Top responses to common Christian theistic arguments...

[Sternwallow]

Choobus wrote

not really, there has to be energy. The "quantum foam" cannot exist without the vacuum, which has energy associated with it (perhaps giving rise to dark energy).

Didn't Lawrence Krauss say that the Quantum Foam produced mass in the volume of a proton between the quarks? What energy is there in that volume and why would it stay there?

Please don't make Jerry right that something must pre-exist in the volume that becomes occupied by QF byproducts.

[anthonyjfuchs]

Kate wrote

Anthony, please.

You know I love it when you beg

Besides, all I hear is mooing, and I don't speak Bovinae anymore. Like Lyra forgot how to read the alethiometer, I forgot how to speak nonsense once I quit the Church.

And we all know that you can lead a cow to the waters of reason, but you can't drown her in it. Strong blighters. Faith is like PCP.

I might have considered responding -- might -- if I had even the slightest inkling that she was being genuine. But she's not. So I didn't even bother to read her screed beyond, "YERRONG HEETHIN!" (paraphrasing mine).

dean09 wrote

the cosmological argument

So you see, dean, that those who offer the cosmological argument are guilty of special pleading. They insist that everything that has a beginning must be caused, and then insist that their god-being mysteriously, inexplicably, and without a tittle of empirical evidence, has no beginning.

The answer, of course, is beyond the reckoning of the theist. The so-called Big Bang -- which was not an explosion as its name seems to imply, but rather an expansion -- marks the beginning of time as well, but the singularity that expanded at the moment of the Big Bang existed prior to that. It had to. All of the matter and energy in the universe was compressed into a single infinitely dense point before it expanded. But time did not exist in the singularity, making the singularity infinite by definition.

The singularity had no beginning. It was eternal.

But trying to explain singularities to theists is like trying to explain an infinitely dense point to an infinitely dense point.

Dean, you will understand, if you read this, that Tony does not understand what the cosmological argument is. Even when corrected, he prefers to hold on to his myth rather than confront the truth.

This is a perfect example of how things go down here. I don't think you will ever be able to assume that you are getting reliable information. It is called *Raving atheists* for a reason.

[Irreligious]

There is no "reliable" information on a so-called First Cause; it's all speculation.

[Philboid Studge]

Sternwallow wrote

The only things that are known to have a beginning are the universe (in a stage smaller than a subatomic particle) and some subatomic particles that have begun since the universe began....

This (among other things) turns the Cosmo Gulper argument on its head. When theologians like Billy Craig and his howler monkey acolytes say that things which begin to exist have a cause, we are asked to swallow that bald assertion--that things 'begin to exist' at all--like Linda Lovelace swallowed ... pride. But our demarcations for beginnings are arbitrary. All we really have are transformations*, not discrete beginnings. Except for those things that pop into existence from the foamy solace of quantum -- those do seem to begin to exist -- and those are probably uncaused.


*On top of that, the transformations--from energy to matter, e.g. or from an acorn into toilet paper--are the things that are counted by the God Wallopers as "causes". There are so many things wrong with this "proof" one wonders how it began to exist in the first place.

Studge has spoken! It must be so.

How? Who can say? Thankfully, all those philosophers and theologians who find the argument interesting will go on finding it interesting and Studge will continue to spew on a little forum in a vast universe; unnoticed and unappreciated... except by a select few. Very few.

[Sternwallow]

Bovina, it is better to live free of your cosmic tyrant in Hell than be a slave to Him in Heaven. [Not original] This rejection of mindless eternal servitude should soften your hooves and give you paws instead.

[anthonyjfuchs]

Do not be deceived, dean.

The cosmological argument invariably begins with a claim to the tune of "Every finite and contingent being has a cause." Since a singularity is by definition infinite, it requires no cause. Since time did not exist in the singularity, it is not contingent. Another variation may claim that, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause." But since a singularity is eternal (it precedes time), it has no beginning: it simply always existed. It is eternal.

Even if one were so inclined as to imagine, for fun, that the singularity that predated the universe were a "contingent being," an un-caused cause is not a satisfactory explanation. We see in nature that caused effects can cause other effects. If we accept that the universe is a caused effect, one can just as easily argue that its cause is similarly a caused effect, or several caused effects, rather than an irrationally uncaused and singular one.

The Uncaused Cause argument is, frankly, quite absurd. It argues firstly that everything imaginable requires a cause, and then prompts us to subvert its own premise by attempting to then imagine some external cause that inexplicably does not require a cause.

The cosmological argument is, ironically, debunked by the argument from complexity, which claims that the universe is too complex to have occurred by chance, thus requiring a creator. The argument from complexity implies a complexity threshold, beyond which any thing presumably requires a creator. The universe, according to this argument, surpasses that complexity threshold. The question, then, is: how complex is the being that created the universe?

There are three possibilities: more complex than, as complex as, or less complex than the universe it created. If a hypothetical creator is more complex than or as complex as the universe, then it surpasses the complexity threshold by definition, and therefore similarly requires a creator as a result of the argument from complexity. If it is less complex than the universe and below the complexity threshold, then it could not have created the universe, since the notion of greater complexity emerging from lesser complexity defies the argument from complexity.

Steel your mind, dean. There are trolling theists in our midst whose only objective is to claim you for their imaginary deity. They don't care for reason, and they don't want you to think. They want you to swear mindless allegiance to their gods and christs.

I offer you nothing more than the counterarguments that best illustrate the inherent nonsense of those claims. I have been accused of answering with the "same-old-same-old" answers, but that is not a sign of failed thinking. It is a sign of a sufficient answer.

Tony repeats the ridiculous claim that the creator must be complex. in fact, he must be the super complexest being in the universe!! He can probably leap tall buildings in a single bound! Even if Tony came up with it on his own, it is a loser. But I suspect he is channelling Dawkins, whose philosophical and logical deficiencies are now legendary.

I can sort of understand how someone uneducated in philosophy and logic could propose such an argument. After all, it’s the high degree of improbability involved that makes explaining things like the origin of the universe, the high degree of fine-tuning in the universe, and the origin of the genetic information in living systems so difficult from a naturalistic perspective. There are at least two obvious, major problems with the "complexity" argument. The first is that the term “complex” is only loosely defined, and no reason is given to explain why or in what way the designer would have to be “more complex” than the thing which is designed. It’s not even clear that the premise would be true if the terms WERE defined. Dawkins certainly doesn't argue his claim, he simply asserts it and the sheeple all nod in agreement.

Second, the whole idea that highly complex things are improbable is only true from a naturalistic worldview, that is, if the things in question arose by sheer chance and not by the purpose of some causal agent. But nobody proposes that God arose naturalistically or by sheer chance, and in fact just by proposing God, we are already outside of a naturalistic framework. Dawkins is simply considering God to be another part of the universe, which demonstrates, yet again, his complete inability to comprehend the supernatural worldview. That is why he cannot make an argument that does not cause people who do get it to laugh. And that includes his philosophically trained peers at Oxford and elsewhere.

Honestly, Dean. Look long and hard at Tony, Sternwallow, et al. This is what comes from deriving your knowledge from your rump. Most people will read an actual book before pontificating on such subjects. There are real philosophers out there who can make the real arguments-- for and against the various arguments you have named. If you want to know what the intelligent, intellectually meaty arguments are, you aren't going to learn it here. Tony has made a hilarious mash of the cosmological argument and put forward a frankly childish view of "complexity". You have only a finite number of years of life. Spend them learning from people who know something. Not from the ravers here. Not even from me.

[ILOVEJESUS]

Lily wrote

Tony repeats the ridiculous claim that the creator must be complex. in fact, he must be the super complexest being in the universe!! He can probably leap tall buildings in a single bound! Even if Tony came up with it on his own, it is a loser. But I suspect he is channelling Dawkins, whose philosophical and logical deficiencies are now legendary.

I can sort of understand how someone uneducated in philosophy and logic could propose such an argument. After all, it’s the high degree of improbability involved that makes explaining things like the origin of the universe, the high degree of fine-tuning in the universe, and the origin of the genetic information in living systems so difficult from a naturalistic perspective. There are at least two obvious, major problems with the "complexity" argument. The first is that the term “complex” is only loosely defined, and no reason is given to explain why or in what way the designer would have to be “more complex” than the thing which is designed. It’s not even clear that the premise would be true if the terms WERE defined. Dawkins certainly doesn't argue his claim, he simply asserts it and the sheeple all nod in agreement.

Second, the whole idea that highly complex things are improbable is only true from a naturalistic worldview, that is, if the things in question arose by sheer chance and not by the purpose of some causal agent. But nobody proposes that God arose naturalistically or by sheer chance, and in fact just by proposing God, we are already outside of a naturalistic framework. Dawkins is simply considering God to be another part of the universe, which demonstrates, yet again, his complete inability to comprehend the supernatural worldview. That is why he cannot make an argument that does not cause people who do get it to laugh. And that includes his philosophically trained peers at Oxford and elsewhere.

Honestly, Dean. Look long and hard at Tony, Sternwallow, et al. This is what comes from deriving your knowledge from your rump. Most people will read an actual book before pontificating on such subjects. There are real philosophers out there who can make the real arguments-- for and against the various arguments you have named. If you want to know what the intelligent, intellectually meaty arguments are, you aren't going to learn it here. Tony has made a hilarious mash of the cosmological argument and put forward a frankly childish view of "complexity". You have only a finite number of years of life. Spend them learning from people who know something. Not from the ravers here. Not even from me.

Try reading the post again and do not embarass yourself further. You cannot get away from the point that if complex things need a creator, then God would need one. If God is not complex and is simple,( then aside from being a pretty crappy God) where is the evidence of this being the case, and how does this simple being create a universe far more complex than himself? What philospher proposes that?
Unicorns are also not part of the naturalistic universe, as are bogeymen, pegasus, and Hercules. They all live in a place called fiction. Is this where God lives too? Or are you going to stump us with a piece of evidence that holds his precise address?

[Philboid Studge]

ILOVEJESUS wrote

If God is not complex and is simple,( then aside from being a pretty crappy God) where is the evidence of this being the case, and how does this simple being create a universe far more complex than himself? What philospher proposes that?

Christer theologians have been proposing this since jimboree. They call it 'Divine Simplicity' and it is generally openly mocked (for incoherence) by unaffiliated philosophers.

[inkadu]

Don't quote the cow.

Catholic theology is perfectly logical after you start with the assumption the God exists. It's a seems that a criticism of metaphysical naturalism is "Well, you're not considering the possibility that maybe X just exists out of time and space, and, incidentally, created the whole shebang."

The thing is, though, how can you consider such a possibility? You can't test it. You can't look for evidence in this cosmos... And the quantity of 'X' that can fill the above statement reaches into infinity. The number of equally-valid idea of pre-time is limited only by our imaginations.

My question for Sterny and others is I often have this idea that universes come into and out of existence all the time. I'm not sure if I see it as parallel dimensions, but just the idea that there is a near infinite amount of universes out there. So it's no surprise there's a little soggy sand grain with microbes crawling along it somewhere in that infinite number. I am not going to church to worship this idea, and I'm not trying to convince other people of it... but how is it any different than Bovina's a priori assumption of God?

[psychodiva]

please stop quoting the cow-bitch!!!!!

What a waste of bandwidth these three responses are! Yet more evidence, were any needed, that Dean cannot get an intelligent response to his question except from me-- and I referred him to those trained in logic and philosophy.


P.S. I take it back. Psilly Psycho got her feathers ruffled (or are her knickers in a twist? )

So the responses weren't a total waste!

[anthonyjfuchs]

Beware of those so enamored with their own delusions of superiority that they declare themselves the sole voice of intelligence, dean.

Those are mighty fantasies indeed.

Edit: moved the bulk of this post down south...