I did not take any of your comments as a personal attack, or as an attack on religion. They are a critique. I now understand a little bit better what you were saying about a leap of faith. Some of my arguments relied on first assuming God exists and then applying a situation to see if it makes sense. But that is like using a word in its own definition. An example I gave goes like this: God exists = God exists + impossible event. This is not wholly logical but now I believe it is the closest we can get to proving God exists. The assumption is my Leap of Faith.But now let me take one last stand in defense of my arguments. Then I must go do some homework for a couple of weeks.
I already knew the obvious problems with the Unmoved Mover, The First Cause, and The Cosmological Arguments. They do not prove God’s existence because there might be another explanation. These are not my favorite arguments.
: Floyd: You mentioned Occam's Razor, so I'll apply it to your conclusions. The assumption that two particles (actually contemporary Big Bang cosmology doesn't even require particles, but for the sake of argument...) existed at the Big Bang is quite parsimonious. We see particles today, and we understand how they act. However, we do not see God today, and do not have any clear understanding of how he acts. It is therefore more parsimonious to trust a purely naturalistic explanation than to trust a supernatural one, since it only includes variables that we know to be present.
My argument was that God does not have to exist in order for the universe to be created out of nothing because in a vacuum a particle of matter and anti-matter are created and are simultaneously annihilated. This means that all arguments that the universe could not have been created out of nothingness without God are flawed. If it could be proved that these particles do in fact exist and do not annihilate each other from time to time, then any theory, the contemporary theory of the Big Bang for example is more valid than the theory that God did it.
First of all we do not see this happening all the time, in fact anti-matter is so incredibly rare in this part of the universe that we have only seen it for nanoseconds at a time in particle accelerators. Besides this there is no suitable explanation as to why the particles might not annihilate each other. There are enough flaws in the theory to make one think that any type of Vacuum Genesis is impossible without some unknown element intervening. Whether this element is God or not is a question we should address. Belief in any type of Vacuum Genesis necessitates just as much faith as belief in God.
Furthermore, why couldn’t God’s intervention be seen as natural, no doubt he uses natural phenomenon to do what he wants. This in no way proves God exists though.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
: THE OBJECTIVITY OF VALUE
: Ryan: To sum up this argument, if there are differing values of perfection then there must be an absolute perfect cannon which we are using to compare. This we call the Tao or God.
: Floyd: There are two major problems with this argument. First, the argument assumes that values (ethics, standards, morals, etc.) exist on a ratio scale. Second (and see below re: RIGHT AND WRONG...) this argument assumes that all people in all times and places have exactly the same moral code as western Europeans and Euro-Americans. This premise is demonstrably false.
It is not demonstrably false as this is the basis of the Tao, that it is demonstrably universal. Just because I lived on another continent in another millennium does not mean that I would have a different moral code. Hurting some one is always hurting someone. Causing someone’s life to end is still causing someone’s life to end.
: THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN
: AND
: LEWIS’ THEORY OF THE LOADED COIN
: Floyd: Again, several issues. First, highly improbable is not the same thing as impossible. Many highly improbable events happen. In fact, each one of us is the result of a single sperm, out of millions, fertilizing an egg. The one single sperm that succeeds is not more likely, before the fact, to be the lucky one. It nevertheless is. The odds are less than one in one million that the sperm that resulted in your existence would be the one that did so. This, multiplied by the odds of your mother and father meeting, multiplied by the odds of each of them being that one lucky sperm, multiplied by...ad nauseum, make your existence an extremely improbable event, and yet here you are.
The probability that there exists a future universe that includes life is not the same as the probability that an egg gets fertilized; in fact it is quite the opposite. It is the probability that one particular sperm out of one million competing sperm will actually fertilize it. What if only one in one million sperm could actually fertilize an egg? Our population would dwindle into nothingness in one generation. This is not how it work in human biology, close to one million out of one million sperm are able to fertilize. This is exactly my point, it seems that our universe is designed to fertilize! That no matter how the primal particle collisions had occurred there would still be life in the universe, and probably an abundance of it at that. This implies a design. Our universe tends toward the goal of creating life.
:Floyd: Third, the appearance of design does not necessarily imply a conscious designer. Waves lapping the shore of a lake sort pebbles and sand by size, based entirely on the relative strength of the wave at different points in its course up the beach. This type of size sorting can be nearly perfect, and yet it is not reasonable to attribute intent to the waves, nor to the lake as a whole, despite the near perfection of the pattern it creates…
… like the size-sorting of beach sands, are the result of undirected processes falling into the most easily sustained patterns.
Again, why couldn’t these processes be the result of God. Why wouldn’t God create a universe that tends toward the way of least resistance? Water flows down hill, electrons move down to the lowest most stable electron orbit, etc… This would allows God to prove he exists when things don’t go that way. It is highly improbable that a sea of liquid water would fall upward creating a path through the Gulf of Aquaba on it’s own or that a burning bush in the desert would not be consumed in its own flame. These events from the life of Moses are examples of miracles.
: Ryan: Lewis goes on to say, and the question whether miracles occur is just the question whether Nature is ever doctored. That person who is able to doctor the universe is what we call God.
: Floyd: Certainly any entity that was capable of altering the laws of probability at will appear godlike to us. However, the question Lewis posed is not sufficiently answered. Again, to assume the active interference of God as one of your premises is not logically valid.
I now acknowledge that proving God’s existence takes more than logic and reason, at some point of your rhetoric you will need to take a leap of faith; a very simple assumption perhaps. My reasoning above goes like this. Improbable even + God = God’s existence. It makes sense but it is not wholly logical. But my teacher Dr. Ess once told me no matter what position you take, no matter what your philosophical belief is, at some point along your reasoning you must make some sort of leap of faith. I hoped to be able to make it beyond this and be able to prove God’s existence solely from empirical evidence. But I am not done arguing, as of yet, my original plan was to create a theory and then develop a theology and then apply it to historical and present day miracles. This should create enough circumstantial evidence to prove it in a court of law. It is only circumstantial because I was forced to make a few assumptions.
: RIGHT AND WRONG AS A CLUE TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE
: Floyd: This approach assumes, once again, that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic moral and ethical codes with which we are familiar are the only moral or ethical codes in existence. Once again, this is demonstrably false.
Please demonstrate a society where killing each other is productive and encouraged. I would like to see it for myself. Is there a country where cowardice and betrayal are looked upon as attributes of “good men?” I do not believe so.
: Floyd: In addition, this argument misplaces the source of these codes of behavior as something inherent and instinctual, when in fact they are learned. Children are not born with a knowledge of the Ten Commandments, any more than they are born already knowing Tort law or campaign finance regulations. These rules of appropriate behavior are taught to children and conformity to these rules is (more or less) consistently rewarded, while violation is (more or less) consistently punished.
What I did not make incredibly clear in this previous essay is that love is based on reason. When you are drowning my feelings or animal instincts will tell me that it will be dangerous to try and save you but my ability to reason allows me to put my interests below yours, to say “you are not any more important than me so I will help you because if I was in your place I would like to helped as well.” So if the Tao is based on Love, and Love is just an application of Reason, then children could not be expected to know all about right and wrong. Reason is something that grows along with becoming an adult. That is why there are legal consent laws, that is why children do not vote.
Furthermore, morals from the Tao are seen in every culture, from Babylonia to the books of the dead in ancient Egypt. American Indian and Chinese proverbs. Even Buddhism, Indian, and Roman/Greek philosophies share the same basic belief in a definite right and wrong. I would go into detail with examples of different moral ideas and where they can be found in many different cultures but it would take up nearly ten pages. Maybe next time.
I believe this argument to be the strongest. It still assumes a leap of faith. Assume there is a God, where would you expect to find evidence for him? We expect to find evidence inside us. In the very place we look we find it, if you believe in a Tao. If you do not believe in a Tao then your world is so fundamentally different than mine that I will never be able to convince you of anything.
I thank you for the critique and the compliment. I am trying very hard to create a coherent rhetoric. I am improving daily. My friends think I should drop architecture and take up philosophy/religion as my major. But that would be too much fun.
-Ryan-
