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1. The universe had most probably a beginning.
Not necessarily, and even if it did, and the cause of the beginning was a god, then what began that god?
2. The universe is finely tuned to permit life on our planet
If we weren't here we wouldn't be having this conversation. But since we are here and I am holding a winning powerball jackpot ticket in my hand, let's discuss hiw it was inevitable that I would win and how the whole universe exists just so I can be here right now, rich as Croesus.
3. Life. Abiogenesis has not been able to explain the existence of life on earth.
Yes it has, and quite nicely, too.
4. The moral argument, and value of life.
The fact that every religious person picks and chooses which instructions to follow or not follow shows that common morals are innate.
5. Without God, life has no reason to be, there is no ultimate goal
Just because you're having an existentialist nihilist crisis, don't pull me into it, TYVM. I could invent an imaginary niece to fulfill my need to sew frilly pink dresses, but that doesn't make her real.
6. Religious experiences and miracles
Migraine auras, psychotic breaks, schizophrenia, hallucinations, epilepsy, sleep paralysis, mass hysteria, lying.
Drat! Didn't even take five minutes, I'll have to go and do something useful now
In any case I don't personally hold to the OP's argument as given. There IS a FAIR AMOUNT of commonality in moral codes between different cultures because those codes naturally evolve based on what facilitates the survival and prospering of that society in its particular environment. Since we are all humans living on the same planet and also because by now most of us have had some contact with each other for a long time, and have thus influenced each other, it's totally unsurprising that on at least the major things, what is beneficial and harmful to individuals and society has been found to be pretty similar. We've independently arrived at similar conclusions.
I also think it's helpful to distinguish "innate" and "instinctive" and "blindingly obvious" For example, it's not rocket science, nor does it require outside help, to recognize what's mine and what's not mine. Tiny infants learn to do that as soon as they figure out their bodies are separate from the rest of the universe.
Last edited by Miss Blue; 01-15-2013 at 09:24 AM..
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Last edited by Miss Blue; 01-15-2013 at 09:20 AM..
Reason: Thank you for that :)
1. The universe had most probably a beginning.
Not necessarily, and even if it did, and the cause of the beginning was a god, then what began that god?
This is one of the biggest and most blatant theist errors we witness I feel.
Current science tells us that the universe as we know it... that is the current form the universe has... has a beginning. That is all we know. The universe we currently reside in is said to have expanded from a singularity.
Theists try to paint this as saying the universe itself had a beginning and we simply do not know that to be the case. We know nothing about this singularity, where it came from, why it is there or anything else.
We can not even talk about that singularity in terms of "before" and "after" because time itself is an attribute that only arose with the universes current form.
Our existence is an open question. No more. No less. Our duty is to come up with hypotheses to explain that and then prove and substantiate those hypotheses. The God Hypothesis is just as valid as anything else you simply make up on the spot. However it remains entirely unsubstantiated at this time and as such remains just something someone made up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Colonial Girl
4. The moral argument, and value of life.
The fact that every religious person picks and chooses which instructions to follow or not follow shows that common morals are innate.
I think these are things the theists just make up and demand we explain. We are a social species and we want to find the best way in which to live together as a species. All "morality" is is the set of rules and procedures we come up with which we feel best facilitates that agenda.
Theists however want you to believe that morality is an objectively existing thing separate from us and hence requires some explanation. As with the "Fine Tuning" argument what we see here is the theist simply making things up and then demanding we explain them. The goal: To find something you can not explain just so they can go "Aha! Therefore God!".
It is a true testament to the power the "God of the Gaps" has over these people that they feel the need to invent gaps where there are none, just to have more gaps to shove god into.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Colonial Girl
6. Religious experiences and miracles
Migraine auras, psychotic breaks, schizophrenia, hallucinations, epilepsy, sleep paralysis, mass hysteria, lying.
All perfectly valid hypotheses depending on the particular experience/miracle being discussed. Which of the above (if any) to apply will of course depends on what the claim being made actually is. There is MUCH more I would add to that list however.
We are a pattern seeking animal and we notice "positive hits" more readily than negatives. Maybe experiences and "miracles" can be explained by this. When someone says for example "I had not seen him in 20 years, I thought of him, and in that moment he phoned me!" it seems like an amazing event requiring some miraculous explanation.
What we do not hear about however is the number of times that person was thought of and did NOT phone in that moment. It could have been every year, month, week, even day. But the brain does not note / remember such things. But the positive hit of "I thought... he phoned" registers and subjectively we find it amazing.
We can not even talk about that singularity in terms of "before" and "after" because time itself is an attribute that only arose with the universes current form.
Exactly. We are emergent properties of our environment, and time as we know it is one of our environment's fundamental properties. Since we can only understand reality in the context of time as we know it, it is useless to talk about chronological sequences or anything else remotely familiar when we are discussing what's outside the bounds of our present universe. Indeed, it's well nigh impossible to avoid injecting time dependencies into any discussion of the subject, so limited are we to framing everything in terms of "time as we know it". Even the phrase two sentences back includes the word "what's" = "what IS" which is a reference to time.
The truth is that you can't observe and evaluate a system from inside the bounds and rules of that system; you'd need the ability to exit the system for an overview, assuming you'd even be able to survive outside the system or make sense of it. Therefore some things will ever be unknown; there will only be better or worse theories and even the best theories will be inherently unverifiable. The proper response to any unknown is to acknowledge it as such. Theism finds unknowns (or at least these unknowns) intolerable and must invent a placeholder to "explain" these unknowns, to control, manage and render explicable the inexplicable, to calm its terror of uncertainty. A more mature and useful response is to simply sit with uncertainty and be open to the possibility of there eventually being new data that might clear some of that uncertainty up -- but not to count on it.
"I don't know" are the Three Dirty Words for some people. It offends their narcissistic need for existence to be all about them, to be understandable to them, and ultimately to be controllable by them.
The fact that every religious person picks and chooses which instructions to follow or not follow shows that common morals are innate.
Actually, isn't all morality contractual? If it was innate it would be found in the lower animals as well. What is morality apart from a series of human agreements about what behaviors are desirable and which behaviors are offensive?
Morality obviously predates religion because morality is required for collective actions, collective actions are required for civilization to exist, and civilization is required for a religion to come into being.
Morality is an entirely human concept, it has no application otherwise. We were not born with it, we invented it because it was pragmatic to do so.
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sorry I couldn't resist.
