Questions atheists can't answer
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I was just watching a fairly entertaining YouTube video with this as the title and thought it might be fun to discuss here.
The first offered in the video is "why is there something rather than nothing?"
Of course the boring but correct answer is "I don't know." Which seems to me like an appropriate answer but apparently some don't accept it.
The more long-winded answer is (IMO) that unless we know all the other possible universes, it is impossible to know the other possibilities. If there are universes with every possible outcome, then maybe we are just living within the group where nothing (matter/antimatter) has somehow separated things from unthings. In the universes where that didn't happen, there's nothing.
Or perhaps the universe and everything is endless and has always and will always exist. There are periodic "big bangs" preceded by "big crunches" in cycles.
Anyway, what other questions do you know that atheists can't answer?
The first offered in the video is "why is there something rather than nothing?"
Of course the boring but correct answer is "I don't know." Which seems to me like an appropriate answer but apparently some don't accept it.
The more long-winded answer is (IMO) that unless we know all the other possible universes, it is impossible to know the other possibilities. If there are universes with every possible outcome, then maybe we are just living within the group where nothing (matter/antimatter) has somehow separated things from unthings. In the universes where that didn't happen, there's nothing.
Or perhaps the universe and everything is endless and has always and will always exist. There are periodic "big bangs" preceded by "big crunches" in cycles.
Anyway, what other questions do you know that atheists can't answer?
Comments
(Supplementary, if consciousness is not an emergent property of complex systems - how does it exist without supernatural intervention ?)
It feels like this is an assertion; complex systems tend towards consciousness, the universe is really complex so it must be conscious.
Atheists have no question to answer.
And what makes the universe a complex 'system'? Nothing I can see outside my window as far as the tropopause above my garden and the neighbour's house and street trees, is as complex as me.
Scaling consciousness emerging from complex systems is pantheism. Next door to Intelligent Design.
Stone me! Martin has posted something I agee with ... An answer to prayer!
: ) surely not! Well, I'm glad we agee on something! Especially this.
It is a theory within psychology as to how mind emerges from brain, I am not aware of any other plausible theories as to where consciousness comes from - but it is not something I've read up on recently. How do you think consciousness arises from matter ?
Which is perhaps to a) illustrate my ignorance and b) to suggest that the perception of consciousness is useful only as a framework for humans to understand something about themselves and thus c) could have evolved in complex organisms like humans to aid survival.
It's entirely possible that other organisms have some other concept internal to themselves which helps individuals know themselves.
Brains are complex in very particular ways. Other things complex in other ways do not necessarily cause consciousness to arise.
I don't think you can actually test for a conscious anything. The only consciousness I know exists is my own. By extention, I assume other humans are like me. I can assume with less confidence that other beings with complex neural networks of one kind or another may also be conscious - chimps yeah probably; earwigs not so much; snails who knows eh? But they're only conjectures of probabilities.
My point is that while the universe could be conscious, it doesn't *have* to be just on grounds of complexity.
Maybe it is. Who knows? Who cares?
Any question about either usually falls very quickly into silence.
People will believe anything. I have. But as the Ship's born again infidel Puritan, I have no warrant for the supernatural.
I don't understand the 'consciousness' thing. An octopus's 'consciousness', if it has one, is going to be very different to ours.
Even other mammals are going to differ from us in so many respects. Dolphins in terms of the very different environment they inhabit, for instance.
Even other primates.
I don't know if this is a 'consciousness' thing but lemur mothers will abandon any offspring that fail to make much effort to climb back towards them if they accidentally tumble off onto the first floor. They take that as a sign of weakness and assume the infant won't survive.
Some ancient peoples used to 'expose' or abandon unwanted children.
I've heard it suggested that atheists are unable to explain where their sense of moral compass comes from. I've not read David Bentley Hart, for instance, but have heard that this is one of the arguments he levels against atheism in his apologetics.
Shipmates will correct me if I'm wrong.
The atheists I know would argue that we should do our best to preserve and sustain the environment and show love and concern for other people because that's the right thing to do. They'd argue that they don't need a divine reference point for that.
I also agree with @Martin54 that the idea of the universe itself having a consciousness sounds pantheistic. Ok, I can incline towards panentheism - 'God is everywhere present and filleth all things.'
But Orthodox and orthodox theology has it that God isn't a 'part' of Creation as it were. The universe isn't God. God isn't the universe.
I'm not sure what questions atheists can't answer because I'm not an atheist.
Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, has a book and has given a talk many times (available on YouTube) called A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. I don't think this is quite the question you think it is.
My only thought was that people here might find it an enjoyable topic to discuss, I'm not trying to gotcha anyone.
It's certainly a linguistic paradox, but if there were no existence then nothing would not exist: There is existence, the opposite of that is, there isn't existence. Even that feels iffy.
I beg your pardon. Sorry. Let me rephrase: I don't think it's quite the question they think it is. I can't even begin to approximate the work that Krauss summarizes to show the possibility that something from nothing exists. One of his more salient points is that "nothing" from a cosmological POV is significantly misunderstood. From a statistical POV any layperson is sure to find it statistically insignificant, but it's not zero, and that in the end is enough to outweigh the supernatural (at least to me).
The same is true of things existing. OK, the principle of sufficient reason says that there must be a cause or reason, as for everything, but I would have thought that atheists can simply deny that. The principle is an assertion.
One possible measure with potential for significant levels of connectivity is gravity (at least up to galaxy/cluster/supercluster level). You would need to be able to apply (or observe the application of) gravitational stimuli to the system, and to observe gravitational (or possibly other) responses. The lifespan of humanity might be a limiting factor, in relation to collecting sufficient data.
Or you could look to the quantum mind. No chaos this time, but also available with fractals.
Rather than simply deny it, the atheists I've read or heard on that issue ask how those who assert a cause for everything avoid infinite regression.
Oh God no. The quantum mind. I was actually intrigued at the sci-fi of talking to the universe with gravity. We'd need to toss galactic core black holes about, but yeah. How would you expect the universe to respond unnaturally to natural extreme gravity events? And why would it? Is it that it doesn't know we're here? We need to play Beethoven's 5th to it by fiddling with black holes?
I think this is the fallacy of generalization, reasoning that if consciousness is an emergent property of some complex systems it must therefore be an emergent property of all complex systems.
For example, an airplane is a complex system that has the emergent property of powered flight. None of the individual components (engine, fuel, wings, body, tail) have this property by themselves, but when assembled in the correct configuration the property of powered flight emerges. However, there are a lot of complex systems that do not, in themselves, possess the property of powered flight. Examples include, but are not limited to, the human body, the Empire State Building, and giant redwood trees.
This is not simply a matter of insufficient complexity either. A human body is arguably more complex than a Bœing 747 and yet the 747 possesses emergent properties that the human body does not.
Intentionality and emergence are not necessarily exclusive. Emergence simply means that a complex system exhibits a property that its individual components do not separately have. Whether that complex system was designed or not is irrelevant to whether a property is emergent.
And a 747 is a complex system in the way the term is typically used. It may be less complex than other systems, but it's still a complex system.
"Atheist" is a funny one really isn't it? We don't identify people as Acryptobiologists or Aghostists. I think it often misleads Theists into thinking that there's a particular God that people don't believe in.
I just regard it as pathetically sadly, unintentionally, blithely ignorantly amusing.
Young Dickie Dawkins has been accused of unbelieving in the wrong God. Whereas I find his exclusion of theology from first order nature study, rationality, ontology as perfectly valid. Whoops! Sorry. Double post.
"If consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems, and the universe is the most complex system we know - how can it not be conscious"
Is the universe the most complex system of which we know? It's large, sure, but is it systematic? Wouldn't a consciousness have to have internal communication? The universe
has, if any internal communication at all, a facility so slow as to be almost inconceivable.
As for consciousness as an emergent property: not yet known to occur but perhaps possible.
As for identifying the universe with God, that sounds rather bleak to me personally, but Spinoza might like it.
I’m wondering what slow means if your “lifespan“ is measured in the billions of years.
Pantheism as I said. Away with the fairies all of it. Pseudoscientific BS. All of it. Great sci-fi. Hoyle. Asimov. Lem. All created yearning masterpieces with it. But otherwise, ohhhh dear.
I can't see what there is to human consciousness beyond being a self-referential intentional state - which is I what I take you to mean by a concept that helps one to know oneself. Consciousness certainly has internal quality - but since we can't communicate that quality to each other we don't know whether that quality is the same for all humans, and so it forms no part of the denotation of the concept.
I’m suddenly reminded of this issue, in which that question is a major plot point, of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol:
https://comicsbreakdown.com/2020/11/09/unearthed-doom-patrol-22/
Is there some other term? I mean, theist/atheist is the general pair of terms people use, and I don’t think anyone gets confused by the meaning of either.
As an atheist watching this debate, I'd say that many people often do.
Perhaps the most common that atheists can't answer is,
"Why are all these people trying to to second guess what I think?"
I just figure they don’t believe in God or the gods, and mostly not in any kind of supernatural. Beyond that it depends on the person, I assume, like with theists of various kinds.
Partly, I think, because some see you as a threat.
'This person doesn't think like me. That presents the possibility that I might be wrong.'
This leads to:
'I wonder why they don't think like me? Is it because of X, Y, Z?'
Then the second-guessing runs I to over-drive.
It can work the other way round too, of course. I've had atheists assume or second-guess that because I'm a theist I believe in a literal 6-Day Creation or that I'm ignorant of science. The latter may well be the case, I didn't do physics, biology or chemistry at O'level but I did O'level Geology. All my A'levels and degree subjects were arty ones.
Similar and parallel things occur in relation to other ideologies and beliefs.
'I can't understand how / why they vote Labour / Conservative / [insert party of choice] ...'
* Why is there something rather than nothing?
* 'why' questions
* Can one get an 'ought' from an 'is'?
* How does one explain the 'divine sense'?
* Why doesn't atheism work on a national level
* Where do laws of logic come from?
* What is consciousness?
Some of these are quite contrived and the atheists in question have a high regard for their own intelligence and a love of talking quickly. I'm not sure these are the questions I would have chosen
(Although in this case it appears to be ironic. Because everything online is ironic now.)
I think this is about entrenched positions and familiar ways of thinking. For many people, it is extremely hard to get out of the familiar surroundings of thought and therefore it is really hard to find ways of relating to other people which don't fit into that internal model.
One could sit down and work out with the 'other' the steps right back to the point where the views diverged, but most people don't have the capacity to do that and instead assume things about the other position based on their entrenched position.
I've not explained that well, but that's what I'm reading from your post.