You can sometimes tell something about people by the way they act. If you're in the local Kwik-E-Mart, and you walked into an aisle where there's a person furtively looking around while stuffing something into a pocket, you have some reason to assume that the person has just shoplifted. You may be wrong, but the person's behavior indicates that they are attempting to obscure the act that they're committing - whatever it may be.
You can also sometimes tell something about people by the way they look. A guy may rate a 4 out of ten on the classic-movie-star-good-looks-scale, but if he's clean and neatly dressed, walks upright and purposefully, you might think he's well brought-up, well-educated, confident, or some combination of these and other positive characteristics. Alternatively, that same 4-out-of-10 guy, when unclean, unshaven, disheveled, disoriented may look homeless, possibly ill or slightly incapacitated.
You can tell where this is going, of course ... You can sometimes tell something about people by the things they say. The guy downtown at the corner of State Street and Broadway railing about the government cover up of UFOs may not be your next choice for CEO of your bank - assuming of course, that the government cover up of the existence of UFOs has not been exposed between the time I write this and the time that you read it.
The way people look and act may give us an indication of how the person perceives and interacts with the world, but gives us little insight into what their intentions might be over a period of time. A person's words, however, may provide those additional insights we need to fully appreciate the persons viewpoint and possible future behavior.
Normally, I don't care what a person's world view is, provided they're a good neighbor. I assume that a good neighbor also has the characteristics of being a good family member, reasonably caring and charitable of those nearest to him, reasonably tolerant of those less close to him, and generally a benefit to the community. I can be completely, tragically wrong, but using this as an operating assumption has served me well so far, and doesn't burden me with the small, but still plausible, worry that my neighbor might be an axe murderer.
When people start talking about things that are not there, I assess that the person asserting these things has a world view that maps differently, or not at all, to the world that I map mine. Since I believe that I am of sound mind, and since I believe that I am not subject to belief in implausible things for which there is no physical evidence, makes it difficult for me to confidently predict that person's behavior. I might even have reason to believe that the person might be a danger to himself or others, depending on other signals that I pick up.
This is where I have problems with people asserting belief in the unexplained, and more specifically the supernatural. If the person expressing the belief, say, in UFOs, does so in a manner that indicates a casual interest, then I am less concerned than if they structure their life around this belief, and manifest it in ways that are weird and even disruptive. A UFO landing pad in the backyard might be a cause for worry.
As I continue my journey through life, I find the whole god conjecture, and most specifically the assertion that Jesus is the conjectural being's representative to whom we owe our fealty, rely on for a supposedly requisite redemption, and around whose teachings and the teachings of millennia of his followers we must structure our lives - I find this bizarre in the extreme.
It makes no sense to believe in something that is never directly evident and for which there is no indirect evidence, nor rational justification. The hypothetical universe that can only exist through the simultaneous existence of god and his delegate(s) has never been rationally described. There appears to be no necessity in any system for such a thing. The attempts at reasoning why such a scheme might be the most plausible conception of the universe are always subject to huge gaps in empirical support and reasoning.
If a person believes that god is real, and that he sent a delegate to redeem the believer, then okay. I do not care if the person truly sees things this way about the world. It would be nice if the believer didn't feel the need for this belief, because it would indicate to me that the person is mature, reasonable, and possesses a sound world view that maps to the objects and events that constitute the world that I perceive.
Fervent, even fevered belief in the supernatural leaves me to consider the belief-holder to be untrustworthy, imbalanced, and potentially even dangerous. There is no reason to try to out-shout people who do not believe things you believe in, yet this often happens when addressing people that have no other alternative. If your favored beliefs do not have the power of physical evidence and sound rational justification behind them, then the average mature, stable, reasonable adult has every right to reject the assertions you make as unfounded. This is the way rational discourse progresses.
When you assert belief in the unseen, and your audience assents, you may have strengthened the emotional bond between you and they, but you are literally preaching to the choir - reinforcing a set of conceptions that otherwise erode the moment you step outside and continue with mundane everyday experience.
Spending a whole lifetime trying to resist thinking and ignoring the world around you in favor of the comfort of imaginary supervision and redemption is a tragic waste of the human spirit.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Letter to a generic apologist
Dear generic apologist,
So far, all of your pro-theist bluster is based on the unwarranted belief that there are supernatural forces at work in the universe. There is not the slightest shred of evidence that this is so. Tens of billions of human beings have walked the planet. Not one has offered evidence of the supernatural that could be verified, let alone resulted in a fundamental change in the way we view such claims. Instead, fundamental changes to human understanding of the universe have always come from detecting phenomena and exploring their causes - creating hypotheses that could be tested, testing those hypotheses and rejecting them, refining them or accepting them as adequate explanations of what we observe. You continue to not participate in this global endeavor. You have not offered a shred of evidence to support your claim(s) of the supernatural.
Certainly there may be phenomena for which no answer can be found in our lifetimes. This is not cause for worry, and absolutely never a reason to fabricate explanatory schemes that are more fantastic and less plausible than what we can temporarily infer based on the incomplete evidence that we *do* have. Use String Theory as an example of where a skeptical approach is appropriate. It sounds great - space-aged - complicated - mysterious, but is it a fact? No. Ask any physicist. What will they tell you? They'll tell you string theory is a contender for a hoped-for Theory of Everything that explains and links all known physical phenomena. What's wrong with it? It has never predicted any results that have been observed and verified, leading some scientists to believe that it is not correct to consider it in the same sentence with the word "science". We cannot accept it as anything but an interim hypothesis until it can be tested, rejected, refined or accepted. This approach prevails throughout all successful projects that attempt to explain the world. It is a long and tortuous process, this search for the truth. It takes baby steps.
The conjecture that the supernatural exists ... angels, prophecies, gods, demons, the devil, messiahs - may have been useful when primitive groups of people spent all of their days in the struggle to obtain adequate food and water, to construct and maintain shelter, to defend themselves against animal and human predators. It may have been part wishful thinking, part social adhesive, part emotional defense against facing the gross uncertainty of life early in human history. Some of the words that have survived have a timeless quality that still ring true. Most of the words do not.
The world has grown up. Our understanding of the universe is monumentally greater than it was two, three, four thousand years ago. Most of the stories we told ourselves thousands of years ago are no longer necessary to explain the phenomena that we observe in everyday life.
If you enjoy religion, or take comfort in its rituals and practices; or find it a convenient tool to maintain familial and social bonds and harmony; or use it as an ethical guide instead of your own ability to behave civilly without the threat of retribution; or gain a platform from which you can be heard; or benefit from some other effect that I didn't mention; you are of course free to do so. You may even genuinely, fervently believe the sacred texts and doctrines that the religion has developed over time. Just don't expect moderately rational, moderately informed, moderately independent, moderately civil, moderately intelligent people to accept the fevered repetition of Calvin, Henry and other apologists as anything more than obsolete rationalizations for why ancient texts might be the word of some entity that deserves even passing consideration, let alone worship. This entity, for all you've been able to establish for an anxiously waiting world, is so invisible, so inconsequential, that it is indistinguishable from its own absence. There is no indication that what you say is there, is there.
You have a right to have yourself heard. I have a right to ask that you make sense. You have no right that guarantees your ideas will be respected - in civil discourse, that has to be earned. Until you can present evidence that the most trivial supernatural concept is real, making claims for anything supernatural will continue to be met by reactions ranging from indifference, through gentle kidding and skeptical inquiry, to derision and outright scorn. The broader the claims you make, the more difficult your evidentiary support and rational justification efforts will be.
I patiently await evidence of anything supernatural from you or anyone that you may offer as your surrogate. After we establish the veracity of that evidence, we can start talking about the possibility of a god. Once that's resolved, we can investigate why your preferred conception is more compelling than the thousands of others that have come and gone. It may even be worthwhile, if you have the time, to examine the different versions of the sacred texts and explain the reason such differences are necessary. While we're at it, some attempt at clarifying why separate sects and denominations exist will also help to solidify your claim to representing "the truth". After we resolve that, we can concern ourselves with the possibility of an incorporeal, eternal soul, an afterlife, eternal punishment and reward, and finally, the proposition that a messiah figure is a necessary delegate of the primary deity, could fit into to this grand scheme, in fact exists, and is worthy of our consideration and ultimately, worship. It is a long and tortuous process, this search for the truth. It takes baby steps.
Have a nice day!
The preceding mental exercise was written with a particular obscure apologist in mind - a fellow who has participated with me and others in a blog about the bible. I believe that the preceding generic admonishments can apply to most apologists.
So far, all of your pro-theist bluster is based on the unwarranted belief that there are supernatural forces at work in the universe. There is not the slightest shred of evidence that this is so. Tens of billions of human beings have walked the planet. Not one has offered evidence of the supernatural that could be verified, let alone resulted in a fundamental change in the way we view such claims. Instead, fundamental changes to human understanding of the universe have always come from detecting phenomena and exploring their causes - creating hypotheses that could be tested, testing those hypotheses and rejecting them, refining them or accepting them as adequate explanations of what we observe. You continue to not participate in this global endeavor. You have not offered a shred of evidence to support your claim(s) of the supernatural.
Certainly there may be phenomena for which no answer can be found in our lifetimes. This is not cause for worry, and absolutely never a reason to fabricate explanatory schemes that are more fantastic and less plausible than what we can temporarily infer based on the incomplete evidence that we *do* have. Use String Theory as an example of where a skeptical approach is appropriate. It sounds great - space-aged - complicated - mysterious, but is it a fact? No. Ask any physicist. What will they tell you? They'll tell you string theory is a contender for a hoped-for Theory of Everything that explains and links all known physical phenomena. What's wrong with it? It has never predicted any results that have been observed and verified, leading some scientists to believe that it is not correct to consider it in the same sentence with the word "science". We cannot accept it as anything but an interim hypothesis until it can be tested, rejected, refined or accepted. This approach prevails throughout all successful projects that attempt to explain the world. It is a long and tortuous process, this search for the truth. It takes baby steps.
The conjecture that the supernatural exists ... angels, prophecies, gods, demons, the devil, messiahs - may have been useful when primitive groups of people spent all of their days in the struggle to obtain adequate food and water, to construct and maintain shelter, to defend themselves against animal and human predators. It may have been part wishful thinking, part social adhesive, part emotional defense against facing the gross uncertainty of life early in human history. Some of the words that have survived have a timeless quality that still ring true. Most of the words do not.
The world has grown up. Our understanding of the universe is monumentally greater than it was two, three, four thousand years ago. Most of the stories we told ourselves thousands of years ago are no longer necessary to explain the phenomena that we observe in everyday life.
If you enjoy religion, or take comfort in its rituals and practices; or find it a convenient tool to maintain familial and social bonds and harmony; or use it as an ethical guide instead of your own ability to behave civilly without the threat of retribution; or gain a platform from which you can be heard; or benefit from some other effect that I didn't mention; you are of course free to do so. You may even genuinely, fervently believe the sacred texts and doctrines that the religion has developed over time. Just don't expect moderately rational, moderately informed, moderately independent, moderately civil, moderately intelligent people to accept the fevered repetition of Calvin, Henry and other apologists as anything more than obsolete rationalizations for why ancient texts might be the word of some entity that deserves even passing consideration, let alone worship. This entity, for all you've been able to establish for an anxiously waiting world, is so invisible, so inconsequential, that it is indistinguishable from its own absence. There is no indication that what you say is there, is there.
You have a right to have yourself heard. I have a right to ask that you make sense. You have no right that guarantees your ideas will be respected - in civil discourse, that has to be earned. Until you can present evidence that the most trivial supernatural concept is real, making claims for anything supernatural will continue to be met by reactions ranging from indifference, through gentle kidding and skeptical inquiry, to derision and outright scorn. The broader the claims you make, the more difficult your evidentiary support and rational justification efforts will be.
I patiently await evidence of anything supernatural from you or anyone that you may offer as your surrogate. After we establish the veracity of that evidence, we can start talking about the possibility of a god. Once that's resolved, we can investigate why your preferred conception is more compelling than the thousands of others that have come and gone. It may even be worthwhile, if you have the time, to examine the different versions of the sacred texts and explain the reason such differences are necessary. While we're at it, some attempt at clarifying why separate sects and denominations exist will also help to solidify your claim to representing "the truth". After we resolve that, we can concern ourselves with the possibility of an incorporeal, eternal soul, an afterlife, eternal punishment and reward, and finally, the proposition that a messiah figure is a necessary delegate of the primary deity, could fit into to this grand scheme, in fact exists, and is worthy of our consideration and ultimately, worship. It is a long and tortuous process, this search for the truth. It takes baby steps.
Have a nice day!
The preceding mental exercise was written with a particular obscure apologist in mind - a fellow who has participated with me and others in a blog about the bible. I believe that the preceding generic admonishments can apply to most apologists.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday Inspiration
It's been a good week for me to occupy my head with tidbits from the world of research, intellectual thought and skepticism ... although the "intellectual" tag is something only I might apply to thoughts that i have.
Exhibit A -
Researchers in South Africa found what may have been an "art studio" where early man accumulated and mixed materials that could be loosely termed "paint". This site is approximately 100,000 years old. Quoting directly from the article:
Exhibit B -
@theealex tweeted a link to the reliably thought-provoking Talk Origins site about the existence of Geologic Columns around the world that provide evidence on how the earth has changed over the eons ... and puts the lie to Creationist claims that the "Geologic Column is an idea, but nowhere to be found in nature". Ummmm ... except that it's found in at least 25 places around the world. Creationism is fun!
Exhibits C through Z -
Almost any tweet with the hashtag #skeptic #atheist or #atheism has the potential to be insightful or downright funny. A couple that caught my eye:
via @godisreundant - "The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything...I wanted to understand." Dr. James Watson
via @maximosis - "If God Made us in his image then why aren't we invisible too?" - #Random Bathroom Graffiti #atheism lockerz.com/s/147687213
via @hemantmehta - God Has a Challenger bit.ly/q5FBYI
via @Monicks - Don't confuse your religious beliefs with knowledge, better gain vast knowledge of your beliefs, you'd most likely stop believing. #atheism
...and a most heart-rending one...
via @GodlesBlkFemale - #atheist #christian #YouhaveSomeExplainingToDo #Jesustweeter lockerz.com/s/146635485
That last one cuts to the heart of the matter: that a supposed god would be kicking back in his supposed heaven in his favorite easy chair, sipping his favorite beverage, while innocent children starve to death.
It reminds us thinking, caring, un-delusional human beings that our friends, neighbors, fellow citizens, and the innocents born around the world are in need of help - and that those of us that can help, should help.
Exhibit A -
Researchers in South Africa found what may have been an "art studio" where early man accumulated and mixed materials that could be loosely termed "paint". This site is approximately 100,000 years old. Quoting directly from the article:
the find represents an important benchmark in the evolution of complex human mental processesI suppose that articles like this fill my heart with joy, awe and wonder much like my religious brethren claim when they consider their favorite major or minor deity.
Exhibit B -
@theealex tweeted a link to the reliably thought-provoking Talk Origins site about the existence of Geologic Columns around the world that provide evidence on how the earth has changed over the eons ... and puts the lie to Creationist claims that the "Geologic Column is an idea, but nowhere to be found in nature". Ummmm ... except that it's found in at least 25 places around the world. Creationism is fun!
Exhibits C through Z -
Almost any tweet with the hashtag #skeptic #atheist or #atheism has the potential to be insightful or downright funny. A couple that caught my eye:
via @godisreundant - "The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything...I wanted to understand." Dr. James Watson
via @maximosis - "If God Made us in his image then why aren't we invisible too?" - #Random Bathroom Graffiti #atheism lockerz.com/s/147687213
via @hemantmehta - God Has a Challenger bit.ly/q5FBYI
via @Monicks - Don't confuse your religious beliefs with knowledge, better gain vast knowledge of your beliefs, you'd most likely stop believing. #atheism
...and a most heart-rending one...
via @GodlesBlkFemale - #atheist #christian #YouhaveSomeExplainingToDo #Jesustweeter lockerz.com/s/146635485
That last one cuts to the heart of the matter: that a supposed god would be kicking back in his supposed heaven in his favorite easy chair, sipping his favorite beverage, while innocent children starve to death.
It reminds us thinking, caring, un-delusional human beings that our friends, neighbors, fellow citizens, and the innocents born around the world are in need of help - and that those of us that can help, should help.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Why I am an Atheist
I thought I'd take a shot at the Why I am an Atheist topic that PZ Myers called submissions for.
I'm an atheist because it is a rational intellectual stance about a proposition for which there is no evidence and no rational justification.
A personal god - as I presume theists believe - has never been observed in the history of humanity. It is, strictly speaking, imaginary. God can only be imagined, not observed, therefore belief in such a proposition has no base from which to operate. It does not add to my understanding of the world. It does not help me deal with immediate emotional, familial, social, professional or avocational problems that I might encounter. It unnecessarily complicates any system in which it is introduced. It is not needed. It is not plausible.
There are a nearly unlimited number of tangible and plausible concerns about which I can attend. God is not part of that set.
I'm an atheist because it is a rational intellectual stance about a proposition for which there is no evidence and no rational justification.
A personal god - as I presume theists believe - has never been observed in the history of humanity. It is, strictly speaking, imaginary. God can only be imagined, not observed, therefore belief in such a proposition has no base from which to operate. It does not add to my understanding of the world. It does not help me deal with immediate emotional, familial, social, professional or avocational problems that I might encounter. It unnecessarily complicates any system in which it is introduced. It is not needed. It is not plausible.
There are a nearly unlimited number of tangible and plausible concerns about which I can attend. God is not part of that set.
Sunday Links
PZ Myers posted a submission from Heather Dalgleish on Why I am an Atheist. It was elegant, precise, and I thought that PZ had written it until I saw her name at the end.
Unreasonable Faith has a link to an excellent talk by Lawrence Krauss on how the universe might arise from nothing. It was fascinating. Clocking in at a little over an hour long - it kept me awake until after 2 AM.
Finally, Camels With Hammers has a series-in-progress on reaching out to religious believers. It's well thought out, and definitely worthwhile!
Unreasonable Faith has a link to an excellent talk by Lawrence Krauss on how the universe might arise from nothing. It was fascinating. Clocking in at a little over an hour long - it kept me awake until after 2 AM.
Finally, Camels With Hammers has a series-in-progress on reaching out to religious believers. It's well thought out, and definitely worthwhile!
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Blogger from iPhone!
Kewllll!
Now that I have the new Blogger app for iPhone, I can post from anywhere! Even from a flying saucer that I claim to not believe in.
Now that I have the new Blogger app for iPhone, I can post from anywhere! Even from a flying saucer that I claim to not believe in.
21st Floor
It's probably been around for a while, but I just discovered the
21st Floor - obviously a skeptics site!
Since I don't give near enough attention to non-religious magical thinking, I thought I'd pimp a nice article titled Astrology IS a load of rubbish.
Pretty accurate assessment, wouldn't you say?
21st Floor - obviously a skeptics site!
Since I don't give near enough attention to non-religious magical thinking, I thought I'd pimp a nice article titled Astrology IS a load of rubbish.
Pretty accurate assessment, wouldn't you say?
Saturday, October 1, 2011
My (imaginary) Debate with Dr. William Lane Craig
Thank you for being here tonight, and thank you for allowing me to spend the next couple of hours with you. Let me especially extend my thanks to Dr. William Lane Craig, who, wholly unbeknownst to him, will serve as my imaginary opponent in this most improbable of imaginary debates.
The question before us here tonight is "Is there a God?" This question has been debated by such legends as Plato and Aristotle, St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, Dr. William Lane Craig, and by such obscure laymen as yours truly.
Is there a God? The question itself evokes awe and wonder about the immensity of the universe - eternity and infinity, time, space, mass, energy and the way they appear and are arranged and behave. The question "Is there a God?" is almost invariably linked to, and preceded by life's most basic and deepest questions such as "Where did I come from?", "How did life arise?", "How did the universe come into existence?" and "Why is there something instead of nothing?".
Our intuitions - the almost-unconscious feelings and attitudes we have about things, tell us that there is something greater than we are. As an example, if we didn't know better, we might imagine that the cause of the rain was something not unlike ourselves - an animate force endowed with the ability to cause rain to fall. We know what and how we humans think and act (to an extent) so projecting characteristics that we ourselves have onto the invisible cause of the rain is as good a guess as any we can make in the absence of more information. We certainly do this as children, we certainly did this as a species early in our history, and we certainly do that even today.
Carrying the analogy a step further - when the rain floods the river until it overruns its banks and threatens our homes, we may seek to win favor from this animate rain-causing being by acting in a certain way that we think it might approve of, or offering it certain things that we think would please it, or bargaining with it. When the rain either falls - or subsides - in accordance with our wishes, we are filled with good feelings about the force behind the rain, and we sing its praises. When the rain - or lack or it - does not accord with our wishes and requirements, we may feel anger or fear, and seek to ameliorate these feelings with bargaining and offerings and sincere beseechments. So when these beseechments and offerings are coincident with a positive change in the weather, we say that the rain force has answered our prayers. When the weather fails to turn in our favor, we don't understand, but we can save face by saying that the rain force works in mysterious ways, and we re-double our prayers and offerings. Sooner or later, we either get rain, or we parch to death, after which our particular form of belief in the rain god passes away with us.
Taken to the extreme, this minor deity may accumulate other powers, merge with other minor deities and morph over time into God, almighty God, God the great and powerful. That's what Dr. Craig and I will argue tonight, he in the affirmative, I in the negative.
Let me define God as I perceive it to be intended in this debate. When we say "God" tonight, I believe we are speaking of the monotheistic God "Yahweh" as described in the Hebrew Bible. This God is usually believed to have created Heaven and Earth, Adam and Eve, and is most commonly perceived to supervise and judge our lives and the world around us, and take action upon us and our surroundings both during our lives, and for eternity after we pass away. We can petition this God to receive benefits, and occasionally to smite our enemies. This conception of a deity is unimaginably powerful, this thing that can create an entire universe and interact with every thinking being on this tiny planet, then supervise us all for eternity after our physical lives are over. Unimaginably powerful indeed. And acts in mysterious ways.
Dr. Craig will argue that God exists. Dr. Craig will not present physical evidence of God, because, up until the very moment we walked into this building, there has never been any credible evidence that God exists. That we expect physical evidence which others can verify independently is a hallmark of an intelligent society that seeks to understand how the universe works. We want to know - to a reasonably high degree of certainty - that the things we can discern are explained as well as possible, while leaving it open to new and better explanations when new data, tools and techniques warrant. We even design experiments to falsify our hypotheses - to show that the data and models and methods that we propose as representing reality are instead false or unrepeatable - in order to prove to ourselves that our models reliably and repeatably explain things. So keep in mind that Dr. Craig will not present any of that.
Dr. Craig will argue some or all of the following: that God exists because 1) he is necessary for being; 2) the universe requires a cause, and that cause must be God; 3) the appearance of design in the universe indicates that there must be a designer, and that designer must be God; 4) the existence of human morals requires a higher authority to instill them in us, and that authority must be God. Dr. Craig's fifth common argument may be that the resurrection of Jesus as described in the New Testament is evidence of grace and power and love that are signs that God exists.
Finally, you may hear Dr. Craig tell us (and I will paraphrase here) "I believe in God because he personally revealed himself to me" - and that revelation is evidence that God exists. Although it is the least warranted, least supported by verifiable physical evidence and rational justification, it is the one argument that I am most sympathetic to. You see, I was once born-again. I once had what I would describe as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and I once - or twice - had what I interpreted as personal revelations that convinced me that God exists, and that he was speaking to me directly, not through an intermediary. This is powerful, powerful stuff. I no longer believe it - not a bit of it - but I'm very, very sympathetic to personal revelation because I've experienced it. So I stipulate that I am sympathetic to some arguments for the existence of God - but let me make it clear that I, in no way, accept any of them as demonstrations of, or evidence for God. I reject this God hypothesis completely, and in the course of this debate, I will show that the arguments for God that I've listed just now, are devoid of evidence, faulty in structure, and in no way present the slightest indication that anything supernatural does or could exist, let alone that ultimate supernatural conjecture we call God. They are just arrangements of words.
In the course of tonight's debate - Dr. Craig arguing that God exists and I arguing that God does not exist - I want to warn you of some of the tactics that will be employed in arguing for the resolution that God does exist. First, you will hear some assertions that are not agreed to.
For instance, you may hear that eternity - literally a universe with an infinite past and an infinite future, is logically impossible. Well, this is irrelevant. It makes no difference whether there is an infinite past or not. We are talking about whether something - God - exists. We are not arranging three and four-syllable words in order to impress our friends and exercise our lips. The only thing this assertion is good for is to set the stage for the argument from first cause - that the universe requires a cause, thus the cause is God, thereby proving that God exists (which incidentally omits how God could exist in the first place to perform this function). When you hear an argument against the existence of an eternal universe, you're just being softened up to accept a finite beginning, to which a hypothetical being - God - can be prepended as the cause. This is the only way that an argument from first cause can ever be made. Don't be misled. Arguing the existence of God ... a conjecture that has never been proven anywhere, and certainly the point of contention in this debate ... based on a premise so conditional as whether or not the universe has a beginning, does not make a worthy argument. It still ignores how God is necessary to the process. You might as well say "if, hypothetically, the universe has a finite beginning, then if, hypothetically, anything with a beginning has to have a cause, then if, hypothetically, the supernatural exists, then if, hypothetically God could exist, then if, hypothetically, God did exist, then if, hypothetically God could cause the universe to exist, then actually God did cause the universe to exist, therefore God exists." Did you notice how many times we have to interject that this is hypothetical? This type of reasoning is not something you'd ever consider worthwhile if you were trying to determine if the 200 foot high bridge in front of you is safe to cross - there are too many conditions to be met, most of which are clearly not certain, and may in fact be wildly improbable. To top it off, it's just another fine example of a circular argument - if he could exist and if he did exist and if he could create the universe and if he did create the universe then he exists. Huh?
If something exists, it can be detected. Rearranging words like we just did, on the other hand, doesn't help us detect anything. When my opponent rearranges words without a valid logical structure, without providing warrants for the intermediate inferences, without supplying adequate evidential support, it may simply confuse you or dissuade you from consciously recognizing that the conjecture being proposed - God - has no base of evidence or reasoning from which its existence can be affirmed.
The fact is, considering concepts such as eternity and infinity don't help you except to give you a metaphorical place to stand here and now. If, from this vantage point here and now, the human race cannot detect anything supernatural in the universe, then the best argument for the existence of God is only its negation - that "you can't prove God doesn't exist". Because you can't prove the non-existence of something is not logically followed by the statement "thus that 'something' is proven". It only puts the subject being not disproved into limbo - a limbo that says "we can think and say the words that describe it, but we have never observed it in any fashion". This is not an argument for God.
Also in the course of this debate, I urge you to count how many times your hear my opponent appeal to your emotion, to your ego. You will hear "don't you think?" and "it just stands to reason..." and "it's just common sense" - and similar constructions - more than once tonight. If you're like me, (and I'm blatantly appealing to your emotions and your intellects here) you are flattered when folks appeal to your predispositions, your emotions, your egos. But look for evidence - cold, hard, verifiable, unequivocal evidence. There will be none. Invoking things like "common sense" means nothing if, at its core, the sense that we're claiming to be common has no basis in fact. It's just opinion. Questions of existence aren't decided by opinion polls, they're decided by observation and measurement.
Now ... what would it take for me to believe in God? I once jokingly told a fellow blogger that my standards were low - just have her meet me at a restaurant that I'm thinking about, and at a time and date that I'm thinking about, and buy me the meal that I'm thinking about. If all this comes to pass, I'll even pick up the tip. It's that simple. It will not happen of course, but I hope this makes my point. If a super powerful being that people could communicate with and influence via the power of prayer cared one bit about the people of the world, she'd start making appearances so that the locals would know that it's not just nature that brought us here, but a real, verifiable cosmic force that is capable of finding its way around Little Italy in San Diego and ordering a meal for two. Simple.
Finally, before I get into the meat of my thesis, I want to stress again that you will not hear me attempt to prove, logically or by physical evidence, that God does *NOT* exist. That, I'm sure Dr. Craig will agree with me, is a fool's errand. Here's a trivial analogy: You may able to measure the water in a glass and come to a reasonable conclusion that all of the water in the glass is H2O and only H2O - that only real water exists in the glass - but if I assert that there is arsenic in that glass, the only way you can disprove it to an absolute certainty is to observe each molecule individually. Barring that, you can never be 100% sure. You may be 99.999999% sure, but getting that last millionth, or billionth, or gazillionth of a percent will take more time, effort and money than the question is worth.
The same difficulty prevails when considering a disproof of the existence of God. If I can't disprove the existence of a molecule of arsenic in a glass - I'm darned sure incapable of disproving God's existence. I just don't have the time or inclination to go through each atom and photon and neutrino in the universe, nor each and every one of them in combination as they move and rearrange throughout eternity. Getting to that last billionth or gazillionth of a percent certainty is astronomically more difficult than my simple glass of water. So I won't even start down that road - not during football season, anyway.
Let's have a brief look at why the most common arguments for the existence of God don't work.
Dr. Craig normally relies on a variation of the Ontological argument first proposed by St. Anselm, and refined by Alvin Plantinga. I understand this to be:
But we won't - second problem: If and when Dr. Craig argues that this proves god ... does it prove Yahweh as well? You won't hear him make the mental twists and turns to do this - case closed again.
Third problem - did anyone count the "ifs"? That's a whole lot of "ifs" there, isn't it? Four of them. We can summarize the problems with this argument in one sentence: literally "It is possible that a maximally great being exists - therefore, a maximally great being exists". We can see that this chain of conditional premises can be used to "prove" - in a scare-quotey kind of way - that anything that you wish to assert is the maximally great being proved - and thereby prove that anything you wish to assert is God. By this logic - I can argue that it's possible for the universe to consist entirely of white mocha frappacino with a dash of cinnamon. You get my point that this argument does nothing for the theist when we take it seriously.
The argument from first cause - the Cosmological Argument - states that something caused the Universe to exist, and this First Cause must be God.
There are some problems with that: 1) it assumes that the term "cause" can be meaningfully applied to the universe. We may assign cause to human beings and their actions and products because we really do cause trivial things to be built and destroyed, and we really do cause events to occur. But it is early, barely at the dawn of man's ability to make meaningful observations and interpretations of the universe. There might not be a "cause" of the universe... it may just exist. 2) If "cause" is relevant, then we presumably must assign it to something external to the thing being caused. That implies that the thing doing the causing has an existence of its own, which, following the same pattern of thought, requires a cause, and so on. That's called an infinite regress. You can never stop asking the question of what caused the next higher causative agent. As a wise lady once was reported to say "it's turtles all the way down".
The variant of this argument that Dr. Craig appears to prefer is called the Kalam Cosmological argument. It is more elaborate that the basic formulation we just described. It says:
[The preceding was an imaginary opening statement for an even more imaginary debate that I hallucinated, starring William Lane Craig as my opponent - but it could have been any apologist capable of making the common arguments that I preempt here. See? Imaginary friends *CAN* be fun!] Because I was trying to fashion this as a transcript of an opening argument (imaginary though it was), I didn't provide hyperlinks in the text like you'd usually expect in a blog post. Here are some relevant links to make up for that: The Cosmological Argument The Teleological Argument The Existence of God (lists lots of arguments for and against) And ... the two debates starring Dr. Craig that I'm most familiar with: Dr. Craig and Christopher Hitchens Dr. Craig and Sam Harris
I modifed this in April and May to correct some errors that I made ... somehow in my prior version I interleaved info on the Kalam COsmological and the Ontological argument. How could I have been so careless?
The question before us here tonight is "Is there a God?" This question has been debated by such legends as Plato and Aristotle, St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, Dr. William Lane Craig, and by such obscure laymen as yours truly.
Is there a God? The question itself evokes awe and wonder about the immensity of the universe - eternity and infinity, time, space, mass, energy and the way they appear and are arranged and behave. The question "Is there a God?" is almost invariably linked to, and preceded by life's most basic and deepest questions such as "Where did I come from?", "How did life arise?", "How did the universe come into existence?" and "Why is there something instead of nothing?".
Our intuitions - the almost-unconscious feelings and attitudes we have about things, tell us that there is something greater than we are. As an example, if we didn't know better, we might imagine that the cause of the rain was something not unlike ourselves - an animate force endowed with the ability to cause rain to fall. We know what and how we humans think and act (to an extent) so projecting characteristics that we ourselves have onto the invisible cause of the rain is as good a guess as any we can make in the absence of more information. We certainly do this as children, we certainly did this as a species early in our history, and we certainly do that even today.
Carrying the analogy a step further - when the rain floods the river until it overruns its banks and threatens our homes, we may seek to win favor from this animate rain-causing being by acting in a certain way that we think it might approve of, or offering it certain things that we think would please it, or bargaining with it. When the rain either falls - or subsides - in accordance with our wishes, we are filled with good feelings about the force behind the rain, and we sing its praises. When the rain - or lack or it - does not accord with our wishes and requirements, we may feel anger or fear, and seek to ameliorate these feelings with bargaining and offerings and sincere beseechments. So when these beseechments and offerings are coincident with a positive change in the weather, we say that the rain force has answered our prayers. When the weather fails to turn in our favor, we don't understand, but we can save face by saying that the rain force works in mysterious ways, and we re-double our prayers and offerings. Sooner or later, we either get rain, or we parch to death, after which our particular form of belief in the rain god passes away with us.
Taken to the extreme, this minor deity may accumulate other powers, merge with other minor deities and morph over time into God, almighty God, God the great and powerful. That's what Dr. Craig and I will argue tonight, he in the affirmative, I in the negative.
Defining God
Let me define God as I perceive it to be intended in this debate. When we say "God" tonight, I believe we are speaking of the monotheistic God "Yahweh" as described in the Hebrew Bible. This God is usually believed to have created Heaven and Earth, Adam and Eve, and is most commonly perceived to supervise and judge our lives and the world around us, and take action upon us and our surroundings both during our lives, and for eternity after we pass away. We can petition this God to receive benefits, and occasionally to smite our enemies. This conception of a deity is unimaginably powerful, this thing that can create an entire universe and interact with every thinking being on this tiny planet, then supervise us all for eternity after our physical lives are over. Unimaginably powerful indeed. And acts in mysterious ways.
Common arguments for God
Dr. Craig will argue that God exists. Dr. Craig will not present physical evidence of God, because, up until the very moment we walked into this building, there has never been any credible evidence that God exists. That we expect physical evidence which others can verify independently is a hallmark of an intelligent society that seeks to understand how the universe works. We want to know - to a reasonably high degree of certainty - that the things we can discern are explained as well as possible, while leaving it open to new and better explanations when new data, tools and techniques warrant. We even design experiments to falsify our hypotheses - to show that the data and models and methods that we propose as representing reality are instead false or unrepeatable - in order to prove to ourselves that our models reliably and repeatably explain things. So keep in mind that Dr. Craig will not present any of that.
Dr. Craig will argue some or all of the following: that God exists because 1) he is necessary for being; 2) the universe requires a cause, and that cause must be God; 3) the appearance of design in the universe indicates that there must be a designer, and that designer must be God; 4) the existence of human morals requires a higher authority to instill them in us, and that authority must be God. Dr. Craig's fifth common argument may be that the resurrection of Jesus as described in the New Testament is evidence of grace and power and love that are signs that God exists.
Finally, you may hear Dr. Craig tell us (and I will paraphrase here) "I believe in God because he personally revealed himself to me" - and that revelation is evidence that God exists. Although it is the least warranted, least supported by verifiable physical evidence and rational justification, it is the one argument that I am most sympathetic to. You see, I was once born-again. I once had what I would describe as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and I once - or twice - had what I interpreted as personal revelations that convinced me that God exists, and that he was speaking to me directly, not through an intermediary. This is powerful, powerful stuff. I no longer believe it - not a bit of it - but I'm very, very sympathetic to personal revelation because I've experienced it. So I stipulate that I am sympathetic to some arguments for the existence of God - but let me make it clear that I, in no way, accept any of them as demonstrations of, or evidence for God. I reject this God hypothesis completely, and in the course of this debate, I will show that the arguments for God that I've listed just now, are devoid of evidence, faulty in structure, and in no way present the slightest indication that anything supernatural does or could exist, let alone that ultimate supernatural conjecture we call God. They are just arrangements of words.
Tricks and traps
In the course of tonight's debate - Dr. Craig arguing that God exists and I arguing that God does not exist - I want to warn you of some of the tactics that will be employed in arguing for the resolution that God does exist. First, you will hear some assertions that are not agreed to.
For instance, you may hear that eternity - literally a universe with an infinite past and an infinite future, is logically impossible. Well, this is irrelevant. It makes no difference whether there is an infinite past or not. We are talking about whether something - God - exists. We are not arranging three and four-syllable words in order to impress our friends and exercise our lips. The only thing this assertion is good for is to set the stage for the argument from first cause - that the universe requires a cause, thus the cause is God, thereby proving that God exists (which incidentally omits how God could exist in the first place to perform this function). When you hear an argument against the existence of an eternal universe, you're just being softened up to accept a finite beginning, to which a hypothetical being - God - can be prepended as the cause. This is the only way that an argument from first cause can ever be made. Don't be misled. Arguing the existence of God ... a conjecture that has never been proven anywhere, and certainly the point of contention in this debate ... based on a premise so conditional as whether or not the universe has a beginning, does not make a worthy argument. It still ignores how God is necessary to the process. You might as well say "if, hypothetically, the universe has a finite beginning, then if, hypothetically, anything with a beginning has to have a cause, then if, hypothetically, the supernatural exists, then if, hypothetically God could exist, then if, hypothetically, God did exist, then if, hypothetically God could cause the universe to exist, then actually God did cause the universe to exist, therefore God exists." Did you notice how many times we have to interject that this is hypothetical? This type of reasoning is not something you'd ever consider worthwhile if you were trying to determine if the 200 foot high bridge in front of you is safe to cross - there are too many conditions to be met, most of which are clearly not certain, and may in fact be wildly improbable. To top it off, it's just another fine example of a circular argument - if he could exist and if he did exist and if he could create the universe and if he did create the universe then he exists. Huh?
If something exists, it can be detected. Rearranging words like we just did, on the other hand, doesn't help us detect anything. When my opponent rearranges words without a valid logical structure, without providing warrants for the intermediate inferences, without supplying adequate evidential support, it may simply confuse you or dissuade you from consciously recognizing that the conjecture being proposed - God - has no base of evidence or reasoning from which its existence can be affirmed.
The fact is, considering concepts such as eternity and infinity don't help you except to give you a metaphorical place to stand here and now. If, from this vantage point here and now, the human race cannot detect anything supernatural in the universe, then the best argument for the existence of God is only its negation - that "you can't prove God doesn't exist". Because you can't prove the non-existence of something is not logically followed by the statement "thus that 'something' is proven". It only puts the subject being not disproved into limbo - a limbo that says "we can think and say the words that describe it, but we have never observed it in any fashion". This is not an argument for God.
Also in the course of this debate, I urge you to count how many times your hear my opponent appeal to your emotion, to your ego. You will hear "don't you think?" and "it just stands to reason..." and "it's just common sense" - and similar constructions - more than once tonight. If you're like me, (and I'm blatantly appealing to your emotions and your intellects here) you are flattered when folks appeal to your predispositions, your emotions, your egos. But look for evidence - cold, hard, verifiable, unequivocal evidence. There will be none. Invoking things like "common sense" means nothing if, at its core, the sense that we're claiming to be common has no basis in fact. It's just opinion. Questions of existence aren't decided by opinion polls, they're decided by observation and measurement.
Interlude - my potential for belief in God
Now ... what would it take for me to believe in God? I once jokingly told a fellow blogger that my standards were low - just have her meet me at a restaurant that I'm thinking about, and at a time and date that I'm thinking about, and buy me the meal that I'm thinking about. If all this comes to pass, I'll even pick up the tip. It's that simple. It will not happen of course, but I hope this makes my point. If a super powerful being that people could communicate with and influence via the power of prayer cared one bit about the people of the world, she'd start making appearances so that the locals would know that it's not just nature that brought us here, but a real, verifiable cosmic force that is capable of finding its way around Little Italy in San Diego and ordering a meal for two. Simple.
Introducing my arguments
Finally, before I get into the meat of my thesis, I want to stress again that you will not hear me attempt to prove, logically or by physical evidence, that God does *NOT* exist. That, I'm sure Dr. Craig will agree with me, is a fool's errand. Here's a trivial analogy: You may able to measure the water in a glass and come to a reasonable conclusion that all of the water in the glass is H2O and only H2O - that only real water exists in the glass - but if I assert that there is arsenic in that glass, the only way you can disprove it to an absolute certainty is to observe each molecule individually. Barring that, you can never be 100% sure. You may be 99.999999% sure, but getting that last millionth, or billionth, or gazillionth of a percent will take more time, effort and money than the question is worth.
The same difficulty prevails when considering a disproof of the existence of God. If I can't disprove the existence of a molecule of arsenic in a glass - I'm darned sure incapable of disproving God's existence. I just don't have the time or inclination to go through each atom and photon and neutrino in the universe, nor each and every one of them in combination as they move and rearrange throughout eternity. Getting to that last billionth or gazillionth of a percent certainty is astronomically more difficult than my simple glass of water. So I won't even start down that road - not during football season, anyway.
Why the expected Arguments for God don't work
Let's have a brief look at why the most common arguments for the existence of God don't work.
The ontological argument
Ontological arguments take many forms, but tend to be marked by a focus on categories of being - such that extending the idea of higher powers to its "ultimate" leads you to arrive at the concept of God.Dr. Craig normally relies on a variation of the Ontological argument first proposed by St. Anselm, and refined by Alvin Plantinga. I understand this to be:
1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.First problem - none of that indicates there's a god required anywhere - but we are then told that the maximally great be is god. It's not necessary that a god is the maximally great being that the argument concludes - so we could stop there.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
But we won't - second problem: If and when Dr. Craig argues that this proves god ... does it prove Yahweh as well? You won't hear him make the mental twists and turns to do this - case closed again.
Third problem - did anyone count the "ifs"? That's a whole lot of "ifs" there, isn't it? Four of them. We can summarize the problems with this argument in one sentence: literally "It is possible that a maximally great being exists - therefore, a maximally great being exists". We can see that this chain of conditional premises can be used to "prove" - in a scare-quotey kind of way - that anything that you wish to assert is the maximally great being proved - and thereby prove that anything you wish to assert is God. By this logic - I can argue that it's possible for the universe to consist entirely of white mocha frappacino with a dash of cinnamon. You get my point that this argument does nothing for the theist when we take it seriously.
The argument from first cause
The argument from first cause - the Cosmological Argument - states that something caused the Universe to exist, and this First Cause must be God.
There are some problems with that: 1) it assumes that the term "cause" can be meaningfully applied to the universe. We may assign cause to human beings and their actions and products because we really do cause trivial things to be built and destroyed, and we really do cause events to occur. But it is early, barely at the dawn of man's ability to make meaningful observations and interpretations of the universe. There might not be a "cause" of the universe... it may just exist. 2) If "cause" is relevant, then we presumably must assign it to something external to the thing being caused. That implies that the thing doing the causing has an existence of its own, which, following the same pattern of thought, requires a cause, and so on. That's called an infinite regress. You can never stop asking the question of what caused the next higher causative agent. As a wise lady once was reported to say "it's turtles all the way down".
The variant of this argument that Dr. Craig appears to prefer is called the Kalam Cosmological argument. It is more elaborate that the basic formulation we just described. It says:
Dr. Craig - when he chooses to make this argument - will throw lots of sciency sounding phrases around in an attempt to make it sound plausible, but here's all you need to know. Premise 4 - that "if the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful" - is not concluded. There is, just as with the ontological argument before it, no evidence and no warrant that justifies making the leap from (it has a cause" to "the cause was some all-powerful magical being". It could be, as before, that white mocha frappacino is working its mysterious wonders again here, as well.
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
- If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.
- Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.
The argument from design
The argument from design - known as the teleological argument, mainly because philosophers love big words - asserts that the existence of order and direction in nature - its apparent design - is attributable to some kind of designer, thereby essentially proving the existence of God. You're guaranteed to hear proponents of this - Dr. Lane of course - use the words design and designer as if the apparently ordered arrangement that we observe is the product of a design, thus implying a designer. In fact, what we perceive as order is just our human propensity to mentally arrange things in meaningful and memorable patterns. The "design" as it were - is just the result of nature. There is no active moving around of parts in this universe that are not just action and reaction cascading down from what we perceive as the Big Bang. The stars are just accumulations of gas caused by gravity, and lit up by fusion when the gravitational forces sufficiently compress the hydrogen and helium in the star. Planets, asteroids and comets are all subsequent by-products of heavier elements blown off by early supernovae, and coalesced around stars, again via the force of gravity. Up until this very moment, there has never been any supernatural force or entity required for anything that we've ever observed.The argument from morality
The argument from morality - that the existence of morals could only be instilled in humanity by a divine presence - is an attractive but flawed explanation for why we feel a sense of right and wrong. Man is a social animal. Social animals develop behaviors that nurture one's offspring, relatives, and social group, and protect against those not in those groups. Some of the things that humans and other higher primates do, are wholly expected - altruism for instance. The fact that we feel repugnance at senseless murder within the social group, but extol it as a warrior's bravery when committed against out-group members, is just a further indication of how such behaviors evolve to perpetuate the social group, possibly to the detriment of those outside.The argument from miracles (Jesus' resurrection)
The Resurrection of Jesus is also used as evidence that God exists. It is the argument from miracles. The problem with miracles is that they can be claimed, but you never have direct evidence of them. Find a single example of an occurrence in human history that couldn't be explained by natural forces, and you'd have a shocking headline. The resurrection of Jesus is not one of those cases. It is not independently attested to beyond the Bible ... the authors of the New Testament themselves were unclear if Jesus was resurrected by God to fulfill a divine purpose, as later authors claimed, or simply was no longer in the tomb, as the author of Mark reports. Since Mark is the first Gospel to be written, and upon whom both Matthew and Luke base most of their material, it is more plausible to say that the resurrection story was added later. Let's be clear, if Jesus was truly dead, and was truly raised from the dead after three days, and we could not explain it in natural terms, then it would be a miracle. But we can't ever make that claim, because there's no way of verifying that. The author of Mark doesn't make that claim. We are left to conjure up scenarios of what might have happened: possibly he never truly died and he escaped before three days was up; possibly he died and his body was stolen, possibly he died but his body was hidden and the tomb was presented as misdirection; possibly people were just mistaken about what happened; or more simply the story was just added long after his passing to impress on the faithful the importance of Jesus' entire ministry. This probably sounds if I'm being dismissive or disrespectful of the New Testament or of the faithful, but simpler conjectures are more likely, given the absence of any physical evidence.The meat of my thesis
Finally - we get to the meat of my argument that God does not exist. Remember that I am not attempting to prove his non-existence, because we've already shown that any endeavor to prove the non-existence of something becomes astronomically more difficult as the subject increases in complexity. If, by definition, God is perceived of as that maximally great being that we mentioned before, then examining every particle in every atom everywhere in the universe, and every bit of energy everywhere in the universe, is laughable. My argument against the existence of God is simple: First, where is she? Tens of billions of humans have walked the earth since man first arrived on the scene. We might make a broad assumption that they've each lived an average of ten thousand days or so - less than thirty years each up until recently. Not once in history has a single human made a single credible claim of a God sighting that could verify her existence. The staggering silence of this hypothetical being speaks more to her non-existence than all of the preaching from all of the pulpits and street corners in all of history. One hundred trillion person-days, and nary a peep. Second, when is attempting to explain a complicated and remote concept such as the creation of the universe or the emergence of life, ever ... EVER ... aided by presupposing something astronomically more complex as an essential predecessor, as God is presumed to be? It defies logic and physics to postulate this. It is unnecessary, and it leads to an infinite regress. This astronomically more complex being would then require an explanation as to what brought IT into existence. And what brought THAT into existence? And so on. We don't now what brought the universe into existence, but laid bare, we are either faced with an infinite regress that presupposes an infinite number of succeedingly greater worlds that require beings to cause them, or we just admit our ignorance and continue to look deeper into this mystery with the goal of broadening our understanding. It most certainly isn't turtles all the way down.Summation
In summary:- imagining that a being as great as God is required to bring the universe into existence ignores that the arguments for it don't work;
- we don't need external forces to explain what we take to be design;
- the existence of what we consider morals are just good social sense that tend to help us propagate our kin;
- the resurrection of Jesus, or any purported miracle, has yet to be independently reported on, not to mention verified;
- and the idea that God revealed himself to you personally has no bearing on how the world is, it just tells you how you respond to internal sensations.
[The preceding was an imaginary opening statement for an even more imaginary debate that I hallucinated, starring William Lane Craig as my opponent - but it could have been any apologist capable of making the common arguments that I preempt here. See? Imaginary friends *CAN* be fun!] Because I was trying to fashion this as a transcript of an opening argument (imaginary though it was), I didn't provide hyperlinks in the text like you'd usually expect in a blog post. Here are some relevant links to make up for that: The Cosmological Argument The Teleological Argument The Existence of God (lists lots of arguments for and against) And ... the two debates starring Dr. Craig that I'm most familiar with: Dr. Craig and Christopher Hitchens Dr. Craig and Sam Harris
I modifed this in April and May to correct some errors that I made ... somehow in my prior version I interleaved info on the Kalam COsmological and the Ontological argument. How could I have been so careless?
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