This is pretty erudite but perhaps the point I am trying to make is that in our present state, at least, the mind that is capable of generating space ships that actually take people to distant orbs is also capable of finding a way to explain it all away into hoax at worst, or some kind of self-hypnosis at best. Ergo we are all ultimately forced to take up one faith or another for there is no knowledge but what can be explained away. But enough of this.

I also want to comment on “ESPECIALLY no evidence to follow the three main desert dogmas”. I don’t remember ever hearing “the three main desert dogmas” expression before - that’s an interesting insight. On the other hand, there is a growing body of very compelling evidence for a couple of these dogmas. I speak in particular of a book which came out of nowhere in the 1830’s which claimed to be an ancient record. A goodly number of things mentioned in this book that first seemed to be hard evidence that it was a fraud, have, over the years turned into compelling evidence that it is not. It talks about two of these desert Gods.

1. I can’t think of good reasons for accepting an infinite being exists.
2. The cosmological argument for the existence of God, which makes use of the principle of cause and effect necessitates linear time, which is scientifically false.
3. It makes no sense to ask what happened before the big bang.
4. A creator God also needs a creator, so there is still an infinite regress.
5. I’ve looked up all the arguments for the existence of God and they’re all very very wrong.
6. I think you haven’t bothered to really look into the problem properly and think about it.
7. You can’t rely on anything said in the dark ages, so Thomas Aquinas’s use of an argument implies that it must be wrong.
8. I can easily check on facts like planets and chairs, so your arguments using these are fallacious.
9. Your basic problem is that you deny science/logic/knowledge, and so you’re happy to accept unreasonable arguments (like the Cosmological one).
10. Aristotle is someone else worth discounting because any 10 year old knows more about him in the areas of both science and philosophy.
11. Aristotle would be devasted by the blow to his system thanks to Stephen Hawking’s theories.
12. All things can be reduced to chemical equations or thought processes.
13. There exists a mathematical formula that explains everything about everything (the unified field theory).
14. Belief in God is often (usually? / always?) due to psychological weakness - the need for outside authority.
15. The existence of God needs to be proven scientifically or is just a delusion.
16. Summing up all these devastating blows, it is clear that “THERE IS NO RATIONAL ARGUMENT FOR ANY FORM OF THEISM.”

Fortunately I agree with you on one point, number 3. So this is a good place to start. We are both making the assumption here that the big bang is the beginning of time. If this is the case, then “before” is meaningless. Time (thanks to the useful definition of St. Augustine, at the beginning of the dark ages, so with luck he just escapes point 7) is the measure of change, and if nothing changes there is no time and therefore no “before”. So in the Big Bang, we suddenly have the entire universe coming to being in one big explosion. Either that or we assume that there was some matter/energy that produced it. In the latter case we can still talk of time, because we now have change. There is a before. Assuming that there was nothing however: no energy, no matter, nothing, we now have to find an explanation for something. E=mc2, perhaps, but if you start with no E and no m, c2 can’t do much by itself! We are now at the start of the problem that the cosmological argument seeks to resolve.

I will not comment on most of your other statements, because you might wish to reformulate them more accurately. I am hoping that you don’t really accept them as they stand. However, I would briefly like to comment on the following:

8. I can easily check on facts like planets and chairs, so your arguments using these are fallacious.
The point I was making is simply that you accept hundreds of ‘facts’ every day without proving them for yourself, or even being able to. The existence of a quasar, for example, or even a black hole, require specialised equipment to detect, so most of us have to rely on the experts. In other words, belief in the full sense (accepting the testimony of somethone that we trust in a particular area about something we don’t know anything ourselves) is actually an everyday experience. The other example I gave is love. Anyone who thought they constantly needed to ‘test’ their spouse’s (or children’s etc…) love before they accepted it to be true is clearly inhuman. Faith and love are closely aligned.

9. … you deny science/logic/knowledge…” I don’t think you have any reason to say that. In fact I have taught logic. (I suspect it wouldn’t be helpful to indicate Aristotle’s influence on that science!) I am not a scientist, but enjoy reading about it. I don’t see any threats to the existence of God, and nor do countless men and women who are scientists.

12. Everything can be reduced to chemical equations or thought processes.
This is not science but ideology if you really think that. In any case I’d be interested to hear why you seem to separate thought processes from chemical equations.

13. There exists a mathematical formula that explains everything about everything (the unified field theory).
More ideology if that is what it means. Does this formula already exist? If not what is your reason that it necessarily does exist? I would also add that even in that case it would not disprove God: why could God not be the formula-maker… (ie is a mathematical formula a description/model of reality or its contructor? In either case it cannot explain itself).

14. Belief in God is often (usually? / always?) due to psychological weakness - the emotional need for outside authority.
I am not a psychologist, but I don’t think you need to be to see the fallacy of this in the lives of well-balanced believers. I suspect, however, (and the writings of some famous atheists like Sartre and Camus and possible Nietzche) that atheism is often a reaction against a malinformed belief that God is just an indifferent autocrat.

15: I need scientific proof of God’s existence. I think this is your real point. If so, please let me know… otherwise…. let me know which of the first 14 points you accept in your defence of the 16! I would be grateful if you encapsulated each claim in a pithy numbered statement for future reference!

Happy New Year to all!

Judging from your comment, it’s easy to see why you are religious. You talk of selfishness and loneliness, no doubt you were brought to religion through a promise of friendship, something to fill the void in your life. Not all of us suffer this deficiency. And I don’t doubt that becoming religious has changed your life. Now you spend your Sundays repeating chants with the rest of the members of your cult. I can live unselfishly based on my own personal moral code, that I’ve been free to form on my own. I don’t need religion to force me to be a good person, I pity those that do.

- That is very well put. However I would like to tend to the first comment you made on this post, in which you say: ” if we believe in atheism we believe in the absence of God. I learned in logic class that proving the absence of something is the most impossible of all tasks. That being so, then our belief in atheism is an act of faith which makes us religious. No??”

However your statement mentions “believe” and does not define this well. If we talk about strength of atheism on a probability scale we can certainly place ourselves all on a line from “I know there is a god” to “I know there isn’t a god” and move up and down the line according to evidence. Of course, many atheists in my experience would be almost certain that there is no god, but allow for the possibility as required by logic.

However, in the light that there is no evidence, and ESPECIALLY no evidence to follow the three main desert dogmas - in our day to day lives, we are just atheists.

What’s your take on this?

I explain quite clearly why you are wrong. Further, I did not say that God is a specimen to be placed under a microscope. My position is merely the null hypothesis.

You claim that there is a creator god, right?

Well, where is your evidence?

Until you can provide some evidence, you are merely delusional. How can I have an intelligent debate with someone who is delusional?

Why not? Love and emotions are chemical processes and logic is a thought pattern or process. I a god is found or reveals itself I don’t see any reason we couldn’t eventually describe it with a mathematical formula. But isn’t that what we are trying to do with the unified field theory?

~”THERE IS NO RATIONAL ARGUMENT FOR ANY FORM OF THEISM.”~

What about power, politics and control. Authoritarian Personalities seem to need the illusion that someone is in control with a plan, not just traveling aimlessly through space for no reason.

Yes, tell people they are worthless and that they owe you a debt that you can not repay. Sounds more like an abusive husband or slave owner. A good slave will defend his/her master and the church has had a few thousand years to perfect their psychology to an art form.

In fact I am a philosophy student, so again you are wrong that I “either haven’t been bothered to look up the problem, think about it yourself or find out if there’s been any scientific advancement in these areas since Thomas Aquinas first came out with these terrible arguements in the dark ages.” For starters, Aquinas was merely one in the chain who took up the arguments [and the reasons for and against!] to see if they worked or not, and in fact, there have been some very clever atheists or agnostics who have come up with some very good arguments against them. Once again you seem to think that it is a question of science, as if God is a specimen to be stuck under a microscope: no wonder you never find him.

I am sure that Aristotle (who advanced scientist in his day) would be amazed at new discoveries, but he would also have a lot to teach those who think that science covers everything. You need to recognise that there are other fields of enquiry, especially philosophy (like logic, metaphysics, aesthetics). And questions like justice, love etc… can not simply be reduced to chemical equations.

There’s Genealogies. Unless you accept that the people listed lived for a few hundred million years each, it’s complete and total rubbish. I’d like to refer you to Answers in Genesis for your Christian spokesperson answer to this one.

“It has been proven that Jesus WAS a teacher that walked and talked a couple thousand years ago”.

No, it hasn’t.

There isn’t ANY proof. Moreover, there isn’t any evidence for the existence of Jesus, other than the bible, whatsoever. The only “evidence” conflicts with the existence of Jesus. Like Josphephus Flavius and the, shall we say, lies that the early Church put in pretending to be him? Good one, early church.

What about the other messiahs at the time that we DO have evidence for? Horus… Krishna… all had exactly the same stories as Jesus. Born on Dec 25th, Crucified at Easter, last supper, walking on water, casting out demons, raising a guy called Lazurus (yes, it’s been done before), and dying for sins and coming back three days later and ascending into heaven.

It’s an old story.

And regarding your “Three choices” you leave us with. Leave the Alpha course material at home please. I used to be an Alpha course leader, don’t you know…. there is one other option here in the dichothamy that is not mentioned:

4) That Jesus didn’t exist at all (after all, there is no evidence for it). He was a god-man like the hundreds that proceeded him and the thousands that followed thereafter.