The Case for Atheism

[Mister Agenda]

Thanks for bringing this up again. Would you give an example of something beginning to exist that can be traced back to its cause?

Sure, black holes begin to exist. There cause is when a super nova explodes and the remaining material contracts into a black hole. I suspect your leading up to something else but I'll wait for your response.

I suppose I am, but not trying to play 'gotcha', just trying to see what you mean by 'begins to exist' and your answer answers that. The reason I asked is that, for example, a black hole 'begins to exist' from matter and energy already present. It's possible our universe is a transformation of a previously-existing state of matter and energy, but I don't see how that helps the case for a personal creator.

Then what non-god cause is more justified and what is your justification? Otherwise I'm liable to think you're just biased.

Oh, I think you were liable to think that before you walked in. You repeatedly demand some other, better explanation; but there's nothing in logic that requires that if one explanation is unjustified that a better one must exist. Sometimes the most honest thing to do is admit an answer isn't possible at this time.

You know Mister Agenda, I think if I made this same argument to you in some other context you'd bang me over the head with it. This would be like saying if we didn't know how base balls came into existence it would be less miraculous to propose that base balls somehow created themselves because we know they exist.

Umm, I'm not saying we only know how the baseballs exist, I'm saying we know pretty much every detail of their formation back billions of years, and it's been natural causes all the way down, inferring that when we learn more about their origins they will still be natural ones isn't a miraculous claim compared to 'no, now it's not going to be natural causes anymore, it's going to be a personal creator god'.

No one disagree's that mindless forces exist. It's how they came into existence, why they turned into a universe with the right characteristics to allow sentient life that is in question. The fact of their existence doesn't lead to any explantion for thier existence or for the laws of nature.

You're a little behind modern theoretical physics which actually does have hypotheses for the origin of the universe that account for its characteristics. Check out Hawkings and Stenger.

I could apply that same logic to life and intelligence, since life and intelligence is known to exist it is less miraculous to propose a known cause to an unknown one and we have observable, repeatable proof that life can cause life and intelligence can cause intelligence.

Yes, we KNOW life can cause life and we also know life hasn't always existed on this planet, and the oldest life we can find evidence of is also the simplest life we can find evidence of. Human beings start life as a single-celled organism, so we know a single-celled organism can give rise to intelligence.

Compared to mindless forces we are gods.

Stop breathing and see which one wins: Drew the man-god or mindless forces. A little humility before the awesome forces of the universe might be in order. 'Having volition' is not part of any definition of a small-g 'god'.

You're avoiding the point that a computer coming into existence at the hands of designers and engineers is far less miraculous than if mindless forces through time and chance untentionally caused one to exist.

You're avoiding the point that what enables us to determine the computer is man-made is how different it is from everything that's not. We know how we got to computers. We also know how we got to rocks and fish and birds and insects and so on. The way computers come to be is really, really different from how those other things come to be.

Another clue that would inform us its designed its the extremely close tolerance in which the constituient parts operate also known as fine-tuning.

And an interesting fact about living organisms is that they fine-tune themselves to their environments without need of a master programmer to alter their settings. Fine-tuning doesn't imply a tuner, it just means that if certain things were different, other things would be different, too.

And if mindless forces without plan or intent, design or engineering caused a universe to exist with the correct characteristics to create life and sentience we'd have to chalk it up to the most fantastic and fortuitious stroke of luck imagininable.

Lucky for us. On the other hand, the odds of getting a particular bridge hand are about six billion to one and it's kind of silly to say you couldn't have gotten the hand you're holding after the fact because it's so unlikely. If it wasn't that one, it would be another, equally improbable one. It's a misuse of probability to start with something that has happened and reason backwards that it couldn't have happened by chance because it's so improbable.

On the other hand if the universe was the product if design, engineering and planning no luck or miracle needed.

Imagine what the odds must be against there being a creator that wanted to create a universe and also wanted it to be one perfect for resulting in exactly us. It's not like a creator would HAVE to create exactly us, because then it wouldn't have had volition. If it was omnipotent, it could have created any universe conceivable, which would be an infinite number of universes, but it chose exactly this one; the odds are one in infinity...and in math, that's the same as zero.