Stump the Christian?

[Randy Carson]

For example, if one of your best friends told you about an online game that he discovered, would you check it out?

If 2.2 billion people downloaded a new app onto their smartphones, would you check it out?

If xx billion people believe that a god exists, would you check it out?

The third example is very different from the first two.  My friend would explain how to find and try the game.  My smartphone would allow me to locate and try the application.  But how do I check out the claim regarding god?  Those 2.2 billion people may have thousands --or possibly millions-- of different suggestions for how to do so, none of which would actually get me to a god that exists.  And some of those suggestions would be in direct contrast to other suggestions, even among the people whose beliefs overlap in some areas.  Why would I accept the general claim regarding the resurrection of Jesus, when those billions of believers can't even come to an agreement as to who or what he is?

Is this hypothetical? Or are you seriously willing to consider the matter?

[Randy Carson]

I agree with you about the appeal to popularity as a PROOF. However, it does tell us something about human nature.

For example, if one of your best friends told you about an online game that he discovered, would you check it out?

If 2.2 billion people downloaded a new app onto their smartphones, would you check it out?

If xx billion people believe that a god exists, would you check it out?

1) No, not automatically. Only if I'm interested in the topic

2) Hell no. Not before I checked what it does and if it does any damage or profiling

3) I did and the results didn't satisfy me.

As for point three, there are 1,6 billion muslims. Don't you feel the need to check it out? There are also give or take 800 million Hindus - checked them already? The Budhists?

What I do is not all that important. After all, I have theism in COMMON with all of those groups.

The real question is: are YOU as an atheist willing to set aside YOUR presuppositions and consider the possibility that a god exists?

[abaris]

The real question is: are YOU as an atheist willing to set aside YOUR presuppositions and consider the possibility that a god exists?

As opposed to theists I never claim absolutes. I argued repeatedly that I do not have all the answers of the universe. I only found every god claim totally unbelievable and don't build my life on it. Might be that some, for lack of a better word, superior force is residing in the unknown. I don't know, you don't know either. There's no evidence for it's existence and as I said, I don't build my life on a 2000 year old dogma I consider absurd to it's core.

I'm not discriminatory either. I consider all god claims of all religions of all times to be absurd and men made.

[robvalue]

[dyresand]

God of the gaps again.

You don't know the answer, nobody does. But at heart you're still the caveman praying to the moon. Don't know doesn't mean god required. Don't know is simply what it says: Don't know.

In a hundred years, we will know more and in a thousand years, we will have learned a lot more. For me, we don't know simply means interesting question. Would be nice if some of them could be answered while I'm still around. And no, god done it isn't the answer. Science is great pseudo

No, this is science-of-the-gaps. Your assumption is that science can't give us all the answers now, but eventually it will.

Ironically, you are taking a faith position, not a scientific position.

Science doesn't require faith either it is or it isn't. I have no faith i see no point in it. It's like you take medication to get better do you need faith it will work no you don't. Since when has the bible even described anything truthful or even factual anyways never. Science works because it uses observations in the real world. Mythical beings and or ethereal/magic is not in the real world. Also science of the gaps is getting smaller when it finally figures out the big bang and were the initial energy/matter that was present came from kiss religion good bye.

[Esquilax]

Composition Fallacy?

The argument is in the classic form Modus ponens:

P implies Q.
P.
Therefore, Q.

1. All men are mortal. (Everything that begins has a cause.)
2. Socrates was a man. (The universe began.)
3. Therefore, Socrates is moral. (Therefore, the universe has a cause.)

The argument does not imply that because some things in the universe have a cause, therefore the whole universe must have a cause.

Oh, it doesn't? Great! Then you're just arguing on factually incorrect or equivocatory premises, and I can easily correct those!

[*]Something cannot come from nothing.
[*]If something can come from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything does not come into being from nothing. If the universe can come into being out of nothing, why not root beer? Or bowling balls? And why don't they appear out of nothing at random?

[*]

You're equivocating here, because we're talking about two radically different states of reality, and you're pretending they're exactly the same state. As I've said before, the pre-expansion, pre-big bang universe is, as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin paper you fallaciously cite below states, something unlike anything we've encountered before, requiring entirely different physics models to properly map it. To simply assert that something cannot come from nothing in our current universe may be true- but it also might not be; you've made the assertion but have done nothing at all to back it up, as usual- but it's also entirely irrelevant,  because our current universe did not exist at the time we're talking about. At the time that we're thinking something may have come from nothing, everything was different, in fact, the basic motions of the universe, that have persisted for the entirety of its expansion, had not yet begun. The universe we're talking about was different at every conceivable scale, right down to its fundamentals. Time and space are linked, and neither of those things were in the shape that they are now; you cannot rely on your understanding of this universe to see you through.

[*]Modern cosmologists, Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin, have proved that any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history, cannot be eternal in the past but must have an absolute beginning. This also applies to multiverses – if there is such a thing. Vilenkin said,

“This means that scientists “can no longer hide behind a past eternal-universe. There is no escape; they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”

[*]

[*]

Have you read the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin paper, Randy? Or are you like so many other theists who seek to use it without having read it or understood it? Because I have read it, and they're talking about a beginning to universal expansion, not a beginning of the universe. That's something they flatly state; in fact, the, and I quote, "chief conclusion" of the paper is, indeed, that universal expansion cannot be past-eternal, that it had to have a beginning, and that beyond that point, one would need an entirely new physics model to properly describe it. They do not, in fact, state that therefore this is the beginning of the universe, which is something that's made clear in the fucking abstract, so evidently you haven't read the paper past the first paragraph:

Thus inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past boundary of the inflating region of spacetime.

[*]

[*]

Hey I have an idea: maybe next time you read the source you cite before you cite it, because why would we need physics to describe something past the boundary of inflation if, as you claim, past that point constitutes the beginning of the universe, wherein there is nothing before it?

Incidentally, the physicists you quote don't agree with you: in a debate with William Lane Craig, who also misuses the same scientists that you do, Sean Carroll anticipated this argument and asked Alan Guth for his view. His response was unambiguous: "I don't know whether the universe had a beginning. I suspect that it did not have a beginning." So, who is misinterpreting the paper: the person who wrote it, or the non-physicist attempting to bend science to his biases?

Vilenkin doesn't like what you're selling either, Randy; in his 2006 book, "Many worlds in one," he has this to say about theologians attempting to hold up his work as proof of god:

Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God … So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist.

[*]

[*]

"Far too simplistic." Hmm... sounds like what I've been saying about your arguments from the start!

This all took me a few minutes research on google, by the way. It's nice knowing that a few minutes' thought on the subjects you speak so authoritatively on is beyond your grasp.  

[Randy Carson]

You're not  surprising anybody.

Nor did I expect to. I will take a look at the threads. I spent HOURS reading all the Tim O'Neill threads, and I was impressed with how he addressed the issues of the historicity of Jesus. (Quite a few folks got shellacked by a fellow atheist on that issue.)

If the proponents of the Kalam argument did as well as Tim, then I look forward to reading their posts.

Thanks.

[Randy Carson]

The real question is: are YOU as an atheist willing to set aside YOUR presuppositions and consider the possibility that a god exists?

As opposed to theists I never claim absolutes. I argued repeatedly that I do not have all the answers of the universe. I only found every god claim totally unbelievable and don't build my life on it. Might be that some, for lack of a better word, superior force is residing in the unknown. I don't know, you don't know either. There's no evidence for it's existence and as I said, I don't build my life on a 2000 year old dogma I consider absurd to it's core.

I'm not discriminatory either. I consider all god claims of all religions of all times to be absurd and men made.

How do you know what I or any theist knows? Have you checked with ALL of us to determine whether our personal experiences fail your test? No.

And btw, every time I get close to asserting what atheists believe, you guys howl in protest...and yet, you make bald-faced claims about what theists know and do not know with certainty.

On what basis?

[Tonus]

Is this hypothetical? Or are you seriously willing to consider the matter?

Hypothetical. I seriously considered the matter for the better part of 30 or 35 years before realizing that I did not believe, and further inquiry just confirms the doubt. The discrepancies between denominations and individuals only became clear after I stepped outside of the bubble of my particular branch of Christianity, but it also helped me see that many (if not most, or all) of them require that you shield at least some of your beliefs from scrutiny. At least one of the reasons for my leaving religious faith behind was that I tried pretty hard to test those shields, and that's not a good thing to do if you want to remain faithful.

[pocaracas]

I agree with you about the appeal to popularity as a PROOF. However, it does tell us something about human nature.

For example, if one of your best friends told you about an online game that he discovered, would you check it out?

If 2.2 billion people downloaded a new app onto their smartphones, would you check it out?

If xx billion people believe that a god exists, would you check it out?

It tells us something about Human nature... you got that right!
Beliefs are powerful incentives to action... and a belief that gets passed on tends to stick around.
Also, if somewhere along the chain of passing the belief along, you come across the information that not holding that belief is bad, or that those who don't hold your same belief are "the others" and must be destroyed or converted, then you pick up on a very powerful force that, in time, gets the whole world to hold such beliefs.
We are at that time.

And, if you notice, I never mentioned that whatever is believed upon must be true.

The concept of god has won out in the beliefs stage mainly for its inability to be disproved.
Even with the far reaching advancement of science, god-of-the-gaps is still a thing. As long as there is a gap in knowledge, god will hide there and xx billion people will believe some form of god exists.

It's all down to human nature. No god required.
Being aware of this, how would I let my own mind be tricked into believing whatever god is proposed to me?