A gay theist (gaytheist?) on the internet attempted to refute my recent post explaining why I'm an atheist. He claims it was "easy" and that I show a lack of understanding of science and philosophy! Ha! Nothing can be further from the truth. It's he who lacks in-depth understanding of physics, philosophy, religion, and atheism, and a refutation of his "refutation" was really easy for me, albeit just time consuming.
But since I'm off work for the next few days and I'm bored at home (it's freezing outside!) let me for the record refute his pathetic attempt at a refutation.
Here's his attempt at a refutation of my argument number 1. My original arguments can be read here.
1) The traditional notion of god isn't coherent
He responds:
The author here runs on a strawman argument. He simply does not understand the concept of God. The author assumes that God is subject to his terms or the terms of the understandings of man; that is to say, how we perceive and understand everything. He claims that theists resort to special pleading to address what he claims to be contradictions. However, he is doing exactly that. He argues that change requires times and fails to back this up. We know from cosmology that there was no time prior to cosmic inflation. Time is a product that came into existence after the "big bang." Despite this, a change did take place. If change did not take place, there would have been no "big bang" event. Moreover, the author fails to understand that God is a being, not a mere concept. This being is beyond all, transcends all. No theist, no atheist, no theologian or pope can ever truly understand God or explain Him. St. Augustine tried and experienced a vision of his angel as a young boy who was at the shore trying to put the ocean in a small hole in the sand. The boy went to and fro collecting water in a shell until St. Augustine stopped him and inquired as to what the boy was trying to do. The boy said he was trying to put the entire ocean in the hole he dug. St. Augustine brushed it off as a something that came out of a babe's mouth and explained that it was not possible for the ocean to be poured into a small hole. The boy replied that neither can he put the entirety of God into his mind.
Every time I'm told that a person has "refuted" atheism I'm sadly disappointed. This is one of those times. Here I'm clearly saying god is subject to logic. As I clearly wrote in the post, "god cannot do the logically impossible or be the logically impossible." These aren't my terms and conditions, or the limitations of human intellect, this is our ability to be logical. Deny this, and you throw all of logic out the window. That includes your ability to logically "prove" atheism false - or anything else. That change requires time is obvious and certain. To change requires two states of being that cannot exist at the same time, otherwise you'd get a contradiction: A = ￢A. This is logically impossible. That this guy doesn't understand that means he fails logic 101, and that means his assessment of the rest of the argument fails. This is why I like to get all theists to agree beforehand that god is not beyond logic. I do this because - exactly as I predict - theists resort to special pleading to explain away god's inconsistence. When he says god "is beyond all, transcends all. No theist, no atheist, no theologian or pope can ever truly understand God or explain Him," he is resorting to special pleading. If you can't coherently explain god, you can't coherently say god exists. This guy fails to do that. His response to argument 1 completely fails and did exactly what I predicted.
2) Since the universe is eternal no god could not have created it
His response:
Here the author makes a huge mistake. He shows his science illiteracy by claiming that the universe is eternal. The universe is not eternal. Our universe began at the big bang from a singularity and will end after it runs out of usable energy in about 15-20 billion years from now. This is called the "heat death." Some physicists believe that the universe will probably contract back into a singularity. They call this the "big crunch." In any event, our universe is not eternal; never was and never will be. Moreover, the universe is still expanding. To say that it is eternal makes no sense since eternity indicates the reaching of absoluteness. The universe is not at the point of expanded absoluteness. Clearly, the author has no grasp of cosmology or physics. The use of the content in the links he posted, along with his inferences demonstrates this. In fact, the late and great scientist, Carl Sagan stated this about the absurdity of atheism and the idea that no God exists:
Our universe had a cause. It is contingent upon an antecedence that existed prior to and external to it. I address more of this in my book "Atheism In Stupid." In reality, atheists simply substituted a conscious agent/designer with an unconscious one (http://www.sacerdotus.com/2013/10/atheism-is-stupid-iv.html).
Many, many mistakes with this response. Of course, he utterly fails to understand what eternalism is despite the fact that I linked to it in my post. Eternalism comes from special relativity, which I'm sure he knows very little about. On eternalism the universe can be eternal even if it has a finite number of moments to the big bang. I explained that fully in my post, and I even linked to a lengthy argument making the case for eternalism, as well as linked to the Wikipedia page on eternalism, and despite all of that, all this flew right over the head of this guy.
I can't blame him. He's ignorant. And understanding relativity and eternalism is complex and esoteric. Your average internet apologist just doesn't understand it. Once you understand eternalism, his entire response is blown to pieces. So what can I do to emphasize this point? Should I add an additional disclaimer, perhaps in bold to my original post? I think this is what I'll have to do. I don't want future people misunderstanding this argument, since it's very important.
Oh, and an atheist is not someone certain god doesn't exist.
3) Causality doesn't exist in the way we think it does
His response:
Again, the author does not understand causality nor cosmology. Our universe had a cause. There is no dispute on this. With the exception of one or two physicists, the consensus is that the universe had a cause. Albert Einstein once believed that the universe was static and eternal. He was proven wrong by Monsignor George Lemaitre who discovered cosmic inflation or the "big bang theory." The author is appealing to ignorance in this argument. On its merits, it falls apart when vetted against cosmology. The "first cause" cosmological argument for God does not fail at all. It can only fail if and when cosmologists locate what exactly triggered the "big bang" and if that trigger lacks contingency. To date, no such thing has happened. In fact, recent studies by CERN show the fact that the universe's existence does not make sense (see: http://www.sacerdotus.com/2017/10/cern-study-universe-should-not-exist.html). In the early moments of the "big bang," there was anti-matter and normal matter. These two should have annihilated themselves taking away with them the entire universe before it even expanded. However, this did not occur. Our universe has remained stable and continues to expand allowing for the anthropic principle to take fold. To claim that the universe had no cause and was just there is absurd and disregards the laws of thermodynamics within a closed system.
I don't understand causality? Please. First there is no consensus on whether the universe had a cause. He shows no evidence for that. This also is an argument ad populum - a logical fallacy, and a false consensus at that. What physicists understand causality to be is exactly what Sean Carroll said it was from Carroll's paper Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists:
From the perspective of modern science, events don’t have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to “sustain” a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so. Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about “causality”, but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one.
Although general relativity, from which George Lamaitre derived the big bang idea, did disproved Einstein's idea of the steady state universe, it also confirmed another eternal concept of the universe: eternalism. (Eternalism and the steady state model are not the same thing.) There are gravitational waves, gravitational waves have non-zero Weyl curvature, non-zero Weyl curvature is only possible in 4 or more dimensions, presentism is incompatible with a 4 dimensional world. Then, presentism is false. If presentism is false, his objection to number 2 and this argument are false.
There's no appeal to ignorance on my part, I appeal to what we know, not what we don't know. This guy is simply ignorant of special and general relativity and cosmology beyond a pop-cultural understanding of it. You see, in order to really debate cosmological arguments, you need more than a lay person's understanding of physics. This guy doesn't have that.
Once you understand eternalism and the fact that it negates causality as it is typically understood, the first cause argument is done. This guy make no cause for causality - he just asserts it's true. He doesn't defined what he means by "cause" at all, unlike what I did, nor did he attempt to refute my case. He just asserts "Our universe had a cause." It's not an argument, it's a claim.
4) The big bang does not say the universe came from "nothing"
His response:
And again, the author shows his/her ignorance of cosmology. The universe did, in fact, come from "nothing." Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin's calculations have demonstrated this. He is not alone. Other physicists such as Hawking, Kaku and even Krauss have posited that the universe came from nothing. As with everything else in physics, theories continue to be studied. Nevertheless, the consensus among physicists is that the universe did come from nothing. Some posit that the universe was the size of a proton and somehow contained the necessary gravitational force to begin expanding into what it is today. The idea of something coming from nothing seems mindboggling. However, it is not. Since gravitational energy is negative, it is, therefore, zero in a closed system. Matter is naturally positive and when added to the energy of gravity, it is equal to zero. Because of this, the existence and formation of a closed system universe where something comes from nothing is possible and does not violate the laws of conservation. The mathematics is clear and contradicts the author. Our universe did, in fact, come from nothing. It is understandable why some alleged atheists without a physics background can get confused. The word "nothing" in physics is also used to describe quantum fluctuations such as virtual particles. Neither Aquinas nor William Lane Craig has failed. In fact, Aquinas was ahead of his time. Had he known quantum physics or cosmology, his arguments would have been even stronger, scientifically speaking, since he pretty much nailed it despite using philosophy.
Vilenkin, Kaku, and Krauss all make the mistake of calling the quantum vacuum "nothing." If this guy read my response, he'd see that I clearly and logically showed that if the universe began at the big bang and there is no space or time before that, then there never was a state of nothing that existed. When physicists say the universe came from nothing, they don't literally mean there was a state of nothingness, and then *poof* you get a big bang. This is a problem of language, a problem of semantics that this guy clearly doesn't understand because he hasn't gotten advanced enough into the arguments. I think physicist Brian Greene said it best:
5) Argument from core theory
Science has made no such statement on the soul. In fact, many physicists and neurologists are acknowledging that there exists some form of immaterial energy that controls the body or gives life to it. Physicist Penrose conducted studies and came to the conclusion that the "soul" may exist within microtubules in brain neurons after he discovered quantum vibrations which account for randomness and behave as an algorithm within the human person. The topic is still under discussion among physicists and neurologists. Moreover, the author is wrong when he/she claims that 5% of the universe is made up of fermions and bosons. In fact, the number changes. Sometimes there are more. Sometimes they are equal, and so on. Any given matter particle will produce and absorb many particles within its existence. Because of this, we can surmise that there are more bosons than fermions. This static percentage that the author gives is nonsense. In regards to the Core Theory, the author is resorting to special pleading. He/she argues that because particles and forces account for each other, then there can be no room for any metaphysical interaction between the aforementioned. This is simply bad science. To date, physicists have not discovered all particles and forces in the universe. If this were the case, CERN would have shut down a long time ago. In fact, new particles are being discovered nearly every year. There is still a lot we do not understand on how our universe works. In fact, just last year, the large hadron collider discovered other particles and forces that operate apart from those in the Standard Model. This poses a big threat to the ideas presented in the Cord Theory (see: http://www.sacerdotus.com/2016/03/physics-standard-model-wrong.html
Science has indeed made a statement about the soul through scientists, and the data we have from science shows no soul. He proposes a highly (and I mean highly) speculative idea from Roger Penrose (who is fond of some woo) that the soul resides on microtubles in neurons. Are you kidding me? You're putting that up against the standard model? He says the percent of the universe that are made of fermions and bosons changes, but offers zero evidence of this (something he typically does).
He also doesn't understand the argument. We don't need to know all the forces and particles in the universe. All we need to know is all the forces and particles relevant to human beings, and that includes everything in the standard model and gravity. New quarks that the LHC discovered are irrelevant to human beings because we are not made of those heavy quarks, which rapidly decay. Core Theory covers everything you experience in your everyday lives, without exception. That includes what humans are made of — and humans are not made of, nor are they affected by dark matter, dark energy, or certain generations of heavy quarks. What we are made of is fully accounted for, and it leaves no room for the soul without violating the standard model.
What he wrote is literally the most common misunderstanding everyone has to the argument from Core Theory. That means he just doesn't understand the subject matter enough. B Mesons might also explain why our universe shouldn't exist.
6) Libertarian free will is incoherent
Here, the author makes so many mistakes. He/she claims that if our thoughts are caused or uncaused, that we cannot control them. This is ridiculous. He/she fails to take into account that our control is the cause. The fact that you and I can think of anything at any time, shows we are in control. The act of doing so shows the cause: our will in unison with the neurological structure of the brain. The author here is thinking in a linear sense and is completely ignorant of physics; particularly m-theory. We are in space and time, they have an effect on us. We exist in 4 dimensions (possibly up to 12) and are limited to them. We cannot perceive the others. To sum it up, string theory is the idea that particles are strings existing within and interacting with different dimensions. For example, string theory posits that what I am doing now is just one of the many outcomes within "reality." In this dimension I am blogging, in another, I could be blogging but chewing gum, etc etc. All of this can happen at the same time or at different times. You can test this with something that refracts light and a flashlight. When you put the beam on it, the light will "split" into parts pointing at different points. It is the same light, but they are at different points in space and time and in different dimensions. You can observe this because you are outside of that light, but if the light were conscious it would not be aware of this and would only be aware that it can exist at its respective point. In light of this (no pun intended), we know free will exists. Moreover, free will exists at an atomic level. Electrons and other particles behave in a random manner which allows for free will. This is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Nothing in the universe is deterministic. One of my former instructors, renown professor Dr. Kaku explains here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMNZQVyabiM. Determinism is not taken seriously by most philosophers, less by physicists. Here is a piece from philosopher Huemer:
Our control is the cause? This is the best argument he has? This is absurd. Our control can't be the cause because our control has to be caused itself. Or it has to be uncaused. And neither option allows for free will. You can't choose your thoughts before you have them, so the fact that you and I can think of anything at any time, doesn't show we are in control. It shows we can have different thoughts. Oh and by saying "We exist in 4 dimensions" is to admit eternalism, which is 4 dmensionalism. Once you have that, you negate free will. String theory is irrelevant here.
Quantum indeterminacy doesn't get you free will. It would mean your atoms are random fluctuations, and you cannot have control over random fluctuations because for something to truly be random it must be uncaused, and you can't have control over something uncaused. Dr. Kaku I'm afraid doesn't know what he's talking about.
My argument doesn't depend on determinism, it depends on logic. From his quote:
"1. We should refrain from accepting unjustified beliefs. (Premise; presupposition of reasoning.) 2. To say that one should do something implies that one can do it. (premise) 3. So we can refrain from accepting unjustified beliefs. (From 1, 2) 4. Assume that hard determinism is true. Then what we actually do is the only thing we can do - that is, what can be done is done. (Assumption, definition of hard determinism.) 5. Therefore, we have no unjustified beliefs. (From 3,4) 6. Many people believe in free will. (Premise.) 7. So the belief in free will justified. (From 5,6)."
Premise 2 is wrong. When a determinist says one should do something they don't know if they can in the future, but they do know that telling someone to do something increases the likelihood of that person doing it. Premise 3 is false in the sense that "can" doesn't mean "will." Premise 5 doesn't follow. And that means 7 is false.
Read here: "If Determinism Were True There'd Be No Reason To Try And Convince Anyone Of Anything"
7) Brute facts are unavoidable
His response:
Plagarizes? I simply list the trilemma and link to it. That's not plagarizing. I don't claim to have discovered this trilemma. So this guy has no idea what he's talking about. I don't claim that "God has an immutable nature, then there was no need to create a universe," I claim that god's will to create this universe is not necessary and once you allow that, the reason why god willed this universe must be contingent, and once you get that you get a dilemma. This guy has no clue about philosophy.
Here the author shows his/her ignorance of philosophy and even plagiarizes a Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Münchhausen_trilemma). The author argues that God has an immutable nature, then there was no need to create a universe. This is just a silly argument. God created the universe out of love. The creation is not necessary for Him, but it is for us because we exist in it. As a kid, I had an ant farm. I had no need for it in regards to survival. I had it because I wanted to care for ants and learn from them. Similarly, God has no need for a universe or humanity; not even the angels. He created them simply to share His love. A married couple has no need to have children. They do so because they want to start a family and share their love with their children. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
After that he goes over some Catholic dogma that states god created the world according to his wisdom, but not out of necessity - and that's my point! The explanation to why god created our world is not necessary, and that means it must be contingent, since those are your only two options. Then you get the dilemma. And my argument doesn't rely on there being one universe. There can be billions of universes and my argument would still work: why did god create these particular billion universes and not another billion? Same problem.
So he's clueless as to the problem he's in.
8) Omnibenevolence is incompatible with the natural evil of evolution
Here, the author cites Christopher Hitchens regarding a creator who is "cruel, incompetent etc." This is a common argument used by atheists which they believe is strong, but it really is not. The argument is very bad as it assumes that God is subject to our interpretation of morality or what is ethical. The author then argues that evolution somehow proves God does not exist or is cruel. This is a typical ridiculous argument made by alleged online atheists who do not have a grasp of science or theology. The idea that since mass extinctions occur in nature and that this proves God does not exist or is cruel is extremely silly. The author proceeds to make claims that the process of evolution is cruel and clumsy. Any evolutionary biologist would laugh at the idea. Natural selection is not a clumsy or evil process. Those organisms with the best genes and ability to survive are the one who do so. This makes perfect sense. In school, those who study hard pass while those who do not, fail. This does not make a teacher or school clumsy or evil. The author argues that "God knowingly chose a process that requires suffering that is logically unnecessary." We see here the poor argumentation made by the author. He/she assumes that suffering is a concept that is part of nature. It is not. Suffering is a social construct. It is a word that we give to a particular experience which we describe as unpleasant. What is suffering exactly? Philosophers debate this all the time. Is suffering when a child is forced to eat vegetables? How so? Are not vegetables good for the child? I make this point to show that we must define suffering properly and place it in the proper perspective. The author uses it in a fallacious way when he/she applies it to the evolutionary process. Moreover, the author fails to acknowledge that sin brought death and suffering to the world (Genesis 3:14-19; 4:1-15, Romans 5:12, Romans 8:20-22). God did not create suffering or evil. These are not real things that exist in nature. They are the privation of what is pleasant and good. Similarly, darkness is not a real thing that exists. It is just the absence of light which does exist. Any mass extinctions or disappearance of species of earth is not "suffering" or "evil." These are just the consequences of real processes that happen in nature. The idea that suffering invalidates God's omnibenevolence is based on poor reasoning. I wrote in my book Atheism Is Stupid an extensive refutation of the so-called "Problem of Evil." In the refutation, I wrote,
Many, many problems with this attempt to rebut my evolutionary argument against god. First, I assume the Christian's own moral claims and beliefs, not my own. I'm simply taking the idea of infinite goodness the theist claims god is, and then showing how that is not compatible with the cruelty of evolution. No evolutionary biologist will say evolution isn't cruel or clumsy. They all know it is blind and the organisms who do not have the best genes die an often painful death. He forgot to mention that. Comparing studying school to inherited genes is beyond silly - you can't study or do anything for better inherited genes!
Suffering is a social construct? Um what? I think being eaten alive qualifies as objective suffering. I think being burned to death in a forest fire qualifies as suffering. I think having a wasp's larva eat you alive from the inside qualifies as suffering. There's no fallaciousness on my part here.
And appealing to Genesis as a literal history is fallacious. There was no Adam and Eve. Animals have been suffering and dying for millions of years before humans even existed. This guy's a creationist and has no clue about science. You can't claim you know about science and be a creationist! That's ridiculous to the point of insanity.
If his book is anything as bad as his arguments in this post, his book is high school level apologetics, at best!
9) No god of any religion is compatible with the ontological argument for god
This is another ridiculous argument. To suggest that no God of any religion is compatible with the ontological argument for God is just silly. The Ontological argument for God from St. Anselm posits that since we can conceive the idea of greatest conceivable being, then God must exist since our minds allow for this conception. The argument is strong on that point but weak on others. It does beg the question as to why we can think of such a great being. However, it can also leave it open to conceive any other entity as being great, i.e "Flying spaghetti monster or Russell's Teapot." The author attempts to capitalize this by claiming that any religion can formulate any great being. He/she uses Yahweh as an example. He/she writes:
I use Yahweh as an example because Yahweh is the Christian god, and I can easily conceive of a god greater than Yahweh. He never addresses this point, which means he doesn't address my argument!
Saying, "There is ONE GOD and over 3,000 ways man has tried to describe Him," is absurd because those 3000 gods all have different incompatible traits. It also does nothing to refute my argument. He finishes with:
The author even acknowledges that his argument does not disprove God's existence. This speaks volume of the poor reasoning.
This guy is extremely stupid because I explicitly said in that argument that "This doesn't disprove god per se, but it shows that none of the concepts of god in any existing religion can even meet the standards of greatest conceivable being, and therefore none can be god."
He's completely dishonest and/or ignorant.
10) Euthyphro's trilemma
Here the author recycles the banal Euthyphro's dilemma which is geared towards polytheism, not monotheism. The dilemma posits whether or not good exists independent of God. Does God ordain something as good because it is independently good or is it Good because God ordained it as so? This is pretty much the dilemma posited in Euthyphro's thought experiment. The author assumes that the theist has a problem when trying to address this. In reality, the atheist is the one who has the problem. God is good. God is the fullness of goodness and love. God is love (1 John 4:8). Goodness and love do not exist as separate entities from God. As stated before, when God created everything, He said that it was "good." This means that God is the one who defines what is a "good." The goodness of something does not exist independently of God. Call to mind what I wrote before about pleasure etc being social constructs. In light of this, what is good and evil is often defined by man in different ways based on circumstance and experience (ie hamburger example).
He's totally clueless as to the problem he's in because he has a high school level understanding of philosophy and apologetics. But he says "God is the one who defines what is a 'good.'" That would be saying morality is arbitrarily decided by god. In other words, god could say murder was good. Answer this: Why is god good? He can't answer without falling into the above dilemma. There's no lack of reasoning and knowledge on ontology. He's clueless about ethics.
11) Religious belief is product of the brain
His response:
Here, the author relies on terminology from Michael Shermer. Shermer borrowed these ideas from cognitive psychology which posts the phenomenon of pareidolia and so on. The author then describes how patternicity and agenticity developed via evolution to allow for greater survival against predators and the like. The problem here is that the author and Shermer distort science to push a narrative that is self-contradictory. They claim that seeing patterns and agents that are not there is hardwired into us. We, in turn, say they are ghosts, angels, gods and so on. Now, look carefully at what the author wrote, "What does all this mean? It means that seeing patterns and agents that aren't there is hardwired into our brains..." Do you see the problem here? The author makes a huge contradiction. How can one detect patterns and agents that are not there? In other words, how can one assign a conceptual pattern to patterns and agencies that are not there? This makes no sense. Both the author and Shermer rely on special pleading to make the claim that these undetectable patterns and agencies "manifest into belief in spirits, demons, angels, ghosts, and gods." The truth of the matter is that we are all hard-wired to believe in God, not ghosts, spirits or anything else. Scientist Graham Lawton who is an atheist himself has stated that atheism is naturally impossible. It simply does not exist.
There is no problem or contradiction. It's very easy to detect patterns that aren't there. Childishly easy. In fact, that was already explained in my argument! This idiot just completely ignores it and then asks a question about the very thing that I explained. We detect them because we have a tendency for false positives and I explained why. That is undeniable. Shermer doesn't claim they're undetectable, he claims they're detectable and he explains why this is the case. We're not hardwired to only believe in "God." He produces zero evidence for that. He continues.
This scientific view is supported by another atheist scientist, Pascal Boyer. Now let us assume that this author and Shermer are correct. We believe in gods because of evolution. The idea does not make any sense. Evolution prepares an organism to survive in nature. The key word is nature. It will not benefit an organism to look for patterns and agencies not found in nature when actual natural dangers exist. In other words, it is not possible for organisms to evolve to believe in supernatural agencies and patterns unless the organism was preexposed to them and this allowed for evolution to process the tangible stimuli. The author and Shermer inadvertently acknowledge the existence of the supernatural via their arguments.
Organisms will survive better in nature because having a false positive is much better than a false negative. That's why animals in nature that are at the bottom of the food chain are constantly paranoid. I explained why we have false positives and why that helped our survival, yet again he asks a question that was explained in the post! This makes his last two sentences completely false. This guy is utterly inept at logic and reason.
12) All the arguments for god fail
His response:
The author claims that all arguments for God fail. This is simply not true and is why atheism is on the decline worldwide. It is nearly extinct in Russia! Atheism has no answers, only misconceptions. Everything that begins to exist does, in fact, have a cause. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of science and philosophy who rely on the principle of causality. The author him/herself is a product of causality. His parents copulated which allowed for fertilization. At conception, the author came to be. He began to exist as a separate organism on this earth. To say otherwise is nonsense and disturbing. I have already demonstrated that the universe did come out of nothing. The author is simply not well-informed on science. His statements show his lack of knowledge. I refuted his "brute facts" easily using science and philosophy. Had the author done his/her homework, he/she would not have made this post showing such disdain for facts. The premise of KCA does not negate free will. I have demonstrated this using physics and philosophy in my previous refutations.
Atheism is declining? Um, has this guy read anything in the last 10 years on the subject? The number of atheists is increasing (See here: Number Of Religiously Unaffiliated "Nones" In US Rises to 25%) Atheism isn't supposed to provide answers, it's just lack of belief in any god. Nothing begins to exist because that presupposes presentism, which begs the question. Nothing in science relies on the "principle of causality." In fact, it's science that negates the principle of causality. Read Sean Carroll's quote above. Causality is a derived term, not a fundamental one. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. He never refuted any brute facts of mine and he's simply delusional if he thinks he did. He never shows the KCA doesn't negate free will. He must be one of those people who thinks that asserting the opposite of what I said is an argument.
The author's criticism of the Fine-Tuning argument shows that his/her own arguments need fine-tuning. His/her criticisms are based on misconceptions, poor understanding of science and philosophy, and a heavy reliance on special pleading. The author presents him/herself as the authority or archetypal source for how a universe is to be created and run. Nothing in the fine-tuning argument suggests that God could only create the universe in one specific way. This is just nonsense from the author. The author claims that the Moral Argument is negated by his premise listed in 10. However, I have demonstrated his argument to be faulty. He/she simply lacks the understanding of science, philosophy, and theology to adequately make a strong critique of the moral argument. The same is done with the ontological argument. The author claims to have refuted it, in reality, the author simply showed his/her poor understanding of the argument and how it applies to theology. There is no contradiction or circular argument. The author's ignorance is the problem here when vetted against philosophy, theology and the arguments themselves. In a rush to "refute" the arguments, the author failed to understand them and address their points. What we see is the author pushing a narrative based on misinformation and misconception.
The fine tuning argument does indeed suggest god can only create humans one way. If god could create humans a trillion physical ways, then there's a trillion ways humans could physically exist, and the fine tuning argument is rendered false. He just asserts god is good to refute my rebuttal to the moral argument, but I already addressed that. Claiming I'm wrong isn't an argument. It's an assertion.
13) All religions appear man made
His response:
Not all religions are man-made. Only Judaism and Catholicism can describe themselves as revealed religions. God directly founded them. Judaism began with Abraham and Catholicism via Jesus Christ who is the Son of God and the second person of the Holy Trinity. The author makes the suggestion that religious texts are inconsistent and fail to be corroborated by history and archaeology. This is simply not true. The author is clearly working with misconceptions and not facts. Israel has many archaeological sites that prove the events of the Bible. To reject them is to reject science and foster antisemitism. The tomb of David is there, the sites holy to Judaism and Christianity are there. They are all verified by archaeologists, historians, and biblical scholars. Just last year, the University of Tel Aviv release a study that showed that the writers of the scriptures were not illiterate goat herders and that their content corroborates with discoveries in archaeology (see:
http://www.sacerdotus.com/2016/04/illiterate-bronze-age-goat-herders.html). Just recently, the story of Joshua's battle at Gibeon was confirmed by the journal Astronomy & Geophysics (see: ). There are many more sources one can find online that show that the events of the Bible are historical and supported by hard evidence and documentation. Nothing in the Bible is contradictory. The Bible is a collection of books written at different points in time, by different people and to different audiences. The contradictions atheists claim exist are due to their lack of comprehension of the literary styles and the methodology of how to interpret ancient texts. I can guarantee that this author has never taken any biblical studies course. He or she is relying on banal arguments circulating on the internet which is never vetted against scholarship.
Um, virtually all religions describe themselves as revealed religions. Nothing about Judaism or Christianity is special. I already showed archeology contradicts the Bible, and he doesn't refute that:
As evidence to support his claim that the Bible doesn't appear man made, he links to a post he wrote that the Bible records a solar eclipse accurately. And this somehow is suppose to prove the Bible as a whole is compatible with science? This is a horrible attempt at logic. Many ancient societies recorded astrological events. The Chinese recorded one of the earliest in 1302 BC. By his logic, ancient Chinese religions are true. My position is not that everything in the Bible is historically false. My view is that many of the Bible's historical claims are false. The Jewish enslavement in Egypt, the exodus, wandering Sinai for 40 years, the military conquest of Canaan — the central stories in the books of Moses (who didn't exist), none of them have been shown to be archaeological by science (and this includes a historical Adam and Eve). Showing that the Israelites recorded an eclipse doesn't in any way show the Bible's central historical claims are true
And it's total bullshit to claim that it's antisemitic to say the Old Testament's claims weren't historical. This is coming from a guy who thinks Adam and Eve were historical! Enough said.
This is the stupidest response ever. Are you telling me that 2,000 years ago man couldn't handle the idea of evolution, DNA or germs? Humans would be "scared out of their wits"? So it was ok to reveal to them laws that condone sexism and slavery, and killing people for working on the Sabbath, killing people for worshiping other gods, genocide - and that wouldn't "scared out of their wits"? This is absurd! It's what I hear over and over again from theists on this issue: god couldn't reveal actual scientific truths because it humans couldn't handle it. That's utterly absurd. He's saying they could handle the death penalty for certain kinds of sex, being witches, working on the wrong day, being rude to mommy and daddy, and a host of other nonsense, but can't handle germs, a heliocentric solar system, DNA, or any other unknown scientific knowledge at the time? Please! Don't insult my intelligence. This is obviously an excuse theists give because they know their religion contains all the scientific ignorance of the time and no knew knowledge that was detailed and specific — which an all knowing god could easily do. The point of this knowledge is not to make people go to heaven, it's would be to prove the revelations in Judaism really came from an all-knowing god by containing facts no one knew or could know at that time. This would make Christianity more believable. Instead, it's ignorance fails to distinguish it from all the other religions of the time. This is totally lost on this guy.
Then he makes the claim about all knowledge coming from god. Two words: prove it! Lastly, he says "It makes no sense for someone who denies the existence of God to be fixated on something he/she believes does not exist." Well by that logic, it makes no sense for someone who believes in god to be fixated on the disbelief in god. He's espousing high school level apologetics. The reason why some atheists like me focus on religion so much is because other people believe it and use that belief to discriminate against others or kill. That's why we're motivated to destroy religious belief. Your belief affects me. Just to take a recent example in the US, judge Roy Moore in Alabama who's currently running for senate uses the Bible to justify discrimination against homosexuals (which this author is!), discrimination against atheists (which I am), and Moore's colleague even used religion to justify him messing around with under age girls by saying Joseph was married to Mary when she was a teenager! This is why we atheists want to destroy religion. Not because we think it's true, or that god exists, it's because we see how wrong and harmful it is. We care about people understanding truth.
He writes:
This guy thinks he's "refuted" me! He's busy patting himself on the back at what he thinks is a job well done. What he doesn't realize is that every single one of his responses utterly fails to refute my arguments. Every single one. He completely fails to properly understand science, and has shown he only has a pop-culture understanding of it. He's completely ignorant of eternalism - which I mentioned over and over again and linked to. He apparently didn't click on a single one of my hyperlinks. Several times he asked questions about things that I had already answered because he completely ignored arguments I made. This shows he's either a liar or completely inept at analytical thinking. I think he's both. If his book is anything like the caliber of these arguments I can safely say that his book is high school level apologetics based on ignorance to science, philosophy, religion, and of course, atheism! And that characterizes the vast majority of the apologetics out there.
Don't waste your time on his book.
And it's total bullshit to claim that it's antisemitic to say the Old Testament's claims weren't historical. This is coming from a guy who thinks Adam and Eve were historical! Enough said.
The author asks, "If there was indeed an all-knowing creator who revealed himself, why would he do it in such a way that contained all the ignorance extant of that time? Why not include a few detailed verses about something like evolution, DNA or germs which no one knew about at that time?" This question shows a poor understanding of the term Divine Pedagogy. Divine Pedagogy is the idea that God guides man throughout history, slowly revealing Himself based on man's level of understanding and abilities. Think of it as Star Trek's "Prime Directive." In the franchise, the Prime Directive exists to prevent advance cultures from interfering in primitive ones. God reveals Himself to man based on his lived experience. This makes sense due to man's paranoia when encountering new things or alien things. Take the age of exploration for example. When White European men landed in the western hemisphere, some native tribes mistook them as gods. The experience of pale face humans riding on huge animals we call horses must have been frightening. If that made a huge impact on man, imagine if God appeared to man as He really is? How many people will be scared out of their wits? Imagine the panic! God reveals Himself to man based on his lived experience. This is why Jesus came as a poor baby and lived as a commoner. He could have come with pomp and circumstance, but He chose to do it in a humble way to show that God understands us at all levels. God loves man and wants man to be with Him for eternity to live in bliss and love. Knowledge of DNA etc will not bring about this end. Moreover, who is to say that God did not reveal the knowledge that we have now? All knowledge comes from God. However, knowledge of the natural world will do nothing to make man good or holy. Grace and our response to it is what matters in the scope of things. I assume and hope that God will reveal how He made the universe at the end of time. This would be awesome. God is too awesome to be processed all at once. Human beings are finite creatures with finite minds. It is impossible for the finite to process the infinite. This is why we are hard-wired. Atheists are not immune to this. This is why they seek God as well. It makes no sense for someone who denies the existence of God to be fixated on something he/she believes does not exist.
This is the stupidest response ever. Are you telling me that 2,000 years ago man couldn't handle the idea of evolution, DNA or germs? Humans would be "scared out of their wits"? So it was ok to reveal to them laws that condone sexism and slavery, and killing people for working on the Sabbath, killing people for worshiping other gods, genocide - and that wouldn't "scared out of their wits"? This is absurd! It's what I hear over and over again from theists on this issue: god couldn't reveal actual scientific truths because it humans couldn't handle it. That's utterly absurd. He's saying they could handle the death penalty for certain kinds of sex, being witches, working on the wrong day, being rude to mommy and daddy, and a host of other nonsense, but can't handle germs, a heliocentric solar system, DNA, or any other unknown scientific knowledge at the time? Please! Don't insult my intelligence. This is obviously an excuse theists give because they know their religion contains all the scientific ignorance of the time and no knew knowledge that was detailed and specific — which an all knowing god could easily do. The point of this knowledge is not to make people go to heaven, it's would be to prove the revelations in Judaism really came from an all-knowing god by containing facts no one knew or could know at that time. This would make Christianity more believable. Instead, it's ignorance fails to distinguish it from all the other religions of the time. This is totally lost on this guy.
Then he makes the claim about all knowledge coming from god. Two words: prove it! Lastly, he says "It makes no sense for someone who denies the existence of God to be fixated on something he/she believes does not exist." Well by that logic, it makes no sense for someone who believes in god to be fixated on the disbelief in god. He's espousing high school level apologetics. The reason why some atheists like me focus on religion so much is because other people believe it and use that belief to discriminate against others or kill. That's why we're motivated to destroy religious belief. Your belief affects me. Just to take a recent example in the US, judge Roy Moore in Alabama who's currently running for senate uses the Bible to justify discrimination against homosexuals (which this author is!), discrimination against atheists (which I am), and Moore's colleague even used religion to justify him messing around with under age girls by saying Joseph was married to Mary when she was a teenager! This is why we atheists want to destroy religion. Not because we think it's true, or that god exists, it's because we see how wrong and harmful it is. We care about people understanding truth.
In summary
He writes:
The author outlined 13 bad reasons to be an atheist. I have shown why these arguments failed when vetted against reason, science, philosophy, and theology. The facts are simply not on the side of atheism. Only the cognitively lethargic would believe that these 13 arguments presented by this atheist author refute God or religion. They do the contrary. They show that Atheism Is Stupid, which is the conclusion I came to after being an atheist most of my life and why I chose the words at the title of my books. There exists no atheist who can make a strong argument for atheism. Atheism is a fictitious premise that runs on misconceptions as fact. It distorts science and philosophy to meet its ends of deception and ignorance. My book refutes this author's arguments more deeply as well as other commonly used arguments. I recommend you get a copy and learn why Atheism Is Stupid when vetted against science, philosophy and so on.
This guy thinks he's "refuted" me! He's busy patting himself on the back at what he thinks is a job well done. What he doesn't realize is that every single one of his responses utterly fails to refute my arguments. Every single one. He completely fails to properly understand science, and has shown he only has a pop-culture understanding of it. He's completely ignorant of eternalism - which I mentioned over and over again and linked to. He apparently didn't click on a single one of my hyperlinks. Several times he asked questions about things that I had already answered because he completely ignored arguments I made. This shows he's either a liar or completely inept at analytical thinking. I think he's both. If his book is anything like the caliber of these arguments I can safely say that his book is high school level apologetics based on ignorance to science, philosophy, religion, and of course, atheism! And that characterizes the vast majority of the apologetics out there.
Don't waste your time on his book.
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