(December 9, 2015 at 8:42 pm)The_Empress Wrote:

(December 9, 2015 at 8:35 pm)SteveII Wrote: While by no means exhaustive, All of the list below has been discussed anywhere from decades to millennium. Collectively they form the basis of the rational belief in the existence of God. While you can debate any or all of them, you cannot dismiss them as inconsequential to the question: does God exist.

The Kalam Cosmological argument

Not evidence (arguments are not evidence); first you have to prove the premise that everything must have a creator.

Quote:The Cosmological Argument from Contingency

See above.

Quote:The Moral Argument Based upon Moral Values and Duties

Again, see above.

Quote:The Teleological Argument from Fine-tuning

... (see above)

Quote:The Ontological Argument

... (really?)

Here is an important definition:

Quote:"Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation. This data is recorded and analyzed by scientists and is a central process as part of the scientific method."

Is there another kind of evidence which is based upon logic and reason? Sure. In an article on Evidence (law), Wikipedia describes it this way:

Quote:"Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence that implies the existence of the main fact in question, but does not in itself prove it. The existence of the main fact is deduced from the indirect or circumstantial evidence by a process of probable reasoning. [emphasis added] The introduction of a defendant's fingerprints or DNA sample are examples of circumstantial evidence. The fact that a defendant had a motive to commit a crime is also circumstantial evidence. In an important sense, however, all evidence is merely circumstantial because no evidence can prove a fact in the absence of one or more inferences."

So, you may not LIKE the fact that arguments such as the Moral Argument are not empirical, but they are valid means to deduce the the existence of a supreme being "by a process of probable reasoning."

And that's why they have to be considered carefully and not treated dismissively.

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(December 9, 2015 at 9:00 pm)Evie Wrote:

(December 9, 2015 at 8:53 pm)SteveII Wrote: This is not the place to argue these again. Do you think that these logical arguments have been defeated?

What part of "arguments are not evidence" do you not understand?

The part where you erroneously assert that "arguments are not evidence."

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(December 9, 2015 at 9:08 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(December 9, 2015 at 8:35 pm)SteveII Wrote: While by no means exhaustive, All of the list below has been discussed anywhere from decades to millennium. Collectively they form the basis of the rational belief in the existence of God. While you can debate any or all of them, you cannot dismiss them as inconsequential to the question: does God exist.

The Kalam Cosmological argument
The Cosmological Argument from Contingency
The Moral Argument Based upon Moral Values and Duties
The Teleological Argument from Fine-tuning
The Ontological Argument
Origins of life
Irreducible complexity in biology
Psychological propensity to believe in God
Human consciousness
Miracles

While you can debate them, all of these arguments tend to be unpersuasive to the non-believer, while more persuasive to those who already believe.  Ignoring Antony Flew, few people are converted on the strength of these arguments alone.  The common thread being that those who find these arguments persuasive already have a propensity for belief.  Belief is the common ingredient, not the argument.

Do we ignore Dr. Edward Feser, also? And I got his name from a Google search that took mere seconds. LOTS of atheists and agnostics begin the path to faith by an honest evaluation of the information that is available for consideration.

Among the reasons that freethinkers convert are the following factors (in no particular order):

• Reading good books
  
• Studying the historical record of the gospels
  
• Honest philosophical reasoning
  
• Experimentation with prayer and reading the Bible
  

(To be fair, I could list reasons people leave religion, too, but I'm simply pointing out that I think your assessment of the role of philosophical arguments underestimates their importance.)

(December 10, 2015 at 10:50 am)Cato Wrote:

(December 10, 2015 at 10:23 am)SteveII Wrote: If your magic alligator is immaterial, timeless, personal cause of sufficient power to create the entirety of the universe, then you can use the argument. Most people just use the word God.

Are you to have us believe that the creators of Bible stories made the cosmological argument and the most reasonable conclusion Based on all known facts is the content of the Bible? If so , you're being hilariously disingenuous. The best you could ever achieve with this approach is a deist' god, but that is still a conclusion troubled by argument from ignorance. "I don't know; therefore God". Again, you cannot get from here to Jehovah, you can't.

The reality is that the Bible is a compilation of stories passed down from ignorants. The cosmological argument and similar others are post hoc arguments that attempt to keep your favorite deity out of the unemployment line like all the others. It's absurd, yet you try to use the same that God is arrived at methodologically; history betrays you.

The purpose of the biblical stories is to teach the basic rule of belief and obedience without exception and to tie each story into one of the Ten Commandments from Exodus 34:10-28.  That's all it is.

(December 9, 2015 at 8:12 am)Aractus Wrote: Religion still does more good than harm. It still provides people with the benefits that they've drawn from it for 300,000 years - in all of its various forms and belief systems.

[Citation needed]

From what I know, people haven't been around that long. By what metric are you measuring more good than harm?

(December 10, 2015 at 10:23 am)SteveII Wrote:

(December 9, 2015 at 11:56 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: Wow man, you really can't be this dense? You haven't proven god exists how could you possibly say that its a plausible explanation, I could take your argument and plug in magic alligator or universe creating turtle as the first cause, they both have the power to create the universe why are they less probable than the magic god that you made up.

You're confused about the what the Kalam argument is.  The argument concludes a cause. The next step is, based on all the back and forth discussed in the premises, describe what attributes must this cause have. Important: nothing new was introduced. A description of the cause is logically developed from the premises. 

If your magic alligator is immaterial, timeless, personal cause of sufficient power to create the entirety of the universe, then you can use the argument. Most people just use the word God.

Nope, not confused at all, that is why I gave you the magic alligator example. Even if the argument could establish a first cause, leaping to whatever that cause is, is just an argument from ignorance.

(December 10, 2015 at 11:36 am)SteveII Wrote: No the authors of the 66 books of the Bible did not base their belief in God on the cosmological argument. They based it on other things. You'll have to look into each one to see what exactly. The cosmological (and other) arguments give Christians a measure of confidence and logical defense from people who say stupid things like "compilation of stories passed down from ignorants". If arguments and evidence suggest there probably is a God, the next step is to examine if that God has interacted in some other way with man.

The people that wrote the Bible were ignorant. Do you honestly think that the creation myth in Genesis would be written the same if the authors had our knowledge? How does a simple statement of fact suddenly become a stupid thing? My guess it's because the truth makes much of what the Bible claims to be fact demonstrably false which in turn makes believers uncomfortable and their argument untenable.

What was stupid was your earlier invocation of magic alligators. The reason it was stupid is because I can easily prove the existence of alligators. You have absolutely no evidence for any god. Magic be damned.

(December 10, 2015 at 11:40 am)Irrational Wrote:

(December 10, 2015 at 10:38 am)SteveII Wrote: So what properties must such a cause of the universe possess? As the cause of space and time, it must transcend space and time and therefore exist timelessly and non-spatially (at least without the universe). This transcendent cause must therefore be changeless and immaterial because (1) anything that is timeless must also be unchanging and (2) anything that is changeless must be non-physical and immaterial since material things are constantly changing at the molecular and atomic levels. Such a cause must be without a beginning and uncaused, at least in the sense of lacking any prior causal conditions, since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes.

Therefore, that transcendent cause could not have been a changeless God. If the cause needed to have a mind in order to create, then it must have mindfully planned the creation of the universe. But such mindful planning requires the mind to move on to the next step in the series of ideas. This implies change.
Otherwise, if God did not mindfully plan the universe into existence, then the creation of the universe was mindless (i.e., random and spontaneous). But in this case, why call it God? Why not just stick to the simpler explanation that the universe came into existence randomly and spontaneously.

All that is needed is that God be self-conscious. There would be no need of a temporal component. It is not like he needed to learn things along the way. He would he simply have known all truths.

Quote:

Quote:Ockham’s Razor (the principle that states that we should not multiply causes beyond necessity) will shave away any other causes since only one cause is required to explain the effect. This entity must be unimaginably powerful, if not omnipotent, since it created the universe without any material cause.

Powerful suggests personhood in this context. However, the cause need not be personal. It just needs to have the capacity to yield universes randomly and spontaneously.

And Ockham's Razor itself suggests that God is not the best explanation since an extra entity like God, being beyond this reality, isn't really needed.

Are you suggesting that the universe needed no cause or that the causal chain was past infinite? Neither is logically sound.

Quote:2. If nothing can logically arise from nothingness, then not even God himself can form anything from nothingness.

But perhaps a much better solution to this "dilemma" would be that the cause in the form of this whole reality is eternal and universes have always emerged as a result. In this case, the cause has always occurred with effects, unlike the case with WLC's God.

So, conclusion: a personal and mindful God has not been shown to be necessary for the existence of this universe.

You are confusing an efficient cause with a material cause.

Again, are you suggesting that the universe needed no cause or that the causal chain was past infinite? Neither is logically sound.

(December 10, 2015 at 9:30 pm)Cato Wrote:

(December 10, 2015 at 11:36 am)SteveII Wrote: No the authors of the 66 books of the Bible did not base their belief in God on the cosmological argument. They based it on other things. You'll have to look into each one to see what exactly. The cosmological (and other) arguments give Christians a measure of confidence and logical defense from people who say stupid things like "compilation of stories passed down from ignorants". If arguments and evidence suggest there probably is a God, the next step is to examine if that God has interacted in some other way with man.

The people that wrote the Bible were ignorant. Do you honestly think that the creation myth in Genesis would be written the same if the authors had our knowledge? How does a simple statement of fact suddenly become a stupid thing? My guess it's because the truth makes much of what the Bible claims to be fact demonstrably false which in turn makes believers uncomfortable and their argument untenable.

What was stupid was your earlier invocation of magic alligators. The reason it was stupid is because I can easily prove the existence of alligators. You have absolutely no evidence for any god. Magic be damned.

So it would seem the you think that belief in God is irrational. You base this on the fact that there is no evidence. You discount the Bible as evidence because you don't believe in God. You discount any logical arguments because the people in the Bible didn't use them for their belief.  Isn't that circular reasoning? 

I did not bring up alligators.

(December 10, 2015 at 11:40 am)Irrational Wrote:
This is a false dichotomy. It does not follow that timelessness and immateriality must imply either personhood or abstractness.

Please provide at least one more thing that can be timeless and immaterial that can be considered as an option as the first cause.

(December 11, 2015 at 10:15 am)SteveII Wrote:

(December 10, 2015 at 11:40 am)Irrational Wrote:
This is a false dichotomy. It does not follow that timelessness and immateriality must imply either personhood or abstractness.

Please provide at least one more thing that can be timeless and immaterial that can be considered as an option as the first cause.

Okay it's not just a false dichotomy, it's a false dichotomy and an argument from ignorance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

(December 11, 2015 at 9:48 am)SteveII Wrote: All that is needed is that God be self-conscious. There would be no need of a temporal component. It is not like he needed to learn things along the way. He would he simply have known all truths.

If there was no progression in the mind of God prior to creating the universe, if there was no "prior" at all, then the creation of the universe was a mindless act.

Quote:Are you suggesting that the universe needed no cause or that the causal chain was past infinite? Neither is logically sound.

Regarding the first half of the question, you believe God himself needed no cause, but you won't grant that possibility for the universe or reality overall? This is just special pleading.

As for infinite regression, I have not seen any logical argument that effectively shows that it is illogical. Just because a concept is not intuitive to the limited human mind doesn't mean it automatically defies logic.

Quote:You are confusing an efficient cause with a material cause.

No, you just didn't get it. Efficient causes need not be sentient. And, even given the Creator, the universe itself was not the result of sentience.