How do I turn the table on atheists?

[ThinkingSapien]

I really do not know what you mean by, “I found the best arguments for God …” when it does not sound like you have found any that you understand.

I think s/he is identifying the question against which s/he has experienced the most difficulty in producing counter arguments even though these arguments have not been sufficient to change his/her position.

I can only speak for myself - but, I do not honeslty think that there is a greater proportion of child rapists amongst Atheists than amonst those who profess any belief in any god.

I also don’t think that the presence or absence of a belief in a god alone is by itself an indicator of the chance that one would engage in rape either. But I hear variants of that argument come up more when there’s a discussion of objective/subjective morality.

Most countries have laws against this type of particularly vicious behavior - and it does not take a lot of faith to believe that if one is caught they will be punished for their criminal behavior.

There’s more than just the laws the discourage that type of behaviour. But that gets into a discussion of other things.

Maybe it is this disconnect that leads you to conclude that ‘…morality can only come from God…’ because man has reason. Well … where do you think reason came from?

That’s something I’ve been looking into for reasons totally unrelated to this forum (though a wording that better fits the material I am reading is “how does reasoning ability develop”). I’ve found some nice materials that start off looking at biological neurological development and work their way up to simple cognition along with some that look at applying some of the principals to make machines that are capable of some level of learning and problem solving.

Getting back on topic, one of the “dangers” I see of using the question “where does reason come from” as evidence for God is that in some manners it looks like a “God of the gaps” (GotG) argument. My expectation is that it doesn’t advance the discussion when presented to some one that is familiar with GotG arguments. I don’t have an expectation for how one not familiar with GotG arguments may respond.

 

[Bobber90]

Your faith in String theory is touching but it won’t help you to live…

BTW Does String theory explain how entities that can explain that they have been produced by String theory have been produced?

If the universe were made by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, wouldn’t you expect its fundamental structure to be spaghetti-like? #justsaying

 

[tonyrey]

If the universe were made by a Flying Spaghetti Monster, wouldn’t you expect its fundamental structure to be spaghetti-like? #justsaying

There is no evidence that an FSM can explain anything - let alone itself…

 

[tonyrey]

BTW Does String theory explain how

That is what it is meant to sound like, i.e. nonsense!

 

[tonyrey]

That doesn’t address why it wasn’t mentioned by contemporary and nearly contemporary historians like Josephus, nor does it explain why all of the other Gospel authors – notably including the allegedly historically rigorous Luke – failed to mention it. Surely they had nothing to fear writing decades later.

		 		 	 	 1. Did historians need to give an encyclopaedic account of **all **the events they believed were fantasies?

1. Did the Gospel authors need to give an encyclopaedic account of **all **the events they believed were true?
2. Was that most significant event for Christians?
3. Is that the main reason why do you reject the truth of the New Testament?
4. If not what is the main reason?

 

[tqualey]

Hi ThinkingSapien,

I have not heard of ‘God of the gaps’ before - so, I am quite unfamiliar with this argument.

What I was getting at, is that when one really looks at the incredible complexity all around us - from how cell membranes work to the development of star clusters - we find incredible order … dare I say patterns…

There are certain behaviors we can look at and wonder - like a plant turning to face the sun may seem like rational and purposeful behavior - but, living creatures can act a certain way without thought as we usually understand the term. Certain insects fly towards the light, or fly in a upward direction - and man has used this to develop traps for the insects. Once trapped, the insect apparently does not use one of its six legs to scratch its head and wonder how it will free itself from certain death. I have seen films of monkeys in the wild using a stick to stick into a termite mound and then bring the termite covered stick to their mouth and eat the insects. Using the stick surly qualifies as using a tool - but, the money never seems to advance beyond this point - so it has some abstraction ability, but not much is all that I can conclude. Finally, we get to man - and look at what wonderous thoughts and inventions he has had!

The ability to reason, to project one’s self in tme and/or location - past or future - to simply imagine and then set up tests to see if our imaginings (in part or in whole) match external reality - is nothing short of amazing. Some have even thought that that all of creation ‘just happened and here we are’ and deny the existence of God or conclude that there will never be enough evidence to prove His existence - so why bother and just live our lives like there is no God.

And, just as I think that God is responsible for all of creation, I do not think that our ability to reason just sort of ‘happened somehow’. Yes, we can use the rationality He gave us to think of Him.

God bless

Getting back on topic, one of the “dangers” I see of using the question “where does reason come from” as evidence for God is that in some manners it looks like a “God of the gaps” (GotG) argument. My expectation is that it doesn’t advance the discussion when presented to some one that is familiar with GotG arguments. I don’t have an expectation for how one not familiar with GotG arguments may respond.

 

[Bobber90]

There is no evidence that an FSM can explain anything - let alone itself…

Reality doesn’t need to bow to our desire for purpose/meaning. The FSM just is, and to be is to be noodly - String Theory demonstrates this(!)

Clearly I’m just joking, but if any real theistic arguments matched the format of any of these points, consider it a test of their efficacy.

Amusing reading: loose-canon.fsm-consortium.com/the-loose-canon/

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Reality doesn’t need to bow to our desire for purpose/meaning. The FSM just is, and to be is to be noodly - String Theory demonstrates this(!)

Clearly I’m just joking, but if any real theistic arguments matched the format of any of these points, consider it a test of their efficacy.

Did you have straw for breakfast?

 

[Bobber90]

Did you have straw for breakfast?

I will repeat- what would you expect the fundamental structure of the universe to look like if everything was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster? Like spahgetti, or, to our limited human comprehension, String [Theory].



When I said that to be is to be noodly, this was not a straw man but a copy of another argument that will no doubt be familiar to you:

‘there is only one act of existence (God). There cannot be multiple acts of distinct potential realities, because reality is a necessary nature. …Thus the only way any potential thing can come to exist is by God sharing his act of reality with the “essence” of things. … Our act of reality (the act of being real) is God, because there is only one reality. Therefore to have being is to have God.’

We are but vibrations on the extra-dimensional divine spaghetti

 

[tonyrey]

There is no evidence that an FSM can explain anything - let alone itself…

                             Reality doesn't need to bow to our desire for purpose/meaning.It does  bow to our desire for explanation which presupposes that reality is purposeful and meaningful - unless you believe purpose and meaning are produced inexplicably by that which is purposeless and meaningless, i.e. absurd...

 

[tonyrey]

We are but vibrations on the extra-dimensional divine spaghetti

Some of which produce meaningless and purposeless cacophony!

 

[Bobber90]

Bobber90;8665457:

It does bow to our desire for explanation which presupposes that reality is purpose and meaningl - unless you believe purpose and meaning are produced inexplicably by that which is purposeless and meaningless, i.e. absurd…

Hmmm, I don’t think so. Even putting the FSM aside for a moment, we cannot argue from any logical tautology to the conclusion that therefore reality must be meaningful/purposeful. So, the reality of the FSM does not bow to our desires/idiosyncrasies of thought. It could exist and yet grant no higher meaning and satisfy none of our searches for knowledge.

 

[Bobber90]

Some of which produce meaningless and purposeless cacophony!

Whatever the FSM does is good, because the FSM does it. If you or I could create life by the mere shaking of our appendages (don’t follow that thought), wouldn’t we be supreme beings? Surely, if we were responsible for the creation of the entire universe, we would be the most supreme being possible. One feature most befitting for this ultimately supreme being is existence, therefore the FSM must exist and be good.

 

[tonyrey]

tonyrey;8665595:

Hmmm, I don’t think so. Even putting the FSM aside for a moment, we cannot argue from any logical tautology to the conclusion that therefore reality must be meaningful/purposeful. So, the reality of the FSM does not bow to our desires/idiosyncrasies of thought. It could exist and yet grant no higher meaning and satisfy none of our searches for knowledge.

A logical tautology and our searches for knowledge presuppose rationality…

 

[Bobber90]

Bobber90;8665618:

A logical tautology and our searches for knowledge presuppose rationality…

Whatever is thought or whatever exists fails to approach the grandeur of the reality of the FSM, that was my point. We may question whether there is any purpose or meaning to our post-FSM life, or argue that reason necessitates purpose (and we have reason, …), but none of this matters because we cannot scrutinise the will of the FSM, or even suppose the FSM has a will…

 

[tonyrey]

Correction:

originally posted by cornbread r2*

That doesn’t address why it wasn’t mentioned by contemporary and nearly contemporary historians like Josephus, nor does it explain why all of the other Gospel authors – notably including the allegedly historically rigorous Luke – failed to mention it. Surely they had nothing to fear writing decades later.*

                                                              1. Did historians need to give an encyclopaedic account of **all **the events they believed were fantasies?

1. Did the Gospel authors need to give an encyclopaedic account of **all **the events they believed were true?
2. Was that most significant event for Christians?
3. Is that the main reason why do you reject the truth of the New Testament?
4. If not what is the main reason? 1. Did historians need to give an encyclopaedic account of **all **the events they believed were fantasies?
5. Did the Gospel authors need to give an encyclopaedic account of **all **the events they believed were true?
6. Was that most significant event for Christians?
7. Is that the main reason why do you reject the truth of the New Testament?
8. If not what is the main reason?

 

[Mystic_Banana]

You have looked up the wrong article then when it’s the one with “damned lies”. That article is old, nobody talks about hypercycles anymore, and in the meantime we have quite concrete ideas how things might have happened. Try mine, also on Talkorigins.org:

talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

There is no absurd unlikelihood at all.

By the way, if you look at the upper right corner of my post, I am not an atheist.

Yeah, I think I figured that a bit too late…

This is what annoys me about the scientific response… that you’re usually directed to 40 page (copied into word, at any rate) papers which the half one in the morning casual apologist inevitably puts off reading for several weeks, by which time his defense will have been assumed ignored…

at the end of the day, I’ll be looking for something to indicate the appearance of something organic from inorganic as a chjance occurance is anything other than unconvincing…
…if I ever get round to reading enough of this rather hefty paper! Care to indicate the most relevent, magical, abiogenesical chunk???

 

[Al_Moritz]

Yeah, I think I figured that a bit too late…

This is what annoys me about the scientific response… that you’re usually directed to 40 page (copied into word, at any rate) papers which the half one in the morning casual apologist inevitably puts off reading for several weeks, by which time his defense will have been assumed ignored…

at the end of the day, I’ll be looking for something to indicate the appearance of something organic from inorganic as a chjance occurance is anything other than unconvincing…
…if I ever get round to reading enough of this rather hefty paper! Care to indicate the most relevent, magical, abiogenesical chunk???

O.k., perhaps this Scientific American article might help:

mcb.ucdavis.edu/faculty-labs/scholey/journal%20papers/Ricardo-Szostak-SA2009.pdf

It’s not 40 pages long.

 

[Reivax]

Hi, Reivax,

Actually, it did not help at all.

I really do not know what you mean by, “I found the best arguments for God …” when it does not sound like you have found any that you understand. And, the ones you presented you really do not understand very well. I can only speak for myself - but, I do not honeslty think that there is a greater proportion of child rapists amongst Atheists than amonst those who profess any belief in any god. Most countries have laws against this type of particularly vicious behavior - and it does not take a lot of faith to believe that if one is caught they will be punished for their criminal behavior.

Maybe it is this disconnect that leads you to conclude that ‘…morality can only come from God…’ because man has reason. Well … where do you think reason came from?

God bless

Well my ignorance is ‘partly’ what makes them ‘seem’ like better arguments. But perhaps if I understood metaphysics at a deeper level I would find the arguments less impressive. But I do think metaphysical arguments are going to be the best defense of the God idea. As I said before, there is nothing compelling about moralistic arguments for God or Biblical arguments. It is good that you have this understanding about ‘rape’ in relation to atheists, there are many who do not. Reason is a survival mechanism given to use by billions of years of evolution.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Reason is a survival mechanism given to use by billions of years of evolution.

What? So what you saying here is that evolution created reason for the purpose of survival?

I think you need to rethink what you have said here, because it sounds like you trying to make a teleological argument using the theory of evolution.

If you don’t believe in a creator, then it is meaningless to say that certain attributes exist for our survival.

When you say survival mechanism it sounds like you saying its purpose is survival; but there is no purpose in a universe without purpose. So why attribute survival to it? Doing so implies that life has an objective meaning.