Atheism is unreasonable

[Esquilax]

Did I say or imply that it was? No, I didn't. I said "the universe began to exist"...now of course, since I only believe there is only one universe, which is our own, I don't posit any other universe. BUT, if you do want to posit a pre-big bang scenario, then you are only pushing the question of origins back one step further at which you dive right back into the realm of infinity.

I'm saying that we don't know. I don't know, you don't know, and if you actually bothered to look, you would see that science has done little more than theorize, at this point. We simply do. not. have. sufficient. evidence. Making declarative claims as you are, when the scientific consensus refuses to on account of a lack of proper data from before the Planck time doesn't make you some grand pioneer. It makes you a buffoon stepping on the toes of people whose education you couldn't hope to imitate.

Hey, I go where the science takes me, and for the last 80+ years it is a fact in science that our universe began to exist. Point blank, period.

Which is why you haven't provided a single resource to back that up.

Wrong again. In his book, Many World's in One, pg. 175, Vilenkin said this about the BGV theorem:

"We made no assumptions about the material content of the universe. We did not eve assume that gravity is described by Einstein's equations. So, if Einstein's gravity requires some modification, our conclusion will still hold. The only assumption that we made was that the expansion rate of the universe never gets below some nonzero value, no matter how small. The assumption should certainly be satisfied in the inflating false vacuum. The conclusion is that past-eternal inflation without a beginning is impossible."

I don't even know why you even mentioned the BGV theorem, as if that somehow supports your side of things.

Oh, you little fool. I am so glad you decided to disagree with me on this point.

Here is a reference from someone who asked Alexander Vilenkin, one of the authors of the paper in question, and the writer of the quote you posted flat out, "does your theorem prove that the universe must have had a beginning?" and Vilenkin's answer, contrary to what you assert here, is no. All it proves, he says, is that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. Vilenkin also mentions here that if one were willing to entertain the subtleties of the theorem, then the answer to the question of a finite universe would be "no, but..." with a number of possible avenues for discussion. The relevant part, I think, is that despite your quotations and assertions, at no point when directly asked the question does Vilenkin ever assert that the universe is finite.

That sufficiently scuttles your bullcrap right there, but I'm not done. Perhaps you're aware of Alan Guth, another one of the writers of the BGV theorem? Because, see, Alan Guth was willing to go on video for Sean Carrol, in his debate with William Lane Craig, to state that his theorem does not endorse a finite universe model either. Here, see for yourself:





So, it's interesting that you assert that this specific theorem endorses a finite universe model, when two thirds of the authorship disagree. I wonder who we should believe? Some random moron, or the actual authors of the paper?

Oh, and also? Just to, you know, rub salt in the wound? The debater in that video who isn't a creationist conman is Sean Carrol, a fucking theoretical physicist, who also agrees on video that we don't know enough to make the declarative statements you are, and that our understanding of the universe breaks down at the big bang. What was that you were saying about the science agreeing with you?

Mind reader? Dude, the kalam argument has two premises. You erraneously attributed the infinity problem to the premise that it didn't apply to. That is your ignorance, not mines. And if you were familiar with the argument as you made it seem with that weak rebuttal, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I'm familiar enough with Kalam to dismiss it as ridiculous. Did you know that it was a modification of an earlier cosmological argument, the chief change being the addition of the words "begins to exist" to the original premise "everything has a cause"? No evidence was discovered between then and the advent of Kalam to cause this, it was just changed by fiat assertion to get around the "what caused god?" problem. And that's the big black mark on these kinds of arguments, that they change on a dime to define problems with them out of existence absent any kind of real world evidence.

Actually, I already know how the game goes. When you mention the concept of time, all of a sudden it is time to get all technical and crap. That is why I am purposely not focusing on specifically time, but events in time, which is why I gave the analogy regarding the event of your birth. And the good thing about that is, it is independent of how technical you want to get about time.

So basically, "don't use all dem big words, they scare me!"

Wrong again, because it does. Here is another (better) analogy.

Oh, so you can't count from one to two to three? Because I can, despite the fact that we have an infinite amount of numbers. Here I go: one, two, three, four, five! See? I even went two beyond, to show you just how fucking stupid you're being.

Analogy: So if I imagine myself standing on an infinitely long road, and in the distance, I see you running towards me. When you reach me, I stop you, and I ask you how long have you been running. And you say "For eternity"..and I say, "Ok, I want you to turn around, and run the opposite direction, and I want you to stop running when you reach the same (equal) distance that you reached when you met me", and you turn around and begin running...at what point would you stop?

One cannot run for eternity, as eternity is not a discrete unit of time, it's an expression of an infinite length of time, which I would by definition not have been running for if you stopped me at any point.

But the analogy can still be useful: say I start at any point on an infinitely long road, and I plant a flag at that point before running down the road in one direction. If I turned around and ran back the same distance- which would be a limited, discrete distance despite the endless expanse of the road- the flag would still be there at the position I left it.

The same is true of an eternal time span: if I'm on earth under the same gravitational physics as usual, one day will still pass in 24 hours, despite the endless length of time. And another day would pass. And despite there being an eternity, my perception of time can still demarcate individual passed units of time, to the degree that I could mark off a single week within eternity easily enough. It's just seven 24 hour periods, even in a space where the remaining time is infinite.

A certain kind of apologist loves to pretend that eternity or infinity is some paralyzing endless conundrum in which nothing could happen, but it's not. You can still measure an infinite length; if I had a meter long tape measure I could use it to mark out a specific single meter of an infinite length, it's just that the remainder I would have after marking off that meter would be endless. Under your logic, any attempt to measure infinity instantly vanishes because there would still be the same amount left after measuring, but you have no means of demonstrating that.

No need for any smart ass comments either...just tell me at what point would you stop.

If you were working with two undefined quantities you couldn't stop. But therein lies the problem, because you wouldn't be working with two undefined infinite quantities, you'd be working with one. The moment you stopped me to ask how long I'd been running, I would have ceased running for eternity, and have begun running for a finite length of time relative to the moment you asked me. If you interrupt a supposedly eternal activity but time keeps on passing after it has stopped, then the activity is no longer eternal. Given that, I could tell you the definitely finite answer you wanted, and be able to run back in the opposite direction for that span of time.

But for every event, an infinite number of events preceded it. That is the point. For every event that comes to past, and event number of events was before it, which is basically saying saying that infinity has been traversed. But you can't traverse infinity, that is the problem.

You can traverse finite points within infinity, providing you are inside it, experiencing it actively as it passes. Think of it like this: if you were trapped inside an eternity of time, and you had on a functioning watch, that watch would still keep time, yes? So you could monitor that, say, an hour had passed inside that eternity. How much time had that eternity existed before you got there? Eternity. How long will it continue now that you're in there? Eternally. But in your subjective experience, one hour has passed. If I were, as your initial example indicated, a baby being born in an infinity, an infinite number of babies would have come before, but I would still have a subjective sense of time passing. An infinite sequence can still have discrete individual items that come up in that sequence: seven does not cease to exist merely because there is an infinite number of numbers preceding it.

What the hell is a "causal" infinity?

So now you don't understand what causality is?

But for your birth to come to past, an infinite "set" is traversed", the entire "set" which includes every event which preceded your birth would be complete...but that is like saying you can count the entire set of natural numbers and be "complete". It can't happen.

You're right. But if you start counting numbers, eventually you will get to seven. What you're doing is saying that, say, I'm the number seven and we're counting, only when we get to six you demand that I count eight before I count seven. And when I get to eight you demand that I count nine before seven, and so on.

Even in an infinite set, I would occupy a space in that set, prior to one thing and after another. If we're talking infinite babies in an eternal time span, then whatever spot in that sequence I occupied would still come up once the baby before me is born, even if there are an infinite number of babies born before him. Or are you denying that? Are you creating an example where you say I'm one of an infinite set of something, and then telling me that I'm also not a part of that set when it suits you?

Ok, so if I told you that in an infinity number of days, I will deposit a trillion dollars in your bank account, will you ever get the money? No, because for every single day that passes, there is an infinite amount to go, so you will NEVER get the money.

So first of all, there is not an "infinity number." Infinite is a concept representing an endless span of numbers. So your hypothetical is non functional from the get go. But what you're saying is that if you said to me that you'd deposit one dollar in my bank account for an infinite span of days, at no point in that span would I ever have seven dollars. It's moronic.

So for the event of your birth to come to pass after traversing an infinte number of births would be saying that an infinite set of births has already been traversed. If that can't happen in the "trillion dollar" analogy, how can it happen in the "birth" analogy?

Because in an infinite set discrete entities still exist. For an infinity of births to happen you would need an eternity; by definition there is now enough time for all of the births to occur, including mine. It would just so happen that if you tried counting babies on either side of me, you would never reach the end.

Have you ever wondered why you can magically count from 1 to 2 quite easily, but you will never reach the #2 if you counted all the number in between 1 and 2?

So does that mean two doesn't exist, and is not a number?

Foolishness. If time never began, then it is infinite.

I posited a third alternative just a few posts back, moron: recursive time, cycling from a finite span of forward moving time, into a similarly finite span of reverse moving time. So let's not go into the false dichotomies again. But the point I was making, which you missed again, is that we do not know whether time is finite or infinite or not.

Until you can solve the infinity problem, statements such as the one above need not be made.

It's not a problem, because I'm saying we don't have sufficient evidence to make a conclusion one way or the other, not that time is infinite, you loon. Pay some fucking attention.

What the HELL are you talking about? The BGV theorem is a theorem which proves that the universe began to exist.

That's funny, since Guth and Vilenkin disagree.

So, there is no cosmologist on earth that believes in god?

There's no cosmologist who has been able to come to that conclusion as a result of their professional work. Must you oversimplify absolutely everything you hear?

Um, I am a man, but I am not a cat.

Which demonstrates the problem with using logical syllogisms as proof; my syllogism functioned perfectly on logic, but finds a stumbling block in not being factually accurate. Logic is always subordinate to reality.

To be omniscient would mean that it is impossible for you to not know anything, so no point in these meaningless hypotheticals.

Yes, to literally be omniscient would mean that, but all you have is the claim of omniscience. Put it this way: how could a claimed omniscient be sure that there weren't unknown unknowns to them? Your answer can't just be "they're omniscient!" because that's circular reasoning. How could they possibly verify it?

Spare me the rhetoric…do objective moral values exist…yes or no? Very simple question.

So basically, you don't want to listen, so can I sum up a complex concept in a simple soundbite? No, and fuck you for trying to make me. Read the fucking paragraph like an adult.

Can you hold a computer code in your hand and get a fistful of information??

No. That's my point: neither of us can, because information is conceptual, and not literal. It exists in minds, not in objects, and it does not require an intelligent creator to exist.

Then you apparently lack the basic reading comprehension skills needed to decipher what was said to you, which was based on what you said to me. I don’t think I can help you there.

Actually, I think you were just being an asshole.

Bullcrap. It would be a beneficial trait for me to evolve wings to be able to fly away from a bear in the woods as opposed to running from it, but I don’t have no damn wings, do I?

So, we can add evolution to the list of things you don't understand, then.

You could never evolve wings, because individuals do not evolve. But you could pass specific traits that are conducive to the development of wings on to your offspring, because populations do evolve over successive generations. Additionally, not that I think you'll actually understand this, but humanity's survival niche doesn't require that we fly; we evolved- through random mutations, to avoid the simpering "but whyyyyy?" in response- in such a way that cooperation and intelligence were our survival traits. Bears are not a sufficient selection pressure to a modern human for the need for an escape tactic to evolve.

And even if they were, you could just die off instead. Maybe your lineage just wasn't fit enough to survive, that's always an option.

More bullcrap. This is all bio-babble.

"I don't understand it, therefore it doesn't mean anything!"

What the heck is “complex reactive intellects”,

Do you not know what words mean? Complicated intelligence that can react to a wider range of scenarios in appropriate ways are a survival advantage.

and who is directing the “drive” towards it?

Selection pressures in the environment. Those organisms that were better able to react to situations quickly and in more nuanced ways were able to survive longer, as all the other ones that couldn't react appropriately to, say, a predator, were caught and eaten. The survivors got to pass on their genes, meaning the intelligence trait got passed on to the next generation at a higher rate than other traits. It propagated.

This is a prime example of putting words together to make it sound pretty when in actuality the answer that is given leaves you with more questions than answers.

"Use smaller words, or you're not saying anything real!"

If the brain “evolved” like you claim it did, and if you are sitting there watching it evolve, please explain to me at what point would that brain begin thinking…and what is the mechanism needed for this to happen.

And if I can't tell you, does that make it untrue?

As it happens, even modern human brains aren't instantly thinking; there's a developmental curve that is quite well mapped in medical science.

The brain is made up of matter. If you had a chunk of brain cartilage and you shaped and molded it into a brain, at what point would you get that brain to begin thinking of thoughts??

Maybe go look at how fetuses develop, eh? We know when specific parts of the brain "switch on" in babies, after all. Just asserting "you can't make one work now with your hands!" doesn't mean it didn't evolve. That's a total non sequitur.

And, again: someone else not knowing something doesn't make you right by default.

Well, hmm…the first sentence in this page article

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/ce...mregarding DNA states

¬“DNA carr¬ies all of the information for your physical characteristics, which are essentially determined by proteins.”

If DNA “carries all the information for your physical characteristics”, I would say that is quite specified, don’t you think?

No, I wouldn't. Mostly because "specified" refers to the origin of the information in question, and not its function.

Natural selection “selects”…it doesn’t “create” anything. The information was already there, and once again, back to my questions of origins…where did it come from? How can a mindless process get this kind of information to “create” anything???

Information is a conceptual label placed upon predictable patterns, in this case within chemical reactions. There is no information inside DNA, there are chemicals that can be read as information later. And if you think it is otherwise then I ask you again to show me a picture of the information in DNA. Not the code itself, but the information that you think exists as a discrete entity within it.

Oh, and also? What you've got here is a prime example of the argument from ignorance. Maybe look it up.

You’ve basically sold yourself on the unsupported fact that a mindless and blind process created consciousness and vision, when it couldn’t think or see?? Wow.

It's plenty supported; perhaps open up a goddamn biology textbook one of these days?

All I did was say that DNA contains specified information, information on how to make you, You. When you open up a book and you see that the letters are all sequenced and patterned in a way to form words and sentences, you know that there is information in the pattern. The same thing with DNA. It is patterned and sequenced….but there is no mechanism that patterns the DNA into that particular sequence, the sequence that is spewing of information. The information has to come from an external source, because nature sure as hell didn’t “know” anything.

It's a chemical reaction. The information is arranged in specific ways because that is the ways that the corresponding chemicals react and bond with one another. Like chemical reactions do.

Do you have any evidence for this putative external source of yours, or are you just asserting it?

So basically, I am supposed to let you use consciousness as a gateway to something else without having you first empirically explain to me where consciousness came from in the first place…when the origin of consciousness is exactly what I questioned in the OP??

Yes, if we aren't talking about consciousness specifically, but about something else. What, am I just supposed to let you dismiss everything I say until I can come up with a unified theory for the origins of everything that came before it? Stick on the fucking topic, don't be all "oh yeah? Well, your observation that the sky is blue is invalid, because you don't know how the universe came to be! How can I just let you use the universe as a gateway to something else without having you first empirically explain to me where the universe came from?!"

Quit your fucking dodging and address the issue at hand. Besides, I have explained consciousness above, in as much detail as is currently available. Your response was nothing more than "I don't understand those words! This can't be true!"

You are wrong yet again. It can be shown to anyone that wishes to view it under a microscope..you know, that “thing” that every biochemist has his lab.

No, I think you'll find that when you do that, you're looking at DNA, not information.

So the code that is embedded in DNA is the only code known to man that isn’t intentionally placed?

I already gave you an example of a code that isn't intentionally placed. Your response was "codes are intentionally placed, therefore that isn't a code!" Which means that if you're calling DNA a code, and your definition of a code includes the thing you are trying to prove DNA to be, then you are begging the question.

And DNA is the only case where “instructions” doesn’t come from an “instructor”. Gotcha.

It's not instructions. It's chemical reactions, the expression of which results in an organism. Calling DNA instructions for an organism is, again, an analogy to explain something complex to a layman.

Bonding is one thing, sequencing is another. A metal chalkboard with a dozen magnetic letters attached to it; Yeah, the letters are attached to the board…but if the letters form the patterned sequence of the word “Information” on it, that is specified complexity.

Or someone threw a bunch of magnetic letters at the board, and only the letters "I, N, F, O, R, M, A, T, I, O, N" stuck to it, in that sequence. It may be unlikely, but it's not impossible; how would you determine which of those two possibilities is what occurred?

Or better yet, if there is a giant magnetic chalk board with hundreds of magnetic letters on it and the idea is for the letters to be formed in a way to give instructions of how to assemble a bicycle, even if the letters were randomly scattering about the board, you will be hard pressed to think that the letters will eventually randomly form perfect words in perfect sentences, periods included. It takes faith to think that it could, and even more faith to think that it did.

Except that we aren't talking about an entirely random process with evolution, because natural selection exists. Successes are kept, and failures are dropped. A more accurate analogy would be hundreds of magnetic letters, where individual words are allowed to be retained when they form at random. That way, you'd end up with plenty of words in a relatively short period of time, and in terms of evolution we've had millions of years.

I am talking about specified complexity, buddy.

Talking about it, but you haven't demonstrated that the complexity that we're discussing is specified, at all.

I’m glad you said that. So I challenge you to name me one external Egyptian source that can vouch for the existence of King Tut. You just said we have corroboration from other sources when it comes to many things in antiquity, but we don’t with King Tut, yet I assume you have no problems believing that King Tut existed, right?

It doesn't bother me one way or the other, truthfully. But if you insist: Here. Not only do we have his tomb and his body, but a number of other sources attesting to his existence.

Are you suitably chastened?

Actually the Bible is one book comprised of many different INDEPENDENT books, so it’s not just one source. Second, every single claim in the Bible could be true EVEN if it all came from one source, and to think otherwise would be clearly committing the Genetic Fallacy.

Sure, but without outside corroboration then each of those books remains a claim made without corroboration. Just saying "it could be true anyway!" doesn't reduce the fact that all we have is the original claim itself.

Again, you are making it seem as if the Bible is one single book written by one author. We have four independent accounts of the Resurrection, plus the letters of Paul. That is at least 5 different sources, not even mentioning the Old Testament. Just because someone came up with the bright idea to compile all of the books into one book doesn’t negate those facts.

Five different anonymous sources written decades after the events in question happened by people that could never have met any of the principle players involved with the claims. Why is it you christians never complete that sentence right?

Right, and in order for you to discount them as superstitions, you have to presuppose that they are in fact superstitions. They are not superstitions just because you think that they are or want them to be.

You would need actual evidence, extraordinary evidence in fact, as they are extraordinary claims, to demonstrate that they are more than superstitions. Observing that the real world has never had a confirmed miracle, nor does it seem to be one where miracles are even possible, is not a presupposition. It's just reality.

You can do whatever you like, although I would hope that you will examine the evidence before drawing such conclusions.

I have. The trouble is that you haven't, not with an open mind, at least.

Fine, but my point is if the church was going to just start attaching names to their sacred books, why would they attribute those specific people? Why Mark instead of Peter? Why Luke instead of Paul? If you are going to just toss names in there to give this religion any credibility, I would think you would attach the names of more prominent individuals within the Christian domain than these lesser individuals. Just sayin’

Hey, don't ask me to comment on church tradition at the time. But considering we know when those epigraphs were added to the books, and it was very much after they were written and the authors long dead, it's not a debatable point whether or not they were added as an accurate reflection of the author. They weren't. That's just history.

If Matthew actually wrote the book, then it has EVERYTHING to do with who literally wrote the book. Either Papias was mistaken, lying, or telling the truth. I don’t see him claiming that Matthew wrote the book unless he had reasons to believe so.

Papias never met Matthew, and the epigraph of the book was added without his input by people who equally did not know who the original author was. Papias was using third hand information to come to his conclusion, and he had no better evidence than anyone else with which to form his thoughts. Mistaken seems likely, though I'm not going to discount lying; wouldn't be the first church dude to make shit up. One thing he couldn't have been was right; he had no way of verifying, and neither do we. If you want to claim the book was written by the Matthew as Papias did, you are doing it on no evidence, as he did, and are therefore making it up.

The Gospels were all written within 40 years after the cross, which was during the lifetime of the disciples. Paul’s epistles were written even earlier that the Gospels.

This is not especially compelling. 40 years is plenty of time for information to become distorted, especially in a superstitious culture that has no real infrastructure for accurately transcribing information.

Soo, on your view we don’t know who wrote the Gospels, but we do know that whoever wrote it never knew him?? If you don’t know who wrote it, how do you know whether or not whoever wrote it knew him??

Given that none of the gospel authors ever claimed to have met Jesus, are we meant to draw precisely the opposite conclusion? Absence of evidence really is evidence of absence when it comes to books, you know.

Well, judging by the fact that the vast majority of the population at the time couldn’t read or write, I guess it should come as no surprise that people were breaking out their pen and pads when he was alive.

And yet we have plenty of written corroborations for the lives of other people, such as the rulers who were alive during Jesus' lifetime. It's just the man himself who exists in this pit of silence.

Um, Paul was there “near the time the action went down”. Paul actually met with the ORIGINAL disciples…so this would make his testimony second hand at worse.

Second hand with a twenty year gap between the events and their recording. Super trustworthy.

Twenty years? Well, MLK was assassinated in 1968, and after 46 years, people are STILL talking about him as a person..his speeches, his actions, his character. So if we are still talking about MLK and even made a holiday in his honor 46 years later…why is it so difficult to believe that Paul testifying the Resurrection 20 years after the cross.

Paul doesn't have the same level of cross-confirmatory dialogue and additional recordings that we do for MLK. You're trying to equate one source and no recordings with multiple first hand accounts and plenty of recordings. It doesn't work that way.

And not only that, but Paul was an active member of the Jewish authorities shortly post-Resurrection. So it isn’t as if he knew nothing about Christianity and bumped into some guy at the Temple and was told about it. He was there.

Assuming he even existed...

No, the evidence is we have at least 5 external biblical sources that mentions Jesus by NAME, and mentions his character as well. Take those 5 external sources, plus four Gospel’s by his followers, and a few letters from a skeptic turned convert. So we have at the very least 11 sources for the historical Jesus, and it is based on these sources that the vast majority of all scholars accept Jesus as a historical figure.

I don't necessarily deny the existence of Jesus, just his divine nature. I just find it strange that we don't find this level of silence with other historical figures of the time, especially considering his supposed impact.

And there's still a huge bridge to cross, between proving that a man existed, and proving that the son of god existed.