RE: How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard
September 10, 2015 at 5:19 am
(September 10, 2015 at 3:25 am)Ronkonkoma Wrote: Yes, but the presupposing has no bearing on the arguments I gave and the science I talked about.
We live in the present. The future is full of possibilities. The past is impossible to reverse. How do we change reality in the present? Through our behaviors, and our behaviors are influenced by our values. Values are immaterial. Just like you can print money out of seemingly nothing. MS window existed as a stolen idea before it came into existence as software.
You can say that the Big Bang is the limit of our knowledge. I guess that's acceptable. But other evidence for the existence of God is the immensely huge improbability of life forming on earth given the number of conditions that all need add up to make it possible.. Estimated that there are around 320 of these conditions, with each of their probabilities to be "just right" to support life and prevent the earth to implode, being less than 1%. Adding all of them up gives a probability for there to be life on earth at a staggering 10 to the power of 23. AllThat in a small window of time!
Dude, seriously. What is with you theists and the word salads? Half of that first paragraph was Deepak Chopra sayings and the other half was simply untrue. MS Windows didn't "exist" simply because Gates copied the work of that lady at Xerox for a GUI. And none of that has anything to do with the OP. It's just like you decided to connect a string of random phrases.
Every event that has ever happened is statistically improbable. Try calculating the odds that, given our lifetimes and the myriad paths we could have taken in life, that I would meet my wife. Or that the lady who nearly killed me on my motorcycle would have been there, would have turned left the instant she did, or that I wasn't going 5mph faster/slower. Doesn't make it part of some divine plan.
The "just right" argument is bunk, as it presupposes a huge number of things that are massive post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies, or are simply not within our realm of knowledge to presuppose.
An example of the former is that conditions were shaped for life, rather than life being shaped by the conditions that exist.
An example of the latter is your implied claim that this is the only way things could have happened, that life is not going to occur in other forms, given other "settings" of the variables, and that the settings are even variable. None of that is known, nor can be supposed.
If you're going to try the teleological argument, at least present a better version of it. That's the other thing about you amateur apologists; you all show up at these atheism forums like we've never seen your arguments before.
Good grief!
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
