Is atheism a religion?

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Morgoroth, I am afraid that I might be doing just that. I just hope that humanity will be able to deal with free thought and that a lack of religion will bring new things. But there is no doubt that when religion fades from a country much of its unity and sense of purpose fades from it. I am hoping that we are moving away from the inflated tribal attitude of the nation states into a more global world, a global world where 2/3 of hte population are not convinced that their god is hte only true one and that all others are infidels.

 

Ok, let's start at the beginning:
1.) Is context at all important to you? I was using miracles as an example of the most common claim of proof that God does exist, and saying atheists deny it. If you had quoted the whole sentence, instead of paraphrasing it, that would have been obvious. You know, the part where I said "'and we know there is no god because there's no proof (miracles)'".

2.) Now who's got a strawman arguement? I'm not ignoring any proof. Do you have any proof that there is no God? No, all you have is a lack of proof that there is one. No proof for God (that you will accept), and no proof against God (that any scientists will accept) equals no proof. that leads us to:

3.) Ok, here I may be to blame for poor wording. What I meant was evidence that both groups could accept. I have proof of God, but it is personal experience which I can't replicate scientifically, so I don't expect you to accept it.


Joacqin, the mere fact that you can seriously make such a statment is appalling. You aren't claiming anything, but you're claiming something? It's the religionists that are making absolute claims, not you, you just claim absolutely that they're wrong? Do you see any contradictions here? Any problems? And you are ignoring all the millions of converts from not just other classes, but from atheism and agnosticism as well, some of them quite radical atheism/agnosticism. Essentially, you have created a little bubble-world for yourself, significantly devoid of both logic and factual connection to the real world, all in an attempt to support your blind claim that religion is foolish. You're bordering on conspiracy-theory level delusions here.

Yes I have, and I've made that point both in this topic and others many times. I even had a discussion with (I think it was) you where I gladly said that, if you provided real evidence that Christianity was false, that Christ had never been raised from the dead, then I would denounce Christianity right off. The poster (again, I think it was you, but I may be wrong) said the same thing about atheism if proof of God were presented to you. None was given on either side.

Then please present it. I'm tired of your baseless claims that religion is stupid because you don't agree with it. I'm tired of your claims that religionists don't think/are blind to reality, when case examples of the opposite have been presented to you time and again. You have proof? Real proof? Let's hear it.

It is not on logic that it fails, but on your assumption. And on that same assumption any rational analysis of the universe as we know it today also fails. Things can't have always been and they certainly won't always continue to be in any growing/changing form, not unless something drastically changes (strenght of gravity, for example). The assumption that cause and effect must be infinite, that there cannot be a Prime Mover, is demonstrably false. Our universe is either not infinitely old, or has gone through periods where the very basic laws of physics no longer applied. Either one denies some part of your logical arguement. If the universe is infinitely old, then the current laws of physics are nothing more than a fluke, may change at any time, and all science (along with all it's claims and conclusions) is unreliable. If it is not infinitely old, then it MUST have some finite original cause which is NOT the effect of something else, some Prime Mover. There's nothing to say that it must be a god, but again there's nothing to say it must not.

From the claims you've made already, I believe it likely that you came to the conclusion before the investigation and merely used the investigation to see what you wanted to in order to reinforce your own belief.


Taza:

Thank you. So many people seem to forget this so easily, even on these boards. Any reiteration of it is appreciated.


Shoshino, I think the problem is that you define science as what is, while Taza and I (and most others, I think) define science as our best guess at what is, or more accurately, our best guess at how things work. As has been stated, science can't actually prove anything, ever. This means any hard belief in the claims of science requires faith, because science itself tells you we don't really know this, it's just how it seems to be at the moment, given our current knowledge.


Joacqin:

I'm sorry to tell you this, but, looking at history, the nature of man has not changed since the dawn of recorded history. If your hope is that mankind is changing and improving, I'm afraid it's a futile one. If your hope is that the failures of man were simply because of a lack of resources/knowledge/understaning/etc, then there is some real hope, as both the amount of those, and the average man's access to them, are increasing with time.

 

1. "No miracles means no god, and no god means no miracles." is a strawman. Nothing short of it. There are no miracles that can be proven - end of. If there were miracles that would be a great big hint that maybe there is something to this spiritual / god thing, but unfortunately all miracles that can be studied can also be easily explained by modern science.

2. No proof that there isn't something, and no proof there is. In this case, the assumption that there is nothing is automatically the more valid one. Reducing any argument not agreeing with that to absurdity is easy - check out Russel's Teapot, again.

Ugh, Prime Cause. Every single damn argument about the Prime Cause will always end up as "is too" versus "is not" because we're going to have a real hard time knowing either way.

I don't frankly care if you call Prime Cause God or Lord Xenu or Quantum Uncertainty - nobody whose thought is worth anything bothers to argue about it, because either it stretches into infinity which means we'll never have any proof, or it breaks causality, which means we'll never have any proof. Either way it's good only for getting in character while playing a Xaositect.

 

Sorry to nitpick, but we'd be talking about the nurture of man, not the nature. And that has changed a great deal over the course of history. For the better mostly. 'Atheism' is, as cleverly pointed out, a term based on religion, just like heretic, moor, infidel, blasphemor, etc. The atheists are merely a result of our movement into the future. While we're still busy moving away from religion, we have more problems with later forms of social control, like nationalist fervour, and other 'enemy images'.
Personally I'd like to see a movement away from organized religion, and towards either 'atheism', or the personal pursuit of true spirituality. Both would greatly improve the individual.

 

I've never seen a donation plate for athiests. If there's no collection, there's no religion.

 

NOG I do not see any contradiction really part of that of course is because it is much easier to tear things down than to build them. I am absolutely convinced that no touch of what man has traditionally called divinity has ever existed in the universe and sure as hell not on our little mubball of a planet. I have covered the prime mover thingy but you are not even worshipping the prime mover oyu are worshipping the Christian god. First, he is omnipotent so he must have created the entire universe, all of it and time itself. He must really be an awesome being and yet, and yet he/she/it goes through the effort of trying to micromanage the life of a tribe of a race of beings on a fringe planet whose suns very existance must be as vital to him as a water atom in a drop of water in hte middle of the ocean. Come on, as a few other people have stated even if I would believe a being like that existed I would refuse to worship it. That is the pettiest thing I have ever heard. You believe that this being, talked to a string of desert shamans (and yourself), smote a whole bunch of other primitives, impregnated a human woman with a child that was its son, this son then proceeded to cure the sick, walk on water preach a lot of stuff, much of it quite sympathetic sadly most of his worshippers forgot most of the things he is claimed to have said got himself crucified to forgive us for our sins and then stood up and flew away to heaven? I know none of this sound implausable to you but I can tell you it does to me. It is on the exact same level as the scientologists or worshipping The empty candy wrapper of infinite wisdom.

Then if you look at historical records or even church records you can see how a religion was formed, how bits and pieces were taken from previous faiths, how a patchwork faith was put together. I mean, the burden of proof is the claimant, you claim these things are true. Prove it, there are vast amounts of material out there for you to research, cases against religion that has been put together by much smarter people than me. You believe in a fairy tale, you believe in the adult equivalent of Santa Claus. If it makes you happy then there is nothing I can do about it but it makes me sad that people choose to live their lives in such a way.

NOG, again, I used to be way more open minded, I wanted to live and let live it was a comfortable way of living but then I came here and was exposed to people like you and I read your arguments and well, they were just plain stupid and then I have seen and read things and I can't understand how an adult, educated person can have religious faith.

 

It is easy for an educated person to have and not have religious faith. I sometimes think the most likely indicator if someone (educated or not) believes is who that person spent time with.

If you were annoyed/really pissed off by religious people when you were young you don't believe in God (or gods depending on whomever the religious folks were and what the belief system they followed was) as a way of getting back at/separating yourself from them.

Atheism is a belief system because there really isn't a way to prove if there is a God or not that we all readily know and accept. If a miracle happens and God is revealed to someone that could end up being a very personal/individual experience that others may not go along with. On the other hand if someone feels let down by religion in some way it is an event that effects the person that experienced it directly in a way that is likely different for him/her than everyone else.

Atheism is a belief system because it requires a belief in non-existence rather than the possibility of it. There is a difference between saying there is no divinity and saying you don't know.

 

On the other hand, there's also a difference between saying there's no divinity/god/spiritual world/Qi/whatever and saying there's no reason to believe in such silly superstitions. Beware of the strawman.

 

Perhaps more importantly, it is easy for an affluent person to not have religious faith.

 

Taza, by strawman do you mean stating an obnoxious comment so that others will view that thinking related to that comment badly?

If so one can still say there is no reason (if by reason you mean court provable evidence we all agree on) and still be a believer.

My point about atheism before was that it requires a certain belief rather than a simple acknowledgment of uncertainty. And that is because the former argues the question is settled rather than open or not answered to the satisfaction of some-the place of others in the latter.

 

This is what I love about the atheist arguement. The definition of a miracle is that it happens only when God wants it to, so this isn't a laboratory-repeatable phenomenon. If it were, it wouldn't be a miracle, it'd be a new aspect of science, like quarks and mesons. IF miracles happen, science will never be able to satisfactoraly prove it. The best you'll get is a video-tape, and that'll probably be grainy and poorly shot. This is just the necessary nature of miracles. I've seen miracles, so don't tell me they don't happen (not that you did, but you came close). The point of my arguement, though, was that many atheists "know" that all the claims of miracles are either false or can otherwise be explained, without testing anything, simply because they "know" that there is no God, and so no reason for real miracles to happen. That is not a strawman arguement, I've heard it said myself by atheists. It's just a circular one.

No, it isn't more valid, just more simple, and thus more likely. Occam's Razor again, but that's not logic, it's a rule of thumb. Rules of thumb are good for common circumstances, but they are hardly dependable, particularly this one. By the way, assumptions are never valid. They may be true or false, but they are never valid or invalid. Only the arguements based on them may be valid, but even then the truth of the conclusion depends on the truth of the assumption.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you, here. Of course, I'm used to twisting my brain into odd shapes for my classes, so maybe that's why. You claimed Christianity was a non-starter because there had to be someone to start God, and someone to start him, and so on. I pointed out that, one way or another, some assumption of how the universe works has to break down given any theory of the universe, so that's not an issue. In other words, your arguement was only a problem if you assume cause-and-effect are absolute, and that produces the same problem for everyone, even atheists.

My point is that you're just trading one thing for another and not actually improving anything. The "nurture" of man may have changed, yes, but not really for the better. It's really only gone sideways. You're looking for a better future there, and I can't blame you, but I really don't think we'll find it. Just a different manifestation of the same.

Then I guess a lot of the churches I've seen recently aren't religions any more, either. I bet they wish they were, though.

I agree that what you have put forth is implausible. Let me put something else together. There was a being, infinite in power, but ultimately alone. At this point there is neither time nor space, at least not as we understand them. If God experienced(s) any dimentions of any kind, they are different from ours. I'm just saying that so you can understand the whole omnicient/omnipresent thing. God is to our time and space like the author of a book is to the book-world's time and space. So, this being decided to get creative. He (and I only say He because it is His traditional way of interacting with us), being omnipotent and completely seperate from any kind of time He would create, manifested a masterful plan, a majestic piece of creation that was beautiful not only at every stage of completion, but in the very process of completion itself. We're talking true art here. This was all only setting, though, because a bazillion stars are nothing more significant to Him than a drop of water (as you said). They take no more effort to create or control. The real point of this creation was to create a setting for something else, something really special. This was a created being who had a nature similar to God's. Similar in that they could choose, they could act freely, seperate from God's control. This was the real purpose, to create 'company' of a kind.

Oh, they weren't equal to God, not even close, but they were as different from the rest of creation as a newborn child is from a coffee pot. Now, God had set the entire system up to work a certain way and follow a certain sequence, but, as mankind was the centerpiece of all this (and possibly other sentient races, I'm not ignoring the possibility, just lumping them all together), God hung all of creation about us. If we failed, so would it. Well, choice is nothing if there are no choices to make, yet any choice that was not to go along with the way the system was designed would necessarily be destructive to the system (think of using scissors to cut cables). Still, God knew that even a failure of man could lead to something greater, so He allowed it. He allowed sin to exist and He allowed man to indulge in it. After all, what's the point in giving man choice if you won't allow him to choose? Anyway, of course, man fell, the system faltered, and things started going badly. Partly because the system was now working on the laws of physics only, when it was designed to work on more than that, and partly because man was trying to fix things without actually knowing what was going on. The latter is more a concern now than it was then, I think. Anyway, God looks after thing, He makes sure nothing falls off or blows up, but He allows the decay to continue; it too was necessary. Mankind, of course, is trying to do everything by itself and totally ignores God trying to correct it. Eventually, though, it gets to the point that a few people start to see that, whatever is happening, something has gone wrong and man isn't fixing anything. God talks to these people, and, knowing that no one else would listen to Him, only them. He sets some of them up as a case study on both how things go right and how they go wrong. This is the nation of Israel. Things go right and things go wrong and God shows how things are supposed to work and how things work when things go wrong. All this while, He's also gradually changing society. The laws written out in the Torah, for their time, are radically progressive. They redefine fair and unfair, and how to handle things, for all the societies in the area. Of course, this takes time, and it's only step one. Once this is reasonably done, step two comes along, and that is yet another massive, radical update to the laws and ideas of morality. All the while, though, nothing has actually been done to fix the system, nor to actually fix man. This is all just trying to keep things from getting worse and to prepare the way for the actual fix. Here comes the fix. God actually moves into His story-world and takes on the weight of the critical part of the failing system Himself: the failing nature of man. Now, this is also the ultimate expression of this morality system He had been setting up, but that's still only the beginning. The 'cure' is something that has to work through the system. You can't just inject it and instantly fix everything. So, more time passes, and the system is being patched up in the critical areas and still failing in others, but sooner or later it'll be ready for some really radical repairs. Not before, though, God makes some last-ditch efforts to fix as many humans as possible. That's all to come.

Now, I say some things about the system 'failing' and about 'fixing' humanity, but the truth is that's a bad analogy. It presents things as being unintended, and trying to restore them to the way they were. That's not accurate. God fully intended this to happen, though I don't imagine He was happy about it. There was a reason for it all, though, and that's why 'fixing' humanity won't turn us back to what we were in Eden. In Eden we were perfect, but also innocent and, frankly, stupid. We had to learn, and most importantly, we had to learn about evil. You can't learn about evil without touching it, though, and that necessitated all of that. It's complicated, I know, but basically it means that evil itself was the first (and in my opinion only) 'necessary evil'. It also requires the removal of 'broken' pieces that can't be repaired. Again, a failing system with broken or damaged pieces is a limited analogy, but it's what I've got. Damaged pieces can be repaired and put back into play, but broken pieces have to be taken out entirely. The funny thing is that, when it comes to humans at least, we choose if we are 'damaged' or 'broken'. I hope that helped a little.

There are vast amounts of material that support the Bible, yes. There are hundreds archeological studies that show that culture X (which was always assumed to be fictional because it was 'unrealistic' and 'idealized') was actually real and was accurately described in the Old testament. You want proof more conclusive than that? I'm sorry, but I don't have a time machine. As to your claim that the faith is 'patchwork' and put together from 'previous faiths', you again run into the problem of proving timing. Judaism pre-dates the written record in it's culture, as do many early religions, so the real roots of it are untracable by archeology. We don't know where it came from, or who came first. Maybe what you see as patchwork pieces drawn from other religions is actually other religions drawing pieces from Judaism. Judaism certainly fits together well enough to not be patchwork itself.

And again, you weren't 'more open minded', just less convinced of your own rightness. My posts here are anything but stupid. They may not be absolutely provable, and I'm not going to claim that their rightness should be obvious to all, but the only way you can claim they are stupid is by starting with that position and then reading my posts. The simple fact that you can't understand how an intelligent, educated person can be religious, even though case examples galore have been given, not just of people in the past, but of religious and educated and intelligent people on these boards, tells me that you actually aren't even trying to understand, or at least to accept.

No, by strawman he means pretending your opponent argues one thing (which they don't) and then attacking that arguement to make your opponent look stupid and petty. It's a type of putting words in someone's mouth. He accuses me of that because he says real atheism doesn't flat out deny the existence of God (which is what I've spent most of my time arguing against because it is prevalent), but just says that the belief in the unprovable is stupid. The problem with that is that the lack of a god is just as unprovable as the presence of a god, so what he's actually arguing is agnosticism (I refuse to take sides until I can see proof). Agnosticism say that neither existence nor nonexistence are provable, and so we shouldn't believe in either one over the other, we should keep an open mind. He doesn't really seem to do that last part too much. I'm guessing he's actually what I would classify as halfway between atheism and agnosticism.

My arguements aren't strawman arguements simply because atheists actually do make the claims I'm refuting.

 

Essentially, you're trying to argue that your extremely complicated, stretched, far-fetched stories are an equivalent to saying what we can observe is reality.

And you preface that with saying that all proof is always going to be extremely easily falsifiable.

Sorry, but just no. You've performed a reductio ad absurdum on your own argument.

Followers admitting there will never be reliable proof indeed makes it a matter of faith - and with really nothing I've seen or anything proven suggesting the existence of magical leprechauns, it makes it a gigantic leap of faith.

To boot, the particular faith has a history (and present) of violence and intolerance.

So yeah. Invisible Pink Unicorn. I have faith she is pink - and I logically know she's invisible because I cannot see her. A claim of equal validity in every sense to your argument about god - and one not coming with any additional moral judgment. I can decide my values myself just fine.

 

As opposed to what, a near infinite series of events that come as close to being statistically impossible as statistics gets, all happening by chance? Talk about a fairy tale.

Umm, wait, what? When did I equate anything to anything else?

Oh, and I'd appreciate it if you somehow indicate that what you 'quoted' from me wasn't actually a quote but a petty attempt to belittle and paraphrase at the same time. You know, something like brackets or something.

Again, what? Unless you're talking about my bit about miracles, this is lost on me. If you are talking about the miracles bit, do you expect miracles that defy the actual laws of nature (i.e. not our guesses at them, but the real things) to be repeatable under laboratory conditions? I mean, come on, even the so-called soft sciences know better than that with their purely natural phenomena. Does this mean that tornados are unsupportable claims because we can't reproduce them in the lab (not a vortex, an actual tornado)? Or how about plate techtonics? Next you'll be asking God to take on mass and radiate energy and sit nicely on your lab bench while you take readings. The entire point of this arguement is that proof on either side is impossible.

No, I've just supported my arguement that, from a strictly logical/scientific perspective, the whole discussion is absurd. Congrats, I think you just understood my arguement, even if you mistook it for something else.

Faith, yes, no arguement there. Gigantic leap, well, as I indicated previously, no moreso than a belief in the lack of such an entity given modern science. We've learned a lot about the formation of life, our solar system, the universe, etc. and it all leaves us with the most convoluted chain of astronomically unlikely events imaginable. Yet we know they happened. To believe they happened by random chance is no more mind-boggling than to believe something guided them with the express intent of creating the end results we see today.

No, you don't get it. It's people that have a history (and present) of violence and intolerance. You see it in everything: religion, race, culture, art, food, sports, politics, marriages, atheism. Where there are people, there is violence and intolerance. Whatever people do, if any large number of them do it, there is violence and intolerance.

Are you still trying this old lame strawman that pretends I'm claiming God is a documented fact? I never said that and I never will, not until He returns at least. All I'm trying to show you is that a belief in God is not foolish, that there is legitimate grounds for it.


Oh, and by the by, for all the 'atheists' here that are saying a belief in the unprovable is stupid, do you believe in science? Do you believe in gravity? By the very nature of science, it is unprovable. You cannot prove a theory, only disprove it. Is Ragusa an idiot for believing in evolution (unprovable)? Sure, there's evidence that supports it, but no evidence that proves it. There can't be. The same evidence could also support any number of other theories. All your readily accessible evidence of gravity may support Newton's theory, Einstein's theory, the idea of graviton emissions, or any number of other ideas. I'm not trying to rag on science, I'm just saying that we all put faith in something, and calling the other people stupid for not putting it in the same thing as you is, well, stupid.

 

We are either lying, delusional or foolish (or all the above). You may as well just shout at the wind, NOG.

 

More or less. And trying to stack an extremely contrived explanation relying on non-proof to defend your opinion only earns you ridicule.

Faith, well, is a matter of faith. Outside of delusions, the biological tendency and sociopolitical factors, it has no ground in reality.

Give me evidence otherwise and I'll take it into account, but until such a time, all you get is ridicule.

NOG: To address a few points:
Your stance on randomness is absurd. The explanation is simple: If the random chances didn't happen that way we wouldn't be here to witness it. We're only one possible outcome. Which is more likely, a god or random chance resulting in this? Answer: Probability doesn't deal in matters it doesn't have a sample size larger than one for.
And on "people suck"? Yeah, very possible. Though, religion is yet another justification for people to suck. Do religious people suck because of religion or is religion just an excuse to be a bad person?

Other than that: Bleh. You come in with your complicated, fantastical fairy tales and in the end demand the same respect as an opinion that nothing extraordinary is there if there's proof of nothing extraordinary. Just because you (and millions of people) say so doesn't make it so, so gimme some compelling evidence.

And oh - God talks to you / your relative / someone you heard about doesn't count. God talked to me too, and then I got on antipsychotics.

 

Oh, I don't feel "ridiculed" by you in the least. I've just been reading your posts for their entertainment value. I really don't give a crap what you believe.

 

There are those who believe in atheism, evolution, big bang, etc. with the same fervour of those who believe in Mormonism, Catholicism, Muslim, etc..

The arguments are quite passionate on both sides as the beliefs held are core to the individuals (which means everyone else has skewed core values).

 

Well, there are some people that should be in a straight jacket ;p But seriously, Without a sense of where I came from and what comes beyond death, this life won't hold much for me. That said, if you can't spiritually connect with what's being taught for whatever reason, you're better off staying home to watch the Three Stooges on Sunday Morning...

I consider Religion to be an incentive for many to rise above being more than just an animal. Being made in the image of God, and being His spiritual offspring can motivate people to think of the needs and good of others before their own desires.

Actually I was referring to the New York State law that Joseph Smith was charged under. One of the definitions was "claiming to be in contact with supernatural entities." The Holy Ghost would consitiute such a supernatural entity, and thus a violation of that law. Contrary to your point, the Church encourages members to talk about the faith--including the Holy Ghost.

I didn't read Kant, but I did read Sartre. I remember the Categorical Imperative from studying Sartre in College. Because I haven't read Kant, I can't claim that Kant didn't develop the concept before Sartre. All that really jumps out at me from Kant's theory was a snippet from Nietzsche where he claimed that Kant suggested that the commoner was actually right and that the philosopher was trying to make things more complicated than they needed to be. This was years ago, so I may be off. Now that I think about it, wasn't Kant the one who first used the term "Leap of Faith"?

I would go so far as to suggest that to the faithful that IS the purpose of religion.

I agree with a need to separate church and state, but that's going too far. If religious arguments are a reflection of what the people believe, are you not painting the faithful as a second class of citizen by disqualifying their beliefs and opinions from political debate?

---------- Added 0 hours, 15 minutes and 29 seconds later... ----------

There was candy and I missed it?

 

Oh Chandos, how nice of you to deign to join us. Beware, the air has a bit more oxygen down here than up where you usually hang out.

NOG, I could take your story and replace your Christian god with anything and the story would be as valid. I think it was you who grudgingly accepted once that the Lard Lord Xenu and the Almighty Yoghurt was equally reasonable to christianity and deserved the same respect as all other faiths. Can all of you with faith do that? Is there nothing you think is stupid, silly or preposterour or you think every religion is quite reasonable you just happened to pick yours? Gnarff, how do you know Smith was not a con artist who just wanted to get laid more often? NOG, how do you know that Smith was not a prophet from god?

Or really, to put it simply, could anyone explain to me the difference between a child believing in Santa Claus and an adult believing in Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour who died for our sins and who waits for your soul in a kingdom beyond heaven? Where is the difference, could someone spell it out for me.

 

Well, it simply comes to this: I do have proof, proof that works for me. I've seen things and experienced things that would leave almost any scientific atheist a believer. I can't do a little dance to make them happen again, so you won't accept it as proof (and that's reasonable to me). Joacqin, the difference is that Santa doesn't bring people back from the dead, heal wounds that should have killed you, stop storms in their tracks, that kind of thing. I know you don't believe God can, either, but I've seen stuff like that.

Plus, the whole 'your delusional' bit just doesn't work. Lying, foolish, maybe, but not delusional. The reason I say this is because we know how delusions work and these things don't work that way. We can observe and diagnose delusions, and the vast majority of Christians (and other religious groups) aren't delusional.

As for the 'bad people' bit, Taza, religions show no higher propensity for 'bad people' than atheism or agnosticism in the same culture.

My stance on 'randomness' isn't absurd. Yes, something had to happen, but all the other options result in nothing, while only one option results in life. If you flip a coin 5,000 times in a row and get all heads, it had to come up something, and every one being heads is no more likely than an exact alternation of heads and tails, but it's still a probabilistic freak and you should be examining that coin for two heads.

Basically, the belief that it happened by chance is no more probable than that the coin flipper really knows what he's doing and can decide how the coin will land by how he flips it.