Well, David has made several points that I would like to address. But first
I have to reiterate that no matter the outcome of the questions he presents,
the concept of God is still problematic, and the quality of transcendence
really doesn't help his argument. I'll expand on this in a little while.
In David's opening, he began by trying to make a corollary between God and
love. He commits a fallacy in doing this, though. He thinks we can't prove
love. I beg to differ. What is love? Well, we can sit around and ponder that
question for a long time, but eventually we'll come to the conclusion that
love is a complex series of multiple biochemical reactions, etc. Now, I'm
sure many people will flat out deny this, so I'll go a little more in depth.
The alternate idea they propose is that God is the cause of love. Now, this
seems like a simple answer, but it really doesn't explain a damn thing. How
exactly does God cause love? We have no idea. In fact, we don't really even
know what we're talking about when we say God is the cause of love. Also,
if the theist is going to attribute love to God, why doesn't he attribute
things like hate and greed to God. Well, the usual answer to this is that
there's some little demon with a pitchfork that makes us feel these bad emotions.
And again, we really have no idea how this is happening. But back to the
corollary. If love can be proven, this analogy fails. If love can't be proven,
the theist has dug himself a hole. In one way because of all other emotions
and the affects physical things have on them. In another way because all
he's really done is disprove love. He hasn't done anything to prove love
exists. Take Freud for example. It's a fairly common belief that love is
nothing more that reinforced behavior concerning the basic pleasure of sex.
Next he comes to the business of defining God. He thinks, and it surprises
me, that God can be experienced. I can only ask that anyone who says God
can be experienced to think literally about what you're saying. A God of
transcendence can not be observed or even indirectly observed. I addressed
this in my opening. A transcendent God is by definition outside of all human
universe, understanding, knowledge, and experience. We literally have no
way of figuring out what this sort of creature is. Much less if he exists.
I mean, we can sit around all day and think of invisible blue fairies flying
around us that do all the same things as God. What is the difference between
the blue fairies and God? Well, as I intend to show, nothing. David will
present lots of arguments for why God might and why God does exist, and I
will reduce them to nothing at all. But even if all his arguments are valid,
they could never be sound. The premises would use a term that is not possible.
Take for instance this scenario: all married bachelors are happy. Joe is
a married bachelor. Therefore, Joe is happy. This argument itself is in proper
form, but has no hope of being sound. There's simply no way a married bachelor
can exist. Thus the argument that Joe is happy doesn't even get off the ground.
This is the same with God. God can't be used in a premise or conclusion of
an argument because it is -by nature- impossible to exist. But for the fun
of argument, I'll explain some of these arguments, just to show that they
don't have any merit if God is a coherent thought.
First of all, let's put this causal argument to rest. Why did the universe
come to exist? I'm not sure that's in proper form. Saying things like "what
happened before the universe cam to exist?" are completely meaningless. There
is no dimension for these things to happen in. Now, the theists will no doubt
say that God exists outside of all these dimensions. Of course this really
just furthers my point. We have no idea what it would be like to live outside
of the universe. And we have no way of proving it. And we have no reason
for even thinking it might be true. But even if somehow you could prove that
there was some sort of cause for the universe, you still wouldn't be able
to prove that there is God. There are many sorts of ideas of beings that
could have created the universe. Many of which would be long gone by now.
This yields a negative answer to the question at hand. Back to the story
with the invisible blue fairies. There is no difference in this argument.
Blue fairies could be the cause of the universe. And immediately after that,
they all died. I mean, there are millions of ways the universe could have
come to exist. I do have one more thing to say about this issue. It seems
as though the Christian is always ready to attack the things we don't know.
We don't know why the universe is here. Or even if there is a why. But this
'God story' is one in a long list. And we have no reason to believe it over
any other.
Also, the theists love to bring in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. They
feel that this disproves evolution and the Big Bang. Let me tell you something.
This is just not true. Look at us. We're burning energy in at a rate that
is much greater than most things. We aren't order. We are a catalyst creating
a hell of a lot of disorder. We are a furnace that burns complex molecules
at a steady temperature of 98.6 degrees. The total entropy of the universe
decreases because of us. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is in complete
accordance with evolution in this manner. It's just that the best-fit furnaces
live to continue to burn. Now the 2nd law is applied to the Big Bang. Look
at our universe. It's not ordered. Galaxies are so far apart that from each
other, they look like stars (if they can be seen at all). The background
radiation is a mere 3 degrees above absolute zero. That's disorder if I've
ever seen it. One more thing about the 2nd law. Gravity often times causes
it not to function (after all, it is a probabilistic law). Why doesn't the
nuclear furnace in the sun explode? It does. Gravity just pulls it back.
Gravity is what makes solar systems, galaxies, and even life appear to be
ordered. The 2nd law of thermodynamics does nothing to show that there are
more than natural lows at work in the universe, thus the 2nd law does nothing
to help the theist in a search for God.
You also keep referring to the natural world and alluding to a supernatural
realm. And my central question to you is why do think this supernatural realm
exists? The scientific evidence to which you refer is just not there. Your
scientific evidence for God is nothing more than scientific uncertainties
and scientific unknowns attributed to some word which when we think critically
about, we have no idea what it is supposed to mean.
Normally, I would stop at this last paragraph because I like the sound of
the ending of it. But there is another very serious thing I want to say.
There are (at least) two causes of atheism. Firstly, the one you mention.
Some atheists don't want to believe in God. To me, this seems ridiculous.
Why wouldn't you want to live forever? Why wouldn't you want to be rewarded
for what you do that is good? Well, there's the catch. You're punished for
what you do wrong. This is probably the reason many atheists don't believe
in God. It's a subconscious attempt to escape eternal damnation. This group
of atheists I find just as irrational as theists -if not more- than the theists.
Ironically, eventually some of these atheists will get morals and this causes
them to convert to some sort of theism. The other type of atheists is a group
you don't think exists -the atheists that analyze the scientific evidence
and rationally realize that it does not point to any sort of God. Of these
atheists, I have seen no converts to theism. To claim that all atheists just
don't want to believe in God is a lie. I hope some sort of God exists, and
I get to live forever, but hey, chances and reason tell me that's just not
the case. I can accept that. The theist can not, thus the desire to believe
is very similar to the desire not to believe, but neither has any merit when
compared to the desire of truth.
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