Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
Originally Posted by DakotaDeer
Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
You've attempted to do a couple things above, so lets walk through them.

You've essentially moved on to a conversational version of the "Cosmological Argument". You begin by stating "You inhabit a creation". What I know is that I live in a Universe. To say it is a "creation" is a fallacy of presupposition, that presupposes a creator that has not been established by evidence.

Next you ask if I have any evidence this Universe came from nothing. Here, you are attempting to shift the burden of proof. If Science is unable to prove a specific model for the creation of the Universe, it gets you no close to your proposition that "God did it". Regardless, we do have evidence, and at this moment the model it seems to best support is the Lawrence Krauss model of "A Universe from Nothing".

Next you ask about the first cause, which has it's own problems. Your assumption that the infinite regress of cause and effect ends with your God is just a case of "special pleading". One argument for the cosmological argument is that the universe is too complex to create itself. However intelligence is extremely complex, and an intelligence that can create the universe, micromanage it, all the lives of all the beings within it, through listening to and answering their prayer, would be exponentially more complex then the universe itself, and hence, to complex to cause itself, which leads to the question, "Who created God". Again, the only way I've seen this question avoided is through more "special pleading", and this special pleading also avoids the question of "which god".

As for logic "demanding I admit to a cause", it does no such thing, since you statement is a based on a fallacy known as a "hasty generalization", pairs of virtual particles pop in and our of existence all the time. Islamic apologist go even further, and reject Augustine;s argument all together, because in thir words, "Observation, however shows simply that the alleged effect happens alongside the cause rather through it ... and accordingly, such a correlation is not logically necessary but is rather the outcome of a correlation is not logically necessary but is rather the outcome of mere psychological disposition or habit."

As for what logic demands of God, it demands evidence that he exists, and a presupposition is not evidence.


Keep blowing smoke! The "arguments" you are using to not believe in a deity with knowable attributes is philosophical baloney. You're going to have to do better than that, as the stuff you're trotting out here isn't even held by philosophical atheists anymore.

Here's some good books for you that quite well demonstrate the probability of theism, if you're willing to actually deal with the philosophy:

Douglas Groothius "Christian Apologetics"
Richard Swinburne "The Coherence of Theism" (to be read vis-a-vis JL Mackie "The Miracle of Theism")
Anthony Flew "There is a God"


DD,

That's a pretty broad statement. Can you please be specific about which of my arguments you consider "baloney", and provide your counter argument.


No, I won't be more specific, as you are conflating and running roughshod over many arguments at once. For example, you act as though science is not a philosophy. That's foolishness. But it allows you to make "scientific claims" over against religion without having to deal with the underlying philosophical presuppositions.

Read Groothuis for yourself, to start.

Epistemology is not your strong suit.