A good argument that atheists use, and one that fumbles me

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clem456 said:
So you believe in God, but cannot prove or disprove there is a God. Why do you believe in God then? It seems God has already spoken to you. Right?
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spoken? no.
i believe there is a god out there because i cant imagine how dna could have formed without some sort of intelligent guidance. and also because i hope there is more to life after death.
 
Poseidon said:
:doh2:
No, no, no , no, NO!

The universe is a closed system, and entropy is increasing in it. The earth, however, where evolution is taking pace, is not a closed system. Both energy and matter can enter and exit it, and do so every day.

It is the energy coming into our (open) system that allows evolution and increasing order and complexity to happen. Evolution is fueled by the sun. I understand that you may have other issued with evolution, but entropy is clearly and unequivocally not in contradiction with it.
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Ahh - the earth is an open system argument. :hmmm:

The laws of thermodynamics apply to open systems. To get to living systems directed energy in the form of information, design and intelligence.is needed.

“As long as the laws of thermodynamics are operative, not even one biopolymer will form spontaneously without a pre-exisitng machine.”

“A machine is a device for capturing energy from its surroundings such that it will be able to constrain such energy to do work”. AC McIntosh

Look to the ATP synthase motor. Life needs intelligence, energy and machines.
 
I can’t take time to read all 44 posts on this thread, so I’ll reply to the original post one point at a time.
Hi, I’m new here, and I thought that this was an interesting topic, as it has been on my mind lately.
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I’m undecided in my faith, and so far many arguments have made me lean toward one religion, but then a counterargument is made and I just keep getting myself confused.
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The atheists have an easy job. They simply make an assertion, an unsubstantiated claim, without proving their assertions. This puts you in the position of disproving their assertion and proving the opposite, which is very difficult to do, and so you wonder if they’re right. This is not fair.
But my curiosity and young age have brought me to this forum. The argument at hand is one that is used to disprove theology and used to describe creation in the atheist’s eye. The Big Bang Theory is one example of this, and on paper it sounds very believeable.
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The Big Bang did happen. And maybe before the Big Bang there was something. And maybe something else before that. And so on. But we can’t go back to infinity. There cannot be an infinite past. Every event happened a finite time ago. And so, there had to be a beginning. The universe started. How did it start? Nothing in the natural order of things could have started the universe before there was anything at all.
We have no choice but to say the universe was started by something outside the natural order of things, and this we call God. ( Now some atheist will jump in and talk about “chance” or “accident” or “quantum effect” without explaining how there can be “chance” or “accident” or “quantum effect” if there is absolutely nothing. :mad: )
Atheists point out what are interpreted as “errors” in the Bible, and use these as a defense in their lack of faith.
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The Bible is not a history or science book. It is not to be taken literally word for word. It is a poetic work intended to bring out sublime points. When the atheists object that science proves the world is billions of years old, not only six thousand, and all their other stupid points, they are being ridiculous. Pay no attention. There can be no contradiction between science and religion because God created both.
But what makes me scratch my head is that what science teaches us is that everything comes down do coincidence after coincidence after another, all leading to humanity and existence itself. But this seems just too fishy to me, and I’d like to know what counter there is to this argument that just seems flawed?
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Thanks, everybody.
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No doubt, higher life on Earth including ours is possible only because of a long list of lucky situations. For example:
  1. The average temperature is perfect, safely in between the freezing and boiling points of water. This is rare among the planets.
  2. The atmosphere has enough oxygen to supply energetic higher life such as ourselves but not too much which would be toxic to us.
  3. Unlike most stars, our sun is a very stable star. It’s energy/heat output varies by only a tiny amount barely measurable. If the sun varied more in its output, higher life would be impossible.
  4. We have a very large moon orbiting close to us. This prevents the Earth from flipping over Pole to Pole every hundred thousand years or so in an interesting physics phenonemon called “precession”. ( I think the planet Uranus is currently inclined with its Poles on the plane of its orbit. ) Without the moon Earth would flip over now and then making higher life impossible. The huge swings in climates would wipe out higher life faster than it could evolve.
  5. We have volcano and tectonic plate activity which keeps recycling out carbon every four hundred million years or so. Without it, carbon would be forever locked up in the shells of sheelfish and other things, and we wouldn’t be here.
  6. Out gravity field is perfect. Heavier, and we would have to crawl. Lighter, and we couldn’t move around fast. ( because of inertia, our mass is constant regardless of gravity. Never mind. )
There are many other “lucky” situations like that.
So what? 🤷
First of all, there are at least a billion galaxies each with two hundred billion stars. With all those chances, it was inevitable that at least one planet would have all the lucky coincidences needed to support higher life.
Second, God could have rigged the game, loaded the dice, stacked the deck, marked the cards, “cheated” :D, to make Earth the perfect environment for us. Nobody was around to see him “cheat”. 😉
 
empther said:
They simply make an assertion, an unsubstantiated claim, without proving their assertions. This puts you in the position of disproving their assertion and proving the opposite, which is very difficult to do, and so you wonder if they’re right.
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👍
 
Observe how ThinkingSapien edits my post to change the meaning.

This is typical of the atheists. Truth means nothing to them. It’s deceive, deceive, deceive.
 
empther said:
Observe how ThinkingSapien edits my post to change the meaning.

This is typical of the atheists. Truth means nothing to them. It’s deceive, deceive, deceive.
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That is how relativists and atheists try to convert people.
 
empther said:
Observe how ThinkingSapien edits my post to change the meaning.

This is typical of the atheists. Truth means nothing to them. It’s deceive, deceive, deceive.
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Don’t the forum rules call for charity to those of other beliefs? I’m sure you hate it when atheists make negative generalizations about those who believe in god, so wouldn’t it be better to avoid making such generalizations yourself?
 
empther said:
Observe how ThinkingSapien edits my post to change the meaning.
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Sorry to hear that you think that is what I was trying to do. My intent was to bring attention to a section of your post. As it certainly is something to which I can say I’ve observed on many fronts. The meaning of the post hasn’t changed but when the group to which it is applied is not identified then (in my opinion) the general applicability of it becomes more clear.
 
Don’t the forum rules call for charity to those of other beliefs? I’m sure you hate it when atheists make negative generalizations about those who believe in god, so wouldn’t it be better to avoid making such generalizations yourself?
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No. It’s always better to point out the truth.
 
Logical arguments for and against theism are fallacious (saying this from the philosophical standpoint) in that both assume their position is true and both expect the opposing party to prove their argument.

My response to arguments against theism is that there is more than one aspect to reality: we have the reality we can test scientifically, the reality we experience subjectively, and there is the reality that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit working in our lives. All realities influence each other - there is a long line of people who view the ability to explore the natural world as a part of revering Creation, there are the those who have “mystical” (sorry, can’t think of a better word) experiences with the Creator, etc.

Some do not believe there is a subjective reality or that a subjective reality is valid. I suppose it depends on how you define reality. For my purposes, I find reality to be a mix of what I know is true (e.g. the earth is round) and what I experience.

As far as I’m concerned, my subjective reality is important to me and has truth, even though I am fallible. I am happy to share my thoughts, but I have nothing to prove in regards to theism and I do not expect someone who does not share my stance on theism to prove anything to me. Knowing I am fallible, I’m sure I’m wrong on a lot of things.

At the end of the day, God is not something that can be measured in the same way we can measure the depths of the ocean, because God is of a different world. And I’m okay with that. What I typically suggest to people is to stay open and ask questions.
 
SophiaK said:
Logical arguments for and against theism are fallacious (saying this from the philosophical standpoint) in that both assume their position is true and both expect the opposing party to prove their argument…
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Nice presentation of your thoughts! And welcome to the forums! 🙂
 
empther said:
I can’t take time to read all 44 posts on this thread, so I’ll reply to the original post one point at a time.

The atheists have an easy job. They simply make an assertion, an unsubstantiated claim, without proving their assertions. This puts you in the position of disproving their assertion and proving the opposite, which is very difficult to do, and so you wonder if they’re right. This is not fair.

The Big Bang did happen. And maybe before the Big Bang there was something. And maybe something else before that. And so on. But we can’t go back to infinity. There cannot be an infinite past. Every event happened a finite time ago. And so, there had to be a beginning. The universe started. How did it start? Nothing in the natural order of things could have started the universe before there was anything at all.
We have no choice but to say the universe was started by something outside the natural order of things, and this we call God. ( Now some atheist will jump in and talk about “chance” or “accident” or “quantum effect” without explaining how there can be “chance” or “accident” or “quantum effect” if there is absolutely nothing. :mad: )

The Bible is not a history or science book. It is not to be taken literally word for word. It is a poetic work intended to bring out sublime points. When the atheists object that science proves the world is billions of years old, not only six thousand, and all their other stupid points, they are being ridiculous. Pay no attention. There can be no contradiction between science and religion because God created both.

No doubt, higher life on Earth including ours is possible only because of a long list of lucky situations. For example:
  1. The average temperature is perfect, safely in between the freezing and boiling points of water. This is rare among the planets.
  2. The atmosphere has enough oxygen to supply energetic higher life such as ourselves but not too much which would be toxic to us.
  3. Unlike most stars, our sun is a very stable star. It’s energy/heat output varies by only a tiny amount barely measurable. If the sun varied more in its output, higher life would be impossible.
  4. We have a very large moon orbiting close to us. This prevents the Earth from flipping over Pole to Pole every hundred thousand years or so in an interesting physics phenonemon called “precession”. ( I think the planet Uranus is currently inclined with its Poles on the plane of its orbit. ) Without the moon Earth would flip over now and then making higher life impossible. The huge swings in climates would wipe out higher life faster than it could evolve.
  5. We have volcano and tectonic plate activity which keeps recycling out carbon every four hundred million years or so. Without it, carbon would be forever locked up in the shells of sheelfish and other things, and we wouldn’t be here.
  6. Out gravity field is perfect. Heavier, and we would have to crawl. Lighter, and we couldn’t move around fast. ( because of inertia, our mass is constant regardless of gravity. Never mind. )
There are many other “lucky” situations like that.
So what? 🤷
First of all, there are at least a billion galaxies each with two hundred billion stars. With all those chances, it was inevitable that at least one planet would have all the lucky coincidences needed to support higher life.
Second, God could have rigged the game, loaded the dice, stacked the deck, marked the cards, “cheated” :D, to make Earth the perfect environment for us. Nobody was around to see him “cheat”. 😉
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Calculate the odds of all those lucky situations. They are astounding.
 
CuriousSoul said:
Hi, I’m new here, and I thought that this was an interesting topic, as it has been on my mind lately.

I’m undecided in my faith, and so far many arguments have made me lean toward one religion, but then a counterargument is made and I just keep getting myself confused. But my curiosity and young age have brought me to this forum. The argument at hand is one that is used to disprove theology and used to describe creation in the atheist’s eye. The Big Bang Theory is one example of this, and on paper it sounds very believeable. Atheists point out what are interpreted as “errors” in the Bible, and use these as a defense in their lack of faith. But what makes me scratch my head is that what science teaches us is that everything comes down do coincidence after coincidence after another, all leading to humanity and existence itself. But this seems just too fishy to me, and I’d like to know what counter there is to this argument that just seems flawed?

Thanks, everybody.
Click to expand...
This is a personal story of the experience someone that listened to the same ideas of atheism which also fumbled them too.

“I left the church for 11 years and became the president of an Atheist group. I was miserable. I thought that since I was a good and moral person I didn’t need the church and it’s silly rules. I could simply police myself and live a good life. I was wrong. I disintegrated into all sorts of sin, lost my morality (what little I had of my own) and the misery pain index of my soul skyrocketed. If I had to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10 I would say I was pretty much at 9. I was empty, dissatisfied, and tearing Christians apart and making fun of them ceased to amuse me any longer. I was bankrupt spiritually. When I finally went to a mass I cried my eyes out in the back row. It is still a work in progress as I went to Confession, was restored to the Church, but still wrestle with horrible guilt that I left. It’s NOT WORTH IT.”

“By the way, the woman I “tore up” about her faith was on Facebook. I found her, profusely apologized, asking her to forgive me for my horrible anger and that I wanted to just say I was sorry. She friended me, and we are talking and she is praying for me. I cried. That was the most amazing way that God worked yet. I prayed and asked God first to let me find her and I did almost instantly.”
 
“…science teaches us is that everything comes down do coincidence after coincidence after another, all leading to humanity and existence itself. But this seems just too fishy to me, and I’d like to know what counter there is to this argument that just seems flawed?”

Here is the thing, science does not teach us that everything comes down to coincidence after coincidence. Science can only tell us WHAT is taking place, but not why. There is no scientific way of showing that coincidence is the reason things happen. What experiment would prove that? Instead, the doctrine of coincidence is the atheistic philosophy that can sometimes try to make science into more than it is.

You could ask it this way: which experiment, done by what scientist, published in which scientific journal, proved that everything is just coincidence?

Also, I believe in the Big Bang, and I believe in the Bible. I just believe what all intellectually rigorous Christians have believed: interpreting the Bible the right way is important. The first few books of the Bible are not meant to be a literal “scientific” account of creation. Rather, they are “myths” of a certain sort that teach us truth about God. Augustine, in his book “On the Literal Meaning of Genesis,” says that the 7 “days” of creation literally refer to the various classes of created beings.

I am a high school physics teacher with degrees in physics and philosophy (earned from secular universities), and my faith has never been stronger.
 
mattdantuono said:
“…science teaches us is that everything comes down do coincidence after coincidence after another, all leading to humanity and existence itself. But this seems just too fishy to me, and I’d like to know what counter there is to this argument that just seems flawed?”

Here is the thing, science does not teach us that everything comes down to coincidence after coincidence. Science can only tell us WHAT is taking place, but not why. There is no scientific way of showing that coincidence is the reason things happen. What experiment would prove that? Instead, the doctrine of coincidence is the atheistic philosophy that can sometimes try to make science into more than it is.

You could ask it this way: which experiment, done by what scientist, published in which scientific journal, proved that everything is just coincidence?

Also, I believe in the Big Bang, and I believe in the Bible. I just believe what all intellectually rigorous Christians have believed: interpreting the Bible the right way is important. The first few books of the Bible are not meant to be a literal “scientific” account of creation. Rather, they are “myths” of a certain sort that teach us truth about God. Augustine, in his book “On the Literal Meaning of Genesis,” says that the 7 “days” of creation literally refer to the various classes of created beings.

I am a high school physics teacher with degrees in physics and philosophy (earned from secular universities), and my faith has never been stronger.
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The conclusions many make are that life and everything is due to blind unguided chance. Everything comes from nothing.
 
mattdantuono said:
“…science teaches us is that everything comes down do coincidence after coincidence after another, all leading to humanity and existence itself. But this seems just too fishy to me, and I’d like to know what counter there is to this argument that just seems flawed?”

Here is the thing, science does not teach us that everything comes down to coincidence after coincidence. Science can only tell us WHAT is taking place, but not why. There is no scientific way of showing that coincidence is the reason things happen. What experiment would prove that? Instead, the doctrine of coincidence is the atheistic philosophy that can sometimes try to make science into more than it is.

You could ask it this way: which experiment, done by what scientist, published in which scientific journal, proved that everything is just coincidence?
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Correct. 👍

(I agree as a scientist.)

Many people confuse philosophical opinions of scientists, or opinions based on philosophical interpretation of science by others, with scientific statements.

Science proper is neutral regarding worldview.
 
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