Questions for the moral atheist

Originally posted by FreakyKBH

I think one would be hard-pressed to find a theist who would claim that everything (life, the universe) can be explained on the sole basis of the laws of physics and chemistry.

i think you'll find that it's the religious folk who claim to have all the answers... 'god did it'. atheists and scientific minds alike have a certain phrase that keeps popping up... it's, 'i/we don't know'.

Originally posted by trev33
i think you'll find that it's the religious folk who claim to have all the answers... 'god did it'. atheists and scientific minds alike have a certain phrase that keeps popping up... it's, 'i/we don't know'.

Still, the atheist will insist, despite not knowing exactly how the universe began to exist, that it must be a naturalistic explanation. That much atheists do know.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Still, the atheist will insist, despite not knowing exactly how the universe began to exist, that it must be a naturalistic explanation. That much atheists do know.

well duh.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
In the world view of the theist, that uncaused cause is, of course, God, an ultimate being of inscrutable power and glory, One who behaves consistently (faithfully) from start to finish... and beyond.

Again, an absolute, bald-faced cop-out.

"And it all comes down to God." QED

Sorry, that does not fly. We reduce the material world down to its nethermost levels and see all behaving in accordance with physical law, and then, then, when we cannot explain any further the mechanisms of the next layer down, well then physical laws must give way to a God. That does not stop the "infinite regress" problem, because once again we have to explain whence God came from. God affords a kind of carte blanche license to dispose of any further inquiry. He's the "fill-in-the-blank" that plugs the gaps and short-circuits reasoned scientific experimentation.

That is what is rotten to the core about theism, and more specifically what's rotten about the theist's arguments against atheism. If God is allowed to just "be" without any obligation to explain his origins, then an impersonal set of physical principles must be allowed the same luxury! And an infinitely wise Intelligence just "existing" at the so-called "beginning of time" is far and away less plausible than a simple set of physical principles which, given vast tracts of time and space, eventually give rise to intelligent beings such as humans through purely stochastic processes helped along by selective mechanisms that favor localized order.

But the very idea of a "beginning of time" is itself specious. The surface of the Earth is finite yet unbounded. A Mobius surface goes on forever yet loops back on itself. The concept of time, as a dimension of reality, is not actually of necessity linear. In fact there is nothing in the canon of physics that insists that there can be only one timeline and only one universe. I've said as much before in the past, and I'll just toss out Occam's Razor and the Anthropic Principle as keywords (my own time is limited).

I categorically reject the old playbook of argumentation that theists expect everyone to adhere to when it comes to talking about beginnings and the nature of reality. God must have a cause, or if he doesn't have to have a cause, then atheists are free to claim that there need not be any primordial "first cause" for physical reality and our own material universe. Moreover, I reject the notion that time must follow a straight line. It does not. Relativity theory is clear on this: it bends as does space, and the spacetime continuum of the universe is closed on itself. Thus, the idea there there must be a so-called "beginning" to reality can be soundly rejected.

The theist vehemently insists that scientists come up with an explanation to the universe that is in accordance with the current workings and laws of the universe. That's just bloody blinkered. The laws of the universe are not necessarily static, nor can we claim to know all the laws of even the present-day universe. Yet theists are allowed to cast the whole body of known science to the four winds of creation and say some hyperdimensional deity dwelling (somehow) "outside of time" just conjured Everything with a single Word. Again, a double-standard, because there's no evidence that the current workings of the universe are being animated by a living intelligence. Every time mankind thinks he's found something with magical properties, further investigation reveals that it actually functions in accordance with natural laws.

There can be no further progress until both camps get to play by the same rules and the theists renounce their intellectually slovenly crutches and biased double-standards of logic and argumentation.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Still, the atheist will insist, despite not knowing exactly how the universe began to exist, that it must be a naturalistic explanation. That much atheists do know.

And I'll just add that just because the mechanism governing the beginnings of this particular universe cannot yet be fully explained scientifically, that is no reason to lose our heads, throw our slider rules and compasses into the air, and exclaim "It must be God!"

Sure, believe in God if you must, but don't use him as a crutch to explain away anything you don't understand.*



*I'm not referring to you in particular, of course.

I would just like to point out to anyone interested that the heart and soul of the FreakyKBH position for why there must be a God is precisely that God serves as the Primordial Cause that puts to bed the problem of "infinite regress". If that lofty axiom is not contested -- and it is highly contestable -- then his position will be unassailable.

And actually, if you want to really split hairs, the FreakyKBH god is really a mere corollary to an even more fundamental axiom that can be stated thus:

There exists a unique time continuum (namely ours) that must be everywhere linear, and so there must be a "beginning" to reality.

This is actually at variance with known science, specifically quantum physics and relativity theory, as well as some interesting modern theoretical work which suggests the existence of a so-called multiverse. Some of this theoretical work may actually be verifiable experimentally in the not-too-distant future.

Originally posted by trev33
well duh.

I'm just sayin'—atheists think they have the answers, too.

Originally posted by Soothfast
I would just like to point out to anyone interested that the heart and soul of the FreakyKBH position for why there must be a God is precisely that God serves as the Primordial Cause that puts to bed the problem of "infinite regress". If that lofty axiom is not contested -- and it is highly contestable -- then his position will be unassailable.

...[text shortened]... is theoretical work may actually be verifiable experimentally in the not-too-distant future.

That's obviously a strawman argument. Why don't we discuss the actual cosmological argument?

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Who, besides the atheist, claims that all is explained by functions of the creation--- rather than giving credit where it is due, so to speak? The atheist rejection of the need for God for morality is intertwined with his assertion that creation itself can also be explained without relying on God.

I think one would be hard-pressed to find a theist who ...[text shortened]... and chemistry, without at some point running out of equations and left with the indivisible One.

And then when they attack the God of the Bible it is because of his supposide lack of morality in terms of condoning such things as mass floods and wars etc

Originally posted by epiphinehas
I'm just sayin'—atheists think they have the answers, too.

The honest ones do not. They understand they don't know, for example, the precise mechanism of this universe's origins, but do not let that cause them to give up on scientific inquiry and bow to a god. All there is is the known and the unknown, and since the known admits no god, there is no reason to suppose, a priori, that the unknown harbors a god.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
That's obviously a strawman argument. Why don't we discuss the actual cosmological argument?

No it is not a strawman argument. I have ascribed no false positions or motivations to KBH -- which is the definition of a strawman, by the way. KBH has said already that atheism is "rotten to the core". Some of his "greatest hits":

I hold that, as a belief system, atheism is illogical and rotten to the core and, further, that it falls in on itself every single time.

Our hardwired instinct to follow the infinite regress logically demands an uncaused cause. In your suggestion, the creation is that uncaused cause, a creator-less creation. To support such a view, one necessarily manufactures speculative and specious conjectures based on... well, the need for such stupidity as universal burping mechanisms, for instance.

So here in the second quote we see: the atheist is not allowed to suggest that natural reality is "uncaused" and has no "beginning". Enter: the double standard.

Somehow, despite the advances in observation which have consistently, repeatedly shown a clock-like precision of predictable function, we are to throw such a pattern out the window and embrace a fantasy which posits that the universe (in its present state) behaved in a manner wholly inconsistent with everything else that it currently does.

On display in the above quote is an objection to the idea that physical laws may have been quite different at the very beginnings of the universe (an objection that is at variance with the Standard Model of modern physics, by the way). Note the use of the word "behaved" -- past tense, so we're definitely talking about the state of the universe in the distant past, presumably back to the Big Bang.

In the world view of the theist, that uncaused cause is, of course, God, an ultimate being of inscrutable power and glory, One who behaves consistently (faithfully) from start to finish... and beyond.

"And then there is God. QED." This quote exhibits the core of the rubbish heap. The theist -- KBH -- can invoke a living, intelligent "God" as an uncaused cause, and grants the atheist no quarter to hypothesize that perhaps physics and its natural laws may be the uncaused cause that turns the same trick of creating creation. Moreover there is the implicit suggestion that time must be linear and so creation must conform to our everyday notions of having a "beginning". I say that's sheer speculation with nothing to back it up. Moreover it is at variance with widely accepted theories of cosmology.

So where is the strawman, Epiphinehas? Show me the strawman.

Originally posted by Soothfast
The honest ones do not. They understand they don't know, for example, the precise mechanism of this universe's origins, but do not let that cause them to give up on scientific inquiry and bow to a god. All there is is the known and the unknown, and since the known admits no god, there is no reason to suppose, a priori, that the unknown harbors a god.

What about the known universe admits no God? As far as I know, every version of the cosmological argument, as far back as Aquinas even, is consonant with modern science. On the contrary, there is good reason to think, given what we do know, that God exists.

Originally posted by Soothfast
No it is not a strawman argument. I have ascribed no false positions or motivations to KBH -- which is the definition of a strawman, by the way. KBH has said already that atheism is "rotten to the core". Some of his "greatest hits":

[quote]I hold that, as a belief system, atheism is illogical and rotten to the core and, further, that it falls in on i ...[text shortened]... of cosmology.

So where is the strawman, Epiphinehas? Show me the strawman.

So where is the strawman, Epiphinehas? Show me the strawman.

I don't have any interest in what you've discussed with Freaky. What is apparent, however, is the argument you presented above Reveal Hidden Content is not the cosmological argument for God's existence.

...physical laws may have been quite different at the very beginnings of the universe (an objection that is at variance with the Standard Model of modern physics, by the way).

I don't know of any cosmologists who ascribe to the view that the physical laws were different at the beginning of the universe. Do you have sources for this?

...perhaps physics and its natural laws may be the uncaused cause that turns the same trick of creating creation.

Obviously, you'd need to account for the existence of physical laws.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
On the contrary, there is good reason to think, given what we do know, that God exists.

Since I don't agree with this, there must be a flaw in your design. I could counter with: "There is good reason to think, given what we do know, that God does not exist." And we're clearly not going to resolve the matter tonight or any other night. I'm on the atheist side of the issue, but my main energies tonight are devoted to the oft overlooked double-standard that is in play in these kinds of debates. Whatever device the theist is allowed to employ, the atheist should also have access to.