Who created God? (creation.com)

[Vera]

(21-10-2012 03:54 AM)Erxomai Wrote:  

(20-10-2012 12:49 PM)Vera Wrote:  What I want to know is which country in Europe has buses on which it's printed "There's probably no God". I'd move there in a heartbeat. You see, I need an excuse for my wickedness, preferably - one printed on public transport vehicles...

No need to go to Europe where people smell funny and dump their chamber pots in the streets. I saw this on a bus in Seattle recently and I'm quite fine being one of the 1 in 4 crowd.

No need to go Europe indeed... seeing as I'm already t/here.

However... oh damn, the chamber pot's starting to smell, have to go dump it in the street... BRB!

[Vosur]

(21-10-2012 04:49 AM)Julius Wrote:  Vosur,

This was a good posy. Thanks for the link.

The article "Who Created God?", by Don Batten is typical of the convoluted arguments presented from about every Christian Apologist I have ever seen. Batten begins by posting a straw-man atheist argument of "If God was the beginning who began God?” which really isn't an argument at all but a simple way of showing the absurdity of the Christian Viewpoint of our being able to know an absolute beginning. Like a squid spurting ink into the water, Batten starts out by obscuring the issue - and then he squirts even more ink.

Batten then goes on to use his scientific knowledge to further obscure the issue by vomiting up his child-like views of thermodynamics (big scientific and philosophical words impress xtians who just are insistent to believe).

Then, he discusses the Principle of Causality and missuses it to describe a physical phenomenon (the beginning of our universe) to which any principle of causality we may know of might not apply...and so on.

Them...Batten vomits this LuLu of a combination of convoluted Logic and Science where he tries to apply the rules of Logic and Science which govern our Universe - to potential Universes that are unknown....and whose workings (i.e., Logic and Science) may be unknowable. In short, he's used an unproven and unjustified premise to jump right to concluding the Supernatural exist!

[undefined=undefined]The cause of the universe must have been non-material because if the cause was material / natural, it would be subject to the same laws of decay as the universe. That means it would have to have had a beginning itself and you have the same problem as cycles of births and deaths of universes. So the cause of the universe’s beginning must have been super-natural, i.e. non-material or spirit—a cause outside of space-matter-time. Such a cause would not be subject to the law of decay and so would not have a beginning. That is, the cause had to be eternal spirit.
[/undefined]

And then he keeps going on...and on...and on....like a squid whose capacity to spurt ink is infinite.

For you, or me, or anyone here - or anyone I could think of - to refute this argument would take an effort 10x greater than what was needed to make the argument, for it is a lot easier and faster to take a dump and smear it on the wall than it is to clean it up. And this is technique that guys like Duane Gish and William Lane Craig and other apologists use in debates with Atheists.

Unfortunately, when the Apologists start spurting ink, the Atheists tend to want to clean up the mess - almost to a man (or woman) - and this is the big mistake that atheists make. For these arguments are designed such that they can not be cleaned up within the time alloted to rebuttal. Seriously - William Lane Craig uses the same ole' arguments every time he debates and these arguments - word for word - are published on the net. Yet...the Atheists debator - even when they know the exact argument before hand - just never have the time to clean up the mess. And...it's a big mistake they all make.

Instead, I would ignore the arguments completely for I recognize them as nothing but a screen of ink. I would ficus on the Supernatural or God and demand irrefutable scientific proof like - SHOW ME A MIRACLE...NOW! If this guy proclaims to know the Supernatural exist, then insist he show you a resurection, or someone walking on water, or an amputee's limb grown back, or the earth openiong up on command, or bread falling from the skies - or anything that is irrefutably "Super Natural" and just busts the laws of Causality, Physics, Chemistry and Biology as we know them. And I'd keep targeting this argument at the apologist with the ferocity and focus of a psychotic wolverine.

If these apologist can't show irrefutable evidence of the Supernatural - then all thier talk is just hot air.

If WLC were to challenge me to a debate about god, I would refuse to participate. Why? Because he is intellectually dishonest right off the bat. In one of the Q&A on his website reasonablefaith.org and in his book with the same title, Craig states that no amount of evidence and no argument can convince him that the resurrection didn't happen and that god doesn't exist, because he has what he calls, the "witness of the Holy Spirit". One should wonder why he had a debate with Christopher Hitchens about whether or not god exists and a debate with the New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman about whether or not the resurrection happened if it is impossible to change his point of view in the first place.

That being said, I noticed the problem with refuting all these arguments in the short time available in these 'public debates' as well. For example, in a debate with Dinesh D'Souza, Christopher Hitchens was supposed to explain several flaws in the theory of Evolution and the science of cosmology in his 5 minute rebuttal. It is borderline insane to think that anyone would be able to pull that off, yet D'Souza accused him of having ignored said flaws. Overall I enjoy watching these debates. I find it funny that a teenager who still hasn't finished school has a better grasp of logic than WLC and Dinesh D'Souza, both of whom have a PhD. You should read D'Souza's "Village with Bill" analogy. I've posted a blog entry refuting it in the Philosophy section.

[ClydeLee]

(20-10-2012 05:00 PM)Vosur Wrote:  I completely forgot Carl Sagan's take on this. A brilliant response.

The start of that video is so ironic it makes it even better!

Sagan was defiantly a master of this debate.

[Bucky Ball]

(21-10-2012 05:19 AM)Vosur Wrote:  If WLC were to challenge me to a debate about god, I would refuse to participate. Why? Because he is intellectually dishonest right off the bat. In one of the Q&A on his website reasonablefaith.org and in his book with the same title, Craig states that no amount of evidence and no argument can convince him that the resurrection didn't happen and that god doesn't exist, because he has what he calls, the "witness of the Holy Spirit". One should wonder why he had a debate with Christopher Hitchens about whether or not god exists and a debate with the New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman about whether or not the resurrection happened if it is impossible to change his point of view in the first place.

I think it would be fun to debate WLC. I'd wear big red suspenders, just to make fun of him. Then, after refuting his arguments, which is pretty easy, I'd lay into his "bad faith". I'd throw the statement you point out in his face, and ask him why he uses Logic at all, if in the end he dismisses it, and Special Pleads his god out of the argument. Then I'd put up his Bart's Blunder as another example of his Sophistry, and bad faith, and ask him how much his conferences pay him. No one really get's under his skin. I think it would be easy, especially if a much younger person were to make a fool of him. I would make sure it were taped and that there was no legal impediment to putting it on YouTube. He recently did a talk in Scotland which is SO full of holes, it's laughable. He thinks he's an expert on Quantum Physics, along with his nonsense. He tried to say that Relativity isn't really what Einstein says it was. (!) All of his arguments require absolute linear time, (as does Kalam). Also his First Cause, is just Proximate Cause. An omnipotent god could have created universe makers. His arguments for the resurrection are easily shot down, which is his "ace in the hole". He really only has a beginners grasp of scripture. But I would insist on more than an hour. Some of the concepts are require some time to explain, especially why the resurrection is all BS. I should make a YouTube about that. Like I have nothing else to do.

[Humakt]

I got as far as this:

"Some have proposed one universe giving birth to another, but again, there cannot be an infinite series of such births and deaths, as each cycle must have less energy available than the last and if this had been happening for eternity, the death of everything would have already happened."

The statement "as each cycle must have less energy available than the last" seems to me to fly in the face of nature of energy that brings the authors veracity or knowledge into question. None the less an interesting read, thx for posting.

[houseofcantor]

Quote:So the cause of the universe’s beginning must have been super-natural, i.e. non-material or spirit—a cause outside of space-matter-time. Such a cause would not be subject to the law of decay and so would not have a beginning.

OK, local void a la Penrose and yours truly...

Quote:That is, the cause had to be eternal spirit.

...a what, now?