On a related note here’s a really good atheist store I found. Well, primarily atheist and science stuff…

Aristotle’s Muse

Maybe wearing an atheist T-shirt won’t change the world, but then again, it cant hurt. Every little bit helps.

For that matter, it can be mathematically demonstrated that prayers are not answered, either. Even the behavior of religious groups when confronted with practical matter demonstrates that they do not believe in the “power of prayer” either. If they don’t trust that, they must not really have much faith in their “god” either.

You are wrong to suggest that religious views are inconsistent, simply because they are not consistent with materialism. They are often inconsistent with one another, but they are not internally inconsistent.

They are either indeed internally inconsistent, or they are incoherent — they deny that consistency is necessary.

In your case, you’re also denying that you’re inconsistent, which is even more inconsistent.

They simply declare that anything inconsistent with materialism is also internally inconsistent, and out of touch with reality.

I’m sorry that truth hurts your feelings.

This is well demonstrated in your response to my remark about the Advaitic teaching of “nothing ever happened”. You interpret that phrase in a simplistic materialistic manner, without any understanding of the context or tradition of that point of view.

The phrase, as you presented it, is either simply false, utterly incoherent, or tautological to the point of being consistent with materialism. In no way does it answer the question any better than materialism.

And, if you don’t want to be misunderstood, it’s your responsibility to present sufficient “context” or “tradition” to avoid misunderstanding.

Materialists like to reduce everything to something materialism can understand, and then look for inconsistencies, but this is a pointless exercise that demonstrates nothing more than the simple fact the materialism has very little philosophical strength or flexibility, and depends entirely on reductionist arguments.

And immaterialism depends entirely on a failure to analyze its epistemic methods for consistency.

In fact, it is materialism that is even more internally inconsistent than religious views, and that’s why it can’t deal with philosophical issues like this very well, and can’t even see that other views deal with it better.

Your fallacious and incoherent combination of slagging and boasting is noted.

You are wrong to suggest that religious views are inconsistent, simply because they are not consistent with materialism. They are often inconsistent with one another, but they are not internally inconsistent. Or, at least, many religious views are internally consistent and work hard at it.

What I find in many materialists is an inability to even comprehend religious views, and a strong disinclination to even educate themselves about them. They simply declare that anything inconsistent with materialism is also internally inconsistent, and out of touch with reality.

This is well demonstrated in your response to my remark about the Advaitic teaching of “nothing ever happened”. You interpret that phrase in a simplistic materialistic manner, without any understanding of the context or tradition of that point of view. You claim this is inconsistent with a question about why there is something rather than nothing, without understanding what it actually means, and what it doesn’t mean. Materialists like to reduce everything to something materialism can understand, and then look for inconsistencies, but this is a pointless exercise that demonstrates nothing more than the simple fact the materialism has very little philosophical strength or flexibility, and depends entirely on reductionist arguments.

In fact, it is materialism that is even more internally inconsistent than religious views, and that’s why it can’t deal with philosophical issues like this very well, and can’t even see that other views deal with it better.

It might be hard to admit it, but yes, the “why is there something rather than nothing?” question is more internally consistent with religious views than with materialist ones.

“Internally consistent” implies logical coherence, but this is exactly what religion does not have.

In part that’s because religious view are more complex

Or rather, more incoherent.

While materialism wants to put God in a box and define him materially, and even has to, religion does not have that obligation in order to be consistent.

Or rather, religion rejects any sort of obligation to be consistent.

Religion can come up with, and does, all sorts of ways of understanding God which are no materialistic, not bound to “things” or “thingness”, and which render even the notion of “nothing” as a mere dualistic illusion, the flip side of “something”.

And this is fundamentally incoherent.

Of course, you might argue that even the notion of coherence is a mere dualistic illusion. But this destroys your own argument: If you’re going to reject logical consistency, you can’t honestly claim that religion has any consistency in it at all.

My own ultimate religious point of view is closer to the Advaitic teaching that “nothing ever happened”, which is also a great rejoinder to this question.

Which contradicts the sentence you started this comment out with.

It might be hard to admit it, but yes, the “why is there something rather than nothing?” question is more internally consistent with religious views than with materialist ones. In part that’s because religious view are more complex in the first place, and can deal with “God” in ways that materialism can’t. While materialism wants to put God in a box and define him materially, and even has to, religion does not have that obligation in order to be consistent. Religion can come up with, and does, all sorts of ways of understanding God which are no materialistic, not bound to “things” or “thingness”, and which render even the notion of “nothing” as a mere dualistic illusion, the flip side of “something”. So there’s just a whole lot more one can say from a religious point of view about this whole question which materialism hasn’t got the flexibility to work with, or even comprehend, and it’s only response is “hey, that’s not fair according to materialism”, which is moot since most of religion isn’t materialistic to begin with.

My own ultimate religious point of view is closer to the Advaitic teaching that “nothing ever happened”, which is also a great rejoinder to this question.

Or rather:

“Why is “This sentence is true” true rather than false?”

I’m inclined to say that the question is meaningless—it has the form of a meaningful, even a scientific question, but it can always be framed in a way that places it outside any system of causal explanation. It’s a kind of grammatical misfire, like “This sentence (or proposition) is false.”

In order to match the question, perhaps the self-reference needs to be modified a little:

“Why is this sentence true rather than false?”

Or in other words, why is it the case that there is tautology (of truth, for the sentence, or existence, for reality) rather than the incoherence of paradox (of a self-asserted falseness, for the sentence, or of nothingness that can somehow be asked about)?