Theists, are you immune to being decieved?

[Statler Waldorf]

When you keep saying I've admitted that natural laws require a creator, when the entire time I've made no bones about how completely made up my creator scenario was, and that the point I was making was something else entirely, then yes, you are misrepresenting my position.

No I am not; I am making a reasonable inference about your position. I asked you to account for such laws consistently within your view of reality (materialism). Every attempt you have put forth has involved a creator or creative agent, so I am assuming that you cannot account for such laws without invoking a creative agent. You could always prove me wrong by actually accounting for such laws in a manner that is consistent with your materialism. However, I suspect that if you could actually do so you would have by now.

I just wanted you to admit it before I called that on the huge argument from ignorance you just committed. How the hell would you know what is and isn't available in the future?

Easy, logical contradictions cannot exist and such events in the future would lead to logical contradictions. I also know that there will never be any married bachelors, round squares, or odd numbers divisible by 2 in the future either.

Quite the opposite: the argument from ignorance goes "I don't know X, therefore X cannot be true." If I'd said that since Position A hasn't got an answer for B yet, it could never have an answer for B (which seems to be your position) then I would be guilty of an argument from ignorance. Saying that Position A hasn't yet accounted for B, but may do so in future, is specifically avoiding the argument from ignorance.

No, an argument from ignorance can work either direction. However, as you will see your position leads to logical absurdities. Given my logic we can make the following statements…

-Pigs cannot fly because we have never seen a pig fly
-Materialism cannot account for the laws of nature because no materialist has done so yet.

Given your logic you’d have to argue…

-Pigs can fly, we just have not seen one do it yet.
-Materialism can account for the laws of nature -we just have not seen a materialist do so yet.

Clearly my position is the only rational position here.

I swear, every single argument you make is like a complete inversion of reality or logic.

This will be the case when pigs fly.

And as I've mentioned like seven times now, and this was the point of my initial time travel argument that you've been fleeing from at top speed, making shit up to account for something doesn't say anything about its veracity.

And as I have pointed out like seven times now, your time travel argument did not actually account for the laws of nature because it violated the law of non-contradiction and was also guilty of a category error.
You still have to deal with the fact that your view of reality cannot even account for such things. This is nothing short of a fatal flaw in the materialistic conceptual scheme.

All you've done is clung to a story of magic that you think explains everything, all the while giving absolutely no mechanism and therefore explaining nothing, and you think that gives your position more credibility:

Where did I say anything about magic? It does give my position more credibility because my view of reality makes more sense of actual reality than yours does.

until you can demonstrate that your position is correct, however much it accounts for anything means nothing, because there are dozens of fictional answers that could do the same thing.

It means everything because it is the only conceptual scheme that can account for such things in a logically consistent manner. You assert that there are dozens of other conceptual schemes that account for such things but you have yet to actually present any. Couple that with the fact that your conceptual scheme cannot account for such things and you have got serious problems.

Meanwhile, over here, I'm keeping an open mind and waiting for the evidence to come in.

No, you are adhering to your position upon blind faith hoping the evidence comes in. I prefer the view of reality that is already supported by the evidence. How ironic is this? The atheist is now appealing to blind faith and the theist is appealing to the evidence.

You know, the rational view? And yet my position, where I only believe things that are demonstrable, is somehow one that requires blind faith, while yours, where you go for the answer that you want to believe, regardless of evidence, doesn't?

If you only believe in that which is demonstrable then demonstrate where the laws of nature came from and how they are upheld.

Except that I answered that by appealing to the future again, and the only response you had was to categorically deny that the technology I require could exist in the future, which is something you can't possibly know.

Sure I can, logical contradictions are not possible (even in the future). The fact you have to resort to such irrationality to defend your position demonstrates that your position is logically indefensible.

Equally, I could just say that your god is irrational because magic isn't real, but unlike you I recognize that simply asserting bullshit that I want to be true isn't much of an argument. One needs evidence.

God’s creation of the laws of nature does not violate the law of non-contradiction (unlike your time travel example).

What a compelling and well thought out response.

You’re not compelled to be logical? Then why are we having this discussion?

Do you have any concept of how little credibility your baseless assertions have, here?

I was simply agreeing with your assertion that creation and magic are different things.

No thanks, unlike you I'd like to work with a full complement of facts. I'll happily run through the problems with the vanilla version of the argument, but I'd rather not be accused of strawmanning whatever version you're using; why not just present your little doodad, so I can tailor my response to that specifically?

I’d prefer to keep the discussion on topic and continue holding your feet to the flames. We are discussing how my view of reality can account for the laws of nature and yours cannot.

Yes: all the evidence.

You have evidence demonstrating that the laws of nature arose and are upheld through purely material and natural means? By all means then, please present it!

You made an assertion. That means absolutely nothing. I could do the same, as I've already pointed out; I don't, because "nuh uh!" isn't actually an argument that adults should use. And again, in doing so you still missed the actual point I was making...

Where did I make merely an assertion? If my assertion that my view of reality can account for the laws of nature and yours cannot is in error then by all means show me how. Thus far, the fact that you are allowing it to stand unrefuted is rather telling.

Here is your logic using your same analogy…

A: “Where do hotdogs come from?”
B: “People make them.”
A: “How do people make them?”
B: “I do not know; I have never been to the plant.”
A: “Well, why don't we go and find out?”
B: "No, they must have been made by magic."
A: "What?
B: "Magic."
A: "But magic doesn't exist, as far as we know."
B: "Hotdogs are made by magic. Anything else is illogical. Without magic, you can't make any meat. "
A: "You just said you hadn't been to the factory."
B: "Magic accounts for how hotdogs are made. You can't account for that, and therefore I'm right."
A: “Huh?”

Tread lightly; you’re only supposed to use the quote functions if you are accurately quoting a poster. I never said anything about magic so you have yet to actually address my position.

B: "Magic."
A: "But magic doesn't exist, as far as we know."

No no no! According to you this is a fallacious argument from ignorance. Magic does exist, we will simply discover this in the future just like we will discover in the future that your position actually can account for natural laws.

Just asserting your answer is correct doesn't make it so.

Have you not been paying attention? My position is proven correct through logical negation. The logical negation of my position (your position) cannot make sense of reality.

And your made up reason isn't correct just because you decided to say it is. Besides, there's another argument from ignorance here, which is that you've no way of knowing whether the laws of nature will stay the same in every circumstance. You're just asserting it.

You’re wrong again. I do know, because He who created the laws of nature and who is upholding them has revealed to us that they will stay uniform in the future (Genesis 8). This is just another example of how the Christian view of reality and only the Christian view of reality can actually make sense of what we all believe to be the case.

I love how your every position is based on ignorance.

Thus far the only one of the two of us who seems to be ignorant of the answers is you.

So you can't refute me without an argument from ignorance? That's all I needed to know.

Refute what? You have not provided anything.

Floontium is made of Floontium, Stat. Try to keep up. And Floontium ensures the natural laws remain stable over time, because so far, there has always been Floontium.

If Floontium is made of material then it is subject to the same natural laws that all other materials are subject to; so you did not account for anything because your explanation requires that natural laws exist in order for itself to exist.

You don't actually know what an argument from ignorance is, do you Stat?

Sure I do. An argument from ignorance is arguing that something is true simply because it has not been proven false (or vice versa). You love using them.

Nah, I am really not even trying. You've been refuted so many times that it's grown old. Now I'm just sitting back and watching you, and the other atheists, tie yourself into logical knots.

It really is amazing isn’t it? Now an atheist of all people is appealing to blind faith. He’d rather have faith that his materialism will someday come up with an answer (how someone who only believes in the material could ever explain the existence and origin of immaterial laws of nature is beyond me) than just adopt theism which has had a perfectly logical answer for centuries. It reminds me of when Christ says that they could see a dead man rise from the dead and still not believe.

You invoke an entity to account for something that I admit I cannot account for. I am not entirely convinced that they need be accounted for, or are necessarily something absolute as you seem to think they are.

According to the rules of proper reasoning you must provide sufficient reasons for believing what you believe (For every fact F, there must be an explanation why F is the case [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]). Thus far you are violating that rule by having no reason for believing in laws of nature and yet believing they have always existed and will continue to exist.

Nonetheless, there's nothing dishonest about admitting when my understanding comes to a hault.

Yes there is, if you claim to know such laws have always existed and will continue to exist but cannot explain how you know this.

You are being intellectually dishonest by praying on my humility (which you seem to view as theft) and using it as an opportunity to plug in your God (for which you cannot account for), If you can believe in God without being able to account for his existence, how is it you then take issue with my recognition of reality? There are things in reality I don't understand, you maintain that you understand everything, yet you cannot account for God or justify your invocation of your particular version? You cannot distinguish your God as the real God over all others that are being solicited. You have no foundation for your belief other than a really old text. You are just claiming to have answers and pleading for special exceptions so as to be granted immunity with regards to providing explanations. Which one of us is "engaging in intellectual laziness"?

You are completely mistaken though. Unlike the laws of nature, God is by definition a non-contingent, absolutely self-sufficient, and ultimately sufficient being. Such a being therefore requires no causal agent or mechanism in order to exist. I can however account for why I believe in the existence of such a being. You cannot account for why you believe in the existence of the laws of nature nor can you account for their origin since they are contingent laws.