If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong (1 Viewer)

[Not-That-Bright]

doesnt faith = belief ?

Faith is a believe without any evidence. Beliefs have to have some sort of logical reasoning / evidence behind them.

 

[SashatheMan]

I will answer a few arguments that are half-way attempted --
1. That is very bad logic.

Simply because we do not understand something does not call for the adoption of a fantastical belief that does not actually explain anything at all. This is your argument:

1. There are things that remain unanswered.
2. The concept of God answers those questions.
3. There must be a God.

The argument is logically invalid. Premise 3 does not necessarily follow from Premises 1 & 2. Allow me to demonstrate:

1. I do not know where my socks have gone.
2. The concept of a spider living under my bed that drags my socks away answers that question.
3. There must be a spider living under my bed that drags my socks away.

Your argument is even worse because your Premise 2 is false. God does not answer those questions at all. It only accommodates – it doesn’t actually explain anything. An explanation tells us why something is one way and not another way. But a theory that accommodates anything explains nothing because it doesn’t exclude any possibilities. Accommodating all possibilities makes a theory worthless.

(Not only that, the God version is worse even further because it relates to the supernatural – in contrast at least spiders exist and a spider dragging away socks are physically possible, though very unlikely.)

MoonlightSonata makes good points. i dont see anything equivalent coming from the believers side

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Moonlight lays out his arguments in coherant ,logical ways. People do not challenge his points logically because they cannot (or at least do not currently possess any counter-argument), but at the same time they do not conceed that he has defeated their argument.

 

[gerhard]

moonlight puts so much effort in each post

its quite impressive

 

[SashatheMan]

no .. just most poeple.

and you scribble yourself off the list when noones looking

 

[hipPo3]

and you scribble yourself off the list when noones looking

deffinately

 

[StGeorgeDragons]

it says in the bible, "blessed are
those who have not seen and yet have believed"


now u can say, thats just the guy who wrote the bible's exuse for us not seeing. but u could also see it the other way, if u have enough faith to believe without seeing, its an extremly difficult thing. imagine how different the world would be if everyone saw God. There wouldnt be any point in life on "earth".

 

[Sepulchres]

"While you call believing in something that spectacular without evidence "special" (which is completely vague and doesn't show anything), I call it irrational."

The idea of a 'god' is, by definition, beyond the scope of 'observation'. Now, there are two types of evidence - a type that is a result of, and a type that is a cause to. If you're defining god as the 'creator', then there's plenty of evidence - the world is the evidence to god's creation. So asking for the evidence of a being who'se attribute is to create is kind of stupid isn't it?

What you should be saying is 'there is no observational proof of god' - and that in itself is a valid statement, but redundant. It's like saying "I have figured out from months of thinking that 2-1 is indeed 1". Why? Because god, as defined, is beyond observational senses. So what other faculty do we have of determining whether god exists or not? Only one way - pure logical arguments without the aid of observational evidence.

Now, this is a que for you to leave your little science theories behind because science does not speculate upon anything beyond the senses thus it cannot prove it (being god) right/wrong. In fact, if you know science, you know that it never proves anything 'right' - it only attaches a low probability of being 'wrong' to its theories.

Now that we've determined that the only faculty of proving/disproving god is through pure logic - I'd like to point you towards the arguments of god such as the unmoved mover, the cosmologiacl first cause, and spinoza's argument for god. These are all based on deductive logic and once you've tried to refute all of them - you can make some sort of claim towards "god does not exist" because remember: to prove that something does not exist is a lot harder than to prove that something does. So basically the burden is upon you to analyse the logical arguments FOR god, and prove them wrong. Happy huntings.

1)God exists
2) Therefore he must have been created

God's definition is "infinite", and infinite by definition does not have a start - therefore god, by definition, was not created. Now, if you have something against the concept of infinity you're welcome to try and prove that wrong.

 

[Generator]

Why does it, your god, not have a creator? If it's existence is essentially 'known', then why is it removed from the idea that if something exists then it must have a creator? If one were to accept the argument of an infinite entity (despite the fact that it's a neat cop-out when selectively applied), then why is your god infinite rather than the unvierse itself (e.g., the idea of perpetual expansion and contraction)?

Why must everything go back to a god? How does the mere existence of something tangible suggest that a god exists? (for the record, the argument 'immortalised' by Paley's watch was successfully deconstructed years ago)

 

[SashatheMan]

Why does it, your god, not have a creator? If it's existence is essentially 'known', then why is it removed from the idea that if something exists then it must have a creator? If one were to accept the argument of an infinite entity (despite the fact that it's a neat cop-out when selectively applied), then why is your god infinite rather than the unvierse itself (e.g., the idea of perpetual expansion and contraction)?

Why must everything go back to a god? How does the mere existence of something tangible suggest that a god exists? (for the record, the argument 'immortalised' by Paley's watch was successfully deconstructed years ago)

what argument is by paley's watch?

 

[Sepulchres]

Why must everything go back to a god? How does the mere existence of something tangible suggest that a god exists? (for the record, the argument 'immortalised' by Paley's watch was successfully deconstructed years ago)

Well the perpetual expansion/contraction as a scientific theory has no evidence - so that's an asumption. Logically speaking, an infinity universe = eternal time = no flow of time.

It goes back to god because: something can't come from nothing.

Also, I'm not arguing Paley's point.

Why does it, your god, not have a creator? If it's existence is essentially 'known', then why is it removed from the idea that if something exists then it must have a creator? If one were to accept the argument of an infinite entity (despite the fact that it's a neat cop-out when selectively applied), then why is your god infinite rather than the unvierse itself (e.g., the idea of perpetual expansion and contraction)?

[quote="sepulchres']God's definition is "infinite", and infinite by definition does not have a start - therefore god, by definition, was not created. Now, if you have something against the concept of infinity you're welcome to try and prove that wrong.[/quote]

 

[gerhard]

hahaha

in first year philosophy they used aquinas first mover to teach us how to attack bad arguments

 

[Sepulchres]

hahaha

in first year philosophy they used aquinas first mover to teach us how to attack bad arguments

It's Aristotle's unmoved mover - not Aguinas. First year philosophy?

 

[Generator]

Well the perpetual expansion/contraction as a scientific theory has no evidence - so that's an asumption. Logically speaking, an infinity universe = eternal time = no flow of time.

It goes back to god because: something can't come from nothing.

Well, one could quite easily argue that it's as valid as a god - both are essentially assumptions based upon what people may 'observe', it's just that one is posed as a possible scientific theory and the other as a religious belief.

Once again, what is it that separates a god from everything else in that it just exists? If everything must have a creator, then why is a god deemed to be 'infinite' and as such removed?

 

[hipPo3]

hahaha

in first year philosophy they used aquinas first mover to teach us how to attack bad arguments

lol thats awesome ... im going to try n score some free lectures

 

[MoonlightSonata]

I love it how you try to simplify arguements but miss the point completely. Let me help you:

1) Stuff exists
2) Therefore it must have been created.
3) So, mono/ploytheistic religions relate creationism as an act of God rather than what Darwin has put forward.

With respect, I already disposed of that argument in another thread:

That is called the "first cause argument". It was formed by Aquinas in the 13th Century.

The argument can take several forms, but the main one is this:

1. Everything has a cause.
2. Nothing can cause itself.
3. Everything is caused by another thing.
4. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
5. There must be a first cause.
6. God was the first cause.


Response

1. If everything requires a cause, what created God? If God does not need a cause, then by the same reasoning, neither does the universe.

2. Premise 6 does not necessarily flow from premise 5. Who says that the first cause was God? (See also: Law of parsimony/Occam's razor - multiplying assumptions/entities unnecessarily.)

3. According to this argument, there can be more than one first cause. Premises 1 and 2 state that there is at least one causal chain of events, premise 3 tells us that they have a first cause. In this argument, the first entity (God) cannot have a cause, since then it wouldn't be an uncaused cause of the chain. However it does not follow that all causal chains must have the same first cause. There may be many different causal chains with many first causes, one for each of the chains. So it is not necessarily true that there is one, first uncaused cause of everything.

4. It is also not necessarily true that every event has a cause. Some things apparently do not have a cause, such as radioactive decay. (There are also theories such as infinitely oscillating universes that could mean the unvirse does not exist without a cause.)

It is a very old argument and comes in a few different forms but they all suffer the core flaws similar to what I have pointed out above.

And I did not say faith was evidence but it is something which religion builds its evidence upon. ie. If you do not have faith, you'll find it difficult to believe in religion, whichever it may be.

That is an empty sentence. Faith is just believing in something without logical or material evidence. For example, I might have faith that there is a great goat-God named Gorgamel. Faith alone is worthless. I'm sure that my faith alone is unlikely to be very convincing to you in my assertions that we should all follow his goatly-goodness. You need evidence and/or reason.

 

[Sepulchres]

Well, one could quite easily argue that it's as valid as a god - both are essentially assumptions based upon what people may 'observe', it's just that one is posed as a possible scientific theory and the other as a religious belief.

Once again, what is it that separates a god from everything else in that it just exists? If everything must have a creator, then why is a god deemed to be 'infinite' and as such removed?

God's existence cannot be proven though science, this has already been established - so stating your atheistic beliefs based on science are irrelevant here. Also, I countered the idea of an infinite universe using logical reasoning so I'll wait for its counter.

Also, god's definition is 'the infinite'. If you want to define god as 'finite' then it's fine - but remembe you're not arguing for/against god, but just your personal interpretation of it which has nothing to do with the accepted notion of what god is.

 

[Generator]

Ah, for the record I wasn't presenting an aethiestic 'belief' (funnily enough, there is no such thing) and I wasn't trying to suggest that your god's existence could be scientifically proven (or disproven for that matter), rather I was trying to question the arguments that you presented.

I do find that definition of a god to be quite interesting, and at the moment I'm finding it quite hard to counter an idea that seems to accept as fact that a god is essentially removed from all that it purveys - that it is infinite and somehow removed from the notion of time and that it alone exists without a creator. I'll let someone else who has taken the time to actually investigate the debate at length counter that definition, because right now I don't quite know how to effectively counter what I consider to be illogical yet you consider to be a watertight assumption..

 

[Sepulchres]

1. If everything requires a cause, what created God? If God does not need a cause, then by the same reasoning, neither does the universe.

God is, by definition, infinite. The universe is not infinite (see previous replies).

2. Premise 6 does not necessarily flow from premise 5. Who says that the first cause was God? (See also: Law of parsimony/Occam's razor - multiplying assumptions/entities unnecessarily.)

Logical disjunction. If the first cause was finite, then it itself would need a cause, and therefore cease to be first cause; so on and so forth. Ultimately you'll require an infinte entity who's cause was itself.

for number 3:

See previous argument.

4. It is also not necessarily true that every event has a cause. Some things apparently do not have a cause, such as radioactive decay. (There are also theories such as infinitely oscillating universes that could mean the unvirse does not exist without a cause.)

No and no. I don't want to go over the basics of logic here, but if you really believe that something can indeed come from nothing (effect without cause) then I'll leave you to your ignorance.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

The idea of a 'god' is, by definition, beyond the scope of 'observation'. Now, there are two types of evidence - a type that is a result of, and a type that is a cause to. If you're defining god as the 'creator', then there's plenty of evidence - the world is the evidence to god's creation. So asking for the evidence of a being who'se attribute is to create is kind of stupid isn't it?

What you should be saying is 'there is no observational proof of god' - and that in itself is a valid statement, but redundant. It's like saying "I have figured out from months of thinking that 2-1 is indeed 1". Why? Because god, as defined, is beyond observational senses. So what other faculty do we have of determining whether god exists or not? Only one way - pure logical arguments without the aid of observational evidence.

What's your point? If there is no evidence available then it doesn't mean we should believe it. No evidence means no evidence. You've got no evidence that there isn't an invisible flying pink elephant named Mervin who likes singing ballads undetactable to ours ears. It would be stupid asking for evidence because Mervin is invisible. Why don't you believe in him?

Now, this is a que for you to leave your little science theories behind because science does not speculate upon anything beyond the senses thus it cannot prove it (being god) right/wrong. In fact, if you know science, you know that it never proves anything 'right' - it only attaches a low probability of being 'wrong' to its theories.

I'm an agnostic, not an atheist.

Now that we've determined that the only faculty of proving/disproving god is through pure logic - I'd like to point you towards the arguments of god such as the unmoved mover, the cosmologiacl first cause, and spinoza's argument for god. These are all based on deductive logic and once you've tried to refute all of them - you can make some sort of claim towards "god does not exist" because remember: to prove that something does not exist is a lot harder than to prove that something does. So basically the burden is upon you to analyse the logical arguments FOR god, and prove them wrong. Happy huntings.

With respect, those arguments are so old and flawed it's laughable. See my above post for example, in regards to the first cause argument.

As to the burden of proof, again the onus is on you. I am agnostic, not an atheist.