Why make stupid unsustainable arguments?

[GrandizerII]

This is a false dichotomy. It does not follow that timelessness and immateriality must imply either personhood or abstractness.

Please provide at least one more thing that can be timeless and immaterial that can be considered as an option as the first cause.

I already did. This just goes to show me that you put your theistic blinders on before reading the posts here.

[The Grand Nudger]

I get the impression, OP, that your frustration and inability to address some argument in the specific has led to you bitching and moaning in the general.

Fucking......lazy. Why on earth would you add your name to the mountain of identical shitposts these boards have had over the years?

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't need to refute Christianity or argue against Christianity. It is self-defeating.

[SteveII]

While by no means exhaustive, All of the list below has been discussed anywhere from decades to millennium. Collectively they form the basis of the rational belief in the existence of God. While you can debate any or all of them, you cannot dismiss them as inconsequential to the question: does God exist.

The Kalam Cosmological argument
The Cosmological Argument from Contingency
The Moral Argument Based upon Moral Values and Duties
The Teleological Argument from Fine-tuning
The Ontological Argument
Origins of life
Irreducible complexity in biology
Psychological propensity to believe in God
Human consciousness
Miracles

While you can debate them, all of these arguments tend to be unpersuasive to the non-believer, while more persuasive to those who already believe.  Ignoring Antony Flew, few people are converted on the strength of these arguments alone.  The common thread being that those who find these arguments persuasive already have a propensity for belief.  Belief is the common ingredient, not the argument.

I wanted to come back to this because this has to do with the OP. I firmly believe you are correct, the arguments listed cannot persuade a belief in God. My intent was to point out that belief in God is not irrational and can therefore be discussed in a reasonable manner and with respect. 

An interesting dynamic can be observed on both sides. 

There are Christians that think they can come in and with a little typing change your minds. I think all of them are sincere, These range from people who are sincere but unprepared (either factually or cognitively) to those that want to learn what the objections are and research and come back. The first group is frustrating to everyone else (including the second group). 

The very same thing happens with atheists. They think if they type "there is no evidence for gawd or jebus" that they win. They are often unprepared (either factually or cognitively). Some feel the need for shock, contempt, and/or derision.  Others know the arguments and can engage in a productive and civil dialog. 

A comment about the atheist that feels the need for shock, contempt, and/or derision toward theists or Christians in general: it is juvenile and shows a lack of character. Whether God exists or not and whether Christianity is true has been debated for millennium. There is nothing new that you can bring up that has not been discussed and written about to a staggering degree by people way smarter than those here (on both sides). There has been no new discovery that makes our generation more enlightened than the previous. You do not have a monopoly on truth. Intelligent people can agree to disagree with civility.

[SteveII]

I don't need to refute Christianity or argue against Christianity. It is self-defeating.

You do like to hear yourself say that don't you. Statements like this are meant to...what? Educate me? Convince you?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Do we ignore Dr. Edward Feser, also? And I got his name from a Google search that took mere seconds. LOTS of atheists and agnostics begin the path to faith by an honest evaluation of the information that is available for consideration.

Among the reasons that freethinkers convert are the following factors (in no particular order):

• Reading good books
  
• Studying the historical record of the gospels
  
• Honest philosophical reasoning
  
• Experimentation with prayer and reading the Bible
  

(To be fair, I could list reasons people leave religion, too, but I'm simply pointing out that I think your assessment of the role of philosophical arguments underestimates their importance.)

Yes, how can we possibly ignore a philosophy professor at Pasadena City College? 

1) We do read good books. It's practically all we talk about, here.

2) Though scholars don't agree on the "historical record of the gospels", I am shocked that you would even suggest that a "historical record" supports the claims of Christianity. There are dozens of holes in the claims made by fundamentalist Christianity, regarding the history of the Bible, and any more-complex academic understanding includes the archaeological and known-historical elements that don't add up to the claims being made by scripture. That's not even counting the massive scientific problems that emerge from a literal reading of the Bible. Is it possible there was a real Rabbi Yeshua? Sure... that's up for debate among academics, and seems to lean toward "yes". (I happen to think Jesus was real, myself... just that he was "turned into God" by later writers embellishing his story.) But the rest of that argument is not nearly so easily sustainable. Most of the claims made by apologists about historicity (e.g. the Tacitus passage) are dubious at best, and we now know that most of the gospels are not authored by the persons claimed by the title, and we have numerous writings of the early church fathers which demonstrate the process of fabrication that went on during the first 400 years of the church, based on later claims that the writers at the time seemed to know nothing about. It's ludicrous to suggest that "historical record" supports your claim.

3) While there are philosophical "first-cause"/kalam arguments that can be made, they are not proofs, nor are they necessary. Other equally-valid explanations exist, and it's disingenuous of anyone (in particular your "I used to be an atheist" hyper-conservative professor) to claim that these philosophical arguments are solid enough to require someone to drop one view and adopt another. Again, disingenuous at best.

4) Almost every member of this forum is an ex-Christian, myself included. The idea that we just need to "experiment" with prayer and reading the Bible is insulting to those of us who spent years studying the Bible and finding out the logical, moral, historical, and scientific conflicts contained within. I am an atheist BECAUSE of reading the Bible.

Almost without fail, when I see someone who's an apologist claiming to be a "former atheist" (C.S. Lewis comes immediately to mind, but there are a host of others), it turns out to be a case where they were raised in the church and drifted away not as an atheist by choice, but as what might be called an "Ijustdon'tgiveafuck-ist", before returning to their religious roots later in life. It turns out to be a good way to sell your books, however, since Christian readers of such apologetic literature (primary audience) just eat-up the story of a reconverted "former atheist". The problem is their idea of what constitutes generic, passive atheism and what constitutes our style of active atheism (and what Pasadena College philosophy professors tag as "New Atheists"-- read properly as: "ones who won't stay quiet about it") are not the same thing.

Perhaps most importantly, you need to realize that if you're going to make an Argument From Authority™ (i.e. "professor so-and-so says _____"), you'd best pick someone with serious credentials, rather than random conservative think-tank member who has a crappy job at a crappy college and is trying to pad his bank account on the credulity of religious believers who love ex-atheist stories and mediocre philosophy. We just don't care if a person has a PhD next to his name; we care how well-supported the arguments are and what the consensus among scholars (or diversity of views among scholars, honestly acknowledged) happens to be, and why it is so.

[SteveII]

All that is needed is that God be self-conscious. There would be no need of a temporal component. It is not like he needed to learn things along the way. He would he simply have known all truths.

If there was no progression in the mind of God prior to creating the universe, if there was no "prior" at all, then the creation of the universe was a mindless act.

That does not follow. Why can't a single state of consciousness be the cause of the universe (and the beginning of time)?

Are you suggesting that the universe needed no cause or that the causal chain was past infinite? Neither is logically sound.

Regarding the first half of the question, you believe God himself needed no cause, but you won't grant that possibility for the universe or reality overall? This is just special pleading.

As for infinite regression, I have not seen any logical argument that effectively shows that it is illogical. Just because a concept is not intuitive to the limited human mind doesn't mean it automatically defies logic.

Hilbert's Hotel

You are confusing an efficient cause with a material cause.

No, you just didn't get it. Efficient causes need not be sentient. And, even given the Creator, the universe itself was not the result of sentience.

So you think that the universe springing into being from nothing (no efficient cause nor material cause) makes more sense than just an efficient cause.

[athrock]

If your magic alligator is immaterial, timeless, personal cause of sufficient power to create the entirety of the universe, then you can use the argument. Most people just use the word God.

Are you to have us believe that the creators of Bible stories made the cosmological argument and the most reasonable conclusion Based on all known facts is the content of the Bible? If so , you're being hilariously disingenuous. The best you could ever achieve with this approach is a deist' god, but that is still a conclusion troubled by argument from ignorance. "I don't know; therefore God". Again, you cannot get from here to Jehovah, you can't.

Perhaps it's the other way around? Rather than coming up with the argument first and then writing about a god which they had just argued into existence, maybe they authors had an experience of god and then started reasoning about a being which they experientially KNEW existed. IOW, the arguments for god's existence were the result of their reasoning about what they already knew to be true.

In trying to understand and explain what is known of the natural world, scientists have reasoned their way back to the Big Bang, and that appears to be where things sit at present. In order to understand and explain what they knew of the supernatural world, theologians have reasoned their way back to the existence of a supreme being called god.

It may well be the case that when, after centuries of effort, scientists finally reach the summit of understanding concerning the origins of the universe, they may find a group of theologians who have been sitting there all along.

The reality is that the Bible is a compilation of stories passed down from ignorants. The cosmological argument and similar others are post hoc arguments that attempt to keep your favorite deity out of the unemployment line like all the others. It's absurd, yet you try to use the same that God is arrived at methodologically; history betrays you.

This merely betrays why you are not a Christian; it does not explain why you are, and should rightly be, an atheist.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I wanted to come back to this because this has to do with the OP. I firmly believe you are correct, the arguments listed cannot persuade a belief in God. My intent was to point out that belief in God is not irrational and can therefore be discussed in a reasonable manner and with respect. 

An interesting dynamic can be observed on both sides. 

There are Christians that think they can come in and with a little typing change your minds. I think all of them are sincere, These range from people who are sincere but unprepared (either factually or cognitively) to those that want to learn what the objections are and research and come back. The first group is frustrating to everyone else (including the second group). 

The very same thing happens with atheists. They think if they type "there is no evidence for gawd or jebus" that they win. They are often unprepared (either factually or cognitively). Some feel the need for shock, contempt, and/or derision.  Others know the arguments and can engage in a productive and civil dialog. 

A comment about the atheist that feels the need for shock, contempt, and/or derision toward theists or Christians in general: it is juvenile and shows a lack of character. Whether God exists or not and whether Christianity is true has been debated for millennium. There is nothing new that you can bring up that has not been discussed and written about to a staggering degree by people way smarter than those here (on both sides). There has been no new discovery that makes our generation more enlightened than the previous. You do not have a monopoly on truth. Intelligent people can agree to disagree with civility.

This is quite true, all of it, except for the lack of discovery-- numerous discoveries have been made in the last few years that are relevant to the subject of Biblical historicity, from the translation of the Gnostic texts to the work on archaeological sites. 

However, there are other reasons to speak to a Christian with contempt, aside from factual debate. Too often, a Christian will come here either ignorant of the fact that most of us are deeply familiar with the Bible, with common (and even rare) apologist arguments, and with the historical record. When they speak to us as though we are contemptible for being atheists, or ignorant because we do not consider a particular set of arguments valid, then we return that contempt-- only to listen to the poor, poor Christian scream about how they're oppressed by our hatred of Christianity. It's ridiculous! 

Many of us are married to Christians, best friends with Christians, along with members of a host of other religions. We have no more stake in disliking Christianity than any other set of beliefs, from magic-crystal "Woo-ists" to Muslims to Hindus to Taoists, et cetera. It is only in the face of poor argumentation and/or disrespect that the contempt comes out. Yes, we have some members who will treat anyone of any religious belief poorly, but it does not apply to the vast majority of us, and it is disingenuous to point to outliers as typifying atheism or "problems" with atheism, here or elsewhere.

Intelligent people can disagree with civility, no doubt... but intellectual dishonesty will be met with contempt. Count on it.

[Minimalist]

Perhaps it's the other way around? Rather than coming up with the argument first and then writing about a god which they had just argued into existence, maybe they authors had an experience of god and then started reasoning about a being which they experientially KNEW existed.

Putting "perhaps" before a statement is not evidence that it is true...or even plausible.  "Religion" in antiquity was a means of social control.  In most of the islamic world it still is.  The xtians lament the passing of those days.