(November 6, 2013 at 10:42 pm)Vincenzo "Vinny" G. Wrote: Okay, so there are smart atheists and there are dumb atheists.
Some dumb atheists make some piss poor arguments. Here I'll deal with one that comes up a lot.
1) "If God created everything then who created God?"
This is one facepalmtastic objection. Typically the atheist is some 12 year old who thinks he's "refuted religion". If he is, it's no use trying to reason. But if there are smart atheists, they ought to know why this is a terrible argument:
a) There are various beings that are called "God", and they all have different features. But philosophically, the most rigorous concept of God is called the "Maximally Great Being", or a being that possesses all the categories of greatness to such a degree that nothing greater can be conceived. Such a being is almost always thought to be personal rather than impersonal.
b) One of the features of this maximally great being is it's role as the "First cause" or "uncaused cause". To understand what this is, you have to look at everything in the world in terms of cause-effect relations. Everything contingent has a cause that leads backwards in a causal chain. Does the causal chain go on infinitely, or is it finite? Theists argue that the causal chain is finite, and it begins at an uncaused cause, or first cause which was not itself caused by anything. This is God.
If you disagree with this idea, you can either:
i) Challenge the claim that the causal chain is finite, arguing that it is infinite in the past.
ii) Challenge the claim that the first cause must be God.
What you cannot do is imply that God needs to be caused by something.
Special pleading.
"God created everything!"
"How do you know?"
"Nothing exists without a cause!"
"What caused God?"
"Nothing caused God!"
"So God has no cause?"
"Of course!"
"So God doesn't exist?"
"..."
Try again.
