Awwww, shucks ma’am! I’m just a simply country boy.

This is just what I needed to read this morning. Whenever I am wallowing I always seem to be lifted up when I offer little acts of kindness to those around me.

That sounds like a pretty good philosophy to me.

Today is going to be fantastic. I can feel it in the air.

You go get ‘em, Tiger!

My childhood, up through my early twenties was filled with religious indoctrination. I was taught to pray, and to follow the spirit. To which I believed I was doing quite well. A blind faith, so to speak.

Then I was face with glaring ‘situations’ that made my faith take a complete nose dive. The final straw would be when a friend and his family were in a car accident. They were hit by another driver and crashed into the retaining wall. Everyone was able to get out of the SUV but his 8 year old daughter. She was trapped and pleading with her dad to get her out. This little girl was burned alive and her father could do nothing to help her.

Although my friend did nothing wrong and was a great person, he is now left with the nightmares of his daughter screams. I cannot bring my head around to understand how and why a loving god would allow such cruelty. What do we gain by her being taken in such a manner?

I am not completely convinced there is no god. But, if he exists, I will surely be going straight to hell for saying, “He is one sick bastard.”

I will not be upset if you delete this… I just had to get it off my chest. To be completely honest, my own blasphemous thoughts depress me. A belief in God gives me hope… yet, I refuse to fully let myself believe again. Maybe one day…

Well, first of all, I would never delete one of your comments. You always put a great deal of thought and insight into them. Your comments are always welcome here.

-sps

But here’s the crux of my argument: neither Dawkins nor anyone else can prove that he DOESN’T exist. Therefore in the absence of proof, the non-existence of God is not a fact, it is a belief, or, if you prefer, an opinion. Therefore atheism is merely a belief, albeit a belief in the non-existence of something. And as such, the proponents of this belief must accept the unpleasant truth that they MAY be wrong, just as adherents of traditional (and non-traditional) religious thought must also accept that their views on God and the universe may be wrong (although they rarely do, another point where I agree with Dawkins).

No, atheism is not a belief! It is the absence of a belief. It does not require proof, because it is not making any claims. There is no proposition or premise being made.

It is a belief insofar as it is not a statement of empirically verifiable fact. That said,
I have no problem with the mere absence of belief in God, as I can easily understand how people might feel that way.

I hasten to add that I’m not saying that that’s what YOU’RE doing here. But again, my post was not about God pe se. It was about the dogmatic tone that many atheists take when debating this subject.

“Athests do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist. Hence category 7 [Strong Atheist - 'I know there is not God] is in practise rather emptier than its opposite number, category 1 (Strong Theist), which has many devoted inhabitants” – R. Dawkins, Page 51

Yes, yes, I read that too. But Dawkins comes awfully close (by his own admission) to category 7.

You seem to think that evolution disproves God.

No, I am absolutely not saying that! Darwin shows us with natural selection that other explanations, other than intelligent design, for how processes that otherwise look designed may not be. In the case of biology, natural selection is an explanation for the diversity of species. We can see how the process does not require outside interference. In the case of biology, natural selection very eloquently explains how species gradually became more complex over time. Prior to Darwin, it would have been natural to assume design in the case of animals and plant. After Darwin, we see a better, simpler, natural explanation. Evolution does come close to disproving the creation story in the Book of Genesis.

Genesis? Who said anything about Genesis? I would hope that you would realize by now that I don’t put much stock in Genesis.

But it also brings up a puzzling thought: a few strands of DNA is all that’s kept me from a lifetime of sitting in a tree, scratching my balls, and wondering where my next banana is coming from. As it turns out, we share almost that much DNA with mice. So my point here is simply that evolution only explains why we are not chimpanzees, but doesn’t really explain why we are human.

As far as the multiverse goes, it’s clearly his main argument against the argument from design. And just like the god hypothesis, it is based on speculation, nothing more.

How so? I see two pages out of Chapter four (Why There Almost Certainly no God” speaks of it – out of 40 pages. Given that Dawkins is not a physicist it should not be surprising is that his main probability argument is based on his argument against intelligent design. He points to Darwin to show that it does not take ‘a big smart thing to make a lesser thing.’ (Dennett).

I said it’s his main argument against the argument from design, not necessarily his main argument against the existence of God. This is one of the weakest points in the whole book. For some reason, Dawkins seems to be so desperate NOT to believe in God that any theory, no matter similarly unprovable, is preferable to the God hypothesis. He even acknowledges it, but can give no better reason as to why his theory is better than to say his “consciousness has been raised” by Darwin. In essence, he is allowing himself a luxury he denies the Deist.

I would like to take the time to explain in more detail about what I mean by complexity increasing gradually over time and how that is, in spite of the second law of thermodynamics.

Understanding this concept is key to understanding the probability argument against a designer or an inteligent god. Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and Victor Stenger talk about this from different points-of-view. Dawkins knowledge is obviously centered in biology and Darwinian evolution, Stephen Hawking explains from a much more general outlook in “A Brief History of Time”. Victor Stenger’s is good in this context, because we are discussing arguments for and against God (“God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist”).

The basic concept is that at the point of the so-called “big bang”, the Universe was at maximum entropy (maximum disorder, and minimum information). At the point of the big bang, the universe had minumum spacial and temporal dimensions. Any space or time smaller than Planck space and time cease to have any meaning. There is zero indication of god’s “fingerprint”. The “bang” was not an ordinary explosion, but a completely causless random quantum flucuation which led to the sudden expansion of space itself. As the Universe increases in size, space itself is expanding. Space expands at a highter rate than entropy, so there is room for order and complexity to grow and still leave room for entropy to increase.

There are now several models of universes that have been simulated in computers that show that our universe is not the only universe that could have expanded and not immediately collapsed. Our universe’s “constants” are not special in that sense. Further, there is confusion about the so call “fine tuning”. It is not the actual values of the constants that are important, but the ratios between certain key values. Secondly, the values can change more than what is often portrayed in many of the “Goldie Locks” and “Rare Earth” descriptions that are available in popular book stores in the “Science” sections. Lastly, because of the ratios, there are far fewer “special constants” that are key.

Antother important concept about entropy and the second law of thermodynamics is that it only applies to open systems. Useful energy always tends to decrease while unuseful energy (heat) increases. Useful information tends to decrease. Since the Universe is expanding at such a high rate, there is always room for more order even as disorder increases.

An interesting fact is that the existense of highly ordered life forms adds to disorder at a much higher rate of ordinary matter. A planet of rocks can just “sit there” for a very long time. Put some people on it and you will see a huge increase in entropy. It is almost as if nature abhores energy gradiants and it “comes up” with unlikely ways of smoothing out these gradiants by “creating” life. Please see: “Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life”, by Eric D. Schneider, and Dorion Sagan for more details on this interesting idea.

“The role of entropy in cosmology remains a controversial subject. Although entropy does increase in the model of an expanding universe, the maximum possible entropy rises much more rapidly – thus entropy density is decreasing with time. This results in an “entropy gap” pushing the system further away from equilibrium.”

I didn’t write that, but I think it forms a fairly succinct answer to your argument. Again, it’s fascinating, and underscores just how little we know about the universe. Proves nothing, though. A deistic God can still be postulated as the so-called “unmoved mover” of it all.

Part of the problem is semantics. I have always personally equated theism with deism, i.e., a belief in a higher power unadorned with religious dogma. Evidently the word “theist” means more than that to others. For my part, I consider myself an agnostic deist.

The default position in science is to be a-”anything” for which there is no evidense. Given the lack of evidense for design and the abundance of evidense pointing in the other direction, there is no reason to believe in any designer. The point of the tea pot, etcetera is not that it disproves god, it is that the onus is one the one making the claim. The same criteria holds true for String Theory. So far, the string theorists have not shown us how their hypothesis can be falsified. Strictly speaking, String Theory is not a proper scientific theory.

I don’t know a lot about String Theory, but it does sound rather strange to me, so I’ll just give you that one. The rest of the points you bring up in this comment have already been hashed to death, so I’m going to skip down to your most recent comment and address that.

There are claims made by many theists of certain attributes that their god (e.g. The God of Abraham) has. These claims can often be tested. Double-blind tests for prayer is one example, and there are others. We can point out logical paradoxes

God’s omnipotents is one example of a paradox. God either can or cannot make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.

The existence of evil is another.
“It is empirical fact that unnecessary suffering exists in the world.

2. An omniscient model God would be aware of this unnecessary suffering.

3. An omnipotent model God would have the power to eliminate or alleviate at least some of the unnecessary suffering.

4. An omnibenevolent model God would have the desire to eliminate or alleviate at least some of the unnecessary suffering.

5. It follows that a God with the attributes of the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent model God does not exist.
” – Victor Stinger

Diestic gods are usually not well enough defined to make any kind of investigation. However, we do see that for everything man has observed in the universe, up to this point, nature builds up complexity on a gradual level. A god capable of designing the Universe would need to be highly complex – more complex than the Universe being created. We look to probability. As improbable as it may seem that the Universe either always existed or spontaniously came from nothing, it does no help to posit a god, since this god would be even less probable than what is trying to be explained.

Dawkins never claims that he can prove that no gods of this type exist, just that it is not prbable. I am not claiming, nor is Dawkins that we have proven the non-existense in God, just pointing out the improbability and that god is unessesary.

Occam’s Razor is applied to eliminate additinal, unessesary variables. In this case, we eliminate God because it does not add any additinal information or function. It does not mean that god does not ultimately exist, it is just that no concept, force or attribute under invesitgation in science has been brought up that requires a god or explains anything in any model.

Relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, chemestry, and cosmology all have perfectly good models without invoking a god or gods.

Again, it is up to those making extaordinary claims (e.g. String theory or God) who have the burndon of proof or at least a means to falsify, not the other way around. To be an atheist (or agnostic) is to have the default position.

Whenever one enters into this debate, sooner or later the atheist will trot out the chorus line which features the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and the Celestial Teapot, as though the obvious fact that one cannot disprove the existence of any product of the imagination somehow proves the non-existence of god. The flaw in the logic lies in the assumption that one should disbelieve in the existence of God for the same reason that one disbelieves in the existence of the Celestial Teapot. If we think this through for a moment, we will see that this isn’t true.

Furthermore, if one resists the temptation to “humanize” God, one can deduce the possible existence of a Deistic god from what one observes in the universe. Not conclusively prove, mind you, but certainly entertain a warranted belief.

The belief in a creator requires the belief in something far more complex than what is claimed was created in the first place. That is the reason that it is improbable. Complexity appears over time, and creators come along very late in the game, because evolution is a gradual process as was the formation of stars, planets and even the elements of matter.

I agree that the God hypothesis present difficulties of its own. I never said it didn’t.

The belief in a complex being existing prior to the big bang is an extraordinary claim. Relativity was revolutionary and had to be tested to be shown it was true. Not believing in relativity, prior to the evidence did not demand any proof, because Newton’s theory appeared to hold up quite nicely, with a few known exceptions. There is precisely zero data supporting an intelligent designer or supernatural being, and there is in fact a great deal of evidence against.

Again, I respectfully disagree with your assertion that there is zero data. Some would argue that the data is all around us. Where I would agree with you is that there is zero data to support the various claims about god that mankind has promulgated over the years.

*the universe is not perfect, but it is claimed that god is perfect

By some, but by no means all. Some religions postulate the existence of an “imperfect” god.

*the universe does not appear designed

Again, many would disagree with you here.

*life does not appear to be designed (in light of Darwin and evolution)

You seem to think that evolution disproves God. I would argue that it’s one of the clearest manifestations of his existence.

*evil exists

Hence Manichaeism. The Catholic church calls it heresy, but I think there’s a lot to it, at least in an allegorical sense. In any event, the existence of evil does not disprove the existence of god.

*a transcendent being cannot exist anywhere in space, but it is claimed by theists that god exists everywhere and is simultaniously transcendent. A Transcendent Being Cannot Be Omnipresent.

Well, now we’re just bantering semantics here. In any event, all this proves is the folly of trying to give God knowable attributes.

*the bible is full of historical inaccuracies, is internally inconsistent, and is self-contradictory. it appears exactly as one would expect were it not divinely inspired, but was written by several primitive men with primitive morals.

I couldn’t agree with you more.

*everything about the universe follows a course of increased complexity over time, but god would have to be complex

As I said above, the theory had problems of its own. I’ve never denied that.

*99.99999…% of the Universe is wasted and serves no useful purpose, and the Earth is not located in any special place. It is not especially a nice place for people and natural accidents have wiped out life several times.

Well, it’s still better than Venus.

*an Omnipotent god is paradoxical, yet it is claimed that god has such an attribute.

See above.

*prayers do not work any better than horseshoes

In my case, not nearly as well. I’m one hell of a horseshoe player.

*miracles never work on amputees or people with MD or other currently incurable genetically-based diseases, they only “Work” on people with illnesses that are known to spontaneously heal with non-believers at the same statistical level of believers.

You’re right, but so what? The point of my post was about Dawkins, not God. The validity of your point doesn’t make Dawkins any less annoying.

*religious people are no more moral than non-believers. the divorce rate is the same or higher, and criminal rate is the same or higher.

See above.

*telepathy, esp, ghosts, etc. do not exist, or there is a lacking of any evidence. on the other hand, magicians perform magic tricks that simulate all of these phenomena.

Again, I fail to see how any of this disproves the point of my post.

*we never see people return from the dead or walk on water, but we know that magicians have

See previous comment

*a personal being needs to be physical, but God is supposed to be a person.

The (probably) erroneous conclusions reached by others have nothing to do with my post.

*there is no empirical evidence for any claims about a god or gods.

One of the things that used to confuse me back in my Sunday school days was how the nuns would teach us that God was unknowable, and then proceed to tell us everything they knew about God. So hear I agree with you. Man has tried to define God in human terms by giving him/her/it human attributes. The folly of this is no doubt as evident to you as it is to me.

Stating that “God did it” to explain every unknown does is a non-explanation.

But I’m not doing that, as I think you can see.

Interesting, thought provoking comments. For the sake of consistency, I have concatenated all your comments into one, however, nothing in your comments has been altered. I’ll respond to your comments shortly. Thanks for stopping by.

-sps

I have read the book. Technically an agnostic maybe, but when you write a book called “The God Delusion”, and include in it a chapter called “Why God almost certainly doesn’t exist”, then you come pretty close to claiming that you “Know”. And that’s what annoys me, not his lack of belief. He doesn’t KNOW that god doesn’t exist any more than I KNOW that he does. His atheism is still nothing more than a belief.

As to your other point, attempting to deduce the existence of god from what we observe in the universe in no way implies “giving up”. As I said, science, not religion, has taught us what we know about the universe. But a belief in God is not incompatible with faith in the scientific method.

Life was not made up, but invisible beings that live in the sky were (Thor, Jahova, Spagetti monsters). It is just that some were made up more recently.

I agree. But one can disbelieve in the gods that man created in HIS own image, and still believe in a higher power. It’s only when one starts to attribute characteristics to this higher power that one begins to stray. The Flying Spaghetti Monster settles nothing.

We know that life exists on Earth, and there is reason to believe that life may have evolved elsewhere. It is silly for someone to say “I believe there is life on other planets”. Beliefs are superstitous. That is quite different from saying “It is possible that life exists on another planet.”

My point was that in this case, one is speculating about something for which there is no proof, because it seems reasonable. One can, at best, call it a “warranted belief”. And that’s my position on God: I feel it is a “warranted belief”, but I realize that it probably can’t be any more than that.

The universe does not look designed, so why bring up a designer in the first place? There is no need. Who designed the designer? It answers nothing and is mere wishful thinking.

I disagree. The universe clearly looks to designed to many, or we wouldn’t be having the debate in the first place. Asking “who designed the designer” is about as helpful as asking “what came before the Big Bang?” And in any event, one can attempt to deduce the existence of God from what one observes in the universe. That is not necessarily wishful thinking. It’s the various saccharine attributes given to God over the centuries that constitute wishful thinking.

A lack of belief in “A” is not equivalent to a belief in NOT A. It is up to the proponents of A to provide the evidence. There is no need for anyone to attempt to disprove the existence of The God of Abraham any more than for anyone to disprove the non existence of anything magical. God believers do not even provide a coherent set of attributes their god(s) have, so there is nothing worth talking about, except for the fact that so many have a belief and lately it has lead to a lot of trouble.

I think you’re losing sight of my original point here. I’m not defending organized religion, nor was my post an attempt to prove the existence of god. You’re not required to disprove the existence of God, up until the point where you call me delusional because I happen to believe in one. Once the atheist does that, it’s his turn to pony up some proof. My point here is that both sides of this argument should exercise a little intellectual modesty in their respective positions.

Definitely any drug with the same effectiveness of prayer would never make it past the FDA and Consumer Reports would be critical of its snake oil-like qualities.

I don’t recall ever bringing up the subject of prayer in this post.

So why is the notion of some sort o higher power so unthinkable

It was perhaps reasonable to think that way before the advent of modern science. Now it is not reasonable, because we know that this kind of thinking is just giving up and wishful thinking with no basis in the evidence.

Again, I disagree for reasons I discussed above.

The existence of evil makes a lot more sense from the naturalistic perspective and cannot be explain by a higher power of the sort the Dawkins, Hitchens and the others are talking about. They are mostly concerned with The God of Abraham (and other personal gods to a lesser extent) that interfere with the Universe and make promises that, once believed, change the believer’s behavior in unpredictable and sometime dangerous ways.

I agree. There has been a lot of evil done in the name of religion. But for the purposes of this debate, it is straw man argument. The evil perpetrated by “religious” people in no way disproves the existence of God.

I only do that when someone misses every one of my points as badly as you seem to have done. Which you’re doing again, I might add. And in any event, I responded to all your points, so I really don’t know what you’re talking about here.

Oh yes, and asking repeatedly (which I see in many of your responses to others) if I’ve actually read your post.

Well, one really has to wonder. You state that I make claims about God that I never actually made. Basically, your’e putting words in my mouth that don’t belong there. You seem determined to rebut all my attempts to prove that God exists….oh, wait a minute, I never actually claimed that I could prove that God exists, now did I? That’s where you’re missing my point.

Now, can you prove that God doesn’t exist without invoking such nonsense as the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” or the “Invisible Pink Unicorn”? No, you can’t. So again I say to you what I have been saying to religious fundamentalists for years: accept the fact that you can’t possibly know all there is to know about our universe and lose the dogmatic, know-it-all tone. It doesn’t serve you well.

Ok then, have a nice day.

You too. Thanks for stopping by.

You’re missing my point, and rather badly I might add. Any claim about God is, by definition, an extraordinary claim, including the claim that there is no God at all. You don’t know any more than I know. You lack of belief is just that, a belief, nothing more. As I’ve said, ad nauseum by now, the inability to disprove God’s existence in no way proves his/her/its existence. What I am saying is that atheists have no more right to be dogmatic in their beliefs than theists. Did you actually read the post?

Finally, proof and evidence are not the same thing. True, there is not necessarily any proof of the existence of God, but some would argue that there is evidence all around us, if one chooses to interpret it as such. All I’m saying here is: believe or disbelieve whatever you want, just lose the dogmatic tone.

Next, the ‘if you accept there’s other life in the universe and that it could be vastly more advanced, then the notion of god isn’t much of a stretch, is it?’ idea. Answer – yes, it’s quite a stretch indeed. Comparatively, could beings seem like gods to us? Sure. Can the willingness to accept there are such beings then mean believing there’s a god, creator of the universe, all-knowing, all-powerful, who knows when you’ve been sleeping, knows when you’re awake, knows when you’ve been bad or good, and so on then be just as plausible? No. They say Evolution has gaps! My goodness, the gap from one thing to another here is so huge that to cover it you’d, well, need a leap of faith.

Again, I must ask if you actually read my post in its entirety? I never made those claims about God. I even acknowledge the very real possibility that there is no God at all. I simply postulate that it’s no more unreasonable a position than to assume that the universe is simply the result of a series of happy yet highly improbable coincidences. I’m not a creationist. Don’t try to make me one.

“We may never know. So why is the notion of some sort of higher power so unthinkable”
- Because then we really will never know. Intellectual exploration stops once god is inserted as an answer. The god of the gaps is like a stubborn squatter rather than a friendly house guest. Once a real answer is found, he doesn’t leave quietly but rather has to be forcibly removed from the premises. Darwin served eviction papers and we’re still struggling. Gallileo had his troubles, too.

I’m sorry, but this has to be one of the silliest bits of rubbish I’ve ever read here. Non sequitur after non sequitur. As I’ve already said, science, not religion, has and will continue to teach us most of what we know about the universe. But that is in no way incompatible with a belief in some sort of higher power. Read the post again, with the understanding that it was written by an agnostic deist, not a fundamentalist. Maybe it will make more sense to you then.

Most of the rest of your argument is the usual theist position of either ‘well if it’s improbable, then it’s impossible without god’ or ‘we know so little, so who’s to say there’s no god?’. Yawn. Really? You took a few days off to reinvent these and the other wheels above?

Granted, I may not be saying anything especially new here, but your answers aren’t exactly devastatingly original, either, now are they?

Without realizing it, obviously, you’re helping me make my point. You’re being snitty, condescending, and frankly, a little juvenile here. You’re displaying the exact same traits as the religious fundamentalists I’m sure you despise. You’re proving my point that religious fundies and hard core atheists are nothing more than mirror images of each other.