The Case for Theism

[Mister Agenda]

What I attribute to the existence of God is the universe and humans. It may not be much to go on, but its not nothing.

It's not nothing, but it IS affirming the consequent.

If God, then the universe and humans.
The universe and humans, therefore, God

That reasoning is no more sound than

If I am Bill Gates, then I am rich.
I am rich, therefore, I am Bill Gates.

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

I can't argue with that.

If all atheists had such an even handed response the issue would just be a discussion up for debate likes who's the greatest QB in the NFL. Most atheists frame the question as if its a 'no brainer' fact there is no God, that belief in God is on par with belief in Santa Claus but when questioned they all scurry to the position that atheism is a mere lack of belief and therefore they have no burden of evidence.

Thanks. People who identify as strong atheists are a minority among atheists, but they tend not to scurry. People who are weak atheists actually hold that position, so they don't need to scurry to reach it, we're already there. If you hang around long enough you might witness a strong atheist telling the weak atheists that it's ridiculous not to come right out and say Santa is impossible.

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

I am not familiar with that rule, and see no reason why it should be the case. You seem to think theories are weak constructs by definition that are therefore weaker when combined.

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.

I suppose you mean it is only introduced as a diversion, not because it is an actual alternative. However, I think it is a legitimate alternative, and I think I can safely say that, in broad strokes, so does Lawrence Krauss, whom I've found persuasive.

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.

It's an accurate assessment that most of us think it's more likely that no design or plan is behind the universe, but if you think we're trying to hide that, then you've misunderstood us.

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.

Yes, but I wouldn't say that is happenstance. I'm not in a position to pick a winner among the various hypotheses, no one is, but I certainly consider it a strong possibility that the laws of physics are constrained within a liimited, possibly very limited range of values, and thus aren't accurately described as happenstance. I don't think the origin of life happened purposefully and I don't think I've said anything that could reasonably be interpreted as indicating that my position is anything other than that.

I suspect this is exactly what most atheists think.

I suspect you sometimes have glimpses of what most atheists think, but then they escape you.

So why hide and obfuscate.

It's not hiding and obfuscating. It's precision. In a minute I will fix your claim for you so that it isn't a false dichotomy but a true one, and no atheist here will object to it. I don't know about atheists in general, but skeptics tend to be fussy about what a claim actually is.

I don't raise objections I myself don't actually beileve in. Its seems disengenous some folks do.

You might want to try entertaining objections without committing to them. It is one of the best tools of thought available. I don't know how the universe was formed, and neither does anyone else, but there are a number of plausible scenarios, one of which could be true. If you were to say there are only two scenarios, how is it disengenuous to point out some of the others? If you say there are either one or no cars in my neighbor's garage and I point out that maybe my neighbor has two cars in her garage, is that being disengenuous in your eyes?

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

On the basis that they've all made sense so far. If your only knowledge about cats was from your own, you wouldn't think from the fact that your cat likes fish that there's no reason to think other cats like fish. You can say 'maybe not all cats like fish', but you can't say there's no reason to think cats like fish. There is, and it's that the one cat you've observed likes fish.

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

Why should we think it's possible to not have any rules? Conceiving of a universe without any rules is like conceiving of a theodic God. You can say the words, but you can't really imagine it. Although you've given me an interesting thought: if there were a universe without rules, there's no reason why it couldn't give rise to our universe! Or a God for that matter. Another possible origin for the universe: a preceding universe with no rules. And before you start, it's not what I believe, I'm just saying that if there could be such a thing, and YOU seem to think there could since you're mystified by universes having any rules, then it follows that it could produce a universe like ours.

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.

And it will have the same problem of affirming the consequent that you already have with the universe and humans. You need something that starts with 'If X, therefore God', not 'If God, therefore X'.

We'll have to disagree on the issue of according to theism/atheism. At minimal according to theism, the universe and humans were caused to exist by a transcendent being and according to atheism...not so.

I don't think you're giving theists enough credit for their diversity. Mere theism is believing in at least one god. It doesn't necessarily have to be a creator God. Some theists have origin myths in which their gods are among the things created according to their understanding of natural processes.

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.

Particularly uncharitable, since I actually agree with Krauss that it's highly possible that the basic laws of the universe must be what they are. Although it doesn't matter if I really believe it, only that it be a genuine alternative, if the point is that there are more alternatives than two.

No, they'd decide for themselves if I am right regardless of an alternative.

You're the one that asked for an alternative. I just pointed out that if I don't have one, it doesn't raise the odds that your explanation is right at all.

Most people think Occams razor just means the simpliest explanation is best. but one can subtract entities below necessity.

No doubt. Most people tend to err in the other direction, though.

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.

Is your definition of a 'phoney objection', 'an objection I don't know how to refute?' Because it seems so to me.

My answer is I have no idea how the Creator came into existence or if in fact the creator was created. But even if the creator did require a creator, theism is still true no?

If you're comfortable with an infinite regress, okey dokey, but since God is popularly posited as an answer to an infinite regress of causality, you have to kick the legs out from under one of the main reasons given for suspecting the existence of a creator God in the first place, if you want to go that route. I'm just pointing that out, he says, before you start to go on about how I'm just raising phoney objections to hide and obfuscate.

However we can go down this line of thinking both ways. What created the universe? The singularity...what created the singularity? Some other unknown phenomena. The problem is for us to get to this point in time, we'd have to cross and endless recession of events. How could we?

I don't know and I'm comfortable saying so. I haven't heard a proof saying an infinite regress is impossible and objections that we could never get to the present that way strike me as variations on Zeno's Paradox. Despite the paradox, we still get where we're going. It all starts going over my head when I consider that we have to talk about different times than the one we experience in this universe to talk about anything 'before' (not the applicable word since 'before' requires time to happen in, but such are the limitations of English) our space/time began.

On the other hand the atheist could say something always existed...now they have attributed a divine characteristic to nature.

Just because an attribute has been attributed to a divinity doesn't mean only divinities can have it. You're well into semantics now. The Christian God says he's a jealous God, does that make jealousy a divine attribute now?

Some atheists promote the notion this universe came into existence uncaused out of nothing. Its appears thats out of vogue now.

Where you said 'atheists' it would have been more accurate to say 'physicists'. Some of physicists still entertain that one, it's more a matter of an embarrasment of plausible explanations crowding it out than anything being discovered that makes it less likely.

But of course they always claim its not magic. Our existence and that of the universe no matter how you slice it is problematic.

Probably because nothing in the history of anything has ever turned out to be magic. I don't find them problematic, I find them to be brute facts, and also find I'm in no position to demand an explanation for them, although I hope we eventually figure it out.

Almost like the belief at one time that nature abhors a vaccum.

It seems to the case that it may abhor 'true nothingness' ™.

Now for the dichotomy fix I promised. You offered happenstance and purposeful creation as the dichotomy, and I pointed out a physically necessary chain of causality as an alternative to those two. From what you've said since, I think it would serve your point equally well to make the alternatives purposeful and non-purposeful. That's pretty binary, and I think it doesn't subtract anything important from your point. What do you think?