Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
Aristotle lived in time when we did not know that the earth revolved around the sun. Why get any scientific information from that era? We know so much more now. If we are referring to the Big Bang as needing a prime mover then we have a very detailed description by cosmologists as to the universes opening events. Down to the first billionth of a second. No god is a necessary explanation. So far much is unknown but purely physical/natural explanations are so far sufficing. Adding the supernatural is an unnecessary conclusion.
This is in response to LogicForTW but also to others.
The arguments I presented are deductive, which means if the premises are correct and the logic is valid then the conclusion necessarily follows. Furthermore, the argument is not an argument of the gaps. Furthermore, I am not trying to prove that this being has all of the divine attributes or that it is the Christian God. I am trying to prove that it is an uncaused cause.
Also, not everything has to be proven by the scientific method..... for instance the scientific method.
Dumb Ox
You claim what you say is logical and correct, so it must be true? Do you believe in faith? Still waiting for you to prove your god is real. Have you give any evidence of your uncaused cause? Uncaused cause sounds like another oxymoron statement.
I believe in faith and reason. I used logical proofs to prove an uncaused cause. It is not an oxymoron. It is not caused but causes others. If you think my proofs are flawed then point them out. No one has really done that. Most here have just asserted that I haven't proven anything and then ask that I do so. I wrote a pretty long op, so it's not too much to ask that someone actually engages my argument. The best counter argument so far is "what caused the uncaused cause" which is very stupid.
You haven't proven anything yet. How is it stupid to say the uncaused cause has a cause, or needed a cause? You did write a long OP, I skimmed it like I do all long OP's. You talked in circles and failed to prove anything about what you wrote.
Is faith a path to truth? Can faith prove your god or any god? Can it then prove all gods of humanity are true and real?
That's a separate topic that I don't want to get side tracked on too at the moment.
Dumb Ox you should change "Ox" to "ass." If you make a claim, prove it! If you say there must be something that starts the ball rolling, then there HAS to be something that started the one that rolled the ball. It's endless and infinite. Your own OP actually proves what I am saying here. There can be no god because that god has to have a god to create him. Just because things are in motion doesn't prove something or a god started them. You have to first prove that there is a "prime mover" and then prove a direct connection. Your prove logic isn't even circumstantial is supposition. It isn't deductive reasoning, it's wishful thinking.
I will repost one of my syllogisms:
1. We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world.
2. Nothing exists prior to itself.
3. Therefore nothing [in the world of things we perceive] is the efficient cause of itself.
4. If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results (the effect).
5. Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists.
6. If the series of efficient causes ordered per se extends ad infinitum into the past, then there would be no things existing now.
7. That is plainly false (i.e., there are things existing now that came about through efficient causes).
8. Therefore efficient causes do not extend ad infinitum in a per se casual series.
9. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause.
There is no premise, "everything which exists has a cause." Nor is there anything in my argument which logically leads to that. If nothing can exist without a cause, then nothing can exist at all because a thing must exist in order to cause other things and cannot be its own cause.
If nothing has casual power of itself, then nothing can be caused.
But there are things which exist so there must be an uncaused cause.
Atheists have to resort to absurdity if they don't at least admit some kind of an uncaused cause. They have to say things just come into existence from nothing or there is infinite regress without an uncaused cause. Many atheists claim that an infinite series of causes without no first uncaused cause is possible. That is analogous to saying an infinitely long line of train cars can explain why they move without reference to the locomotive.
Demonstrate #2, please.
Sure, but it is kinda self evident. I am glad that you are being specific though.
Basically it is a contradiction in terms if a thing exists prior to itself and violates the principle of non contradiction which I assume you correct. If a thing is prior to itself then it is and is not in the exact same way and manner. It would both exist and not exist at the same time, which absurd and impossible.
I asked you to demonstrate it. That was a word salad, not a demonstration.
If you want me to prove it with SCIENCE! which seems to be the only proof that many here accept, then I will try. We observe things that come into existence all of the time. A table is made of wood, a chicken lays an egg, a tree bears a fruit etc. never do we see a piece of wood that is a table before it is a table. Never do we see an egg, that is an egg prior to being an egg or prior to itself. So, inductively, we can infer this is always true or at least probably true. In my post before I proved 2 deductively which is far more certain.
Let me flip the tables a little bit. How about you explain to me how it is even possible or conceivable that a thing exists prior to itself. I would argue you would have deny the principle of non contradiction which makes all science and rational discourse impossible and absurd.
You made assertions. I've asked you to demonstrate one. You offer iterations of word salads. Then you "flip the tables". That just doesn't present anything I find compelling. Therefore, it seems reasonable to dismiss what you posit.
I made logical arguments, not assertions. So do you think this statement is wrong:
Nothing exists prior to itself.
Or in other words do you think it is possible for something to exist prior to itself? Do you accept the principle of non contradiction or not? Please answer these questions. If I know where you are coming from then I can explain things better.
I do not know if it is possible for something to exist prior to itself. You, however, have said that nothing does so. (That, by the way, is indeed an assertion.) It's pretty simple: I want you to demonstrate that the statement you have made is true. So far, you've not done that. That is where I'm coming from. You've already done a lot of explaining but have yet to provision a demonstration.
Could it be that you haven't provided a demonstration because you cannot? Could it be that your assertion is based on belief and not fact? If so, just say that.
@Dumb Ox I see this a fair amount in these kind of debates from the theist side.
The argument (from the theist side,) spends a lot of time setting up definitions, ideas, for a very complex thought process, dress it up with big words with tons of meaning behind them that can be interpreted in many ways, with what even religious scholars will admit is a difficult thought process thread to follow. All of this thought process that conveniently arrives at the answer the theist was looking for! The vast majority of followers eyes quickly glaze over and quickly decide its easier to smile and nod and point to it to appear smart, then truly try to understand it. And for an atheist to debate it they have to wade through a thick morass of new definitions and ideas to get a what we are really arguing. It cant be simple or it would be simple to counter.
I seen this technique used a lot by theist for another favorite argument of theirs: objective morality. There is a term for this too, its called "word salad."
To me this is just a dressed up version of the: current science and human understanding cannot account for "nothing."
Yay! Something science and reasoning can not account for! Time to plug in our "idea" of god. Since god is imaginary and not bound by any rules, we can just say god is eternal and he created everything! We don't have to understand just how that works, it is god we could never really understand him!
To which the easy atheist response is: I just made up a god, its name is "Theist are silly" It is powerful, it is eternal, it created everything, and we will never understand this god. The fact that science/reason can not account for nothing is proof my just now made up god is real!
The above of course is ridiculous, I do not even believe in any gods. However, my made up god has just as much evidence as yours, (none.)
The correct conclusion to come to on the debate of the "the beginning" is: "we do not know." The incorrect conclusion to come to is: It is proof of my god! Especially when said god idea is already held back by thousands of contradictions, zero evidence for it, and has been used as a tool for centuries as a method of control over people, that has been used to commit many horrible atrocities.
The "Theist are Silly" god actually makes much more logical sense then most long term established religion gods because the
"Theist are SIlly" god does not have a mountain of evidence, logic holes, and atrocious history to contend with, dragging it down. It does not expect you to believe the story of the great flood and Noah's ark nonsense. Or a talking snake, etc etc etc
@ Logic
My arguments are complicated and have a lot of definitions for two reasons:
1. Proving God or an uncaused cause is hard since we have not seen him/it or had direct revelation.
2. Atheists make it even more hairy by denying that nothing exists prior to itself or by saying something can come from nothing etc.
I, and I believe, many other atheist do not say: "something can/does come from nothing." I think most of us wisely say: "we do not know," we have a few guesses but nothing that can be substantiated well.
Certainly none of us atheist say anything like many theist say with great certainty: "it is god!"
Most atheist have the common sense to not make declarations of fact without any supporting evidence that can be tested and proven.
I fully agree proving "god: is hard since nobody alive has seen god, (and can prove it.) Us atheist also like to point out no one dead either can prove it either. Have you ever stopped to wonder why this supposed god makes it so incredibly difficult to prove/justify?
To me that is like saying: "it is hard for a man to flap his arms fast enough to lift off and fly. But we "can" fly if we just flap our arms fast enough, don't worry about other people telling you there is no evidence that: a man can flap his arms fast enough to fly around."
@ CyberLN
Okay I'll explain what logically follows if a thing can be prior to itself.
Assuming it is possible for something to be prior to itself:
1. The thing exists prior to itself which is another way of saying it exists before it exists.
2. This means it is possible that the principle of non contradiction is wrong; namely, a thing can both be and not be in the exact same way and manner.
1. René Descartes (and others before him) famously said I think therefore I am. In other words, even if he started his search for truth by doubting everything, he could still know that at least he existed because nothing cannot think. Only something can think.
2. He based this off the principle of non contradiction.
3. If it is possible for the principle of non contradiction to be wrong, then, it is possible for nothing to both exist and not exist. It is possible for nothing to think since it exists, even though it does not.
4. Finally, this means you cannot even be certain that you exist, which absurd.
Put another way, maybe you exist and are thinking prior to yourself i.e. prior to when you exist. So, maybe you don't exist but you are nothing which is thinking and exists at the same time as you are not existing.
Thanks. I'll have Caesar dressing on that please.
@Dumb Ox
So if someone says: "I have no idea if something can or cannot exist before it self" Where do you take your argument?
Do you argue that you are correct that there must be a "god" based on the fact that a person is not sure and cannot find conclusive evidence either way? Even though your own argument also has no conclusive evidence other then the fact that science/reason does not have a good answer yet?
I have to dig deeper into what they think and find out if they deny or doubt the principle of non contradiction, because that is what you must do to be consistent when you say that a thing can exist prior to itself.
That is false. Consider the graph of -√(x).
Also note the use of the weasel word "efficient cause".
Efficient is not a weasel word. It helps qualify what kind of causes I am talking about.
How does the graph disprove 5? A graph is not a casual series btw.
VS
Notice how you made a false statement about series, then tried to correct it by adding yet another weasel word.
Words have meaning from context. When I used series it was in the context of causation. So you think I was not spesific enough...funny since when I said efficient cause you said I was using a weasel word....
This is all semantics and bs, to be quite frank. If you don't understand what I am saying then ask, but please don't try these gotcha word games.
I couldn't agree more. Add enough weasel words and you can "prove" anything you want.
And yet no one can actually show my logic is faulty or that one of my premises is wrong. I'll explain what those "weasel words" are if you don't understand them.
Aren't you atheists supppse to be intellectually honest or something and go where evidence or reason takes you?
You said, "And yet no one can actually show my logic is faulty or that one of my premises is wrong."
I had to chuckle at that one.
Pages