How to easily defeat any argument for God

[Belacqua]

Acrobat thinks they are one and the same, though. 

I can't speak for him. Maybe he does. Maybe I haven't listened to him well enough yet. 

This isn't a simple argument we can deal with in a sound-bitey fashion. I think that if we want better understanding and not just Internet victory we can take it slow and be charitable with one another. We're all working on it. 

And I don't believe in final causes. I think final cause is a grave misunderstanding of how things in the universe happen. There is no end goal towards which things move toward in how they behave. Things move forward because of what they are intrinsically and the conditions at hand.

My experience is that people associate final causes with conscious intentional goals, though this isn't usually the case. Especially in nature. 

I mean, the final cause of an acorn is a mature oak tree. And that's entirely due to evolution and the intrinsic conditions of what acorns are. 

But I risk derailing the thread....

I'm going to check that thread you linked me to now since I'm on the bus to work.

The poster called Ignorant is a far better philosopher than I am. I've talked to him on another forum, and I know who he is from real life. I've gained a lot from reviewing his conversations on this forum.

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Reason, Faith & Revolution? Yes, i credit Terry Eagleton for a lot, especially for introducing me to my favorite theologian, Herbert McCabe.

That's the one! I figured you'd know it. 

I think what many such unbelievers fail to recognize, is that most people live their religion, rather than develop an articulation of it. If my mother had to articulate a theology, it would have very little to do with the space in which her religion, faith, occupy in her life, it cuts deep within her. 

I think of this quote from Dostoevsky: "“the essence of religious feeling doesn’t fit in with any reasoning, with any crimes and trespasses, or with any atheisms; there’s something else here that’s not that, and it will eternally be not that; there’s something in it that atheisms will eternally glance off, and they will eternally be talking not about that.”

Yes, I'm sure this is true. I'm Facebook friends with two faithful church-goers, and neither is into theology at all. But their community and moral culture is shaped through the church, and there's no way I could be against that.

They are also loving and good people -- yesterday one of them was celebrating the fact that her pastor -- a man -- had just got married to another man.