Atheism's Unanswered Questions

[agnostic_pilgrim]

Atheism's Unanswered Questions

The atheistic world view fails to plausibly answer many questions and explain common observations about the universe and human nature. Theism, however, does provide answers and explanations, and so these questions lead us to evidence for the existence of God.

The universe: How did the universe begin? How did life arise from non-living matter? The claims that the universe always existed or had a "natural" cause and that life spontaneously arose are just as extraordinary as the claim that an intelligent being created both the universe and life. If the universe is in its present state because of the Big Bang, what caused the Big Bang, and where did the matter that exploded come from? If the universe has always existed, why is there such a large quantity of mass and energy, not to mention intelligent life?

Science: Science exists because the universe operates in a consistent way and has phenomena that we can describe as "laws," such as the law of gravity. If the universe and/or things in it were formed by chance, why should the behavior of the universe be predictable instead of random?

Nature: Why do people uniformly admire nature? Why do we see so much beauty in it? It's no longer our natural surroundings, for we live in urban areas surrounded by pavement and man-made structures. Why do we prefer nature to what we ourselves have made? Why do we prize window offices and decorate walls with landscapes, instead of being content with our climate-controlled environment?

Psychology: Why do people seek for meaning and purpose in life - why are we not content simply to live in the moment? Why do we keep trying to explain how and why the universe came into existence? Why would evolution have given us this need for a purpose, when the instinct to survive would suffice and when lack of a purpose leads so many into despair and self-destructive behavior?

Religious experience: If there are no gods and nothing spiritual or supernatural exists, how can religious experience be explained, and why do the vast majority of people believe in God and/or spiritual and supernatural things? If religion is a placebo for the weak-minded, why do even intelligent, committed atheists convert - and why do people have a need for religion in the first place?

Morality: Why do people feel guilt? Why are monogamy, altruism and humility regarded as virtues, if morality is the result of evolution?

Love & emotion: From an evolutionary standpoint, emotions (except fear and possibly paternal feelings) are a waste of resources. Other creatures only need instincts to survive; why should we have the capacity to love and feel happiness? More to the point, why should we be able to feel emotions like annoyance, grief and hopelessness, when they only retard our ability to survive and reproduce?

Art & music: Why do we spend so much time and energy in making our surroundings attractive rather than merely functional? Why should we have an appreciation for art and music at all?

Source: http://www.rationalchristianity.net/unansweredq.html

This is a nice topic to talk about. Are these really unanswered questions?

[Corvus]

This is a nice topic to talk about. Are these really unanswered questions?

No. Most of us would be quite able to furnish some answers. I'm a little pressed for time at the moment, so I won't go into it in any great detail, especially on the subject of cosmology, but it does make a lot of assumptions. I certainly don't "admire nature". I only admire select parts of it. Very few, in fact. I hate the majority of it, because it's too uniform, and I tend to think too many people have a stupidly bovine attachment to it, (sorry for those people who do, in fact, admire nature) but this is easily explained by a primal familiarity and ease with certain types of environment. I doubt very much many people think a desert is beautiful, and most people regard snow as just a novelty rather than something pretty. I feel more in the country when standing in front of a painting of the country than when in the country.

I haven't felt guilt in years, and I certainly don't regard humility as a virtue. Awful things are adversely affecting the beauty of the world because of it. I admire, when justified, pride in moderate amounts.

And why are paternal instincts alone useful? What about maternal instincts? And how is it possible to have a paternal instinct, or an attachment to another, without grief? Argh, this is making me flustered. Someone has not thought very deeply about the other side of these specious questions.

Just what about atheism or evolution precludes the development of a species capable of abstract thought and, consequentially, more complex emotions and a desire for self-analysis? Surely these advanced forms of thinking have its origins in a precursor who developed the rudimentary abilities through the application of ideas to practical purposes as its sole means of survival? Heavens, that was a fantastic piece of circumlocution, but I hope it expressed my point! This is making me terribly flustered!

[ST88]

Atheism's Unanswered Questions

The atheistic world view fails to plausibly answer many questions and explain common observations about the universe and human nature. Theism, however, does provide answers and explanations, and so these questions lead us to evidence for the existence of God.

There are plenty of answers. The problem with these answers from a theist point of view has to do with the number of answers available. Theists see the number of answers available to these various questions and make the assumption that they are either competing or contradictory and so feel more secure in their theist beliefs.

Many people -- more than ought -- see science as a competing world-view, as if science were a religion itself. I can only theorize that because science refutes many long-held traditional religious beliefs -- such as the wafer transmogrifying into the body of Christ in the mouth -- the theists see it as antagonistic. So far, science has not been able to disprove the existence of anything metaphysical, only some of the assumptions about the material world made by religious leaders.


The universe: How did the universe begin?
There are several theories, and they all appear to point in different directions, but not really. The Big Bang comes with it an implication that there was something before the singularity of the initial event, suggesting a oscillating universe or something similar. But these theories will probably never be proven, which is perfectly fine with science. Circumstantial evidence can be used to create a valid hypothesis in order to test other theories against it.


Science: Science exists because the universe operates in a consistent way and has phenomena that we can describe as "laws," such as the law of gravity. If the universe and/or things in it were formed by chance, why should the behavior of the universe be predictable instead of random?
There is nothing in the way the various physical laws operate that would preclude the creation of anything. The phrase "formed by chance" is itself a fallacy, because if all laws are predictable, then nothing forms by chance. The fact that we see it as chance only proves that our observations are inadequate. Chaos theory and Complexity theory state that systems that appear random never are, there are only a set of connections that can never be controlled for or discovered.


Nature: Why do people uniformly admire nature? Why do we see so much beauty in it?
and
Religious experience: If there are no gods and nothing spiritual or supernatural exists, how can religious experience be explained, and why do the vast majority of people believe in God and/or spiritual and supernatural things?
and
Art & music: Why do we spend so much time and energy in making our surroundings attractive rather than merely functional? Why should we have an appreciation for art and music at all?
For religion and the wonder of nature, please see my post in this thread:

back when humans were nomads and natural selection was still a player in the human species, those tribes that had some kind of religious faith (or "awe of nature") tended to survive better than those who didn't. If you respect nature's power, you're more likely to realize when something is a threat to your existence, and if there's someone who's telling you that there is an invisible superpower on your side in a battle, you're more likely to fight harder. This puts us outside of nature, and we become either an antagonist or a willing servant. This evolutionary remnant is now that feeling of wonder we get when viewing, for example, the Grand Canyon, or a multi-colored sunset. For some people, this wonder has been translated to a feeling of being "lost" without some kind of guide provided by nature, or, more formally, "God". And the unresolved feelings of being "outside" of nature yet still within it become expressed as a one-ness with another being outside of nature -- as we understand and perceive it. In this case, the choice has to do with how these feelings are expressed and which ideas in the outside world connect with them.

Secondly, that humans see beauty in nature is also a remnant of evolutionary behavior. Fruits, for example, strive to be beautiful for those animals that can help it spread its seed around. Brightly colored berries attract the attention of those that pass by. The bushes that produce these berries are not consciously trying to be striking or attractive, but natural selection says that the more beautiful a berry is (appearance, smell, texture, etc.), the more likely it is that an animal, or a person will covet it and want to ingest it or use it in some other way (e.g., blueberry dye), thus spreading its seed. Michael Pollan argues exactly this in his excellent book, The Botany of Desire:

...sweetness has proved to be a force in evolution. By encasing their seeds in sugary and nutritious flesh, fruiting plants such as the apple hit on an ingenious way of exploiting the mammalian sweet tooth: in exchange for fructose, the animals provide the seeds with transportation, allowing the plant to expand its range. As parties to this grand coevolutionary bargain, animals with the strongest predilection for sweetness and plants offering the biggest, sweetest fruits prospered together and multiplied, evolving into the species we see, and are, today. p.19

In this way, we are attracted to beauty because it helps us to survive. The fact that we can make our own beauty to satisfy this need for it just shows how much we have evolved from our animal cousins.


Why do even intelligent, committed atheists convert - and why do people have a need for religion in the first place?
In my opinion, the wonder of nature supercedes our intelligence. This can also be seen as an evolutionary adaptation. If we can rationally state that a volcano has been appeased with a virgin, we can also run like heck when it starts to rumble anyway.


Psychology: Why do people seek for meaning and purpose in life - why are we not content simply to live in the moment? Why would evolution have given us this need for a purpose, when the instinct to survive would suffice and when lack of a purpose leads so many into despair and self-destructive behavior?
The human species has been gifted with something that no other animal on the planet has, a well-developed long-term memory. Other animals have procedural memory, so that they can remember how to use a stick to retrieve ants from an anthill, but only humans can remember thoughts, feelings, emotions, events, and ideas from long ago. That we have all these past events in our heads at any given time means that they are contained in the same space and are often thought of in context with each other. "My grandmother died eight years ago. I just had a dream where she spoke to me. Are these things related?" The fact that we ask questions like these at all has to do with something else that distinguishes ourselves from other animals: the desire to predict the future. We want to know if the seed we plant will yield enough grain for the entire family, or if the hunters will come back from the hunt with enough meat.

It is possible that dreams themselves are a driving force in this kind of psychology. Not in the Freudian sense, where things in dreams are stand-ins for things in life, but the fact that we dream and can distinguish that there is this different state of mind that is not the reality we experience otherwise. The true "purpose" of dreams is debated among researchers, but the effect of dreaming could quite possibly cause humans to ask questions about what it means to have different states of mind.


Morality:Why do people feel guilt? Why are monogamy, altruism and humility regarded as virtues, if morality is the result of evolution?
Humans are pack animals, like wolves. As such, we all will have different natures and different roles in the pack -- our basic natures are genetically variable, just like wolves. Also important in a pack setting is getting along with other members of the pack. Societies whose members feel guilt when they harm members of the society will tend to survive better than societies of sociopaths. It may be a remnant of the fear of unrequited retribution. This violates our sense of right and wrong, we are in an unbalanced situation where we are unpunished for an act of wrongness. Because the wrong has harmed the community, our sense of unrequited retribution tends to make us confess our wrong. And later on when we think of doing that wrong again, we will remember how the guilt made us feel, and we will not do it, thereby making the community stronger.

Monogamy is a social construct, as are altruism and humility. Humility is interesting because it is largely a learned emotional defense mechanism against perceived personal failure. We tend to admire humility not because it points to failure, but because it acknowledges the possibility of failure and causes admiration to increase when failure does not occur. In my opinion, morality is the result of complex pain-avoidance and pleasure-seeking behaviors that have multiplied in a brain as complex as ours.

For example, the negative feeling of the unrequited retribution I mentioned above can be combined with the positive feeling of kinship when we feel the heat of touch from a family member to make us not want to hurt that person.


Love & emotion: From an evolutionary standpoint, emotions (except fear and possibly paternal feelings) are a waste of resources. Other creatures only need instincts to survive; why should we have the capacity to love and feel happiness? More to the point, why should we be able to feel emotions like annoyance, grief and hopelessness, when they only retard our ability to survive and reproduce?
Emotions are hardly a waste of resources. We only see them as such because many of them do not operate in the way that nature first intended. Envy, for example, tends to cause us to want to make our own lives better. Way back in nomad days, we may have lived in a commune-type organization, where everyone shared their good fortunes (furs, meat, pottery, etc.) so the destructive part of envy was not present. We just saw how much better someone else was at producing something or at doing something and we wanted to be better ourselves. But now that we have smaller communities (i.e., marriage and nuclear family), our envy causes us to feel resentment at not being able to have what someone else has.

Love may be a special case. Many people do not believe that love is a valid emotion, that it is just a romantic notion we all aspire to but never achieve. Regardless, love for our fellow humans tends to cause them to love us back (or at least treat us more kindly), giving us a direct benefit from it.

That we can acknowledge that there are these questions at all shows how much we want to connect our experience with the experiences of others, which is itself a complex psychological construct from seemingly conflicting base emotions. Pride, greed, maybe lust all have to do with our search for ourselves, and all can be traced back to how early humans operated in a world they did not completely understand or could possibly have control of. Now that we partially understand it, and if not completely understand how it works, then at least understand the directions our research is taking us, these base emotions and primal drives operate in completely different ways.

[Xanadu Moo]

agnostic pilgrim, those are some very valid points. Atheism has not described many of these qualities. In fact, it tries to dismiss a lot of them instead of confront them.

Science: While science can describe the order of the universe, it does not explain why an ordered universe would be more plausible than a random universe.

Psychology: I also don't see where science adequately explains why humans are so fascinated by the meaning of life on such a grand scale.

Religious Experience: The atheistic viewpoint is that our species which is light years ahead of all the rest on this planet is comprised mostly of deluded individuals who have overactive imaginations, continuing on for thousands of generations. But only in the technology age are we able to rise above this misconception. (?) Never mind that technology has not been able to solve social problems, but has instead aggravated them.

Love & emotion, art & music: There is a lot here that separates us from the rest of the animal world. A larger brain and advanced intelligence alone do not explain why humans would have all these additional traits.

Corvus, your point about not having felt guilty in years... That's seems rather disingenuous. Certainly you would feel guilty if you intentionally injured a child and then later were able to think rationally about it. You cannot hope to suggest that guilt is purely a concoction of religion. Is not regret sometimes interchangeable with guilt? Do you think regret exists?

Corvus, because you don't admire nature, that means it trumps most of humanity who does? Admiring nature crosses over demographics of atheists and theists alike. Pesonal experience doesn't disavow any of these conditions.

You asked what is it about atheism or evolution that precludes the development of a species capable of abstract thought and complex emotions. Nothing substantial. But atheism and science still can't explain their processes very well. Theism revels in this area.

Atheists seem to be in a mode of self-denial, as if afraid to admit that certain emotions exist (i.e.-guilt), or virtues (humility). They want to restrict definitions, while theists want to expand definitions. (Which of them is more free thinking?) The closer humans can be compared to robots, the more credible atheism becomes. None of this is a personal criticism, but ask yourself why you would try to dismiss certain human emotions rather than explore their wonder?

[Xanadu Moo]

It seems like the atheistic standpoint on this subject is based on two things:
1) Human emotions are part of our animalistic nature.
2) Humans have numerous traits that no other animals do.

But isn't #2 a little inconsistent with #1? How can our emotions point back to an animalistic nature when animalistic means to not have emotions?

[ST88]

It seems like the atheistic standpoint on this subject is based on two things:
1) Human emotions are part of our animalistic nature.
2) Humans have numerous traits that no other animals do.

But isn't #2 a little inconsistent with #1? How can our emotions point back to an animalistic nature when animalistic means to not have emotions?

This isn't an inconsistency at all. The fact that we have some "animalistic" traits does not mean that these traits would be expressed in the same way as they are in other animals. Physiologically, we are different, with the largest differences being in the way our brain works. Humans can use the frontal cortex for solving problems, rather than using the "lower" parts of the brain -- i.e., a series of instincts in a specific progression -- which shows that we evolved through thought processes rather than through physiology (exclusively).

However, this evolution of the brain does not mean that we don't retain the animal characters that brought us from the "lower" orders of animals to where we are now. Our animal natures are "filtered" through the higher functions of the brain to give us the human nature we all love and try to examine.

[Corvus]

agnostic pilgrim, those are some very valid points. Atheism has not described many of these qualities. In fact, it tries to dismiss a lot of them instead of confront them.

Science: While science can describe the order of the universe, it does not explain why an ordered universe would be more plausible than a random universe.

Psychology: I also don't see where science adequately explains why humans are so fascinated by the meaning of life on such a grand scale.

Religious Experience: The atheistic viewpoint is that our species which is light years ahead of all the rest on this planet is comprised mostly of deluded individuals who have overactive imaginations, continuing on for thousands of generations. But only in the technology age are we able to rise above this misconception. (?) Never mind that technology has not been able to solve social problems, but has instead aggravated them.

Love & emotion, art & music: There is a lot here that separates us from the rest of the animal world. A larger brain and advanced intelligence alone do not explain why humans would have all these additional traits.

Corvus, your point about not having felt guilty in years... That's seems rather disingenuous. Certainly you would feel guilty if you intentionally injured a child and then later were able to think rationally about it. You cannot hope to suggest that guilt is purely a concoction of religion.

Most guilt is a result of social mores. I am quite comfortable knowing I am incapable of an action that is wrong or, indeed, right. I am a cold fish, and if I intentionally injured a child, I would forgive myself without the need of all this self-torture which will ultimately come to nothing. I have lost the ability to feel guilt or regret, and I know I have done things that warrant it.

Is not regret sometimes interchangeable with guilt? Do you think regret exists?

Sometimes regret is interchangeable with guilt. But where guilt can be classed as hurt pride from not living up to the expectations of yourself, regret is often hurt pride for not living up to the expectations of others. I fail to see how this could have an external origin, nor is something that would not be useful when it arises in a social animal. Both guilt and regret exist. The article implies they are attributed to a creator, instead of natural development. I may not have a soul or I may have an unusual psychosis that allows me, through rationalisation, to prevent me from feeling guilt. It's more likely the latter, but I believe it's possible to teach someone to feel guilt, just as I am confident I could teach someone not to feel it. The point of my post was not to show that guilt does not exist, but to explain that it does not have to, which weakens the Christian argument.

Corvus, because you don't admire nature, that means it trumps most of humanity who does? Admiring nature crosses over demographics of atheists and theists alike. Pesonal experience doesn't disavow any of these conditions.

Isn't this what I acknowledged by saying most people have a vapid attachment to it? Didn't I also provide an explanation for it? The article post made an absolute statement that was wrong. Not all people admire nature and not all people admire every part of it. Green grass has a more pleasing affect than deserts, savanah or ice fields, and not every flower is pretty.

Atheists seem to be in a mode of self-denial, as if afraid to admit that certain emotions exist (i.e.-guilt), or virtues (humility). They want to restrict definitions, while theists want to expand definitions. (Which of them is more free thinking?) The closer humans can be compared to robots, the more credible atheism becomes. None of this is a personal criticism, but ask yourself why you would try to dismiss certain human emotions rather than explore their wonder?

I do try to explore emotions, which is why I try to define them and understand how they function. The only reason I may try to restrict a definition is because the process of defining is the process of restricting. I feel restricting is a lot better than generalising.

I am not afraid to admit humility or guilt exists. To me, humility is often a vice, not a virtue, and guilt is something that we are often made to feel by our subconscious mind because it is expected we feel it. Guilt could also help when living in a community to keep its members honest.

[Katsuro]

Most of those questions can easily be answered by evolution and without reverting to God as the explanation. By-products and misfirings of various aspects of evolutionary psychology are good answers for these questions. I can't be bothered to go into it now as I'd be here forever but Richard Dawkins covers several of them in The God Delusion. And as Dawkins says, "God did it" is just a little too easy. It requires no explanation or investigation, no effort. If science had always said "God must be responsible" everytime it came up against something it didn't understand or couldn't explain and just gave up we wouldn't have progressed very far. "God did it" is little more than an "I don't know" dressed up in spirituality (paraphrased from Dawkins book).

[Righteous Indignation]

Atheism's Unanswered Questions

The atheistic world view fails to plausibly answer many questions and explain common observations about the universe and human nature. Theism, however, does provide answers and explanations, and so these questions lead us to evidence for the existence of God.

Just because we can’t explain something doesn’t mean it’s the work of the Gods. Our ancestors didn’t know what moved the sun through the sky so they imagined there was a God pushing it. They didn’t know what cause the rain to fall so they created weather Gods. They didn’t understand pollination, storms, comets, eclipses, gravity, or diseases caused by microorganisms so they explained these as the work of the Gods. Why should we continue this foolishness and think that just because we can’t explain something it must be the work of Gods.

Also, I fail to understand how religion can explain any of these.

The universe: How did the universe begin? How did life arise from non-living matter? The claims that the universe always existed or had a "natural" cause and that life spontaneously arose are just as extraordinary as the claim that an intelligent being created both the universe and life. If the universe is in its present state because of the Big Bang, what caused the Big Bang, and where did the matter that exploded come from? If the universe has always existed, why is there such a large quantity of mass and energy, not to mention intelligent life?

If a God created the universe, who created the God? A creator explains nothing.

[
Science: Science exists because the universe operates in a consistent way and has phenomena that we can describe as "laws," such as the law of gravity. If the universe and/or things in it were formed by chance, why should the behavior of the universe be predictable instead of random? \

How does a supernatural being capable of breaking all the laws of nature convince you that the universe is a place of laws and predictability?

Nature: Why do people uniformly admire nature? Why do we see so much beauty in it? It's no longer our natural surroundings, for we live in urban areas surrounded by pavement and man-made structures. Why do we prefer nature to what we ourselves have made? Why do we prize window offices and decorate walls with landscapes, instead of being content with our climate-controlled environment?

Which makes more sense the Gods created this world for us or we evolve to fit this world. Is it just coincidence that the places we enjoy most, places with lots of clean water, green foliage, and bright colorful fruit are the same places that our ancestors found the most food. Is it just coincidence that places with great views would have been good spots for our ancestor to locate wild game.

Psychology: Why do people seek for meaning and purpose in life - why are we not content simply to live in the moment? Why do we keep trying to explain how and why the universe came into existence? Why would evolution have given us this need for a purpose, when the instinct to survive would suffice and when lack of a purpose leads so many into despair and self-destructive behavior?

Our ancestors curiosity about the world created discovery and innovation. Those who wondered what was over the next hill were more likely to go there and discovered new resource the tribe could use. Humans looked at the things around them an asked how can I put this to use? What purpose can it serve? Eventually they asked the same question about the people around them and even themselves.

Religious experience: If there are no gods and nothing spiritual or supernatural exists, how can religious experience be explained, and why do the vast majority of people believe in God and/or spiritual and supernatural things? If religion is a placebo for the weak-minded, why do even intelligent, committed atheists convert - and why do people have a need for religion in the first place?

First more theist are converting to atheism than the other way around. The non-religious and non-spritual as of 2004 were up to 10.3%.

Why do people believe in so many unbelievable things? Because as smart as people are, there is someone smarter trying to get them to believe he is the next Jesus Christ. There is a lot of money and power to be gained selling religion and too many people using it to advance there own wealth.

Morality: Why do people feel guilt? Why are monogamy, altruism and humility regarded as virtues, if morality is the result of evolution?

We learn morality through our culture. We are born without morals. When I was a child I remember littering without guilt. But now after years of TV commercials with the crying Native American and people giving me the evil eye, I can’t litter without feeling guilty. Guilt is learned.

Love & emotion: From an evolutionary standpoint, emotions (except fear and possibly paternal feelings) are a waste of resources. Other creatures only need instincts to survive; why should we have the capacity to love and feel happiness? More to the point, why should we be able to feel emotions like annoyance, grief and hopelessness, when they only retard our ability to survive and reproduce?

You lost me here. How does love retard our ability to reproduce. Happiness is things like: a full stomach, shelter from the cold, escaping death, sex, etc. How is this emotion retarding our ability to survive? Depression slows metabolism and prepares us for periods when we may be without food. Emotions benifit both humans and animals.

Art & music: Why do we spend so much time and energy in making our surroundings attractive rather than merely functional? Why should we have an appreciation for art and music at all?

Again, how does God explain this. The devoutly religious have no interest in art or music other than religious art and religious music. Some churches even outright ban all art, music and dance. God hates nudity but personally I find nudes beautiful. So where does my pleasure at viewing the nude body come from if not nature. Music and dance to me seems more like mating ritual. Men and women dancing to the rhythm, acting out sexual movements, synchronize their bodies, close enough to feel the heat, close enough to smell the scent. It’s seduction, romance and sex not God.

The God hypothesis explains nothing!

[Cmass]

Science: Science exists because the universe operates in a consistent way and has phenomena that we can describe as "laws," such as the law of gravity. If the universe and/or things in it were formed by chance, why should the behavior of the universe be predictable instead of random?

You need to review your science. Your statement is not true. Science is a process, it is NOT the result or the conclusion. The universe certainly does NOT have to operate in a perfectly orderly way for science to be valid. In fact, randomness is a very important topic within science right now. Further, just because something is random does not thus predict a God person.