Continuation from IAP 1.0

Only those participating in the debate may post, others will be deleted.

At the conclusion of the debate, others may feel free to post.

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1. marioze53's opening
2. IamMe's opening
3. IfPattonwasAlive's opening
4. Daedalus' opening
5. mario53's rebuttal
6. IamMe's rebuttal
7. IPWA's rebuttal
8. Daedalus' rebuttal
9. Mario's question (to be answered by IamMe)
10. IamMe's question (to be answered by mario)
11. IPWA's question (to be answered by Daedalus)
12. Daedalus' question (to be answered by IPWA)
13. mario's closing
14. IamMe's closing
15. IPWA's closing
16. Daedalus' closing
17. Voting
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1. marioze53's opening

I cannot prove you to be capable of cognitive thought since you may be a figment of my imagination. Then again, perhaps you have imagined marioze53. I can only establish with absolute certainty my own existence. I think, therefore I am. Anything else is speculation. My senses have deceived me in the past. I have thought I heard things not said, seen things (mirages) that weren’t there, dreamed things that weren’t really happening, etc. Why should I trust my senses? Therefore, it is truly reasonable to begin as thus; I cannot (initially) establish the existence or nonexistence of anything beyond myself. Thus, anything entering my mind albeit Gods, Goddesses, or spaghetti monsters is perfectly plausible given this assertion. I only bring this up to address one very simple point; we are all people of tremendous faith. Most of us trust our senses and feelings about God. As atheists, you require just as much (if not more) faith as us theists. It is the agnostics who are the sensible ones!

I intend to establish two claims; firstly, the universe is more thematically consistent with the existence of a supremely perfect being. Secondly, consequently, theism requires LESS faith than materialism. This will be achieved by addressing two principle subjects, namely physical laws and the human condition.
I will challenge my opponent not to disprove the existence of God for I do not think this can be done. If he can, that is a remarkable feat and he deserves my congratulations. Instead, I challenge him to develop themes more consistent with the absence of God rather than his existence. For, as I have already discussed, we are all merely speculating. And with that, I begin!

I. PHYSICAL LAWS

Let us consider the traditional watchmaker argument. It makes sense that if someone not knowing what a watch is were to find one in the middle of the desert that they would assume it to be the property or creation of an intelligent being. What is the purpose of a watch? It is meant for measuring time. It, like all technologies, is built to suit a need given assumed conditions. While machines indicate intelligence, I would argue that the conditions or rules themselves indicate intelligence also, much like a game. Both the games creator and players demonstrate cognitive thought through rules and strategies alike. In fact, the presence of physical laws most readily demonstrates something more like a will than anything we know. The more I learn about the world around me, the more thoroughly convinced I am that there is an active will behind the curtain. Human beings have tremendous capacity to observe and predict (with astonishing accuracy) causes and effects. Consider Einstein’s theory of general relativity or Bernoulli’s equation to name but a few. Our universe is a system of laws built on laws, one rule established upon another. This is the greatest law of all; causality. For every action, there is a reaction. If we assume a purely materialistic world for a moment, we can safely conclude that an infinite knowledge of the universe at any point in time will provide us with ample information to accurately predict both past and future. Therefore, it can be said that the winner of this debate could have been predicted based on an infinite knowledge of a moment in time 5 billion years before or after today! It is as if the powers that be have conspired to bring about our discussion, as if it was meant to be.

Now, let us for a moment entertain the notion of a god. Traditionally, Christians (and many other faiths for that matter) assert that God never changes and that he is all-knowing. Therefore, assuming the definition of God to entail unchanging and all-knowing, the existence of such a God is philosophically and theologically consistent with the world we seem to live in. That is to say, such a god could operate within the universe previously described for the very simple reason that he is predictable as is his universe. This is not proof. I am merely demonstrating that the themes we see are more consistent with theism than its antithesis.

Let us consider death. Atheism (more specifically materialism) suggests, in principle, the lack of an afterlife. Faith in a greater being is irrelevant; we live, we die, and that’s that. Although this does not directly contradict causality, it stands in stark contrast to what we normally observe. Our physical environment is subject to both our thoughts and our actions. An abrupt halt to this theme upon death strikes me as naive and unlikely.

I am confused when an atheist asks me a question to the effect of “what (or who) created God?” Most theists would say something like “nothing, God is the beginning and the end; he transcends time.” I am inclined to fire back “What caused the big bang?” or “nodes? Where did they come from?” I am not implying that these are silly or even false ideas, merely a wholly materialistic explanation is lacking. It is a question that materialists must perpetually answer while the theist recognizes the limit that is God. Where did causality come from? Perhaps it is naive to declare the existence of a consciousness that transcends causality, but it is hopeless to insist that matter has no supreme cause, that it is an infinite regress. As such I can promise you that your theory of the universe will always be wrong, regardless of God (existing or not). There will always be a greater truth, a more unified theory, a better answer. I merely ascribe a name and a consciousness to the limit you refuse to acknowledge.

Physical laws, particularly causality indicate a supreme being or power more readily than materialism. Now let us investigate the human condition.

Ran out of words! I will discuss the human condition in my next post.
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2. IamMe's opening

I am going to argue that there is no reason to believe in the existence of God. However, I am not going to prove (or even attempt to prove) that there is no God. That’s impossible. How can you disprove something when no evidence exists either way? Luckily, I don’t have to; the burden of proof is not on me – it’s is on the proponents of the God Hypothesis. I’m getting this out of the way early as it seems to come up every time.

Like I said, I intend to argue that there is no reason to believe in the existence of God. I’ll do this under two main points.

-That appeals to the supernatural are inherently invalid.
-That God as an explanation is superfluous.

In the past, Gods were invented to explain the unknown. The classic example is lightning. Early peoples saw lightning in the sky and had no explanation for it. So the best they could come up with was that it was ‘the Gods’. The sun was a God because they didn’t know that it was a giant ball of burning gas. The moon was a God because they didn’t know that it was a big chunk of rock. They looked around them and saw phenomena for which their primitive science had no explanation. Though understandable, their appeal to the supernatural was not logical.

I dislike this God of the Gaps theology. It’s lazy thinking. Essentially what you are saying is “I cannot think of any way X could have happened. Therefore I’ll just say God did it. Next problem…” This is the reason I dislike this way of thinking: if accepted it leaves no room for scientific inquiry. If every hard problem, every unknown can be answered by “God did it” then there would be no need for science and humanity would not progress.

The scientific method is the best method we have come up with for determining truth. This is because it relies entirely on evidence. Any scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable. The God Hypothesis does not meet this criterion. It does not make any falsifiable prediction. You cannot say: “If God exists the universe should look like this…” This is because an intelligent creator could create the universe any way he/she/it wants. It is impossible to know the intentions of a divine creator – we can only speculate. You could even postulate that God would deliberately make a universe with no evidence of his existence in order to conceal himself. This is the problem with proposing an intelligent designer as an explanation.

Indeed, design ultimately explains nothing as the question ultimately regresses to the origin of the designer. Any being capable of creating the universe must be at least as complex as the universe itself. So if something as complex as the universe needs an intelligent creator (which is how the argument usually goes) then it follows that the creator itself needs a creator and so on ad infinitum.

Historically, God was used to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Those gaps no longer exist. We can now explain the diversity of life – we have evolution by natural selection. We also have various competing theories for the origin of life (abiogenisis) and for the origin of the universe. These may not enjoy the same amount of evidence as natural selection (and hence are not on as sure footing) but they are there and they do explain. The fact that these explanations exist shows that God as an explanation is now superfluous. God was invented to explain life and the universe in the absence of plausible material mechanisms. Now plausible material mechanisms exist we have no need of God so (using Occam’s Razor) God is no longer needed. We can adequately explain everything without God. (More correctly, we can now explain all the stuff God was meant to explain – there are still outstanding questions. There is still the question of why there is anything when there could be nothing at all. Even God does not answer this question.)

However, even were this not so, it would still be logical not to believe in God (as I have demonstrated above). Pre-Darwin it would still have been possible and logical to be an atheist but it would have been a much more difficult position to defend – for some reason, people are never satisfied with “I don’t know” (or even “I don’t know, I’ll use science and try to find out”).

When asked by Napoleon why he hadn’t used God in his equations, the French scientist Pierre-Simon de Laplace replied Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothese – I have no need of that hypothesis. Nor do we.

5. mario53's rebuttal

II. THE HUMAN CONDITION


In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes “There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.” (23) Given this unique perspective that Lewis describes, it would make sense to look for traces of a God within ourselves. What themes might indicate a god?

Firstly, God is literally revealed in religions throughout the world. While various faiths demonstrate very different ideas about his character, the fact remains that nearly every culture (indeed all cultures) describe through tradition, ritual, or written word a supreme being or force. Paul describes this phenomenon in his letter to the Romans: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:14, NIV) It strikes me as remarkable that all cultures embrace this concept.

This universal proclamation indicates at the very least that we ask the question ‘why?’. There have always been two answers to this question:


Why is the water boiling?

1. Kinetic energy applied via the burner to the pot increases the entropy of the fluids particles within. Hence the water boils.

2. Because I wanted some tea.


The first answer indicates a material cause while the latter indicates intentional cause or a will. Materialism cannot answer the question ‘why’ in both manners if there is no supreme will. And yet the question exists in both forms; Why? Isn’t it more thematically consistent to conclude that there is an active will than to conclude it simply does not exist?

Secondly, we humans have a finite experience. We have a definite beginning. Therefore it is difficult to imagine a universe without a definite beginning because the idea is alien to our nature. It is a necessary idea since infinity must exist. It doesn’t mean matter has existed forever however. I find that everything within the world I live in has a definite beginning and an ending. My rabbit was born and she will die. My desk was built in a factory. It is useful, but will rot in a dump when I throw it out. Is it thematically consistent to say materials have always been and will always be? I am not convinced. It is more likely that infinity is a quality reserved for something beyond our comprehension, something metaphysical.

Thirdly, human beings generally love drama. Any fictional book that I read, any movie that I watch has predictable ingredients. There is always a beginning and an ending (of course), a protagonist, an antagonist, and a conflict of some kind. It is in fiction that the world is made most clear, that we see things as they really are. Why are we drawn to stories like Jack and the Bean-stock? Are we lying to our children when we tell them these tales? Or do they reveal human nature in the most basic way? Are things as thematically consistent as they seem to be? In short, yes. There is a good guy and there are certainly bad guys. There are consequences for your actions. We ask why because there is an answer. We question the existence of God because he exists.

CONCLUSION: Ultimately, physical laws and the human condition most readily demonstrate the existence of a supreme will. I therefore conclude that the universe is more thematically consistent with the theist perspective instead of the materialist world view.



Now, concerning your initial post Iamme...


Fortunately, this is not a court of law. Otherwise, to win an argument of this nature, I suppose all I must do is start a new thread titled ‘does God not exist?’ Since we have both claimed that absolute proof is lacking, then I suppose I win by default. However, this is persuasive argument, no burden of proof... Wink


-That appeals to the supernatural are inherently invalid.
-That God as an explanation is superfluous.

In the past, Gods were invented to explain the unknown. The classic example is lightning. Early peoples saw lightning in the sky and had no explanation for it. So the best they could come up with was that it was ‘the Gods’. The sun was a God because they didn’t know that it was a giant ball of burning gas. The moon was a God because they didn’t know that it was a big chunk of rock. They looked around them and saw phenomena for which their primitive science had no explanation. Though understandable, their appeal to the supernatural was not logical.

Perhaps the Gods themselves were invented. However, it strikes me as remarkable coincidence that these deities demonstrate many of the same qualities and abilities. Was religion wielded as a weapon, to control a population? I have no doubt that evil men realized the potential for power that religion presented them with after their establishment. However, to conclude what amounts to conspiracy theory on a world wide scales strikes me as ludicrous.


What does God of the gaps mean? Most theists do not see science and religion as being in conflict. Rather, science demonstrates God’s technique or methodology. Take evolution for instance. From my own experience, most Christians are not opposed to it because it is science and they are religious. It is because they see a conflict between a God who would use evolution and the God they read of in the bible. Remember, evolution does not disprove God. It is an alternative hypothesis of his technique that many regard as uncharacteristic of the God they expected. I on the other hand see no conflict. Evolution reminds me how miniscule I am relative to space and time, and is IMHO more thematically consistent with the universe God has created. Evolution humbles me more than creation. Is that not what God desires is humility? There are things God has done we can explain and there are things that we cannot explain. In short, he is the God of both science and the gaps.


I will not disagree with you here. However, I will point out that because it is not falsifiable does not make it false. I fail to see how this makes the question any less relevant or profound.

I am skeptical of both RF and Mr. Dawkins, who claim God to be a scientific hypothesis (In fact RF if you are reading this, I am intrigued and would like to know more about your conclusions). That is why I have suggested themes since I do not think science is capable of providing us with an acceptable answer. In light of that, I would anticipate the logical response to be one of agnosticism, not atheism as you suggest.


Ad infinitum applies solely to materialism. If I ask you what caused the Universe, or what caused the Universe’s cause, you are bound by an irreducible string of material causes, a vicious infinite regress. What caused causation? Materialism stipulates the absence of supreme cause which is illogical. A metaphysical being or power transcending cause is not bound by this restraint.


Because I understand Bobby Fisher’s moves and general strategy does not disprove Bobby Fisher.
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6. IamMe's rebuttal

To begin, I agree that we are unable to establish with certainty the existence of anything beyond ourselves. What we perceive as reality may be illusion and, because of this, anything might exist. I propose two axioms:

1. I exist.
2. What I perceive as reality exists.

Without these, continuing with the debate – and indeed with any discussion of anything – would be pointless.

Though you certainly did not intend it, by stating It is the agnostics who are the sensible ones! you essentially conceded the debate i.e. you conceded that it is impossible to establish with any degree of certainty the existence of God.

Having initially warned us about the dangers of speculation, you then proceed to indulge in unfounded speculation that God would create a universe with physical laws. You cannot know this. I could equally say that God might create a universe with purple eggs. Neither statement follows from the premise “God exists”. As I already established, an intelligent creator could create the universe any way he/she/it wants.

Your statement (The presence of physical laws most readily demonstrates something more like a will than anything we know) got me thinking: can anything exist without physical laws? Certainly, I am incapable of imagining anything existing without physical laws. What would govern its reactions, its movements, its position? Does reality even have any meaning in the absence of physical laws? If God is the creator of the physical laws then either God operates outside of any laws – in which case the above questions apply – or is subject to a set of physical laws – in which case we are again faced with an infinite regress: where do the set of laws that God is subject to come from? To use your analogy, the creator of the game must also be subject to certain laws – so someone must have created that ‘game’ also.

In your argument you give us a version of Paley’s debunked Watchmaker argument. The obvious objection to this is that watches don’t give birth to other watches so they are not subject to natural selection. As an analogy for biological life the watch fails. For the same reason (and for another I will come to) it fails as an analogy for the universe. It has been postulated that the universe is just one of many subject to a psuedo-Darwinian process called Cosmological Natural Selection in which universes that are fine tuned for producing black holes (which give birth to other universes) are selected for. Just as biological natural selection accounts for the illusion of design in life so Cosmological Natural Selection accounts for the illusion of design in the universe.

Design implies purpose. Designers do not create designs for which there is no purpose. You say What is the purpose of a watch? It is meant for measuring time. Unlike a watch neither life nor the universe has any obvious purpose from the point of view of the designer (‘to exist’ doesn’t count). Indeed to try to attribute a purpose would be to indulge in unfounded speculation.

Arguments from Design are both convincing and unconvincing for the same reason. The human mind tends towards anthropomorphism – we see intent behind everything even if there is none. This, I suspect, is what made us first postulate that there is a consciousness behind the universe – the same reason I get angry at the door if I bang my head on it. When you say that the universe is more thematically consistent with a designer you are essentially saying that your mind, which has evolved to search for intent, perceives the universe as having intent behind it. This is far from proof.

I am struggling to understand how an unchanging God is more ‘thematically consistent’ with the universe we observe than the opposite. How would a universe with an unchanging God appear any different from one with unchanging physical laws? Are we again entering the realm of baseless speculation?

Your argument for an afterlife is based around a logical fallacy – namely an Argument from Personal Incredulity. An abrupt halt to this theme upon death strikes me as naive and unlikely. In other words “I personally cannot believe that on death life just ends.” I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you why this is fallacious logic. Personally, life continuing after death strikes me as naïve and unlikely. This is based on the lack of any evidence for an afterlife (apart from vague ideas about the Law of Conservation of Energy). An afterlife doesn’t necessarily follow from the existence of God nor does atheism necessarily reject the idea – I’m not sure how it’s relevant.

The causal nature of the universe implies either an infinite regress or an uncaused cause. I see no reason to rule out either. Neither of them specifically shows the existence of God. When an atheist asks “Who created God?” it is done to make the point that if the universe requires a cause then God must also. We have an infinite regress whether God exists or not. The common theist rebuttal – that God doesn’t need a cause, He always existed – is special pleading. If God can exist without requiring a cause then why can’t the universe? Why do we suspend causality to accommodate God? We must resign ourselves to the fact that either we have an infinite regression of causes or that something spontaneously appeared ex nihlo (perhaps a third possibility is a continuous loop of events with neither beginning nor end where the ‘last’ event is also the cause of the ‘first’)

As I mentioned before, the question of why there is anything when there could be nothing at all is one that is still (and, probably, will always be) outstanding. I think this what you were alluding to when you said that a materialistic explanation will always be lacking. It should be obvious that a theistic explanation will also be lacking in this respect. If you wish to call this ‘limit’ God then I won’t stop you but it makes no sense to ascribe a consciousness to it also.

You challenged me to show that the universe is more ‘thematically consistent’ with a material mechanism – I shall deal with this in my question.

When is Big D going to post? This is marioze53 btw (new handle)

Sorry guys. I realize this thread may be dead.  Perhaps we can resurrect it by the Will of Us?



1. Love:  I have refuted this in another thread but in a nutshell, here it is:
Love is an emotion, like hate or envy. It differs from person to person and is self-defined. If god is like love, then god is a self-defined emotion. Love is a chemical reaction, thus, god would be a chemical reaction.  If Pat means more than this, he must explain it more clearly.

(For example, Pat may be suggesting that if we can't explain sometihng but know it exists, then we don't need to explain god to know god exists. But this renders god unknowable except by an emotion - which many people have AND have different concepts of god. some are contradictory.  so it leaves us in a position in which atheism is still justified.)

2. I notice that no one has established that a universe that includes a god can be a basis for rationality.  By positing, as Pat seems to, that god's nature is ultimately unknowable, then we are left with a foundation of knowledge that is unknowable.

To say that we can't know god, then we can't know anything about gods creation. We can't know if the moon revolves around the Earth because of gravity or god, or if god created the Tsunami or not, or if god created malaria or not. We can't know if our hearts beat because of god or not, or whether the bible will have the same words in it tomorrow as it does today.  We could wake up tomorrow in a vastly different world and not know it - because god wills it.  And since we can't know gods nature, this is plausible.

To rest on inference - to rely on the events that precede - is meaningless in a god-filled universe - since god can overturn the laws of nature instantly and perfectly.  We would be none the wiser.

To posit that god wouldn't do that because he is good, or just, or...  is to speculate on gods nature: something that is impossible.  (PLus, you would have to rely on some basis for what "goodness" or "Justice" is, which falls apart since you have no anchor.)  Again, to claim god is that anchor is to presume a quality of something heretofore declared as unknowable.

Mar:
3. C.S. Lewis:
Lewis presumes, (a), that a god exists and would leave a trace of himself in man. This is a presumption without basis.
(b)Lewis assumes that we would know what the evidence or mark - or spoor - or god looks like.

True, we can examine ourselves, but that is it. To say that "kindness" is a sign of god is to presume that god would imbue that in us and not Nature. This, of course, presumes that one is familiar with the nature of god.


4. The revealed religions are simply evidence that Man has a propensity to imagine things beyond himself. He creates God in his image. And that he has a desire to create reasons for things.  Again, to presume this is "god spoor" is to understand the nature of god, not the nature of man.

5. Water and tea:
Why is the water boiling? Because of kinetic energy and because I wanted some tea.

Why did I want tea? Because I was dehydrated and thirsty, and based on my chemical make up I preferred tea. Why? because I have had tea before and the chemicals in my brain reminded me that it was effective for what I desired it for. Why? ......

I have answered the "why" in both cases through material methods.

6.  Beginning: It is difficult to imagine living underwater for our entire lives, but it actually happens with some species.  Just because it is alien to our nature doesn't make it wrong.

But you are arguing something different here, and as far as I can tell it is "I have a sense that infity is reserved for something "other"".

Well, I have a different sense. Is this enough to counter? I would need more for why you think this would lead somewhere.

7. Your third point could be an argument for atheism. We love drama (stories of other human beings' lives) and have created tales that take on more significance because they resonate with people.  (Some are written better than others). This would explain the writing of religious texts.

8. Your conclusion does not follow from your arguments. It seems to be a non sequiter.

yeah, yeah.... :-/

I had started a few more formal ones but lost them. Finally I just typed it out.
Hopefully, Mar comes back and joins in. I promise to make my responses more timely, even if not well thought out...

SORRY EVERYONE!!!!!

That delay is simply unacceptable >;-(  I win by default!

/jk 


I, of all people, understand perfectly. Take you time.