Atheist turned to Christianity

I've read today a small bit of an interview with some atheist, who became a preacher. Christians will always point out those atheist turned to christianity as to prove, that their way is the right one. When in fact, it does not prove anything. It's complete ignorance to other evidence, because there are also a lot of christians, that in the end convert to atheism. And that's not to be considered as a proof of atheism's right way, as well. Because it doesn't matter, who believes in something. It doesn't make it the reality, even if it would be belief of the wisest person in the world. Just remember those times, when people believed, that the earth is flat. Event those most educated ones. And is the earth flat, just becaused it was believed so?

It's the reason, why someone turned their belief system completely, that should be used to make valid points. And let's face it. Lot of christians get turned to atheism without any really valid reasons. Similar to what happens with atheists turned to christianity. But some people claim to have valid reasons. This converted preacher is one of them. So they asked him, naturally, about his reasons. And they were just plainly wrong. I mean, it's a nice example of when people think, that they gave it much thought, when they really didn't.

His answer was, that he used to believe, that everything is behaving according to laws of physics and everything is only about matter, etc. But then he realized, that, when his thoughts are just some sideproduct of these chemical and physical rules, then there's no real way to tell anything about existence of God. And it's like saying, that I like coffee, but you might like tea. And I am unable to find any logic in this statement. I mean.. Just read it again. It's completely meaningless.

The first wrong assumption is, that this world is only from matter. I mean.. Okey, it is, we don't know about anything else, than matter. But there are unexplained mysteries, like dark energy, which don't behave, like any polite matter would. And it very well might be just something else happening. Something, that could not be explained by matter, but something else. I am not saying, that there is something else. I'm just saying, don't be blind to other options. There certainly CAN be other options. And christians always believe, that atheists think, that everything begins with matter, that matter is the only important thing about this world, and how it works. While it is the most basic principle, by which all the universe works, certainly, there is place for another phenomens of matter's level. And noone says, they aren't, but we don't seem to observe it, yet.

But even so, let's not just jump into conclusion, that then it must be something spiritual going on. Well, no. It doesn't have to. We are speaking about something we don't even know exists, so we can't just say, it must be something spiritual. In fact, there is no place for you to say, it must be anything, unless you can point out some tendencies, that without obvious flaws could explain, what there is other, than matter. Without it.. I'm sorry.. Your argument just can't be taken into account. From what we know so far, the world really works fine without anything spiritual going on.

The biggest problem with spirituality is something, what I want to write a little bit more about, now. By moving to other fallacy in that preacher's reasons for turning to christianity. And he said, that we cannot prove God and that one might say that he likes coffee, the other guy likes tea. Okey, there's big difference, because beverage preference does  not try to persuade people about anything. I mean, if you like coffee more, than tea, than you are just drinking it, but there is no such law in physics, that coffee cannot taste well. It's not scientifically testible and it never will be, because it's about personal preference. Science can explain mechanisms behind that preference. But cannot evaluate which preference is more right, because it's simply not an mathematical equation, that needs to be solved. Unlike the beginning of the universe, or existence of God. Okey, we don't know, how to test the possibility of God's existence, or beginning of the universe, yet. But wheter God exist, or not, that is not a preference. That is, wheter some equation is right or wrong. There's big difference between liking coffee or tea and saying that God exist, while the other guy believes, that He doesn't exist. And belief in God can be grounded on evidence(or lack of it), unlike coffee, which you can't prove, that is always tasty for everyone.

But that is not even the point, it's simply one of other fallacies in that statement, in those reasons. But what lot of people, that believe in some kind of higher power exist, think about spirituality is simply wrong. You see... Lot of people will say: You can't explain by matter this and this, it must be some kind of higher power. And that's wrong statement. We established that in some previous entry, that our unability to do so, doesn't make it neccessarily a higher power. And the other thing is.. Okey, so we know Big Bang happened, but we don't know, what was before. So there are a few approaches for this. The most stupid, without giving into it any thought is to say: It was God. One of the other approaches is to say, we are part of some multiverse and our universe, the one we live in was created when in some other dimensions two universes collided. Now.. We can't say for now about any of these two possible approaches, which is right and even if any of them is right.

But what we can see is very obvious difference. Those guys working with other universes might not be right, but they at least EXPLAIN exactly, what happens according to their theory. And it's mathematicaly consistent. If their assumption about more dimensions than 3 is correct, than their theory is very likely to be true, because it's consistent with how the universe works now. But when you say, God made Big Bang, you achieved nothing. You didn't explain anything. How did he created? How do you know, that all those processes that you might claim as God's doing, would not happen without him being there. How is belief in God consistent with what we already know about how the universe works. And what could such belief possibly gain you for new advancement in knowledge of this world.

Like, when people came up with big bang, it ultimatively meant to raise new questions about atoms, matter itself, about space. And answering those questions might very well bring us new technologies, new devices, new knowledge. But imagine God being the answer for universe coming into existence. So what did you gain in human advancement? Like with a cellphone. You could try to study about matter, how electricity works, how to make LCD displays etc.. Or you could pray to God, to produce one(which should not be that difficult task, since he managed to create the universe). And you probably know, that God's lazy-assed and we have to study our world ourselves, without His help, to produce a cellphone. So we had to study what's there and not turning to spirituality. We have to study the nature, if we want to progress. Spirituality won't get us knowledge, studying, observing, thinking and experimenting will.

Celebrating Christmas

This entry will be one of the occassions to criticize atheists actually. Maybe not all of them, but I'd say most of them. The christmas time is here and with it all the other stuff like buying presents, lot of food, christmas markets etc.

Recently, lot of people got disgusted by Christmas time, because the society had turned it into races of who buys the best present. And also who will sell most of the most useless things ever produced, to be later presented as presents. And these people lack a little bit of motivation to celebrate the holiday, nevertheless, most of them do celebrate it.

What I don't understand, though, is why ATHEISTS celebrate Christmas. I believe, most of you are familiar with the events behind Christmas celebration. It's celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and that is, why every year on december the 25th we celebrate it. To put aside the issue, that the date of birth of Jesus Christ was established much, much later after his supposed death. I even heard about new calculations of his birthday to be around april, or so. Anyway, that is not important.

The important factor here is, the question, why atheists celebrate Christ's birthday? There is no compelling reason for me as to why they do that. And to tell the truth, I myself DO NOT celebrate Christmas for this very reason. As an educated atheist, educated even on the christian point of view, I am not even at all persuaded about him even being born, in the first place. There is no conclusive evidence to that. And there really isn't and I will present you with a link on wikipedia about historicity of Jesus at the end of this entry.


So tell me then. Why do you celebrate it? And I've heard the excuses, like you're with your family etc. Well, what prevents you from being with your family any other day of the year? What prevents you from buying something for them any other day of the year? What prevents you from lot of other things to do any other day? Why do you need it to be done on the Christmas time and even admiting you celebrate Christmas? You could be with your family and do all the other stuff(maybe except making a christmas tree, because it's rather an annoyance in my opinion, anyway) without the pretense of Christmas even on december the 25th(or 24th). But you don't mind to call it celebrating Christmas.

And there is another point to consider. So you don't mind celebrating Christ's birthday, why then on earth you do mind celebrating his last dinner and why don't you go to church? I mean, you act like you don't believe in the stuff, but then there comes Christmas and you're all like Yeah, let's celebrate Christmas.. Yes.. let's celebrate it guys, along with celebrating jesus being born, because that's what it realy is after all and nothing more, nothing less. So I'd like to encourage you to go to your nearest church and celebrate all the other nice stories about Jesus and about God, you very obviously don't mind.

I take the position of not believing all those fairy tales. That also means, I don't celebrate birthdays of fairy tale character.. Just tell me, how many times have you celebrated the birthday of Snowwhite?

This article discusses about historicity of Jesus and I rather encourage you to read it whole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

The universe couldn't spring into existence just like that

Most of the time, you'll be talking about how the universe came to be, you'll hear lot of different answers. The most honest one is recognizable very easily. The most honest one is "I don't know". And you'll find this answer honest because - well, you don't know either. Unless you happen to be God, or some quantum physicist hidden somewhere in Area 51 and having the solution for any struggle the humanity will have to face(the latter option being a joke)

Some of the guys believe, though, they have to key to wisdom and they KNOW, how it all came to be. Well, of course the answer is pretty easy, lame and you probably thought of that answer for billion of times, always strucking out the stupid idea. Of course, there might be this old-aged man with long white hair and white beard being awfully bored and alone, who in his almightiness just got petty in his retirement and created the Universe. Yeah, and still not satisfied and bored created Adam. Then he heard something about a porn channel somewhere and he thought that this might be damn exciting idea, so he just took Adam's rib and created porn actress Eve.

Probably because of Eve being very poor actress eventually Lucifer got bored(where the fuck did he come from?) and persuaded Eve through a snake with legs to eat some cursed apple. Instead of going to sleep literaly(like in Snow white), she offered the apple Adam and miraculously both got the knowledge and were righteously angered by the knowledge, God payed them miserably for the show. National television probably payed three times more at those (as Bible puts it) perfect times. So they hided from the God. God being reasonably angry about his porn channel main's stars missing just kicked them of the business. He would probably create more competent actors. And he took out snake's legs as punishment for being Satan's tool. Very effective.

So you get to listen to this petty story of a petty man. You probably ask yourself, where's the perfection of this. And there is really lacking one if the story is put like this. But nevermind the other way of telling the story. One might ask for evidence, that it was this retired guy, who created all there is to be. And of course you get all the stories and arguments, how God cannot be tested, everything on the earth showing the existence of God(but somehow failing to point directly to him, right?) and one of the most typical answers: Well, do you know any other way how the universe could come to be? It couldn't spring into existence just like that! And couldn't come from nothing, right?

If you are not educated very well, or you haven't payed attention to what the teacher was saying in the science class, when you were at school, you might possibly consider this as a valid argument. When in fact, it is not. The statement is very wrong by many means. Well first of all, the most basic and greatest mistake in that statement is, that in science we NEVER say, something just came to be, just like that. In fact, science is all about trying to find the very reasons of most of the phenomens in the universe. With some of them science was successfull already, while some other mysteries remain unrevealed to us, yet. But not with the beginning of the universe.

We in fact KNOW there was the Big bang, which was the beginning of the universe. Now, this has been proven scientifically and as it is, we know it just happened. And we can explain some of the mechanisms of it. Before we knew this, the God was something like big bang. Now we don't know, what was before big bang. The thing is, no, that God is exactly there, now. He is before the big bang. At least according to christians. The big bang occured because God commanded it to occur. Why christian know this? Because the universe couldn't just come up like that and couldn't came up out of nothing. But science of course works with lot of possible scenarios, what was before the big bang. We can't tell for sure, that any of this scenarios really happened, but in lot of them we are certain enough, that even though these events didn't lead to actually creating THIS universe, if the universe would work the way those theories predict it, the universe could came to be. Without God being there.

Of course, now, these are only ideas. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But it doesn't matter as long as this argument is concerned. I only want to show, that the Universe even according to science did not happen just like that->which is what Christians believe, science do. They think that science says, the universe just happen. That's the reason they use the argument in the first place. So they have wrong asumptions as for what science has to say about the universe.

But that's not the only problem with that statement. Other than that it is false because there's for now no way to test if the universe couldn't happen just like that. I mean... How can you prove it could not? Because you can't explain something, it doesn't mean it's impossible. In math you are sometimes presented with task to disprove some mathematical statement. The typical way to do this is find an example, when the statement doesn't work. But if you are unable to do it, it does not validate the statement. The statement doesn't care if you are dumbass or a competent person to find the solution to the problem. This does not affect the validity of the statement. The statement will remain false, even if you are unable to find the example of being it false. Just because you can't find the example, it does not make the statement right.

That's just what about most of the people do, when they say, you can't do something. Well, prove it then. Just because you don't know, how to do it, doesn't make it impossible. This is very important to remember. Don't you ever forget this, because it's one of the most important statements there are. The science itself is driven by this ethernal truth. If hundred years ago you would ask someone if it is possible to have a handheld device, that would allow you to talk to almost anywhere on the earth to almost anyone on the other side of the earth, would show you latest news from all of the countries in the world, would bring you weather forecasts etc. they would of course say, that this is not possible. But if science would take this into account, we wouldn't hold such devices in our hands right now.

The other wrong assumption is, that the universe could not come from nothing. Well there are lot of scenarios, modern physics works with. Some of them say, our universe is part of bigger universe, while other go out in front of people and with calm face they say: The universe could come to existence out of nothing. And in fact, it is surprisingly possible, at least from the math's point of view. If it really happend that way, or some other.. We don't know for now. But the important fact is, that there is always this possibility. At least for now. So the statement "The universe could not come into existence out of nothing" is at least for now wrong. It turns out, it could. Now, most of you would be skeptical about this. In fact, I am a little bit myself skeptical about it. But I am not just blabbering about random stuff and I'll attach to this entry a video, that explains how it is possible for the universe to spring into existence out of nothing. Let's just hope, those guys under Geneva in LHC will bring more light into the issue.

For now, the most important thing is, that one should now, that science does not say, the universe happened jsut like that. That it really came to be because of some rules, which the physics is trying to find. Other important conclusion is, that it is entirely possible, that the universe just came to be. Just like that. There's no real reason to believe otherwise, as long as our knowledge is concerned it could happen just like that. Next thing to remember is, that it's not true, the universe could not came to be out of nothing. In fact, it could and science takes into account this possibility too.

And the promised video about how the universe could come to be out of nothing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gy1e2olvMw

Tautology of Christian belief

Just recently I had a small talk about Christian beliefs with my friend, who incidentally is a christian. She wasn't raised as such, she was turned to christianity a few years ago by some small and otherwise very uninteresting christian church. You know, like.. They're all the same, anyway. Maybe except Mormons, because you don't seem to find lot of christian churches, that believe, that God lives on another planet.

We talked with my friend a little about Bible, Holy Spirit and basic stuff like this. There's a bunch of beliefs regarding origins of the Bible so I just wanted to be sure, I know what is her belief on this matter. She presented me quite popular belief of today's christians; According to them Bible was of course written by mortal man, but this mortal man was guided by God.

Well, of course this alone should one make skeptic and jump out and say something like: Are you out of your mind? And in fact, in my mind, it was my first reaction, but I kept my cool and continued with asking questions. I wanted to know how it is possible, that different people claim that they were commanded by God differently. How does one come out and say: Okey, I believe you were commanded by God and point out on the other one and say,you're the idiot, you obviously know nothing about what God wants. Or what Jesus wants us to do. Well those people probably never struck out the very idea. They don't seem to wonder, how it is that they somehow know, what Jesus would do. They're some kind of underworld mind readers, they just can read minds of dead people.

I offered an quick example of previous popes of catholic church. Like.. Most of you reading this article are probably familiar with the information, that the previous pope proposed, that the theory of evolution and christianity are not in conflict at all. But it took only one pope ago, that they all went like: Evolution theory and science are evil, they're Satans work. In fact, all of those previous popes before John Paul the second wished ill long-dead Darwin and wished him ethernal burning in hell in which they were sure, he already suffered for his sinns. Now they even appraised Satan's work, but that didn't seem to bother them, either.

The problem is, that every of these popes claimed to be guided by God. God revealed to them, what is right. But that means, that at least one of them must have made the story up and they simply lied about God revealing to them, what is right and what is not. First of all, why SHOULD I believe, that some person is better suited to be God's messenger, when God is almighty and can talk what he wishes to anyone. Why is it, that only a few "chosen" ones are the ones who just have it right, because they were born and I am just a stupid idiot who doesn't get it? But then here they come, two different popes, one says Evolution is Satan's work, the other one says it's perfectly fine. So now God seems to be hesitant? I don't think so and in fact, most of the people today believe, that previous popes were just wrong. About the evolution anyway. Some of the people don't even think that. And they don't consider much the option, that the current pope might be wrong, either.

So here it is. you only believe PEOPLE when they say anything about God. Not the concept of God, not the God. Only the people claiming they're commanded by God himself. This should just scream out just because of how riddiculous this is, but it gets even further than that. So I asked, how does my friend know, what's real about God and what's not. How does she know, the Bible is real for that matter. And she came out with one of the most typicall christian answers. One of the wrongest answer ever possible. She told me, that the Holy Spirit is her guide. She knows Bible is real, because the Holy Spirit told her so. So I asked her, Ok, but how do you know about it being the Holy Spirit? How do you even know, such thing as Holy Spirit exists? What is your source of the knowledge on this?

She continued with her great fallacy and answered, that she knows about the holy spirit from the Bible. Some of you probably grasped the concept of what I want to present here. For those of you, who don't just continue on reading on. So let me repeat it a little different way, now. She read the Bible, she learned about the Holy spirit. She asked herself if this is real. If the Bible is real. And she answered to herself, yes, it is real and the holy spirit just confirmed it with her. She knew, that what she read is real, because holy spirit told her so. Still don't get it? Well to make it short, she basically said, that she proved to herself that the holy spirit exists by believing that the holy spirit told her so. So you would ask her: Does the holy spirit exist? And she would answer: Oh, yes, indeed he exists, in my mind he just told me so.

Well this is one of the most basic logical fallacy. You see, what she says is this: Holy spirit exists, because he says so. If he says so, he must exist, so what it means in shorter form is this: Holy spirit exists, because it exists. Well but this is a tautology. You could say this: Singing bottle of milk exists, because singing bottle of milk exists. You could say Unicorns exist, because they exist. Yetti exists, because he exists. You haven't proven anything. You only stated, that if let's say Holy spirit exists, well.. yeah.. then... he exists. But the question if he exists wasnt answered by this sentence. The sentence only assumes that something would be true if he would exist. That 'something being' that he exists. This is in mathematics called as stated above a tautology. It's well known fallacy in arguments to use this tautology to prove existence of something.

This is something lot of christians do. They all seem to fail to grasp on the concept and if you are in a debate with a christian and he points out this very same tautology, it should be even your moral duty to warn him about his fallacy, about his argument being invalid and that he should see to it, he wouldn't make mistakes like that in the future. And that was something I've done. After kindhearted warning like this, you'll probably be praised by ignorance, which is another issue for one of my next entries. Until then I hope you will be able to point out more of mistakes in simple logic of arguments of that believing folk and explain it to those less educated folks. Good luck with that.