A question for atheists and agnostics

MaxP said:

Not true, I have said this in response to two others but I present it again -
Everything in existence is moved by another thing.This process, however, cannot be infinite; there has to be a first mover.

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Says who?

Because everything moved is a sort of instrument of the first Mover. Therefore, if there is no first Mover, then all things that move will be instruments. In an infinite series of moves, there is not first mover. In that case, these infinite mover and things will all be instruments. But instruments cannot be moved without a principal mover. It's like a saw cutting a piece of wood by itself. There must be a first mover above all the rest; this being we call God.

Now, to argue as to the nature of God is a different thing from arguing as to Its existence.

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I have no idea if there is a first mover. I don't doubt that depths exist beyond human perception, which doesn't help your position any more than mine. But, the very idea of a personal god is just too much. It's simply nonsensicle from my pov.

MaxP said:

I would argue for God thusly -
Everything in existence is moved by another thing.This process, however, cannot be infinite; there has to be a first mover. Because everything moved is a sort of instrument of the first Mover. Therefore, if there is no first Mover, then all things that move will be instruments. In an infinite series of moves, there is not first mover. In that case, these infinite mover and things will all be instruments. But instruments cannot be moved without a principal mover. It's like a saw cutting a piece of wood by itself. There must be a first mover above all the rest; this being we call God.

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This only works if you define God as the "first mover", after which, you'd have to admit that you know nothing at all about God.

If you define God as "The LORD GOD" from the bible and then take it literally, God clearly does not exist. If such a being did exist it would be obvious.

Here, read this verse:

From 1 kings chapter 18:

21Elijah then came near to all the people, and said, ‘How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.’ The people did not answer him a word.

22Then Elijah said to the people, ‘I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets number four hundred and fifty.

23Let two bulls be given to us; let them choose one bull for themselves, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it; I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it.

24Then you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God.’ All the people answered, ‘Well spoken!’

25Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, ‘Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many; then call on the name of your god, but put no fire to it.’

26So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, ‘O Baal, answer us!’ But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made.

27At noon Elijah mocked them, saying, ‘Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is meditating, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.’

28Then they cried aloud and, as was their custom, they cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed out over them.

29As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

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Now, everytime you see "Baal", substitute "God". That would give you a good idea of what atheists think about your God.

You could argue that only a prophet could convince God to give a sign. The problem is that this makes God unfalsifiable.

I cannot verify that your God exists other than to take your word for it, and whether you admit it or not you only believe what you believe because that is what you read or have been told.

Another verse to chew on:

From John chapter 20:

24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.


25So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’



26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’

27Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’

28Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’

29Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

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I think that a lot of atheists are like Thomas. They won't just take your word for it, they won't believe without verification.

You may think this is an unreasonable standard, but i don't, if your God wanted me to believe in his existence he would have no trouble making his existence known to me.

MaxP said:

Why would we be a science project for a Being that would inherently know the result of the experiment, by virtue of being omnipowerful(by virtue of It creating existence).

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That's a great argument in favor of atheism. Why would an omnipowerful being create things that include needless suffering, such as we have here in this world? Why does the creator of mankind have to also be the creator of the universe? A created being can create another created being, so it would seem.

I would argue for God thusly -
Everything in existence is moved by another thing.This process, however, cannot be infinite; there has to be a first mover. Because everything moved is a sort of instrument of the first Mover. Therefore, if there is no first Mover, then all things that move will be instruments. In an infinite series of moves, there is not first mover. In that case, these infinite mover and things will all be instruments. But instruments cannot be moved without a principal mover. It's like a saw cutting a piece of wood by itself. There must be a first mover above all the rest; this being we call God.

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Again, the origin of the universe is subject to speculation. And there is no reason to believe that that which caused the universe to come into being, also created mankind.

We could go on and on like this. There is no proof of any god. Certainly no proof of the Biblical God other than words on a page, no different than any other work of fiction when you come right down to it.

MaxP said:

A rational and logical being, I suppose the only current example on this planet are humans. And rather than being objectively rational or logical, I suppose the definition of the beings implied is the ability to use logic and reason.

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What, then, is an "irrational being"?

I was raised a Christian; at age eight, I had a born-again experience. I rededicated myself twice at various points intended on being a missionary. I went to Christian college (fortunately, an accredited one and one continually noted by US News & World Report as being a best-buy in private schools). I've taught adult Sunday school; sung special music; taken offering; counted money; was a treasurer; led a home-group for the last 6+ years and was an elder for the last three of those.

It was this year I became an atheist. People ask when did it begin. I like to answer 44-years ago. All of it is part of the process. I suppose one ought to ask how then was my process different. That is, why did I become an atheist while so many others did not. Or, what was unique about my process. Well, I can't get in someone else's head, but the fact that the question can be asked suggest that the story is worth telling. (Or at least articulating for my own sake.)

I have always been a fairly logical being. I don't say this boastfully ... most who know me personally would attest to this. This isn't to say that I don't have emotions; it is just that I try not be ruled by them.

The major consequence of who I am is that those things that I ascribe to--insofar as I take the time to examine them--must follow logically from propositions that are themselves sound at least as far back as we can or can dare take them.

All of my year up until the last 3 or 4 have been building and rebuilding aspects of Christian theology to be rational. I borrowed concepts of original sin and what hell is (alá St. Seraphim) from the Orthodox to correct problems in western thought. I invented concepts of time to explain how God could act outside of time; extended concepts of God's omnipresence to explain Christ and our process of sanctification. It was all quite elaborate and wonderful (if I do say so myself).

Eventually, turn the power of reason to examining my own premises ... and that is when it began to fall apart. Why, for example, should I expect those of other religions to respect my experience with God if I didn't respect theirs. If I feel that my experiences are of God and they think that they experience God in their context, on what basis can I dismiss theirs. If they do experience God and that experience does not include the concept of Jesus and may in fact, explicitly or implicitly, lead them to believe that the concept of a son of God is false, how shall I gainsay them?

From here, I worked for a while on the concept of meta-religion. Concepts that would allow for distinctions and even allowing the "sub-religion" (for lack of a better word) of Christianity to explain and retain concepts of Jesus. Part and parcel with this would be "what, if anything, would a good just God want to convey to all peoples everywhere." Well, if God does exists and he is good and just and he did convey something to all peoples everywhere--and all those peoples experience God--then that which is common is what that good just God conveyed. Those things would probably be that which is common morality--I put it (for poetry's sake) "Don't steal; neither lives, wives, or knives." (Pardon me for the sexism ... like I said, poetry.) Or as Lewis put it, "do as you would be done by."

Long before reaching this point, I had allowed and accepted that God created through evolution. (It's just not logical that Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and atheists--scientists all--could come to the same conclusions regarding scientific explanations and that it all be a conspiracy or delusion. All while at the same time that scientific process yielding obviously useful things--regardless of one's other convictions--like medicine or computers.) I had concluded that Original Sin as a specific event rather than a general description was both incredibly unlikely as well as useless for understanding either our current predicament or the need for salvation. It seemed plausible that that which compels us to behave in particular ways is explainable via evolution--even if it were God that willed it.

Then, if all that God has conveyed is "do as you would be done by" (all other particularities of any religion being almost certainly false due to their uniqueness) then sheer social necessity renders gods unnecessary. That is, we are social beings. All social beings (chimps, dolphins, bonobos, silver-backs, orangutans, penguins too, and humans) operate under a social quid pro quo. We are not unique. We operate in a way than one should expect if nothing but evolution had anything to do with our existence. God is in no way obviously necessary.

So what of my experiences? Taking a long hard cruel stare in the mirror, I examined my experiences. I came to the conclusion that nothing I'd ever counted as an experience of a god was anything but emotion. That emotion was indistinguishable from those emotions that arose from any other event ... making love to my wife, holding in my arms my new born child, or even solving a programming problem at work. Those experience are, in turn, indistinguishable from those experienced by, say, the whirling dervishes of Istanbul or those experienced by Navahos. That is, a spiritual experience is nothing more than emotion to which one attributes the source of the spirit. And, of course, there is no evidence of a spirit or soul.

I guess I had always believed that "faith is a virtue" was a lie. It just took this long to come to admit it. That which cannot be verified cannot be believed.

In the end, there is no evidence for God or gods. The above is roughly how I came to that conclusion. The way God supposedly operates makes no sense. What a good just God would want (which is measured in some sense by how the message is delivered) doesn't line up with what any individual religion believes and what does line up doesn't require God at all.

In the words of Laplace, I have no need of that hypothesis.

MaxP said:

The premise is that everything in existence is moved by an ulterior source. I go on to state why that ulterior source must be, in itself, immovable. The premise is that everything is moved; the conclusion is by what.

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If a premise is "everything is moved," then concluding something unmoved is contradictory.

I don't understand the question.

We exist. Period.

quatona said:

Except that this assumption violates your own premise.
You start from the premise that everything in existence needs to be moved by something else, and your conclusion is that there must be something that isn´t moved by something else.

If we start from your conclusion that there can/must be something unmoved, your entire reasoning lacks any basis.

Interestingly the only valid conclusion from your premise is that the first mover is not in existence (because everything in existence needs a mover).

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The argument works better if instead of saying "in existence" he says "that is natural".
The conclusion is that the first mover, named "God", is supernatural.

MaxP said:

Went on to explain why not...

The premise is that everything in existence is moved by an ulterior source.

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And since you end up calling this ulteriour source "god", "god" is not your conclusion but has been your premise.

So you would say there is no Uncaused Cause, then?

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No - if I´d intend to say it I would have said it. All I said was that your argument was flawed. In the end it turned out to be circular reasoning: your conclusion is identical with your premise, as shown above.

MaxP said:

What has led you to determine God does not exist, or cannot be known?

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When I actually started to look at the historicity of a lot of biblical claims, particularly in the OT, a lot of them didn't hold any water. There are also a number of claims in the NT (a made-up tradition of Romans allowing a Jewish criminal free comes to mind) weren't any better.

This, coupled with a complete lack of evidence of the supernatural (in any form), was a fairly strong argument against belief.

After that I looked at the probability behind the existence of a Christian god. If you take every possible god or god into account, and even if you let the probability of a Christian god equal 1 - 1/n, n -> infinity, one should be completely indifferent to any belief system. I don't expect the proof to sway anyone, but always it's a nice novelty.

MaxP said:

There is reason to believe for the existence of a Being which created the universe, an Uncaused Cause.
That's the first step.

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And I suppose the second step is to conclude irrational things about God and believe everything the Catholic Church tells you?

But i suppose i'll have to wait for the 2nd lesson for that.

MaxP said:

But when one examines what would be the logical result if everything was moved by something else, then we see that path to be fruitless.
Therefore, we must go down the other path, that there is Something unmoved.

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You can not, however, do so with the argument you have proffered thus far.

It is not an unreasonable conclusion at all - brilliant minds have come to the same conclusion of an Uncaused Cause.

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Their arguments were notably more sophisticated than yours. There are multiple ways to construct a valid cosmological argument, but none that I consider sound.

It is worth noting here that 'big bang' cosmology does not commit us to a "beginning of all things."

MaxP said:

So would you say there is a Being who created existence, though?

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I would say, as I think I already have, that I can only speculate on the origin of existence.

There is reason to believe for the existence of a Being which created the universe, an Uncaused Cause.
That's the first step.

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There are as many reasons not to believe as there are to believe. And some of my personal reasons for believing are more nostalgic and mystical in nature than anything; i.e. it makes me feel good to believe that there could be a god, that there could be a world outside and beyond our present one. But just because it makes me feel better to believe there may be such doesn't make it so.

MaxP said:

Therefore, we must go down the other path, that there is Something unmoved.

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Or, that not everything is moved.

Nathan45 said:

The argument works better if instead of saying "in existence" he says "that is natural".
The conclusion is that the first mover, named "God", is supernatural.

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Maybe it works a little better that way, but it still has plenty of holes.

Of course, the first thing I´d ask for would be a definition of "natural".

We don´t have a problem defining god into existence, mind you. I just have to prove that there is a monitor on my desk and then say "and we call this monitor god" and - poof - atheism and agnosticism are refuted.