God's Not Dead

Well to a christian who only wants to revalidate their faith or someone uneducated, pro's arguments might seem good, but they are non-sense. I'll start with his opening statement and then move on to his statement last round and then if time permits, introduce new points. -More on the watch maker and design: Now the watch maker argument assumes design is an apparent attribute one would assume. If there's a watch, someone who knows what a watch is would infer design, but one with no concept of a watch, would most likely conclude that the watch is naturally there. Also how do you come to the conclusion the universe is designed. We have not experienced other universes to compare it to. With the argument from design you encounter an infinite regression. If anything with intelligence comes from prior intelligence, then god must have been designed. Is god not intelligent? It is absurd to argue everything intelligent comes from prior intelligence but the most intelligent being conceivable doesn't. KCA(first cause): This is a terribly presumptuous argument. It presumes: 1. Everything has a cause 2. The universe has a cause 3. The universe has a transcendent cause Axiom 1 is false. In quantum physics particles come in and out of existence with no cause. Axiom 2 might be true. I will elaborate on axiom two in my discussion of plausible cosmological models. Axiom 3 is so absurd that it ISN'T EVEN FALSE. One could never know if the universe has the transcendent cause; it isn't even testable. This violates Occam's razor. If it is true everything has a cause and the universe has a cause, then why can' the universe be the cause of its self. Saying the universe has a transcendent cause raises unneeded questions that CAN'T EVER BE ANSWERED. Axiom 3 does not follow from 1 and 2. Both the design and KCA are terrible arguments. -Consciousness The soul does not cause consciousness, also I would like you to demonstrate the existence of a soul. Consciousness is all neurons and brain activity. If you hurt your brain to a certain extent you will loose consciousness. The mind is what the brain does. If your sort of dualism were true, one would expect to keep consciousness and mind functioning despite physical brain damage, but this is not the case. I will concede consciousness is a hard subject and we don't know the exact mechanism by which consciousness is developed however that does not refute the physical cause of consciousness. -Emotions? Are you joking me? It seems my opponent has studied zero psychology. In psychology, emotion is often defined as a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence thought and behavior. My favorite theory is the James-Lange theory: You may observe an external stimulus that causes a physiological reaction. Your emotional response is dependent upon how you interpret those physical reactions. Example:For example, suppose you are walking in the woods and you see a grizzly bear. You begin to tremble and your heart begins to race. The James-Lange theory proposes that you will interpret your physical reactions and conclude that you are frightened . There are other theories such as the Cannon-Bard theory of evolution which states that emotions result when the thalamus sends a message to the brain in response to a stimulus, resulting in a physiological reaction. Emotion is science. -Fine tuning. The only world view in which life permitting parameters mean anything is naturalism. On theism, I'm sure god could create life under any parameters. "Please address how an explosion like the Big Bang could accidentally cause the orderly processes of the Earth's rotation, orbit, and moon's orbit, as well as its perfect distance from the sun and the moon's distance from Earth." Once again THE MULTIVERSE. If there are an infinite amount of universes then some of them are bound to have life permitting parameters. Pro has seemed to completely ignore my points about how baron the universe seems to be and how insignificant we are in the universe. Do we need a god for a universe? NO Self contained models: -The Oscillating Universe This is a self-contained model in which the universe evolves from a big bang, then expands and expands and then collapses upon it's self and then re-expands. This model is perfectly self-contained and no god is needed. X-->Y-->X infiniteInfinite -Hartle Hawking A boundless self contained universe model in which a creator is unneeded. -QET Once again, any universe that is described by quantum mechanics with non-zero energy and a time independent Hamiltonian is eternal in both arrows of time. -Quantum fluctuation: The universe is a quantum fluctuation. Suppose we have a timeline: X-------------Y-----------X X and X are synonymous high entropy states. If you start in the middle with the low entropy state and go either right or left you will go to high entropy states. -On low probability events and chance, Any single event can take an infinite set of infinite sets of probabilities. Given probability is on a scale from 0-100, but between these is an infinite set of infinite sets of probabilities it is impossible for an event to fall outside of this range. Any event can naturally happen. Low probability DOES NOT mean impossible. -Consequentialism An action is good only if it produces good outcomes. This is a way better system for two reasons. 1. It makes morality rational and makes one have a good reason for doing things. 2. If moral absolutes are true, you are not morally justified in doing anything immoral EVER. You can not lie or kill EVER. If a man breaks into your house with an axe and he asks where is your daughter hiding, it is your obligation to tell him. If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, you wouldn't be justified. Moral absolutes are literally insane. I am not even employing an reductio ad absurdum. These are natural consequences of moral absolutes. Hitler was not a christian? Well I guess that's another debate. However it does validate my point that bad acts are trivially justified with religion, so you would expect people to invent gods to do so. Now on the bible: "How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock." Psalms 137:9 "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;[a] she must be quiet." Timothy 2:12 "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them." Jermiah 19:9 "Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh." Peter 2:18 2 Kings 2:23-24 King James Version (KJV) 23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Leviticus 20:13 The above conveys a homophobic, child hating, pro-slavery, misogynistic angry god. This is exactly why the bible is non-sense. The good parts can be interpreted literally but brutal parts are figurative or metaphorical. The parts that are offensive nonsense, we recognize as nonsense and we discard them. Why do we do this? Because as we become more rational and knowledgeable we see that such terrible acts are bad. We evolve past them. Genesis: Genesis is complete non-sense. The characters don't permit me to go into great length. I ill partially explain and the rest will be in a link. 2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The early universe was not "dark". We know from quantum mechanics that the earliest universe was a sea of quarks, followed shortly after by a sea of free nucleons and photons. Until the era of "decoupling", about 300,000 years after the formation of the universe, the entire universe was as bright throughout as the surface of the sun is today. The verse refers to "the face of the waters". If this verse refers to the waters on earth, such as the ocean, it is completely wrong. The early earth had no ocean. It was not until millions of years of accretion had built up the planet that liquid water began to form, both from volcanic outgassing and from the impacts of comets attracted by the gravity of the earth. However, most Biblical scholars believe that the "waters" referred to here are those in heaven, from which rain comes. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Genesis account later describes how these "waters" were divided from those of earth by a wall, with one portion of these divided waters forming the oceans. But we know from science that the early universe did not have any liquid water. None at all. Not even any water molecules. In fact, for a period of several hundred thousand years, it did not have any molecules of any sort. The Genesis description of water above the "firmament" is simply wrong. Next round I will talk about Jesus and objections. http://www.huecotanks.com... http://psychology.about.com... http://plato.stanford.edu... http://plato.stanford.edu... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.universetoday.com... http://www.preposterousuniverse.com...