Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[polymath257]

1. That a natural law requires a law giver

2. That humans are qualified to recognize design without further testing

3. That an infinite regress is impossible

4. That, even if there is/was a lawgiver for natural laws, that there is only one such

5. That causality makes sense outside of the universe

6. That everything that begins to exist (meaning there was a time when it did not exist) needs to have a cause (applied unevenly, I might add)

7. That having a start means that a thing 'begins to exist' in the sense of the last claim

8. That postulating a lawgiver means that such a lawgiver must actually exist

I can go on, but how about we address these?

1. The existence of natural laws is vastly more expected under theism than under atheism.

I disagree. The likelihood is precisely the same: guaranteed in both cases. Either something exists and there are natural laws that describe its properties, or things are random and the laws of probability apply. Either way, there would be natural laws. The only other case is where nothing exists, and we know that isn't the case.

Now, if a deity exist, that alone would imply the existence of natural laws since to have something as complex as a deity would require such laws. But that means the deity didn't 'give' those laws.

2. Humans act on the appearances all the time. If we don't act on the appearance of design, we are being hypocritical. This is a direct application of the principle of credulity: we should consider, a priori, that what seems to be so is indeed so.

And we know that we are inclined to attribute intentions to things that have none: how many people name their cars or complain about their computers being cranky?

This is a well-known fault in how the human mind works and so it needs to be guarded against. That is quite sufficient to show that appearances are not enough in this case.

But I can go further. Appearances are not enough *alone* in most cases. The appearance of design, or lack thereof, is particularly frought with difficulties. And they are often dealt with in, for example, archeology. There, the best way to show design is to show the structure observed could not be made without conscious involvement.

For example, if we have a bone that has scrape marks, we can ask whether they were the result of deliberate cleaning of the bone by some tool or, instead, the result of being dragged along the ground by the wind. Knowing what sorts of marks the wind makes helps in this determination.

So, the best way to show design is to show that what is observed *cannot* be produced other than by conscious intervention. And that is testable. And that means we should not rely on mere appearances, but dig deeper into the qualities of what is observed.

3. Only an infinite regress of actual causes using some notion of time can be proven to be impossible. I already explained why repeatedly: an eternal past never elapses and therefore there cannot be a present. 

In your model presenting an infinite past and in which you get to choose any two moments, you are already assuming your conclusion, circular. Recall that a wrong proposition can imply a true proposition. Therefore, a wrong model may not necessarily yield a logical contradiction. So, I don't have to find a contradiction in your model, in which you assumed what you're trying to prove.

I see you don't understand basic logic. I am showing how your proposed contradiction is not a contradiction within my model.

For you to show that there cannot be an infinite past, you would have to give an *internal* contradiction from the assumption that there is such a past. That is called a redutio ad absurdum style of argument.

But I would note that you do the same thing: you assume that your deity exists and has certain properties as an explanation of why it cannot be tested via observation.

The difference is that you are trying to prove your deity exists and I am only showing that an infinite regress is not self-contradictory.

4. Occam's razor: we shouldn't posit multiple entities unless we have a good reason.

Most things have more than one cause, so it is reasonable to assume that, if the universe is caused, it has multiple causes. That seems like a very good reason.

5. Rejecting causality means that things can pop into existence for no reason....

Which we know happens in reality in quantum systems. There is no 'reason' why electron-positron pairs appear out of nothing, exist for a while, and disappear again.

The quantum filed is simply a *description* of this process, NOT a cause of it.

6. This is simply a restatement of causality. And no, it's not applied unevenly, because God purportedly didn't begin to exist.

And I am saying the universe potentially didn't begin to exist. If it is a consistent possibility for your god, then it is also consistent for the universe.

7. I already explained the meaning of began to exist, which doesn't require time. Causation can be simultaneous.

A claim that has no substantial reason to believe.

8. The existence of a lawgiver is vastly more probable than not given the observation: "natural laws exist".

On the contrary, it is unreasonable to think that something as complicated as a lawgiver (especially one that is conscious) can exist without physical laws.