Sunday, July 14, 2013

Atheism Dilemma V
















As you read the uneducated tweets above from so-called "atheists," did you notice the trend?  They all mention "reality."

Atheists often bring up the word in an attempt to mock believers by claiming that they (atheists) hold the true perception of reality, while believers live in a "fantasy" world.  To them, Christians are "delusional." They worship a "fictitious being" a "sky fairy," while the atheist is in the "real world" made of material that can be perceived by the senses and examined via the scientific method.

There is a big dilemma here that these atheists above and all others have:

Reality is not what they think it is.

The world we perceive, the universe we see and send satellites and telescopes to study is not as it seems.  The water you shower in, the food you eat, the people you hug and kiss; each are not what they seem.  What do I mean by this?

Well, we all are made up of atoms. Atoms are mostly empty space with a nucleus in the middle which is very small.  Think of it as a stadium representing an atom and a baseball in the middle representing the nucleus.  This is how an atom basically is structured.

The shell of the atom is created by electrons spinning around the atom protecting it with an electromagnetic field, just like a stadium has a circular wall.  Without this electromagnetic field, atoms would touch each other and will annihilate one another.  In other words, everything that we know to exist would explode instantly if we did not have these electrons generating this field and preventing the atoms from touching.

Here is where it gets even more weird.

We are not Solid and Touch is an illusion:

Since we are mostly space, how come we don't pass through each other like "ghosts?"  Why are we "solid?" Well the answer is simple and mind blowing at the same time.  We are not solid. Solidity is an illusion.  What we perceive as solid are the electromagnetic fields repelling one another.  In other words, when atoms bump into each other via the electromagnetic field, that "bump" is caused by the repulsion or the coulomb repulsion. This repulsion is what we perceive as "solid" or touch. Depending how strong the force around the atom is determines whether or not the material we are "touching" is hard or soft, liquid or gas, etc.  The field around liquid or softer material is weaken, so this is why our fingers can enter easily in water and why we can crumble snow in our hands.  The field around metal or a rock is stronger, this is why we cannot easily press into them.

Think of it as having two magnets with differ poles.  When you try to put the magnets together, they repel each other. You can feel something pushing both magnets apart or away from each other.  This same force is what we perceive every time we "touch" something. However, in reality, we are NOT touching anything, just like the two magnets are not "touching." We are perceiving the force around atoms. Each electron releases a differ charge and these charges tell our senses what it is we are "touching."  Our brains are pretty much left to figure out on its own what it is we are actually perceiving, nothing is exact.

The Lying Brain

As a matter of fact, when you touch your nose you seem to feel your finger touching your nose and your nose touching your finger right?  Wrong! There is actually a difference between the time it takes for a signal from your finger to reach your brain and the time it takes for a signal from the skin on your nose to reach the brain. Since the nose is closer the brain, the signal reaches the brain almost instantly.

However, when pertaining to your finger and the brain, the signal takes longer.  So how is it that we don't notice the delay in sensation?  Well, our brains lie to us!  Our brains compensate for the time difference by telling us that both signals are coming in at the same time allowing us to perceive that the nose and finger are touching at the same time.  

Moreover, if you are sitting right now, you really are not. You are actually hovering over the chair one Angstrom or 10 ^-8 centimeters. Your rear end seems to be touching the chair, but it is not. What you "feel" is the repulsion of the electrons that make up the chair and the electrons that make up your clothing and buttocks.

Here comes the scary part.

We have a lonely existence:

We basically are trapped in a field of electrons and live a lonely existence never touching anything.  You may think that you are touching things, but in fact you never are. A hug from mom and dad feels great; or perhaps, that first kiss from your significant other, well, it never happened in the way you think it did.  You have never touched them.

That "great sex" you think you had was just an illusion - a bunch of forces repelling each other.  All you perceived are force fields which your brain told you were "hugs" or "kisses." All we have are fields and our brains telling us what it thinks those fields are.  This is what we call "reality."


"Reality"

Reality is pretty much what the brain tells us it thinks it is.  We have to have faith in this information and trust it to be in fact, "reality."  For all we know, we could be just a brain in a vat, or hooked up to a computer which feeds us "reality" like in the movie, "The Matrix."

We can never know for sure what "reality" is.  An atheist tweeted above that, "our senses are limited but our understanding of reality is far better thanks to science..." well there is a problem with this. Science is subject to our senses.  It is not independent of nature nor is it a conscious entity that bypasses nature. Science is processed via our senses.  We "touch" and "taste" samples, "smell" them, we "see" through microscopes or telescopes, we "hear" sounds and try to figure them out.

See the problem here?

All this information is processed via our senses and in the brain.  So this atheist's claim that "our understanding of reality is far better thanks to science" is not correct.

Star Trek's "holodeck" which gives the illusion of reality using force fields
Next time an atheist tells you that you believe in "fairy tales" or that they are the sole dwellers of"reality," remind them this physics lesson.

Physics in a way confirms "Solipsism" or the philosophical idea that our brains are all that exist and that "reality" is what the mind makes of it.

In "reality" (no pun intended), atheists live in a "fairy tale" of the mind along with everyone else.  The "reality" they are so fond of is really a bunch of electromagnetic fields in empty space repelling each other leaving the brain to interpret what each field is while at the same time giving the illusion that things are solid.

This begs the question: does reality really exist, or is it an illusion?

For all we know it could be a computer simulation like in the Star Trek "holodeck" where force fields are charged in a specific way in order to give the appearance of different kinds of matter. This is basically what "reality" is - a bunch of force fields structured in distinct ways in order to present what we perceive as "reality."  

Any atheist that cites "reality" in an attempt to discredit faith does not understand science.  The tweets above demonstrate the scientific illiteracy of atheists who speak without knowing.
Claiming to be "in reality" and that believers rely on "blind faith" is a false dichotomy.  The truth of the matter is that the atheist him/herself is relying on "blind faith" when perceiving and accepting what he/she thinks is reality.  Here lies another dilemma in atheism.  

These are actual atoms. Notice they do not touch.


     

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