Part 5
Email Debate
with Ed (anon)
Part 5
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I guess you
simply don't get it.
Same to you.
You're welcome.
The question
is this....which worldview is the most
reasonable?
That's a subjective
question. To me, mine is. I'm sure to you, yours
is.
If you don't know if God
exists, then you must admit that He could.
You don't know if
invisible poodles with gills exist at the bottom of the ocean that care
deeply about your sex life. So you must admit that they could,
right?
Give me a reason to
believe.
You're straying from the meat of the matter.
I'm not asking you to believe it, I'm asking you to concede that it's
POSSIBLE, just as you are asking me to concede that your god's
existence is POSSIBLE. Do you agree that it's
POSSIBLE?
I contend
that if one really examines the evidence we DO have, it is more
logical to conclude that HE does exist.
I have examined it, and I
don't come to that conclusion. I'm not alone in this. There
are 30 million more like me in the U.S.
alone.
And there are 250 million more
like me. What does that prove?
It proves that what you consider to be some
fundamental logical proof, simply isn't, or it would be universally
accepted as such. I gave you a number to show that I'm not
alone in my reasoning of this fundamental fact; That what you
consider to be some universal logical truth in the matter of the existence
of god is not universally accepted, is not logically sound, and is not
universally conclusive. It therefore stands to reason that your
presumed logic is in error.
How do you logically conclude
HE does exist? What is the evidence? How do you logically
conclude that it's a "HE" rather than a "she" or an
"it"?
Your view
that something came from nothing without a cause is
absurd. It is unreasonable to make such a claim. I am shocked
that someone who actually claims to engage logic would posit such an
irrational view. From nothing, nothing comes. IF you can believe that
something came from nothing without a cause, what is so hard about
believing that God exists. There is not a shread of evidence anywhere that
anything has ever had a beginning without a
cause.
Once again, I never
stated something came from nothing without a cause.
That's 3 times now that I've told you
this. Try to
keep up your end of the conversation, please. Your continued use of
this straw man you keep trying to set up so you can easily knock it down
just isn't working. Sorry. Get over it and move
on.
So you admit that the universe
had a cause. Your answer is, "I don't
know."
Yes, I admit that the universe had a cause. "I
don't know" is the answer to the question, "WHAT is the
cause?"
Could a man do it? Nope! How about the entire human
race together? Nope!
So whatever it was, it must be
far more intelligent than us and far more powerful than us. Could
that be a biblical description of God. Hmmm.
You're assumption that it must be an intelligent
being of some sort is a giant leap without logical reason. It
could just as easily be a non-intelligent physical property of the
universe, as I have explained to you more than once now. Your
continued use of this straw man is intellectually dishonest, and I'm
getting pretty tired of it.
You simply have NO WAY to logically deduce that the
cause MUST BE intelligent, rather than a natural event of purely physical
consequence. You don't KNOW, just as I don't KNOW. Yet you
make a giant leap of logic to a supernatural explanation while I stay
within the KNOWN realm of natural, physical, mechanical properties of
the universe that we already know exists.
Your position is untenable, in that you posit a
supremely complex god must have created the universe because the universe
is supremely complex. If that is true, then god must have a creator
as well because he is supremely complex. And then his creator must
have had a creator, and so on for all of time, for the exact same
reasons.
If that's true and it is possible that there is
an endless series of gods creating one after the other, then it is just as
possible that there are an endless series of universes expanding and
contracting.
If it is possible that there is something which has
no beginning, such as the god you describe, it is equally possible that
there are other things which have no beginning, such as an endless series
of universes.
The whole point here is that we don't KNOW, so we
cannot declare with any certainty that it WAS (insert cause
here). We can only postulate on possibilities and probabilities in
that regard. And in that regard, your intelligent designer has no
more merit than any naturalistic explanation. Still, you have
the obligation to somehow define the characteristics of such a god to
fulfill your description of the cause. Saying, "God did it" without
proof that there even IS a god to do it is no explanation at
all.
Everything
that we see can be traced to a cause, everything! Therefore, it
is most rational to conclude that the universe, which we know had
a beginning also must have had a cause.
For the 3rd time, I agree; it had a
cause.
Let us also make
clear that every known thing in the universe can be detected
by some means. Therefore, it is most rational to
conclude that what absolutely cannot be detected probably does
not exist.
That is correct Buckster. But
who ever said that God was materially in the universe in the
first place?
If god is not materially in the
universe to be detected at all, how do you define god and what
makes you think he's somehow
'there'?
By the way, God can be detected
in many ways.
Then why are so many, like myself, unable to detect
god?
Why do humans love the way they
do.
Emotional responses based on physical, chemical
reactions in the brain are not evidence of a supernatural
entity.
Why do we have codes, rules, and
laws.
Codes, rules and laws have been invented by humans in
order to produce order and to protect individuals from harm. They
are not evidence of a supernatural entity.
Why is much worse to kill a baby
than it is to run over a squirrel?
It is a subjective view based on the fact that we are
humans. If we were squirrels, we might have a very different opinion
in the matter. This is not evidence of a supernatural
entity.
If there is no God, it is not.
But try selling that to a sensible human. We know better. That is
the image of God in our conscience.
No, that is the ideal of self preservation in
our conscience. It is not evidence of a supernatural
entity.
Cannot be denied. Some things
are absolutely right while others are absolutely wrong. Without
God, this makes no sense.
It makes every sense to do unto others only what you
would accept that they do unto you. That's morals 101. Every
culture throughout history has held that as a basic tenet of the human
condition. That is not evidence of a supernatural
entity.
Even Neiche said, "If God
is dead, someone must take His place. Kant posited God's
existence if for no other reason, that chaos would ensue. The
logical end of a world without God is disorder and moral
decedance beyond anything we have seen even in our
culture.
That purely philosophical view has yet to be proven,
but I call it into question by the mere fact that indigenous peoples
around the globe have had productive societies and cultures without
your god and without descending into some hellish nightmare of chaos and
moral decadence without him. It was only AFTER the introduction of
your god into society and culture that we had such hellish nightmares as
the Inquisition, witch-hunts, world wars and suicide bombings in the name
of god, among other god-based atrocities.
Buck
I am convinced
that for you, there would NEVER be enough evidence, that is,
until it is too late and you see your maker face to face, and
someday you will.
God could
easily convince me, if he was real and wanted to.
Arguement #1
Everything that had a beginning must have had a
cause.
The Universe had a beginning.
Therefore the universe had a
cause.
Your
answer.....Shrugging of the shoulders
My ACTUAL answer: Yes
it had a cause. I believe that cause was natural, physical
and mechanical, rather than supernatural, magical and
mystical. Hardly a
shrug of the shoulders.
My answer.....the bible records that God created the
universe out of nothing.
Science says the universe exploded into
existence.....from nothing.
Your
answer.....Shrugging of the shoulders
My ACTUAL answer: The
bible was written by men who guessed. No evidence supports
it.
Science
says, "we don't KNOW yet, but we're looking into several
possibilities.
My guess is the cause
is the burst of collected energy of the entire universe
before this one which had collapsed in upon itself into the
singularity from which this universe was born. Hardly a
shrug of the shoulders.
Arguement #2
Every design must have a
designer
The universe has tremendous
design.
Therefore, the
universe must have had a designer.
Your answer...shrugging of the
shoulders
My answer....God designed the
universe
The bible
records in detail, how God designed the earth over 6 days in
Genesis 1
My ACTUAL
answer: You cannot prove an intelligent design, only a
perceived design, based on your own perceptions in that
regard. If a drop of water falls into a puddle and
makes a design of concentric rings, that doesn't PROVE
that an intelligent designer made the rings, even though they
'appear' designed. The natural explanation, based
in the laws of physics, suffices entirely without intervention of
a supernatural entity.
Therefore,
your logic is fundamentally flawed.
The bible was written by men who guessed. No
evidence supports it.
Hardly a shrug of the
shoulders.
Argument #3
Every law must have a lawgiver.
It is undeniable that absolute moral law
exists.
Therefore there
must be a transcendent moral lawgiver.
Your
perception again. "Every law must have a lawgiver" is not an
absolute truth. You have no proof that the law of gravity has a
lawgiver. Nor do you have any proofs that the other physical laws of
the universe had a lawgiver. They are simply fundamental properties
of the universe in which we live.
There is no
absolute moral law. It is always subjective. While we may
agree universally on many laws at this time, that doesn't make them
absolute. For if circumstances were to change enough to require
changes in the law for survival, we would change
them.
Your flawed leap of logic that there MUST be a
transcendent moral lawgiver is without any proof, physically or
logically.
Based on these
three lines of evidence, which are supported by several lines of
evidence within the evidence, we can reasonably conclude that God
is very powerful..He created the universe, He is very careful and
loving, He designed the universe with great care and awesome
beauty, and finally, God is very holy, as is demonstrated in
moral law and the existence of good.
You have yet
to provide any evidence or proof of this. You simply state that it's
so. Your statements are NOT evidence. They are not
proof. They are simply ideas that have not yet been
demonstrated in any way that can elevate them to the status of being
defined as fundamental truth, proof or evidence. They are nothing
more than what you HOPE to be true in order to make your supernatural
story more tenable.
How can we
reasonably conclude that god is very powerful, careful and
loving, when we cannot yet reasonably conclude that god exists at
all? For you, it is enough to start with that conclusion
and then try to find ideas to support it. For the rest of
us, we need some actual evidence. A philosophical argument
is simply NOT PROOF. I'm sorry, it's just not, no
matter how many times you try to make it
so.
That you find the universe to be beautiful does not
prove that it was designed. I find the concentric circles in a
puddle beautiful, but I don't suddenly leap to the conclusion that some
intelligent entity is forming them before my eyes when the nature of
physics solves the riddle easily.
Would the bible
support such a view? Yes.
It's not so hard to believe that the bible would,
given that it was written by men who were guessing, based on what they
could see. They saw beauty just as you and I do, and concluded that
god made things beautiful. That doesn't prove god exists to
have done so though. And that's a big
difference.
What does agnosticism say about
this issue. It shrugs its shoulders.
It tells the truth. It is honest. It
says, we don't have enough evidence yet to
KNOW.
Why do you guys bother? If you
cannot know, then why do you bother. You say you study and put in
so much effort. Why? For someone holding your view it would seem
illogical to defend a position as hopeless as yours. If you
can't know, then sit down and shut up.
All of science starts with not knowing. If we
just sit down and shut up, we'd never KNOW anything. Sifting through
actual evidence, posing questions and testing their veracity is HOW we
come to conclusions. I realize this is foreign to you, as you start
with the answer, then try to build a case for it. What position am I
actually defending? The one that says, "I don't KNOW YET, but I am
interested in finding out." The one that says, "I don't know YET,
but since everything we've figured out so far has a natural explanation,
that seems like a good place to start looking for the answers." It's
not that we CAN'T know, only that we don't know
YET.
If you can know, then I
understand the argument and the search. But if I really believed
that you could not know, I wouldn't waste my time on such
matters.
I wouldn't
either. That's why I don't waste time looking for a
supernatural entity that cannot be physically or logically
defined or detected. It
would be a waste of time.
The fact is that
the infidel guy has a program discussing something that he says
he cannot know. How absurd an idea. What a waste of time. What is
it that you guys hope to accomplish? To open our eyes? To what?
The fact the we are all hopelessly blind? Do you know how foolish
that sounds. You fight theism for a reason. You know it and I
know it. You try to convince yourself that it is not true.
Because you know that IF it is, you have a lot to answer
for.
I live in the United States, a country
where there is supposedly a basic right to worship or believe in any way I
see fit, including not at all, as long as I bring no harm to others in
doing so. It is supposedly my inalienable right of
free conscience
and freedom of religion. No one is any less of a citizen for their
religious views according to our forefathers and the Constitution and Bill
of Rights, yet we have politicians like George Bush Sr. who get up in
front of the world and declare things like, "
No, I don't know that atheists should
be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This
is one nation under God."
You see, I live in a nation where my religious views are
not respected or represented, and are barely tolerated, in
violation of my basic civil rights as defined in the Bill of
Rights. Theists often scream at me to move to some
communist country if I want to be an atheist. Declaring
that I'm an atheist can get me beat up, fired and
ostracized from society. I consider this
to be fundamentally wrong and intolerant thinking. There is no
reason I should be viewed as some second class citizen for my religious
views. I don't barge into people's homes, churches or lives telling
them that they should not believe as they do. That is for every
individual to decide for himself
or herself. I respect that basic right for them, and I want
it respected for me and the 30 million like me in this country in
return.
What we hope to accomplish is to have the world
understand us better, so they can find out that we're not fundamentally
evil or immoral as they've been taught by their preachers. We're
normal, fun, loving, responsible citizens, people, parents, family and
friends, just like all of you, and we want to be treated as such,
regardless of our religious views. We want our religious views to
not be an issue. We don't want to have to hide it any longer out of
fear of reprisals.
We believe we are no more immoral on the whole than
any theist. We believe we should have the same basic civil rights as
any theist. We believe we should no longer be maligned by
representatives of our government the way Bush did any more than any other
minority in this country should be maligned by a representative of the
PEOPLE, of which we are a part. We believe we have as much of a
right to believe in no god(s) as you have to believe IN your god.
And we believe our reasons to justify our beliefs are as good as any
theists belief to justify their own.
We do not seek to convert you, only to open your mind
to the possibility that our truths are to us as reasonable and moral as
your truths are to you. We hope to build a bridge between us that
allows us to live together peacefully and productively without constant
threats and derision and political and social division or
ridicule.
Tell me how the
universe came to be? Why is there such great design? How can we
exist without moral law?
I've already
addressed all these questions for
you.
Now, if God
exists, and we have demonstated that it is reasonable to believe
that He does, then miracles are indeed possible. If miracles are
possible, then God can confirm a message and a messanger with
miracles. There are numerous OT prophecies surrounding Jesus,
which he fulfilled when he came, was born of a virgin, lived a
sinless life, worked many miracles, and raised from the
dead.
Again, you
start with your big "IF", then go on to assert that the rest is true
because of it. But it's only true "IF", you see? First, you
have to prove it. You have to find a way to move from "IF" to
"IS".
The OT
prophesies fulfilled...?
He came. Anyone could have claimed he was the one that
was prophesized as any scholar of the OT knew it was
prophesized. It says in the bible that Jesus deliberately
rode in on an ass (that he had his men steal for him)
to fulfill the prophesy he already knew
about. He deliberately
arranged it himself. Anyone could have done the same thing, given
the fact that they knew of the prophesy to be fulfilled. If there
was a prophesy that on September 1st of this year the messiah would return
on a donkey in the streets of Detroit, and I knew about it, and I rode
into the streets of Detroit on a donkey, would that PROVE that I AM the
returning messiah, or would it only PROVE that I knew of the prophesy and
took advantage of it? Do you see the dilemma
with this arranged fulfillment of a prophesy?
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Was born of a
virgin. Where did this idea come
from? From Mathew, who was quoting Isaiah. However,
Isaiah doesn't say "Virgin", does it bible
scholar? No, the passage of Isaiah reads in Hebrew as
follows: "Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben
vekarath shem-o immanuel."
As you certainly know from your own studies, in Hebrew, "ha-almah" means a young woman. The same word is translated in Exodus 21. 20 as a maid, and also in Proverbs 30.19. "Bethulah," a word that appears nowhere in the above quotation, is the Hebrew for "virgin," and is translated as such in Gen. 24.16, Lev. 21.3, 21.14, Deut. 22.19,. 22.23, 2 Samuel 13.2, Isaiah 23.12, 37.22, 47.1, Jer. 14.7, Lam. 1.15, Joel 1.8, and Amos 5.2. "Harah" is the past tense for "conceived." As in English, the past tense in Hebrew denotes completed action. Bernard Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, page 311 (1975). The above passage is honestly translated in the New English Bible: "A young woman is with child, and will bear a son, and will call him Immanuel." The book of Isaiah was written some 750 years before the alleged birth of Jesus Christ. Isaiah 7.14 did not refer to some uncertain virgin who would bear a child three-quarters of a millennium later. The whole idea that the virgin birth of Christ was predicted by Isaiah is a lie. As the writer of the Gospel according to Matthew knew enough Hebrew to correctly translate the meaning of "Immanuel," it follows that his mistranslation was a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. He lied to us, and he knew it. It is that plain and simple. The historical context of the passage in Isaiah is that of an assurance by Isaiah to King Ahaz that within a short time his enemies, Aram and Israel, would lose to him in battle. It has nothing at all to do with a savior who would die to redeem anyone's sins. In Isaiah 8, Isaiah tells us he personally made sure this prophecy was fulfilled: And I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived, and bare a son. . . Isaiah 8.3 (King James Version). Interestingly, it was King Ahaz who lost the battle. Aram and Israel destroyed his armies in a complete defeat. 2 Chronicles 28.5 The passage of Isaiah, rather than a prediction of the virgin birth of Jesus, is just another unfulfilled prophecy in the Old Testament. Jerome, who originally translated the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, knew of the error and insisted on perpetuating it rather than correcting it. He wrote: For at the present day, now that the whole world has embraced the faith, the Jews argue that when Isaiah says, 'behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' the Hebrew word denotes a young woman, and not a virgin; that is to say, the word is 'almah', and not 'bethulah.' Jerome, The Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary, vol. 6, page 336. Thus, another church father is indicted by his own
admissions. Along with Matthew and Jerome are dragged the writers of the
King James Version, who perpetuated the error for hundreds of years. Along
with them go the authors of the current Revised Edition, which has
repeated the error with a note in the margin that not one in a thousand
will see, and which falsely suggests that the original Hebrew is somehow
equivocal.
Lived a sinless
life. As the ENTIRE life of Jesus is not documented,
you can't possibly KNOW this beyond speculation. In fact, he
condemns anyone who says, "you fool", then says it himself. He
instructs his men to steal a donkey. He condemns his own mother, in
violation of the commandment to honor your father and mother. He
gets angry and flips over the money tables. He hangs out with
prostitutes and defends them, when god said they should be put to
death. He curses. He says he comes not to bring peace, but a
sword. What are swords used for? Killing. It would then
appear that he is not without sin, unless you want to redefine what sin
is. Worked many
miracles. And how do we KNOW this is true? How
do we know it wasn't a parlor trick. I once saw a magician make the
Statue of Liberty disappear, but I don't believe he really did it, do
you? He only caused my perception to change for a moment to fool my
mind a bit into thinking it had disappeared. We get all of the
miracle accounts from the text of the NT, which itself is hearsay evidence
at best. If I told you first hand that Elvis is sitting here right
now with me as I type this, would you believe me? Suppose I wrote it
in a book. Would you believe it then? Why not? And why
do you believe the stories in another book that are equally as far removed
from our perception of reality?
Raised from the dead. Which account in the NT would you like to use for this assertion? You do realize, as a bible apologist, that the 4 accounts given surrounding this particular miracle do not work together into a seamless story, right? No one to date has been able to reconcile them to any degree of satisfaction. See if you can do it: http://www.ffrf.org/lfif/stone.html Now we deal with the realiablity of the NT documents. We have eye
witness accounts of Christ and His resurrection, his sinless life
and His miracles.
Where are
these eyewitness
accounts?
Even the
Babalonian Talmud records that Christ worked magic in Israel and
deceived the people.
It is not a
first hand account, but rather an account based on what Christians
were saying at the time.
Other sources
record that Jesus' followers worshipped Him as
God.
Which
doesn't mean he WAS god, only that his followers thought so. David
Koresh's followers thought the same thing about David. Many others
have felt the same thing about their spiritual
leader. Are they all gods as well, or is it POSSIBLE that none of
them were?
These men died
for the truth of the resurrection. This is not only recorded in
the NT, but in secular records.
Martyrs for
belief systems do not automatically confirm that belief system to be
correct or true. If it did, you would have to re-evaluate the Muslim
faith based on the martyrs they have that overtook jets and crashed them
into buildings for their god and their faith. They believe just
as strongly and are just as willing to die for their beliefs as Jesus'
followers. Does that make them right, or does it make them religious
fanatics? What's the difference between them and Jesus'
followers?
There are
several other historians who wrote of Jesus and the controversy
surrounding His life and death as well as His
resurrection.
Who and when
did they write about him? Was it within his lifetime? Were
they eyewitnesses or did they write what they heard from other
sources?
Yet no credible
scholar would deny these claims or their validity.
I assume
that any scholar that questions these claims is automatically
dropped into the category "not credible" in
your opinion.
Am I to believe
that these disciples died some of the most brutal deaths for
something they knew to be a lie? Is that what you would ask me to
believe? Is that reasonable?
Am I to
believe that the Muslims that crashed into the WTC on 911 died some
of the most brutal and chilling deaths for something they KNEW to be a
lie? Is that what you're asking me to believe? Same thing, get
it? It doesn't PROVE their claim, it only PROVES they believed it
themselves. Do you understand the
difference?
So if the NT is
actually a realiable historical document, then we can conclude
that what is says happened, actually happened.
Start with another big "IF", then form a truth
conclusion on that "IF". You don't see the faulty logic error in
your continued use of this method?
The records we
have date back closer to their events than any other document of
antiquity. The men who wrote it, wrote of the highest of ethics
and died for them. Yet you say these men wrote lies, all the
while condemning such things and that they died for what they
knew was a lie.
No, I didn't say that at all. I said they are
not the only people in the world that ever wrote a book that they
considered to be a religious truth, and then died as martyrs for it.
You know this to be true. It's going on right now in the
world. Look at the Middle
East. Yet you don't give credence to any of the other books
or martyrs the way you do your own. Why is that? The
situations are parallel to each other in the terms you've outlined.
How do you choose one over another in that case? More martyrs die
for Islam than for Christianity, so if that's the measure of
believability, shouldn't you convert to Islam? Why
not?
What do you
believe? Shrugs shoulders......I don't know. Seems to me
Buckster that the only thing you do know is that I am wrong. But
how can you possibly know that I am wrong IF you don't know
and can't know anything for sure? The fact is, you
can't.
I don't KNOW that you're wrong, though I suspect
it, just as you can't KNOW the Muslims or any other religions are wrong,
though you probably suspect it. I do KNOW that there is the
POSSIBILITY that you're wrong, just as you must KNOW there is a
POSSIBILITY that the proponents of the many other religions are
wrong. Similarly, you can't KNOW that you're right, thought
you may believe you are, nor can you KNOW that I'm wrong, though you
may think so.
Here's the part
you fail to grasp: YOU DON'T KNOW any more than I
DO. The difference is
that I can be honest and admit it, while you remain afraid to be honest
about it. Your guesses are no better, nor more valid than
mine. You choose supernatural explanations to answer that which you
don't KNOW, while I choose natural explanations to answer that which I
don't KNOW.
If you KNEW, you wouldn't need
FAITH.
Hebrews 11:1 tells us that, "Faith is the assurance
of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." So when you have
faith, the bible tells us, it is for something you have not seen,
something you merely hope for; i.e. something for which you have no
evidence.
"Faith is the effort to believe what your common
sense tells you is not true." --Elbert
Hubbard
I commend you on your efforts in that regard.
I, however, am unable to make that particular leap of logic, of hope, of
faith, of reason.
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