comments on "Top 10 arguments for the existence of god"

[awjohnson]

One more thing... Even if you accept the premise that there are both determinite and indeterminite things that exist in the universe, you need to create a transcendent hypothesis that explains them both.

[awjohnson]

Then you go on to talk of free will. Unfortunatly for your argument, free will has never been shown to exist and there are good reasons to suspect that what we percieve as free will is anything but.

I don't know if you realize this, but you seem to be (at best) drawing an artificial distinction in a posteriori reasoning. If you choose to do this, you make yourself subject to the special pleading fallacy. I don't mean to imply that you're wrong, it just means your argument is not cogent. Please provide me with the a posteriori observations (i.e. credible scientific research) that refute the a posteriori perception of freedom so I can evaluate them for myself. If you succeed in doing this, we will need to do extensive analysis of the implications of such an assumption before we start debate again. In particular, I'm concerned with the implications of the psychological glitch that produces the perception of freedom. One specific of such implications would be the fact that due the indeterminate nature of quantum mechanics, if it is such, would mean that we have produced a faulty science, and your example of the spotaneous decay of nuclear material would be a faulty observation. If we begin to cast doubt on a posteriori thinking, it actually makes the request for "tangible" evidence for the existence of God absurd. However, for the time being, there is not a cogent reason to conclude that such a distinction exists.

In any case, I would like to mention two more things:
1. Your failure to back this claim is exactly the same as when you accuse me of not giving examples. You made a naked assertion. Not to mention that it is an incredibly counterintuitive claim. You are a hypocrit.
2. I never did or will argue for the existence of free will. You do not understand what free will is. I am arguing for free choice. There is a difference. If you are interested in the difference, I will explain it later.

[awjohnson]

You know.... this is not working.

There are too many things being miscommunicated, and I don't feel I can adequately express my tone through this medium. It's just too much information, and I'm already a poor communicator.

This seems like it is going to degrade into childish name calling, and I don't want to be a part of that, even if I've been somewhat sucked into it already.

I would like to continue discussion... for those who are still interested and don't hate me. I think I may move to youtube, which is a little better medium I guess. I have a youtube account under ktandaj. I don't know.

As kind of a parting note... I do respect you all, regardless of how it may sound from what I have said thus far. I can appreciate your disdain for the general Christian attitude and behavior. I've had much of that myself. I actually found myself debating with a pastor before, because of my concerns over the irrationality of Christianity (at least, the Christianity I knew). I used to be quite a skeptic.

Anyway.... Thanks for the discussion. I appreciate it.

[awjohnson]

I lied. I have one last thing to say.

The proof for the existence of God is this the question:
What determines reality?

You cannot say "natural laws", since those laws themselves must be determined by something, otherwise why are there laws at all?

The cosmological argument, or the very nature of having determinate things, shows essentially that there is a transcendent cause of the universe. Atheist attempts to explain such a cause, aka by a different type of universe with different natural laws, is totally arbitrary. Those previous natural laws have no proven relationship to the current ones, and there is no definitive connection to that arbitrary claim and natural reality. The God I'm describing is a transcendent-infinite God whose nature is beyond comprehension (since it determined the natural universe, in which your rational mind exists), yet relates to things that actually exists, since this transcendent cause is the cause of everything.

This means that such a God has something like sentience. Something like a personality. Something like intellect. Something like everything we know and experience. This is the Christian God. It is the very name of this God, "I am", which implies a infinite-transcendent-personal-intellectual-sentient-supernatural-perfect God whose nature resembles, but is not confined to, all of reality. You could try to argue that other gods resemble this God, but you will be wrong ultimately, because every other god is arbitrary or irrational. You may disagree, but my primary concern is this: demonstrating that belief in God is not irrational, but disbelief in God causes an infinite set of questions that can never be answered pertaining to the determined nature of the universe.

Thank you for this discussion. I hope that it has not been terribly exhausting for you.

[wayneNilsen]

The cosmological argument, or the very nature of having determinate things, shows essentially that there is a transcendent cause of the universe.

Did you read any of this by chance?
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall ... -argument/
You should consider those arguments more throughly.

[philipthegreat]

"It's just too much information, and I'm already a poor communicator."

At least he got one thing right. I hope you get back on and read this awjohnson or whatever the hell your name is because I would like to say this.

You are an asshat, you talk like a freshman philosophy student that is endlessly impressed with his own vocabulary and words like "a posteriori" and "heuristics" (which you got from reading cliff notes of Descartes). Quit engaging in intellectual masturbation by saying stupid shit in really fancy words. Also take a fucking logic class so that you can stop randomly throwing out logical fallacies that actually have nothing to do with your opponents’ argument. I'll give you a lesson right now.

"God is my ultimate presupposition. God is my presupposition because I have questions that are categorically unscientific that need an answer."

This is what is known as a non-sequitur, god does not follow. Using the word "categorically" for absolutely no reason makes you sound like a pseudo-intellectual; which is fitting, I suppose, considering that you are one. You are also begging the question because there is no reason to assume that you can in fact answer any of your questions, which are probably all stupid anyway.

"For example, the mechanical universe is deterministic, but I have the freedom to make choices in an indeterminite manner. How is it exactly that a deterministic universe can produce something that isn't intrinsic to its structure?"

More begging the question. You just pulled free will out of your ass. Also read up on emergent behavior.

"I also presuppose God because I believe there must be some kind of ultimate absolute origin of all things absolute."

*yawn* argument from incredulity. Also, what is this "ultimate absolute origin of all things absolute" nonsense? Another instance of you getting a boner for big words.

"There are things that exist that are unscientific in nature. "

Argument from being a theistic cockweasel

“Even worse, you assume science can solve things simply because it has before, which is a fallacy. If you cannot define precisely, in an abstract process, how one would even go about answering a question scientifically, then it is an irrational leap of faith to assume the question will be answered by science at all.”

Straw man, atheist don’t assume that science can solve everything. (In fact atheists as a group have no common beliefs besides the lack of one in god). Basically, science has discovered many models of the behavior of the universe that can be independently verified, have predictive power, and bring us useful things like computers and airplanes. In a very short time the advance of science has brought us information that nobody previously would think we could know. It has put us on the moon and at the bottom of the sea. It gave us vaccines and solar panels. Theists meanwhile continue to disagree about everything, kill each other over stupid shit that nobody else cares about, and engage in theological hand waving every time somebody asks for an actual definition of anything, (just try asking a theist what “god” or “love” is). Religion continues at failing to answer any questions in a way that makes sense or can be proven, and has come up with no definitive proof for god in the last 6,000 years. Is it so unreasonable to trust that science may be able to answer more questions in the future belief in god?

p.s. I know you are going to accuse me of ad hominem (or possibly something unrelated like poisoning the well) for all the name calling, but the truth is that if you had had any actual arguments I would have taken you seriously. As it stands you are the same message board troll I’ve seen a thousand times (albeit with better typing skills), who leaves as soon as they get beat whining about all the bullies on the internet. Come back when you have something to say besides overly long sentences peppered with vocabulary you learned in your “intro to western thought” class (e.g. determinism, categorically, intrinsic, etc).

As a final note I would also like to include the pm I received from this cretin awjohnson.

“Hello fellow theist. I'm pursuing a systematic deconstruction of the atheist worldview in another thread. I'm currently making the case that they have an invalid epistemology/methodology. I think you've recognized this already. I would appreciate it if you made contributions to my thread "comments on "Top 10 arguments for the existence of god". We need an organized direct approach. If they are forced to concede it is impossible to know anything, then they cease to maintain their case for rationality.”

Call me a theist again and it will be worse. Peace bitch.

[pile]

Argument from being a theistic cockweasel

And I thought I was a bit harsh...

[Reflectionist]

Argument from being a theistic cockweasel

And I thought I was a bit harsh...

No worries; I've had quite the discussion with [awjohnson]. He thinks he can pull stuff out of his ass and call it objective, while insisting that any other argument is arbitrary and random. Total disregard for epistemology, logic, reason, language, argumentation, rhetoric, etc. etc. He just makes stuff up and expects you to believe it while speaking with large words to sound intelligent. It's not.

[pile]

Well, you've come a long way..... I am enjoying this stuff...

[Johann1901]

Oh Dear Lord....*lol*

I read this entire thread, simply because I wanted to get into the digs of what this guy was saying, and to equip myself for a reasonable and logical response, but I almost fell down laughing when I read the post of PhilipTheGreat. I thought it was brilliant, and if I had to say anything to this dude, then Philip said it for me, and spared me the emotional trauma of having to recover myself from the fringes of hysterical and uncontrolled laughter.

Cockweasel indeed! What is such a thing, by the way? Has science discovered a new species, previously unknown to us? And...is it a cock that weasels, or simply a weasly cock? Of the feathered type, perhaps?

Peace