Re: Arguments for the existance of god

Here is a collection and my responses to various arguments for deism or theism.  Often we are asked to not only disprove or refute the ideas being presented but are held to the requirement of offering some replacement explanation.  While I enjoy the challenge of coming up with a rational consistent worldview based on the facts at hand, this simply misses the point.  Atheism is by definition a null hypothesis, this means it is the assertion that the idea put forward is not true.  It need only demonstrate that sufficient evidence has not been presented to accept the arguments and their conclusions or that the arguments are fallacies.  That is what I seek to do here.  My own ideas about origin and purpose will have to wait, though they will likely be touched upon.

The Main Premises:

None of the claims are very good.  You cannot move from one claim to another via deduction or induction.  The claims are both independent (they do not reference each other) yet interdependent in the way they are thought to provide proof.  The claims all assume a definition (or definitions) of god without giving reasons for those definitions or explicitly stating them.

The Specific Arguments:

Please note that I am ignoring and young earth anti evolution arguments; they are not the point of this post nor as interesting philosophically as the ones I am choosing to discuss.  I would happily cover that subject in another post at some point, or possibly just direct people to other sources (more likely).

Cosmological- The Prime Mover

What happened before time?  Where was space before the big bang?  These questions and those like them cannot be answered with our current understanding of physics.  They may not have a sensible answer.  There is a point before which we can say or see nothing. I think it is safe to say "we don't know" and if you want to say "ah well I know..." and wink knowingly at Jesus or Thor, over the shoulders of ALL OF PHYSICS, then you are going to have to show your work.   The main argument is There is no thing which is un-caused, this assertion seems to make sense until you realize that it A) begs the question and B) relates to things in time and space rather than time and space itself.  Can the term "cause" have any meaning outside of the idea of time?



Teleological- the argument from design. Paley's watch.   Darwin starts our path here, after that we can begin to view another method.  I wont bother referencing poor design, or cruel or petty (there might be gods that fit that)   IMPORTANT  an over-arching order is not the same as god.

The second part  is the anthropic principle in reverse; Here is often employed even more physics references and a misunderstanding of certain probabilities. Of course the anthropic principle suggests the first proper answer to this idea.  If you want to talk about probabilities I will need you to show the numbers you are using as well as how you came by them and the equations.

Ontological - (not ornithological but there is a joke there somehow I'm sure)  Anslem's conception as I have heard it stated is a non sequitur.  "Imagine the most perfect being. It would be more perfect if it existed. Therefore it exists"

There also seems to be an inherent Platonism, with god as the ideal ideal,  which I question on more basic grounds.  This is often tied to an assertion that Math and Logic exceed the physical universe (and therefore precede it?) to which; for now one can only say "incompleteness theorem"

From Morality -  This is typically stated that without god there is no basis for morality.  The emphasis is on god as an idea and not a specific deity.   This argument is fallacious for a few reasons.  1 it is an Appeal to Authority  2 it posits that god is the source of morality which is part of the definition given (circular reasoning) 3 Basically the argument from evil in reverse without specific conception of god. (the argument from evil is only to rule out a specific type of god -loving, all knowing and all powerful)

From Faith - not really a relevant argument from evidence please stop it.

From Scripture - (revelation) Well this is the leap from theism to religion.It relies on specific texts to be true.  These are not as spurious as the from faith argument but are beyond the scope of this essay and will be addressed separately.

From History - This is always a specific idea to support a specific religion.  I plan to look specifically at the resurrection claims about Jesus as most of my sources are Christian apologists.  Any links to other historical claims are welcome)

My sources for the original pro arguments against which I argue.

Hitchens Vs Craig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KBx4vvlbZ8

Hitches Vs Turek
http://vimeo.com/1904911

Hitchens Vs Boteach  (actually doesn't believe in evolution)  Mainly failing at the math and argument from incredulity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMYL8sF7bQ

Hitchens Vs Mcgrath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U1b7Xgyq-Y

Hitchens Vs D'Souza (some interesting ideas couched in logical fallacies)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V85OykSDT8


Additional Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_of_God#Arguments_for_the_existence_of_God

Mentions Historical Resurrection (does not give actual sources they must be acquired)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpp37iJogFI&feature=related

Images of the Prophet(s)

The Abrahamic faiths have something against imagery as used in worship. Thou Shalt not make Graven Images was put right into the decalogue about 4 places before murder. SO we should know that this is serious business. By the way, graven means carved. As in statues which were often used as devotional objects, but it is typically taken to mean any image used for religious purposes. Anyway this seems to be extended to all representations. So, Charlton Heston dressed as Moses in a movie? Bad idea.

Chuck, you are holding the dang thing in your hand, at least read it!

Why I don't capitalize god.

The rules of English are fairly clear about capitalization, and I believe that members of the other English speaking nations will agree with me on them, even if they disagree with my spelling (most people from my own nation would too). We capitalize words at the beginning of sentences, and proper nouns (which we can't use in scrabble or bananagrams). All other instances of capitalization are typographical preference of a reverse ee cummings sort, or because we are stupidly TRYING TO MAKE A POINT ON THE INTERNET. This brings me to the word god. I often stumble upon this word in a capitalized variety, when it meets none of the previously mentioned criteria, for instance if i were to submit the sentence prior to this to an editor they would find a need to capitalize it, and also chances are to make this into more than one sentence but THAT at least is advisable. However if someone were to do it they would wrong me. Moreover if someone were to quote me as saying something about god, and capitalize it they would be doing me a slander (well really a libel but that doesn't flow quite as well). Now some people at this point have raised the argument, well truthfully they probably raised it earlier and have already stopped reading this. er anyway. Some would argue that god is a proper noun, to which I retort with a word, or words that will make it past censorship. How is god a proper noun? Is god a country or a person or a trademarked product or such? Lets address the second first as that will be the most common objection. If god is a person, fictional or otherwise, it would be proper to capitalize his or her or its name. However, I find upon inspection, and by that I mean fucking using the language, that god is in fact a singular noun. The plural of which is gods, and either neither or both deserve the upper case. Hmmm. Lets look at that a little closer shall we? If we speak of the Greek gods we capitalize "Greek" a proper noun but not gods. So we can assume that if we were to speak of a Greek god then we would do the same, after all we don't go from games to Game or from congregation to Sucker, now do we? But wait, our fictional critic cries, my god is god so that should be capitalized. OK, lets examine that statement.... First what god is your god? is it Poseidon, because I have no problem there. Is it Zeus, Hermes, Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Buddha, Set, Amon, The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Still good with me, but god is just a term used to refer to any one of these characters and if we refer to any number of them greater than one, we use the plural gods. Now I will move on to god as a trademarked product, by which I really mean, god as a protected concept. As long as we have to capitalize this otherwise normal singular noun the more certain people can capitalize upon that. Memetics at its finest. why does this intellectual product get afforded such special care? It is mostly tradition of being scared to utter the name of a powerful being lest the sympathetic power (believed to be) inherent in names call them to you. Which is why all sorts of words are used in place of Jesus' name in Christianity. Words such as lamb, god, lord, savior, et cetera. However if you use a word to refer to something long enough that word will simply become the name of the thing. Most names of things are presumably derived in this way. However if you also still use the name, or at least a name, then the others may simply be nicknames or pet names. Lamb, I think, is a good example of that. Ultimately my point here is to enforce common rules of language and avoid giving undue credit to one idea amongst many. Otherwise I may have to invent a god called "the" and insist that anytime that word appears it must be in the uppercase. I have no doubt if I convinced enough people of the veracity of the The, then the blind pluralism of our culture would support me. Provided that The was also Jesus at least.