The Case for Theism

[genkaus]

Exactly people have to decide for themselves based on their own personal experience which explanation explains best.

That would be the wrong way to determine which explanation is the best since personal experience can cloud judgment.

The problem is you can't use a theory to support yet another theory.

Why not?

I've been going round and round on this issue and I still think its special pleading to claim that there could be some other option besides design and happenstance.

Except it's not special pleading because that fallacy applies when an unjustified exemption to the rule has been made and your rule about design and happenstance being the only two possibilities has never been accepted.

Secondly I think its a red herring because I don't believe the folks pining for some other option actually believe that the universe was caused by some circumstance that would be neither design or plan, they're just running interference to obfuscate the issue. I suspect your actual take on this is that mindless forces without plan or design caused the universe to exist and life is just the accidental by product or the laws of physics. I suspect this is exactly what most atheists think. So why hide and obfuscate. I don't raise objections I myself don't actually beileve in. Its seems disengenous some folks do.

Then all I can say is that you are the one being disingenuous. There are atheists who take that position and others who take a different one and provide justification for it. They have given no evidence for you to assume that they actually don't believe what they are arguing for. Its about as deluded as saying that atheists are just angry at god.

Why? On what basis should the laws of nature make sense?

On the basis that what makes sense and what doesn't itself is derived from the laws of nature.

Why does nature seem to act as if it is compelled by a set or rules?

Because humans tend to project their own nature onto things where it is not applicable. Nature is not compelled to follow a set of rules nor is it free to act as it pleases. Those concepts apply only to conscious entities - which nature is not.

Scientists have found these 'laws' of nature not because they projected them into nature but because they really do exist. I plan to submit that fact as another line of evidence.

Don't bother. These 'laws' do not have any existence beyond a conceptual one.

Correct most atheists would opine the laws we observe are not some blueprint the universe had to follow but are just patterns of regularity we happen to observe...unless they are raising an objection for instance to the argument of fine tuning in which case they do raise the objection that maybe in fact the laws of nature do have to be as we observe them, not that they actually believe that... but just because they don't actually believe something is true that's no reason not to raise it as an objection anyway and will argue the objection should carry weight even though they themselves don't believe the objection. I call it bullshit but thats just me.

That is just you and that's because you cannot comprehend that those two arguments are in fact the same. Nature is what it is. It does not conform to any external authority nor does it follow a set of blueprints. That is what necessity means. If there were blueprints or an external authority which it had to conform to then it could have been different if the dictates of that authority had been different - and then you might have had an argument for fine-tuning. The "laws of nature" that you refer to are the observed aspects of nature that have been identified and labelled for our convenience - they do not govern or determine what nature is or what it does. In fact, nature determines what those laws would be.

Again its another phoney objection, the atheist doesn't think there was a creator to a creator anymore than they think there was any creator.

The fact that atheist does not believe in a creator or a creator's creator does not make the objection any less valid. The atheist is simply holding you to your own logic and showing how quickly you choose to commit a fallacy when confronted with the uncomfortable implications of your position.

---

Now accepting that evolution is true

Which it is.

with all its premises and ideologies that tag along with it,

There are no ideologies that tag along with it.

would it embrace the idea of social eugenics?

No.

apparently Darwin thought so "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox.Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."[Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871 edition), vol. I, p. 168)

Are you fucking kidding me? Are you really that brainwashed and deluded or have you been living under a rock? Or are you simply being a poe and throwing in a well-known and publicized quote mine to misrepresent his position? Have you not even heard of trying to verify what you say before putting it out on the internet?

Here's the rest of the quote which you conveniently chose to ignore.

"The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."