Absolutely irrefutable logic

[grinnel]

[color=#] [/color] I once read some paragraphs in a text that I have lost track of, which consisted of self asked and answered questioons to a theist-in this essay the atheist started by saying something like "Let us first define a god". Then he shows that no god could be defined at all because the definitions would be so illogical as to preclude that god could ever exist in the framework of any logical argument whatsoever.
   The handy disposition of the existence of an indefinible god was so neat and compact-yet I have lost the work involved and my collections are so huge and scattered that I have no idea where to look for this piece. Anybody have any idea where I might find this argument?

[Whitney]

I think I may have read that somewhere online (or maybe in a book; but I think it was online) a year or two ago.

If you try to google for the essay...it will likely be under keywords involving the Socratic Method; however, I didn't turn up anything when I tried.

[SteveS]

Heh, I was just looking up "Socratic Method" the other day.  It was the title of an old "House" episode and I wanted to know to what it referred.

Seems apropos to the topic here, because the method involves putting forth questions for the argumentative opposition to answer, hopefully contradicting themselves.  It seems to be a popular method of the atheist philosophers when debating the theologians.

Anyway, I don't know the piece to which you refer grinnel.  Sorry I can't help - but it you find it please post it here - it sounds interesting.

[gorgedoc]

God does not exist?  Does that computer you are looking at have a maker?  How do you know it had a maker?   You’ve never met him, probably never thought about him. But you know she or he must exist.  A computer could not have appeared by a random set of events, but needed a body of knowledge to be created.  The rest of the world is no different.  Your computer, your car, that watch on your wrist are all the result of a thoughtful process that has taken eons of evolution with resulting experience, knowledge and creation.  On the most fundamental level, your computer is one of the fantastic results of the Big Bang.  The Big Bang is an event that even an atheist and a thinking Christian can appreciate and is scientifically proven through entropy.  But it begs the question, how did everything in the universe suddenly come from nothing?  Where did the Big Bang come from?  I can’t remember ever seeing anything appear from nothing, can you?  Believing in God may be a bit hard at times, but I do not have enough faith to be an atheist and believe the universe spontaneously popped out of thin air just because.

If you can be 100% certain that everything in the universe spontaneously and independently appeared from nothing and you know for an absolute fact that God does not exist, than you should be an atheist.  But this is of course impossible and not logical because it cannot be proven.  So the only logical thing to do is to believe in God. You have everything to gain by believing in God and everything to lose by not believing.  What is so terrible about believing in a God that came as a man to suffer and die for you in order to be an example and a teacher of good?  God created you in order to have free choice to choose or deny him.  He came and died for you to give you another chance to choose him by seeing his example of love.  There is no other religion besides Christianity where a God suffers and dies for you so your soul can live with him simple because you made the choice to want to be with him.  Why wouldn’t you believe?  It’s actually beautiful.  Leave the denominational rhetoric out of it; that is man’s distortion of a pure thing that was given to you as a perfect, free gift.  The fault is in man, not the gift.

[tomday]

The Big Bang is an event that even an atheist and a thinking Christian can appreciate and is scientifically proven through entropy.  But it begs the question, how did everything in the universe suddenly come from nothing?  Where did the Big Bang come from?  I can’t remember ever seeing anything appear from nothing, can you?  Believing in God may be a bit hard at times, but I do not have enough faith to be an atheist and believe the universe spontaneously popped out of thin air just because.

gorgedoc, if your 'God' has to exist because nothing can come from nothing, then where did 'God' come from?  If your answer to that question is the stock "God has always existed" then why could not the universe have always existed?  In fact, the definition of 'universe' is (Chambers dictionary) "all that is: the whole system of things..." so if anything exists then there is a 'universe' so if 'God' has always existed then so, by definition, has the universe.

To talk about computers, cars, watches etc. is irrelevant to your argument because they are not organic and their design, development and manufacture are clearly a matter of formal record within very recent history.

You ask whether I remember seeing something come from nothing - sure I can:  as a simple example of things that I can see from my desk as I write, I have a number of Washingtonia palm trees that have grown from seeds that I picked from a tree in Arizona 2 years ago.  These 4 to 5 feet high trees now each weigh many times more than the weight of the seed, and the water used to grow them;  where has that weight/mass come from?  

Now please don't tell me that it is "a miracle of 'God's creation" or any such lame stock answer, but please explain to me in a plain, practical context, how YOU think my trees have gained such mass and weight and will continue to grow with only traces of chemical nutrient  from the soil and occasional water into (potentially) 90 feet high trees.

[MommaSquid]

God created you in order to have free choice to choose or deny him.

I've made my choice, thank you very much.  

I don't believe that your god created me or anything else.  Unless you have proof (or at least an argument I haven't already heard) you are wasting your time here.

Go in peace.  





Really....go.  

[gorgedoc]

We know the universe has not always existed because of physics; we can calculate it’s creation to a specific moment.  I have no explanation for where God came and don’t require one.  The burden is on the atheist to prove he does not exist because you have everything to lose being a non-believer and I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by being a believer.  I’m hedging my bet which is the only logical thing to do because there is no way for you to prove God does not exist.  

What are you missing out on by not believing in God?  Let’s see  1) You can’t worship yourself or other people;  2) You can’t worship your stuff; 3) You can’t say “god damn”; 4) You need to take Sundays off from work; 5)  You have to respect your mother and father; 6) You can’t kill anyone; 7) You can only have sex with your wife; You can’t steal; 9) You can’t lie; and 10) You can’t screw around with your buddies wife.  Since we’ve all been given free choice to do or not do these things we of course choose to do them because we’re flawed to the core.  There is no way you can follow these rules God has set up to make us a good people.  I’m sure you have stolen something, no matter how small, looked at some attractive person and wanted to get in her pants and been disrespectful to your parents.  You fall short just like everyone else and the only way to make yourself clean of being a thief, an adulterer, etc. is admit your flawed and ask for God’s help and grace.

The point with the computer, watch, etc. is that it took intelligent design to create them; billions of years of intelligent design.  We know these things have a maker, man, but man came from a slurry of chemicals that somewhere along the line learned to think.  How can something that cannot be created by a random act of nature (computer, watch) be created by something that is theorized to be a random act of nature (man).  How can man be a random act of nature when the computer is not?  Again, we are creating something out of nothing, unless there is another element outside the system affecting it. .  
 
Your trees are undergoing photosynthesis with the sun, soil, and water.  This is a closed system in which existing matter is being reorganized with energy input from the sun; although they are marvelous trees, there is little mystery to where the composition of the tree is coming from.  This is not at all analogous to the Big Bang in which all matter and energy came from absolutely nothing.  Before you discount God, you have to explain this, and you cannot.  You hedge you bet in Vegas to the best odds, why wouldn’t you do the same with your soul?  

The Bible is a bit hard to swallow if you have no faith.  Funny thing is, things keep popping up that prove an event happened even without faith.  That old Red Sea parting story sounds so ridiculous doesn’t it?  Take a look at this:  http://www.arkdiscovery.com/red_sea_crossing.htm.   Pan down to the picture of the picture of the chariot axel and wheels.  What are these Chariots doing in the middle of the Red Sea with associated human and horse fossilized bones?   This story was featured on the History Channel.  Jesus himself has been proven to exist outside of the Biblical record. Have you heard of Josephus, Antiquites of the Jews, Book VIII and Book XX.  Josephus was alive at the time of Christ and wrote about him along with other important figures and facts that are taken at face value by non-religious historians.  It is much easier to prove the existence of the God then to prove God does not exist.  I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

[McQ]

We know the universe has not always existed because of physics; we can calculate it’s creation to a specific moment.  I have no explanation for where God came and don’t require one.  The burden is on the atheist to prove he does not exist because you have everything to lose being a non-believer and I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by being a believer.  I’m hedging my bet which is the only logical thing to do because there is no way for you to prove God does not exist.  

What are you missing out on by not believing in God?  Let’s see  1) You can’t worship yourself or other people;  2) You can’t worship your stuff; 3) You can’t say “god damn”; 4) You need to take Sundays off from work; 5)  You have to respect your mother and father; 6) You can’t kill anyone; 7) You can only have sex with your wife; You can’t steal; 9) You can’t lie; and 10) You can’t screw around with your buddies wife.  Since we’ve all been given free choice to do or not do these things we of course choose to do them because we’re flawed to the core.  There is no way you can follow these rules God has set up to make us a good people.  I’m sure you have stolen something, no matter how small, looked at some attractive person and wanted to get in her pants and been disrespectful to your parents.  You fall short just like everyone else and the only way to make yourself clean of being a thief, an adulterer, etc. is admit your flawed and ask for God’s help and grace.

The point with the computer, watch, etc. is that it took intelligent design to create them; billions of years of intelligent design.  We know these things have a maker, man, but man came from a slurry of chemicals that somewhere along the line learned to think.  How can something that cannot be created by a random act of nature (computer, watch) be created by something that is theorized to be a random act of nature (man).  How can man be a random act of nature when the computer is not?  Again, we are creating something out of nothing, unless there is another element outside the system affecting it. .  
 
Your trees are undergoing photosynthesis with the sun, soil, and water.  This is a closed system in which existing matter is being reorganized with energy input from the sun; although they are marvelous trees, there is little mystery to where the composition of the tree is coming from.  This is not at all analogous to the Big Bang in which all matter and energy came from absolutely nothing.  Before you discount God, you have to explain this, and you cannot.  You hedge you bet in Vegas to the best odds, why wouldn’t you do the same with your soul?  

The Bible is a bit hard to swallow if you have no faith.  Funny thing is, things keep popping up that prove an event happened even without faith.  That old Red Sea parting story sounds so ridiculous doesn’t it?  Take a look at this:  http://www.arkdiscovery.com/red_sea_crossing.htm.   Pan down to the picture of the picture of the chariot axel and wheels.  What are these Chariots doing in the middle of the Red Sea with associated human and horse fossilized bones?   This story was featured on the History Channel.  Jesus himself has been proven to exist outside of the Biblical record. Have you heard of Josephus, Antiquites of the Jews, Book VIII and Book XX.  Josephus was alive at the time of Christ and wrote about him along with other important figures and facts that are taken at face value by non-religious historians.  It is much easier to prove the existence of the God then to prove God does not exist.  I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Quite frankly, it looks like you have more than enough "faith" to be an atheist.

You have assumed some things incorrectly. First, you have assumed that no one here was ever a christian. Second, that people here do not know the bible or anything about religion. Third that people here don't know about science: biology, physics, chemistry, etc.

Every single thing you have said has been debated here ad nauseum.
(why, oh why, don't these new folks ever start by actually reading the forum before jumping in and evangelizing???)

I'm already tired just thinking about where to start with the arguments you put forth. And since I am rushed and have to go do real-world things, I won't even try right now.

Who wants to take the baton?

Anyway, you are welcome here at the forum, gorgedoc, despite what you might think by my (or our) messages to you. But for the love of (insert make-believe deity here), please take some time to read existing threads so you know a little more about us and what you are talking about! Pretty Please? Thanks!

 

[gorgedoc]

Sorry to be such a pest to you.  But you are on a blog asking for someone to present you with the holy grail of atheism.  You must be asking for this for a reason, perhaps to talk to other atheists about your point of view, which seems pointless, or you are asking for this information to help convince non-atheists that atheism is the true way.   If the later is the case, well, here you go.  Tell me what you know.  You may consider talking to me a waste of your important time, but if my points are so trivial to you, than why haven't you responded with anything except disdain and what appears to be anger and at best a very weak analogy.   I have thumbed through your logs and have found very little that can refute the simple truth I've presented to you.  I am in no way belittling your knowledge base; I have no idea who you are or what you know.  I will say that many people who think they are Christians or think they were Christians have never actually known the Lord.  Just because you say your Christian doesn't mean you are.  I do actually care about you and your thoughts.   I make a living saving peoples lives all day that I have never met, but I don't think it is nearly as important as saving souls or talking to people about thier salvation.

Thanks,

Patrick

[McQ]

Sorry to be such a pest to you.  But you are on a blog asking for someone to present you with the holy grail of atheism.  You must be asking for this for a reason, perhaps to talk to other atheists about your point of view, which seems pointless, or you are asking for this information to help convince non-atheists that atheism is the true way.   If the later is the case, well, here you go.  Tell me what you know.  You may consider talking to me a waste of your important time, but if my points are so trivial to you, than why haven't you responded with anything except disdain and what appears to be anger and at best a very weak analogy.   I have thumbed through your logs and have found very little that can refute the simple truth I've presented to you.  I am in no way belittling your knowledge base; I have no idea who you are or what you know.  I will say that many people who think they are Christians or think they were Christians have never actually known the Lord.  Just because you say your Christian doesn't mean you are.  I do actually care about you and your thoughts.   I make a living saving peoples lives all day that I have never met, but I don't think it is nearly as important as saving souls or talking to people about thier salvation.

Thanks,

Patrick

I am not asking anyone to present me with the holy grail of atheism. I have no idea what you even mean by that. I have no anger toward you. That is a false statement. I am weary of christians who think they know what they are talking about when they come in here and make asinine assumptions, as you have done.

I also knew that you would say something about people thinking they were christians, but never really knowing the lord. That was a sure thing. I used to think that too, when I was an evangelical, trying to save souls.
What you fail to understand is that I've been where you are and thought I knew it all too. So have others here.
And I'm certain that I or others here can easily refute your claims of your god being the one and only, real god of the universe.

What you have is not truth, but an irrational belief in something that simply does not exist. and by the way, the burden of proof is not on people to disprove the existence of god. You are the one claiming there is a god. Prove it. Tell us why you believe what you believe.

Lastly, you may not be aware of it, but you are an atheist too. You and I both have a list of gods we do not believe in, mine just has one more on it than yours.

[gorgedoc]

Excuse my phrasing; you are looking for more information to further prove your belief in nothing.  Why would you have a huge collection of atheist materials to study?  Who are you trying to convince?  Yourself, Jesus freaks like me, or is it just handy information to have around for cocktail parties?

Being weary of me infers that I could cause you some sort of harm.  Why would you feel threatened by entertaining my questions?  If you can easily refute me, than do it.  I haven’t said that I had any great knowledge of anything.  I asked you some simple questions that you haven’t answered.  Where did the Big Bang come from?  Something from nothing?  And how can something that was created completely from random chance create something that could never be created from random chance?  I have conceded that God exists and therefore miracles exist and God can exist outside of the universe in my “lame stock” explanation.  What do you concede to?  If you don’t have an answer to these questions than you cannot 100% rule out the existence of God.  

It’s interesting that you were an evangelical.  Who took God away from you?  I’m interested in your story.  

Patrick

[tomday]

Your trees are undergoing photosynthesis with the sun, soil, and water.  This is a closed system in which existing matter is being reorganized with energy input from the sun; although they are marvelous trees, there is little mystery to where the composition of the tree is coming from.  This is not at all analogous to the Big Bang in which all matter and energy came from absolutely nothing.  Before you discount God, you have to explain this, and you cannot.  You hedge you bet in Vegas to the best odds, why wouldn’t you do the same with your soul?  

gorgedoc,  at least you accept a scientific rationale behind the growth of trees from relatively miniscule physical input without the need for any supernatural input.    However, re the Big Bang:  I would suggest to you that it is totally illogical to say that there was neither matter nor energy before the Big Bang and then to suggest that ‘God’ had a hand in it because, if 'God' existed before the Big Bang, yet there was no energy or mass, then 'God' had neither energy nor mass!  How can anything without energy and/or mass possibly exist?

What are you missing out on by not believing in God?  Let’s see  1) You can’t worship yourself or other people;  2) You can’t worship your stuff; 3) You can’t say “god damn”; 4) You need to take Sundays off from work; 5)  You have to respect your mother and father; 6) You can’t kill anyone; 7) You can only have sex with your wife; You can’t steal; 9) You can’t lie; and 10) You can’t screw around with your buddies wife.  Since we’ve all been given free choice to do or not do these things we of course choose to do them because we’re flawed to the core.  There is no way you can follow these rules God has set up to make us a good people.  I’m sure you have stolen something, no matter how small, looked at some attractive person and wanted to get in her pants and been disrespectful to your parents.  You fall short just like everyone else and the only way to make yourself clean of being a thief, an adulterer, etc. is admit your flawed and ask for God’s help and grace.

To claim that your 'God' is responsible for the morals within society is absolutely ludicrous - societies all over the globe share the same moral codes that you are claiming come from 'God', yet do not identify in any way with your religious views.  
I take it as a personal affront that you suggest that because I am an atheist I do not conform with the morals and standards that are imposed on me by society, legislation and my own humanity.

[McQ]

Excuse my phrasing; you are looking for more information to further prove your belief in nothing.  Why would you have a huge collection of atheist materials to study?  Who are you trying to convince?  Yourself, Jesus freaks like me, or is it just handy information to have around for cocktail parties?

Being weary of me infers that I could cause you some sort of harm.  Why would you feel threatened by entertaining my questions?  If you can easily refute me, than do it.  I haven't said that I had any great knowledge of anything.  I asked you some simple questions that you haven't answered.  Where did the Big Bang come from?  Something from nothing?  And how can something that was created completely from random chance create something that could never be created from random chance?  I have conceded that God exists and therefore miracles exist and God can exist outside of the universe in my "lame stock" explanation.  What do you concede to?  If you don't have an answer to these questions than you cannot 100% rule out the existence of God.  

It's interesting that you were an evangelical.  Who took God away from you?  I'm interested in your story.  

Patrick

Now you're just continuing to attribute thoughts and words to me that I have neither said or thought. That is why I'm weary of you. If you want to play games, do it somewhere else. I have no time to waste on someone trying to be cute or coy.

One by one, to address the things you just said:

you are looking for more information to further prove your belief in nothing.

Nope. I'm not looking for anything. You have said this more than once, and I don't know why you think this. An analogy...what proof do you need to keep looking for to convince you there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny?

Why would you have a huge collection of atheist materials to study?  Who are you trying to convince?  Yourself, Jesus freaks like me, or is it just handy information to have around for cocktail parties?

What huge collection of atheist materials do you mean? I have no such collection. Never did. Be specific. I am not trying to convince anyone. Where did you get the idea that I am trying to convince myself, you, or anyone else of something. again, be specific, since you are leveling accusations at me.

Being weary of me infers that I could cause you some sort of harm.  Why would you feel threatened by entertaining my questions?

No such inference is made by my statement. You would like to think so in order to possibly be a martyr to your cause, but it does not follow from my statement. It simply means I'm tired of debating people who don't have a clue as to: 1) what my position is, 2) why they believe what they believe, 3) Who have no real interest in learning the truth, or to put it in the negative, no real desire to realize they believe in something that does not exist.

I am in no way threatened by you. You simply are not that relevant to me to warrant anything resembling a threat.

If you can easily refute me, than do it.

First, based on your posts so far, I believe that you are not interested in learning anything, so it would be a waste of time which could be spent doing other things. You are here to convert, not understand. Second, what is it I must disprove? You forget that the burden of proof is on the person making the claim that god exists, or ever existed. again, use the Santa analogy. If you say he exists, then prove it. You wouldn't ask me to disprove that Santa exists. Or Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. How about Thor? Vishnu?

Where did the Big Bang come from?  Something from nothing?

Irrelevant. It simply doesn't matter "where", or even "when", or even "why". And just because no one yet knows what happened "before" the Big Bang, doesn't mean you need to automatically fill in the gap of knowledge with "god". Humans have been doing that for millennium. We used to think that thunder was "god", that disease was from "god". Countless gaps in human knowledge over time have been automatically and incorrectly attributed to god.

Funny that the people who actually feel threatened are the religious zealots, who find their god getting smaller and smaller as we learn more of the truth about the world. If you want to attribute the gaps in your knowledge to a god, go right ahead. You might as well attribute them to Superman, or Baal, or Archie and Jughead.

I have conceded that God exists and therefore miracles exist and God can exist outside of the universe in my "lame stock" explanation

See above paragraph as to the filling in gaps of knowledge with make-believe beings, rather than seek the truth.

What do you concede to?

Science, rational thought, the search for truth, no matter what answers I find, and no matter how it shakes my belief system. That's the way progress is made in the search for truth.

And please don't throw in science bits that you've heard from "Answers in Genesis" or other sources that have not the first clue about science. As soon as I see someone (you haven't done it...yet) put the Big Bang in the same thought as Evolution, I know they are reading from a script, given to them by people who don't know the first thing about either. Clue: they have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

If you don't have an answer to these questions than you cannot 100% rule out the existence of God.

Neither I nor science has 100% certainty about anything, and never claim to. However, I have enough confidence that god does not now exist, and never did, to feel justified in my statement of non-belief. again, I do not fill in the gaps in my knowledge with a god. Things I don't simply don't yet have an answer. Just as it's been all through human history. And I will reiterate once more that it is not up to me to disprove the existence of a supernatural being.

As for who took god away from me. No one. I find the question glaringly naive. In fact, if anything, it was the careful study of scriptures that did it, along with simple biblical apologetics, which I studied, that led me to realize that the bible couldn't be what it claimed. Give it a try some time.

All in all, you are using the same arguments that I was using over 15 years ago. And you should know better than to try to bait a hook with things along the line of, "think they were Christians have never actually known the Lord. You know that no man can know another man's heart. I was a born-again believer, evangelical, who had every bit of faith in christ, the holy spirit, and the father. You might want to keep that tucked away and not bother questioning that again. It just weakens your argument.

That's it for now. Don't expect me to engage you in debate further, as I feel you are not genuinely interested in learning anything. If you are here to convert, please refer to the forum rules and do so in the appropriate areas. http://www.happyatheistforum.com/ftopic333.html

This thread has been hijacked long enough, and will not be continued here. I will move the topic to the proper location.[/color]

[McQ]

OK, so I can't move this into it's own topic.... :?

Maybe laetusatheos can do it. She's way better at this stuff than I am!

Regardless, please stick to the original post only for the topic, and refer all debate to gorgedoc in another thread.

[pjkeeley]

I doubt this is the argument you're looking for grinnel but I thought I may as well suggest it anyway:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
--Epicurus