Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

So the collision of galaxies is like the universe scratching an itch?

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

I always thought the way stars explode and form was a little similar to how organisms propagate

The comparison is not lost on astronomers.

...really?

They call nebulae "stellar nurseries", The way stars develop is called their "life cycle", a star that's about to go supernova is said to be "dying"...

If it's a life cycle, does that mean the remains of a dead star can eventually become a new one?

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Yeah. That's exactly what does happen. The sun is second generation at least. That's why it and the solar system have heavy elements to make planets with. Those are only created in supernovae.

That's nice enough as a metaphor, but what are the actual implications of this? Sure, one can redefine "organism" to be sufficiently broad that the whole universe would be considered an "organism", but that's just another semantic slight of hand. What observable properties of the universe would actually be different if it were a "single sapient organism"?

If there were an answer to that it would be testable and therefore disqualified from being a religion.

Although I guess an underlying mind-network would possibly make telepathy a viable concept. At the moment the real sticking point is that there's no identifiable medium for the information to travel through, but if something existed whose mind was the sum total of every mind combined that would imply some sort of connection.

edited 23rd Jul '14 9:24:14 AM by Elfive

I doubt a universe/organism could interact with its components . Unless it's components interacting with eachother counts as such ......

What I'm trying to say is it would be like us interacting with the cells in our bodies

thing is, atheims dosent atack pantheims like other because is more a respect to the universe as a whole instead of workship a god-like figure, and they don preach to you face so people go soft of them

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

That, and very few people even seem to be pantheists.

And pantheism usually doesn't proclaim some arbitrary rules. There's just not much to be against.

If I am not mistaken, some of the more popular Native American religions were pantheistic. Pantheism tends to be associated with environmentalism, the pantheists want to protect nature since it is part of the universe and hence god. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a pantheist, for example. There also seem to be some pantheistic threads running through some of the Pagan religions. It seems to me that most pantheists seem to often be converts from other religions. Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan both arguably died as Pantheists, Einstein flipping between Agnosticism, Atheism, and Deism while Sagan was Agnostic. Einstein claimed to be a pantheist, Sagan denied it but there are hints that he may have been one (i.e. his tendency to capitalize "KOSMOS" and his references to it, arguably treating it like a deity).

The concept of an ecosystem-as-deity is probably more plausible than the whole universe, simply because as far as we know planets have very little interaction with each other. Confining the concept to a single biome means that we don't need any sort of supernatural spirit realm to house the conciousness. It could simply exist as the interactions between organisms.

edited 24th Jul '14 5:37:13 AM by Elfive

well, carl sagan wife say prety clear that carl hate the word supernatural because is the almost arrogant idea that there is something above nature

in fact, many christian always seen to understimate the universe as a whole, i can understad why nieztche say about the nihilist touch of christianity

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

I like pantheism. If I wasn't an atheist, I'd be a pantheist.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

What did Nietzche say about Christianity and nihilism ? I thought nihilism was a logical approach to things, and a solution to it was either existentialism or absurdism

He said it was nihilistic due to being fixated on death and suffering. The entire point of life for Christians would be to "die well" (i.e. in a state of grace). Thus, he felt it devalued life. You find a lot of denigration toward human life and "things of the world" in the Bible.

Of course, from their perspective, eternal life in paradise is what it's all about. For someone who subscribes to that, then of course this life is relatively unimportant (except in preparation for the aforementioned life eternal).

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Yeah, a lot of my theo teachers disliked humanism cuz it claimed meaning didn't have to come from god ; I can see where that's coming from - Nietzche's perspective I mean. I never got why that was wrong . Like, I swear one of our textbooks had a picture of the happy human logo, claiming that humanism was the devils work, though I'm probably wrong, but I wouldn't put it past them, since obviously the devil will do anything to separate us from god including encouraging us to take pleasure in the 'material world'. But I thought a lot of tropers here agreed that the universe didn't have any inherent meaning? Was the difference in the conclusions they came to afterwords?

a point is that for christianity and many other, the spiritual world is always better because is not this world: there we are inmortal and ageless,we cant do bad and everything is just the way it is, ancient christianity even say it better that this world is a fallen world, the diferent bewteen this and catolic teaching is that ancient christianity see the world as a hospital instead of a prision

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

My problem is not with the concept of a better world, it's rather how they blame everything wrong with with this one on us while acquitting God. If you imagine an all-good, all-powerful being, that's just ludicrous.

edited 24th Jul '14 9:45:54 PM by Fireblood

first at all, you ask me where i am, im from venezuela, but learn a lot of ancient christianity thanks to a ortodox christian(and huge asshole) and i have to say it was...diferent

the problem is that they blame US to this world, ancient christianty say that we chose to be outside of god and because of that, because you use your freedom in bad way, what is the good way? to chose god...yeah, is pretty much "slavery is freedom" way to early

So to all the writers here: did you ever use flat earth atheist? it have a problem with that trope but i cant spot what problem

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

The problem is that most atheists don't deny things when the evidence is staring them in the face.

That's what some religious people do.