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Atheist Argument

Shawn wrote:

I would like to take the time to explain why I am an atheist. Feel free to use this letter and mock me all you want on your site (which I am sure you will do).

I saw your $1,000 challenge and this is not related to it. You know that no one can provide adequate proof of the zeitgeist claims. Obviously no one alive today was alive then, and stories get clouded over generations so proof would only be based on transferred opinions over thousands of years - again, not possible.

I am a very logical thinking person, I don't believe in something unless I can prove it to myself with either research or the 5 senses.

For starters I have one big issue with religions as a whole. There are so many different faiths and beliefs out there. Even in Christianity alone there are many sub-religious beliefs. This means that someone has to be wrong here. Lets say there are only 20 different possible religions. This means that you have a 95% chance of being wrong without me even proving religion right or wrong. So on to the 5% chance...

Imagine yourself WAY back in time, farther back. Back to the beginning of Egypt if you will. You are 30 years old (old for them) and you are the pharaoh. You suddenly ask yourself, what is this mysterious thing above you bringing us light and helping to grow our food. Why does it go away and come back over and over again? There must be some kind of force controlling this. Then it starts to rain, and you wonder why is this water falling from above? Eventually without modern science and no answers you discover it must be a "god" that is controlling all of this. At night you pray for the sun god to bring light and bring you out of the harm of darkness. To grow food you pray to the rain god for rain. Then one day someone asks you a question no one has thought of before. What happens when I die? You've seen people die before but you don't know what happens so you can't answer him. As a human being, one of the HARDEST things to comprehend in our brains is what happens immediately after death. Your brain is dead so you can't think or see what happens, thus making it impossible to think about it. Eventually this will cause your people to fear death. You can't win any wars and conquer new lands with your men fearing death. What is a logical way to overcome this fear? When you die you move on to another life. What a simple and easy solution to this fear of death. Over the years it transforms as a leveraging tool. If you are a good person in life you will move on to a better life when you die. If you are a bad person, well the afterlife is worse. What a simple and easy way to now control everyone by instilling fear of a bad afterlife. This has continued through almost every religion up to present day. At one point in history people were killed for even thinking anything different than the church. The church ruled all the lands with the simple fear of death and after life. Heaven and hell as you know it. Commandments telling you what not to do. Eventually people starting freaking out when they accidentally did something bad, so then came the option to repent your sins, making it OK to be bad once in a while. If you take away all that you have learned in your lifetime, in today's society this is the only acceptable explanation to a "god" being created. This of course not including any of the scientific breakthroughs since Egyptian times farther proving religion to be false.

I believe that when you die, you die. That's it, nothing else. It's very hard to think about it, but it's the truth. I want to believe in a god, I want someone to tell me it will be OK when I die. I want there to be an afterlife that is full of happiness for me. But I can't and I won't because there is no such thing. I have asked many, many times over my life for a sign from god telling me he's real. If he did, I would obviously throw all this in the garbage and become full fledged christian (or whatever religion the sign points to). But I know that sign is never coming.

So I leave you with a question I want you to deeply think about. Are you religious because your family and friends are and that's how you were raised? Or are you religious because you and ONLY you felt a presence from god and you believe because YOU believe on your own? Seriously think back to the day you became religious and ask why you are religious. You may be stunned to realize that you really had no choice in the matter since you were very young and most likely surrounded by it in everyday life. It's so easy for humans to just go with the flow. I was "baptized", my parents put me in sunday school every week. I have friends that baptized their kids when they don't even go to church themselves! How many people go to church once a year on Christmas or Easter? Do they really believe in god, or are they just following the norm of society? Ask for a sign, a real sign.

My Response:

Shawn,

Thanks for writing. I will post your letter at my site with my response, and if you want me to take it down for any reason, I will do so without question. I'll send you a link when it's up.

I try not to be rude, mocking, or condescending in my discussions, and I apologize in advance if I ever come across as such.

"I saw your $1,000 challenge and this is not related to it. You know that no one can provide adequate proof of the zeitgeist claims. Obviously no one alive today was alive then, and stories get clouded over generations so proof would only be based on transferred opinions over thousands of years - again, not possible."

I agree. I'm just trying to make people aware that the stories don't exist, since a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that they do.

"There are so many different faiths and beliefs out there. Even in Christianity alone there are many sub-religious belief's. This means that someone has to be wrong here."

What I find more likely is that everyone is at varying degrees of right and wrong. I don't believe that anyone, myself included, is capable of fully understanding God, any more than, say, a dog is capable of fully understanding a human. This means that everyone, myself included, has misconceptions. I do believe that study and contemplation can give you some answers, and thus make you more "right" than you were before, but you won't fully understand everything. I do think that some religions are probably more right than others, and some Christian denominations are probably more right than others. But I don't believe that one religion or denomination has a monopoly on the truth to the exclusion of all others.

"Let's say there are only 20 different possible religions. This means that you have a 95% chance of being wrong without me even proving religion right or wrong."

Probability really doesn't work that way, though. For example, suppose that a man's been murdered and there are 20 suspects. 19 of them apparently got along well with the victim and had no discernible motive, but one guy was constantly arguing with the victim, had recently threatened to kill him, and had the victim's blood on his shirt after the murder. Would you say that there's a 95% chance that the last guy didn't do it?

"Imagine yourself WAY back in time, farther back. Back to the beginning of Egypt if you will. You are 30 years old (old for them) and you are the pharaoh. You suddenly ask yourself, what is this mysterious thing above you bringing us light and helping to grow our food. Why does it go away and come back over and over again? There must be some kind of force controlling this. Then it starts to rain, and you wonder why is this water falling from above? Eventually without modern science and no answers you discover it must be a "god" that is controlling all of this. At night you pray for the sun god to bring light and bring you out of the harm of darkness. To grow food you pray to the rain god for rain. Then one day someone asks you a question no one has thought of before. What happens when I die? You've seen people die before but you don't know what happens so you can't answer him. As a human being, one of the HARDEST things to comprehend in our brains is what happens immediately after death. Your brain is dead so you can't think or see what happens, thus making it impossible to think about it. Eventually this will cause your people to fear death. You can't win any wars and conquer new lands with your men fearing death. What is a logical way to overcome this fear? When you die you move on to another life. What a simple and easy solution to this fear of death. Over the years it transforms as a leveraging tool. If you are a good person in life you will move on to a better life when you die. If you are a bad person, well the afterlife is worse. What a simple and easy way to now control everyone by instilling fear of a bad afterlife. This has continued through almost every religion up to present day. At one point in history people were killed for even thinking anything different than the church. The church ruled all the lands with the simple fear of death and after life. Heaven and hell as you know it. Commandments telling you what not to do. Eventually people starting freaking out when they accidentally did something bad, so then came the option to repent your sins, making it OK to be bad once in a while. If you take away all that you have learned in your lifetime, in today's society this is the only acceptable explanation to a "god" being created."

The problem is that your scenario *assumes* that God is created. I'll give you that *if* God is just something we created, your scenario does make sense as to why it was done.

To draw a comparison, there are those who believe that NASA faked the 1969 moon landing. They say that NASA had vowed to get a man on the moon by the end of the sixties, realized that they weren't going to get it done in time, and then, in order to save face with the public and to appear strong to the rest of the world, faked the moon landing in a Hollywood studio. Assuming that the moon landing was faked, this reasoning is pretty solid. I can understand the idea of someone unable to meet a deadline wanting to pretend to have met it, especially with the entire world watching in expectation. But this scenario only makes sense if you start with the assumption that it was faked, just as your scenario only makes sense if you start with the assumption that God doesn't exist. Do you see what I mean?

And regarding the church's occasional use of threats and intimidation - yeah, they have at times. But the fact that religion has been misused at times doesn't mean that it's false. In fact, I think these tactics have probably slowed the growth of religion more than they sped it up. You can't force someone to believe something. At best, you can only force them to pretend to believe in it. If I stuck a gun in your face and told you to believe in leprechauns or I'd blow your brains out, would you believe in them? No, but you might pretend that you do.

"This of course not including any of the scientific breakthroughs since Egyptian times farther proving religion to be false."

There haven't been any scientific breakthroughs proving religion to be false. Science can only deal with the natural, and cannot prove or disprove religion any more than it can prove or disprove the existence of love.

"I believe that when you die, you die. That's it, nothing else. It's very hard to think about it, but it's the truth. I want to believe in a god, I want someone to tell me it will be OK when I die. I want there to be an afterlife that is full of happiness for me. But I can't and I won't because there is no such thing."

You sound like you've already made up your mind, and closed it to other possibilities. Personally, I don't believe that anyone can be 100% sure that there is no afterlife any more than they can be 100% sure there is one (unless they have access to information that the rest of us don't). I don't see a way that anyone can know for sure one way or the other. Personally, I believe that the soul lives on after death, but I could be wrong, of course. And if the soul doesn't live on after death, then that means that our life is followed by "nothing". And I ain't afraid of "nothing"!

"I have asked many, many times over my life for a sign from god telling me he's real. If he did, I would obviously throw all this in the garbage and become full fledged christian (or whatever religion the sign points to). But I know that sign is never coming."

I must say that your request for a sign can't be very sincere if you've already made up your mind that it will never arrive. It almost sounds like (and I could be wrong) that you're asking simply for the purpose of being able to say "I asked and it never came" - in other words that you're asking because you want to disprove God to yourself, and perhaps to others.

Of course, God could, hypothetically, give you that sign anyway. But I believe that God wants willing followers, rather than forcing people to follow Him who would rather not.

"So I leave you with a question I want you to deeply think about. Are you religious because your family and friends are and that's how you were raised?"

No. As a matter of fact, my mom, who raised me, is an atheist. And I was an atheist until I was 20, and didn't become a Christian until I was 27.

"Or are you religious because you and ONLY you felt a presence from god and you believe because YOU believe on your own?"

No. I'm religious because I find the idea of God's existence to be more logical than His non-existence. The universe we live in is one where the creation of life is not only possible, but apparently inevitable (most scientists agree that life probably exists elsewhere in our universe, meaning life on this planet isn't just a fluke). Our universe is also capable of sustaining this life for billions of years, without that life being swallowed up by chaos. Of course, it *could* be this way purely by chance. It's statistically possible. But suppose that I showed you a painting of, say, the Eiffel Tower and told you that this painting was made by an explosion in a paint factory, and was not the result of someone purposely painting a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Would you believe it? Of course, it's statistically possible that an explosion in a paint factory could end up creating a picture of the Eiffel Tower, but just because something is hypothetically possible doesn't mean it's the most logical explanation. If something appears to have purpose behind it, as our universe does, then I find it most rational to conclude that it has purpose behind it. The idea of a God explains why our universe is capable of sustaining life. The idea of naturalism does not, but just says "it is because it is".

"Seriously think back to the day you became religious and ask why you are religious. You may be stunned to realize that you really had no choice in the matter since you were very young and most likely surrounded by it in everyday life."

Prior to my believing in God, I had very little exposure to religion. Like I said, I was raised by an atheist mother, and was an atheist until I was 20. My conversion from atheism was due to an astronomy course I took in college, where I began to see that our universe was composed of multiple orderly patterns that, had they not existed, would make life impossible. And I wondered why those patterns were there in the first place.

I was in a discussion with an atheist friend on another board over this issue, and he pointed out that energy flowing through a system tends to order the system, and that this phenomena alone explains why life can (and does) exist. So I asked him *why* energy flowing through a system tends to order the system. Just because it does? Or because it's supposed to? A theory which explains a phenomena is more believable than a theory which doesn't.

Peace,

David

I haven't heard back from Shawn, but did get a response from a guy named Peter:

Hello... David? It feels a little odd calling a stranger by his first name, but I feel if I didn't call you anything that the message might seem impersonal.

In a way I guess it should be. I don't think this is going to be a personal message. I just read the letter from Shawn and your response and I just want to comment on a few points. I'm not guaranteeing it won't turn into more than that, though; I tend not to go back and edit my e-mails for more than clarity, spelling, and grammar. I will say that I haven't looked at much of your site - just the article about Christ-mythers and Christianity in general (plus the two latest letters) - so please forgive me if you have to repeat yourself.

Anyway, there were a few points you made while responding to him that I wasn't 100% with you on. Shawn's words will be italicized and yours will be in bold.

"There are so many different faiths and beliefs out there. Even in Christianity alone there are many sub-religious belief's. This means that someone has to be wrong here."

"What I find more likely is that everyone is at varying degrees of right and wrong. I don't believe that anyone, myself included, is capable of fully understanding God, any more than, say, a dog is capable of fully understanding a human. This means that everyone, myself included, has misconceptions. I do believe that study and contemplation can give you some answers, and thus make you more "right" than you were before, but you won't fully understand everything. I do think that some religions are probably more right than others, and some Christian denominations are probably more right than others. But I don't believe that one religion or denomination has a monopoly on the truth to the exclusion of all others."

No real disagreement with you here, but I am interested in something. If this is how you feel, I would like to know why you chose Christianity. If you think that all the religions are right to some degree or another, why pick Christianity over the rest? Do you believe that Christianity is the most right of the religions? It would seem to me that such a belief is no easier to justify than believing that Christianity is totally 'right'. You mentioned that it was 'the most scrutinized of all faiths, and the one faith that has best withstood the scrutiny.' As far as I know, Judaism and Islam are both heavily scrutinized and have held up at least as well as Christianity.

"Let's say there are only 20 different possible religions. This means that you have a 95% chance of being wrong without me even proving religion right or wrong."

"Probability really doesn't work that way, though. For example, suppose that a man's been murdered and there are 20 suspects. 19 of them apparently got along well with the victim and had no discernible motive, but one guy was constantly arguing with the victim, had recently threatened to kill him, and had the victim's blood on his shirt after the murder. Would you say that there's a 95% chance that the last guy didn't do it?"

Actually, I'm pretty sure it does work that way. You took things a little out of context here. You're right that in such a situation as the one you described above, the man with the blood on his shirt would certainly seem to be the murderer (although there *is* a significant chance that he could have been framed). However, this is irrelevant because your analogy hardly comes close to accurately representing the situation. The fact of the matter is, the difference between each religion is not so clear-cut.

Here's what I think would be a much more fitting analogy for the situation:

A man has been murdered. There are 5 suspects.

One's been convicted of murder on several occasions before and had recently been involved in dealings with the victim, however, he has an alibi that would seem to hold water.

The second man recently had a dispute with the victim and is a known member of the National Rifle Association. The problem is that he and the victim had been best friends since college.

The third suspect is the victim's wife of three years. Their marriage was arranged (under circumstances that do not mater), although it was clear that she was not keen at all on marrying the man and any marriage counselor would have said that the arrangement would not last for very long. But upon questioning close friends of the victim, all stated that the two had recently been able to work out many problems and had seemed to have really started loving each other.

The fourth had only just met the victim several days before the incident. They had met because of a company merger and had been conducting business up until the murder. The dealings had been going according to plan and although the suspect would seem to have no motive, he was the only one seen with the victim on the night of the murder.

The last suspect is the victim's butler. There is really no reason to suspect the butler other than the fact that several of the detectives on the case have watched one too many late-night murder mysteries to rule him out.

So who's the murderer? What are the chances that any of them are the murderer? Honestly, I'm not sure how accurate a murder mystery is in representing religions, but if it's good enough for you, then it's good enough for me. Granted, I went a teensy bit just a little pretty dang overboard with that example, but my point stands. You can't argue one minute that all religions have some chance of being right and indeed are all right to some extent and then give an example that suggests something entirely different.

Moving on...

"Imagine yourself WAY back in time, farther back. Back to the beginning of Egypt if you will. You are 30 years old (old for them) and you are the pharaoh. You suddenly ask yourself, what is this mysterious thing above you bringing us light and helping to grow our food. Why does it go away and come back over and over again? There must be some kind of force controlling this. Then it starts to rain, and you wonder why is this water falling from above? Eventually without modern science and no answers you discover it must be a "god" that is controlling all of this. At night you pray for the sun god to bring light and bring you out of the harm of darkness. To grow food you pray to the rain god for rain. Then one day someone asks you a question no one has thought of before. What happens when I die? You've seen people die before but you don't know what happens so you can't answer him. As a human being, one of the HARDEST things to comprehend in our brains is what happens immediately after death. Your brain is dead so you can't think or see what happens, thus making it impossible to think about it. Eventually this will cause your people to fear death. You can't win any wars and conquer new lands with your men fearing death. What is a logical way to overcome this fear? When you die you move on to another life. What a simple and easy solution to this fear of death. Over the years it transforms as a leveraging tool. If you are a good person in life you will move on to a better life when you die. If you are a bad person, well the afterlife is worse. What a simple and easy way to now control everyone by instilling fear of a bad afterlife. This has continued through almost every religion up to present day. At one point in history people were killed for even thinking anything different than the church. The church ruled all the lands with the simple fear of death and after life. Heaven and hell as you know it. Commandments telling you what not to do. Eventually people starting freaking out when they accidentally did something bad, so then came the option to repent your sins, making it OK to be bad once in a while. If you take away all that you have learned in your lifetime, in today's society this is the only acceptable explanation to a "god" being created."

"The problem is that your scenario *assumes* that God is created. I'll give you that *if* God is just something we created, your scenario does make sense as to why it was done.

To draw a comparison, there are those who believe that NASA faked the 1969 moon landing. They say that NASA had vowed to get a man on the moon by the end of the sixties, realized that they weren't going to get it done in time, and then, in order to save face with the public and to appear strong to the rest of the world, faked the moon landing in a Hollywood studio. Assuming that the moon landing was faked, this reasoning is pretty solid. I can understand the idea of someone unable to meet a deadline wanting to pretend to have met it, especially with the entire world watching in expectation. But this scenario only makes sense if you start with the assumption that it was faked, just as your scenario only makes sense if you start with the assumption that God doesn't exist. Do you see what I mean?

And regarding the church's occasional use of threats and intimidation - yeah, they have at times. But the fact that religion has been misused at times doesn't mean that it's false. In fact, I think these tactics have probably slowed the growth of religion more than they sped it up. You can't force someone to believe something. At best, you can only force them to pretend to believe in it. If I stuck a gun in your face and told you to believe in leprechauns or I'd blow your brains out, would you believe in them? No, but you might pretend that you do."

Why does Shawn's scenario assume that God does not exist?

I'm not entirely sure of Shawn's motives with this paragraph, but to me, he's not trying to prove that God does not exist. If I had written his paragraph, my purpose would have been to show that nowadays we don't need to believe in a God to understand things. We've nailed down some scientific principles that come close to explaining things that people could have had absolutely no idea about in earlier times. It's not likely or unlikely that God exists; we simply do not need the idea of God to explain the universe any more.

"This of course not including any of the scientific breakthroughs since Egyptian times farther proving religion to be false."

"There haven't been any scientific breakthroughs proving religion to be false. Science can only deal with the natural, and cannot prove or disprove religion any more than it can prove or disprove the existence of love."

I must say that I agree with you. Science has no precedence in the field of religion. (Also, I know that you didn't say anything about it, but the converse is also true. Religion, as far as I can tell, really seems pretty irrelevant when it come to the field of science)

"I believe that when you die, you die. That's it, nothing else. It's very hard to think about it, but it's the truth. I want to believe in a god, I want someone to tell me it will be OK when I die. I want there to be an afterlife that is full of happiness for me. But I can't and I won't because there is no such thing."

"You sound like you've already made up your mind, and closed it to other possibilities. Personally, I don't believe that anyone can be 100% sure that there is no afterlife any more than they can be 100% sure there is one (unless they have access to information that the rest of us don't). I don't see a way that anyone can know for sure one way or the other. Personally, I believe that the soul lives on after death, but I could be wrong, of course. And if the soul doesn't live on after death, then that means that our life is followed by "nothing". And I ain't afraid of "nothing"!"

Pretty solid with you here, although I wouldn't really say either is more likely than the other.

"I have asked many, many times over my life for a sign from god telling me he's real. If he did, I would obviously throw all this in the garbage and become full fledged christian (or whatever religion the sign points to). But I know that sign is never coming."

"I must say that your request for a sign can't be very sincere if you've already made up your mind that it will never arrive. It almost sounds like (and I could be wrong) that you're asking simply for the purpose of being able to say "I asked and it never came" - in other words that you're asking because you want to disprove God to yourself, and perhaps to others.

Of course, God could, hypothetically, give you that sign anyway. But I believe that God wants willing followers, rather than forcing people to follow Him who would rather not."

I mostly agree with you, but I don't believe Shawn was saying that God would have to 'force' him to believe, simply that he wanted a sign so that he *could* believe. I know this is contrary to the principle of faith, and I would not have made such a request of God, but Shawn's logic is probably that if God is all powerful, why shouldn't He give him a way of knowing?

"Or are you religious because you and ONLY you felt a presence from god and you believe because YOU believe on your own?"

"No. I'm religious because I find the idea of God's existence to be more logical than His non-existence. The universe we live in is one where the creation of life is not only possible, but apparently inevitable (most scientists agree that life probably exists elsewhere in our universe, meaning life on this planet isn't just a fluke). Our universe is also capable of sustaining this life for billions of years, without that life being swallowed up by chaos. Of course, it *could* be this way purely by chance. It's statistically possible. But suppose that I showed you a painting of, say, the Eiffel Tower and told you that this painting was made by an explosion in a paint factory, and was not the result of someone purposely painting a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Would you believe it? Of course, it's statistically possible that an explosion in a paint factory could end up creating a picture of the Eiffel Tower, but just because something is hypothetically possible doesn't mean it's the most logical explanation. If something appears to have purpose behind it, as our universe does, then I find it most rational to conclude that it has purpose behind it. The idea of a God explains why our universe is capable of sustaining life. The idea of naturalism does not, but just says "it is because it is"."

Interesting analogy again. Although again, I think you're leaving out some important details.

If I were to extrapolate this analogy, it seems to me that the existence of God is just another configuration of exploded paints. Let's assume that one particular explosion didn't produce the Eiffel Tower. That's not to say that if you tried it again that it would yield the same picture. Think about this - how many thousands of combinations of explosions would produce an image pleasing to the eye? Not necessarily the Tower, just something that you wouldn't mind looking at. The universe didn't necessarily have to end up the way it did - there are many possibilities that could have ended with intelligent life - or even human consciousness. Sure, a painter may make beautiful things a higher portion of the time, but the sheer quantity of possibilities that the paint buckets exploding present offer, to me, an explanation that is in no way less likely than that of the painter.

"I was in a discussion with an atheist friend on another board over this issue, and he pointed out that energy flowing through a system tends to order the system, and that this phenomena alone explains why life can (and does) exist. So I asked him *why* energy flowing through a system tends to order the system. Just because it does? Or because it's supposed to? A theory which explains a phenomena is more believable than a theory which doesn't."

This question can just as easily be asked of God. 'God tends to order a system, and God alone explains why life can (and does) exist.' That, essentially, is what I understand to be God's explanatory value. So I ask you not *why* God tends to order a system, but rather why does God exist at all? The paint buckets exploding seem to give us a fine chance of being created, so how does God explain anything more?

Thanks for taking the time to read this stuff, and again, I'm sorry if I'm wasting your time. I doubt I need to tell you of what religious persuasion I am as you can probably guess just fine. But it doesn't matter. I'm not (purposely) directly attacking your beliefs, simply the methods you use to defend it. I'd be flattered if you were to respond.

So hopefully not to belabor my message, but really, thank you again - I just want to understand things;

~ Mi Sombra

I responded:

Peter,

Thanks for writing. Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you.

"If this is how you feel, I would like to know why you chose Christianity. If you think that all the religions are right to some degree or another, why pick Christianity over the rest? Do you believe that Christianity is the most right of the religions?"

I guess you could say that. Basically, I am convinced that Jesus was resurrected, and, if He was, that pretty much validates everything He said and stood for. It essentially shows that He was on God's side. It's possible, of course, that He could be resurrected without being on God's side, but I find that unlikely in the extreme and not backed up by what kind of person He was. He definitely strikes me as good and God-like to some extent, so "on God's side" makes more sense to me.

"As far as I know, Judaism and Islam are both heavily scrutinized and have held up at least as well as Christianity."

I believe that Judaism, which is essentially based on the idea that the Israelites were God's chosen people, is actually best explained by Jesus. His being born of the Israelites is the culmination of *why* they were chosen. Christianity being true doesn't prove that Judaism is not, but kind of explains why it was true.

And I don't reject the idea that Mohommad, the founder of Islam, had some sort of personal experience with God, but I don't find that really proof of Islam being a valid religion. I believe that a lot of people have experiences with God, but that doesn't mean that any religion founded around them should be followed. But Jesus being resurrected is pretty unique and pretty big, and I believe shows a stronger relationship with God.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure it does work that way. You took things a little out of context here. You're right that in such a situation as the one you described above, the man with the blood on his shirt would certainly seem to be the murderer (although there *is* a significant chance that he could have been framed). However, this is irrelevant because your analogy hardly comes close to accurately representing the situation."

I was simply trying to show Shawn that it's not automatically an even split, as he was suggesting. Had I used an example like yours with the five suspects, all somewhat likely for different reasons, I wouldn't have made my point, would I? Of your five suspects, I'd give them, in order, roughly 25%, 10%, 40%, 20%, and 5% (the butler being the least likely, the wife the most). But by his logic, it would be 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%. I was simply trying to show that his logic doesn't work. He can't really say that the wife and the butler have an equal chance of being the killer based on what we know so far.

"You can't argue one minute that all religions have some chance of being right and indeed are all right to some extent and then give an example that suggests something entirely different."

My example wasn't about showing the strength of Christianity over the strength of other religions, just about showing that his "if it's one of 20, then it's automatically a 5% chance" claim was incorrect.

"Why does Shawn's scenario assume that God does not exist?"

He specifically says "this is the only acceptable explanation to a "god" being created.", thus it assumes that God is something we created in our minds, not something which actually exists.

"I know this is contrary to the principle of faith, and I would not have made such a request of God, but Shawn's logic is probably that if God is all powerful, why shouldn't He give him a way of knowing?"

"Forcing" may have been too strong on a word on my part, but I think it's clear that Shawn doesn't really want to believe in God and thus, if he became a follower, it would be an unwilling follower.

"Let's assume that one particular explosion didn't produce the Eiffel Tower. That's not to say that if you tried it again that it would yield the same picture. Think about this - how many thousands of combinations of explosions would produce an image pleasing to the eye? Not necessarily the Tower, just something that you wouldn't mind looking at. The universe didn't necessarily have to end up the way it did - there are many possibilities that could have ended with intelligent life - or even human consciousness."

And there are many "explosion in a paint factory" results that could have produced an image on the Eiffel Tower. There isn't only one way to paint the Eiffel Tower. But still, it doesn't change the fact that if I see an image of the Eiffel Tower, I would presume it was purposefully painted onto the canvas and not exploded onto it. I'm not saying the explosion explanation is impossible, it's just not what my mind would jump to.

"Sure, a painter may make beautiful things a higher portion of the time, but the sheer quantity of possibilities that the paint buckets exploding present offer, to me, an explanation that is in no way less likely than that of the painter."

Here's a link to a painting of the Eiffel Tower:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3542/3471331583_3bbee01568.jpg

What do you think of it? Purposeful painting, or explosion in a paint factory? You could probably research it and find out for sure (like the name of the artist, if there is one and it is known), but until you find out for sure, which conclusion seems more likely to you?

"This question can just as easily be asked of God. 'God tends to order a system, and God alone explains why life can (and does) exist.' That, essentially, is what I understand to be God's explanatory value. So I ask you not *why* God tends to order a system, but rather why does God exist at all? The paint buckets exploding seem to give us a fine chance of being created, so how does God explain anything more?"

That's a little like looking at a painting of the Eiffel Tower, concluding (as most people would) that it was created by a painter, and then asking why the painter existed. The exploding paint buckets do present an alternate explanation, but it's not one that most people would find likely. Why the Eiffel Tower? "Explosionists" would answer "just because". "Painterists" would say "Because that's what the painter wanted to draw". We can certainly agree to disagree on the matter, but I think that no matter how you slice it, the painter is the more likely explanation.

I will say that it's more difficult, perhaps even impossible, to explain why something exists if it's something which always existed. At one time, science generally believed that the universe as we know it always existed. At that time, asking scientists why the universe exists would have been silly. Something which always existed, logically speaking, doesn't have a reason for its existence. Only when science discovered that the universe is expanding, and thus must have had a beginning, did they start contemplating the reason for its creation. There are those who argue that while the universe itself began to exist, the matter and energy which it's comprised of always existed, just in another form. Ask them why the matter and energy exists, and "because it does" is the only real explanation.

But since the universe did begin to exist, then something caused it. It could be something purposeful, like God, or it could be something purposeless, like a natural event with natural causes.

God, I believe, always existed. Hypothetically, of course, He could have been created by yet another being, but that being would also have to essentially be a God, and I think that Occam's Razor makes that unlikely (why assume 2 or more Gods when 1 explains the facts just as well?). Ultimately, there must be an uncaused cause back at the beginning of it all, and you can't ask why an "uncaused cause" exists. Automatically, the answer would have to be "it just does", whether that uncaused cause is God or something entirely natural. The painting of the Eiffel Tower, we know, is not such an uncaused cause, since any painting would have to have begun to exist. Thus we can contemplate why it exists. Same with the universe as we know it, that thing which began to exist about ten billion years ago. Something, purposeful or not, caused it to exist, so there is a reason (purposeful or not) that it exists.

"But it doesn't matter. I'm not (purposely) directly attacking your beliefs, simply the methods you use to defend it."

I have no problem with people questioning my beliefs or my methods, as long as they're respectful, which you have certainly been. If my beliefs and methods don't stand up to polite scrutiny, then they're worthless, and I'd like to think that they aren't. I've enjoyed this conversation, and please write me back if you have further questions or comments.

Peace,

David

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