Again, name me one conclusive and consistent event that we observe that can be attributed to God and nothing else.
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From this reluctance to simply follow the evidence where it leads, and instead prefer explanations either with no support whatsoever at best, and explanations logically impossible at worse, it is clear that such people are objecting not on intellectual grounds, but on existential grounds. Such objections are a matter of the heart, not the mind.
That's all great and "super-wise", but let's say I approach you with the similar example I gave on this thread.
Let's say that there's a milk-carton Genie in my fridge that's responsible for everything good in your life. And the fact that there's good in your life would validate it's existence.
Given your approach to interpreting reality... why wouldn't you believe me, and how can you say whether I'm wrong or I'm right?
No. Try answering the above question, and you'll see why atheists do what they do.
I would simply say you were wrong about the milk carton genie being the source of all that is good in my life.
My reason?
Because God is the source of all that is good in my life.
Well, I'd say that you think so because Genie created this world 5 minutes ago, including you with all of your thoughts and beliefs, which includes the belief in God ... because in his Genie infinite wisdom it saw that you couldn't live without such belief.
What says you. Which methodology would you imploy in order to tell whether Genie exists or not, and whether its claims are true? Genie demands faith. So, why won't you believe?
I don't think it will be productive to address all of this point by point, so I'll attempt an overarching answer that will attempt to point to the problem that you have.
1) Overall, you are appealing to a non-materialistic interpretation of reality, which is problematic because it's not a reality we observe.
Thus, if we don't observe that reality, it's very easy to squeeze in just about anything into that "unobservable realm" without any need to justify it, and then scream "Materialist" every time one asks for some evidence for what you are postulating.
Again, you seem to misunderstand provisional methodological materialism. It doesn't postulate that nothing other than the observable matter exists. This methodology is based on observation and making least assumptions when it comes to explaining any given phenomenon. Hence, we begin with where we find ourselves in - in material reality. If there is a good evidence for non-material reality, then it would follow that such explanation is viable. If we don't find any evidence, then it can be a useful explanation, but it has not definitive ways as to how we can tell any difference.
For example, if I listen to someone saying "an angel saved my kid in a car crash, by protecting him from injuries", there's no way that we can verify or test such claim, especially when it's an ad-hoc type of interpretation of any given event.
2) From the above you say "Milk Cartoon Genius of your fridge ¿Needs milk, cartoon and Fridge to exist? ¿Yes? then he is not eternal. ¿No? so perhaps he is God and you don't know it."
And I can say... But it's only what we see in our reality as a milk carton in my fridge. But, the "invisible reality" of the milk carton Genie is that it doesn't really need any of that. It is eternal and is above our reality.
So, you see. I framed the rationalization in a way that you can't tell a difference. Everything good in your life is because of milk carton Genie. So, whenever you ask a question, I can plug in an unverifiable excuse as an "explanation".
Hence, if we can't tell a difference, is there really a difference?
3) You make up stuff like "scientific Atheism" and you ascribe it some inherent need to deny God and make up alternative explanations. Likewise, you say that belief in God is a worldwide phenomenon.
If we find a remote Amazon or Aboriginal tribe that without any missionaries would have the same exact story, you would have a point.
Instead, what we have is some tribes believe in ancestral spirits (an no Gods)... some in spirits of animals, some more developed cultures have anthropomorphic gods. There are some that have no concept of God at all (look up piraha tribe in Amazon).
So, it all points to a local primitive attempts to explain reality by injecting "life-like" characteristics to otherwise natural events. Such is the history of religion.
I would ask you why you thought that. I would ask you what evidence, what arguments, what good reasons do you have for thinking that.
In addition, it is no jump or leap to use abductive reasoning. Scientists, forensic scientists for example, do just that when investigating a crime scene. They use inference to the best explanation and start with eliminating those explanations which are more obviously impossible/implausible, and by a process of crossing said explanations off their list, they arrive at a most plausible, best explanation for the data they have.
Methodological naturalism is not applicable when it comes to investigating what the cause of the universe might be. Such a topic is not within the purview of such a methodology.
The problem then is about the parameters to qualify a invisible reality as valid evidence of its existence. You may say the effects of such reality are despicable as visible expressions of the invisible reality, and then it is required to establish a criteria which would not disqualify a priori the invisible Reality which some may consider uncomfortable.
Right, You can't control the event to happen again to verify that any car accident will be intervened by angels, but the effects of such past event can speak by themselves through consistency of the testimony with itself and in the post event life effects on the witness
Good, then we are showing that you can through away the milk and the carton visible realities to analyse the invisible reality of your claimed genie, you just imply the milk and the carton to muck any possible invisible reality and to provoke aversion and rejection a priori, just like the flying spaghetti with meatballs.
Then once you finally talk of a invisible reality manifested through milk and cartoon, we have to analyze the claims of such entity, We then enter in Paranormal activity and analysis of spiritual entities. ¿Angels? ¿Demons? ¿Souls in pain? we have to study the nature of the genie of your fridge to emit a judgment.
Ad of course we will have to analyze your psychic stability to identify if you are a compulsive lier, a schizophrenic or a mentally healthy and honest person. that will credit or discredit your statement and your testimony.
Your ignorance of Paranormal entities does not justify your denial and your mockery of their existence, it only mocks your ignorance and shows you as a perfidy renegade. As I said before, We can study the nature of entities through the consistency of your testimony, and your mental health, and then our veredict would be the your testimony show evidence of being trustworthy or pure product of a perturbed mind of someone who has very little to do of his life.
Wrong, I said that denying a priori the existence of God is already an atheist dogma. you can go as deep as your possibilities allow you to go to identify the ultimate causes of everything, but you can't assume a priori that God is out of them.
Well in fact lost tribes which never had had contact with missionaries have been found and all of them have religions and believe in invisible reality, the problem there is not explaining them the existence of God to make them believers, but it is harder to explain them that there is only One God and many other spirits which are not God.
When Hernán Cortés arrived to México City the Aztecs had a very elaborated religion which had nothing to do with Abrahamic religions. the missionaries faced not the challenge of a Atheistic people which had to be convinced of the Existence of God, but the challenge of a very religious people which had already too many gods and goddesses.
Same with tribes in Papua New Guinea.
Right invisible realities all of them which are manifestations of the sense of spirituality. Many of those religions also have their story of creation. in the case of Aztecs they had their god of creation, Ometeotl.
The point was that the Assertion that Man is atheist a priori and then is taught religion, is not supported by any discovery of human tribes apart of any civilization. all human civilizations which have been discovered through history had religions, it is, spirituality.
And I would feed you exactly the same justifications that you are using:
1) The good events in your life that Genie claimed to create as your memory is the reason why you should see that Genie's claims are true
2) Genie created everything 2 hours ago with all of the memories that you have. Since this world is so orderly, it all points to the wisdom of Genie who created everything for us to experience exactly the way we do, because we need to understand and learn certain things from this exact created version of reality.
3) Genie actually will reveal itself to you if you believe in his power and change your thinking into seeing that everything it says is true and right. And then it will reveal itself to you in many wonderful ways.
4) You need to have faith that all of this is true in order to experience the purpose that Genie has for you. And you need to buy a "Full Circle" organic brand of milk, but make sure it's 2% one and not the skim one. And then you place it into your fridge, and Genie will occupy the mild carton, and you can pray to the carton and see all sorts of miracles happen in your life, if it's in accordance with Genie's will for your life.
So, why would you deny this wonderful gift of experience? Genie created you and your pre-existing belief in God in order to reveal itself through this exact forum post. Why would you deny it? What reasons would you have to deny it? Go out and buy the milk (make sure it's 2%), and experience the joy of miraculous life.
That's why we don't pretend to understand. Instead we frame certain possibilities, and then claim that neither of these is conclusive. In short, we are honest when we say "we don't know, but here's what could be the case". Such explanations don't necessitate anything.
When was the last time you've seen a forensic scientist conclude that a ghost must be responsible for a murder, just like a defendant would claim?
If such could be the case, it would forever change our legal system.
I have never appealed to personal experience as a line of evidence when talking with someone about the veracity of the central truth claims of Christianity. I have presented arguments such as the Kalam, which is supported with philosophical and observational lines of evidence.
Seems you are attacking another strawman.
But you're doing more than claiming ignorance when you reject a premise of the Kalam argument. You are rejecting one premise in favor of another of your own. This is not analogous to claiming ignorance.
In addition, nothing you have said refutes my statement about the inapplicability of methodological naturalism when it comes to the origin of the universe. You glossed over it by claiming ignorance.
I'm not asserting any premise. I'm rejecting yours. Rejecting yours doesn't mean that I must therefore replace it with anything else. I can honestly say that I don't know until there are good reasons to say that.
You are jumping to a conclusion based on a UNJUSTIFIABLE LINES OF REASONING.
You have yet to demonstrate how you went from "uncaused cause" to "that cause must be an immaterial mind". How do you justify such tremendous leap of a conclusion?
If you affirm both premises of the Kalam, you affirm that the universe has a cause. That is where you begin in your conceptual analysis of the cause.
Right off the bat you eliminate the logically contradictory hypothesis that the universe caused itself and since it has been eliminated
it necessarily follows that the cause must be immaterial, spaceless and timeless.
So you are left with either an impersonal, immaterial, spaceless, timeless, enormously powerful cause or a personal, immaterial, spaceless, timeless, enormously powerful cause.
If the cause was some impersonal eternally existing force, then the sufficient conditions for the existence of the universe would be eternally existing and thus the universe would never have come into being 16 billion years ago. It would simply be eternally existing.
Thus you are left with only one option. An immaterial, personal, timeless, spaceless, enormously powerful efficient cause of the universe.
Notice the step by step abductive process of reasoning here. This is not a jump to conclusions by any means my friend.
No. You can't affirm that, because how we define "the Universe" as all matter/energy/space that exists. Hence you are jumping to your first conclusion here by begging the question that you suppose to support.
Universe is not a thing.
It's a concept of collection of entities. That collection of entities follow causal patterns. You can't lump these together and say all must have "external cause". That's not how cause-effect relationships work.
Hence, you jump to the unjustified assumption #1
There you jump to an unjustified assumption #2, again based on lumping everything into one large concept and claiming that it can't "cause itself".
For any viable cause-effect relationship to work, both cause and effect have to exist in some shape or form.
You jump into the unjustified assumption #3, by fudging the semantics of causality. Nowhere in semantics of causality EVER implied that something is caused into existence from nothing. IN EVERY CASE of causal relationship we have existing causes that impact existing caused to form some effect.
Nowhere in reality you have an example of a cause simply causing things out of nothing.
No. You are not describing anything meaningful. When we describe something, we don't describe it by what it's not.
For example, we don't say... the president of the US is not Mexican, and he's not a plumber in order to define what president is.
We only describe non-existing things in the terms that you describe these - spaceless, timeless, immaterial. Hence, you are making unjustified assumption that such cause exist without showing how anything of the sort is possible.
A force is a physical concept. You are postulating a "force" in a way that makes zero semantic sense. How can you describe anything that such force does apart from physical reality of the force?
The Kalam Cosmological argument is a logically valid deductive modus ponens syllogism.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...AC6CD319C0276FEFD280AC6CD319C0276FE&FORM=VIRE
Really? This is a strange view indeed. I know of no scientist that would say the universe is nothing. What do cosmologists spend their time studying and investigating then, if the universe is nothing?
That is not how cosmologists define "universe". Even if they did, you are still wrong, for a concept is not nothing, but something.
Nothing can cause itself to come into being. This notion is logically incoherent, whether you are speaking of the universe, or anything for that matter. If you want to dismiss an appeal to logic as an appeal to an "unjustified assumption" then that is fine. I appeal to logic, you dismiss it.
Nowhere in reality do we have universes coming into being either. The big bang was a unique event and comparing it to an effect we observe as the result of some material cause is to compare apples to oranges.
Sure we do. If someone is broke, we say they are penniless. Much of what you have said is baseless. I can think of hundreds of adjectives that are used in meaningful sentences which describe what something is by conveying what it is not.
The president is not the cause of the universe though.
Non-existent things have no description, there is nothing to describe. So to say we "describe non-existing things" is nonsensical.
You can't. Now you see how silly it is to posit some eternally existing impersonal force as the cause of the universe.
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