Debate the topic "Does an Intelligent Designer of the universe exist?"
Offline This is a challenge to anyone who wants to defend the proposition that an Intelligent Designer does not exist. I will defend its negation in a LOGICAL, RATIONAL manner. There will be no arguments made on the basis of faith. Considering the location of this forum, it would seem reasonable to expect the same type of argument in return. However, in my limited experience with atheists, I've yet to witness one who could actually produce this type of argument. Nonetheless, I am optimistic that I may encounter a worthy foe eventually.
So here is the game plan. I will provide multiple arguments in favor of my position. These arguments will be supported by a multitude of scientific and philosophical evidence. If you are to be successful in defending your position, you must first tear down my arguments, and then erect in their place a positive case of your own. So if you happen to be someone who suffers from intellectually laziness by thinking it is sufficient for you to just resort to unsubstantiated skepticism to defend your claim, please, abstain from engaging. You see the topic of this debate is "Does an Intelligent Designer of the universe exist?". It is not a proposition, but rather a question. So their is no place here for anyone who likes to play the "you are the one asserting the claim so you have the burden of proof-card", considering both sides will be making claims. So I welcome anyone capable of accomplishing this in a LOGICAL, RATIONAL manner.
My first argument is on the basis of the existence of the universe. It is by no means any new, groundbreaking argument that I have authored. However, I've yet to witness a cogent rebuttal of it.
The argument is as follows.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
I have no doubt that you are familiar with the structure of an argument. So as you can see, this argument is air tight logically. That is to say that based on the 2 premises, the conclusion is logically inescapable. So to dispute the conclusion, one must argue against the truth of one or both premises, demonstrating they are less plausible than their negation. In accordance, I will attempt to demonstrate their validity with the following:
Support of premise 1
A. For something to come into being without any cause whatsoever would be to come into being from nothing. This would be worse that magic. If a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat, at least you have a cause, even if it is the deceiving magician. But this is still better than NOTHING. I don't think anyone sincerely believes that things, like say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.
B. If something could come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing. Why don't bicycles and root beer POP into being? Why only universes?
C. I would assert common experience and scientific evidence confirm premise 1.
Support of premise 2
A. The universally accepted "Big Bang" model.
B. Redshift of light.
C. Abundance of certain light elements.
D. Microwave cosmic background radiation.
E. The thermodynamics of the universe.
F. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem
Clarification of the Cause
A. For think of what the universe is: ALL of space-time reality,including ALL matter and energy.
B. As the cause of space-time, matter and energy, this cause must be transcendent. Therefore, it is nonphysical, uncaused, immaterial, unimaginably powerful, and beyond space and time.
C. Furthermore, it must be a personal being. This is the only way a timeless cause can create a temporal effect. This is because if a cause is sufficient to produce its effect, then if the cause is there, the effect must be there too. To illustrate, water freezes @0C. The cause of the freezing is the temperature achieving 0C. If the temperature was always 0C, the water is eternally frozen. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze a finite time ago. Since the universe began to exist a finite time ago, its cause would have to be a personal being with free will, who chose to create as a free act, independent of any prior conditions.
D. To further illustrate why this cause must be a personal agent, consider causality. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes. A prime-mover is unavoidable for the chain of events to begin. So whatever this may be, it has to be an uncaused cause, which exists by a necessity of its own nature. It follows logically that this cause must contain within itself the cause for the initial event. This is only achievable for an agent that is capable of free-will. Which, by nature, constitutes personal, intelligent beings. We experience this type of causation regularly. To illustrate, imagine 100 dominoes arranged in a manner that would allow you to push the first, into the second, into the third...into the hundredth. Assume you push the first, and they all fall as planned. If we then ask what was the immediate cause of #100 falling, we would say #99 knocked it over. It would follow that the immediate cause of #99 to fall, was #98, and so on all the way to #1. Now, what was the cause of #1 to fall? We could say because you pushed it. Okay, what caused you to push it? Easy, you chose to. But what caused you to choose to? You wanted to, simple as that. You had to make a choice, push it, or don't push it. This is an antonymical pair that exhausts all possibilities. Maybe their were factors that were considered in making your decision, but ultimately, none directly caused you to act. You acted because you chose to, end of story. Every event now has sufficient cause for happening, and we need look no further.
Conclusion
This demonstrates the existence of a beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, Personal Creator of the universe, which I happen to call, God.
The second argument is in regards to the fine-tuning of not only the universe as a whole, but also biological organisms.
1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to physical necessity, chance, or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.
Now again, this is logically iron-clad argument. That is to say if the premises are true, the conclusion follows inescapably. So are the premises more plausible than their negation?
Before we discuss this argument, it’s important to understand that by “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” (otherwise the argument would be obviously circular). Rather during the last forty years or so, scientists have discovered that the existence of intelligent life depends upon a complex and delicate balance of initial conditions given in the Big Bang itself. This is known as the fine-tuning of the universe.
This fine-tuning is of two sorts. First, when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations, you find appearing in them certain constants, like the constant that represents the force of gravity. These constants are not determined by the laws of nature. The laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants. Second, in addition to these constants, there are certain arbitrary quantities that are put in just as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate, for example, the amount of entropy or the balance between matter and anti-matter in the universe. Now all of these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life-permitting values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by less than a hair’s breadth, the life-permitting balance would be destroyed, and no living organisms of any kind could exist.
For example, a change in the strength of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10100 would have prevented a life-permitting universe. The cosmological constant which drives the inflation of the universe and is responsible for the recently discovered acceleration of the universe’s expansion is inexplicably fine-tuned to around one part in 10120. Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of the Big Bang’s low entropy condition existing by chance are on the order of one out of 1010(123). Penrose comments, “I cannot even recall seeing anything else in physics whose accuracy is known to approach, even remotely, a figure like one part in 1010(123). And it’s not just each constant or quantity that must be exquisitely finely-tuned; their ratios to one another must be also finely-tuned. So improbability is multiplied by improbability by improbability until our minds are reeling in incomprehensible numbers.
So when scientists say that the universe is fine-tuned for life, they don’t mean “designed”; rather they mean that small deviations from the actual values of the fundamental constants and quantities of nature would render the universe life-prohibiting or, alternatively, that the range of life-permitting values is incomprehensibly narrow in comparison with the range of assumable values. Richard Dawkins himself, citing the work of the Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, acknowledges that the universe does exhibit this extraordinary fine-tuning. But even if we grant that SOMEHOW the universe did overcome this astronomical problem and provided these initial conditions for life to exist, how did life actually originate? Seems like the best answer an atheist can present is abiogenesis occurred, followed by Darwinian evolution. Now I hold the view that the absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. So I don't reject this claim based solely on the FACT that neither abiogenesis nor Darwinian evolution have EVER been observed (before anyone attempts to condemn and correct me, let me make it easy for you; point me to the recorded observation of abiogenesis and then list JUST ONE observation of an organism that occupied multiple Kingdoms of biological classification.) But also that the probability of this happening unguided is unrealistic. To give just one example, Barrow and Tipler have calculated the probability of an evolutionary genome to be between (4-180)110000 and (4-360)110000. Now multiply this by the improbabilities associated with the universe's formation. So if this somehow did happen, it is rock solid proof of a miracle, and would therefore also be powerful evidence for the existence of God.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
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Hi,
In logic, one learns how to ask logical questions that are specific to a consequence of consistency that he wants answered. Your question is not a good question and cannot logically be answered.
Also, intelligent design never leads to the God of the Bible. It's inductive and in the same line of Aquinas's 5 arguments. it doesn't get you where you're going.
It's like catching a taxi to the airport and the taxi drops you off a mile away.
The argument is unsound and invalid via the intent of opus habcnl tenui indtictione'
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
I agree 100% and never asserted that a logical truth could be obtained in this debate. I only asked to use logic to support your claims. And I never claimed this demonstrates the existence of the Christian God. So anything pertaining to the New Testament, morals, homosexuality etc. is irrelevant. Let's all try to stay on topic and avoid the "red herrings".
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Jack,
Okay, so we agree. No logic an be used. Perhaps only in the area of validity but the argument would be unsound since it would fail in reaching the consistent of consequence of God Himself.
I am a Chrisitan and intellgient design is false. It was a watered down attempt to try to get SOME kind of creationism into the public school. The intention is good, but the arguments are horrific.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
If you believe God exists how could you say Intelligent Design is false? I understand the movement is aimed to at getting into schools to counter the claim of evolution, but I find the arguments very compelling. I would like to hear what you dislike about them. And again, I'm not claiming this alone gets you to the Christian God. But it is part of a cumulative case that does. But as I already stated, that has no relevance here.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Pleased to meet you.
I was wondering if before we get going on this you could define the word 'nothing' for me, please. Given it seems to be a truth claim I'd expect an empirical proof showing there has somewhere been a state of nothing. I comprehend the human mental concept of nothing, though I can't actually imagine it in my mind's eye. I notice you reject abiogenesis on the basis that it has never been observed so I'm certain you will agree with me that empiricism should apply equally to the foundational notion of your case. Is there material proof that there was ever nothing? How could nothing be measured as a value?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Really? Nobody has ever asked you: what created God?
Oh they have? And then you said well God always existed? And to that I say, so has all the matter that exists in the universe today. I have scientific laws to defend my statement, you have hearsay to defend yours.
The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can change its form.
The total quantity of matter and energy available in the universe is a fixed amount and never any more or less.
Next.
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Ktulu did a good job on this over on Prozac's "Atheist Nightmare/intelligent design" post. He also called him out on the whole thing is cut and pasted from http://withalliamgod.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/craigs-explanation-of-teleogical-argument/
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
Has anyone else notice when a person makes a second or third account so they can post under a different name? Does this give them a hard-on to play games with others? Does it make them feel like they are more empowered?
BTW I been meaning to ask you about buddhism. I don't know much about it and have tried to do a little catching up on it. How did you come to be one and what did you consider yourself to be before that? Just wondering. Remember i'm new here.
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
I'm sure Sapient can pick up on them. He should be able to see their IP address.
As for Buddhism (and brian37 shut your piehole) I follow only the 4 noble truths which are 1) there is suffering 2) you will suffer 3) there is a path to non-suffering and 4) you will eventually find this path of non-suffering.
Everything else is really a mix and match thing, but Brian37 is sort of right because some people use it as a religion.
I was catholic, well, my parents were catholic. I was a kid forced to attend church.
God is the creation of Man.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
I wrote "The God Murders" website. I put the Biblical God on trial as the trial prosecutor. Any believer who wishes to debate as the defense attorney concerning the 180 God Murders charges is welcome. Regards, G
Okay, so without getting into all this fancy-schmancy pseudo-logic talk, we both have the same problem. I can’t tell you where the singularity that resulted in the Big Bang came from, and you can’t tell me where the God who created it all came from.
Here’s the difference though, through the ages there have always been, and there will always be, questions that we don’t have answers for, considering the contemporary state of human knowledge. In those situations science has always advanced theories that might explain the answer. Some of those theories have been wildly wrong, some fairly close to the mark, but in all cases science has been willing to revise its theories based on solid evidence and now we find that many of those previously unanswerable questions have been answered.
Theism on the other hand has dealt with these situations by offering definitive solid answers to explain the unexplainable. Frankly, these haven’t worked out very well. Over and over again as human knowledge has advanced these answers have been revealed to be more and more ludicrous until finally theism revises its answers and admits that those guys way way long ago were wrong, but hey, we’ve got it right this time.
So here’s the deal, science is perfectly willing to admit that there are questions that it can’t answer, and it is perfectly willing to reexamine theories as long as the reexamination is based on good solid evidence. And you theist guys, hey you just go ahead and believe whatever it is that you think you need to believe, but please, don’t tell us that just because we don’t have the answer to every question we should accept that your answers are just as good as ours. History really isn’t your friend in that regard.
OMFG Microsoft Office!
Quick... edit it before someone responds!
Too late.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Op,
This subject is pretty extensive. I will briefly comment.
The mannerisms of Intelligent design and Deism are very similar. Since Deism is a belief that God did make the world, He is a finite god and has gone into a different location other then with the people He created. Thus while deists have arguments for God, they never claim who that God is since they don't know because their God went on vacation to the bahamas and when surfing in Californication.
The opus operandi of Intelligent Design Acts like the arguments made by deists. They absolutely refuse to define who the designer is as the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Even if they did identifiy it, the argument itself doesn't lead to God. It's basically the teliological argument all over again with different examples for the same variables in the argument.
Also, by not defiining their God even if the argument did work, the argument could be for satanism, mormonism, Jim Jones Cults, etc.
Also, ID ignore the book of Genesis in their process of thinking. Thus according to their argument strictly speaking, they cannot and ignore the issue of how the world was Good (Hebrew Tov) when God made it and how it is not so Good now due to original sin.
By not grasping and completely ignoring the egology behind their argument, their argument fails as an argument for Christianity. They and the Deists argue almost exactly the same way.
Intelligent Design as an argument, cannot "prove" anything let along the one and only God of Christianity.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
You did good on the first three paragraphs.
Then it just kinda went south...
Is it possible that there exists an atheist who understands a rational argument and abstains from jumping to false conclusions? I'm losing hope. Nevertheless I assume you are referring to the Bible as my source of "hearsay" defense? Nice assumption, but false. As you can see I have not mentioned it or anything else that would be classified as hearsay. Since I also share your feelings on scientific law and evidence, I happen to have some that is universally accepted as proof that our universe cannot be infinite in the past, but must have a space-time boundary. Woops.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/grqc/0110012.pdf
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Yes, I understand this, I just wasn't sure you did and I'm still not.
And when it comes to the above I'm keen to hear you explain how you've calculated the probability of something that does not exist and for which we both agree there is no empirical proof. How did you do it, Jack? I take it you're familiar with the term 'fallacious appeal to complexity'?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Hey,
In logic, an argument can be invalid but sound, an argument can be valid but unsound. In order for the argument to be coherent it must be both valid and sound.
Since your argument was valid, it was not sound and thus fails.
Also, this is the exact argument made by the Deists and cannot be used for anything remotely in relation to Christianity.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
I was referring to the probability of abiogenesis, not a state of nothingness.
Appeal To Complexity:
if the arguer doesn't understand the topic, he concludes that nobody understands it. So, his opinions are as good as anybody's.
Relevant how?
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
How was the argument not sound? Did I miss the part where a premise was shown not to be true?
If an argument is invalid it automatically becomes impossible for it to be sound. Sound logic means that the premises are true and the argument is valid. You're right that an argument can be valid and unsound though.
Please alert me to the accounts that you think are sockpuppets. I can check when I know which ones to investigate. With that said, you would be stunned to see how many people have the same arguments and are most certainly different people. It happens more often than the people creating sockpuppets.
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Phil,
That was a typo. What I meant to say is an argument can be true and invalid and an argument can be valid and yet false. You are correct that an invalid argument automatically disqualifies its soundness.
An argument can be true and invalid and valid but false. However Validity by definition does not by default imply soundness since the argument's validity can be formally correct but with false premises.
For example:
All toasters are items made of gold.
All items made of gold are time-travel devices.
Therefore, all toasters are time-travel devices.
The argument is perfectly valid, so Phil, by your thinking it has to be sound right? hmm?
Another example:
Phil's leg hurts
all legs that hurt are broken
Thus Phil's leg is broken
Basically what is going on here is:
All A are B;
No B are C;
Therefore, No A are C.
Soundness must mean that premises and conclusion are correct (true and false are not to be used technically in logic). and that the argument as a whole is valid
The earth is round
round things are not flat
therefore the earth is round
this is true though not valid.
Anyways, that's what I meant. But that is correct, invalidity instantly disqualifies soundness.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
I was being polite in calling it hearsay, I didn't assume the bible. In fact the bible makes no good arguments on this at all.
You think you are smart, yet I did pick your argument apart in 2 seconds, and I once had a talk with a 5th grader who knew nothing of god arguments who also came to the same conclusion within seconds. Your argument was trivial and weak. And you've followed it up with an equally weak defense as your point has nothing to do with mine.
You are talking about the "Universe" as we know it must have had a starting point. A point in which it was so small that it couldn't have been smaller. And can you account for what occurred one minute before that? You can not with science account for that moment 1 minute before the Universe was at it's smallest originating point. And what I said was based on the laws of conservation: 1000 years before that moment in which you can't account for the matter that makes up the entirety of the Universe today, the same amount of matter and energy existed... no more... no less.
Do I presume that it was a singularity for 1000 years? I'm not sure. I am sure of the laws of conservation, they've never been shown wrong. Maybe we are in a never ending expanding and contracting Universe, and today we are simply in the present incarnation of expansion until we reach a point in which we start to collapse again and the process resets. Hopefully in my lifetime we'll have an answer as to what happened before hand. Until then you will not see me making up an argument. I believed in the God of the gaps as you do for a few years, and I am very thankful to Jake for freeing me from that about 15 years ago.
And your evidence that I am wrong and that I should believe that an eternal being created that moment in time is?? HEARSAY! Would you prefer I call it delusion? Retardation? Make believe? Fantasy? I was being kind.
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Yeah... why the hell should I understand what's going on in this thread?
edit; k... time to replenish bloodsugar... brb vry thx!
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Is English your first language? I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you can't be this delusional. I'm hoping its just a language barrier. Do tell how you picked apart my trivial, weak argument. Let me guess, by asking what caused God? Maybe if you found an interpreter that could read my argument for you, you would realize the premise says "everything that BEGINS to exist has a cause". If God never began to exist, what does questioning his cause do to my argument? NOTHING. So you fail to disprove the first premise. I noticed you gave a mild attempt to refute the second premise by speculating an oscillatory universe. Maybe it is. But if you were capable of comprehending the BVG Theorem I posted earlier, along with the 2nd law of thermodynamics, you'd see that positing the oscillatory hypothesis does nothing to avoid an absolute beginning of the universe. Entropy would be retained in successive cycles, resulting in each cycle becoming larger and longer than the previous. So if you traced back to past cycles, they would constantly decrease, reaching a past space time boundary. HOPEFULLY YOUR TRANSLATOR WILL EMPHASIZE THIS: THE ARGUMENT IS FOR A CAUSE OF THE UNIVERSE, THAT, BY NECESSITY, IS SPACELESS, TIMELESS, IMMATERIAL, ENORMOUSLY POWERFUL, AND PERSONAL. NOTHING MORE.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
1.You start from the naked assertion that a god, specifically your god exists, Take a number, god claims have always existed in our history, big whoopty doo.
2.You also, without evidence start from the naked assertion that a god is needed.
3.You never consider that a "what" is what is going, "non cognitive process", and a "who" is not required. You don't believe that hurricanes are caused by Neptune, so why would nature or the universe need a "who" either? For 3,000 years the Egyptians falsely believed that the sun was a god. Popularity of belief is not evidence, popularity of tradition is not evidence. Otherwise the sun would be a god. Otherwise the earth would be flat.
4. You also falsely try to shift the burden of proof.
"Prove to me my god is not real"
"Prove to me Allah is not real"
"Prove to me Vishnu is not real"
"Prove to me Yahweh is not real"
"Prove to me I cant fart a Lamborghini out of my ass"
5. Bentrand Russell's teapot, go look it up.
6. Ocham's razor. Look it up.
7. And most importantly why do we know god/s are broken concepts. BECAUSE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF THINKING that occurs outside biological evolution, thus any and ALL claims of deities in our human history are bullshit. Thoughts are like running. When you run, the running is not a thing, it is the word we use to describe the material process of your legs moving faster in a forward motion. Thus, if you had no legs, you could not run. Just like if you DONT HAVE A PHYSICAL BRAIN you cannot think. Thus invisible fictional magical non material super brains with magic wands are all bullshit claims.
Humans make up gods, they are a product of our own selfish wishful thinking in a false attempt to replace our parents and ignore our finite existence. God/god/dieties/super natural, are merely human placebo gap answers as an anthropomorphic self projection of our own qualities.
You are NOT doing anything differently than any human in history has done in the past or is doing now, when claiming a fictional super hero. It is merely all in your head because you like the idea of having a super hero.
There was no Isis, there was no Apollo. There is no Vishnu. You wont get 72 virgins. No god magically knocked up a virgin, and human flesh cannot survive rigor mortis. These are mere superstitions and myths humans find false comfort in.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
1. Show me where my argument starts with a naked, or any belief in my God. It's a logically valid deductive argument. Look it up, genius.
2. Again, your ignorance is due to not being educated in the structure of deductive reasoning. It doesn't start by saying God is needed. It's CONCLUSION, which follows logically from the premises says a CAUSE is needed. Try to keep up.
3. Once again, another idiotic objection that, was clearly addressed in the argument. The cause is PERSONAL because how else can a timeless cause have a temporal effect? Also necessary for the uncaused cause Wouldn't expect you to comprehend though.
4. Please, by all means, show me where I am guilty of this.
5 & 6. Relevant how?
7. You commit the genetic fallacy by attempting to disprove a belief by showing how it originated. Like the rest of your pointless, this does nothing for you. Since your are obviously not one of the well educated atheists I usually associate with, let me help you out. Argue the premises if you want to deny the conclusion.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
I addressed that retard.
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And your response was...?
Right, you said so has matter and energy. Only if you still try to deny the universe's beginning 13.7 billion years ago at the Big Bang. Thought you appealed to scientific evidence, rather than oppose it?
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
That is a sensible argument but is mixed in with a faulty conclusion. Because you confuse cause with purpose... There is a difference between stating that the universe has a cause and that the universe is purposefully created by an entity. Me throwing a ball at someone has purpose. Me breaking a twig as I move through a meadow merely has a cause. There is no purpose to the broken twig. The twig doesn't even register in my consciousness.
They way I had it explained to me is that nothing is a massive potential. Absolute Nothing is phenomenal amounts of potential energy that could exist in that space. Absolute nothing in the scale of the universe? Now there are varieties of hypothesis on the matter but frankly no one knows. Philosophy is not an answer to empirical questions because it is armchair science. In the same way that armchair football and armchair generals aren't reall football players and real soldiers... armchair physicists are not going to discover innate truths about the universe merely through discourse. But this is not my forte. Medicine and Biology are. I am sure physicists could do more on the topic than me.
This demonstrates absolutely nothing apart from the fact that you are demonstrating a degree of intellectual dishonesty about the matter.
And furthermore this is where science shows it's honesty.
We Do Not Know How Exactly The Universe Was Created. The mechanics of it are unknown. Mainly because there is little to no evidence of pre-big bang conditions. We can postulate and hypothesise based on mathematical models but frankly we don't know. Anyone who claims to know otherwise better put up some empirical evidence. We build particle accelerators to find out about the fundemental particles of the universe but we still do not know.
And this is a more honest stance than claiming that it is due to a creative entity. Because you don't know either. You have literally been faced with a big unacnswerable abyss of information and inserted a magical being into it. When you don't know something, the appropriate answer is "I don't know" not "Maybe It was The Elves".
God is the ultimate deus ex machina. We need some reason how the universe was created so we literally lower whatever your idea of a god is into that hole, then cover it up and go on with our lives. And as we questioned we realised all the super powers he needed to have in order to be this deus ex machina... The truth of the matter is you don't know either but simply assume it's a god.
Your fault here is you don't quite grasp how utterly tiny we are. The fact remains that the average human being has rarely moved more than 100 miles from his place of birth for millenia only changing with the invention of mass transit and air travel. The furthest we have gone is the moon.
Your argument is faulty in many ways. For starters, you are assuming that the intelligence is more important than life. Evolutionarily speaking, intelligence is handy as a survival strategy but not vital. And life exists in myriad forms across myriad environments in phenomenal diversity. There is life on earth that grows in conditions similar to Venus. There is life on earth that grows in pitch black caves based on chemical breakdown rather than sunlight. The truth of the matter is we haven't found intelligent life out there because the universe is very very big. All we know is that there is no intelligent life with radiowave technology in a 30 light year radius that we can detect (it could be very faint). Our galaxy alone with it's millions of stars is 100,000 light years in diameter. Life will probably exist somewhere out there and by logic some of it should be intelligent. And remember... they may have detected us already and sent a message back... On a galactic scale, light is too slow.
Another faulty premise.
A constant is a mathematical figure used to deal with ratios. For instance Let's say N : M with 4 Ns : 8 Ms. A constant is a number used to balance the equation.
Thefore the constant in this is 2. You multiply N by 2 to get M, this holds true for every value of N. Now this is a simple example. The ones in physics are pretty beefy and big versions of this simple concept. These constants ARE determined by natural laws. These are human interpretations via the pure science of mathematics. There is no big computer with constants typed in. They are what they are when we worked them out based on the simple premise of human beings kept count of things initially via hands to a point that this habit is ubiquious in every culture.
A change in these constants to a new value would simply change the parameters needed for life. It may be that life on OUR planet wouldn't exist but it could exist on some other planet.
Yet again you assume that the only life permitting values are a small range despite the massive range of life we see on this planet. We have life in nuclear wastelands and life in thermal vents and we suddenly seem to think that life exists in a fragile zone. We have life existing at -30C and life existing at 400C.
Now here is the thing. Dawkins specifically said that the universe APPEARS to be fine tuned towards life. Not is fine tuned. He also went on to point out that we think it's finely tuned because we have no perspective.
Also abiogenesis has been observed in the form of viral self assembly. They are technically both life and chemical. They are the very boundary of functioning life since they behave as both. The issue is complex abiogenesis has not been achieved in a lab. Which is fine... The same old answer of "I don't know how exactly it happened" applies, however the Miller Urey experiment and indeed repeated work around thermal vents shows that they are capable of producing biological molecules and the precursors of life.
Evolution however is a fact like gravity is a fact. It is also a theory like gravity is a theory. The empirical fact of evolution is that we can see evolution in bacteria even in cloned colonies. It's pretty macro in them. There is also DNA which is shared by all life indicating a single genesis event. In addition the DNA code we follow is not unique to each species but very nearly the same across all life. (There are slight variations in bacteria and some archea). Further hard evidence is the presence of chirality in proteins to only one direction due to the nature of enzyme action.)
Barrow and Tippler use a faulty assumption that genomes were randomly assembled like lego rather than produced by a fairly simple mechanism. The actual number is a lot lot smaller and evolution provides a system by which complexity and diversity can enter a genome over billions of years (3 Billion or so) to produce complex changes with the only guiding hand being the survival of the genome.
http://a-million-gods.blogspot.com/
My position on it. Is there anything logical that can be said against this?
Absolutely. All it would take is a logical demonstration that just one of the premises is not true.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
The classical form of the Kalam argument goes as follows:
"
I think you skipped the last part.
Therefore:
Aw, that can't be right. The biggest flaw in the Kalam is, as has been mentioned, the presupposition that some creative mind made a universe. Yet, we've never seen a "mind" in the absence of a functional brain. Time is part of the universe, and events cannot happen without a framework of time so far as we know, therefore the act of creation could not happen without a universe already existing.
If you were to ask Pat Robertson what caused a hurricane, he would tell you that it was put there by God to punish us because of our acceptance of gays and lesbians. Do you see a pattern here? There would be no purpose for the Kalam argument if the presenter did not already accept the mystical god-being with an intention of proving it. But you can substitute virtually anything for God in the 'therefore god didit' lilne and it works equally well. Therefore Fred did it. Therefore the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it. Therefore four pairs of gods gave the void form.
And fine-tuning doesn't work until it is demonstrated that a universe can exist with other constants, or that the points of fine-tuning are not variables.
Evolution depends upon abiogenesis for a beginning, but evolution is observable and demonstrable. The odds against winning the lottery may be almost impossible, but someone often wins it nonetheless. Since life exists, the probability of abiogenesis is 1, unless you can prove that we were magicked into existence. Which is more reasonable? That a being exists outside of space and time and yet can poof things into existence by word of its presumed mouth, or that it is natural for objects to order themselves? If you postulate that a god exists but you cannot show any evidence of this except for vague feelings that we all have but do not attribute to the divine then where, exactly, are you getting your information from? Magical telepathic messages from beyond?
Please.
I am NOT going to bother with anything but the first line.
THIS IS THE WAY GOOD LOGIC WORKS OUTSIDE TOPIC ISSUE.
Established prior data =established formula and model+independent verification=solid data independent of personal bias
NOT
Naked assertion by proxy of utterance<=personal desires<=desired outcome
I claim I can fart a Lamborghini out of my ass<=I like Lamborghinis and my ass exists<=Therefore I can fart a Lamborghini out of my ass,
THAT is what you are doing.
Allah exists<=I like the Koran and verses of it match up with science<=Allah is the one true god. If a Muslim pulled that you wouldn't go "They started from Allah so it must be true because they "Deduced" it.
A naked assertion is a naked assertion no matter what it is or what the subject matter is or who is claiming it.
YOU are not doing anything differently than I have seen from other believers of other labels.
You would not buy your own argument if someone else of a different god belief were using your same argument.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
It never fails. SHOW ME WHERE I PRESUPPOSED GOD. Your condescending example of the hurricane argument does nothing but demonstrate that you don't understand an argument my 4 year old daughter comprehends. Why would you say I would attribute the cause of a hurricane to God? I know, to make a pathetic attempt to support the claim I'm presupposing God exits? May I make a suggestion? If you want to show how I'm begging the question, just copy and paste the part where I'm guilty of this in my own post. Save the absurd examples of arguments depict me of reasoning like yourself. There, maybe that will level the playing field for you and give you a chance. If you can't produce a post showing this, then stop crying about it because obviously its BS.
Moving on, if you're not even going to attempt to show that either of the premises are not true, then the conclusion is unavoidable whether you like it or not. To demonstrate for the 5th time why this is a personal agent, look at the examples I gave that demonstrated that a timeless sufficient material cause is not capable of producing a temporal effect. Followed by the example showing why the final cause must also be personal. It has contain within itself the cause of it's actions. The claims about the cause having to personal are not my opinions, but rather logical necessity. So instead of posting something stupid just because you don't like the conclusion, I invite you to look into the study of causality, unless you can logically show that I'm wrong.
To summarize, there was no refutation of of either of the premises. It follows logically therefore, the universe has a cause. Since this cause transcends space, time, matter and energy, it follows logically this cause is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and unfathomably powerful. The previous paragraph addressed the reason it can only be a personal agent. Thank you for playing. Better luck next time.
I'm tired so I'll show you how sad your design and evolution arguments are when I wake up. It gives me a headache to read your lottery analogy. Not because it's confusing or defeating, but rather because it tells me that I have yet another atheist who, on a mathematical level, is not smarter than a 5th grader.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Send me my naked assertion of proxy utterance. Show me where. You can't because there is none so stop crying cause you don't like the logical conclusion but you aren't smart enough to logically refute a simple deductive argument.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Sounds interesting....
We don't appose scientific evidence. We appose people trying to prop up ancient myth with it.
So now your argument is matter and energy.
Ok,
Mater and energy.....blah blah blah, therefore Allah
Mater and energy, blah blah blah, therefore Yahweh
Mater an energy, blah blah blah, pink unicorns
You know damned well if someone with another god claim tried to argue their god with "mater and energy" you wouldn't buy it.
How about this. The only matter and energy are that of humans making up fictional gods because their brains dont want to face their finite existence and there is no god.
IF science justifies "anything goes" then all gods claimed in human history are all true at the same time because science means "anything goes"
Give it up. Humans invent gods because they don't want to accept their finite existence, nothing more.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Your examples of logically invalid arguments show how intellectually bankrupt you really are. Do you see how absurd yours are and how the conclusion doesn't follow even if your premises are true? That refutes an argument!!! Now, show me how mine don't follow either and you win.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
Determining Invalidity
Refutation by Logical Analogy
Sandra LaFave
West Valley College
A logically correct deductive argument is said to be valid.
A valid argument is one in which the conclusion must be true — can’t be false — if the premises are true. (Note that the premises don’t have to be actually true for an argument to be valid.)
Some argument forms — ways of constructing arguments — guarantee validity. Arguments that are put together correctly have valid argument forms, and are guaranteed to be valid. Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, Hypothetical Syllogism, Disjunctive Syllogism, are examples of valid forms. If an argument has a valid form, it is valid (logically correct). You can prove that an argument is valid simply by showing that it has a valid form.
On the other hand, some argument forms guarantee invalidity. Arguments that have invalid forms are guaranteed to be invalid. If the form is invalid, the conclusion does not follow from the premises, even if the premises and conclusion are all true. Affirming the Consequent and Denying the Antecedent are examples of invalid forms. If an argument has an invalid form, it’s invalid. You can prove that an argument is invalid simply by showing it has an invalid form.
Suppose, however, that you’re an ordinary person on the street. You haven’t studied valid and invalid forms, or techniques of symbolic logic (like truth tables or truth trees). Is there any intuitive way you as a non-specialist can determine if an argument is invalid (not logically correct)?
The answer is YES. You can show an argument is invalid by showing that its form is invalid. You can show its form is invalid by showing that the form can lead to an obviously false conclusion when the premises are obviously true.
To show invalidity, just do the following:
1. Determine the form of the argument whose validity is in question.
2. Attempt to construct another argument of the same form with obviously true premises and an obviously false conclusion.
3. If you succeed, you have shown the original argument invalid.
This method works because a valid argument form guarantees validity, and validity means it’s impossible for the conclusion to the false if the premises are true. If the premises had been true, and the form valid, the conclusion could not have been false. (The argument would have been sound: valid, with all true premises.) So the very fact that the form allows true premises and a false conclusion shows it can’t be a valid form. And if the form of an argument is invalid, the argument is invalid.
Example:
You are confronted with the following argument:
“If I were the President, I’d be famous. So I’m not famous, since I’m not the President.”
The conclusion indicator “so” tells you the conclusion is “I’m not famous”.
So the argument is:
Premise: If I were President, I’d be famous.
Premise: I’m not President.
Conclusion: I’m not famous.
The argument obviously is an instance of the invalid form Denying the Antecedent, but we’re supposing you don’t know that.
Step 1: Determine the form of the argument whose validity is in question.
Premise: If A, then B.
Premise: Not A (or “A is not the case&rdquo
.
Conclusion: Not B (or “B is not the case&rdquo
.
Step 2: Now that you’ve extracted the form, try to construct an argument of the very same form with all true premises and a false conclusion. For example:
Premise: If Robert Redford were President, he’d be famous. (true)
Premise: Robert Redford is not President. (true)
Conclusion: Robert Redford is not famous. (false)
Note that the premises are true, but the conclusion is false (Robert Redford is famous).
The following argument would work too:
Premise: If I am decapitated, I’ll die. (true)
Premise: I won’t be decapitated. (very probably true)
Conclusion: I won’t die. (alas, false)
This method of showing invalidity is called the Refutation by Logical Analogy, and people use it all the time (“That’s just like arguing …&rdquo
. The neat thing is, it really does show invalidity!
Try it yourself.
Use the method of Refutation by Logical Analogy to show the invalidity of the following arguments:
1. All Presidents live in the White House. Bill Clinton lives in the White house, so Bill Clinton is the President.
2. If there’s a government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial visitors, then the government would deny any knowledge of UFOs. The government does deny any knowledge of UFOs. This proves there is a conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrial visitors.
3. All persons have skin. Howdy Doody isn’t a person, though, so Howdy Doody doesn’t have skin.
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"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
So jackspell, I am admit to being scientifically illiterate but is your argument that you aren't using a "god" concept as a starting point ( A priori ) but simply as a logical result ?
Again, shifting the burden of proof DOES NOT WORK.
If you want to demonstrate something that can be proven BEYOND personal bias and BEYOND a personal claim, it is up to you to prove it.
Otherwise I'll start a business, you come work for me, and after 2 weeks when you come to pick up your check I'll just say, "I did pay you, just have faith. It's an invisible check, in an invisible account, and all you have to do to get paid is have "faith".
That is how all superstition and myth works on those who buy it. Emotional appeal and desire and tradition over ride far to much of humanity that refuses to take a step back and say "Hey, I don't see a check"
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
This pleases me because I wouldn't want the God from the Bible!
I like this intelligent design theory! I debated it sometimes here. The only way you have to run away from it is to talk about the multiverse theory which for some odd reason no one mentioned it.
I for one do not believe in multiverse theory; it makes no sense to me and I never saw convincing evidence supporting it.
Although this never led me to God whatever that is.
It led me to a First Cause. I believe that the universal reality was generated by an atemporal and immaterial First Cause with the intent of creating life. Even if "intent" suposes intelligence.
I give up on you. I even post a link trying to help you out, and you are still hopeless. That in no way is a shift of The burden of proof. IT IS HOW TO FAIL A DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT!!!
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig
And FYI because of your incompetence, I have proven my argument. You are oblivious to the fact that you never even offered an objection based on the rules of logic. That is sad. Most atheist understand that to fail an argument all you have to do is show that just one of the premises aren't true. Instead, I've got to spend all day trying to teach you an argument's atomic formula so you can even try to refute it.
"In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the probability of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4∧(360)^110,000, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God”-William Lane Craig