13 Questions

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

I think you are getting my arguments confused here. I am making a logical argument here, not a scientific one. So the fact I was not there to observe the first cause is irrelevant to its logical validity. If I remember correctly I think my objections to your use of radiometric dating was focused on your uniformitarian principles and the fact you had no control to prove the method was valid. I don’t think any of that is relevant to the “first cause” logical argument for God. You say the evidence disproves my position, are you suggesting you have evidence that one, something can create itself, or two it is possible to have an infinite series of causes? I feel have plenty of empirical evidence that out of nothing nothing comes and a good logical argument against an infinite series of causes.

I did say that the evidence disproves the position that radiometric dating is invalid, but I was setting that aside for the purposes of pointing out a bit of hypocracy on your part.

My point being that even using your logical arguementation in which you say that there must be a 'first cause' contradicts your logical arguement of radiometric dating being invalid.

I disagree that evolution would preserve rationality in humans (even if it did preserve it, that doesn’t explain where the first rational mind came from). Say I have a set of berries, the red ones are poisonous and the blue ones are not. Even if I hold an irrational view that eating anything red will turn me into a frog and I thus do not eat the red berries I will survive and this irrational thought is thus preserved. I think there is plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that non-rational events cannot give rise to rational minds. A rational creator is a better explanation I think. Feel free to opine though.

Really? What if that irrational thought is based on very rational observations? Perhaps his information was wrong. Perhaps he saw someone die four hours earlier after eating the red berries and returned only to find a missing body (thanks to woodland creatures) and a frog that just happened to have decided that his shoe (or other garment) was a pleasant place to hide from predators? Perhaps this person is ignorant of nature enough to not understand what happened, so he rationalized it by attributing the berry to being magical.
Irrational or otherwise, the dangerous nature of the red berries was logically concluded to be dangerous in my more complete scenario, even if the exact conclusion wasn't entirely rational (thanks to lacking a proper education on the part of the observer).
People rationalize things they don't understand all the time. This is why christians attribute natural disasters to somehow mean that god is angry at americans for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell or some other ridiculous thing.

A rational god is a better explaination for what? Better how? It's certainly an easy explaination, but hardly a rational one or even one that can actually explain how the human mind came to be.