Proof Against Atheism

[El_Catolico]

This whole conversation is completely ridiculous. It appears that Drew cannot understand what we mean by “God” and “First Cause”.

They are the same thing, for a reason I stated above.

The First Cause cannot have a cause before it, or else it wouldn’t be the First Cause. It cannot have any contigency at all.

And that is what God is. It is a completely self-existent being which has no contingency. It does not derive its existence from anywhere else; it is the source of existence.

As it seems that you cannot comprehend what we mean by the word “God”, here is an encyclopedia article to help get you started.

Please do not bother us again until you understand what we are talking about.

 

[Darrel]

Drew98:

Then God needs a cause. Or if you want to say that God is the one exception then explain why God gets the exception but the Universe does not.

Because he also created the rule that says there needs to be a cause withing his created universe. He exists outside of his creation and it’s limitations.

-D

 

[AnAtheist]

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming in to being
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore the universe has a cause for its coming in to being

This is an example of logic and reason to prove Theism and disprove Atheism.

I have three objections against that reasoning:

1. And when did that cause take place? Before the beginning of the universe?
   From all we know, time itself began together with the universe, as it is an intrinsic part of, so there is no before. Ergo there is no event, action, act of will, whatever before the universe that could have caused it.
2. (As stated before by other posters Then the cause for the universe must have a cause too, and so on ad infinitum. Unless of course, one cause is declared to be the ultimate cause. Which the theists identifies to be God, another theist to be a different god, and atheists (and pantheists too, now that I think of it) to be the universe itself.
3. That cause - is it natural or supernatural? If it is a natural cause, then no theism whatsoever is needed to explain the universe. If not, ok, then we know there is something supernatural. What now? Worship Allah, Odin, Jahwe, the Tao, the Universe, the Goddess and the Horned One, or just Nothing?

 

[Catholic_Dude]

I have a question if someone is an Atheist do they have to believe in evolution? Well I guess that doesnt make sense because the way we see evolution is recent in world history.
Ok, so how do they see the world as it changes?

 

[Drew98]

Maranatha:

The argument goes that everything in our universe needs a cause and thus the universe itself needs an external cause.

I don’t see how this “everything in our universe needs a cause” necessitates this “universe itself needs an external cause”.

Maranatha:

Since God is not of our universe (external), he does not fall under that restriction.

Well, the Universe is not of our Universe either. So it wouldn’t fall under that restriction either.

 

[Drew98]

Gilbert Keith:

The Big Bang theory says the universe began … did not always exist. At least there is no scientific evidence it existed before the Bang.

I disagree, it’s my understanding that science says it can’t be known what happened “before” the Big Bang. Thus we can’t say the universe did not exist before the Big Bang.

 

[Drew98]

Gilbert Keith:

The theist doesn’t have to explain anything because he takes God as a mystery beyond his understanding.

It seems to me you’re holding atheism to a higher standard than theism. When it comes to explaining the Universe you have this incredible intellectual curiosity that must be satisfied. So you hypothesize that God created the Universe. Then when it comes to explaining the origin of God that curiosity suddenly vanishes and you’re content with “God is a mystery beyond our understanding”.

I agree that the concept of God is very mysterious. Therefore when it comes to explaining the origins of the Universe it’s not a useful concept. It creates more mystery than it solves.
Gilbert Keith:

It is the atheist who refuses to believe anything without an explanation.

That’s an oversimplification. It’s more like: the better the explanation the stronger the belief.

What’s the “theist” standard of belief?

 

[AnAtheist]

Catholic Dude:

I have a question if someone is an Atheist do they have to believe in evolution?

Noone, really noone believes in evolution. Evolution is biological theory strongly supported by the facts. Therefore it is accepted among the scientists, and thus the current standard knowledge.

To be an atheist you have to do or to believe absolutely nothing. There is exactly one thing, you don’t believe.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

DREW

It seems to me you’re holding atheism to a higher standard than theism.

No, I’m only holding atheism to its own standard. If atheists are going to demand proof for all truth, that includes proof for the truth(?) of atheism.

Religion does not insist on logical proof for all its mysteries because there is the very logical assumption that we, who are finite, cannot fully grasp the Infinite. This is said in humility before God.

The atheist, on the other hand, wants to hold God to his standard, to the standard of the finite. He demands that if there is a God, this God must be intelligible to the atheist on purely rationalist grounds. The only God the atheist would allow would be the God who could be seen through a telescope reclining on the clouds of some distant galaxy. And then, of course, the atheist would not call this God, but rather an optical illusion.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

DREW

What’s the “theist” standard of belief?

I can’t speak for theists outside the Catholic faith, but Catholics have two standards for their belief: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

We did not make up our theology using strictly human tools of thought. We received it from God, the only one who could have given it to us. It was given to us by way of revelation, both from the Old and New Testaments, and again from the Sacred Traditions inspired in us by the Holy Spirit through the teaching authority of the Church.

This is “belief” proper. It requires willing consent to that which is not provable in a scientific laboratory … and this is just one reason why the standard is so disagreeable to atheists who believe that if anything can’t be physically demonstrated … it just ain’t so.

That is, unfortunately, part of the modern way of thinking that we inherit from William of Ockham and Rene Descartes … the Catholics who never lost their faith, but whose influence has resulted in the spread of atheism throughout modern thought just because the scientific route to knowledge came to be considered exclusive of any other route.

Arrogance of intellect … we see it everywhere in the modern world.

 

[AnAtheist]

Gilbert Keith:

Arrogance of intellect … we see it everywhere in the modern world.

Pardon me, but stating “We and only we hold the one and only absolute truth, and everybody else is totally or partially wrong.” looks a bit arrogant too, and that could be seen throughout human history.

 

[David_Brown]

AnAtheist:

I have three objections against that reasoning:

1. And when did that cause take place? Before the beginning of the universe?
   From all we know, time itself began together with the universe, as it is an intrinsic part of, so there is no before. Ergo there is no event, action, act of will, whatever before the universe that could have caused it.

I don’t mean to be argumentative but only get clarification. Your (1) seems to commit you to either denying (one of the original argument’s premises that) the universe had a beginning or that what has a beginning has a cause. If you deny the former you would reject the findings of science; if you reject the latter you would seem to reject (at least a version of) the principle of sufficient reason. Do you deny either? Bertrand Russell in one of his debates with Copleston said he took the universe as a “brute fact.” Do you? By the way, to ask “when” outside the context of time has often been regarded as a pseudo-question, so your initial question might be considered meaningless.

AnAtheist:

1. (As stated before by other posters Then the cause for the universe must have a cause too, and so on ad infinitum. Unless of course, one cause is declared to be the ultimate cause. Which the theists identifies to be God, another theist to be a different god, and atheists (and pantheists too, now that I think of it) to be the universe itself.

As the argument stands it would only show that the universe has a cause (since we know it began to exist), it wouldn’t address the cause of the cause (unless we knew it began to exist). WIlliam Lane Craig (who popularized the Kalam Cosmological Argument) usually takes a second argument about the impossibility of a real infinite regress of causes to argue for a first cause. Rejecting an infinite regress isn’t a Christian notion, the Greeks rejected it long before. As long as the chain of causation has a first member, he can say “that is God.”

AnAtheist:

1. That cause - is it natural or supernatural? If it is a natural cause, then no theism whatsoever is needed to explain the universe. If not, ok, then we know there is something supernatural. What now? Worship Allah, Odin, Jahwe, the Tao, the Universe, the Goddess and the Horned One, or just Nothing?

Craig usually takes “supernatural” to mean “non-natural,” so if the known laws of science don’t explain, any explanation (if you have one) will be supernatural. Saying the (first) cause is supernatural is just saying it is not part of the universe or its laws. Craig never takes the argument to identify the cause (Allah, Odin, etc.) but only claim “we call that God” in imitation of Aquinas.

You raise very good questions on the whole. Much to ponder.

David

 

[_Christopher]

Gilbert Keith:

Maranatha

What your argument asserts is that the universe had a start. Something started it. So far as I can tell, you don’t argue for anything else but a first cause. This is consistent with the Big Bang theory as to the origin of the universe. The Big Bang theory, however, cannot use the concept God because God is not a natural explanation, and science can only deal with natural laws. We therefore become philosophers and theologians if we want to go any further down that road.

A theologian would argue mainly from revelation.

A philosopher would argue mainly from rational inference.

Both would likely conclude with the concept of God, but each would attach to God possibly rather different and even contradictory traits. Most likely the philosopher would allow God traits most agreeable to the philosopher. The theologian would allow God traits that he claims have been revealed by God to him or to the prophets/founders of the religion.

The atheist may be a philosopher who finds nothing rational (credible) in the idea of a God. If so, he has to explain rationally how the universe got started without a God.

I’ve never heard such a rational explanation offered by an atheist. There certainly isn’t any proof that the universe created itself.

Quite right…

…and lets not forget to mention that the atheist must also explain rationality in the first place, not just explaining things rationally.

 

[AnAtheist]

David Brown:

I don’t mean to be argumentative but only get clarification. Your (1) seems to commit you to either denying (one of the original argument’s premises that) the universe had a beginning or that what has a beginning has a cause. If you deny the former you would reject the findings of science; if you reject the latter you would seem to reject (at least a version of) the principle of sufficient reason. Do you deny either?

I deny that a hypothetical cause of the universe was an event taking place before the beginning of the universe. The cause and the beginning must have taken place simultanously, which raises the question if the cause and the beginning might be the same thing.

EDIT: Btw, I do deny that everything that has a beginning MUST have a cause. Quantum physics (in the Kopenhagen interpretation, for the nerds) knows uncaused events, which (naturally) have a beginning, ie when they occur.

Bertrand Russell in one of his debates with Copleston said he took the universe as a “brute fact.” Do you? By the way, to ask “when” outside the context of time has often been regarded as a pseudo-question, so your initial question might be considered meaningless.

Äh, yes.

 

[Maranatha]

AnAtheist:

To be an atheist you have to do or to believe absolutely nothing. There is exactly one thing, you don’t believe.

That’s not exactly true. Atheists need to be believe in Scientism which sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.

 

[AnAtheist]

David Brown:

Craig never takes the argument to identify the cause (Allah, Odin, etc.) but only claim “we call that God” in imitation of Aquinas.

The problem is, that the very term “God” implies a lot of things. A Christian will automatically associate his god with it, while the Muslim will identify it with Allah, and the average Chinese with the Tao.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

AnAtheist

Pardon me, but stating “We and only we hold the one and only absolute truth, and everybody else is totally or partially wrong.” looks a bit arrogant too, and that could be seen throughout human history.

It is not arrogance because we are not stating as truth our own self-made discovery of truth, but rather the truth revealed to us by God. We have no choice but to agree with God that His truth is the only Truth. Anything less than that is truly arrogant.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

AnAtheist

The problem is, that the very term “God” implies a lot of things. A Christian will automatically associate his god with it, while the Muslim will identify it with Allah, and the average Chinese with the Tao.

So what is your point?

 

[AnAtheist]

Maranatha:

That’s not exactly true. Atheists need to be believe in Scientism which sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.

While it is most likely true, that most Atheists see science as the only justifiable access to the truth, I count myself among them, but that is not necessarily the case. Still, one could be a atheist AND a nihilist or a follower of solipsism, both have nothing to do with scientific thinking.

 

[AnAtheist]

Gilbert Keith:

AnAtheist

The problem is, that the very term “God” implies a lot of things. A Christian will automatically associate his god with it, while the Muslim will identify it with Allah, and the average Chinese with the Tao.

So what is your point?

The point is, that this proof is no proof against atheism at all. The only thing it shows is, that there must be a cause for the universe to exist, and even that is debateable. To simply call this cause “God” may satisfy any religious people, but it may as well satisfy non-religious theists like Deists or Pantheists, so it hardly answers the question “is there a God” and it by no means answers the question “is there a specific god”.