The Atheist Blogger has posted a short story about a Christian and atheist on judgement day. It’s pretty good — take a look.
When God asks Eve (the atheist) why he should let her in to heaven, she replies:
“Because I am a better person than you. You have shown it yourself already. You told Martin that you watched as his mother became ill and died. You destroyed him for believing for no good reason, when his whole life had been shaped by that belief. Your preachers on Earth encourage unquestioning faith, yet you do not tell us whether that is what you want. You give people no rational basis for belief, and then when they make up their own that is not good enough for you.
“You listen to our prayers, yet do not answer, leaving people to rationalise events for themselves. People kill and slaughter over trivial differences in doctrine, and you look on. In the churches and temples raised in your glory, children are mentally and physically abused — in your so-called House! All over the world, throughout history, people have murdered each other for believing the wrong thing about God, for believing in the wrong God, or for not believing in any God.
“The poorest and most helpless people are relentlessly targeted, being told to give what little they have now, for the promise of eternal bliss later. When a person is at his lowest ebb, that is when the smiling missionaries appear, knowing that his life will probably get better naturally and they can give you the credit. In your name, the ends justify the means as long as souls are saved”. Eve paused for breath, and continued.
“And you? All-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing? You just sit here and you watch it all… Any person in this line, had they your power, would show greater compassion and morality. You may be God, but you are far from Godliness.”
(via McBloggenstein)
Nelly: ditto 
Anthony D Jacques: I love how God saying “Thou Shalt Not Kill” comes off so Do as I say, not as I do. Christians are... 
Leah: These people came to my school and protested…. I can’t help wondering if maybe they are just a... 
gmcfly: Someone needs to read Romans 13. 
Francesco Orsenigo: It’s scary. As much as I support total freedom of speech (for example, I don’t like laws against... 
Olaf: I agree, the US has no a president that they should be proud of. One with brains and that gets a lot of respect from the... 
86 Comments
This entire line of reasoning depends on the notion that no rational basis for Christian belief has been provided.
There is plenty of cogent rational argumentation to make Christian belief undeniable.
I’ve yet to hear any of this rational argumentation, and trust me, I’ve been looking for a long while. Where might it be found?
@JK: That’s a pretty big claim, especially since many of us are former Christians. Please provide some of this evidence/rational argumentation that makes Christianity “undeniable” instead of just claiming it exists.
J.K. Jones,
If Christian belief were undeniable, I would have a hard time denying it. I approach this whole topic with the best of intentions. I cannot find a rational basis for Christianity.
I have provided such on my own blog.
I am not going to be able to provide the arguments here for a while due to deadlines at work. I apologize. I will be back ASAP.
I checked your blog, and I didn’t see anything of any real substance.
Please post whatever you have here, in this thread, as soon as possible.
@JK
If you have the missing link, the one that undeniably proves that not only God exists but that furthermore Christianity is the one true religion I sincerely doubt that God would let any misfortune befall you in your attempt to provide it to us unbelievers. Most of have waited and quite literally search our whole lives for such proof. I am sure that your deadlines at work are not more important than our souls and that God will take care of it for this more holy pursuit.
Do not delay provide the information right away. I can’t wait to see it!!
You might be able to argue for the possibility of the existence of some sort of god (note the lowercase) rationally, but if you want to prove through reason the “undeniable” existence of a Christian God, you’d be extremely hard pressed to do so.
“Christian beliefs,” by the way, are wholly deniable. The nature of the term “belief” underlines this.
Sam,
I’m sure God has His own timing.
In the meantime, you’ll just have to go out of your way and read my blog.
Now, now. This nice person has volunteered to be our “special friend.” Let’s be polite, at least until we’re sure he’s not John C’s sockpuppet.
J.K. Jones, there are a great number of posts on your blog. If you could please point us to a post that makes a “cogent rational argumentation to make Christian belief undeniable,” I’m sure we’d all be grateful.
I’ll help J.K. out, and get everyone started if you’d like.
I found this on his blog:
———————————————————–
Eleven Reasons Why Christianity is The Only True Religion
1. God is who He is.
2. God has done what He has done.
3. It explains logic and rational thought.
4. It makes science possible.
5. Jesus is the best example.
6. It explains the presence of evil.
7. It answers the problem of evil.
8. It gives a certain promise of heaven.
9. It changes the world for the better.
10. It leads to joy.
11. It has changed my life.
[also...]
God’s existence is as plain as the nose on our faces (Romans 1:18-19). Many, from The Apostle Paul to St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to John Gerstner to Greg Bahnsen, have proven the faith beyond doubt. The problem is not the lack of evidence, but the suppression of it. The unbeliever does not want to submit to God, so he or she refuses to acknowledge the truth that is plain (Romans 1:21-23).
There is no need to fall back on a position that says God’s existence is to be taken on faith, as if faith is something that goes beyond reason. The Christian faith is the wisdom of God that makes foolish the wisdom of this world (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)
——————————————————————
It all sounds pretty slam dunk to me! (note my sarcasm)
I should note that each of the 11 reasons are not just as you see them. They are subjects for a series of posts for which he elaborates on each reason.
Saw that too. A more subjective list I have never seen.
When I read the first one i started singing the Popeye theme :)
Yup pretty slam dunkish LOL
“God’s existence is as plain as the nose on our faces …”
Reminds me of the first century Roman – wish I could remember the name – who said that we know that Gods exist because they are plainly visible to the eye.
They hadn’t figured out what the planets were, you see.
Sam,
You have read an outline (subject headings) for a series of posts. The posts outline arguments.
By the way, insults are not rational arguments.
Vorjak,
You are taking a quote out of the context of the logical argument after which it was given.
Are you all always this condecending? No wonder more rational Christians do not comment.
@J.K. Jones
My comment was not an insult aimed at you. It was merely an off-topic musing that took your comment as a starting point. I’m a historian; I’m allowed to do that.
Hmmmm …
“God is as he is.”
“God is a Spirit.”
“God is infinite.”
“God is eternal, or unlimited by time.”
I think this is what I dislike most about theology. We have here a structure of assertions, each independent yet supporting one another. But each of these assertions are derived from … what? Experiment? Measurement? Verified observation? No, each of these remains a mere assertion. Theology doesn’t just admit this kind of thing, theology demands it.
I suppose we’re not really supposed to ask for details. What is spirit? What are its properties? How do we describe it? How do we know it’s there? What does it mean for an entity to be infinite? How can we finite beings describe and comprehend an infinite being? We’re not supposed to ask questions of epistemology. No, requiring that theological statements be testable or based on evidence would be “verification-ism.” Can’t allow logical positivism to pollute the nice clean mud of theology.
We wouldn’t permit this in any other field. But theologians are permitted to make their own fog and get lost in it.
Let’s see if JK would count something like this as evidence for “undeniability” for a religion:
1. Brahma is who He is.
2. Shiva has done what He has done.
3. Hinduism explains logic and rational thought.
4. Hinduism makes science possible.
5. Vishnu is the best example.
6. Hinduism explains the presence of evil.
7. Hinduism answers the problem of evil.
8. Hinduism gives a certain promise of an afterlife.
9. Hinduism changes the world for the better.
10. Hinduism leads to joy.
11. Hinduism has changed my life.
Ergo, Hinduism is Undeniable!!!!
And, JK, don’t think I couldn’t round up some apologetics to support each point. It would be ever so easy. The Hindus were at that sort of thing when your Middle-Eastern goatherders were banking rocks together for fun.
Since Hinduism is undeniable by your own stands, JK, are you prepared to set upon the Vedic path of Sanatana-dharma?
Vorjak,
You evidentially did not bother to read the section of that post that clearly stated that this was intuitive to me. That post was not intended to be a carefully laid out argument, and it was followed by arguments which proved most of the points. These were not mere assertions when taken in the series of posts.
By the way, are you trying to defend the notion that only what can be verified by the senses can possible be true (one definition of logical positivism)? If so, give me evidence that my senses can detect that “only what can be verified by the senses can possible be true.”
Aor,
I have been trying to respond to your posts using the wonderful invention called an iPhone. But have you ever tried to type a detailed comment on a keyboard that small. I respond on my next comment.
Aquaria,
You evidentially did not read the arguments given in the series of posts. For the last time, the individual posts in the series give the arguments. The arguments rule out the other Gods you mention. I can explain why if you wish to comment on those posts.
The next comment will outline my argument.
Here’s the outline of the argument (not the argument, just the outline):
1. God is.
1a. Something has always existed (is self-existence).
1b. That something exists independently of anything or anyone else.
1c. That something is eternal, unchanging, extremely powerful, and capable of acting without outside influence.
1d. The universe we find ourselves in has things in it which act toward an end (have purpose).
1e. Only an intelligence can cause things to move toward an end.
1f. The universe has moved toward an end since its beginning.
1g. The something discussed from 1a to 1c is extremely intelligent.
1h. The something so discussed acts toward a purpose.
1j. The something which can act without outside influence is intelligent and purposeful.
1k. The Something is at least Personal.
1l. The Something has the essential attributes of the theistic God.
2. The Christian faith is the only true faith.
2a. The New Testament is composed of books written by people who were in a position to know about the life of Jesus Christ.
2b. Jesus Christ’s teaching and actions are captured by those documents.
2c. Jesus Christ claimed to be (the theistic) God in the flesh.
2d. Jesus Christ did things only a messenger from God could do.
2e. Jesus must be God in the flesh.
2f. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God and true in all it says.
2g. The Christian faith is the faith taught in the Bible.
2h. The Christian faith must be true.
I’ll comment soon on points 1a to 1c, but it will probably be tommorrow.
Here’s the first round (1a-1c). I got to it sooner than expected.
I exist. I must exist in order to deny my own existence. This may seem an obvious point, but some make much of the idea that everything we see is an illusion. Even if that is the case, I must exist in order to experience the illusion.
I was caused. There was a time when I came to be. My own self-awareness and the empirical evidence that I find support this.
There must have been a cause of my existence. If I trace back from the cause of my existence to the cause of the cause of my existence, and so on, I must arrive at something that never came to be. The series of causes cannot go back without end. Some examples follow.
It is not possible to count to the end of the series of positive real numbers when you start at zero (0, 1, 2, 3, 4…). You can always count one more. It is, in one sense, an infinite series of discrete things. You cannot count to the end of the string of positive numbers; it has no end. Starting from zero, you cannot count to the beginning of the string of negative numbers; it has no beginning (0, -1, -2, -3, …). We go endlessly in either direction. We cannot count either up or down through an endless series of numbers. If we count forward to zero, we must start counting from a particular negative number, or we will never count to zero.
It is similarly impossible to move through an endless series of discrete moments of time. To use the typical person’s understanding of time as an example, if time extends forward endlessly it will obviously never end. Reversing the process, if time extends endlessly into the past, time would never have arrived at this moment because an endless number of moments of time would have elapsed to get to now.
Going back to the series of causes leading up to me, this series cannot contain an endless number of causes in the past because I would then be the end of an endless series of causes, which is impossible. There must have been a first cause to begin the series of causes that lead to my existence. This first cause must have always existed in order to give a starting place to the series.
This first cause must always exist because it has the power of being in itself. Again, it existed before everything else, so nothing else could cause it to be. It’s being is not caused by anything but itself.
This first cause must have the power to bring about everything else. It was the only thing that existed at the time of creation, so everything must have been a result of its action. If it has the power to cause everything to be, it must have the ability to cease to cause everything to be. It can create or destroy.
This first cause must be able to cause itself to act to produce everything else. The first cause existed before everything else, so there was nothing else to cause it to act. This ability to act or not to act implies something like the freedom of choice. Free choice is a key element of personhood.
So the argument has arrived at a being that has always existed and cannot cease to exist (what Christian theology has called being ‘eternal’). This being has the power to bring the universe into existence or take the universe out of existence (what Christian theology has meant by omnipotence; the power to do anything with the creation that is possible), and has the power to cause itself to act (this is part of the foundation for personhood).
What if the universe has some element in it that has always existed? Then that element must have always existed and cannot cease to exist, has the power to bring the universe into existence or destroy it, and has the power to cause itself to act. Now we are just arguing about the name of the first cause, not its essential nature.
This eternal, self-existent, omnipotent, seemingly personal First Cause is remarkably similar to the God of Christianity. Of course, the other versions of a theistic god are not ruled out yet; that will come much later.
Other evidence from our universe leads us to other attributes, but this is enough for us to discuss for now.
Actually JK I haven’t posted a comment on this article.
But now that you refer to me, for whatever reason, I guess I will.
Your claim seems to be that there is plenty of ‘cogent rational argumentation to make christian belief undeniable.’ Well sorry to say it, but your list is neither cogent, nor rational.
All you do is make a series of baseless claims.
The circularity of your ‘reasoning’ is blatant. Your initial premise is to assume the existence of a god. Not just any god, not just a creator, but the christian god.
Same old junk, JK. You will need to do a lot better.
@J.K. Jones
“You evidentially did not bother to read the section of that post that clearly stated that this was intuitive to me.”
I had, actually. But from the perspective of the reader, there is no difference between a mere assertion of a fact and the statement that you intuit a fact. I have no access to your intuition.
I am not a sooty empiricist. The line about logical positivism comes from some responses I’ve seen from theologians. Apparently, the suggestion that a theory should at some point test itself against reality is not acceptable to some. If you are not one who finds this unacceptable, ignore the comment.
Moving on …
“If it has the power to cause everything to be, it must have the ability to cease to cause everything to be.”
I’m not sure this follows. It is easy to conceive of a way where it is possible to create without the having the ability to destroy. I could, for example, touch off a chemical reaction that results in such a stable compound that I cannot destroy it.
“So the argument has arrived at a being that has always existed and cannot cease to exist.”
I think you’re jumping ahead a bit by using words like “being.” It is possible to imagine an alternative force that is eternal and capable of bringing about the universe. For example, the concept of the “meta-verse,” which has existed eternally, will continue to exist forever, and from which universes continue to arise like bubble is the ocean. It has the added advantage of working easily with the hyper-inflationary model – and the added disadvantage of working well with string theory.
This would be the “first cause”, the element of the universe -or behind the universe – that has existed eternally, yet it would not have the essential nature that you describe. It seems to me, to discuss a “being,” a “seemingly personal First Cause” is as yet unwarranted.
@ J.K. Jones – I LOVE that idea. I DO have evidence that god is undeniable. I DO have utterly unrefutable truth that god exists, christianity is not bullpoo and that that which countless learned men and women, throughout the existence of mankind have sought yet not found exists. But I’m afraid I can’t share it with you “due to deadlines at work”.
Fabulous. :)
Maybe this is a joke. J.K. Jones can’t be serious. We’re all intelligent adults, and he can’t seriously think that any of us will fall for the same old logical fallacies, however incoherently he words them. Maybe J.K. stands for just kidding.
*tweeet*
Cosmological Argument.
10 Yard Penalty.
Repeat First Down.
@J. K. Jones
“So the argument has arrived at a being …”
I think you’ll find that you started with this as the answer and then worked backwards to find the ‘facts’ that support this answer.
What I don’t understand is that any so called evidence (that believers confidentiality put forward as to why not only is there a god but is just so happens to be the one that they believe in) can only be believed if you have faith in it being your own brand of god that did it in the first place or out of wilful ignorance of the facts. Surely if you have unswerving faith in the Christian god then the only purpose of this ‘evidence’ that you’ve put forward is to try and claim that if makes your faith somehow rationale. Why can’t you just admit that you belief is based in faith and nothing else just like all the other religions that you don’t believe in; why are there a section of believers who have to embarrass themselves by trying to ‘prove’ that their belief is perfectly rationale whereas Islam, fairies, Norse mythology is obviously all mumbo-jumbo?
A = A
A = A
How?
How?
Why is he a better example than, for example, Gandhi? Make sure you reference his beliefs on slavery and his numerous angry outbursts.
How?
No, it really doesn’t. Unless you assume that God is either incompetant or malicious.
So, if I were to promise you super-heaven with no evidence that it existed, you’d convert?
If you ignore the Inquisition and the Crusades and the various religious wars and clinic bombings, right?
“The fact that a believer is happier than an atheist is no more relevant than the fact that a drunkard is happier than a sober man. –Bertrand Russel
And why is your life so significant to the truth? John Travolta’s life was changed by Scientology? Does that make Scientology the One True Religion? Why should I care what either of you think?
JK:
The problem with the “first cause” argument is that causality (along with time) is a property of the universe. “Before the Big Bang” doesn’t make sense as the scale of time that we use didn’t exist without the universe. There might be a time-analogue outside the universe that we could use to measure such things, but there’s no reason to believe that there is. And, even if there is, there’s no reason to believe that causality holds in that domain. And, even if there’s a form of time and a form of causality, there’s no reason to believe that, from that point of view, the Big Bang was a beginning. It might appear to be the end of the universe, entirely “caused” by events internal to the universe. Or it might even be a boundary in space rather than in time.
It’s all very confusing, because causality is so ingrained in the way that we conceive of the world. But there’s no reason to believe that the universe needs a cause, and you’ve not provided anything beyond “well, that’s what it looks like from here” – and most of 20th Century science has been proving that that’s a really bad position to argue.
So, let’s not have any more “first cause” arguments, without a better reason to believe that they apply, OK? Thanks.
Continuing on …
“The series of causes cannot go back without end.”
William Lain Craig is fond of this argument as well, but I’m leery of it. It seems to me that you’re intuiting on aspects of infinity with an intuition grounded in the finite. However, dealing with mathematical infinities is a complicated subject that I am no expert on. I’ll simply point to the philosopher Graham Oppy’s essay, “Time, Successive Addition, and Kalam Cosmological Arguments,” and pass on. Respond or not as you see fit.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/gifford.html
I think Aquaria hit the nail on the head about that outline. They can be asserted to support any religion.
J.K.
I don’t see how using real numbers to argue a first cause makes sense. You say that positive real numbers can infinitely add numbers, and negative real numbers can infinitely subtract numbers. But those are only subsets of all numbers.
Your assumption is that our universe, that began, and supposedly had a cause, is like saying that all events that have ever happened on the great timeline had to start somewhere. The great timeline does not go infinitely backwards. The great timeline started at zero.
So, with this way of thinking, our universe and time as we know it are like positive real numbers, which have a clear beginning. But, like I said before, they are only a subset of all numbers.
How do we know that the universe started at the big bang? The measurable universe and time as we know it may have started then, but that does not have to follow that there was absolutely nothing before that event. Nor that it had a cause, nor that a ‘being’ did it.
If your answer is that God was before it, and since your argument is heavily based on cause, then what caused God? It is not admissible to say that God did not need a cause based on your logic.
J.K.,
That is one long list of suppositions. As far as the necessity of a self-existent creator is concerned – any reasonably competent Buddhist philosopher could mop up the floor with you.
I know you won’t listen, but on the off-chance that you will – stop. You’re embarrassing yourself. You’re entirely out of your depth.
Ooh, warm fuzzies for a Sunday morning.
Reading J.K.’s arguments got me all hot and bothered and aching to kick the snot out of some major wrong. But since he just got about six different smackdowns for bringing that tired old Kalam argument, I’ll go work off the excess energy with the wife.
…
We’re planning on going snowshoeing. Just thought I should be clear on that.
“We’re planning on going snowshoeing”
Is that what the kids are calling it these days? ;)
Snowshoeing seems to be more popular recently. My wife and I got two sets for christmas.
“rational Christians”
Oxymoron if I ever heard one! ;)
It’s a little frustrating to realize that the very thing that you were struggling to articulate has already been said. And said better than you could have said it at that. Deacon Duncan over at Evangelical Realism comes forward with the following in his critique of William Lane Craig. It’s a much better formulation of what I was trying to get at with my “mere assertion” comment:
“We’ve barely scratched the surface of Dr. William Lane Craig’s “Theistic Critiques of Atheism,” but we’re already seeing a pattern develop: in the rarified heights of philosophical theism, they dispense with any obligation to find God in the real world, and instead impress each other with the complexity and subtlety of the characteristics they can imagine that a perfect God might possess. To their credit, they do manage to think some deep thoughts, but without that connection to the real world (which they dismiss as “Verificationism”), they risk ending up like the fellow who grew so obsessed with fantasizing about the Perfect Lover that he lost all interest in real women.
The problem with philosophy is that, if you’re really good at it, you’re tempted to forget that genuine reality is a bit too vast and complex to be contained by a finite human mind. You forget that you are dealing with abstractions—details that have been separated from their real-world context so as to simplify the task of considering their characteristics. You forget that, by isolating the details from their context, you are working with facts that are, to some degree, false. You’ve broken their connection to the rest of reality, and thus interrupted the perfect self-consistency that is the characteristic of truth.”
http://blog.evangelicalrealism.com/2009/01/07/theistic-critiques-of-atheism-part-4/
MilitantAtheist, Wormwood, Jeff Eyges, Metro, and Larian LeQuella
Ad hominem abusive arguments are fallacious.
Aor,
“All you do is make a series of baseless claims.”
Rational argumentation was provided for 1a-1c. There is more to come.
“The circularity of your ‘reasoning’ is blatant. Your initial premise is to assume the existence of a god. Not just any god, not just a creator, but the christian god.”
The initial heading (1.) is not a premise. Neither are the subheadings. These are parts of an outline. The initial premise is buried in the argument for 1a to 1c, and I do not assume any kind of god in the argument.
VorJack,
“…there is no difference between a mere assertion of a fact and the statement that you intuit a fact. I have no access to your intuition.”
But you have access to intuition of your own. This particular post was not intended to be a rational argument. Cogent argument is provided in the next few posts in that series.
“…The line about logical positivism comes from some responses I’ve seen from theologians.”
That is not an answer to the argument raised by those theologians.
“…the suggestion that a theory should at some point test itself against reality is not acceptable to some.”
The argument given for 1a to 1c does use information about the world we find ourselves in.
“It is easy to conceive of a way where it is possible to create without the having the ability to destroy. I could, for example, touch off a chemical reaction that results in such a stable compound that I cannot destroy it.”
You are creating something from pre-existent matter. But the force of the argument is not redirected by this objection anyway. You still have a First Cause that is extremely powerful.
“…an alternative force that is eternal and capable of bringing about the universe.”
This alternative force can only come from a being of some kind that has always existed. It must have the attiributes I have outlined.
“…the “meta-verse,” which has existed eternally, will continue to exist forever, and from which universes continue to arise… This would be the “first cause”, the element of the universe -or behind the universe – that has existed eternally, yet it would not have the essential nature that you describe…”
This abstract meta-verse must have the attributes outlined in the argument. It must have existed eternally and have existed at first without anything else around it. Nothing else existed when this First Cause did. It is independent, and therefore must be powerful and able to act without outside influence.
“…to discuss a “being,”…”
Force is an abstract concept used to describe the action of one being on another. It is like the concept of power. Neither force nor power exist. These concepts only describe something’s action on something else.
Rik,
I did respond above if you want to read the other comments.
Jabster,
“I think you’ll find that you started with this as the answer and then worked backwards to find the ‘facts’ that support this answer.”
I am biased. I was raised a Christian, and I have attended church all my life (with the exception of a few years in college). I freely admit that. But the argument stands on its own. It does not assume anything in the premises.
While in high school, I often worked homework assignment in algebra where the answers were given in the back of the book. I had the answer when I started to work the problem, but my teacher could still look at my work and tell when I had merely copied it. The worked problem stood on its own merits or demerits (my papers often had red marks).
I have good reasons to hold the faith I hold.
Wintermute,
“A = A”
As stated already, this is not intended as a full argument. It is merely an admission that I do have a bias. That bias has been discussed above.
“2. God has done what He has done. A = A”
The argument does not assume the existence of a First Cause before it is proven. Note: I have not yet arrived at the Christian God. I have proved Something’s existence and some of the attributes of it/him.
“It explains logic and rational thought. How? It makes science possible. How?”
How is it that the random motions of molecules / atoms / sub-atomic particles is even describable in logical terms? Randomness does not follow a pattern. (More on that in 1d and following.)
“Jesus… Why is he a better example than, for example, Gandhi? Make sure you reference his beliefs on slavery and his numerous angry outbursts.”
I never said Gandhi was a poor example. I just think that being the Divine Son of God gives Him certain advantages.
“…evil…Unless you assume that God is either incompetant or malicious.”
The standard argument that God cannot exist because of the existence of evil depends upon two premises: that there is actually such a thing as evil and that there is no good reason for evil to exist. You will have a hard time demonstrating that those two premises are true, as argued in the full post.
“…the Inquisition and the Crusades and the various religious wars and clinic bombings, right?”
We could also discuss Stalin, Lenin, Po Pot, Mao and some others. Evil men, whether religious or not, do evil things. At least the Christian can call something truly evil.
As to the rest, you could just bother to read the individual posts. The rest of the posts follow from the arguments given in the first few.
Wintermute,
“…causality (along with time) is a property of the universe…”
Nothing comes from nothing. Out of nothing, nothing comes. Try basing science on something else.
““Before the Big Bang” doesn’t make sense as the scale of time that we use didn’t exist without the universe.”
I an not arguing from time, I am arguing from a chain of physical causes. The time allusion was just an analogy based on a common understanding of time.
“… there’s no reason to believe that causality holds in that domain…”
Then that domain is outside the reach of empirical / scientific methods. We can’t experiment on anything without assuming some form of causality. We can’t even come up with a null hypothesis.
“…the Big Bang was a beginning…”
I never referenced the Big Bang. I argued from what now exists to properties of something that must have always existed.
“…entirely “caused” by events internal to the universe…”
The First Cause might well be within the universe in a certain sense. It could, for example, be holding the universe together right now from within. Norman Geisler does a good job of arguing for that very fact, and I’ll leave that set of arguments to him.
I’ll just say that the First Cause within the universe must have the attributes given in the argument for 1a to 1c.
“…there’s no reason to believe that the universe needs a cause, and you’ve not provided anything beyond “well, that’s what it looks like from here” – and most of 20th Century science has been proving that that’s a really bad position to argue.”
I’d like to know how scientific experimentation has denied the logical / philosophical argument I have given. Something does not come into being from nothing. Just because quantum mechanics has not yet found out why certain particles appear does not mean that the pop into being without cause.
“…let’s not have any more “first cause” arguments, without a better reason to believe that they apply, OK? Thanks.”
I have answered, at great length, all of the objections so far. It seems the first cause argument is not dead yet.
VorJack,
“…intuiting on aspects of infinity with an intuition grounded in the finite. However, dealing with mathematical infinities is a complicated subject that I am no expert on…”
That’s the other horn of the kalaam argument: an actual infinite cannot exist. An actual infinite set of finite things is obscured. What’s infinity plus one? Infinity. What’s infinity plus infinity? Infinity. There are other issues with it.
That’s why I used the term ‘unending.’ Fits reality better.
I’ll read the article from the link as soon as possible.
Daniel Florien,
“…They can be asserted to support any religion.”
Not the actual argument, just the outline of them. The actual arguments given in the posts are cogent.
McBloggenstein,
“…positive real numbers can infinitely add numbers, and negative real numbers can infinitely subtract numbers. But those are only subsets of all numbers…”
I said the common understanding of them is that they are unending. That’s a different concept than “infinite.”
“…all events that have ever happened on the great timeline had to start somewhere. The great timeline does not go infinitely backwards. The great timeline started at zero…”
It’s not a timeline, it’s a discrete string of causes.
“…How do we know that the universe started at the big bang? The measurable universe and time as we know it may have started then, but that does not have to follow that there was absolutely nothing before that event. Nor that it had a cause, nor that a ‘being’ did it.”
There was never a time when there was nothing. Out of nothing, nothing comes. If there ever was nothing, then there would not be anything.
Something that existed, that was a ‘being’ in that sense, must have always been and must have existed independently of everything else.
“…what caused God? It is not admissible to say that God did not need a cause based on your logic.”
As per the argument, something existed at some point that did not have a cause or we would have not arrived on the scene. Something has always existed or there would be nothing now.
Vorjack,
I hope you enjoy your snowshoeing trip.
“…dispense with any obligation to find God in the real world…”
The argument given starts with the real world as we find it.
Besides, the quote you give could end up with a form of logical positivism. That was addressed several comments ago.
“…genuine reality is a bit too vast and complex to be contained by a finite human mind…”
I agree wholeheartedly. We will never understand everything about the universe we live in or the First Cause that must have created it. But that does not mean we cannot understand anything about the universe we live in. That conclusion does not follow.
Boy, am I working on a good case of carpal tunnel syndrome after all of this. I also feel very lonely.
Lonely? Isn’t Mr God always with you?
Ah. So, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re saying that because God always existed, he didn’t need a cause? If so, then that is very convenient to believe such a thing so as to elude his existence from the “cause” argument.
JK, you simply aren’t getting it.
Your proof, if it truly was logical and valid and reasonable, would have been commonly accepted for thousands of years. The idea that you somehow have found a way to prove the unprovable is frankly ludicrous. If you had, you would be winning awards from countless christian institutions. Not to mention every other religion.
I ignored the bulk of your words, largely because I notice you fail to understand the elementary points people raised.
I did notice that you accept that the framework of your argument is just as applicable to other religions. Think closely about that for a while, truly think about it. If you are trying to somehow trying to convince people with that argument while also acknowledging that it supports anything else that anyone else wants it to support, then you have tragically failed.
Obviously you’re allowed to take offense to jokes made at your expense, but it does not make any argument invalid. You must realize that your first comment here made an extraordinary claim, which then would require extraordinary evidence from us for discussion purposes.
As Aor just pointed out, if there were really “plenty of cogent rational argumentation to make Christian belief undeniable,” as you said, then clearly there would be no need to debate this topic. But, as you know, there clearly is a need, and I doubt it is because those that are not Christians just haven’t been been made aware of this “cogent rational argumentation” you say exists.
I was assuming that it was a conclusion, rather than an argument. The point is that, regardless of its logical form, it’s completely meaningless. What does it tell us, to assert that God = God? Even the strictest atheist can agree with that without problem, after all.
You are right; there’s no pattern, and it isn’t describable in logical terms. I’m not sure I understand the point you’re making, though.
You specifically said that Jesus was the best example, which means that he is better than any other. I never said that you claimed that Gandhi was a poor example, just that you claimed that Jesus was a better one. Does the fact that you refuse to explain exactly why this is mean that you were wrong to use the word “best”? Or are you just unable to actually support your choice with actual moral examples?
Assume that God is omnipotent. Therefore, he is capable of doing (literally) anything. Therefore, he is capable of arranging the universe such that the best possible outcome occurs without any pain, harm or “evil” occurring in the execution of that plan. Any pain or harm that does occur cannot possibly be necessary for a particular outcome (because an omnipotent God is not so limited), but must be cause by God for its own sake. God must deliberately cause suffering for suffering’s sake without it actually doing any more to advance his aims than a suffering-free option.
Without religion, good men would do good and evil men would do evil; but it takes religion to make good men do evil.
And there are plenty of moral systems that allow one to define “good” and “evil” without reference to a holy book. Really, most people do it, and then shoehorn their holy book to fit their pre-selected moral scheme. For example, do you agree with your God’s moral stance on slavery, or on the treatment of prisoners of war? Or on the eating of shellfish, for that matter?
Particle-antiparticle pairs come from nothing. This is been empirically observed in Hawking radiation around black holes and in the Casimir effect. Try actually knowing a thing or two about science before you make claims like that.
I an not arguing from time, I am arguing from a chain of physical causes. The time allusion was just an analogy based on a common understanding of time.
Causes require time. Without time, you can’t separate events into “cause” and effect”. If there is a beginning to time, then the “chain of physical causes” must also have a beginning.
Well, you attempted to. However, your complete lack of understanding of cosmology and quantum physics means that you don’t even know that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
No, it’s not that we’ve not yet found out what causes quantum effects; it’s that the mathematics says that they cannot possibly have any kind of cause. If they do have a cause, then they’d be theoretically predictable, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would go out the window. Given that microchips absolutely require that electron ground state changes will happen utterly at random, every computer, phone, DVD player, digital watch and even toaster on the planet is continually running millions of experiments every second that demonstrates that quantum events happen without cause. If you honestly believe that these events are not truly random, I recommend that you avoid using anything electronic. Unless of course, you like catching fire.
No, it’s been dead for over a hundred years. But people who don’t know what they’re talking about still trot it out because it sounds impressive and requires a fair amount of advanced physics to talk about (either pro- or anti-), so they can baffle people without too much risk of being contradicted.
Feel free to do a little actual research before you claim that you’re right.
@JK
“I am biased. I was raised a Christian, and I have attended church all my life (with the exception of a few years in college). I freely admit that. But the argument stands on its own. It does not assume anything in the premises.”
Yet as has been pointed out by many of the posters here you argument for just any old creator is flawed let alone the creator being the Christian god. So there are two answers to this a) you’ve done your research in an unbiased way and the answer magically ends up as confirming the religion you grow up as. You are therefore merely guilty of ignorance of the subject you are studying or b) you wish to ‘prove’ that your faith is correct and is not irrational so have deluded yourself with this ‘proof’ either consciously or otherwise. If this was done consciously then you are intellectually dishonest.
Of course the answer will become clear when you either admit that some of the points you’ve made are incorrect and you argument is flawed or you start doing lots of hand waving in you answers.
@J.K.
I didn’t ad hominem you. I called you wrong. Or, if you prefer to be pedantic, I called your arguments wrong.
Via Wikipedia:
You made no factual claims. You came with the Kalam argument, circular in reasoning, unfalsifiable, and with no face value on this blog. Unless you’re claiming that wrongness is somehow one of your attributes, which I might be willing to grant you, then where did I attack the messenger rather than the message?
But since practically everyone else here had already called it for me, I didn’t bother engaging. I stuck with calling you wrong.
Which I can now do again.
Metro:
It seems to be fashionable amongst the kids these days to use “ad hominem” as a synonym for “insult”.
I assume they think it makes them look smart because, you know, it’s Latin.
wintermute
I’m just being a devil’s advocate here (plus I’m curious myself), but don’t they come about from certain pre existing energy levels? Which would mean that the energy field was there first?
Of course I don’t think that this energy had to have a cause or anything.
J.K.
ONLY come from a being? It MUST have your attributes? I would understand if you said that you feel that the evidence and logic point toward a “being” having certain properties, but to say it can ONLY come from a being? Your admitted bias clearly shows through here, do you realize?
This goes along with the common way of thinking among theists that everything has meaning, and a purpose. It’s really no different than the fallacy that you and I are here for a reason, and that our souls will live for eternity after death. There’s absolutely no reason to believe either, and is merely wishful thinking in order to explain things.
As I understand it (and I’ll be the first to admit that that’s not very well), it’s basically a matter of starting out with 0, and ending up with +1 and -1 (and they very quickly combine back to 0). Obviously, there is an existing matrix that this all occurs within, and it’s hard for us to prove that this would still happen if the universe wasn’t there, but most current models in QM say that they come from literally nothing.
My nuclear physicist friend likes to say that stability is hard work, so instability is the default state of physics. Why is everything in the universe spinning? Because it is really hard not to pick up some spin. Why does a particle and anti-particle appear out of nowhere every now and then? Because it is apparently very hard for that not to happen.
But, at the risk of repeating myself too often, J. K. is doing just as much hand waving at John C does, he’s just doing it slightly more coherently.
Once you strip away the conjecture and baseless assertions, there is absolutely nothing left of the argument. If you are trying to build your house of cards in mid air, it will collapse no matter how many cards you throw at it.
It seems like a lot of these supposedly ‘rational’ theistic arguments are the equivalent of throwing out cards so fast that you hope no one notices they are all just falling to the ground.
McBloggenstein,
“ONLY come from a being? It MUST have your attributes?”
I was referring to the discussion of force as an abstract concept. I just mean that a being of some kind must be behind the force. I have not tied any attributes to that being at this point in this particular discussion. Something, rather than nothing, is required to deliver a force.
Speaking in general, something, rather than nothing, influences another something. That is what we call a force.
“This goes along with the common way of thinking among theists that everything has meaning, and a purpose…”
It is not that these things have meaning and purpose. It’s that they can be described rationally. There is a real pattern we can recognize with our senses. There is a logical pattern that we have recognized that we can assume will be there in the future.
There is absolutely no reason to think that we are more than just matter in motion, just a bundle of particles, if we live within an atheist worldview. Everything that rational thought or discourse depends upon is lost. We have no reason to have an argument.
An atheist who argues with me is assuming things he cannot prove just to argue at all.
Of course, as a theology professor of mine used to say, “It is not reasonable to give reasons against reason.” We can reason, so there must be something more out there than atheism allows.
“…wishful thinking in order to explain things.”
Or perhaps your thinking about the universe is just wishful thinking about how to explain things. Did you create in your own mind a universe without a God in order to avoid being accountable to Him? The charge cuts both ways, or it doesn’t cut at all. No one is without bias. No one is completely objective.
Ty,
“Once you strip away the conjecture and baseless assertions…”
Exactly what conjecture and baseless assertions are you referring to in the argument presented in my comments above? What is the issue with the “kalaam cosmological argument” as it has been called by others here? Don’t send me somewhere else. Don’t mask your issues in technical language. Give me one little argument, please.
“…the equivalent of throwing out cards so fast that you hope no one notices they are all just falling to the ground.”
That is the whole point of what I said to McBloggenstein above. Any atheist who argues with me is doing precisely that.
There is no reason to think there is such a thing as intellectual reasoning in an atheist worldview. An atheist cannot prove that what his senses are detecting is true. He cannot prove that his though patterns are more than just chemical interactions. He cannot prove that the world will function in the future the same way it has in the past. He cannot assume the universal validity of the laws of logic or mathematics for that matter. He cannot use the tools of science at all.
If he does, he assumes that the universe was designed to be described rationally, his senses were designed to give him accurate information, and that he was designed to think rationally. A collection of sub-atomic particles that gathers tighter to start chemical reactions does not reason. Everything this collection does is random by definition.
This is 1d-1f in reverse. The Being that made humans and placed them in a universe He designed allows for a purpose: rational thought.
John, once again you prove that you have absolutely no understanding of the words you use. When you start tossing around words like ‘reason’ and ‘rational’ that you clearly do not understand it makes you appear more and more deceptive.
Learn what those words mean please before you misuse them anymore.
Atheism assumes nothing. An atheist might assume some things. What have I assumed in my discussion with you?
I don’t follow how the logic that says that something comes from something proves the existence of a “being”. I believe you are making an assumption, and one based on no evidence. Please realize, an atheist thinking that the possibility that a “being” is behind it all is very unlikely, does not mean that he has to make an assumption as to the alternatives. He is just assigning a probability that is very low for that explanation because there is no evidence, and there is no reason to believe in anything of the supernatural nature to answer any other question.
Are you saying that because we are here having a discussion based on our rational minds, that it is impossible that we are just an accident? That our lives and minds have meaning? I’m afraid this is another assumption based on the fact that it is not clear how humans are able to reason far better than any other species. Do you see how this means that you have jumped to a conclusion merely because of insufficient knowledge?
Why must there be?
That is laughable. I don’t see how not having faith in something due to lack of evidence is “wishful thinking”.
McBlog:
Didn’t you get the memo? All we atheists really know that God exists, but we pretend otherwise so we can have teh gay secks, murder little old ladies and eat lobster without going to hell.
Mmm.. lobster
We can reason, so there must be something more out there than atheism allows.
Again, nothing more than a supposition.
What is the issue with the “kalaam cosmological argument” as it has been called by others here?
And again – try reading some Buddhist philosophy.
Did you create in your own mind a universe without a God in order to avoid being accountable to Him?
Yes – the last refuge of the fundamentalist. It always comes down to this. You think in terms of reward and punishment, hierarchy, submission to authority, etc. You can’t conceptualize any other sort of worldview, so, when confronted by those who don’t agree with you, you must assume that they really do see the world in the same way that you do – they’re just trying to escape punishment.
Jeff Eyges,
“…nothing more than a supposition.”
It’s an explanation.
We can reason. The question is why can we reason. Why do we find ourselves able to think? Why can we recognize patterns? Why can we expect the universe to work tomorrow the same way it works today?
Those are the questions atheism must answer. Otherwise, stop arguing with me.
“…try reading some Buddhist philosophy.”
Admonishing me to read a certain form of philosophy is not much help.
One little argument, please. If you can’t articulate one, then don’t bring it up in shorthand.
“…the last refuge of the fundamentalist…”
I didn’t bring up wishful thinking. Someone else did. I was merely pointing out that wishing thinking can be engaged in by atheists as well as theists. The wishful thinking position as an explanation for religious experience does not prove anything for anyone.
My statement was a counter-argument.
“…You think in terms of reward and punishment…”
Actually, I think in terms of redemption and grace. The two positions are vastly different. See the search label “Extra Nos” on my blog.
“…hierarchy, submission to authority…”
What authority do you appeal to in order to validate logical thought processes? Do you appeal to logic without being able to provide a foundation for it? How about math?
I appeal to the fact that the universe has been designed to reflect the thinking of a logical Being, namely God. I appeal to the fact that God designed His universe to behave consistently with the way it has behaved in the past so His creatures could live in it. You must provide me with an alternative explanation in order for us to have something to discuss.
“…You can’t conceptualize any other sort of worldview…”
As previously stated, you can’t conceptualize at all. You are just a bundle of randomly acting particles arranged in atoms to make up molecules that engage in physical interactions to make chemical reactions to form an organism. You are not a thinking being, just a reactive one. That is the only position you can defend in your worldview, assuming that you are an atheist.
“…when confronted by those who don’t agree with you, you must assume…”
I was not aware that I assumed anything. My argument for 1a to 1c starts with an undeniable premise: you exist. You must exist in order to deny your own existence.
I am rapidly losing track of this discussion. So some of this may be repetitious. I apologize.
McBloggenstein,
“…you’re saying that because God always existed, he didn’t need a cause? If so, then that is very convenient to believe such a thing so as to elude his existence from the “cause” argument.”
Again, the argument itself demonstrates from widely accepted prepositions that there must have been something which existed in this way.
My argument in 1a to 1c does not start with the premise that God always existed. It reasons from your own existence to something that has always been.
Aor,
“…would have been commonly accepted for thousands of years. The idea that you somehow have found a way to prove the unprovable is frankly ludicrous. If you had, you would be winning awards from countless christian institutions. Not to mention every other religion.”
Please explain to me the problem with the argument.
“I ignored the bulk of your words, largely because I notice you fail to understand the elementary points people raised.”
How convenient.
“…you accept that the framework of your argument is just as applicable to other religions.”
The argument is 1a to 1c might apply to other religions, but that is not the end of the argument. The only end of the argument is that something has always existed and is independent of everything else. That means a lot. That can’t just be ignored because it seems to incomplete; it must be answered.
Besides, we haven’t even discussed 2a and following yet.
McBloggenstein,
“…your first comment here made an extraordinary claim, which then would require extraordinary evidence…”
Evidence has been given. My point is just that discussion is better served when it is kept to the argument at hand.
“…clearly there would be no need to debate this topic…”
Unless someone was biased against the evidence and / or for it in such a way as their judgment was affected. This is potentially the case for both the Christian as well as the atheist.
Wintermute,
“…regardless of its logical form, it’s completely meaningless. What does it tell us, to assert that God = God?”
1a to 1c does not start with the definition of God. It begins with the fact that you exist and that you are not eternal.
“You are right; there’s no pattern, and it isn’t describable in logical terms…”
Then you can’t even think. You are not rational. All of this argument is useless.
“…Does the fact that you refuse to explain exactly why this is mean that you were wrong to use the word “best”? Or are you just unable to actually support your choice with actual moral examples?”
As previously stated, being the Divine Son of God does give Jesus certain advantages over other religious leaders. He laid aside His position as God in order to become a man to teach us and to atone for our sins. That’s a great place to start for an example of humility and self-sacrifice.
“…Any pain or harm that does occur cannot possibly be necessary for a particular outcome (because an omnipotent God is not so limited), but must be cause by God for its own sake. God must deliberately cause suffering for suffering’s sake without it actually doing any more to advance his aims than a suffering-free option.”
God must deliberately allow suffering. So what. You have not proved there is no good reason for Him to allow that suffering in order to advance His aims. There might be. Besides, you do not even know what His aims are, do you?
“Without religion, good men would do good and evil men would do evil; but it takes religion to make good men do evil.”
There are no good men. Everyone is capable of evil. People with and without religious belief have done great evil. This argument sounds good, but it proves nothing for either side.
“…there are plenty of moral systems that allow one to define “good” and “evil” without reference to a holy book…”
That’s why the Bible says that the Law of God is written on people’s hearts. Everyone is capable of some good acts.
“… their holy book to fit their pre-selected moral scheme. For example, do you agree with your God’s moral stance on slavery, or on the treatment of prisoners of war? Or on the eating of shellfish, for that matter?”
Yes. But do you presume to tell me what my God’s stance on those subjects is? Seems arrogant.
“Particle-antiparticle pairs come from nothing. This is been empirically observed in Hawking radiation around black holes and in the Casimir effect. Try actually knowing a thing or two about science before you make claims like that.”
Really? Or is ‘nothing’ here just shorthand for not knowing what those things come from.
“Causes require time.”
Not really. They just require sequencing.
“…your complete lack of understanding of cosmology and quantum physics means that you don’t even know that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Interesting. One little argument, please.
“….No, it’s not that we’ve not yet found out what causes quantum effects; it’s that the mathematics says that they cannot possibly have any kind of cause. If they do have a cause, then they’d be theoretically predictable, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would go out the window.”
They are not yet theoretically predictable. The Heisenburg Principle may prove that we cannot find the cause, but that does not prove there is not one.
“…Given that microchips absolutely require that electron ground state changes will happen utterly at random, every computer, phone, DVD player, digital watch and even toaster on the planet is continually running millions of experiments every second that demonstrates that quantum events happen without cause.”
This line of thought has bearing on 1d and following. If the patterns are truly random, then so are all of the things that make up us. Rational thought has no basis. Our arguments are a complete waste of time because they are ultimately based on random chance.
Since this entire string of comments demonstrates that you all do think that rational argumentation is valid, you must look for an explanation for it.
“…Feel free to do a little actual research before you claim that you’re right.”
Feel free to think for yourself more.
Jabster,
Again, the bias or “wishful thinking” argument cuts both ways. I can argue that your own biases are influencing your thinking, but that gets us nowhere. It just results in name calling and impasse.
Metro,
Cute. But it gets you out of having to provide an actual argument, which I find very convenient for you.
Wintermute,
“…All we atheists really know that God exists, but we pretend otherwise so we can have teh gay secks, murder little old ladies and eat lobster without going to hell.”
The ‘memo’ on the Christian side is that we hold our beliefs merely so we can justify slavery, perform spousal abuse, and cause car-bombings. Again, the wishful thinking stuff cuts both ways.
“…the last refuge of the fundamentalist…”
I didn’t bring up wishful thinking.
This had nothing to do with wishful thinking. The last refuge of the Christian fundamentalist is always, “You don’t believe because you don’t want to be held accountable.” You’re incapable of conceptualizing a world view apart form your own, so you convince yourself that we really know you’re right; we’re just attempting to flee God’s wrath. It’s childish, primitive belief system – which is what I was trying to get across with my references to hierarchy and authority, which you also did not understand. Arguing with fundamentalists is like arguing with children who’ve learned a few big words.
As previously stated, you can’t conceptualize at all. You are just a bundle of randomly acting particles arranged in atoms to make up molecules that engage in physical interactions to make chemical reactions to form an organism. You are not a thinking being, just a reactive one. That is the only position you can defend in your worldview, assuming that you are an atheist.
“…when confronted by those who don’t agree with you, you must assume…”
I was not aware that I assumed anything. My argument for 1a to 1c starts with an undeniable premise: you exist. You must exist in order to deny your own existence.
Everything you say is just a random group of assertions. None of your “conclusions” necessarily follows from your premises. Your entire argument essentially boils down to “God did it.” The rest is mere window-dressing.
I admonish you to read a little Buddhist philosophy as they have a complete, internally consistent metaphysical system that accounts for consciousness without the need for a creator. You present your arguments as thought they are self-evident and irrefutable. They are neither.
In any case, you’ll believe whatever you want to; nothing anyone here can say will change your mind. You decide beforehand what you want to believe, search for arguments to support your a priori conclusions, and regard this as a strength. What it really is is addiction.
I’m done. Communication is impossible. We’re speaking entirely different languages.
Very interesting blog. I loved the “eve” story about the atheist meeting God. So true, so true.
Saint Brian
Jeff Eyges,
Almost everything you say in your last comment can be turned around and applied to you. For example:
The last refuge of the atheist is always, “You believe what you believe because you don’t want to face the world on your own without help from a father-figure.” You’re incapable of conceptualizing a world view in which there might be something immaterial, so you convince yourself that we really know you are right; we’re just attempting to avoid working our way through our problems on our own.
I could go further, but I trust I have made my point.
This is what I meant before when I said that all this line of thinking does is lead to name calling and impasse. I am not aware of your motives, and you are not aware of mine, so let’s not talk about the motives we can’t see.
As an example of motives you don’t see: you simply do not know whether I will abandon my Christian faith given enough evidence. (I would, by the way.)
As for Buddhism, I never got pass the idea that individual selves do not truly exist (anatta). Again, I must exist in order to question whether I exist or am just a part of something else. Of course, you might be referring to a version of Buddhist philosophy that teaches something completely different. I have no way of knowing because you do not tell me where to go to find out or articulate the worldview; you just stop the conversation.
@ JK
“Stop arguing with me”= I can’t refute what you said so I will deprive you of the right to speak. Its a cowardly and ignorant approach to having a discussion, JK. If you want to defend a position, or attack one, then do so. Telling people to shut up is just childish.
The flaw in your argument has been described to you by several people. You ignored it and refused to accept reasoning. You begin by assuming the existence of god, not just any god, but a very particular god from a very particular time in a very particular place in the world. You could just look up the definition of circular reasoning, but instead you continue to talk as if that premise had some value. It does not. If it did, then it would apply to all possible religions. Your statements to the contrary are simply false.
Want to know something? The first thing that my professor said in Logic and Critical Thinking 101 was ‘No god can by logically proven.’ This is standard logic, nothing fancy, no weasel words. If your ‘chain of reasoning,’ to use the term loosely, was at all valid it would be commonly accepted by logicians all over the world. All priests of all religions would be using it and it would be utterly convincing. That is what it would mean, JK. Clearly it is not. Clearly there are countless people with experience with logic and reason who declare that your approach is simply wrong. Now that you know that, please study. Learn. Read up on what you have said and learn. If you refuse to learn, refuse to improve your understanding of the world and how it operates, then you are being willfully ignorant. So I challenge you JK. I challenge you to learn what you are talking about. Come back and prove you have an understanding of circular reasoning and that you won’t knowling use it in the future.
Furthermore, JK, the fact that you are here and attempting some form of (poorly constructed and invalid) reasoning shows that you understand the value of being able to prove something. This goes against faith. If your faith were strong you wouldn’t feel the slightest urge to resort to reason, since you would not need or want to prove matters of faith.
Your presence here indicates that you want to be able to prove your position. Sadly, by wishing to prove your position you prove that you lack the faith to believe the way you would like to.
It is a dilemma, isn’t it? By attempting to prove elements of your faith, you destroy your own faith.
@JK
“As an example of motives you don’t see: you simply do not know whether I will abandon my Christian faith given enough evidence. (I would, by the way.)”
That’s a fairly spurious position to take to say the least. ‘I will believe something utterly unprovable until you come up with a way of disproving it”. As you must realise the faulty logic in asking for evidence to prove a non-existent thing doesn’t exist it seems you have somewhat painted yourself into a corner. How is it you must have evidence to prove the non-existence but are quite happy to blindly accept existence without proof?
Now now, I think JK’s admission is progress. While he may have blind faith, he is open to empirical evidence and given said evidence would abandon faith. What more can we hope for. For myself I have said that I would abandon my lack of faith given empirical evidence that there is reason for faith.
Wait… did I just defend JK….I guess I did but fairs fair
J.K.
You said this:
Then you said this:
Care to revise any of that?
Jeff is right. You are making an assumption to say that your assertions definitely point to God. To do so means you have to provide a reason why you have done so.
So, you believe that there are aims that God is incapable of achieving without inflicting suffering? Then either that suffering is the aim, or God is not omnipotent.
Given that you accept that the Bible is the Word of God, it doesn’t seem so arrogant to assume that what God said on these subjects accurately describes his morals. It seems far more arrogant to assume that you know his thoughts better than the people he explicitly told these things to.
No, it means they come from nowhere. You start with 0 and end up with -1 and +1. If you started with something other than nothing, you’d end up with something that didn’t balance, and it would be obvious. As I say, there’s plenty of literature on this subject, if you don’t want to keep on saying laughably ignorant things.
And how do you sequence events without time? How can you say that Cause A happens “before” Effect B when “before” and “after” don’t exist?
Yeah, it’s called “emergent behaviour”. Random and chaotic systems can produce patterns. This really isn’t terribly difficult.
Yeah, the difference is that many theists actually do believe that atheists really know that God exists and just pretend so they can sin without consequence.
I’ve never met an atheist who believes that theists don’t really believe, and are just looking for an excuse to behave badly. Has anyone ever actually used that argument with you?
@J.K.
*Sigh. What argument were you expecting me to provide? You arrive here with a modified Pascal’s Wager and ask me to address it.
Okay, let’s get this over with. There’s not one shred of evidence for a deity and plenty against. What’s that? Yes, evidence against.
Several thousand years ago, the Greek Pantheon was popular. Big industry, people burning sacrifices and so forth in the names of the Immortal Gods!
For some reason, they kind of fell out of favour. Likewise the Egyptian Gods–again, big industry, in fact huge industry what with the whole pyramid-construction business, lots of sacrifices, etc.
The Romans worshipped many, many different gods over the years, including some of their own emperors. Eventually they had their state religion changed by fiat.
Not one single Zuess worshiper remains. Egyptian-God worshippers (and there are one or two) weren’t usually raised with that faith but sort of made it up as they went along. There’s not much of a faith community. Sacrificed to Mithras lately? There are people today who claim to be Druids, but most of them sprang from whole cloth between Tolkein and today. The Romans were efficient and ruthless in exterminating them, both before they discovered the loving God of the Jews Mark II and afterward.
All these religions went bust. And now we have Judeo-Christianism. Huge religion(s) big, big, Jesus-loving ENORMOUS industry. I say give it a thousand years or so and Christianity (though possibly not Judaism and not Islam) will have crumbled, unless we do find definitive proof of the existence, or not, of god.
So: Most religions predating Christianity were social trends, fashionable for a time and then crumbled. Their temples and scrolls have vanished into history. The vast majority were unknown beyond the small region where they were birthed.
Why is your religion any more valid?
The logical position is that a sufficient number of religions (the vast majority–90%+) have proven themselves false that one may say all religions are false. Even Christians embrace this argument, they just exempt themselves from it (reasoned, rational argument don’cherknow?).
Given that 90% or more of all faiths have proven false, and given that there is no data proving the existence of any god, or proving the primacy of any one, one may safely dismiss gods.
However, your thinking has an additional hole in it. You claim that an atheist carries an equal burden of proof to the theist. But we don’t. You’re the one making extraordinary claims.
So come on, produce your evidence and look sharp about it. I’m tired of wasting my comments to repeat the same old smackdown to the same old false logic. Give me something new, something I’ve never heard before.
Something with a glimmer of interest.
And try to do it without unfounded assumptions, eh?
Everything I see in our world is changing (with the possible exception of the speed of light, but I don’t see that directly). Why do the laws of logic (non-contradiction, excluded middle, etc.) not change along with everything else? Logical laws are not merely properties of matter, or they would change with matter. They are not mere social constructions, or they would change from person to person and from culture to culture (some cultures have tried to change logic’s foundations, but they always build buildings and train tracks using the laws). People think the same way. That’s the only way we an think.
Why do the laws of mathematics enable us to work abstract problems? Why are they universally applicable? How do they not change when there is no immaterial, unchanging ground for them?
Why can I trust what my senses tell me about the world? If natural selection keeps traits based on their survival value alone, all of my abstract beliefs and even my concrete perceptions must ensure my survival. That does not necessarily mean they are true, that they correspond to reality.
Why should I expect the processes I see in the world, if governed by randomness, to results in a world that will behave the same in the future as it has in the past? Scientific experimentation depends on this. It’s called the uniformity of nature.
You now have the affirmative position. You have the burden of proof. All I have to do is sit back and be skeptical. I can even quote David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Fredrick Niche (not to mention Derrida and company). This should be fun.
Don’t try to weasel out of this one. I am attacking your reasoning process itself. I m attacking the very foundation of your atheism.
On further reflection:
I have been insulted, ridiculed, mocked, called names, and talked about in the third person as if I am not even listening / reading. I have been told I do not understand the meaning of basic words like “rational.” Someone even questioned my faith just because I don’t think that faith and reason are opposed to each other.
I get the impression that any read only the outline, the table of contents as it were, to a series of posts and critiqued that instead of the arguments given in the posts themselves. That’s a joke.
I am tired of this. I’m signing off. After all, it is your blog, and you deserve the last word anyway.
B the way, if you find solid answers to the questions I have asked in this comment and the last few, you know where to find me. In the mean time I will use my God-given intellect to think about the information my God-given sense perceptionsgive me. Oh, and I will read up on particle physics and Buddhism and respond to some of the things I have read at infidels.org.
God bless.
@JK
“ … and talked about in the third person as if I am not even listening / reading.”
That’s what happens if you just keep make the same points over and over again without actually responding to any of the comments on your flawed argument. Maybe if you tried something above it was god that did it you would get a better response.
“I am tired of this. I’m signing off.”
Did the mean that those nasty atheists pulled apart your flawed logic so you’re going to take your ball and play with people that take the existence of the Christian god as fact so will not dare criticise your point of view. You do realise that unless you believe in your version of god in the first place you argument falls apart don’t you?
“B the way, if you find solid answers to the questions I have asked in this comment and the last few, you know where to find me.”
You forgot to add and you’ll ignore them anyway with lots of hand waving and claim then claim that god did it.
“This entire line of reasoning depends on the notion that no rational basis for Christian belief has been provided.”
And you completely failed to provide this.
Zeus Bless.
@All the regulars
Well I must say you’ve got far more patience then me when the same old tired arguments are trotted out
@JK: I’ve addressed your argument here:
http://unreasonablefaith.com/2008/09/03/can-we-be-rational-evolutionary-naturalists/
JK, your use of certain words has shown clearly that you do not understand the meaning. If you want to refute the point I made, please do so. If you could, I assume you would have by now rather than avoid the chance.
Are you weaseling out of the opportunity to defend your position? You made some serious claims about ex-this and ex-that. Now you quietly avoid responding on that issue. Why? Do you think it makes you look credible when you run away from defending a point that is clearly important to you?
Your attempts to change the topic are also a common tactic from the deceptive. If you were able to defend your position there would be no reason to change the topic, so I’ll take that as an admission that you do not truly believe in this no-ex’s concept. It would be nice if you had the intellectual honesty to admit that you were wrong rather than using avoidance tactics, but your reaction is expected. Rare is the believer who will ever concede a point, because they realize how fragile their system of beliefs is. Conceding even a single point may cause the entire structure to fall apart.
But, I see you have already run away. Interesting pattern, don’t you think? Why would someone who had the truth and was confronted about it choose to run away from the chance to show that truth to people? Running away implies lack of belief in your own words, or at least in your ability to back them up. Considering that you run away after people show you elementary flaws in your beliefs, an honest person would see the connection. You got schooled, and found yourself looking foolish and unable to defend your foolish opinions. Rather than try, you run.
Seen it before, gonna see it again soon.
I am not deceptive. My comments have been made with sincerity. I have found nothing in what you say that is convincing and much in what you say that is irrelevant.
Denial of causality is forced and temporary. I can’t live my life assuming that things pop into existence uncaused. It doesn’t help me find food or negotiate stop signs.
Examples of things that pop into existence in a random pattern without cause remind me of the scientific theory of ‘spontaneous generation.’ There is a gap in the scientific knowledge, so the ‘science of the gaps’ says these things are without cause.
Redefinition of basic words like ‘rationality’ strikes me as forced and temporary as well. It’s a little like the whole “I did not have sex with that woman … That depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.” thing from a few years back.
I could just as easily say that various people on this string have stopped commenting because they knew they were whipped. After all, instead of giving up because their concerns were not being addressed, they gave up because their concerns were addressed and they didn’t like the answers.
It’s time to let your readers decide. I am tired of addressing concerns from so many different people that I can’t keep up with them. I am not out-gunned, but I am certainly outnumbered.
I moved into the second section of proofs as promised in the initial outline. That is not deceptive. It is not from a lack of engagement of the counter-arguments given.
I would like to point out that I did say I would research and review several of the things that have been referred to or mentioned in this tread. That should count for something. Intellectually dishonest people don’t do things like that.
I have learned a lot, particularly about how to argue, from this conversation, and I had forgotten on my last comment to thank you and the others for this. That thank you is very sincere.
Thanks especially for the link above to the article:
“Time, Successive Addition, and Kalam Cosmological Arguments” by Graham Oppy
This has proven worthy of study and comment.
@ Aor
@ J K Jones
“I am not deceptive. My comments have been made with sincerity.”
“I am tired of this. I’m signing off. After all, it is your blog, and you deserve the last word anyway.”
“But, I see you have already run away.”
You know better than to take them at their word.
Previously, Christian guest, J.K. Jones….
“….you[Atheists] can’t conceptualize at all. You are just a bundle of randomly acting particles arranged in atoms to make up molecules that engage in physical interactions to make chemical reactions to form an organism. You are not a thinking being, just a reactive one. That is the only position you can defend in your worldview, assuming that you are an atheist.”
Response: Fallacy of composition.
I realize the party’s over, but I’ve seen this argument from Christians before, and it is fallacious(as well as hilarious).
Example:
1) Atoms are not visible to the naked eye
2) Humans are made up of atoms
3) Therefore, humans are not visible to the naked eye
example ref: Wiki’
JK, if you were not deceptive then you would have responded to the people pointing out that your use of obvious fallacies. You ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, pretend that your other words that follow it have some basis. This is deceptive. You now know that the foundation of your argument is a fallacy, if you didn’t before. Continuing as if that didn’t make the entire house of cards fall apart is deception.
I realize that you want to claim some kind of moral victory here, but its not going to happen. Your ‘chain of reasoning’ is clearly fallacious. Has been for thousands of years. If you somehow found a way to correct that then please submit it to a philosophical journal, because proof of god would be enough to win you awards. I’m quite serious about this. If what you say was true and as provable as you claim, you would be on TV. There would be you, sitting next to Vox Day and Micheal Behe on Fox News. The simple existence of your proof would make you one of the most popular contributors to religious television in the entire world.
Yet somehow I don’t see that happening. You may not accept that your reasoning is faulty but rest assured it is quite clear to anyone who looks at it. If you cannot see it then you must truly believe that you are worthy of that time on Fox News. Do you truly think your proof is a proof? If it is a proof, why aren’t you hanging out with the Pope? Wouldn’t he like to have your proof? Wouldn’t there be an entire article on wikipedia about how you proved the existence of god on the internet? Wouldn’t there be a movie of the week about you?
Sorry, but your claims don’t cut it and you know it.
There’s a single panel cartoon posted at the hospital where I work, in the research department. Two white-coats are before an immense blackboard. The left hand side is full of equations, as is the right. Between the two sides is written:
THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS.
One whitecoat is saying to the other, “I need a little more detail here.”
That said, JK’s blog reminds me of an atheist friend’s critique of C.S. Lewis’s Christian apologetics: “It’s very convincing, if you already agree with him.”
Robert:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/images/MiracleOccurs_big.jpg
It’s a pretty famous one.