Theftz22
Smash Lord
So I would have liked to have debated people on my post that I made in the Is God...PG Version thread, but I was running low on time, and I realized the posts would make it hard for other discussions to continue. It was suggested that I make a thread...that about brings us up to now.
This thread seems to be slipping away. I'll bump with a long *** copy paste of a post from another forum. Topic was what are your beliefs on god.
"Well, my position depends highly upon the definition of god given. There are literally thousands of gods over the course of human history and my position on each one will obviously be different. People sometimes define god as love or something ridiculous like that which I of course must believe in that god because I don't deny its existence (though it's stupid to place a label over something we already have named and ignore the basic attributes god nearly always has). My general position is weak atheism, that is the lack of belief in a god. I do not assert that god in general does not exist (strong atheism), because I could not hope to possibly disprove the existence of every possible definition of god, but I rather assert that there is no good reason or evidence to believe in one, and thus my only burden of proof is disproving theistic claims. However, there are certain gods I believe can be falsified, and in regards to these I am a strong atheist. Prominent among these is the Judeo-Christian god and Allah. For sake of familiarity, I'll focus on the Judeo-Christian god. Before I do that, I'll mention two things: One, I enjoy conversation with an intelligent theist or deist but I generally cba to discuss those that take the historical claims of certain religions seriously and especially literalists. Secondly, I have a problem with the way the term agnostic is often used. A theist is someone who believes in a god and anyone else is a type of atheist, that includes I don't know. Now, to focus on the Judeo-Christian god.
The most basic way of proving that the J-C god does not exist is to show that he is internally contradictory. Firstly, omnipotence contradicts itself. Can god create a task that he cannot perform? If he can, he cannot perform the task and is not omnipotent. If he cannot, he is already not omnipotent. Next, omniscience contradicts omnipotence. Can god pose a question to which he cannot answer? If he can, he is not omniscient. If he cannot, he is not omnipotent. Also, an omniscient god knows his own future and his actions before he can commit then. In this sense, he loses free will and is not omnipotent. He would literally be the most limited being in the universe, only able to perform one exact action at any given time, his actions plotted out linearly with no option for choice. If he does not know his future, then he is not omniscient. Additionally, this god is claimed as being perfect, yet needs worship. A perfect being does not have any needs or deficiencies, but the J-C god regards not believing in it as the only unforgivable sin, punishable by eternal torture in hell. Additionally, perfect justice and perfect mercy are incompatible. This is because justice is to treat someone as they deserve to be treated but mercy is to treat someone better than they deserve to be treated. The concept of hell also contradicts the idea of both mercy and justice, because it promises infinite punishment for finite "crime". Another precept of Christianity is that anyone, except the non-believer, can avoid punishment regardless of what they did in life by atoning to god in the end. This also contradicts the property of perfect justice.
The next set of contradictions are in reality. A god that is omnipotent, benevolent, and omniscient knows about evil, could prevent evil, and wants to prevent evil. But this all could not be true, why then is their evil? The typical response to this is the free will defense, but I will address this later. The next bit is the argument from non-belief. That is, if god does not want us all to go to hell and therefore believe in him, why does he not make his existence readily known? God, being omniscient, knows what it would take to convince everyone of his existence. Being omnipotent, he can execute said actions. Being benevolent, he wants to have everyone to avoid hell. But why then are there non-believers? The theist could turn again to free will, but this fails. God making his presence known does not interfere with free will. This is made more prevalent by the fact that people in other areas of the world grow up to believe in a "false" god. God could in his almightiness instantly reveal which religion was true. And to prove his existence, at the bare minimum I believe a few miracles that could be captured now that we have recording technology would be nice.
Next we turn to the arguments for the existence of the J-C god. I will focus on three of the best, most popular arguments. Additionally I will include the free will defense, which is not an argument for his existence, but a counter argument to the problem of evil.
1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
The formulation:
P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe has a cause.
The theist will then go on to establish what properties the cause must have had, this includes timeless, spaceless, immaterial, transcendent, personal, and vastly powerful.
The problems:
1. It assumes that we can even go sequentially prior to the big bang. The big bang being the beginning of time, it is meaningless to go sequentially prior to time. As many have pointed out, this is like saying "North of the North Pole". This contradicts the statement "the universe began to exist", for it did not begin in the sense that there may be nothing prior to it.
2. It applies causality to anything "before the big bang". Assuming we can even go before the big bang, as causality is a property of time, space, and the universe as we know it, it is unjustified to apply it to anything before the universe. Specifically, when the argument says everything that begins to exist has a cause, this is only justified inside the universe itself. In this way the argument commits a fallacy of composition, that is assuming that because everything within a system has a property, the system itself must have that property. An example, humans are made up of atoms. Atoms are not visible to the naked eye. But a human is visible to the naked eye. Similarly, all things within the universe that begin to exist have a cause, but it does not follow that the universe itself had a cause.
3. The first premise is an assumption even of the universe itself. That is, nothing that we observe truly "begins to exist" as is meant by the argument. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. We never see things begin to exist, only that we see them change form. The first premise is an assumption.
4. It relies on a faulty concept of "nothing". The argument relies on the fact that before the big bang there was nothing. But nothing cannot exist, if it did, it would be something. Anything that exists has properties, as shown by the law of identity. The "nothingness" used the kalam is a myth, the nothingness scientists speculate could have existed is actually believed to be able to give rise to the universe, see A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
5. The hypothesis asserted has no explanatory power and leads to contradictions. In order for the hypothesis that this god created this universe to be used, it must explain itself. How did god create the universe? By what mechanic? Additionally it leads to contradictions. A being that exists outside of time cannot make an action. An action is sequential by nature and involves cause and effect. This cannot happen in a state of timelessness. What does it even mean to exist outside of time? Existing is done sequentially, from one moment to the next.
6. It gives no reason for god's existence. God is said to be timeless and therefore not denote a cause. Even accepting this, god must have some reason for existing rather than not. The argument presumes that god's existence is the natural state before the big bang, which is just asserted and never proved.
7. It assumes A theory time. I'm not educated enough on this subject to talk about it, but just know that the whole argument would be invalid if B theory time were true. The jury is still out, but it's shaky ground to rest an entire argument on. You should research this to learn more, here's a start.
2. The Fine-Tuning Argument
The Formulation
P1: The fine tuning of the universe for life is either due to chance, physical necessity, or design.
P2: It is neither due to chance or physical necessity.
C: It is due to design.
The problems:
1. The universe is not fine tuned for life. It is estimated that less than 2% of the universe could even support life. Additionally, only .00000000117% of the Earth's mass is biomass.
2. It assumes the probability of each possible set of constants is equal. We only make probability judgments like this if we have multiple data points.
3. The constants are linked. I'm not good at explaining this one so "In order for the probability argument to be valid, the fundamental constants under consideration have to be independent. That is, one cannot claim that the gravitational constant and the speed of expansion of the universe were individually tuned, since they are clearly related. The electromagnetic force is mediated by massless photons which travel at the speed of light, so therefore the strength of this force is likely related to the speed of light."
4. Certain sets of constants are impossible. They will not be mathematically self consistent.
5. It projects the idea that our life could not exist under certain conditions, and assumes that no life could exist under certain conditions. In fact, we have no idea what type of life form could have emerged in a different universe. The argument assumes carbon based life. Evolution explains that the organisms evolve to fit the surroundings, hence why it seems fine-tuned.
5. Computer simulations suggest that not all of the purportedly "fine-tuned" parameters may be as fine-tuned as has been claimed. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range, and concluded that "... a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes".
6. The multiverse theory. This is the theory that our universe is just one of many, each with different fundamental constants. It's pure speculation at this point, but that puts it on even ground with the god hypothesis for the fine tuning of the universe.
7. The anthropic principle. We are living in exactly the type of universe we would expect to see considering how the fundamental constants are. ""The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."
3. The Ontological Argument
The Formulation
P1: God is the greatest being conceivable.
P2: God exists in the mind.
P3: To exist in the mind and reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.
C: Therefore, god must exist in the mind and reality.
The Problems:
1. It confuses the idea of something with the thing itself. God does not exist in the mind in the same sense as we mean by existence. The only way a thing itself can exist is in reality. It is not god which is in my mind but the idea of god. The idea of god in my mind cannot create universes and perform miracles.
2. It treats existence as a property. The argument poses all these properties of god and says that god would be greater if he had one more property: existence. But existence is not a property. It is the condition a thing must have to even exhibit properties. For instance, a green, slimy object is not green and slimy unless it actually exists. Existence cannot be treated as a property, it is what enables things to have properties.
3. It relies on a subjective concept of greatness. What is greater than another is opinion. One could simply reject the third premise that existence is greater than non-existence.
And now for the free will defense:
"A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good."
The Problems:
1. Free will is falsified by omniscience. God's all knowing nature means that he knows the future of all people and their actions before you execute them. This means that you are inevitably going to do one thing rather than the other, there is no other possible outcome, and thus no free will.
2. God could create beings that freely chose good over evil. His omnipotence could create creatures with free will that simply did not freely choose evil.
3. It does not address natural evil. That is, things such as disease, natural disasters, and aging bodies. These are not caused by an action of any free being and thus is not covered by the free will defense.
4. God could intervene to stop acts of evil (at the very least gratuitous evil) before they happen without violating free will. He could allow beings to freely choose evil but stop them before they do it. Now if he did this in all cases then there would be no choice, but he could intervene in only gratuitous evil, such as by killing Hitler. Also, think this scene."
Then someone actually brought up Pascal's Wager (LOL) so I commented on that.
"The Formulation
The Problems
1. It assumes the probability of god existing is exactly equal to him not existing. Self explanatory.
2. It discounts religions. Many religions maintain that the only way to salvation is to believe in their specific god. This shows that basic belief in god is not considered a guaranteed way to heaven, but their must be another wager of itself to pick a specific religion.
3. Belief is assumed to have zero cost. I'll just copy paste this, "For one thing, if you go through life believing a lie, that is a bad thing in itself. Besides that, there is more to being a believer than just saying, "Okay, I believe now," and getting on with your life. Serious believers spend a lot of their time in church, and contribute a lot of money as well. There's a reason why some towns have very affluent looking buildings for churches, and why large and elaborate cathedrals are possible: they're funded by folks who donate a tenth of their income throughout their lives to tithing. This is surely quite a waste if the object of worship isn't real. That's to say nothing of the persecution of other groups that's been instigated in the name of God throughout the ages. Also, in the US, churches don't have to pay taxes, which includes property tax. Property tax is what goes to schools, so all the land that churches own is sucking money out of schools. When "God Did It" becomes an acceptable answer, there is little incentive to continue exploring the question. More damaging, the "success" of this theory encourages one to apply it to other areas of human understanding. Practiced in this manner, theism can actively discourage human knowledge by compelling people to follow an arbitrary code of conduct, rather than one based on logic and reason."
4. It assumes that one has complete control over your own beliefs and can change at any time arbitrarily. For instance, I could not just say right now "I believe in god", it would be false. God is omniscient and knows your true beliefs.
5. It assumes that god judges non-believers completely apart from their actions (assumes the major religions are true I guess. ).