants make sure you know the subject. ;)

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[–] Zeppelin75 9 years ago

People who aren't agnostic make me nervous...

I'm not against religious people or atheists, I just find that thought process unsettling and practically illogical.

How can some people claim to be so certain about something that can't possibly be know...

As for origins, that's just an absolutely evil and terrible paradox...

Either something had to have started from nothing, or something had to have always existed forever, and thus was never actually created. Both of those options are unviable, insane, and completely suck.

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[–] HenrikSwanstrom 8 years ago

You're probably pretty certain Zeus don't live on Mount Olympus.

Or are you agnostic towards that proposition aswell?

The whole failure with your final argument is that you let human boundraries of understandning limit the possibilities. There could probably be countless of explainations for the origins of the universe, things that we may never understand due to our limited intelligence.
Anyhow... if we'd go with the standard belief amongst the scinetific community that time started with the Big Bang I'd say it's a pretty plausible explaination that it always has existed. Asking what happened before time existed is like asking what's south of the south pole.

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[–] hafeez112233-1 8 years ago

I'm not against religious people or atheists, I just find that thought process unsettling and practically illogical.

This is why the attempt to make some sort of equivalence between religionists and atheists is so dangerous.

Religionists want to lump everything that is not absolutely provable into one big steaming pile and call it agnosticism.

At the heart is a ridiculous endeavor to change language and definitions so that any countervailing arguments and reason just disappear.

Agnosticism, as commonly used, really refers to a wishy-washy class of people who either are teetering on the fence one way or the other, or are just too cowardly to state their real opinions.

There needs to be a term that means "I am almost completely certain that there is no deity".

Previously, that term was "atheist".

Now, because I am only 99.99999% sure that there is no such deity, you want to put me in the same boat as those that are 50-50...and more importantly, you want to pretend that the argument for a god is just as good as the argument against.

Sorry, charlie, that just aint gonna work.

First of all, that slight bit of uncertainty is only regarding the vague notion of some nebulous deity, properties and attributes undefined.

But talk about almost any actual religion that has numerous followers, then the tenets and scriptures of their faith are almost always self-contradictory and illogical.

So, of all those religions, be it christianity or islam or whatnot, there is absolutely nothing uncertain about them...they are false. Provably false. It does not take any sort of "faith" to believe they are false.

That so many give up reason and logic, abandon their very minds, to preserve such beliefs is proof of how dangerous religion can become and there is no dearth of examples that demonstrate this over and over again.

Atheists, on the other hand, are much more likely to actually use and practice logic and reason.

Which would you choose for the betterment of humanity?

“Your head is on the block and you worry about your whiskers?”

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[–] Saiph90 8 years ago

It is impossible to proof god does not exist in the same way you can not proof invisible pink unicorns do not each night graze on my lawn, now if I want to convince you these unicorns exist I must present some pretty compelling evidence.

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[–] schall1991 7 years ago

Smh...

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[–] rmontro 8 years ago

There is no proof that God does or does not exist.

However, many atheists claim that there is no evidence that God exists, and that is a completely different thing, and one I do not agree with.

There is no reason to think that there might be invisible pink unicorns on someone's lawn, or a flying spaghetti monster - no reason at all. God answers philosophical questions for many people, God serves many purposes. A spaghetti monster does not.

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[–] smilesooner 8 years ago

A reasonable comment. Yay! God is a slippery concept because everyone has a different concept of what God might be. And that includes agnostics and atheists.

The fundamental question is does matter lead to consciousness or does consciousness lead to matter? Physics in the first half of the twentieth century makes the primacy of consciousness the leading metaphysical candidate. But most theoretical physicists have chosen to ignore the implications of those experiments, and most other scientists just go along in lock step. Combine that with the problems of getting consciousness out of inert matter, and all of a sudden things are more complicated than the so-called scientific materialists would have us believe.

A great movie that explores these issues, at least superficially. But it hits you in the gut and is beautifully told. Reincarnation works for me and hopefully that includes soul mates.

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[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 8 years ago

I see a lot of issues in this thread, and rather than reply to each of them piecemeal, I'll just put it in this single longform reply:

1) The film starts off with Ian saying that he wants to disprove the creationist theory that visual sight proves intelligent design, proof that goes exists. Fair enough.

2) As the film goes on, this changes from "I disproved this one theory of yours" to "my findings disproves the existence of god, period, and therefore all theories to the contrary".

I think that was an unfortunate turn in the story. This was demonstrated with his post-book publishing television interview. I was disappointed in that.

3) The film ends with Ian seemingly proving the existence of reincarnation and the film appears to be saying that this is proof of god. This is reinforced with the conversation with Ian and Priya, where she asks if he will question his scientific beliefs (per the Einstein quote) if presented with proof.

This is very unfortunate. His findings do not prove that God does or doesn't exist, or that science is or isn't valid. What it does suggest is that there something to reincarnation thing. The biometric eye patterns are strong indicators, but the tests results were not so strong. Then the film ends with Salomina's fright of the elevator. BOOM, well that proves everything, right?

No, it doesn't. It certainly would be food for thought though.

And even if he does find some kind of proof that there is an 'intelligence at work', that still does not invalidate science. <insert long discussion about how such a supreme being would be related to the physics of our universe>

4) I see some misconceptions about atheists vs agnostic. Both of them claim that there is no proof of god. The differences lie in what that means to them:

- 4a) An atheist claims that there is no proof and therefore is no god. Why should they believe in this bedtime story, manufactured to placate the masses. It's all nonsense, they are convinced.

- It's not clear to me what an atheist would do if such proof were to suddenly exist.

- 4b) the agnostic does not claim that god does not exist and even suggests that there still may be a god, but sees no proof of it. Until such time, the agnostic will not spend valuable time in the 'service' of a lord they don't believe in.

- But a lot of agnostics claim that if god or Jesus were to suddenly appear on earth, they would want to meet or see this person and would have a lot of questions. (They also would still have questions about this supreme being vs. the scriptures the that the god fearing humans put so much faith in, but that's another discussion altogether.)

- 4c) This point isn't from a previous post in the thread -- it's just a point I want to make: Neither of those positions (atheism, agnostic) should be viewed as proof that those people have no morales, passion for the various human conditions, etc. etc. You don't need religion to be a good person and do good, even great things.

5) My takeaway: this film does touch on spirituality and Sofi was a good representative of this viewpoint, even before she transcended to Salomina. She managed to convince Ian of much of this and he always respected those qualities in her, right up to the point where he cremated her remains and spread them at the base of the statue from the photo.

I do like how the film concluded, open-ended, leaving it for us to decide what it all means. We weren't mean to be concerned about Salomina's future.

Be sure to proof your posts to see if you any words out

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