RE: Terrible Atheist Argument #1
November 27, 2013 at 10:45 am
(This post was last modified: November 27, 2013 at 10:47 am by WesOlsen.)
Actually i've gone back over your posts vincent and i've found very little with which to use, in all honesty. But here's what I've drawn up any way from the questions (and there are many of them) that you pose (and leave unanswered.)
Aquinas' argument - You mean the cosmological argument which ties in strongly with Kalam's assumptions, and uses much the same vague and poorly defined criteria for selecting things that need causes and selecting things that don't need causes. You make use of special pleading and you beg the question. Just because you can say "duh, i'm facepalming because it's obvious that god doesn't need a cause" doesn't mean that some hypothetical deity must therefore exist, JUST because you can think of it as existing in your head. I can conceive a great number of powerful beings in my brain if I want to, and likewise I can use a cosmological argument to "prove" the existence of Allah, Krishna, Thor and any other proposed deity simply by stating that he must be the obvious candidate for the uncaused cause, or the thing that doesn't begin to exist. The same debunking techniques to Kalam can be applied, namely that given that we have no real evidence yet of things that do not begin to exist then we rely purely on theoretical conceptions. These redundant logic loops go round and round and are useful for debating the potential for some sort of greater force, but they can never in themselves be used as proof, just as a theoretical case for dinosaurs could never have been worth a penny if it weren't for physical evidence such as the fossil record etc. Theories rise and fall with the discovery of new material evidence and as I said above, logical claims are only useful for debunking other logical claims or pondering. They do not constitute evidence. Also, given that theists can't even agree on the attributes of a god/gods then how can it be supposed that their excemption from requiring a designer is obvious?
Leibnez and the best possible world - Really? This constitutes your evidence, another redundant appeal for reason that is several centuries out of date? How can we be sure that this is the best possible world in the abscence of comparisons? Within our world we have competing belief and political systems, meaning that there is no universal consensus on how the rules of a perfect world work. This poses so many questions that there just isn't time to yap on about it.
Statle Waldorf said:
This makes very little sense. By using an evidence based approach to the world we can show that cakes are typically baked by baker; we have numerous examples of the activity in action, we are familiar with the techniques as they are accessible to all, the actions can be REPLICATED by almost anyone and the results tested. In fact in cellular pathology many techniques are comparable to recipes that we'd cook at home. Every time we use an antibody or a special stain to highlight something at the cellular level we use a tried and tested technique that can be tested, re-tested and married up with a consistent mechanism of effect and thus a wider scientific theory/context.
No atheist would say that you cannot infer that a cake must have been baked by a human because there is no known evidence demonstrating a cake coming into existence by any other means (other than by a machine). We can also demonstrate that the baker came from either his mother or a surrogate, because from a scientific and rational perspective this is how humans reproduce and is the only means by which humans can be consistently shown to reproduce. Again this can be tested, re-tested and replicated by the majority of the adult population. If you have evidence from the real world showing humans popping in to existence without navals (presumably by the glory of the christian god) then by all means show us your evidence (and when I ask for evidence, I mean something that would satisfy contemporary scientific standards; if you're going to make scientific claims then please provide scientific evidence).
Presumably you believe, as Vinny does, that it is somehow painfully obvious that someone put the universe here because you've managed to limit and define it, just as with the cake, the baker or anything else that quite obviously must have been designed. Please see my first post on page 1 with regards to the trouble of limiting and defining 'the universe'.
This thread has presented nothing new or challenging in the debate for first cause. It's recycled redundant assumptions, most of which were crapped out centuries ago and have already been debunked. 99% of the material in this topic has been spoken countless times, with the same tired and exhausted theist claims being met with the same valid non-theist retorts. There is nothing here that even begins to constitute evidence, otherwise theists would have picked up their nobel prizes by now. Old hat.
Aquinas' argument - You mean the cosmological argument which ties in strongly with Kalam's assumptions, and uses much the same vague and poorly defined criteria for selecting things that need causes and selecting things that don't need causes. You make use of special pleading and you beg the question. Just because you can say "duh, i'm facepalming because it's obvious that god doesn't need a cause" doesn't mean that some hypothetical deity must therefore exist, JUST because you can think of it as existing in your head. I can conceive a great number of powerful beings in my brain if I want to, and likewise I can use a cosmological argument to "prove" the existence of Allah, Krishna, Thor and any other proposed deity simply by stating that he must be the obvious candidate for the uncaused cause, or the thing that doesn't begin to exist. The same debunking techniques to Kalam can be applied, namely that given that we have no real evidence yet of things that do not begin to exist then we rely purely on theoretical conceptions. These redundant logic loops go round and round and are useful for debating the potential for some sort of greater force, but they can never in themselves be used as proof, just as a theoretical case for dinosaurs could never have been worth a penny if it weren't for physical evidence such as the fossil record etc. Theories rise and fall with the discovery of new material evidence and as I said above, logical claims are only useful for debunking other logical claims or pondering. They do not constitute evidence. Also, given that theists can't even agree on the attributes of a god/gods then how can it be supposed that their excemption from requiring a designer is obvious?
Leibnez and the best possible world - Really? This constitutes your evidence, another redundant appeal for reason that is several centuries out of date? How can we be sure that this is the best possible world in the abscence of comparisons? Within our world we have competing belief and political systems, meaning that there is no universal consensus on how the rules of a perfect world work. This poses so many questions that there just isn't time to yap on about it.
Statle Waldorf said:
Quote:I walked into my kitchen the other day, and there was a freshly baked cake setting on the counter, and I asked aloud, “Who baked this cake?”
As I was asking the question I was half expecting an atheist to jump out of the closet shaking his finger, “No no no! You cannot ask that because then we would have to ask who baked the baker!” To think that some people actually think this is a legitimate objection is rather troubling.
This makes very little sense. By using an evidence based approach to the world we can show that cakes are typically baked by baker; we have numerous examples of the activity in action, we are familiar with the techniques as they are accessible to all, the actions can be REPLICATED by almost anyone and the results tested. In fact in cellular pathology many techniques are comparable to recipes that we'd cook at home. Every time we use an antibody or a special stain to highlight something at the cellular level we use a tried and tested technique that can be tested, re-tested and married up with a consistent mechanism of effect and thus a wider scientific theory/context.
No atheist would say that you cannot infer that a cake must have been baked by a human because there is no known evidence demonstrating a cake coming into existence by any other means (other than by a machine). We can also demonstrate that the baker came from either his mother or a surrogate, because from a scientific and rational perspective this is how humans reproduce and is the only means by which humans can be consistently shown to reproduce. Again this can be tested, re-tested and replicated by the majority of the adult population. If you have evidence from the real world showing humans popping in to existence without navals (presumably by the glory of the christian god) then by all means show us your evidence (and when I ask for evidence, I mean something that would satisfy contemporary scientific standards; if you're going to make scientific claims then please provide scientific evidence).
Presumably you believe, as Vinny does, that it is somehow painfully obvious that someone put the universe here because you've managed to limit and define it, just as with the cake, the baker or anything else that quite obviously must have been designed. Please see my first post on page 1 with regards to the trouble of limiting and defining 'the universe'.
This thread has presented nothing new or challenging in the debate for first cause. It's recycled redundant assumptions, most of which were crapped out centuries ago and have already been debunked. 99% of the material in this topic has been spoken countless times, with the same tired and exhausted theist claims being met with the same valid non-theist retorts. There is nothing here that even begins to constitute evidence, otherwise theists would have picked up their nobel prizes by now. Old hat.
