Atheism is unreasonable

[Mister Agenda]

Because there are multiple scenarios for which the math works.

Yeah but the math wont get you an infinite universe, according to the BGV theorem.

You absolutely don't understand the BGV theorem. The theorem doesn't make a case for a finite universe.

Well, if I was a naturalist and I found out the universe had a beginning, I would too.

But as a theist you lost interest as soon as you heard something that seemed to confirm your worldview?

Well, if the end solution to the problem is just "more nature"...I don't see what the excitement is about.

Most scientists think nature is amazing and are eager to learn more about it, regarding new mysteries as thrilling challenges. YMMV.

The difference is a past-eternal God wasn't in time, but a past-eternal universe was in time.

There's a Nobel Prize waiting for whoever can prove that must be the case. How about this alternative: At the Planck level of reality, there is a constant 'fizzing' of tiny bubbles of space-time popping into and out of existence, any one of which has the potential to expand into a full space-time continuum, but the whole of the quantum foam is effectively timeless. Quantum foam outside of a universe does not exist within a time dimension. And that's just one possibility.

Quantum fluctuations are described by physical law and operates within the domain of quantum physics...and within that domain there is constant change...things are happening...and as long as things are happening, these things are in time, because something can only happen in time.

Time is a feature of a space-time continuum, quantum foam does not require a space time continuum in order to exist. Interestingly, it seems to possess the property of necessary existence. You can worship it if you're so inclined, because it shares features often described as belonging to the creator of the universe. Not that I'm particularly attached to this explanation, it could be Branes for all anyone knows right now, and that's a different kettle of fish.

So you are basically saying that the universe (all physical reality) is infinite.

Were the words too hard for you? I said causality is a property of things within the universe and causality might not apply to the origin of the universe.

The only way causality cant apply to the whole is if the whole itself is infinite. You have an infinity problem, which means that if time is infinite, no event can possibly come to pass if there was an infinite numbers of events which preceded it.

You have a mere assertion problem. None of that follows from a noncausal origin of the universe.

The fact that events do come to pass would only suggest that there is a past-boundary somewhere on the timeline.

There certainly is to the space time continuum we find ourselves within. It doesn't necessarily follow that the concept applies to whatever the universe came from.

And unfortunatley for you, there cannot be a naturalistic explanation that can explain the origin of time itself. Whatever caused time had to transcend time itself.

If that's the case, it does not follow that the cause is supernatural. At the moment, it certainly seems to be a poorly understood natural cause. I'm not sure what you mean by 'transcend time', but a quantum foam doesn't have to be contained in time. At Planck size, time can be another spatial dimension.

No it isn't the fallacy of composition. If the parts within the universe can not possibly be true (because of the infinity problem), then the whole cannot be true.

'Nuh uh!' doesn't resolve the fallacy. Rules that apply within the universe do not necessarily apply TO the universe. They don't necessarily NOT apply either, it's an unknown right now.

Well, I've yet to see you point out a false premise.

I've yet to detect something in your posts that can reasonably be called a premise at all.

God: A supernatural, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevlent being.

Thank you. I think that's a reasonable defintion in line with what most people have in mind when they say 'God', and I appreciate you not being coy. I think some of those qualities are at odds with each other, but that's a topic that deserves a thread of its own.

Well, judging by the fact that I've been defending the Christian God throughout my brief tenure on here...unless you don't know the definition of the Christian God?

Sadly, we have a lot of visitors who are very cagey about what they think God is. Not all Christians agree with your definition. 'New theology' types, for instance, make concessions regarding God's omnipotence and omniscience.

If there is no God, then where do we get the standard from in the first place?

If there are objective standards, they would be inherent to our nature as a species, but not universal. That is, what's wrong for a human wouldn't necessarily be wrong for a nonhuman, but there doesn't seem to be a contradiction involved in the idea of a standard that applies to all humans.

The idea that things like rape is wrong...where does this standard come from?

Empathy and reason are good candidates. We feel we wouldn't want it to happen to us. We reason that we should agree among ourselves to punish it in order to reduce the risk of it happening to any one of us.

The moral law of God is just as necessary as God himself. If God doesn't exist, then where does objective moral law come from?

Our nature as human beings, though it's not hard to find an atheist who thinks morality is entirely subjective, I think some ways of ordering our society are objectively better than others taking only that people being healthy and happy is good and needless suffering is bad as my axioms.

Kings? Presidents? socieities? civilizations? But that can't be true, because Kings change, Presidents change, and civilizations and societies change. But true objective standards never change...which is why God doesn't change.

Really? He seems to have had a profound personality change between the Old and New Testaments, and reading the Old Testament he certainly seems to evolve as the story progresses; going from the god of a particular tribe who lives in a particular mountain to a god more powerful than the gods of other tribes, to the only god. Then all of a sudden he abandons the prophet model and goes to procreating an incarnation. Once you had to sacrifice animals to him, later you don't. Once slavery was okay, now it isn't. I have trouble imagining a source for morals that's less subjective.

Either way you put it, it still contains instructions...how can you get instructions from something that can't think??

How can you call them instructions when no one has to understand them to follow them?

Right, because usually when something is specified, if you change the specifications, whatever goal that was to be accomplished wont work.

But in a code you can designate anything as meaning anything else.

Automated molecular factory? The odds of this "molecular factory" producing one just one molecule by this mindless and blind process called "nature" is so astronomical, to believe it happened by mere chance is utilizing as much faith as any theist could ever use.

An RNA strand long enough could do it. Short RNA strands form spontaneously in conditions simulating what is believed to have been the case in the Hadean era. There would have been billions of opportunities a day for such a long strand to form, and it only had to happen once. The odds of any given hand of Bridge are about six billiion to one, but if you deal enough Bridge hands long enough, any specified hand you name will come up eventually, and millions of hands of Bridge are dealt every day. We don't know the odds of such a molecule forming spontaneously under the right conditions, but if it was a trillion-to-one, that's practically the same as inevitable given a planet with thousands of places it can happen and hundreds of millions of years for it to happen in.

Scientist Stephen Meyer, in Lee Strobel's book "The Case for a Creator" on page 229, said that the odds of a protein molecule being produced by random chance would be "one chnace in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion".

Protein molecules form by chance all the time. It turns out that rather than being entirely random, the laws of organic chemistry apply. And you probably should have said 'Discovery Institute 'scientist' Stephen Meyer, whose training is as a geophysicist, not an organic chemist, says some nonsense Lee Stroebel found convenient to repeat as though he had any authority on the subject'. The odds of getting a particular protein by chance are slim, the odds of getting some kind of protein, not so bad.

That is a ten with 125 zero's after it. And that is just one protein molecule out of the minimum of 300 molecules needed.

There are plenty of proteins smaller than that, and smaller protein chains can spontaneously connect to form chains that long. That's what chains that long are.

Well, informaton has informats, and instructions have instructors.

Instructors also have students, and there's nothing analogous to that in DNA. It's a dumb process that auromatically cranks out proteins. It's 'instructions' without an instructor or a student. In other words, it's not really instructions, it's chemistry.

Who said "just because it is in the Bible, it is true"? I am saying the Bible (Particularly the Gospels and some of Paul's letters) should be treated with the same historical criterion that any other book or piece of work that has names, dates, and geographical locations. And once you apply that criterion to it, it becomes very reasonable to accept at face value.

You made sense up to that last sentence. Can you think of a non 'Judeo-Christian' historical document that historians accept at face value, including the magic bits?

I will be glad to give my evidence in a separate thread. Stay tuned.

Sure.

Actually, William Lane Craig's website has a feature at which you can see the testimonials of people that converted to Christianity based on his work.

That's truly sad, given the flaws in WLC's arguments.

So in other words, it works on whom it will work and vice versa.

You've got that right. If it worked on rational skeptics, I would be impressed.

I never claimed to "know" anything. I believe that the arguments for theism are persuasive and out of the two options that are presented to me, I am going with what I think is the best (more reasonable) explanation. The God hypothesis, in my opinion, has more explanatory value than the contrary.

Yet you seem completely mystified by people taking the same position in reverse.

That is your opinion. To the billions of Christians in the world, we feel differently than you.

And I don't grudge them their comfort, as long as they keep within their bounds regarding mixing government and religion. I don't go looking for Christians to persuade, enough come to us that I feel I'll be informed when they come up with something noteworthy.

So God made Dahnmer eat people? Got it.

I don't think God made Dahmer at all. You're the one who think Dahmer is a product of an omnibenevolent omniscient creator. I've got no reason to think there won't be an occasional Dahmer. I just note that Dahmer (not to mention a planet and a universe largely inimical to life) seems pretty shoddy work if he was the product of divinity.

A cosmologists can come up with any scenario he/she wants too...but if a cosmologists can come up with a scenario that is the exception to the BGV theorem..or an exception that will allow infinity to be traversed...not only will I be shocked, but I will be impressed. hock:

You really should stop pretending to understand that theorem. Frankly, I don't completely understand it myself, but the authors flat-out state it does not mean what YOU think it does.

The bible is only a claim? Well, so was the statement "The Bible is only a claim."

Do you think that the statement that 'the Bible is the claim, not the evidence' can't be backed up? It's whether the Bible is true that's in question. In it's favor is that it's demonstrably at least partly historical. Against it is that it's just as demonstrably not always historically and geographically accurate, and some of its claims are demonstrably counterfactual. For instance, Egypt and China had thriving civilzations at the time the global Flood is supposed to have happened, which they never noticed; and the sun standing still for Joshua for hours was not noted by either the Egyptians nor the Chinese, who were keeping detailed astronomical records at the time. Not to mention that whoever wrote Mark doesn't seem to have known his way around Palestine.