A simple challenge for atheists

[robvalue]

A logical fallacy is wrong, no matter who uses it. People, even brilliant people, have made mistakes with logic. That doesn't validate the method; that is another fallacy called tu quoque. It's saying "My argument may not work, but neither does his!"

[Tonus]

So I can't use the same argument that was used by a world leading atheist?

In that case, I believe what the following scientists believe.

Curious, though, that none of those scientists provided a smidgen of proof for any statements regarding the existence of god. Just belief. In other words, they took the exact opposite approach to the one that led to great scientific theories, discoveries, and progress. That scientific approach also leads to consistent and repeatable results. Yet you can do a Google search and find scientists who believe that it is the Muslim god who exists and is the one true god, and others who believe in the Christian god, and so on. I suspect that none of them compare notes using the same system that allows them to verify one another's work in the field of science.

[LostLocke]

You are confining God to the rules of our universe. God is outside of our universe. He created the rules.

So, something can come nothing then.

Oh, and, I never specified that I was limiting it to 'within' our universe.
I'm speaking in general. Both 'inside' and 'outside' our universe.

[downbeatplumb]

Where did you get the belief that the bible was created in the 4th century AD???

In the early days christians were following a rag tag collection of contradictory texts and oral traditions. It had gotten so bad that action needed to be taken. So they convened a committee and selected from the myriad sources the ones that:

A: Told a more or less coherent account and

B: Told the account that the committee wanted to tell.

This was the council on Nicaea convened by Emperor Constantine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

[IATIA]

Where did you get the belief that the bible was created in the 4th century AD???

Fact, not a belief.

[Esquilax]

Objective evidence is used to evaluate things inside the universe. Since I believe in a God who is outside the universe, there can be no objective evidence. My original question had no mention of God, but people on the forum have asked that I rewrite the question to include God.

That's not my problem. "You don't understand, evidence of my claim isn't possible!" doesn't mean your claim is somehow off the hook for providing evidence, it just means that the claim has failed the most basic test for ascertaining the reality of something that we have. Thus, you are accepting a claim on irrational grounds. The reason we ask that you add god into the question was to demonstrate that; theistic "challenges" like yours rely on the challenged never questioning the challenger on the same basis. You seek to show the impossibility/improbability/what have you, of what you perceive to be the "atheist worldview," but the point is that doing so does not give your god the upper hand; two poorly justified claims are just that, they don't mean that the unexamined one instantly becomes true.

So I can't use the same argument that was used by a world leading atheist?

Fallacious ideas don't suddenly become appealing just because I happen to agree with the guy making them on some other issue. You're not going to be able to stoke some kind of atheist loyalty in me to get me to go along with bad ideas out of a sense of solidarity. That particular argument from design is an argument from ignorance, and I don't care if Flew said it, or Darwin, or Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris all at once. They'd still be wrong; maybe keep that idea in mind for the future, so you don't just quote a procession of theist and deist scientists, as though that fallacious argument from authority is going to make me change my mind.

"Smart guy X believes this thing too!" is not going to make me consider a proposition I'd previously said was wrong, to be right, unless you can tell me why smart guy X believes it, and on what evidence. And you've already said that no evidence for your god is even possible. So just quoting a bunch of scientists making fallacious statements isn't going to get us anywhere. Allow me to demonstrate:

“The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.”
–Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, as cited in his book Descent of Man.

Argument from authority: the intelligence of the people making the claim has no bearing on the truth of the claim.

“Both religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.”

Fluffy equivocations are not evidence.

“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think, that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.”

–Max Planck, the Nobel Prize winning physicist considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and one of the most important physicists of the 20th century, indeed of all time.

Again, the argument from authority.

“I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.”

You're quoting a physicist's opinion on philosophy?

Besides, argument from ignorance: "I don't know how they could work without god, therefore they can't."

“Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent it must have been created.”
–Physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, who is credited with formulating classical electromagnetic theory and whose contributions to science are considered to be of the same magnitude to those of Einstein and Newton.

And here we have another lengthy argument from ignorance, this time literally appealing to ignorance as its justification. Gross.

“The more I study science, the more I believe in God.”
–Albert Einstein
(The Wall Street Journal, Dec 24, 1997, article by Jim Holt, “Science Resurrects God.”)

Factually incorrect, as letters from Einstein later in his life show. When the man speaks of god he generally does so in reference to Spinoza's pantheistic meta-deity, more poetic language than actual religion. Does it bother you, that you've been manipulated into misrepresenting the beliefs of a dead man for personal gain in an internet argument?

I guess all this demonstrates my point here; even the smartest of us are prone to the occasional fallacy or incorrect thought. That's why the argument itself is more important than the person making it, and as far as these quotes you give, and you yourself, neither is broaching an argument at all.

[IATIA]

Since I believe in a God who is outside the universe, there can be no objective evidence

Which makes it speculation and opinion. However, for god to interact with this universe, there must be some sort of entanglement which makes god now subject to the rules of this universe and testable.

[robvalue]

I read it in a story book + You can't prove it doesn't exist + I really want it to exist = It exists

Trouble is, that works for just about every character in every story book.

[Dystopia]

A better question would how does not being able to know the answer prove god exists?

[robvalue]

Theists like having only two options for any given decision. Any more and they get a bit confused :p

Oh, and goddidit is always at least one of those options.

I'm only playing.