The self-defeating nature of atheism

[DialecticSkeptic]

What was the cause of ignition?

Gravity, once again.

Very early in the history of our solar system there was only a massive, dense cloud of gas and dust—the solar nebula, the raw materials from which stars and planetary systems form. Any kind of gravitational disturbance can cause regions of this molecular cloud to begin clumping together, so to speak, turbulence and irregularities that create regions with slightly higher or lower densities and velocities. As the material continues to collapse, it conserves its original angular momentum, leading to a spinning, flattened disk around a central concentration of mass. This region, this central concentration of mass, is what will eventually become the sun. Like an ice skater who spins faster when she brings her arms closer to her body, as the cloud's radius decreases during the collapse its rotation rate increases.

As the material continues collapsing, the temperature and pressure at this central mass increases. We still don't have nuclear fusion reaction at this point, so this is not yet a star, but it's getting closer, building up mass by accreting material from the surrounding disk. As the temperature and pressure rise, they eventually reach a point where the hydrogen nuclei (protons) in the core can overcome their mutual electrostatic repulsion. This allows them to get close enough for the strong nuclear force to bind them together. This is the nuclear fusion threshold, the stage where we have the conditions necessary for nuclear fusion to occur. The primary fusion process that initiates in most stars, including the sun, is the proton-proton chain reaction. This reaction involves a series of steps in which four hydrogen nuclei (protons) combine to form one helium nucleus, releasing energy in the form of gamma-ray photons. These photons travel outward through the layers of the protostar, carrying energy towards the surface. This is what provides us light and heat.

So, the protostar became the sun when it crossed that nuclear fusion threshold. We now have that delicate balance of energy being released and gravity trying to collapse the star further, an unstable equilibrium between the outward pressure from fusion and the inward pull of gravity, whereby our sun settled into its main sequence phase.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

[The sun is] too hot to be measured with instruments.

Too hot to be measured directly, like with a thermometer? Sure. But we can measure its temperature indirectly with instruments—namely, a spectrometer, which breaks up the sun's light into different colors. This spectrum has dark lines in it, like a barcode—these are called absorption lines—which scientists use to determine the temperature of the sun. These dark lines tell scientists which elements are present in the sun’s surface and how much they are ionized (i.e., atoms losing or gaining electrons), which allows us to calculate temperature. (For example, hydrogen has one electron, and it takes 13.6 electron volts to remove it from the nucleus.)

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

Do you think a person can be a deist, but irreligious?

Certainly. Thomas Jefferson, for example.

In fact, a person can even be an irreligious theist. Harold Kushner, an American rabbi, described such a person like this:

For the religious mind and soul, the issue has never been the existence of God but the importance of God, the difference that God makes in the way we live. To believe that God exists the way that you believe the South Pole exists, though you have never seen either one, to believe in the reality of God the way you believe in the Pythagorean theorem as an accurate abstract statement that does not really affect your daily life, is not a religious stance. A God who exists but does not matter, who does not make a difference in the way you live, might as well not exist.
​

Harold Kushner, Who Needs God? (Summit Books, 1989), p. 23.

In my opinion, many deists are essentially atheists. Their god is only an intellectual answer to a beginning, and its subsequent naturalism—and irrelevant otherwise. They suppress (Romans 1) their knowledge of God and pursue No-God.

Well ... [complicated sigh] ... I think the context of Romans 1 establishes that belief in anything other than the only true God amounts to atheism. In that sense, yes, deists are atheists.

Going by philosophical definitions, though, deism actually contradicts atheism. According to Graham Oppy (2019, 6), who is arguably the most erudite and credible atheist philosopher, "Atheism is the claim that there are no gods, and atheists are those who believe that there are no gods."

Source: Graham Oppy, Atheism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2019).