Maybe you don’t worship it in a ritualistic kind of manner, but don’t atheists believe in Nature holding all the keys, being responsible for all creation, for it being seamless and orderly, for all the laws being implemented so perfectly, for all the required components being created at just the right time, for all the essentials e.g light being an essential “quality” of it. So what’s different if we call it God and you call it “nature” and/or “Universe”?
Posted: November 14th 2009
Eshu www
I think you’re stretching the definition of god. This is what philosopher Julian Baggini calls low redefinition.
Is this to make atheists seem as irrational as theists? That would be a bizarre and backhanded insult!
In fact as people have pointed out below atheists do not treat nature in the same way that theist treat their god(s), so the comparison is not helpful.
Posted: November 22nd 2009
Eric_PK
There are some who believe in Gaia – in a personification of nature.
But if you believe nature to be an entity, then you believe in god and aren’t an atheist.
Posted: November 16th 2009
Paula Kirby www
The differences are many.
Nature is not an entity, let alone an intelligent one, a person, a deliberate creator. Nature is simply a series of natural processes, and the result of those processes, and science is the means by which we study it.
No atheist would suggest that nature has sent us holy texts, or has stipulated that adulterers be stoned or light switches not be turned on on the Sabbath or that women should cover themselves from head to toe, or that only humans with external genitalia are permitted to teach about it.
No atheist would suggest that nature is monitoring our every thought, word or deed and is judging us on the strength of them.
No atheist would suggest that nature considers us deserving of an eternity of hell, or has sent a redeemer to stop us being sent there.
No atheist would suggest that nature has given us an eternal life at all, whether of endless praise-singing or torture.
No atheist would suggest that nature demands that we believe in it, worship it, love it, fear it and obey it.
No atheist would suggest that believing in nature is the only way to avoid damnation.
No atheist will tell you that our understanding of nature is fixed in an ancient book and that this book is the only reliable guide to understanding nature and that anything that contradicts that book must be automatically rejected.
No atheist will urge the importance of faith when understanding nature, or condemn anyone for doubt: on the contrary, doubt and questioning are what lead to the hypotheses that are then tested by science, which then lead to new knowledge, knowledge which is excitedly embraced, knowledge which often simply extends what was known before, but sometimes actually overthrows it and is still welcomed and celebrated when it does.
Your question presupposes that religious people ONLY think of God as the explanation for our existence; whereas in reality their concept of God incorporates far far more than that.
And the other difference, of course, the really important one, is that our knowledge of nature is built on evidence, evidence that is available to anyone, evidence that is verifiable, objective, testable. God provides no such evidence, demanding instead that we put our need for evidence on one side and just have faith and believe, even when what we are being asked to believe runs entirely counter to everything we know about how the world really works.
So no, I’m afraid your analogy doesn’t work at all.
Posted: November 15th 2009
logicel
You are basically saying that both the religious and atheists are doing the same thing. That is not a point but a logical fallacy of tu quoque because even if the equivalence is valid (and it is not), it does not rule out that nature may be the only game in town.
Furthering our understanding of nature is a process and not a conclusion, while god belief is a conclusion based on no evidence providing no explanatory power (who made the god that made the god that made your god?) hence the atheist and theist stances are not equivalent.
Nature is what we can study. We can’t study something that can’t even be defined, that is, an entity that exists outside of nature. Science allows us to deepen our understanding of very complex reality, that is, what nature presents. Atheists don’t conjure nature out of thin air like religious believers do with their gods. So atheists are starting out on the right foot for a proper study of reality.
All those aspects of the universe you described are being studied and some very excellent explanations have been made, much more potent than goddidit.
If a theistic god intervenes on the earthy plane, there will be evidence and as there is none, there is no reason to believe that a theistic god exists. A deistic god is possible, but then again, since it is not intervening, why would it even matter?
Posted: November 14th 2009
George Locke
“Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are natural laws orderly? Why these natural laws and not others?” You suggest that atheists say “nature” is responsible, whereas theists say “God” is responsible. So, you ask, what’s the difference?
Well, there is a big difference. The most obvious is that God is a conscious, intentional being, whereas nature, i.e. the universe, is just orderly stuff. In other words, if the God you’re thinking of weren’t a conscious, intentional agent, then I’d question whether the thing you’re thinking of could be properly called “God”.
I don’t know the answers to those questions, and I don’t name them “nature” or anything else. I would guess that there are natural explanations for these problems, though I don’t know what they would be.
If I say “I don’t know,” it hardly makes sense for you to ask, “What’s the difference between you not knowing and my calling the answer 'God’?” How is that different from calling the answer “Buford”? Assigning a name to an unknown doesn’t mean you have any idea what that unknown is, and assigning it a name that already refers to something else just confuses matters.
Posted: November 14th 2009
Dave Hitt www
Many godders are so wrapped up in their fantasy the idea of anyone living without a god is beyond their comprehension. This leads to all sorts of nonsense claims about atheists: Their god is money, their god is themselves, their god is science, there god is {blah blah blah}.
Nope, nature is not our god, and neither is anything else. We don’t need one.
Posted: November 14th 2009
SmartLX www
Some people do in fact call the universe God. They’re called pantheists.
As for the rest of it, let’s break it down a bit.
- Nature, which you seem to be using as a word for the universe, or the multiverse as the case may be, holds all the keys in a sense because we haven’t found anything thus far which we know requires an explanation involving anything outside of the universe/multiverse’s entirety.
- By using the word “creation” you immediately beg the question by assuming an act of wilful creation, and therefore a creator.
- We haven’t found a seam yet, or a failure in the kinds of order we’ve observed so far.
- Again you beg the question with “implemented”. The laws are what they are, and if they had been different, so would the universe.
- The main difference between your concept of God and mine of the universe, or nature, is that yours has personality. Intent. Intelligence. Purpose. And, I think, a mean streak.
Posted: November 14th 2009