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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Indeed, tooth decay, cancer, piles, these seem an odd creation for a being that is "generous, of pure good" to me. What's purely good about designing and creating things like predation, children with cancer, parasitic organisms or disfiguring birth defects?
Also adding to Sheldon's post, lots of theist believe a person becomes a person the moment the sperm enters the egg, and gets a soul etc.
Anywhere from 30-60 percent of all fertilized eggs do not make it to healthy birth. God (any god) apparently changes his mind a lot. And that is just in modern times. Back before people realized cleaning your hands and basic sanitation, those numbers were even higher, and birth frequently killed the mother as well.
(why didn't god when passing down the commandments/instructions etc not mention sanitation to save untold billions of lives?) And why didn't this perfect god give women larger hips and birth canals to better accommodate the large head of a baby?
If physical reality knows of nothing more empty than a total vacuum (with its quantum fluctuations), as seems to be the case, then you have your "necessary existent." That would be as "nothing" as you could get, meaning that it would always have to be there since it's the ground floor. You could never have a more "nothing" state from which it might originate. I just don't see the point in praying to a quantum vacuum!
There is also the little matter of time being a component of Einstein's spacetime, which can be curved in all kinds of ways. Your idea of time as a kind of straight ruler going out to infinity on both sides is a risky assumption. It's one of the complications that first-cause arguments don't address. Such arguments are stuck in medieval views of time and causation, views that modern physics have abandoned!
Your assumption that a philosopher's idea of absolute nothing has any meaning in our physical reality is just an assumption, one that I can't even wrap my mind around. It's probably an incoherent idea, something like a square circle.
Aside from the above, you can't reason God into existence! You really do have to look at the universe we live in! In my justification of the scientific approach (thread = "On Converting Atheists" - calhais [08/03/2018 14:48]), and in some of the follow-up posts, I explain why pure reason will never give a proof of any god.
"you can't reason God into existence!"
Especially when these arguments have little to do with the religions that spawned them. A deity that took billions of years to get to evolving humans just a couple of hundred thousand years ago, then waited until 2 thousand years ago to intervene in ancient Palestine of all places.
"If physical reality knows of nothing more empty than a total vacuum"
Thinking that physical reality is the only absolute reality is fallacious.. you have to prove this presupposition...
The necessary being is immaterial, so we cannot suppose that it is bound by time and space..
"That would be as "nothing" as you could get"
The necessary being is not "nothing", if you carefully read the proof, we know that oneof its features is "Oneness"
"Your idea of time as a kind of straight ruler going out to infinity on both sides is a risky assumption."
Where have I mentioned "time" in the entire argument?
"I explain why pure reason will never give a proof of any god."
Explaining is different from proving...
Clean up! Aisle Four. Someone left another dump.
rmfr
Har!
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Attach Image/Video?:
avicenna,
Thinking that speculation about things beyond what we actually know is more important than what we know is folly! We can detect the physical reality. On what basis do you claim that something more exists? If you want to sell us on the concept of an immaterial being outside of time and space, then you have a lot of work to do! To begin with you have to come up with serious evidence; reasoning God into existence doesn't work as I pointed out in an old post that I referenced.
My point was that the fabric of space (or space-time if you wish) at the chaotic level of quantum fluctuations may be as "nothing" as nothing can get, the absolute basement level of reality as it were. Therefore, it would always have been present in some form. It has no creator and no beginning. Since your argument for God is based on a misunderstanding of logic, the details having been presented in one of my referenced posts, it would be pointless to talk about the qualities of such a being. Your point about "oneness" is neither here nor there.
The idea of a first cause, and the problem of an infinite regression, are largely contingent on the antiquated ideas of linear time and causality. What can we mean by a "first" cause when there is no such animal as an absolute moment of time in the universe? What comes first may depend on the observer, something that Einstein discovered.
Asking for "proof" here is wrongheaded! "Proof" is for mathematics and systems of deductive logic whose postulates are "givens." A good explanation, i.e., a good model of reality arrived at by inductive reasoning, is as credible as it gets in reaching conclusions about our universe, our physical reality.
"On what basis do you claim that something more exists?"
I am only saying that we can't be certain if there is more or not, I am not presupposing things like you
" Since your argument for God is based on a misunderstanding of logic"
This is again without evidence..you think that I depend on principles such as first cause or infinite regression, but I don't .. the argument uses the pure basic concepts of logic, if you want to argue against it, you have to present a counterargument.
"The idea of a first cause, and the problem of an infinite regression, are largely contingent on the antiquated ideas of linear time and causality. What can we mean by a "first" cause when there is no such animal as an absolute moment of time in the universe? What comes first may depend on the observer, something that Einstein discovered."
But the argument uses neither idea...I think you didn't understand the argument.
"Your point about "oneness" is neither here nor there."
Read further in the argument
"a good model of reality arrived at by inductive reasoning, is as credible as it gets in reaching conclusions about our universe"
we have no such complete model, thus we use deduction
"I am only saying that we can't be certain if there is more or not, I am not presupposing things like you"
This is such a complete misrepresentation of the respective positions it's almost Orwellian.
You absolutely are presupposing something for which you can demonstrate no objective evidence, it's asinine to deny it given this thread is predicated on precisely that position.
Greensnake on the other hand presupposes nothing. On the contrary, and in the post you responded to, he quite specifically said it made no sense to focus on what we dont know as you are doing to weasel your deity into existence, rather than focusing on what we know is properly evidenced.
Atheism is not a claim or a belief that no deity exists. This is a fundamental mistake many theists make. It's either a basic ignorance of logic and epistemology, or a mendacious attempt to reverse the burden of proof because you know you have no evidence for your belief.
No one needs to present contrary evidence to disbelieve something. That's specious logic as it would mean we'd have to lend credence to all unfalsifiable claims.
Do you even know what falsifiability is, and how it's used? You certainly don't give the impression you do.
It's a fact that the natural physical material universe exists. You are claiming there is more. It's for you to demonstrate credible objective evidence for this claim. No one has to prove it wrong, Hitchens's razor applies.
Is your necessary being God?
What evidence do you have that a necessary begin exist?
How can you prove a necessary being exist outside of space and time?
Someone needs a hug.
Whose mon (紋) is that?
Something is only a necessary existent if it exists. The "proof" doesn't actually provide any evidence that god exists, nevermind that it is a necessary existent.
Did you read the argument? the entire proof is about proving your points...If you have a proper counterargument please address it.
Damnit. Clean up. Aisle Six. Another dump left.
rmfr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_the_Truthful#The_necessary_existent
So basically, the universe must be necessary because it exists, and the universe represents "Oneness" because the whole is necessarily unique...therefore god necessarily exists. Hmm, I think my first counterargument was sufficient.
"the universe must be necessary because it exists"
yes but going further in the argument, we come to know that the universe isn't necessary because it has constituents ..
"we come to know that the universe isn't necessary because it has constituents .."
In its current form. How do you know this was always the case?
While we're at it, how can you assert your deity doesn't have constituents, it's not as if you can demonstrate any evidence to support the claim, or test the claim in any objective way.
This has already been shown to be false. Physicists are always detecting particles popping into and out of existence with no detectable cause. It is called Quantum Mechanics. Research it.
Rest of your post you plagiarized is moot.
rmfr
"This has already been shown to be false. Physicists are always detecting particles popping into and out of existence with no detectable cause."
Shown?? It just shows that we are not advanced yet to detect its cause... It does not prove anything... I would like you to show me a proof of your statement.
I am rather shocked that you refer to science to prove something... science depends on induction.. who told you that science is certain?
"Rest of your post you plagiarized is moot."
moot? show it please...
arakish never said science was certain, the word he used was shown, as in demonstrated with proper evidence.
"we are not advanced yet to detect its cause."
And yet you are ok assuming it has a cause, oddly incongruous reasoning.
"moot? show it please...
You already did. Right here.
Sorry ass weasel. Deleted your OP. That is alright, just look at every letter you have posted.
rmfr
I'm still looking for the proof. Anyone got a link to the formal proof? Or is this one of those games where we have to guess the postulates, then have someone tell us they are not the postulates, then they claim victory because we were unable to produce any criticism of a proof we have never seen?
Here is a direct link...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_the_Truthful#Argument
Clean up. Aisle 14. Someone has a serious intestinal problem leaving all these dumps.
rmfr
Link to what?
That isn't a formal proof. If you feel that it is a formal proof, or that it is foolish to ask for the formal version; please tell us what are the first, second, and third postulates. So we have something to start with.
It is a compound proof..
it is based on several arguments thus it is easier to read it that way rather than writing postulates..
So you got lazy. You are using other people writing, because you have nothing original to write.
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