"Lawrie Brewster
9 years ago
Hi there Tom - i'm a filmmaker personally and i was delighted with your very intelligent analysis. In a way you have managed to articulate many thoughts I'd been trying to collate on the subject. We share much the same views - anyway thanks for sharing your ideas. They have proven helpful for myself, and i think it also requires courage to post these ideas and views. Especially given the strength of feeling among those who can allow themselves to get very easily offended!"
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That was the comment that started a relationship of creativity. That comment was on this post:
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In an article I wrote years ago, I called Atheism a religion, and challenged any atheist to debate the topic based on scientific and mathematical possibility. A fellow Helium author took me up on the challenge recently, and it resulted in a friendly exchange of e-mails that ended with this conclusion: "I think we just think of atheism differently. You view it as only those who outright claim there is no god, to which I agree takes faith. And I define it as all who don't have faith in a god's existence."
During the debate, I was offered this definition of atheism: "Atheism simply defined is a lack of belief in god(s), very very few actually say there is definitely no god." While I agree that may be a simple definition, it is not the dictionary definition, which is "(1) the doctrine or belief there is no God; (2) disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings."
This is one of the problems that self-declared atheists need to consider: a can opener can be proved to be a microwave oven if we accept the simple definition that both are kitchen appliances. It makes no sense to contend something is other than what it is, and, in fact, is a major problem with society today. People have no regard for words and accept slang or altered definitions. I suppose they think it is "cool" to do so, or should I say "hot?" Oh well, it matters not because neither word means what is meant.
If two scientists often regarded as atheists denied they were atheists, why do atheists use their principles to prove the religion's point? The two scientists I am referring to are Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. When asked about his religious beliefs, Darwin replied that he had never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God, and that generally "an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind." Einstein not only said, "The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer," he also said "what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views." It makes absolutely no sense to regard these two scientists' principles as infallible, and totally disregard their own beliefs about the existence of a God or gods.
Today's science is built upon these two scientists' theories. Darwin's model of Natural Selection is perfect. Whether you wish to accept it or not, you believe in it if you accept these two premises: (1) children of animals have characteristics of both parents but are identical to neither; (2) dead animals don't have babies. If you reject either or both of those premises, I would love to hear the explanation!
Einstein's theories are not so perfect, and there is newer science that might explain some of what Einstein theorized must exist in order to explain errors in linear gravity theory. Einstein contended there must be something so small it had not been discovered, yet so massive that it affects gravitational pull, and called it a graviton. To Uncle Albert's credit, he died in 1955. It was not for another four years that a physicist named Hermann Bondi theorized that physical laws would apply inversely to entities that are smaller than zero in mass. Bondi also theorized that the universe basically balances to zero, though in much more complex terms.
Had Einstein considered "sub-mass" rather than the graviton, he may have altered the direction of his research. However, Einstein's perfect model is his Theory of Relativity, which, on a very simple level, means once something is born or created, it begins aging. On a secondary level, it means we can relate things based on age, distance, and space. As such, though he did not get to consider Bondi's theory, Bondi got to consider his theories.
I'll illustrate this on a simple level. We cannot actually see holes. What we see is that which surrounds the hole, and we trust that there is a hole. I learned at a young age that we can be deceived by this appearance. While in the hospital as a child, I shared a room with a kid who ran into a pane of glass believing that a sliding door was open. He trusted there was a hole there, and he was incorrect. Holes are negative mass. To prove this, if we take a rock one cubic foot in size and place it in a hole three cubic feet in size, we are left with a hole two cubic feet in size. If we were to place the rock on the pile of dirt beside the hole, we would have mass of four cubic feet.
Linear gravity theory suggests that the more massive entity consumes the less massive entity, which would happen. The rock would consume one cubic foot of the hole. However, in an ironic twist, the hole also consumed the rock! When applied in reverse, the physical law of gravity proved to also be true in that the larger sub-massive entity consumed the entity with negative sub-massive attributes (the smaller sub-mass). Despite this evidence, we still cannot see holes, and are wise to advise children to make sure the sliding glass door is truly open.
So, does this prove a God or gods exist? Absolutely not. However, it also does not prove a God or gods do not exist, for we are unable to see what exists during the positive cycle of light where the quantum particle would interact with whatever a sub-massive proton is. That is one-half the cycle of light, which, when balanced with the half that can be filtered through our eyes, equals zero. It seems to me that Bondi's theory is valid because I cannot find any way to dispel it.
When considering whether Atheism is religion or not, I will offer up that the organization known as American Atheists do preach, offer "antitheological" propaganda, and even has a speaker's bureau similar to their evangelistic counterparts. Furthermore, Buddhists do not believe in a God or gods, and are, by the correct definition, atheists. As such, Buddhism would also not be religion, which is a rather preposterous concept.
During our friendly debate I was offered the logic that saying there is no God is "like saying there is no such thing as a purple golf ball on earth." I wish it were that easy, for if purple golf balls do not exist, we can make purple golf balls exist. Further, if we were to make purple golf balls, could we not prove they are truly the compilation of other components?
In the end, I agree that our disagreement is that we do not define atheism the same, and that, unless he were to espouse that "there is no God," he is also agnostic.
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Sources:
Charles Darwin on Wikepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
Einstein: Science and Religion: http://einsteinandreligion.com/atheism.html
Hermann Bondi on Wikepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Bondi
Defintion of "atheism": http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism
American Atheists: http://www.atheists.org/
The Buddhist Channel: http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=8,2859,0,0,1,0