A blog dedicated to posts about my thoughts as an agnostic atheist and scientist.
I would love if the universe would sign an autograph for me. :D
Hahahahaha!! I LOVE this! :D
Atheism: The Zero Vector
Frequently today, the religious tend to challenge atheists with a typical statement as this:
“Atheism is still a belief. It is the belief that there is no God, not a lack of belief in a God.”
This seems to be one of the most common misunderstandings and areas of heated discussion by both sides, with neither side tending to be able to back up their side with an argument. Usually this topic delves into who can “shout” their conviction louder, or who can come up with the more clever analogy. (Such as: Atheism is a belief like bald is a hair color. Calling atheism a religion is like calling not collecting stamps a hobby or not smoking a habit.) To which the other side will typically reply with a challenge that that is simply an analogy and does not actually make an adequate defense to the position that atheism is a lack of belief.
Well, I’m going to discuss this now, with the help of an analogy. Atheism is like the zero vector of physics.
Now I will explain.
To refresh your memory, a vector in physics is defined to be a physical attribute describing something that acts with magnitude and direction. For example, force is a vector quantity. When you exert a force on an object, you apply a magnitude or strength of force, and you also exert it in a certain direction through space. Energy is not a vector; it is a scalar quantity since it describes a magnitude of energy, but there is no direction to energy. You cannot “shoot” energy through space.
Now let me demonstrate an interesting kind of vector: the zero vector.
As you can see, this is indeed an odd case. At point P, there is no particular direction to the electric force. Also, the magnitude is defined to be a lack of any magnitude at all! And yet, since we are discussing an electric field at the point, it must be thought of as a vector.
Now, let’s switch our thoughts from the realm of space-time to a new plot. Let’s look at religion-truth.
In this realm, vectors inside religion-truth describe exact quantities. Directions of the vectors correspond to religious beliefs. (There could be an infinite number of possible religious beliefs just as much as in space-time there is pretty much an infinite number of directions you can exert a force with.) Magnitudes represent the conviction or strength of those religious beliefs being true.
Further, points in this religion-truth plane correspond to self-aware entities, or people who are capable of thinking about the matter of religion and its philosophical concern about the truth. Therefore, you and I both must exist within the religion-truth plane. Further, when we discuss matters of religion and its correspondence to truth, we must take a “vector” position on the matter, since the matter is a vector quantity in our religion-truth plane.
Maybe by now you can guess where I’m going with this. As a person, I must therefore take a position on religion and its relationship to the truth. However, as an atheist, I do not hold any direction since I lack a religious belief. Since I lack a direction, I also lack a magnitude in any meaningful sense of the word.
In the religion-truth plane, as an atheist, I am the zero-vector. This is where the conflict between the sides of the argument should be able to find where the misunderstanding is and resolve it. One side of the argument is arguing that because we must take a position that is vector-like, it is therefore a belief. The other side is arguing that since atheists lack direction and magnitude, they cannot be described as holding a belief. The confusion lies in our definition of what a belief is.
Hopefully this analogy cleared that confusion.
As an agnostic atheist, I know I can never test all the infinite number of possible religious beliefs for truth, so absolute knowledge about God and truth is not possible; not only that, but testing of the validity of religious beliefs by common conception is that we won’t know until after we die. So it lies in the realm of the unknown.
However, I am an atheist since I define my beliefs to be only those things for which I feel there is evidence, internal consistencies, and objective testing abilities. Since I think that there is no objective evidence, and no ability to objectively test the concept of God, I do not hold a belief in God; I have no direction in this religion-truth plane that our generation is currently very concerned about.
I hope this was a rational post that helped shed some light on the matter; feel free to reblog and express your thoughts. I’d be interested in knowing them.
Without God: Life from the Stars
A common theme and emotion I run across on this campus is everyone’s need and desire for God. Jesus is the central role model of their life, and they find meaning in the thought of using the life they have now to prepare for an eternity of peace, love, and servitude to God in heaven. I remember feeling the same way; it is no surprise that they frequently front the perspective that the life of an atheist is meaningless and empty.
I’d like to reverse the question and pose it as an answer. How can you find meaning in this? If you live forever, then any action you take is arbitrary - you can easily decide to delay an action for a day, a year, or a century. Living forever is actually what is meaningless. The inherent nature of religion though clouds this reasoning. Usually from childhood, the religious have been told, repeated out loud, and convinced their minds (and mine used to be convinced to) that life is not worth living without God. Just like even in a moment of sadness, the sheer repetition of verbally saying “I am happy, I am happy, I am happy” etc. can convince the mind that it is actually happy and not sad, the repetition of the message behind religion can convince the mind that life is empty without the God they serve.
From this then, my life must seem empty indeed; this mind that has been unfortunate enough to be indoctrinated so deeply and so powerfully that God and an eternity of eternal bliss is the meaning of life, my lack of belief must seem like a dark and void life.
Not true. Never before have I felt a freer mind and a love for everyone around me. Meaning has life, not life has a meaning. As a religious believer, I did not feel the awe and the excitement and joy of uncovering the fabric of the cosmos. I did not appreciate fully the understanding of the power and deep philosophical meaning behind science, and the peace and contentment in understanding that I will die one day, yet life will continue beyond me was absent.
I have taken control of my life though, and I find a deep and unchanging peace behind studying the cosmos, the universe learning about itself, and enjoying and loving the people who are alive around me as I live right now. My mind truly feels awakened and unafraid of what lies in the future. I desire more than anything else to act in a way and spread my experience in such a way that it contributes to breaking the bonds that religion places firmly among the minds of children today.
You are NOT a broken, fallen human being. You are NOT immoral and hopeless without God. You do NOT need to fear the unknown or death.
You ARE a beautiful, unique, and intelligent mind born in the stars. That we all have in common. We are a united humanity in our origins - we do not come from Abraham, or Ishmael, or entitled to land given to us as an inheritance from God. This land, the earth, IS our inheritance, and it is our gift from the stars. We are not dust returning to dust. We are stardust that is currently alive, breathing and experiencing itself before we are reunited to the cosmos in its basic forms of matter.
Atheism describes who I am not; scientist, mathematician, philosopher and Tumblr user with a message describes who I am.
From author to reader, one human being to another,
~Andy
Religion is nothing more than human vanity writ large.
-FA
I’m going to disagree on this one. This is a generalization and I’m afraid overly simplistic. I am very skeptical about tracing back causes to specific, singular reasons. Usually sociology is much more complex than that.
There are a significant number of people who believe partially or significantly because they are convinced that evidence for God exists. I was talking with a friend the other day, and he seems to view the afterlife as a kind of unification with God, a God of science and reason, and it isn’t self-focused at all from what I can tell. I think the only thing differentiating us on this matter is that he believes God exists, and I think that the concept of a God is tremendously extravagant and does lack evidence completely. He also does not see life as meaningful or purposeful without God - an emotion I can relate to intimately. It’s an enormous emotional hurdle to overcome, and about the only thing that pulled me over it was my gradual realization that reality is truth, and truth does not revolve around questions of meaning or purpose.
I wouldn’t call him narcissistic at all; the way that he was brought up, and the way his mind was molded would make a deconversion experience, like my own, utterly painful. It really can feel like losing eternal life initially.
So, I suppose that I can see narcissism as a partial reason for belief in an afterlife, for some more than others, but to claim that it is the only reason, for everybody I think is an extraordinary claim with contradictory evidence behind it.
(via katniss--m3llark)
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. - Hippocrates (460-377 BCE)
Anonymous asked: Do you think moral's are/can be relatively objective?
I think relativity and objectivity in regards to truth are complete opposites. If something is objective, then it is true no matter where in space and what coordinate of time in which it is being considered. If something is relative, like velocity, then it depends on the perspective of the observer. So, I think to call anything relatively objective to be a misleading and rather contradicting thought.
Perhaps you mean seemingly objective? I think there can be a moral that such an overwhelming majority of cultures and time periods consider to be “good” or “evil”, that this moral can seem objective to the philosopher. However, as I see morals as a framework evolved into life and humans, I think it is up to the person who claims that moral truth is objective to present the argument and defend it.
I’m no professional moral philosopher, but those are my thoughts. Thanks for the good question.
Religion
(Large image)
I took this quiz as a sort of test of personal philosophical outlook on life. Here are my results:
And this is a quick Google search result that sums up existentialism.
http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/existentialism.htm
I suppose this philosophy pretty closely sums up how I look at life, but I don’t think I would call myself an existentialist. I don’t feel like my outlook on life matches closely enough with any of the philosophies I know about to ally myself with any of them.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll write down some basic things I believe about life, and see if any of Tumblr’s philosophers can help me out. :P
The correspondent was blunt: “Why don’t you atheists just go out and kill yourselves right now?”
True, most Christians phrase it rather more delicately, but atheists are regularly informed by a certain kind of believer that our lives can have no value if we do not believe in their God. What is the point, they ask, of being kind or loving, caring about suffering or doing anything at all, if one day we just die?
It is true that in the absence of a divine plan our lives have no externally determined purpose: an individual is not born for the purpose of becoming a physician or creating a spectacular work of art or digging a well in an arid corner of Africa. But are the sick less cured, the pleasure to the art-lover less intense, or the thirst of parched villagers less slaked, simply because a man sought his own purpose rather than following a diktat from on high? Do we really need a deity to tell us that a life spent curing cancer is more worthwhile than one spent drinking in the gutter?
Why should we not find satisfaction in alleviating suffering or injustice, just because we’re all going to die one day? The very fact that this life is all we have makes it even more important to do everything possible to reduce the suffering caused by poverty, disease, injustice and ignorance. To describe such attempts as meaningless is to say that avoidable suffering does not matter, hardly a moral stance.
Many Christians claim we have no reason to care about others if there is no God. But this is itself a religious claim, arising from the theological concept of Original Sin, which declares humankind fallen and corrupt. We can safely ignore it, for in reality we do not need childish stories of eternal reward or damnation to coerce us into being good: research shows that the least religious societies have the lowest incidence of social ills, including crime and violence. Healthy humans have empathy built in, and the explanations for this lie in psychology and evolutionary biology: no gods required.
Life cannot be meaningless so long as we have the capacity to affect the well-being of ourselves and others. For true meaninglessness, we would need heaven.
In the state of permanent, perfect bliss that is the very definition of heaven, ‘making a difference’ is ruled out. If the difference made an improvement, the previous state could not have been perfect. If it made things worse, the result would not be perfect. In heaven, neither is possible. Even being reunited with loved ones could not add one jot to their bliss or yours, for heaven would be, by definition, a state that could not be improved on.
Just consider for a moment the hellish pointlessness of heaven. At least in our real existence our actions have an effect, for better or worse, and it is therefore worth trying to get them right. In an eternal life where we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.
If you have ever claimed that your life would have no meaning if it weren’t for your faith in God, do you really believe your family and friends have no worth in their own right? Can you really not see the point in striving to protect and nurture your children, even if there is no eternal life? Really?
If you do, then it is you, not atheists, who debase humanity, and it is Christianity, not atheism, that diminishes the real value and meaning of life. We atheists find purpose in the world as it is, and in our real lives; we see living beings as valuable in their own right, deserving of our concern and compassion simply because they share our capacity for pain and pleasure. It is hard to imagine a position less moral, less conducive to empathy, than this inherently warped and uncharitable view of humanity proposed by Christianity.
This is a perverse view of reality. After all, if the only valuable thing about existence is that God gave it to us, then that must mean the gift is not worth having in its own right. God’s creation would be the equivalent of a shapeless, baggy sweater of dubious color that you would never willingly wear but which you nevertheless can’t bring yourself to throw away because it was a gift from Granny. This approach in effect says you’re grateful for God’s gift, but you don’t actually like it very much; that, were it not for your belief that there’ll be an eternity in heaven to compensate you for having had to endure it, you can see no reason why you’d ever want it.
Theistic religion reduces life to something that has no value other than as the creation of an imagined deity. It decrees that purpose and meaning can only be found in being that deity’s puppet, having no purpose but its purpose and no value other than as its handiwork. Theistic religion looks on all that is best and most noble in human impulse and endeavour and dismisses it as meaningless and worthless —or worse: corrupt —unless done in the name of God. It is time to abandon this baseless worldview. It is time to reject theistic religion and start viewing ourselves and others with real dignity, as beings with value in our own right and not just as the distorted shadows of a fictional creator.
Paula Kirby | Jan 18, 2012 12:53 PM
Eloquently worded; I think this is what I’ve been thinking for a while now subconsciously, but struggling to put to words.
