(August 31, 2013 at 7:18 am)Harris Wrote: If you say brain function IS consciousness then why brain is functioning at all? In other words, what is keeping brain to function? You know better than I do that behind every effect there is a cause. Car needs a driver in order to perform its functions. Behind the functioning of car the cause is the driver’s intensions.
If consciousness is a product of a physical brain, then that brain existing in a stable state is what causes the consciousness. Your question is nonsensical; you might as well ask why a shoe remains a shoe. That's its physical state, absent some outside influence.
What you just asked only makes sense if we assume your conclusion that there's something more from the outset.
Quote:Theist uses the word God and simplifies his task to explain this “No Nothingness”.
You might have a simple answer, but that doesn't mean it's correct.
Quote: However, atheist finds it hard to give explanation to this “No Nothingness” and come up with different theories and models. Like multiverse model, inflationary model, string theory, etc. but all these hypotheses are highly speculative scientifically.
Nor does our not having a definite answer make yours the correct one.
Quote: Think of the earth if it moves only 1 cm towards or away from the sun, this short deviation from its path becomes a threat to life on earth.
Lie. The earth has an elliptical orbit, meaning that its distance from the sun varies by several hundred thousand kilometers. So much for the magnificent balance of the universe, huh?
Quote:Look at the human body how accurate and perfectly balanced functions are happening within it without our own incentives. Simply look at the function of genes and that alone gives you surprises after surprises.
All of which are explained scientifically and possess no indication of having a supernatural origin. Unless you'd like to provide such evidence, and not just another argument from ignorance?
Quote:By words, one can deny the existence of God but no one can explain how this grand design and fine-tuning is running on its own.
Fine tuning? Including the black holes that are swallowing whole stars out of the sky? The stars themselves, which are essentially giant radioactive fires blazing in space? Space, which is intensely hostile to life? Just beyond the atmospheric boundaries of our planet, which is itself beset by natural disasters, radiation from space, and the occasional meteor? Very "fine tuned," that.
Quote: It is a laughable joke for us if someone says his wristwatch caused by some desert as a matter of chance and it is running precisely by its own without the need of an operator. However, we don’t laugh when we say this humongous and intricate universe caused by itself as a matter of chance and it is running super precisely by its own.
Oh man, we're doing Watchmaker now? Okay: so, the reason that you know the watch is designed is through contrast and comparison. That's the same way we define everything; we compare it to things that are different from it. But if we take your analogy to its conclusion, there are no natural objects with which to compare and thus infer design. What you're really saying is that we find a wristwatch in a desert made of watches, on a planet of watches orbitting a sun made of watches, in a universe of watches, and also you yourself are a watch. And in the midst of all this clockwork, you reach down and pick up a single watch and say "this watch is so different from all the other watches, it must have been designed."
It's nonsensical.
Quote:Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, and the ships which sail through the sea with that which is of use to mankind, and the water which Allah sends down from the sky and makes the earth alive therewith after its death, and the moving (living) creatures of all kinds that He has scattered therein, and in the veering of winds and clouds which are held between the sky and the earth, are indeed Ayat (proofs, evidences, signs, etc.) for people of understanding.
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 164-
Al Quran
Rather begging the question, there. And the whole thing is an argument from ignorance: "I don't understand how this works, and therefore my idea of a god must be the thing doing that."
Quote:Try to tackle with the following arguments:
Oh, you'd better believe it.
Quote:First Argument
(1) Whatever begins to exist is caused to exist by something else.
(2) The universe began to exist.
(3) Therefore the universe was caused to exist; and the cause of its existence is God.
Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid (1058-1111)
First of all, I reject the absolutist nature of the first premise, because I don't think you can demonstrate that everything that exists does have a cause, least of all in a universe before the big bang, where the laws of causality might not work the way they do here.
I also reject the second premise, because you don't know what happened before the big bang any more than I do, and therefore cannot make a statement about any purported origin.
And I reject the conclusion because nothing in the premises lead one to conclude that the cause was a god, even if they were correct, which they aren't. You're handwaving, and that's not acceptable.
Since I can't be shitted treading over old ground, when I and others have debunked this argument in another threat quite recently, I'll just post an old video with some more objections:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9MtIma5YU
Quote:Second Argument
We recognize that we ourselves are not made by ourselves but by something else; however, we as rational beings are certainly superior to the world of non-rational things. This would not be so if that world were something that caused itself, because anything which relies only on itself for its subsistence is superior to anything that relies on something other than itself. Hence that world is brought into existence by something else, a maker or ruler, and this we call God.
Abelard, Peter (1079-1142)
Arguments are based on demonstrated premises, not assertions. All this is is an assertion, made baselessly and given no reason beyond some vaguely philosophical handwaving. Since you haven't bothered to actually provide any reason why a person should accept the reasoning here, I can reject it out of hand.
That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!