r/DebateAnAtheist

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Humans determine morality based on perceived necessity. Slavery wasn’t widely considered evil until the economy no longer heavily relied on it, and the main advocates against it were people from the parts of the country which didn’t  rely on slavery whereas those in favor of it were from agricultural parts of the country which heavily relied on it. This is also equivalent to how humans view animals. Although no one would argue that enslaving, killing and consuming animals is not evil and wrong, we humans still do it en masse because we rely heavily on it. So just like we don’t think twice when enslaving, killing and eating animals because of how much we feel like we need to do so, people of the past didn’t think twice when enslaving other humans because of how much they felt they needed to do so.

But this raises a problem, it means that since the same people that condemn slavery enslave, kill and eat animals, they have no place to condemn really anything at all if they can’t even be consistent with their own morality

Something interesting I noticed.

When something is established as "true" the burden of proof will be on those trying to disprove it.

For court, if the cops says they did x, y and z, the burden of proof doesn't rest on the cop but the defense attorney to disprove it. Evidence>any claim or testimony.

We can say truth>perceived truth>authority>claim with regular arguments.

For a claim anyone can make a claim. Doesn't mean jack if there is not some type of truth to it. So the burden relies here first.

Authority generally is genuinely has a decent grasp of truth. Even if they are wrong, they'll still be considered correct unless a claim's "proof" is just accurate to deny. Simple example scary tiny goblins liveing on your body. Authority in science laughed at the person making this claim, but because of him we now know about bacteria.

With truth and perceived truth we get into something a little tricky. We can never truly know the truth. Even if our perception is 1:1 the fact that we know, doesn't mean our knowledge is absolute. If something, anything changes from the absolute that we didn't know about then our knowledge needs to adapt.

When arguing with a religious person, an atheist will just put the burden of proof on God. But here is a claim that puts the burden on the atheist.

God is everything. Simple claim but not believable. So here is the truth to back this up.

Anything that exists either exists as a standalone existence or because of something else. This can't be disproven. Just like the mona lisa, that exists because of something else that being paint as the medium for its existence. Even this post relies on electricity as a medium.

We also can claim since you can take the mona lisa and other paintings stack them like a tower of cards, something that exists because of another existence can also be a medium for something else as well.

Two more important claims that can't be denied. Anything that exists due to a medium must obey the medium, this is none negotiable. And anything that exists due to a medium doesn't truly exist for its an idea.

For 2, it's an ideal and always has been. After all get two of anything like an apple. That is 1 apple + 1 apple. So we simplify it down to 2. But those apples aren't equal to each other. You'll probably never find two apples that are perfectly the same. In other words everything we named unless it equals itself 100% of the time is nothing more than an idea based on the shape of the medium. Just like a human, we aren't the same but we share similarities forming this idea we call human. As long as something close enough, we can edit our ideas to accommodate a variety of changes. Just like how someone who only saw red apples can accommodate for green apples. Since it's the perception of truth that has to bend the knee to truth.

After all none of us can truly defy our medium of existence. If we could we could just jump to the moon. This is where the idea of god was ultimately created from.

Even tho we know more about atoms, sub particles and all that stuff. People in the past figured out we must have a medium to exist on. Even phythagrious created the term monad for this. But we can reach a simple conclusion.

Everything we know exists because of some the medium that is used to create us is everywhere. Could it be quarks lepton and what not? Possibly but that could also break down further and we don't know about that yet. But that part doesn't matter. Those things, we can't defy them since it's what creates us.

Probably even noticed how I worded some things, kinda sounds like I'm saying sub particles are conscious. But this is what people don't get about god.

GOD IS NOT A CONSCIOUS ENDITY.

It's just the medium that exists as a standalone existence used to create everything else from. Just pure random chaos from the beginning of existence to now

But no one can deny this standalone existence that Pythagoras called monad and what I call god. Since to do that is to claim an ideal can exist without a medium. Like 2 can exist without 1+1. For those "smarty pants" who say that 2 exists without a 1+1. That 2 and this one exist because of who knows how many basic building blocks of existence ala god/monad allows it to exist. Far more than just 1 electron plus one more electron .

You can make the argument "you know this is not the gid we are talking about right?" With a rebuttal of this is the same god. People of the past did figure this stuff out since they understood it. But you can pass knowledge down, not understanding. So people who knew this didn't understand the logic reaching these ideas so over time it simply got twisted. That is all.

Even something like god is all knowing, all love and all good makes sense with this because removing absolutely everything. Whats left? Nothing, no good, knowledge, or even love. In other words god existence enables all love, all knowledge and all good to exist. Just like how electricity enables this post to take place.

EDIT: I am completely fine with downvotes, but if you're going to leave one, please also leave a comment explaining why you disagree. So far, people have mostly been on the same page after ironing out some of the nuance, mostly around the specific contexts in which I think this is relevant. I said at the outset that I am open to being shifted on this, so if you have a specific alternative approach to getting theists on board with these points, please share.

---

Note: This is not a hard prescription. I'm still sorting through my perspective on this, so very open to input and having my mind changed about how this should be approached.

I've noticed a persistent point of confusion in discussions of the type that occur in this sub, where the theistic use of the term "objective morality" conflicts with the atheistic conception. This gets so bad that I often see people having seemingly completely different conversations, while thinking they are talking about the same thing. Often, this confusion is actually atheist to atheist, derailing the original discussion with perceived disagreement between atheists.

I think everyone understands subjective morality well enough, the idea that morality stems from the views and opinions of the individual. I know many of us would claim morality to rather be intersubjective; I would agree but I don't find it particularly relevant to the scope of this post.

Communication seems to break down when it comes to the term "objective". The theist generally uses the term to mean that there is a universally "correct" moral standard that transcends subjective human opinion of what might be right or wrong.

In my experience, atheists who are moral objectivists use the term to mean literally "not subjective", i.e., that a framework can be constructed that allows for consistent and coherent conclusions regarding what is right or wrong, based on logical rules rather than subjective opinions.

To me, these uses of "objective" are not the same, but are frequently treated as such during these discussions, usually unintentionally. It is generally still the atheist's subjective opinion that their objective framework is correct and appropriate; they do not believe it to be universally correct above and beyond all other viewpoints on morality. This is, at best, confusing to the average theist, and frequently confusing to other atheists. Many atheists are actually moral objectivists without realising it, because the terms are so obtuse.

Ultimately, while it may be correct for an atheist to say that they believe in objective morality from a philosophy 101, dictionary definition sense, I find it to be problematic and confusing when used as part of more informal discussions between laypeople, like those in this sub. I actually think neither subjective nor objective are useful terms in this context at all, since the theist's "objective morality" is ultimately based on the subjective opinions of an alleged deity anyway. We are all talking about different things.

I wonder if people find this to be reasonable, or if it's seen as ceding unnecessary ground to the theist and/or a problem that should be solved by being more careful about defining our terms upfront.

In its Greek roots, the word atheist breaks down into:

a: which is prefix meaning "without" or "not"

theós: meaning "deity" or "god"

But when you look at the arguments of atheist online, their focus is on countering or debunking the doctrines religion, rather than directly attempting to counter the possibility of a Heaven in which God resides, and the survival of consciousness after death in this heavenly environment.

In this respect, an atheist might better be described as athreskos (to coin a term), which in its Greek roots, breaks down into:

a: which is prefix meaning "without" or "not"

thréskeia: which is the closest term the ancient Greeks had for religion.

So most atheists might in practice be athreskoi (the plural of athreskos) — people who do not believe in the doctrines of religion.

It might be argued that athreskeia (my term meaning the philosophy which opposes the doctrines of religion) plays an important role in the world, by exposing religion for a manmade set of ideas about God and Heaven (as opposed to the truth about God and Heaven, if this can be known).

But then atheists should make their position clear: that they are against manmade concepts of God and Heaven found within religion.

Interestingly, individuals who say they have direct knowledge of Heaven though a near-death experience (NDE) often also end up opposing religious doctrines, as their heavenly experience does not line up with what religions teach. So these people might also be accurately described as athreskoi, along with many atheists.

Debate is when two people have opposing views and they discuss the merits of each position relative to each other and the proof.

Debate can not occur when one side (atheists) take the position that they have no position.

By necessity, for a debate to occur, if you do not believe God exists you must argue from that point of view. You cannot have any debate unless they do.

Instead all you will have is atheists going "prove it" while taking no position other than the other side is wrong.

If you said it's Sunday and I said "prove it" you either provide proof or you don't. If you said "what day do you think it is if not Sunday?" And I said "I don't need to prove anything" that's the end of the conversation, no debate has, can, or will occur.

So I’m not an atheist but I’m coming to terms that maybe God or a higher being may not be an actual thing. I grew up in the church…missionary, baptist…I went to church maybe three times a week from like birth to early 20s. I’m 39 now and I haven’t been to a church in about a decade. I do know not being around something in general can lead to other thoughts to appear and question said subject. I have read the bible as well as watched many a sermon on YouTube here and there during this decade of non physical church attendance. My thoughts have been like if God is real then why are any of us struggling? Why does any of this matter if you actually can go to Hell…like is this some board game for God? I know that’s a very low way to think when it comes to the bible because struggle or pain or etc is like a parallel to faith when it comes to the bible. I just have a hard time believing God allows kids to live in filth in third world countries, people born into this world with disabilities or something simple as a kid heartbroken over not accomplishing a dream.

I’m open for discussion…I would like to know why are you atheist or a non believer in general? What makes you sure vs what the bible says? Any other notes would be appreciated

How do you cope in an emergency situation like somebody got hit by a truck or something. Theists usually pray to god, what do you do? Did you ever regret being an atheist, that maybe if you believed in God, outcomes could've been different, could've been better? Do you think being an atheist has has incurred you any loss, loss that wouldn't happen if you prayed to God or something.

I just find it really hard to let go of religion and gods. I don't understand how'd i cope in an emergency situation if I become an atheist. I'm unsure if becoming an atheist would not cause problems for me. Could I be punished for abandoning faith? Explain me. I want to get convinced but i got some real issues abandoning religion. Yet i want to quit all the religion and gods chaos.

It's a mess when you think who to pray. It's a mess when you're praying your religion and suddenly remember Allah exist but no I won't pray to him because I'm an hindu but then that would be a disrespect and could cause me problems as Allah is a god too and he won't like disrespect. But if I worshiped some other religion god, my god can be angry with me too...

It's a chaos. I need an escape. Help me out.

Thankyou for everything you're going to tell me.

Likewise, lack of evidence doesn't prove there are no other living beings on other planets but because there is lack of evidence you're not convinced. Example, if I said I can fly in my apartment telling me I lack evidence doesn't prove me wrong. You're just not convinced.

The best way to prove there is no God is to challange and invalidate the evidence presented not say there is no evidence as if the counterclaim alone defeats the original claim. Example, you can prove I can't fly by the laws of physics.

We should stop answering the question that asks for proof there is a God by saying for lack of evidence. The theist presented the claim and their evidence but you're just not convinced.

No, this isn't an open field to attack an uncommon opinion of an atheist. Food for thought.

Caution for readers (lwk don't wanna get canceled or something lol)

Do I kind of had a philosophical break through and if someone has said this before I had no Idea so if they did idk ignore this I guess. Also for sensitive viewers this involves wild takes on religion and peoples way of life so if you wish to not see this click away.

Real note:

So today I was working and the text immediately below this is copy paste from MY OWN notebook app. (So I am the original writer of the text below)

If God is not one singular being. And "he" is everywhere all at once and is raceless genderless and lacks belonging to one singular species. Then God isn't "something or "someone" (side note) If there are no difining features or descriptives as to "his" physical existence but he still "exists" then "God" is the very essence of nothing he is nothing and can be nothing. (This has now turned into a main note considering that this has debunked my other theory.). But if he is in us/everyone and everything then he is a presence but if he's nothing then he is the presence of nothing.therefore "God" is nothing but if our understanding of nothing is correct "God" isn't possible??? But if we can describe something as nothing it is something because we can describe it. then God exists??? But since the proof surrounding any of the other religions (finishing the note by hand without copy paste from here) can't actually be verified we are left with nothing as our "god" but if nothing aka "God" is the force that made planets, time, universes, galaxies etc. then God at least philosophically is reality and therefore not a god we pray or worship but the actual force that creates us. God is reality and reality is God. (End of note) So yeah that's my thought and for now if anyone has key points or details that I am missing then let me know I will try to check this post as often as I can. Also if anyone does agree with me then I am open to people reaching out and helping me figure this shit out on redit because I am not trying to claim anything or say my way is the right way I am just younger and trying to figure shit out so really any help or wisdom helps. Thanks if you read this far.

Hey guys I'm a theist, if you have any questions to ask feel free to do so, in a respectful mindful way. I'll only respond to 20 questions. If you're wondering about my religion, I'm muslim, but not sunni, I only follow the quran and what's logical, I'm still studying my religion with a different perspective and with my own critical thinking. So if you're wondering if I followed because of tradition, I had my own spiritual experience enough to believe in an independent way, and I respect all believes, and I've got my own morals.

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

Hey everyone, I'm a theist. If you have any questions to start a debate together feel free to ask them in a respectful and thoughtful way. I'll answer up to 20 comments.

If you're wondering about my religion, I'm Muslim, but not Sunni. I only follow the Quran and what I find logical. I'm still learning about my religion from a different perspective while using my own critical thinking.

If you're wondering whether I believe because of tradition, I don't. I've had my own spiritual experiences that led me to believe independently. I respect all beliefs, and I have my own moral values.

"Because he doesn't exist" isn't an answer. Seeing that if He would exist, it would be pretty f*cked up seeing all the Evil in the world. Do you just not want to consider there might be an evil God controlling the Earth?

Do you have a strong sense of morality? What "normal things" give you fear? Could be the product of a manipulative God .. Are you a truth-seeker or do you prefer to just be happy? Have you ever considered the worst-case scenario? ...

Love you all yes even the Atheists

Edit: Obviously there’s a difference between (insert any fictional character) and the (possible) Creator of all life and the Universe. If you want to be dismissive, be dismissive. Whatever

Edit 2: Too many bot comments in here .. I’ll explain it better next time .. for now good bye. Real atheist I’m still curious to see if anyone actually cares about what I’m saying or ever has this vague fear.. Also if anyone shares my existential dread feel free to DM me ..

I'm a bit late to this, but the online debate (if a series of reaction videos can be called such a thing) involving Matt Dillahunty, Joe Schmid, and Alex O'Connor has been in the back of my mind since it happened, so I figured I might as well say my piece. Seeing as this happened in the online "atheist community" and bears on issues like the resurrection, this seemed like as good a place as any to post it.

My contention is this: Matt's slogan, at least on a very reasonable interpretation, is wrong. Claims are often evidence (EDIT: specifically in the Bayesian sense).

To be more specific: the makings of claims often serve as an important kind of evidence, at least in the context of personal belief formation.

I'll relay an example from Joe to make the point clear. Suppose you have a friend whom you know is generally trustworthy and likes to play soccer. You also come into this situation with background knowledge about the world, such as that soccer is a sport that many people play, soccer equipment is fairly easy to obtain, etc. Given this state of knowledge, you might give, say, a 1% credence that your friend has bought a new soccer ball sometime in the last month.

Now your friend tells you that they bought a soccer ball in the last month. The only piece of knowledge you've gained here is that your friend has made a claim. And yet, knowing this, you seem to be justified in giving a much higher credence to the proposition that your friend has bought a soccer ball in the last month.

Given everything we've said, the fact that your friend claimed to have bought a soccer ball in the past month served as evidence that he did, in fact, buy a soccer ball in the past month - at least if the notion of evidence we are working with is the very popular Bayesian notion.

EDIT to more fully defend the thesis here: while this is just a single example, I think we should acknowledge that most instances of claim-makings are like this. It is usually the case that people are more likely to say things that are true than are false. There are of course counterexamples, but the soccer ball example is quite typical. Hence, claims are usually evidence.

Now, there are stricter notions of evidence according to which that might not qualify. As the friend is not under oath, the claim would not be admissible as evidence in court, for example. Many scientific fields only admit claims as evidence in very specific circumstances, or perhaps not at all. But it is evidence, even if some disciplines exclude it on methodological grounds.

The problem which I'm trying to confront and do my part to correct here is that the "atheist community" at large seems to have latched onto Matt's slogan and applied it too broadly. The position that seems to have caught on is that claims are not evidence in any sense, and that even in seemingly clear contexts like the soccer ball example, the "real evidence" at play comes from something other than the making of the claim. The result has been a disconcerting confusion around the concept of evidence and how it works theoretically, sometimes verging on anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure how much of that will be present here, but I feel that this needs to be pushed back against in the atheist sphere at large, so that the community can hold itself to the intellectual standards it professes.

Anyway, I've said enough. Let's discuss!

Religious debaters just keep avoid answering why God exists by deflecting questions, circular reasoning, or winning the crowd over to undermine the questioner rather than addressing the core argument.

‘Why do you think God is real?’

1. They’ll start with the same philosophy of it can’t infinitely regress, therefore it has to be a necessary being, and we humans call this necessary being God. What’s stopping this from just being an alien, or a mindless force, or just literally anything that has power? And soon as I bring this up the response is always targeted replies like ‘can you believe this guy?’, ‘how could it be an alien LOL’.
   I just don’t get it, how do you genuinely call this an argument from going from ‘necessarily being’ to ‘it’s God we humans define this as God’? Why do so many people still use this as an argument when it could literally be anything? There’s as much weight as me saying ‘why couldn’t a dog with powers make it’ and then they switch to making me look dumb.

1.5. Got this post on a different community and so the replies made sense to me why agnostics exist as it’s pretty much just philosophy and abstract concepts. But then these theists (anecdotally only ones I’ve spoken to) basically just proved that they’re just agnostics who just chose a religion probably because of family.

2. For example a recent moment when I asked this question:
   ‘when you ask is God real, you’re asking me do I think MY God is real?’
   ‘so therefore, you’re asking me do I believe my God is true?’
   ‘so therefore, you’re asking do I believe Islam is true?’
   ‘but how can I reply to your question if you don’t even think God is real?’
   And now we’re somehow 5 topics away from the question and I’m answering all of his questions.

And throughout this would just nitpick words I say (I’m not a debater so I speak with way more mistakes than these people) and just somehow end up 5 topics away as well as the crowd thinking he’s a genius.

Can any theists actually answer the question directly? Or are almost all just going to find a way to redirect the topic to something completely different. It makes no sense how theists can be so wholeheartedly religious whilst being unable to answer a simple question as that.

Am I the only one who just can’t date someone who believes in God? Ive been trying to be chill w everyone of course, but when I start to “like” someone and I find out that they’re Christian or whatever I cant like them anymore . I feel like being a religious person stands for your personality and identity for an example I dont freaking mind person having 2 girlfriends/boyfriends, having high bod count, fwb , changing partners,… etc.
I feel like they judge a lot and I just cant be w someone who has a different opinion than me in those things . Your thoughts guys?

Atheists always say that human beings are literally animals that evolved like every other creature on Earth, and that we are essentially equal to worms.

The problem is that there are a lot of things about us that makes us stand out from every other creature on Earth.

Human beings are the only animals I have seen have pronounced facial expressions. I have seen other animals display emotions, but I have not seen other animals being able to visible express emotions such as sadness, anger, fear, joy, and surprise. I have also never seen any animal cry in the same kind d of way as humans do when we're very sad. (The yelling, frowning and hyperventilating as tears are coming out of our eyes.) We seem to express emotions better than any other animal on Earth.

The fact that we wear clothes. Clothes are useful for many different things. They keep us warm. They can help identify people as belonging to different groups. They protest us from contamination, and stop us from contaminating furniture with our butts and private parts. Shoes protect our feet from harsh surfaces.

But human beings hate their nudity in a very large general sense. Isn't it a little bit strange that animals would evolve to hate their own nakedness?

We do not eat poop like other animals do. Animals eat poop for different reasons, and humans do not do that.

We're the only primates that look different than every other speciesof apes. You can look at every species of monkey and ape and see tgat they look very similar to each other. But human beings, despite looking very si.ilar to those creatures also look very different than those creatures. I have never seen another primate that has mustaches or beards, I have never seen another primate that barely has any hair all over their body except for their underarms, private areas and their scalps.

The fact that human females just coincidentally evolved to not have facial hair like men do, nor a similar rate of natural balding.

We have morals tgat are unnecessary if atheism is true.

If there is no God that punishes people for being nude, then I and a bunch of other people can appear nude in public or around family members and it wouldn't even matter.

Incest is not even inherently bad if atheism were true. I understand the arguments about disabled kids and relatives having an unfair power imbalance during many cases of incest, but there is incest that takes place without harming anyone. Not every case of incest is tape or leads to disabled children. So the only way for incest to be bad in every case is if there is a God who tells people that incest is bad.

Beastiality is also okay in some cases if atheism is true. I've seen people say that incest is wrong because it is like pedophile, animals cannot talk nor have human intelligence so it would always be taking advantage of the animal. But there are many cases of dogs wanting to have sex with humans. How would that be taking advantage of the dog if he wants to mount you? So just like these other scenarios, if there is no such thing as a God who tells people beastiality is not okay, then you can make arguments as for why beastiality is okay in some very specific cases.

There's also the fact that human beings arebthe only animals to cook our food. We are suppose to believe that hunan beings just evolved to cook our food every single time we eat meat ir vegetables. But isn't that a little strange that a species would evolve to cook every single meal it eats just because it grew intelligence?

Also the coincidence that male human voices and female human voices naturally sound like lot different from one another.

Also the clothes we wear don't really matter if atheism is true. I can walk around wearing a crop top and a miniskirt, or dressed as Mario, or dressed like a minor, or dressed in wrinkled ripped clothing, and it literally would not matter what I dress like.

Also the fact that words would not truly be bad if atheism were true. Why do we feel like curse words are bad if words are made up by humans and there is no God that ever told anybody what words to not use?

There's also the coincidence that human beings have voices that sound very different from each other. I don't hear any other creature having different sounding voices within the same species other than some dogs having low voices, deep voices and very high pitched voices.

Then there's people who have very strong opinions on gender norms and homosexuality, when that also doesn't make sense for species to have such strong beliefs that homosexuality is bad, crossdressing is bad, and effiminit males are badif there was never any outside source that instilled into humans that crossdressing, effimininety, and homosexuality were bad in the first place.

So yeah, I think atheism is some kind of mass delusion because all of these things are very questionable, and they point to it being true that human beings are very special.

Imagine nothing. Not empty space, not darkness, not a vacuum, not even the idea of nothing. Just... nothing. Now imagine I place an empty box into that nothing. What's inside the box? Most people would say "nothing," but is it? An empty box also represents the possibility of everything that could fit inside it. I've never been inside a coffin, but I know I could fit inside one. The possibility exists whether it ever happens or not. So an empty container isn't just empty... it's full of potential. Now take the walls away. What can you fit inside a box with no walls? If there are no boundaries, no limits, no restrictions, then what exactly is stopping every possibility from being possible? And if every possibility is possible, what's the greatest possible thing that could exist? A being with unlimited knowledge, unlimited power, and the unlimited ability to bring reality into existence. I'm not saying this proves God exists. I'm asking what rule inside absolute nothing would prevent that possibility in the first place. That's the question.

Im still trying to understand it... and its hard for me to even really articulate. I apologize.

(Revised)

God created life and everything around us. Where was God when the earthquakes happened in Venezuela? So many innocent children are gone. Why did he create them? Why are all these innocent lives gone?

Asking this as an agnostic. And I mean loosely atheistic, I don’t believe in religion, but I was raised catholic. I don’t believe in god or religion, but the thought or idea brought me closure on this topic. I am a Venezuelan outside of the country, my family was not affected thankfully, but seeing my people suffering and struggling did cause me pain, and my family and friends were affected by this, so it did hit me a little harder.

Was a suggestion to post it here, I feel like I got the answers I needed, but it was such a healthy debate.

Firstly, I'm arguing for the concept of a First Cause (the thing that pushed the first domino b4 the big bang) and the irony of internet atheists act like they own science and weaponise it against First Cause.

---To be Extra Extra clear---

(Not claiming a certain religion is correct, just showing logically how something has to start the chain of existance)

(The modern idea that a First Cause doesn't exist is an illusion created by personal bias. Older philosophers and scientists never had this problem because they were able to completely separate the logical necessity of a First Cause from people's flawed, personal interpretations of what "God" is)

---End of context now to the main pudding---

The scientific method history

Where did the method actually came from? Long ago in a land far, far away, some backwards sand dwellers switched from an oral to a written history.

Before it was used to study nature, the foundational rules of "scientific verification" were invented by early Islamic scholars for one specific reason: to forensicly analyze, record, and verify the words of the Prophet. They needed a strict, flawless method to put historical claims under a microscope, screen out fabrications, and demand independent proof for every transmission chain. (Very interesting topic to check out!)

This culture of systematic skepticism is exactly what allowed the 11th-century polymath Hasan Ibn al Haytham to develop the modern scientific method for the physical world. (What our modern understanding is based upon) His intention for systematic experimentation was not to disprove a Creator. He did it as a deeply religious man who believed a rational mind created an orderly universe that we could study. The giants who built modern science (from Isaac Newton to Max Planck) saw science as a way to understand the underlying architecture of reality, not to pretend there is no architect.

Consider how we ('we' as in humans) process reality. You don't need to drain the Atlantic Ocean to prove there’s a sea floor. You’ve never seen it, but common sense tells you water needs a container to sit in, It doesn't float in a vaccum. Let's put the universe through this kind of thinking, it works the same way through a First Cause. Think of it like a massive row of falling dominoes. If you see domino number 500 fall, you know with 100% certainty that domino number 1 must have been pushed by something outside the row. The dominoes cannot tip themselves over. A First Cause is simply that very first push that set the whole universe in motion. Claiming the universe exists without a First Cause is like saying the ocean is floating in mid-air with nothing under it.

If we look at a book published by Baruch A. Shalev called "100 years of.nobel prizes" it clearly shows....

- Chemistry: 72.5% of all Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry were from a theistic background.

- Physics: 65.3% of all Nobel Prize winners in Physics were from a theistic background.

- Medicine: 62% of all Nobel Prize winners in Medicine identified with a theistic background.

- Atheists/Freethinkers: Only 10.5% of Nobel laureates across the entire 20th century identified as atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers (and a large portion of that 10.5% won their prizes in Literature, not the hard sciences).

Modern internet atheists aren't the ones out there discovering new laws of physics. They take facts discovered mostly by believers, pull them out of context, and use them in a vacuum to attack the very idea of a beginning. Most anti-theism isn't based on cold, hard logic. It’s based on personal bad experiences with whatever specific version of religion they grew up around. They mistake their emotional problems with a church for a logical disproof of a First Cause.

My last point (something you may wanna read twice)

Think about this....when a modern atheist attacks "God," they aren't arguing against a simple First Cause. They are usually arguing against a human-like cartoon version of God that their local environment taught them (an angry old man in the sky who counts their sins and micromanages their life) Because they have a personal, emotional problem with that specific cultural image, they throw the baby out with the bathwater. They confuse their local church trauma with a logical disproof of the first domino being pushed. They are fighting a straw man of their own upbringing, not the actual physics of a beginning.

The moment you bring the First Cause from the metaphysical source (something outside time and space) and try to define it by the physical tools available (only works within space time) , you are no longer speaking about God, but a flawed human interpretation. (Mixing them up is a category mistake or ontological fallacy)

Have a nice day, I apologize if I offended anybody, this is not my intention. Just love a good meaning chat :)