Logical Proof of Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Hi everyone. I wrote this column on Canada Free Press - Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound.Some more militant atheists have launched into a concerted effort to quash the article and to attack the publisher.Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound | Canada Free PressHope this inspires some conversation.YominEdited by ypostelnik, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Fix title.

Hi Ypostelnik, welcome aboard!We have a few requirements for posts that introduce a new topic. Relevant rules from the Forum Guidelines:

3. When introducing a new topic, please keep the message narrowly focused. Do not include more than a few points.

​

6. Avoid lengthy cut-n-pastes. Introduce the point in your own words and provide a link to your source as a reference. If your source is not on-line you may contact the Site Administrator to have it made available on-line.

Please edit your Message 1 so that it is in compliance with the Forum Guidelines, then post a note to this thread when you're done and I'll take another look.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Welcome to our small zoo. Thanks for the OP (opening post). It is a topic that has come up before it may be a good idea for you to search the site as find the discussions on the topic. You could add your comments and questions to one of those perhaps.After that, if you still want this OP used to start a thread you will have to shorten it to about 1/4 of the current length. You can use other parts of it as the discussion develops. You could drop the "religion and scientists" and the "Bible" sections without affecting your basic thesis I think.It appears that your whole point can be condensed to a paragraph that says something about "a creation needs a creator" or "nothing so complex can come about by itself". If that is the case try to be as clear and succinct as you can.You should also note that this point has been brought up before and that there are some logical difficulties with it. Try to browse this site for that.

Thanks Admins

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

All you have done here is essentially plagiarise William Paley's Design Argument, which has been deconstructed so many times that it is boring to go over again.Re you Bible (torah) info, which gives away your particular bias, I have a question about this: To begin with, the Bible is the only book in the history of mankind to make the claim that part of it was given by the Creator in front of an entire nation (of 600,000 families, totaling a few million people). The Bible claims that there were 600,000 MEN on foot:Exodus 12:37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.It is very unlikely that none of the 600,000 men were related, so does the Bible inform us somewhere else that there were 600 000 families?

Hi Ypostlenik. Welcome to EvC.
If you genuinely want your ideas challnged then you have come to the right place. There are many here who will challenge the basis of your thesis. Nobody has ever to my knowldge claimed that planets formed spontaneously! If you want to face the arguments that are liklely to be presented to you in response to your OP you would do well to familiarise yourself with the actual conclusions of science a bit more throroughly.In summary your whole argument is one of incredulity. You confuse incredulity with logic. They are not the same thing. The fact that you cannot comprehend how the appearance of design in nature can occur without intent and purposeful design from some external third party source has no bearing on the truth or otherwise of such claims either way.I am incredulous that there is an uncreated, uncaused, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who loves us all individually and is responsible for the universe somehow. However I do not claim that my incredulity is some sort of logical proof that your God does not exist.Incredulity in itself is not an argument. It is an opinion.Physical evidence and the objective analysis of scientific investigation are the only way forward in terms of reliably drawing conclusions regarding, and developing our understanding of, the material universe and our place in it. The conclusions of science are based on such evidence.
My lack of belief in your God is based on the absence of such evidence.Stay Happy.

Saw this gem as well... Again this is inaccurate. The Divine (why do you always use a capital letter?) transmission was not witnessed by millions, only Moses was given the info, the millions were specifically instructed to stay well clear of the mountain when God was present:Exodus 19:12 Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, 'Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. Exodus 19:23 Moses said to the LORD, "The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, because you yourself warned us, 'Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy.' " And you claim to know about logic!The thing is, there isn't a single logical argument in the entire article.I take it this website is a free posting site with no editor?

Your article is far too long to give you a line-by-line reply, so I'll just give a brief summary.You assert:1) the Unviverse is too large and complex to have come into existence without a Creator. You use various analogies of complex man-made structures to illustrate this assertion.2) the series of "coincidences" necessary for life to exist in a Universe is beyond rational, and so the proces must have been directed.3) life itself is too complex to have arisen spontaneously. Specific references to irreducible complexity are made.The rest of your article seems to consist of how to bring an Atheist around to "your side." I'm going to ignore this section, as it is not really relevant to your assertions regarding the existence of a deity.Let's just go one at a time, shall we? We have exactly one instance of a Universe to observe. One. We have no idea whether ours is typical, abnormally complex or simple, abnormally large or small, or if any other Unvierses even exist. You have no frame of reference for making this statement - you are providing a bare assertion in the face of zero data. How can you say that our Universe is too complex to simply exist when you have nothing to compare it to?The largest problem with this position is that it results in the infamous infinite regression issue - if all large/complex entities need to have been Created, your Creator also needs a Creator. If you give a free pass to your Creator, why do you apply this double-standard, requiring a Creator for the Unvierse due to complexity but not a Creator for the Creator despite the complexity required of a Creator? We know that the Universe exists from direct observation. We have no such direct observation of a deity. Why then do you assume one exists? This is an argument from personal incredulity.Your argument is partially predicated on the idea that life can only exist as we know it. It is compeltely possible that "life" in some wildly different form could arise in a Universe that is completely inhospitable to life as we know it. Hell, it's already been shown that even Earth-spawned life appears in the most surprising places, where we would never have thought life could exist! Extremophiles exist in geothermal vents and the polar ice caps, buried deep beneath the Earth gaining energy from radioactive decay, and other places.The Unvierse we exist in is is favorable to our form of life. if it had existed in a different form, perhaps a different form of life would have existed, or even no life. If the Unvierse exists, it has to exist in some form or another, and it happened to take the form we see around us. For all we know, the properties of our Universe are the "standard set" of properties of all Universes, or there could be no other Universes.You are assuming here that "Earth-like life" is somehow a "goal." This is only true if you assume the existence of an intelligent entity capable of having a goal, which makes your argument circular: "Because the Creator's goal of life requires too many coincidences, a Creator must exist to explain the existence of life."So we have a circular argument from incredulity. Not a very logical thought process, is it. Ah, irreducible complexity. We've seen this one before. Let's take a well-known example from Dr. Behe, shall we?The bacterial flagellum is a very complex structure. If you take away any part of the flagellum, it ceases to function, meaning it is "irreducibly complex." This means the flagellum could not possibly have evolved, but rather must have been Created intact by an intelligent Creator.This is a woefully false statement. The bacterial flagellum may cease to function in the same way if you remove parts...but does it truley become useless?The answer is "no." Removing a few proteins from the flagellum does stop it from being a flagellum, yes - but it actually winds up working quite well as a sort of biological syringe.From Wikipedia:

quote:

---

Potentially viable evolutionary pathways have since been proposed for the bacterial flagellum.[28][29][30]

​

In addition, the Type III secretory system, a molecular syringe which bacteria use to inject toxins into other cells, appears to be a simplified sub-set of the bacterial flagellum's components, meaning that it is much less likely to be irreducibly complex.[31][32]

​

Behe's arguments have been examined and rejected by the scientific community at large. Exaptation explains how systems with multiple parts can evolve through natural means.

---

Irreducible compelxity is complete bunk proposed by apologists who either compeltely ignore any and all data that contradicts them, or simply speak from ignorance and incredulity. You seem to be doing the latter - your statements in your article betray a whole host of misconceptions regarding nearly all of the scientific principles you attempt to turn on their heads, including evolution, star formation, and basic physics. I'd go into detail, but it would take me all day.So essentially, your entire set of arguments boils down to circular reasoning, ignorance, and personal incredulity. As you said in your introduction: I couldn't agree more.Here's the pin that bursts the Theistic bubble:Prove it.That's it. You assert the existence of a deity, but you have failed to provide even the barest evidence supporting such an assertion. Instead, you've exclaimed "wow, I can't believe that could happen by itself!" This doesn't actually prove anything. There is no objective evidence anywhere in your article regarding the existence of a deity - instead, there are a series of misunderstandings and logical fallacies. You haven't shown me anything to convince me that the Unvierse was Created.

Unrelated note, but I'm curious: are you a Muslim? Most Christians have abandoned these lines of argumentation decades ago, but I notice that most Muslims still use them.Anyways, the article appears to be a hodgepodge of cosmological and teleological arguments unknowingly cribbed from Thomas Aquinas and other thinkers.This is going to be a somewhat superficial treatment of the post since it goes in so many different directions, but let's actually dissect it:

quote:

---

The simplest proof (yet one that no atheist has ever been able to counter effectively) is that a universe of this size and magnitude does not somehow build itself, just as a set of encyclopedias doesn’t write itself or form randomly from the spill of a massive inkblot.

---

Definitely a cosmological argument... it focuses on the origin of the universe. It's very much a stretch to say that "no atheist has ever been able to counter [this proof] effectively." The reason theologians like William Lane Craig have had to reformulate the premises of cosmological arguments like this one is because it has a central flaw that can be described as the "problem of regression."That is, if we take into account the premise that "all things that exist must have a cause" and we say "the universe had a cause, called God," two things are possible:1. God is caused, and this SuperGod is itself also caused, and the SuperSuperGod above this is also caused... ad infinitum. (problem of regression)
2. God is uncaused. However, by allowing for uncaused entities we contradict the original premise of "all things that exist are caused."
.
.
.

quote:

---

They believe that not only did whole planets appear spontaneously, but also believe that the fact that these planets do not collide as meteors do, that they have gravity, that they contain the proper atmospheric conditions for life to take hold and contain sustenance to sustain this life all happened by mere fluke. Yet the same people would (rightly) denounce as preposterous the notion that the Egyptian pyramids built themselves. They would point to the structure and detailed design of these impressive inanimate objects. Yet they outrageously chalk up to coincidence billions upon billions of times more detail and design in all parts of life found in this universe.

​

To be sure, someone can build sandcastles in the sky on how the spontaneous coming together of molecules, then turning into bricks, changing further into buildings, culminating in 10,000 perfectly aligned skyscrapers all built with no builder is a plausible scenario. They can form intricate arguments to support this theory. But in the end, the entire proposition remains offensive to logic itself.

---

A teleological argument, and one that is poorly formulated since it doesn't take into account actual science behind the phenomena it is describing.Also (and this is a very common mistake), the term "logic" refers to the formulation and grammatical structure of arguments and how they follow certain axiomatic laws of structure and inference. You're misusing the term here.
.
.
.

quote:

---

Even if this were possible, would the simplest of animals have been able to survive were it missing even one essential organ? Would human beings survive if one organ or cavity was missing or displaced, even after somehow being otherwise perfectly formed with no designer? The simple fact is that even if humans were so perfectly formed, if food, water, sunlight or any one of a host of details necessary for life to exist were somehow missing, human life would have lasted on this planet for a maximum of a few days.

---

Take a nice, detailed look at evolutionary biology sometime. It'd help answer all these concerns.
.
.
.
Argh. The original posting definitely is much too large, too unfocused, and poorly structured. I'm not just talking about from a standpoint of its arguments, as a paper it needs to be neater and more focused.You wrote an impressive volume of stuff, but unless you can tie it coherently into a few points you're in danger of using spaghetti logic.In addition, please go back to the original sources. Read Aquinas, criticisms of Aquinas, as well as the proofs and disproofs of various other thinkers in the Philosophy of Religion. It would really help you.The ideas you're propagating are hardly new... and they were formulated in a much cleaner, neater, more concise way by others. Please learn from their example and come back to us when you're a bit more organized.

I am a believer, largely because of the personal experiences that I have had which I interpreted to be spiritual.I cannot prove them in any way, which does not bother me in the least.I have been willing to question and test my beliefs, but I resist doubting them probably because my very definition of belief includes taking certain stands on certain issues.Many non believers believe only in what they can empirically test and verify. If something cannot be tested and verified, it may as well not be considered.Conversely, many believers believe based on what they have been taught and they will not consider that they MAY be wrong.Personally, I may be wrong, but I just do my best and am comfortable with my beliefs. I need no proof of anything (except, perhaps, my sanity! )

{Got to "hide" this one too. We need to address the arguments rather than critique the writing quality. In general, a violation of forum rule 10:

quote:

---

Keep discussion civil and avoid inflammatory behavior that might distract attention from the topic. Argue the position, not the person.

---

Be nice Brian. You're getting close to what I've been 24 hour suspending people for.Needless to say, no replies to this message, either the "hidden" part or the moderator comments. If you really feel the need, you can take it to Report Discussion Problems Here: No. 1. Remember, that's a report a message topic, not a debate topic.Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : "Hide" content, added my comments.

Phat - I thought you had left EvC? Is there a point at which unsubstantiated belief does actually become insanity?
I am not saying you are insane (well......)
But I do think you have raised an interesting question regarding belief and insanity.If someone genuinely believes that a giant invisible talking coke bottle is telling them what they should and should not eat and as a result of this they live on a diet of Dr Pepper, live maggots and peppered banana.....
Well are they insane? Are their beliefs necessarily any more or less grounded than your own?How do we decide what is a sane physically unevidenced belief and what is an insane physically unevidenced belief?

"Insanity" is a bit too general of a term, and subject to individual subjective determinations.I would be comfortable in stating that "faith" in general, defined as "any belief that is not based on any objective evidence," is a significant and systematic source of self-delusion. Humanity's ability to detect patterns (even when they aren't actually present at all) is a double-edged blade, simultaneously allowing us to detect patterns that lead to significant scientific advances and improvements in our lives, as well as convincing ourselves that there are, in fact, monsters under our beds and invisible men in the sky.It's not exactly politically correct to call the vast majority of the world's population "delusional," but I'm convinced the term fits.I don't think "insanity" is a good word, however, only because it carries more negative connotation than even I would put forward. Religious faith, delusional as it may be, can be a positive aspect of a person's life. If religious faith causes a person to behave in a socially positive way (being kind, charitable, nonviolent, etc), or gives comfort in times of need (I'm a realist and prefer to face life without a "crutch," but it does help many people get through the day), such beliefs do not need to carry the extremely negative baggage associates with insanity.The problems I (and you, I would assume) have with religion begin when faith stops being a personal matter and encroaches on the rest of us - ie, when people with faith try to push their beliefs on others (and I include even basic street preaching and other attempts to gain converts), or when people try to "wedge" religion into science classrooms, or when people like the OP make blatantly false statements (there was no proof of a deity in that column whatsoever, and the scientific references were all so off-base that Jr. High School students could do better).With those caveats, I have no problem with delusional faith whatsoever. Insanity connotates too much completely abnormal behavior and violence, which, while demonstrated by the likes of Fred Phelps and Tom Cruise in their religious persuits, is not typical of the average faithful person.

Because most people are (1) delusional and (2) ignorant. I don't mean these in a bad sense. To be fair, I'm also delusional with certain things and I'm also very ignorant with certain things. The difference is I know my limits and don't try to sound smart.The article looks like it was put together by someone that thought throwing in the words "logical", "sound", "proof", etc. would make the article sound genuinely academic. Unfortunately for the person, those of us who actually know what a logical argument should look like can see right through the fraudulant attempt. I call this kind of writing style fortune cookie language. Why? It obviously looks like an attempt to sound like some wise chinese old man with infinite wisdom. People who take these kinds of arguments seriously are probably the same people that take the messages in the chinese fortune cookies seriously.

---

I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.