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Bakmoon
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The atheist does not need faith to accept their position because the burden of proof rests with the one who asserts existence, not the one who asserts non-existence, and so the atheist holds to the view that there is no God because of a lack of evidence in his existence, and since the burden of proof rests with the one asserting existence, this insufficiency of evidence leaves them with the option of atheism. It isn’t about faith, but the burden of evidence.
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joe370
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The atheist does need faith do believe something he/she cannot prove. I certainly did long ago, and my fellow non-believers could provide no reason for me to disbelieve; nor could my Christian friends provide evidence to believe. Show me the evidence that God does not exist, keeping in mind that the burden of proof is really not on the believer (or the non-believer) simply because the believer does not claim to have any proof, nor does the believer expect the non-believer to share his/her faith.
Let’s pretend that you want me to embrace your beliefs (I know that is not the case of course) about God’s non-existence. Show me the evidence and I will climb aboard?
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joe370
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Albert Einstein said:
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
Here we have a library of books, so to speak, written by someone else, but deny the existence of that someone, claiming that that intelligence, which was required to write those books, was in fact not required. Objectively, I simply don’t have that kind of faith…Something incongruous in that inductive reasoning.
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
Here we have a library of books, so to speak, written by someone else, but deny the existence of that someone, claiming that that intelligence, which was required to write those books, was in fact not required. Objectively, I simply don’t have that kind of faith…Something incongruous in that inductive reasoning.
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Alberti_Devoveo
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Yes, there exists plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that causality is an expansive property. Do you have any evidence suggesting that causality is not expansive? (Other than your opinion, which does not matter when discussing facts).
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joe370
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In my estimation it is impossible that the extraordinary fine-tuning and precise balance could stem from nothing. Of course I am no expert, but people like Stephen Hawking is, and he said;
“If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present state. Slightly faster than the critical rate, and matter would have dispersed too rapidly to allow stars and galaxies to form.”
meltzerboy
New member
Yet I think Stephen Hawking is an atheist. How might he reconcile that? Perhaps several big-bang attempts?
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joe370
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That is the typical response. Something, logically speaking, must have kick -started the whole thing…
I can never understand why atheists are so content with the idea that everything needs a beginning except the universe.
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belorg
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No, based on arguments and reasoning I see no reason to conclude there is any kind of personal creator.there is no God.
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belorg
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No, Bakmoon. the burden rests on everyone who who asserts anything. If I claimed that there is no God I would have the burden to prove it.
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JDaniel
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Bakmoon:
The problem you will run into with your argument - although you may realize it and not care - is that the so-called Fallacy of Composition cannot be universally applied. Let’s say that someone presents an argument that says, “Every song on that album is less than an hour in duration, therefore, you can listen to the entire album in less than an hour.” This is obviously fallacious and possibly false.
But, let’s say that someone makes an argument that, “Every part of a thing is larger than a car, therefore the entire thing is larger than a car.” This is obviously true, and not overcome by the unwise postulation of fallaciousness by composition.
Unlike many other fallacies, the one you chose is not necessarily a limiter of the argument. In fact, one can choose either side, or reject either side. But now it is us making a selection that may or may not have anything to do with Truth. Not a good argument from out of the old Fallacy book, in my opinion.
Let’s take the argument that the Universe is not eternal because none of its constituent parts is. This is probably true. Why? Well, if every constituent part is non-eternal then at some given point every single part could simultaneously go out of existence (perhaps by being sucked into a “black hole”). Now, it is clear that if all of the parts that constitute a universe are no longer in existence, guess what? We have no universe! So the argument is logically true.
Also, to your argument for a “bouncing universe:” There are several problems with that: (1) the radiation paradox, (2) the entropy paradox, and (3) the increase in cyclic expansion. (New Proofs for the Existence of God, p. 27, Robert J Spitzer, S.J., Ph. D.) These are all related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics such that they also suggest that such a universe has a “beginning,” too.
God bless,
jd
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joe370
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Hey Belorg, that was my only point.
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joe370
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Understood.
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JDaniel
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meltzerboy
New member
That’s my point: an infinite regress in the case of a human creator, but not in the case of a divine Creator. This is one of the reasons why the paradigms are not exactly alike, as the OP’s question asks.
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JDaniel
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Meltzer:
Kind of like science, we work from an extensive a priori dialectic to an induction that posits an uncreated Creator. Mathematician David Hilbert proved that an actually infinite quantity of finite composition cannot exist. But, really, it’s rather simple. Any so-called part of an infinite whole is also infinite. To even think that some actually infinite whole could consist of finite parts, is a brain burp. It is a failure to properly understand what it is to be infinite. Infinity is NOT a number on the real number line. Infinity is purely and simply an abstraction.
In mathematics when it is said that something goes off to infinity, is meant that it “goes off to the possibility of infinity.” Aquinas called this sort of “infinity” a potential infinity. And by “potential” he means “possibly,” “indeterminable,” “might happen,” and “still finite.” A potential infinity is nothing more (nor less) than an extremely large yet finite number. In fact, if you still believe that infinity is a number, tell us why you can’t add (or subtract) a real number to it (or from it). Or, if you could, why it is still called “infinity.” If one adds a unit to the number “eight” the result is the number “nine.” If you subtract a unit from “eight,” the result is “seven.” A whole new number. An entirely new definition. Something not in the least ambiguous.
God bless,
jd
meltzerboy
New member
I think I understand now: your problem was with my implicit assumption that infinity can be quantified. That was not really the focus of my original comment but I suppose it can relate to my attempt to distinguish between human and divine creation. Thanks for the information.
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Bakmoon
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However, this is a false analogy. This argument only works because being larger than something is an expansive property. If the property being discussed is not expansive, then the fallacy still applies. I see no evidence that causation is an expansive property.
Being sucked into a black hole doesn’t equal leaving existence. If the whole universe fell into a black hole, then the universe would still exist. It would exist as a black hole with its singularity.
Could you expound on these examples in some detail? I don’t have that book.
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JDaniel
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Bakmoon
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This is a very odd position to hold to in my opinion. Imagine that you live in a society which has an almost universal belief in the existence of dragons. One day, you decide that you wish to study dragons, but after going through all of the studies, you are struck by a lack of evidence for the existence of dragons. You refuse to believe in the existence of such dragons without proof, and you tell your colleagues that because there is no evidence for their existence, they should abandon their belief in their existence. One of them simply claims “You are the one asserting a claim, and so the burden of proof rests on you to show that they do not exist, not on us to show that they do exist.”
Who is right in this situation? Does the burden of proof rest with the one asserting existence or the one advancing the new claim?
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