Friday, October 2, 2009

Atheist's Religious Fervour

“There is a kind of religion in science . . . every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual when faced with trauma, the brain reacts by ignoring the implications - in science this is known as “refusing to speculate” - or trivializing the origin of the world.”

Robert Jastrow, “God and the Astronomers,” (New York: Norton), 16

Denying the metaphysical implications of the BB is an effort of the will. It has absolutely nothing to do with science.

6 comments:

J Curtis said...

Your darn skippy. Atheism is a religion. The faith they exhibit in the face of everything is unbelievable.

Friendly Technocrat said...

Atheism is not a religion. Religion implies believing in deities or at the very least, supernatural principles. Atheism is simply disbelief in gods. Period. That's all it is. It's skepticism. How is that a religion?

"the faith they exhibit in the face of everything"? Faith in what?

Thesauros said...

Faith that there CAN be an infinite regress of cause

Faith that matter / universe CAN be eternal

Faith that life can spring from non life and on and on and on and on.

leo said...

Atheists don't have FAITH in infinite regress. We point out that it is the logical failure of believing in a god as the first cause. We don't know or claim to know how for sure it all started, and we're not dumb enough to believe that you do.

Thesauros said...

"Atheists don't have FAITH in infinite regress."

Well, you might not but there are plenty who reply here that do. Gorth for example is hard core infinite regress.
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We point out that it is the logical failure of believing in a god as the first cause.

Are you suggesting that there doesn't need to be a first cause?
Are you suggesting that something can just pop into existence without a cause?
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Adam said...

You're really, really good at overgeneralizing. I suppose it makes it easy to dismiss anyone who thinks differently than you.

I'm glad that Gorth's position (as you state it) represents all members of the opposition you rail against.

Imagine if I took your ravings to represent all members of Christianity. Boy howdy would I have a lot of incensed folks to deal with.