The Case for Theism

[Drew_2013]

Hello LukeMC,

The universe didn't get it "right". There is no "right". The claim that sentient life is a goal, or even that it is desirable, is simply a human-centric manipulation of the story of the universe told from the perspective of humans being the center of all things valuable. The problem with your summary is that you suppose human value to be so high that a 13.7 billion year old, 47 billion light year radius universe had to be carefully designed to allow a few small critters on a rock to write poems and watch sunsets. We didn't "get lucky". We just happen to enjoy life and so now you're taking the position of defining the entire universe in terms of that fact.

While on the one hand you profess ignorance about how the universe came about whether it was unintended naturalistic causes or purposely planned by a creator or some other unknown option, you then speak authoritively about whether the universe got it 'right' and whether or not humans may have been the intended goal. How do you know we either didn't get incredibly lucky or we weren't the intended goal? What I meant by get it right was that the conditions for human existence obtained. If the universe was purposely designed and created for human existence would humans be more valuable if that was the case? It seems to me that even though you claim not to know, you assume humans were in fact the unintended by product of the laws of physics and therefore there is nothing significant about human existence. I will argue otherwise in either case. From what we know and what we can observe the entire universe acts as it does because it has no choice in the matter. Planets form, stars form, galaxies form, water rushes through rivers, volcanoes explode but none of those things do so because they want to. They don't have any choice in the matter and cannot act volitionally. To the best of our knowledge in all of the universe humans alone act volitionally. While everything around us has no choice in the matter humans alone have the ability to think and decide for themselves whether to call in sick for work and play golf or read a book or get on the internet and debate a bunch of people we don't know. What quality makes something special? If something is extremely rare and unique it is deemed special. On what basis do you deem humans not to be special?

The origin of the universe is such an incalculably difficult subject to comprehend that neither of us can possibly hope to come up with a satisfactory answer. Theists claim that some intelligent force created it. I on the other hand cannot presume to have an opinion on this, and deem your claim to be as indefensible as any. I don't believe in a "naturalist" origin of the universe- I have no idea at all how the universe came about. And neither do you. This is why an atheist must call you out when you make a positive claim. It's not that I deny God in favour of a godless origin- I just cannot comment. If somebody was to say "the universe came about unintentionally and through random means" then this too would be overstepping the barrier of what we can reasonably posit.

Its not overstepping the bounds by offering an opinion and since everything thus far can be attributed to either plan and design or to happenstance we have good reason to think one of those possibilities is true. What we can't do is state it as a fact (although I can show you plenty of sites where atheists do just that). However, by declaring humans neither got lucky or are special you are making an authoratative claim about the nature of human existence as if you do in fact know about these things.

I don't. What, do you think I'm a genius physicist who has a plausible answer for the origin of the universe? This is very disingenuous. I truly and genuinely do not have an answer for the question of existence.

This debate is about belief. A belief is what you think is true given what information is available.

You seem to contradict yourself here by saying that no evidence is necessary for atheism to be true. This means that atheism is not a claim based on evidence, but rather it rests on the lack of evidence for a creative agent- this is precisely what you argued against earlier in your post.

Therein lies the problem...there is no lack of evidence in favor of the existence of God. All evidence is are facts that comport or agree with a conclusion. There is nothing (I can think of) that needs to be true or condition that needs to be true for the claim God doesn't exist to be true, in contrast there are conditions that need to be true to have evidence in favor of the existence of God.

This is no more interesting than steam ,a gas, coming from ice which, being a solid, is quite unlike steam. The properties of organic molecules are no different to the properties of dead matter. They just happen to behave in a way that we recognize and call "life". Again, you're being human-centric and giving undue treatment to a phenomena simply because you personally value it.

And you're devaluing life and impugning its significance. Were it not for life and the existence of sentient life we wouldn't be having this conversation.

This is purely ridiculous. God of the gaps is the claim that because scientists cannot explain a phenomenon, god must exist and must be the answer to the puzzle. A basic study of scientific history will shed light on the God of the gaps legacy. The "atheist" take on the matter would be to make no claim at all but rather investigate the situation empirically until suitable evidence is found. To claim that this "assumes naturalism" is a nonsensical statement. Anything that can be tested and observed is by definition "natural" and so of course we expect that when we investigate a situation, we will find a "natural" answer. This has nothing at all to do with a creative agent.

In one sense you're correct. If for example scientists had never seen a car and were asked to explore it and explain it they would be able to do so in purely naturalistic terms without reference to whether it was caused to exist by a intelligent agent. My opponents like to believe because we have found naturalistic explanations for most phenonmena that this is evidence its naturalistic causes all the way down and that means no Creator necessary. Unfortunately for them, its not true. Even though scientists can explain a car and how it functions naturally it was in fact caused by intelligent beings who caused it to exist. The same holds true for the universe even if all the working inside the universe can be explained by the laws of nature it is silent on whether it was caused to exist by an intelligent agent(s). When it comes to the issue of how life began and how the universe came into existence my opponents offer naturalisim in the gaps theories whether they subscribe to them or not.

We expect an explanation to exist and so we investigate to uncover an explanation. This only assumes that the universe is investigable. God of the gaps on the other hand undermines investigation by claiming that the answer is not knowable and cannot be discovered, and that therefore it must have happened supernaturally. You are therefore being incredibly deceptive in attempting to equate the two positions as essentially the same thing.

You don't know your history. The father of modern science and perhaps the greatest scientist ever Isaac Newton believed the universe was knowable and could be explained in mathematical terms because he believed he was unraveling a phenonmena (the universe) that was created by God. He didn't believe God was personally manipulating things to keep the universe running, he believed it was designed similiar to the way we design things to run without the creator. Secondly as I pointed out, I'm not making God in the gaps arguments I made a God of the facts arguments.

It is indisputable that complex lifeforms replicate. The origin of lifeforms was not even remotely similar to the way that lifeforms exist now. They were much, much simpler, and to draw the line between "life" and "matter" doesn't make much sense at such a level.....

I didn't argue the existence of God from the fact we haven't discovered how life began to exist, I argued from the fact it does exist and all the conditions necessary for that to come about.

Again, you are either being deceptive or are misleading yourself. We have concrete evidence that life didn't always exist.

We have reason to believe life didn't always exist on planet earth. Whether it existed prior to life on earth is the debate we're having.

Therefore, the "life always comes from life" argument is not sound.

You are being misleading...I didn't say life always comes from life. Its quite possible arguments you falsely attribute to me are unsound. I stated the fact that life comes from life. Do you disagree that is one known provable repeatable method? I am tweaking my opponents a bit because they claim their conclusion there is no God is derived from facts. In reality its driven by philosophical reasons so they believe the theory that life came from non-life through some as yet unknown process. But from a factual basis we only know life comes from life.

That isn't the basis upon which we should form our opinions on life. We can observe that there was no trace of life on earth before a certain point through various means and thus we can know that in some exceptional case, some primordial form of life must have come from something that we would not describe as being alive. The conclusion that life came from no-life is entirely factually based. There is no other possibility.

Oh? Its not possible life was planted here by some other advanced life form?

Absolutely no different to a hot star giving birth to a cold planet. A bunch of molecules reorganized themselves through inevitable physical processes to form something that looks and behaves differently to other collections of molecules. Placing any value on this observation is foolhardy.

So if mindless lifeless forces some how cause a universe the laws of physics must produce life and sentience? Is that a law of nature? Do you know of any reason the laws of nature had to be as they are or does a life bearing universe have to exist for some reason? By the way your welcome to your opinion that there is nothing significant about this but that doesn't mean it is insignificant or others are foolhardy to draw a different conclusion particulary when you appear to be offering an opinon.

The nature of consciousness is quite beyond our intuitive capacity to comprehend, so it's not surprising that this argument comes up a lot. It's not an argument though- it's just God of the gaps. It's near-impossible to understand consciousness, therefore something intelligent must have done. There's no reason to make this claim, or any other claim.

Because you have spoken? Now you say the nature of consciousness is quite beyond our intuitive capacity to comprehend yet if my opponents are to believed, it was caused by mindless lifeless forces that didn't intend or plan to create consciousness. Let me make sure I have this right, our intelligence isn't smart enough to comprehend or understand consciousness but mindless forces without attempting to were able to cause it to exist.

It's near-impossible to understand consciousness, therefore something mindless and lifeless must have unknowingly created it by accident. If we came across a computer so complicated that scientists couldn't figure out how it worked...we'd have to conclude it was the result of mindless forces that didn't attempt to cause or create it. Is that how it works?

As sentient humans we have progressed to the point where we can create on a computer virtual worlds. We can create AI avatars to interact in the worlds of our creation and as sentient beings we can create the laws of nature as we see fit in such virtual worlds. This is the closest model we have to creating a universe with unique laws of physics. In those worlds we are the transcendent gods who caused them to exist. We don't have to ask if the God model is possible, we simulate such ourselves.

It certainly is possible, but no more probable than any other speculation. Thus holding and guarding such a position is foolish.

The speculation is that mindless, lifeless forces created the universe and subsequently life and mind. It isn't speculation that intelligent beings can simulate a virtual world we are doing it.

I'll respond to the rest later...