Why make stupid unsustainable arguments?

[athrock]

In which post did I say that I am a Christian? Or have you assumed this simply because (like Aractus) I take issue with stupid arguments even when they are made by atheists?

It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or not, with respect to this particular argument. You're still plugging in one data-set (the earth's conditions for life) and assuming it's the only way. We simply don't know if life found elsewhere will be based on carbon (it's likely, because of carbon's properties) or DNA. On earth, DNA took over for two prior "precursor" chemicals, but we don't know if that's the process we'll find when we start seeing other forms of life, elsewhere. Earth may well be unique, or rare, in how life evolved here. I personally think it's common, and we'll find the process that happened here repeated elsewhere.

But all of that is irrelevant, in terms of this "God of the Gaps" discussion. We have zero reason to think that the Big Bang was "caused", in the Kalam (or Augistinian) sense, by some form of intelligence, or that the universal constants are anything but random settings or emergent properties of the very nature of particle physics. Inserting an intelligent agent into the mix is entirely unnecessary, a fabrication by those who seek to affirm their pre-set beliefs about God... perhaps someday we'll find true evidence of such a Prime Mover, but the reality is that until the moment we have such evidence, it's all Projection of our desires onto a universe that frankly couldn't care less about what our religious ideologies are.

Most important in this discussion is what has been pointed out to you repeatedly, that arguments themselves are not evidence. Arguments only tie together pieces of evidence into a (hopefully) cohesive whole-- the formulation of a hypothesis, and nothing more. Until you have enough evidence to build a predictive model that can be independently tested and confirmed, you have nothing even resembling a scientific theory, and you cannot expect us to take it seriously.

Intelligent Design proponents like to claim they have a working theory, but it fails at every level, including cohesion of ideas and the need for falsifiable hypotheses and predictive capabilities. This was demonstrated quite handily in the Kitzmiller case, in front of a hyper-conservative US District Judge who is a Christian and had no reason to side with the scientists other than the utter failure of the ID "experts" to demonstrate that their ideas held merit in the face of modern scientific knowledge and methodology.

Instead, the ID experts were forced to move the goalposts and claim that science's definition was too narrow (as you are doing)... the problem was that, once those goalposts were moved, things like astrology fell into their new definition of theory. There's a reason science operates as it does, and you ignore it at your peril. And you can expect us to call you out on it.

You make some valid points, but I'm not convinced that philosophical arguments have no teeth.

IMO, the classical philosophical arguments (working together) attempt to demonstrate that:

• There are good arguments for the existence of God.
  
• A supreme being is more likely to exist than to not exist. 
  
• The arguments make it rational to believe that a god exists.
  

Whichever one of these you choose, the arguments have achieved the goal of the one making them, haven't they?

Yes, they do have the intended effect, apparently. Just to be sure, I Googled to see whether I could find any stories about atheists who have converted to theism or Christianity. Yep, they're there. And that's just what I know of as a westerner. I cannot comment on atheists who are converted to Islam or Buddhism or some religion from the East because I am not part of that culture and am blocked by language barriers. I suspect that the Kalam, for example, with its rich history in Islam, is being used by Muslim apologists with some success.

So, I'm NOT going to be drawn into some big discussion about the Big Bang theory because I'm not qualified to discuss those details. But what I am comfortable saying is that the practical application of these philosophical arguments does achieve the conversion of non-believers to the theistic point of view. At least occasionally.

Consequently, skeptics ignore these arguments at THEIR peril.