Hitchens was wildly overrated as a thinker/debater

[Rise]

I already did by referring you to the Epicurean Problem of Evil. A deity that cannot or will not solve this problem doesn't deserve worship and a deity is by definition something worshiped that's the only point in common in all definition of God employed except when used as a metaphor to refer to a great mystery or something simply extraordinary and these usages aren't that which atheism rejects.

I already refuted the basis of your argument. Because your argument depends on being able to identify what evil vs good is.

As a materialistic atheist you have no ability to declare anything to be objectively moral or immoral.

And if you can't call something objectively immoral, then you can't accuse god of failing to stop immorality.

And you certainly can't even begin to accuse god of being immoral because again you have no objective grounds for declaring that his inaction constitutes a immoral action.

You have no grounds to make your argument because you have no grounds for objectively determining what is evil from what is good

You cannot accuse god of not stopping "evil" when you have no means by which to objectively label any action as "evil".

Likewise, you have no objective basis for qualifyng what makes something worthy or unworthy or worship if your starting point is materialistic atheism.

Who is to say what you think is evil in the world actually is?
Who is to say that it's immoral for god to not act to stop it immediately?
Who is to say that god needs to fit your definition of morality to be considered worthy of worship?

All of these are unproven assumptions that you can't justify from a materialistic atheistic perspective.

Therefore, they are invalid forms of argument and fail to support your claims

Incorrect. The cosmological argument states that a prime mover must exist.

That's what I just said. So obviously it wasn't incorrect. You must not have understood what I said.

Of course this is fallacious and a complete misunderstanding of both causal mechanics and a bare assertion, but that's beside the point.

Merely claiming the cosmological argument is fallacious doesn't prove it is. You need to provide actual specific arguments to try to demonstrate why you think it is fallacious.

You just made a case of special pleading there. You are arguing that it's impossible for the prime mover to have always existed and yet argue that a prime mover always existed at the same time.

You misunderstand the argument.

Time and causality are observed features of our universe. And it is demonstrated to be logically impossible for something bound by these laws of time and casualty to create the universe.

Therefore, we logically conclude that which created the universe had to be timeless and causeless. So therefore this creator must exist outside of the bounds of our universe and not be bound by it's laws.

The error in your response is that you are assuming the creator who is outside of this universe and preceding it must be bound by the laws of the universe. That is neither assumed nor required logically. It would be like saying a computer game programmer who creates an MMORPG online world with certain physical restrictions on how characters move and interact with their world must himself be bound by the rules which he created for that world. That is not logically required. You are making an assumption that doesn't have to be made.

You no doubt make this error because you don't understand that the infinite regression and causality problems are features of our universe specifically because they are bound by the laws of time and causality. But we have no reason to assume a creator of this universe would be bound by the laws he created for this universe.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of the cosmological argument, which is to demonstrate that the creator of this universe cannot come from within the universe itself and cannot be bound by it's laws. Logically we are forced to conclude that a creator of this universe must be unbound by the laws of time and causality which we find to be features of this universe.

You also fail to notice the fact that both spacetime and causality are materialistic concepts and features of the universe themselves.

I just got done saying that above.

If causality exists, a portion of the observable universe thus exist and it isn't created. A feature of the observable universe cannot be prior to the universe. You cannot "cause causality" nor can you use logic to prove logic itself. The first cause will always be causality itself and its caused by the first causal chain which implies movement, space and time. You cannot use causal logical chains to explain the existence of all causal logical chains.
It would be the same as asking "what was going on before time". It doesn't make sense. There can be no "before" if there is no time.

The error in your thinking is that you are trying to apply the law of causality to something that was not bound by that law.

Just like you would be wrong to try to bind the creator to time when he created the concept and law of time long with the universe.

You seem to understand why it would be nonsense to speak of time before the creation of time as a concept and law of the universe - yet you don't understand why it is equally nonsense for you to try to hold a creator to be bound by the concept and law of causality before the universe bound by that law existed.

What you're really saying is that you can't imagine a state of existence in which the law of causality isn't in effect. But then why can you imagine a state where time is not yet in effect?
Logically there is no difference, it's just a matter of personal preference on your part about what you have trouble imagining.

But regardless of whether or not you can imagine what things were like before causality was invented with this universe as one of it's laws, the fact remains that logically we must conclude that not only was there a creator of the universe due to the infinite time regress problem, but we must also logically conclude that the creator had to be causeless because otherwise you just end up with another infinite regress problem.

This argument doesn't present any characteristic of the prime mover/first cause.

You haven't specified what characteristic you think the cosmological argument needs to provide nor why you think it needs to provide it.

I think you are making the mistake of looking at the cosmological argument in isolation and not realizing it is paired with other arguments to provide a more complete picture of the creator of the universe.

He pairs the cosmological argument with the teleological and moral and existential for a reason - those all provide a broad outline and picture of the being that created the universe.

The cosmological tells us that there was a creation event brought about by something timeless, causeless, and of unfathomable power.

The teleological and moral arguments shows us by design that this creation had to be an intentional according to a design. Designs and intentions require beings with will and minds.

Together they tell us the universe was created by a being intentionally, according to a design to support life, and that this being is not bound by the laws of this universe and appears to have unlimited power over it.

And from the moral and self-evidentialism arguments we can deduce things about God's character and his intentions for us.

It only erroneously assert that there must be one and that it can be referred to as God (but anything and everything can be referred as God it doesn't mean it's one).

This goes back to what I just said about you falsely looking at the cosmological argument in isolation and not pairing it with the other arguments which give you a more complete picture of the creator.

When taken together they give us a picture of a causeless, timeless, all powerful, being that intentionally created the universe according to a specific design with the intention of having it support life, and that we have an innate moral sense which tells us whether or not we are in line with the creator's intended design or going against it.

That checks all the boxes of what we call God.

 

[epronovost]

I already refuted the basis of your argument. Because your argument depends on being able to identify what evil vs good is.

As a materialistic atheist you have no ability to declare anything to be objectively moral or immoral.

That's incorrect. You did not make a demonstration of that you made an assertion of it.

Here's how it works. The objective of morality is to maximize human flourishment. All forms of morality have this objective. God almost exterminates humanity and commands the destruction of entire civilizations, slavery, misogyny, etc. Those actions do not maximize human flourishment. Thus, God is immoral. See, I just done it. I objectively demonstrated that the Abrahamic God fails a simple moral test and the reason he fails it is that God's morality is only interested in the flourishment of one group of human, the Ancient Hebrews.

And if you can't call something objectively immoral, then you can't accuse god of failing to stop immorality.

Of course I can. It would be my opinion that God is immoral and thus not worthy of my worship and if a thing isn't worthy of worship then it cannot be my God, thus, I am an atheist. The only thing in common to all God definition is that they must be an object of worship. You might think that A is God, but someone else might disagree. Divinity isn't a fundamental characteristic. It's a title much like president.

You misunderstand the argument.

Time and causality are observed features of our universe. And it is demonstrated to be logically impossible for something bound by these laws of time and casualty to create the universe.

Therefore, we logically conclude that which created the universe had to be timeless and causeless. So therefore this creator must exist outside of the bounds of our universe and not be bound by it's laws.

You cannot use the laws and principle of causality outside of the universe since causality is a principle of the universe. Time and causality are function of the universe. You cannot say that universe must be caused since causation is a thing that happens only inside the universe. We can't know if it can happen to the entirety of the universe itself. It would be a fallacy of composition to assume that what is true for a member of group to be true for the entire group.

The error in your response is that you are assuming the creator who is outside of this universe and preceding it must be bound by the laws of the universe. That is neither assumed nor required logically. It would be like saying a computer game programmer who creates an MMORPG online world with certain physical restrictions on how characters move and interact with their world must himself be bound by the rules which he created for that world. That is not logically required. You are making an assumption that doesn't have to be made.

You no doubt make this error because you don't understand that the infinite regression and causality problems are features of our universe specifically because they are bound by the laws of time and causality. But we have no reason to assume a creator of this universe would be bound by the laws he created for this universe.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of the cosmological argument, which is to demonstrate that the creator of this universe cannot come from within the universe itself and cannot be bound by it's laws. Logically we are forced to conclude that a creator of this universe must be unbound by the laws of time and causality which we find to be features of this universe.

If the "creator of the universe" isn't bound by the laws of causation and time then it can't "create" since creation is a process that requires both time and causation. There is thus no creator of the universe. You can't use logic to argue about things outside the universe. What you managed to do with your argument is demonstrate that causal logic has a limit. That it cannot deal with problems outside the universe nor explain the birth of the universe since the laws upon which logic rests were non-existent. It doesn't mean that there has to be something else capable of creating them. There is no longer any logical necessities at that point since there is no logic at all.

To take you analogy it would be like saying that since all the systems in a computer are working thanks to coding, that the computer itself must have been coded which is obviously false.

 

[Rise]

That's incorrect. You did not make a demonstration of that you made an assertion of it.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

Merely claiming I did not make a valid logical argument, but only made an assertion, isn't true just because you assert it is true.

You need to quote what I said and then specifically, logically, demonstrate why any of my arguments only constituted unsupported assertions or were supposedly not logically valid.

You won't be able to do it because it's not true.

Here's how it works. The objective of morality is to maximize human flourishment. All forms of morality have this objective.

Woah, woah, woah, hold up right there.

Who says it's objectively moral to maximize human flourishment?

On what basis do you claim it to be objectively moral and not just subjectively moral?

As a materialistic atheist, you cannot call anything moral because you can't believe in free will. Free will and choice are a prerequisite for morality to exist by definition. Saying you ought to do one thing over another implies you have a choice to do one thing over the other. But in materialistic atheism everything is predetermined by the laws of physics and you have no power to change that.

And even if you wanted to believe in free will (which you logically can't according to your worldview), you have no basis for claiming any morality is objective vs subjective because you have no moral authority that is external to humanity imposing a standard on humanity. If morality is internal to humanity then you can't objectively say any person has claim to their morality being right and another being wrong. Therefore it can't be called objective. For it to be objective it has to exist as true regardless of what people subjectively think about it.

Appealing to commonality or popularity doesn't prove whether or not something is objectively moral.
Otherwise you'd have to agree that the opposite could become moral if the majority of people started believing the opposite thing to be moral then it becomes moral by popular opinion.

But then it was never objective to begin with. It was subjective but just commonly held.

Objective morality is like objective truth - they exist as true and moral regardless of what you or anyone else thinks about it. Otherwise they wouldn't be objective by definition.

You can't claim there exists an objective morality that exists outside of humanity's subjective experience.

Doing that requires a creator/designer who can state with authority how we are suppose to operate because as the designer and creator he is the one who gave us intention and purpose and designed us to function in a certain way.

Just as the engineer of a device has the authority to say if you don't use it properly you'll break it. He has the authority to say that because he designed and made it, he knows what he intended it to be used for, and he knows what will happen if you misuse it.

If humans can create their own standard of morality then it's subjective. It can't be objective unless it is imposed upon them by an external source.

Much like how objective mathematical truth is imposed upon us by the laws of math. No amount of subjective gymnastics we do internally makes objective true math stop being true, because it is objectively true outside of our own subjective experience of it.

God almost exterminates humanity and commands the destruction of entire civilizations, slavery, misogyny, etc. Those actions do not maximize human flourishment. Thus, God is immoral. See, I just done it. I objectively demonstrated that the Abrahamic God fails a simple moral test and the reason he fails it is that God's morality is only interested in the flourishment of one group of human, the Ancient Hebrews.

Who says it's objectively immoral to not maximize human flourishment?

Who says it's objectively immoral to only be interested in the flourishment of the ancient Hebrews?

You haven't demonstrated that's objectively immoral.

Merely asserting that it's objectively immoral doesn't prove it is.
You are engaging in the logical fallacy of argument by assertion.

You have no logical basis to claim god is immoral for not adhering to your moral standard if you can't first prove your moral standard is right.

You can't ever logically justify your claim if your starting point is materialistic atheism.

Of course I can. It would be my opinion that God is immoral and thus not worthy of my worship and if a thing isn't worthy of worship then it cannot be my God, thus, I am an atheist. The only thing in common to all God definition is that they must be an object of worship. You might think that A is God, but someone else might disagree. Divinity isn't a fundamental characteristic. It's a title much like president.

I said you can't objectively call god immoral if you can't objectively define something as immoral in the first place.

And instead of giving us an objective basis for calling god immoral, you instead give us what you admit is your subjective opinion about why you think god is immoral.

You have admitted you have no objective basis for calling anything in the world immoral, and therefore no objective basis for calling god immoral.

And if no objective standard of morality exists then morality by definition doesn't exist because nothing can truly be said to be right or wrong, it's just a matter of opinion.

So your argument is self defeating. You can't believe god is immoral when your worldview doesn't even allow for the possibility of morality to exist.

You cannot use the laws and principle of causality outside of the universe since causality is a principle of the universe.

You are confused and have it backwards.

It is precisely because causality is a law of the universe that the universe must have had a cause because the universe is bound by these laws.

Just as we know the universe must have had a beginning because it is bound by the laws of time.

Conversely, there is no need for the creator to have a cause because we have no reason to assume causality is a law the creator is bound by, just as we don't have to assume the creator is bound by the law of time.

In fact, as the cosmological argument states, logic demands that the creator cannot be bound by the law of causality or time because it would violate those laws and the laws of logic and math with an infinite regress.

We are forced to logically conclude that the laws of causality and time were created as part of the constraints of this universe and do not constrain the creator who created this universe.

Time and causality are function of the universe. You cannot say that universe must be caused since causation is a thing that happens only inside the universe.

Your argument is illogical.

That's like saying you don't think the universe has to have a beginning, even though it's bound by the laws of time. That would violate the concept of time itself.

The universe, being bound by the laws of physics, requires that something first acted to set things in motion. There logically must be a force behind the big bang.

For the universe to be causeless would violate the laws of motion.

So we need a cause.
But that cause has to be causeless and not bound by the laws of motion in order to not result in an illogical and impossible infinite regress of infinite causes that violates the law of motion and causality.

You would be engaging in the fallacy of special pleading to say everything about the universe is constrained by the laws of cause and effect, except the first cause, and then offer no explanation for why we should believe that is the case.

We can't know if it can happen to the entirety of the universe itself. It would be a fallacy of composition to assume that what is true for a member of group to be true for the entire group.

If you want to reduce things down to that level then there's basically nothing you can say is true about cosmological science at all. Because one of the foundational assumptions behind all of science, and cosmology in particular, is the assumption that the laws of the universe hold true across the entirety of the universe and don't change.

So, sure, you could argue that we have no way of knowing if the laws that govern the universe are different in some part we haven't observed, or maybe they have changed and we haven't been able to observe that - but arguments such as that don't do anything to advance an atheistic explanation of the universe over a theistic explanation.

Your line of logic forces you to throw up your hands and say we can't know anything anyone anything.

The fact is, based on the evidence we do have, using the presumptions all of science routinely takes into analyzing that evidence, Craig's arguments demonstrate that theism is a better explanation for creation than atheism.

Rather than put forth a counter argument for why you think his theism arguments are in error, or why your atheism arguments are superior, you essentially are forced to just blow up everything and say we can't know anything about anything in an effort to avoid having to admit theism better explains what we see based on the scientific presumptions we normally operate under

If the "creator of the universe" isn't bound by the laws of causation and time then it can't "create" since creation is a process that requires both time and causation. There is thus no creator of the universe.

Merely stating an assertion doesn't make it true. You haven't give any logical reason why creator cannot create the laws of time and motion and create something bound by those laws, without himself being bound by those laws.

You are trying to put restraints on the creator that logically don't need to be there. You are only doing so because you think it suits your argument for those restraints to be there, and not because the evidence or logic demand those restraints must be there.

You can't use logic to argue about things outside the universe.

Merely stating an assertion doesn't make it true.

You haven't given any logical reasons why logic can't be used to argue about the cause behind the creation of the universe.

What you managed to do with your argument is demonstrate that causal logic has a limit.

Considering I just used logical reasoning refute your arguments, you haven't proven there is any error in my use of logic to argue the cause of the universe.

That it cannot deal with problems outside the universe nor explain the birth of the universe since the laws upon which logic rests were non-existent.

It doesn't mean that there has to be something else capable of creating them. There is no longer any logical necessities at that point since there is no logic at all.

You are operating out of an unproven assumption.

You can't state as a fact that the laws of logic didn't exist before the universe was created.

You have no evidence of arguments to prove your claim is true.

From the theistic Christian perspective, logic would have existed with God prior to creation of the universe because it is an expression of truth because God is truth. God cannot lie and doesn't change. Likewise, logic cannot contradict itself. It is an expression of truth when rightly used.

To take you analogy it would be like saying that since all the systems in a computer are working thanks to coding, that the computer itself must have been coded which is obviously false.

I don't understand how you think your analogy makes sense. Computers do require code to function. And we know that all code has a coder.

Likewise, God would be the coder and the laws of the universe the code, in this analogy.

So I don't see what point you're trying to argue.

 

[epronovost]

Woah, woah, woah, hold up right there.

Who says it's objectively moral to maximize human flourishment?

It's not objectively moral.

It' the objective of morality.

You are confusing objectivity with objectives.

Morality is an objective its neither objective or subjective in and on itself. It's a just a universal common objective established by the very nature of humans.

Morals can be objectively or subjectively successful at that objective which we would call "good morals". If they are are objectively or subjectively not successful at that objective we would call them "immoral".

On what basis do you claim it to be objectively moral and not just subjectively moral?

Human flourishment is defined by a variety of characteristics like health, happiness, prosperity, level of development, freedom, etc.

It's possible to assess health in an objective manner and thus determine if it fulfils the objective or not. Some category are harder to evaluate though and require some arguing and are subject to dispute. Finally there is the problems of means and resources. That's why we have several moral different moral codes operating at the same time even though they all have the same broad objective. In the end we have to "wing-it" and learn from our mistakes to develop better more sophisticated and efficient codes. That's also why despite the variety of moral codes displayed by humans in all our history, there are always commonalities like don't kill your friends outside of self defense or defense of others for example.

As a materialistic atheist, you cannot call anything moral because you can't believe in free will. Free will and choice are a prerequisite for morality to exist by definition. Saying you ought to do one thing over another implies you have a choice to do one thing over the other. But in materialistic atheism everything is predetermined by the laws of physics and you have no power to change that.

Incorrect.

I have no specific opinion on "Free Will", but I do have a will. I have desires and I can make choices to a certain extend. That's enough to take moral responsibility for my actions. How constrained are my choices doesn't mean anything.

For that matter you no theist can believe in absolute Free Will if only because your will doesn't always equate reality and are subject to the same limitations. For example, no matter how much you wish you could fly like Superman, you cannot fly like Superman. Furthermore, if you believe your deity is omnipotent and omniscient all your thoughts, desires and actions are under its control and you are simply a puppet in its hand doing whatever it lets you or wants you to do. That's known as the problem of divine providence.

You can't claim there exists an objective morality that exists outside of humanity's subjective experience.

There is nothing outside of humanity's subjective experience. You assess the entire universe through your thoughts and your senses. That's why hard solipsism cannot be solved in any certain way. I personally solves that problem by simply ignoring it. If everything is an illusion inside my head, this illusion seems to have consistent rules that can be studied and assessed.

Doing that requires a creator/designer who can state with authority how we are suppose to operate because as the designer and creator he is the one who gave us intention and purpose and designed us to function in a certain way.

That's false. I used a bottle as a pot for a plant once. It was not designed to operate in that function, but it can work in as pot just as well as a bottle. I also used a bottle as a music instrument for which it wasn't designed to do. These are not "wrong use". An invention might have had an intent of use, but once it exist, it gains an existence of its own and can have all sorts of use. The designer intent is then no more than an opinion on how that particular creation should be used, but it doesn't grant him dominion over the use of the invention de facto. That's doubly more important with sentient things.

If you have a child, you created that child, but you and its other parent don't have dominion over what that child will do or must do. You can guide it and educate it, but you can't command it in any absolute way. You don't own that child. It might do things that you don't want it to do.

It is precisely because causality is a law of the universe that the universe must have had a cause because the universe is bound by these laws.

Just as we know the universe must have had a beginning because it is bound by the laws of time.

That's correct. The observable universe must have a beginning, but it cannot be caused because time is part of the universe and you cannot be prior to time. Causality is also part of the universe and you can't cause causality itself either.

The universe, being bound by the laws of physics, requires that something first acted to set things in motion. There logically must be a force behind the big bang.

The universe isn't bound by laws of physics it is the law of physics. Physical laws aren't prescriptive, they are descriptive. They are what the universe is. Causality is one of those laws and principles. You cannot cause causality.

For the universe to be causeless would violate the laws of motion.

There was no law of motion before the observable universe existence. In fact, at the earliest possible time imaginable of the Big Bang, the laws of physics didn't exist. They appeared during the Big Bang as spacetime and the various forces that animate the universe appeared.

So we need a cause.
But that cause has to be causeless and not bound by the laws of motion in order to not result in an illogical and impossible infinite regress of infinite causes that violates the law of motion and causality.

Well it seems you are running in circle. If you need a first cause, that causality is a feature of the universe, that you cannot cause causality the only logical conclusion is that causality is the first cause. Is the principle of causality your god? Is spacetime, a necessary component of all causal chain your god?

The argument of Aquinas betrays its age and lack of understanding of physics and the working of the universe.

You can't state as a fact that the laws of logic didn't exist before the universe was created.

You have no evidence of arguments to prove your claim is true.

Do you even know what logic is?

Logic is a set of rules, axioms and principles derived from the observation of the universe and how it appears to work. They are how we can perceive and understand the universe. If you remove the observable universe, logic doesn't exist anymore. If you could travel to a different universe, the rules of logic would be different. Hell, not all observable phenomenon respond to the rules of logic when we observe quantum phenomenon.

We can use logic and our knowledge of physics to understand and theorize about the universe, but cannot use it to talk about what's outside of it.

It also doesn't follow that all things that exist must have cause. That's simply not even true. Some phenomenon like radioactive decay for example have no known cause. We thus can't say that they must all have a cause since there could be none. We can't also say that all things that begins must have a cause as in a single cause since some phenomenon require multiple simultaneous causes.

 

[Rise]

It's not objectively moral.

You have ceded my position is true then. Objective morality doesn't exist in materialistic atheist.

That settles the debate then in my favor. There's really no need to argue over any of the other details when you just ceded the essential point in contention to me.

But, because I think it can still be instructive, let's go over some of the other fallacious arguments in the rest of your post:

It' the objective of morality.

You are confusing objectivity with objectives.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of equivocation.

The subject being discussed was the concept of whether or not objective morality exists.

"Objective" as in meaning "not subjective."

Objective definition:
expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

Since you are unable to argue that objective morality exists, you now try to equivocate on the definition of objective to redefine your terms in a way that you think will better support your position.

Morality is an objective its neither objective or subjective in and on itself. It's a just a universal common objective established by the very nature of humans.

Morals can be objectively or subjectively successful at that objective which we would call "good morals". If they are are objectively or subjectively not successful at that objective we would call them "immoral".

You are no longer describing morality by definition.
You are describing survival instinct and then merely calling it morality, but you have robbing it of the essential definitional aspects that define morality as morality.

You commit the same fallacious line of argumentation that Harris did against Craig. Unable to come up with a materialistic explanation for objective morality you simply redefine morality to mean something different than what is has always historically meant.

Objective morality means something is objectively right or wrong, not merely useful to survival.

What you are doing is not only intellectual dishonest but it doesn't actually solve the philosophical problem of morality the atheist has - which is that you have no objective basis for settling disputes over what is considered moral and what isn't.

Human flourishment is defined by a variety of characteristics like health, happiness, prosperity, level of development, freedom, etc.

This takes us back to the arguments I already put forth which you ignored:

Who says human flourishing is moral and the opposite is immoral?

You are merely assuming it is, but then you're committing the logical fallacy of begging the question.
You are assuming in our premises that which you are trying to prove.

You're trying to prove human flourishing is moral by assuming human flourishing is moral. It's circular reasoning.

Incorrect.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

Merely asserting I am incorrect doesn't prove I am.
You need to give specific logical reasons or evidence to refute my arguments before you have any basis to claim they were incorrect

I have no specific opinion on "Free Will",

Your opinion of free will is irrelevant to the fact that you cannot logically hold to a materialistic atheistic worldview and conclude that free will exists.

but I do have a will.

Prove it.

You can't.

But you believe it anyway based on our experience.

You take it on faith that your perception and understanding of your reality is true with regards to the fact that you have free will.

You are proving that self evident truths are real and that you live as though they are real.

Great. You're doing well.

But now you've got a problem - you can't hold to a materialistic atheistic worldview and believe free will truly exists and isn't just an illusion.

You're going to have to drop one or the other if you want to be intellectual consistent and honest. They can't both be true at the same time as they are in direct conflict.

That's enough to take moral responsibility for my actions. How constrained are my choices doesn't mean anything.

I already explained for you why it matters.
If atheistic materialism is true, then you are 100% constrained by the laws of physics to act out based on the arrangement of your atoms in relation to the world around you. There is no force outside of physics that can step into this process and interrupt the physical forces that were set in motion with the big bang.

You cannot logically be responsible for a choice you had 0% control over.

Obviously you know intuitively that you have a self evident sense that you are responsible for your actions, morality does exist, and free will does exist (as you rightly should). But that is not consistent with what you claim to believe about the universe (ie. materialistic atheism).

For that matter you no theist can believe in absolute Free Will if only because your will doesn't always equate reality and are subject to the same limitations. For example, no matter how much you wish you could fly like Superman, you cannot fly like Superman.

You're trying to equivocate over degrees of freedom, but that's not relevant to the issue in contention here - because materialistic atheism leaves no room for partial free will in even the slightest amount. Materialistic atheism forces you to conclude that there is zero free will because nothing you do is under your control but is merely pushed along by the raw forces of physics that were set in motion long before you existed.

Furthermore, if you believe your deity is omnipotent and omniscient all your thoughts, desires and actions are under its control and you are simply a puppet in its hand doing whatever it lets you or wants you to do. That's known as the problem of divine providence.

Your argument is based on unproven assumptions that don't have to be true, but which you are presupposing must be true without basis.

Ie. You have no reason to assume that the existence of a theistic deity means that deity is controlling everything about you. That is certainly not what many theists believe.

It is perfectly possible that deity is not controlling everything about you, but has given you free will to act. Which is what many theists do believe.

There is nothing outside of humanity's subjective experience.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.
Merely asserting there is nothing outside of you experience doesn't make it true.
You have given no logical argumentation or evidence to support why we should think your claim is true.

You assess the entire universe through your thoughts and your senses. That's why hard solipsism cannot be solved in any certain way. I personally solves that problem by simply ignoring it. If everything is an illusion inside my head, this illusion seems to have consistent rules that can be studied and assessed.

Your statements here are not relevant to refuting any of my arguments.

 

[Rise]

That's false. I used a bottle as a pot for a plant once. It was not designed to operate in that function, but it can work in as pot just as well as a bottle. I also used a bottle as a music instrument for which it wasn't designed to do. These are not "wrong use". An invention might have had an intent of use, but once it exist, it gains an existence of its own and can have all sorts of use. The designer intent is then no more than an opinion on how that particular creation should be used, but it doesn't grant him dominion over the use of the invention de facto. That's doubly more important with sentient things.

You are trying to distort the analogy to hide the message it was originally trying to convey.

I can return the analogy back to it's original intent by saying if you try to use a chainsaw as a toothbrush there will be dire consequences because you thought you could apply your own subjective purpose and meaning to something that had a specific intention and purpose in mind.

Likewise, the consequences of objectively immoral behavior are dire in the real world. As history can attest.

But you won't be able to determine what is objective immoral from moral unless you know what the intent and purpose for yourself and other life is.

If you think you can create your own intent and purpose then you are admitting no intent and purpose actually exists. Because intent and purpose can't be given to you unless you are created and designed.
If you think no such intent and purpose has been given to your design, then you think it's up to you to create your own.

So you're just talking about subjective purpose and therefore subjective morality.

You have no way of telling the person who has decided that their purpose is to exterminate all life on earth that they are morally wrong to do so. You might decide his purpose in life should be different, but you have no basis for concluding that your self created purpose is anymore objectively right than his.

If you have a child, you created that child, but you and its other parent don't have dominion over what that child will do or must do. You can guide it and educate it, but you can't command it in any absolute way. You don't own that child. It might do things that you don't want it to do.

Who says you don't have dominion?
Who says you don't own that child?
Who says you can't command it in any absolute way?

You have no objective basis for claiming there is a right or wrong way to do anything. It's just your opinion.

That's correct. The observable universe must have a beginning, but it cannot be caused because time is part of the universe and you cannot be prior to time.
Causality is also part of the universe and you can't cause causality itself either.

You are committing the logical fallacy of argument by repetition. I already refuted logically your claim that a creator could not bring into existence the law of causality and time without being subject to those laws, and also explained why logically we are forced to conclude that is what must have happened.

You haven't given any logical refutation of my arguments, but have merely repeated your original assertions. But repeating your assertions doesn't make them true just because you repeat them.
You need to be able to refute the arguments which disprove our claims.

The universe isn't bound by laws of physics it is the law of physics. Physical laws aren't prescriptive, they are descriptive. They are what the universe is. Causality is one of those laws and principles. You cannot cause causality.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion. Merely asserting these things are true doesn't prove they are true.

You aren't give any logical argumentation of evidenece that would forced us to conclude your statement have to be true, or are even more likely true.

For instance :Who are you to say the physical laws aren't prescriptive? They very well cold be if there was in fact a designer/creator. You're just a priori assuming there couldn't be one. But you haven't proved your assumption is correct.

There was no law of motion before the observable universe existence. In fact, at the earliest possible time imaginable of the Big Bang, the laws of physics didn't exist. They appeared during the Big Bang as spacetime and the various forces that animate the universe appeared.

You are contradicting yourself.

You try to argue that time and causality couldn't come into existence, but then admit they weren't here originally.

The fact that they weren't here to start with is precisely what the cosmological argument is saying.

Well it seems you are running in circle. If you need a first cause, that causality is a feature of the universe, that you cannot cause causality the only logical conclusion is that causality is the first cause. Is the principle of causality your god? Is spacetime, a necessary component of all causal chain your god?

You are engaging in the fallacy of a strawman by trying to define what is being argued in way that makes it seem contradictory, or at the very least you are just extremely confused and don't understand what is being argued.

Your argument is fallacious because it is based on presumptions you can't prove are true.

You are assuming God can't cause anything to be created without the law of causality being in existence. But that's like saying you think God can't exhert force upon something without the lws of motions being in effect on the universe

It is to falsely assume that God is constrained by the laws of the universe he created and is incapable of doing anything until those laws manifest in the universe we know

You have no reason to assume that is the case.

Furthermore, all this ignores the fact that the cosmological argument already establishes that you are forced to have a causeless and timeless source of creation.

You haven't even tried to refute those aspects of the cosmological argument, which you would need to do before you could even begin to argue against it.

Do you even know what logic is?

Logic is a set of rules, axioms and principles derived from the observation of the universe and how it appears to work. They are how we can perceive and understand the universe. If you remove the observable universe, logic doesn't exist anymore.

This is ironic. You just demonstrated you don't actually understand what logic is.

Logic is not science. It is not derived from the observation of the universe and how it appears to work.

Logic is what we call a self evident truth, like math. You cannot prove logic or math is true by using logic or math respectively. That would be circular reasoning. You just have to assume both are true because you know it's true.

Logic and math are what we use as part of the scientific method to understand the universe and how it works by observation.

But logic is not something you can prove by observation of the universe - the opposite is the case: Logic is what you use TO observe the universe.

Likewise, you don't observe the universe to discover the principles that underlay math - you use the principles of math you know to exist to measure the universe.

If you could travel to a different universe, the rules of logic would be different.

You have no evidence that a different universe exists. It's baseless speculation.

Hell, not all observable phenomenon respond to the rules of logic when we observe quantum phenomenon.

You would need to be specific with your claim. Chances are what you are thnking of doesnt actually break any laws of logic.

You may be confusing not understanding how something works with it breaking the laws of logic.

Logic is only as good as the information available to you. If you lack sufficient information about what is going on then you can't necessarily form logical conclusions about what has happened.

This is not a failing of the principles behind logic, but a lack of sufficient information about what is actually happening.

We can use logic and our knowledge of physics to understand and theorize about the universe, but cannot use it to talk about what's outside of it.

Your claim has already been proven wrong by Craig's four arguments.

He has proven he is capable of drawing logical conclusions about something which is outside of our universe

You haven't refuted those arguments, so you have no basis to claim we're not capable of talking about what's outside of our universe. He's already successfully done it, disproving your claim.

It also doesn't follow that all things that exist must have cause. That's simply not even true.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion. Merely asserting your claim doesn't prove it's true.

I have already outlined the specific logical reasons and evidence for why we have to assume there was a cause.

And you haven't refuted any of those arguments or the evidence, so you can't claim it's not true.

Some phenomenon like radioactive decay for example have no known cause.

You are committing the logical fallacy of false equivalence. Saying something has no known cause is not the same as saying you know it has has no cause.

We thus can't say that they must all have a cause since there could be none.

You have no basis for claiming there could be causeless events in the universe in violation of the laws of physics as we understand them.
You are baselessly speculating without logic or evidence to back it up.

We can't also say that all things that begins must have a cause as in a single cause since some phenomenon require multiple simultaneous causes.

Logical fallacy of irrelevant conclusion.
The fact that some things require multiple causes does nothing to disprove the arguments put forth about the cause of the universe. You have demonstrated no relevance.

 

[Fallen Prophet]

Watch his debate with William Lane Craig.

You’ll notice that throughout the entire debate he really doesn't even attempt to present a real logical argument of his own that God doesn’t exist. He also never even tries to dispute Craig’s logical arguments for why God does exist.

So what does Hitchens fill all his time doing? Trying to slander God’s character by calling God’s behavior bad or pointing to bad things and blaming God for it. It’s the logical fallacy equivalent of an ad hominem. That makes up basically the entirety of Hitchens time. Which logically has nothing to do with disproving God’s existence even if you assumed the slander were true.

I think the only reason he had gotten away with that for so long and gained admiration for it is because the eloquent manner in which he speaks makes him sound far smarter and more poignant than what the logical substance of his argument actually is.

This exposes the root of what I have noticed with most militant atheists - their objection to God is not based on logic, but anger. Anger at God. They don’t want to believe He is real, not because the evidence is in their favor but because they don’t like Him or don’t like the implications of His reality being true.

Hitchens displays unbridled anger and resentment at God, but puts forth no logical arguments or counter arguments against the reality of His existence.

Similar to what liberals and leftists did to Trump.

 

[Rise]

To be fair, it is you who first made an Appeal to Authority. And I certainly agree that we should apply reasoned and rational skepticism to claims made by anyone, regardless of PhD status.

You are falsely accusing me of making an appeal to authority when I never did. You will find no quote of me doing any such thing.

I never put forth any argument and then used an appeal to PHDs to support that argument. Which is what is required to make an appeal to authority.

You, in actuality, are the one who made an appeal to authority.
You are the one who said only "qualified" individuals should be considered on this matter.

All I did was mention the fact that PHDs who believe in creation exist to dispel the belief that is common amongs people like yourself that only the uneducated could believe in such things.

However, since you have not presented specific arguments from your referenced PhD-holders for us to evaluate, we can set this issue aside.

There is nothing to set aside because I never even tried to make an arguments based on appealing to PHD holders.

All I did was mention the fact that they exist, in the field of creation science, because often people like yourself assume they don't.

As to where the bible contradicts empirical evidence, here are some examples:

1. The claim of a seven day creation is not supported empirically.
2. That man and animals were created by a creator entity in that seven day period, as opposed to Evolution, is not supported empirically.
3. The global flood as described is not empirically supported.
4. That linguistic diversity occurred as described in the Tower of Babel myth is not supported empirically.
5. Referring to the heavens as firmament is Genesis conflicts with empirical evidence.
6. Genesis has the earth formed before the Sun, which conflicts with empirical evidence.

Hopefully, that is enough to support the point. There are many other errors and contradictions in the bible.

There are two problem with your response, one of which is a critical error.

1. We were talking about self evident truths. Like the existence of free will, our existence in a physical reality, objective morality, or the observation of gravity's effects.

These are shared, common, and self evident without the need to be proven. That's the definition of self evident - it doesn't need to be proven because it's self evidenced already. Because of this, self evident truths are also truths which people appear to have always known throughout history. It was never something that had to be arrived at.

You haven't given me anything that is self evident in life that is contradicted by the Bible.

All of the examples you gave are not self evident, but conclusions that were only arrived at in modern times after a great deal of research, evidence, and reasoning went into trying to construct a non-Biblical narrative for creation.

I asked you for evidence of category A and you gave me arguments for category B.
So your argument is invalid due to the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. Even if we assumed your claims were true, they would be irrelevant to proving your original claim that the Bible contradicts self evident truths.

This brings me back to my point about the apple falling from the tree and why it would be nonsense to deny the self evident truth that the effects of gravity exist: Because there are many areas where materialistic atheism is denying self evident truths. Yet ironically they try to lay claim to the scientific high ground while they are in the process of denying the existence of so many of our most fundamental self-evident truths.

2. Your argument also requires assuming your examples are undisputed truths. But you can't take for granted that those things are true beyond question. There is a great body of evidence and arguments put forth by creation affirming scientists who believe the evidence can be rightly understood to be in line with the Biblical account.

But getting into a debate over those issues is not necessary because it would be irrelevant to prove your original argument - because none of the examples you gave represent self evident truths. Which was the issue being contested.

You have mischaracterized my statement as based solely on popular belief.

I don't believe I have done what you claim. You aren't being specific about what what statement you are referring to, nor what statement you think I made that you think mischararacterizes it.
So without you pointing to specifics, I don't see anything that fits your claim.

My comment is supported by empirical evidence and intersubjective corroboration.

What comment are you referring to?

Your belief system hinges on prohibiting the use of empirical evidence, logic, and math as sources of factual information with which to counter your beliefs systems claims.

You are engaging in a strawman fallacy.
No where have I said any such thing, nor implied it.

You have no evidence to even make such a claim as everything I have argued up to this point has been based on both evidence and logic.

You can't quote anything specific I said that would prove your fallacious strawman claims about me to be true.

You only specifically allow for Christian scriptural support and Prior Basic Beliefs (of religious people only, it seems).

I have demonstrated why we must disregard the notion of Prior Basic Belief and you have not countered that. That leaves you only with scripture.

To limit a debate on the existence of your creator entity to arguments based and supported by Christian scripture seems like stacking the deck in your favor. Wouldn't you agree?

You are making up fallacious strawmen to attack instead of dealing with anything I have actually argued. You won't be able to quote anything I argued in this thread that proves your strawman claims about be to be true.

None of the four arguments Craig made (the arguments I am engaging with in this thread) are based in a single scripture.
Not a single one of them requires appealing to scripture to prove they are logically true.

The cosmological, teleological, moral, and self evidentialism arguments are all self sustaining based on scientific evidence and logic.

So for you to try to claim I am arguing from scripture, and refusing to allow anything but scripture as evidence, is a demonstrable complete and utter fabrication on your part with no basis in anything I have actually typed in this thread.

 

[epronovost]

Likewise, the consequences of objectively immoral behavior are dire in the real world. As history can attest.

But you won't be able to determine what is objective immoral from moral unless you know what the intent and purpose for yourself and other life is.

I did; we all did. You called it survival instinct though this is a bit reductive since survival instinct isn't reasoned and is concern only with immediate survival. The goal of all morals and all moral codes is to enhance human flourishment not just survive, but survival is definitely a necessary prerequisite to flourish of course. That's unescapable you can try to deny that morals aren't made for that, but you would be wrong. Morals vary from group to group and era to era (another undeniable fact) because it's impossible to agree in all certitude on what actually needs to be done for humanity to flourish though there are several elements that are well known and understood.

If you think you can create your own intent and purpose then you are admitting no intent and purpose actually exists.

That sentence is contradictory. If I can create intent and purpose then intent and purpose can actually exist since I actually exist and I created it. Creating stuff implies that they now exist. You are making a bare assertion there (AKA that I can't have intent or purpose or that the intent and purpose I create doesn't count because you say so).

You have no way of telling the person who has decided that their purpose is to exterminate all life on earth that they are morally wrong to do so. You might decide his purpose in life should be different, but you have no basis for concluding that your self created purpose is anymore objectively right than his.

Actually yes I can. We have already established that the purpose of all morals is to guaranty human flourishment. A person who has decided to exterminate all life on Earth would thus destroy all of humanity and themselves in the process. Since that's objectively not helping humanity flourish (dead things aren't flourishing due to the law of non-contradiction), that's immoral. You should have picked a more complex problem where there is no obvious easy observable and demonstrable parameters to assess the success or failure of a particular action.

Who says you don't have dominion?
Who says you don't own that child?
Who says you can't command it in any absolute way?

You have no objective basis for claiming there is a right or wrong way to do anything. It's just your opinion.

Because you simply don't have that power. You might want to control their actions, but they could act against your control. They can disobey. You could then try to punish them for their disobedience, but it might fail to curb further disobedience. In the end, a child has a will of its own and will exert it. You do not have a an absolute control over a child. Hell, if you were to attempt to crush a child's will completely and transform them into a drone to your own wish and desire (which you can't anyway), others might try to stop and they might succeed to. This isn't about right or wrong. It's about what you can actually do and achieve with the powers at your disposal.

Since you can't control that which exist outside of you in an absolute way you cannot claim that what you impose upon it is how it should be and how it must be.

You are assuming God can't cause anything to be created without the law of causality being in existence.

Please explain how God can cause causality without causality existing. You can't just say something can do it especially if it's self contradictory. You can't create something if the stuff necessary to create doesn't exist.

It would be akin to saying you created red by putting red paint on a white wall. You didn't create red you used it to paint a wall. If you cause something you are using causality. If you are using causality you can't be creating it. That would go against the law of self contradiction and you know it.

Furthermore, all this ignores the fact that the cosmological argument already establishes that you are forced to have a causeless and timeless source of creation.

You haven't even tried to refute those aspects of the cosmological argument, which you would need to do before you could even begin to argue against it.

I already did. You didn't seem to have grasped the implication though. You cannot cause causation since causation is that which cause things. You cannot be before time since time is what set "before" and "after". Thus spacetime and causality are uncaused. They are spontaneously occurring concept for all intend and purpose.

You cannot use logic to argue about things outside the boundaries of the universe without falling prey to a fallacy of stolen concept, in that case you give a causal explanation to that which cannot be cause for there can be no prior.

This is ironic. You just demonstrated you don't actually understand what logic is.

Logic is not science. It is not derived from the observation of the universe and how it appears to work.

Logic is what we call a self evident truth, like math. You cannot prove logic or math is true by using logic or math respectively. That would be circular reasoning. You just have to assume both are true because you know it's true.

That's actually incorrect. You can use math to prove math to a certain degree and you can use logic to prove logic to a certain degree, but both require observation of the universe to even exist. Logic and math are both mental maps of the universe that allows us to make sense of the things we observe and make predictions.

But logic is not something you can prove by observation of the universe - the opposite is the case: Logic is what you use TO observe the universe.

That's not entirely true either. Both are interrelated. By observing the universe you discover logical formulations, by using logical formulation you discover more of the universe and you keep playing ping-pong between the two as your knowledge expand. Anybody can make a valid logical formulation, but valid doesn't equal true.

You have no evidence that a different universe exists. It's baseless speculation.

As is your idea of God being outside the universe yet using characteristics of the universe to make the universe despite the fact that those characteristics exists only inside the universe itself. That's pure nonsense. It's a fallacy of stolen concept. You are literally using the concept you are providing an origin to to explain the origin of the concept.

 

[epronovost]

You are assuming God can't cause anything to be created without the law of causality being in existence. But that's like saying you think God can't exhert force upon something without the lws of motions being in effect on the universe

By definition you can't exert force without the law of motions since the law of motions define what exerting force means. That's indeed what I am saying. If God "exert force" then he is under the influence of the law of motions. If he does something outside of it or in contradiction of it, he isn't either under the law of motions and you misunderstood what was happening or the law of motion is simply wrong and needs to be redefined. If God causes things, he is under the laws of causality else he couldn't be said to "cause things". We could say that God glabur the law of causation and then go on and invent what glabur is supposed to be, but that's not what you are doing right now.

It is to falsely assume that God is constrained by the laws of the universe he created and is incapable of doing anything until those laws manifest in the universe we know

It's jut as false to say that he isn't constrained by the laws of the universe or that he can do things that can only occur within the domain of the laws of the universe, like causing things, without being under the domain of those things at the same time. There is no logical or empirical demonstration of this. It's pure fantasist speculation.

You are committing the logical fallacy of false equivalence. Saying something has no known cause is not the same as saying you know it has has no cause.

The opposite is also true. Since we don't know for sure that everything that has a beginning has a cause we can't say that everything that has a beginning has a cause, the first premise of the cosmological argument is simply speculative. So far, to the best of our knowledge some phenomenon are spontaneous thus there might be spontaneous phenomenon. It's a strong possibility. This refute the first premise of the cosmological argument and without it, it all crumble.

 

[Rise]

I did we all did.

You have already admitted you don't think objective morality exists, so you are lying if you want claim you have been able to determine what objective morality is when you just got done saying you don't even think it exists.

You called it survival instinct though this is a bit reductive. The goal of all morals and all moral codes is to enhance human flourishment not just survive, but survival is definitely a necessary prerequisite to flourish of course.
That's unescapable you can try to deny that morals aren't made for that, but you would be wrong. Morals vary from group to group and era to era (another undeniable fact) because it's impossible to agree in all certitude on what actually needs to be done for humanity to flourish though there are several elements that are well known and understood.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.

What you are talking about is not morals by definition.
I have already explained why in previous posts to a great detail. You haven't refuted those arguments or even addressed them.

You are merely repeating your refuted assertions as though they haven't been refuted. But you don't prove your claims are true by merely repeating them.

That sentence is contradictory. If I can create intent and purpose then intent and purpose can actually exist since I actually exist and I created it. Creating stuff implies that they now exist. You are making a bare assertion there (AKA that I can't have intent or purpose or that the intent and purpose I create doesn't count because you say so).

I never said you could create an intent and purpose for yourself.

Trying to tell yourself you can is not the same as actually doing it.

That's why atheism is inherently a purposeless existence.

You might tell yourself you have a purpose and intent, but you really don't because ultimately the universe is all going to die a heat death by your worldview and nothing you do will have mattered. You haven't actually done anything in the long run.

This is in contrast with the Christian theism view that says God has given us a specific purpose and that us fulfilling that purpose has positive benefits for eternity.

Actually yes I can. We have already established that the purpose of all morals is to guaranty human flourishment.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.

I already refuted your claims with logical arguments, and you have ignored them. Merely repeating your original claim doesn't prove it's true.

In order to defend your claim you need to be able to refute my arguments with logical counter arguments.

A person who has decided to exterminate all life on Earth would thus destroy all of humanity and themselves in the process. Since that's objectively not helping humanity flourish (dead things aren't flourishing due to the law of non-contradiction), that's immoral. You should have picked a more complex problem where there is no obvious easy observable and demonstrable parameters to assess the success or failure of a particular action.

You are committing the logical fallacy of begging the question, or circular reasoning.

Your premises assume what you are trying to prove.

You assume that human flourishing is the definition of moral. But you never proved it is.
And then when you are challenged to prove human flourishing is moral, you say it's because morality is defined as human flourishing.

You can't prove your conclusion by assuming it's true in your premise.

Because you simply don't have that power.

So it's not a moral question at all then. It's just a question of power.
If you had the power you could do it and there be nothing immoral about it.

So therefore you have no basis for claiming it's immoral to act that way.

Please explain how God can cause causality without causality existing. You can't just say something can do it especially if it's self contradictory. You can't create something if the stuff necessary to create doesn't exist.

You are engaging in a strawman fallacy by saying "cause causality".

No one said God needed to use the law of causality to create the law of causality.

You are committing this error because you don't understand what causality is in relation to this issue.

Causality would be best thought of as that which is set in motion must have been acted upon by something. This is what we observe to always been true in our universe. It is a law that the universe operates by.

There is no logical contradiction with God creating a universe that is bound by this law, when he himself is not living in an existence where that law is binding to him.

You are committing the fallacy of false equivalence by trying to say that any act of creation is means God is bound by the laws of causality.

No, that shows you don't understand the issue at stake here in the big bang.
The issue is not whether the act of creation had a cause. It did.
The issue at stake here is what caused the causer
God is causeless. Meaning, nothing caused him. And because he existed prior to the universe not bound by the law of causality he didn't need a cause to come into existence.

So the real problem here is that you are misunderstanding what the significance o the law of causality is in relation to creation and God.

There logically needs to be source without cause who could cause the creation event in order to prevent a logically and mathematically impossible infinite regress of causation.

I already did. You didn't seem to have grasped the implication though. You cannot cause causation since causation is that which cause things.

You don't refute the cosmological argument by claiming that creation was an act of causation. This shows you neither understand the cosmological argument nor the implications of causation on it.

The point of the cosmological argument is not to say that the act of creation was not a causal event.

The point of the cosmological argument is to say that the one who initiated the causal event of creation was itself never caused by anything.

You haven't refuted the logic that established why we can say the source of the creation event must be uncaused, which is because an infinite regress based on the laws of our universe would be logically and mathematically impossible.

You cannot be before time since time is what set "before" and "after".

You are playing word games and missing the conceptual point.
Which is that God could exist in a state of no time and then bring time as a concept into existence by an act of creation.

Thus spacetime and causality are uncaused. They are spontaneously occurring concept for all intend and purpose

You have no evidential or logical basis for claiming the universe just popped into existence without a cause.

Merely asserting you think it happened doesn't mean it did.

You cannot use logic to argue about things outside the boundaries of the universe without falling prey to a fallacy of stolen concept, in that case you give a causal explanation to that which cannot be cause for there can be no prior.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.
I already explained why you have no basis for assuming the laws of logic could not exist prior to creation. You did not attempt to refute them, so they stand unchallenged.

Merely repeating your claim, while ignoring what refuted it, doesn't make your claim true just because you repeat it.

That's actually incorrect. You can use math to prove math to a certain degree and you can use logic to prove logic to a certain degree, but both require observation of the universe to even exist.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of begging the question or circular reasoning.

You cannot prove your conclusion by assuming it is true in your premise.

That's not entirely true either. Both are interrelated. By observing the universe you discover logical formulations, by using logical formulation you discover more of the universe and you keep playing ping-pong between the two as your knowledge expand.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

Without specific examples to act as evidence for why you think your claim could be true you're just engaging in the fallacy of argument by assertion.

You need to evidence your claim with specific examples that would give us reason to believe your claim is true.

If you tried I can tell you now it won't hold up to scrutiny.

As is your idea of God being outside the universe yet using characteristics of the universe to make the universe despite the fact that those characteristics exists only inside the universe itself.
That's pure nonsense. It's a fallacy of stolen concept. You are literally using the concept you are providing an origin to to explain the origin of the concept.

You are committing the strawman fallacy.

You are the one falsely assuming God needs to use the laws of the universe to create the universe.

Which is ironic because the whole reason we are forced to conclude God had to create the universe is precisely because we know logically and mathematically that the universe could never arise by the laws of the universe alone.

 

[Rise]

By definition you can't exert force without the law of motions since the law of motions define what exerting force means.
That's indeed what I am saying. If God "exert force" then he is under the influence of the law of motions.

You are misunderstanding the point I was making.
Which is: God doesn't need to be bound by the laws of motion in order to create the big bang which is constrained by the laws of motion.

If you want to call his act of creation exherting force or something else it doesn't really matter what label you want to put on it, that's irrelevant to the point that God himself doesn't need to be bound by laws in order to create a universe constrained by laws.

It's jut as false to say that he isn't constrained by the laws of the universe or that he can do things that can only occur within the domain of the laws of the universe, like causing things, without being under the domain of those things at the same time. There is no logical or empirical demonstration of this. It's pure fantasist speculation.

Your paragraph doesn't make enough sense to be understood so it can be refuted.

I already address in the previous post the fallacy of how you are misusing and misunderstanding what relationship causality plays into the cosmological argument.

The opposite is also true. Since we don't know for sure that everything that has a beginning has a cause we can't say that everything that has a beginning has a cause, the first premise of the cosmological argument is simply speculative.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

Merely asserting that the premise of the cosmological argument is speculative, and not logically true, doesn't make it so just because you assert it.

You have given no logical argumentation to demonstrate your claim could be true

The cosmological argument establishes using science that we must conclude the universe had a beginning and a cause. You have done nothing to refute those arguments or it's conclusion by merely asserting the opposite as though it's true.

So far, to the best of our knowledge some phenomenon are spontaneous thus there might be spontaneous phenomenon. It's a strong possibility.

You have no evidence or logical argumentation to support your claim.

You are engaging again in the fallacy of argument by assertion.

 

[epronovost]

You have already admitted you don't think objective morality exists, so you are lying if you want claim you have been able to determine what objective morality is when you just got done saying you don't even think it exists.

It's true that I have said that there is no such thing as objective morality, but there are objectively successful morals though. This is widely considered one of the school of thought that is considered a form of "objective morality" though it's more accurate to consider it a form of non cognitivism.

I never said you could create an intent and purpose for yourself.

Trying to tell yourself you can is not the same as actually doing it.

That's why atheism is inherently a purposeless existence.

Are you then saying I can't create intent and purpose for myself despite the fact I am actually doing it? Are you implying that I don't intent to write those things and am actually following the instruction of someone or something else? It's a tough position to argue that I can't do what I am actually doing while I am doing it. If I give myself a purpose, like eating as much as I can until I die for example, then I am not without purpose. I can base my entire existence on accomplishing that purpose.

You might tell yourself you have a purpose and intent, but you really don't because ultimately the universe is all going to die a heat death by your worldview and nothing you do will have mattered. You haven't actually done anything in the long run.

That's actually incorrect. Temporal changes are still changes even though they can be negated. It might have no value in your opinion, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. I ate a meal six years ago. It no longer feed me and one day I will die, but I still ate it and it still fulfilled its role of keeping alive, healthy and happy a little longer. I am small, my purpose and my impact thus reflect my stature, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

This is in contrast with the Christian theism view that says God has given us a specific purpose and that us fulfilling hat purpose has positive benefits for eternity.

Except that's purely speculative. You are free to believe you are eternal for some reason, but we can't know for sure.

You assume that human flourishing is the definition of moral.

Incorrect, I said that human flourishment is the objective of morality and morals are the way to accomplish that objective. That's what morals are: rules, axioms, parable, councils, etc. that all have the same intent to make humans flourish. There are no morals that do not have that intent. The only time moral statement are used for something else is to simply state a personal like or dislike

(example: killing is wrong as in I don't like when people kill other people without any intent on stating what should be done or the morality of things. I'm just stating my emotional reaction toward killing and that emotion is comparable to a "yuk")

So it's not a moral question at all then. It's just a question of power.
If you had the power you could do it and there be nothing immoral about it.

So therefore you have no basis for claiming it's immoral to act that way.

I never claimed it was immoral to do it. You assumed its what I was claiming in that instance, but wasn't the case.

For that matter I do believe it's immoral for a parent to attempt to exert full dominion over a child because it harms a child and thus go against his or her flourishment which is against the objective of morality. You might disagree and believe it would actually allow it to flourish more in which case we would have to observe and weight the evidence of such claim by using observable data.

 

[epronovost]

God himself doesn't need to be bound by laws in order to create a universe constrained by laws.

That's a baseless assertion.

He certainly cannot do something that can only happens within the purview of a law without being under the purview of that law. That would be breaking the logical law of non contradiction. You can't paint without paint. You can't solve mathematical equation without doing mathematics. You can't cause things without causality. It would be a self contradiction and the laws of logic don't permit such things.

Logical fallacy, argument by assertion.

Merely asserting that the premise of the cosmological argument is speculative, and not logically true, doesn't make it so just because you assert it.

You have given no logical argumentation to demonstrate your claim could be true

I did. I provided an example of a spontaneous phenomenon: radioactive decay. That phenomenon doesn't have a cause. We thus can't say that all phenomenon that have a beginning have a cause else it would be a contradiction. The overwhelming majority of known phenomenon do, but we neither know all the possible phenomenon of the observable universe nor have found at least one cause to all those we do know. We thus can't say that all phenomenon with a beginning have a cause. That premise isn't a demonstrable fact since we don't know all phenomenon and to the best of our knowledge some phenomenon have no cause. That's not a baseless assertion. That's the statement of a verifiable empirical fact. The first premise of the cosmological argument is speculative at best or downright falsified at worst by the fact that radioactive decay is a phenomenon with a beginning, but no cause.

 

[Rise]

It's true that I have said that there is no such thing as objective morality, but there are objectively successful morals though.

You have no basis for defining what is objectively successful.
Because that is placing a value judgement on saying one activity constitutes the definition of success as opposed to failure.

Who is to say that success is determined by " human flourishing"?

There are people out there for whom "success" would be defined as seeing humanity exterminated.

How are you going to tell them they are objectively wrong for defining success in a way that is the opposite you do?

You can't.

You might be able to define what constitutes success at a particular task, but you aren't in a position based on your worldview to assign value judgements to what qualifies your existence itself as successful, or what makes you successful as a being.

This is widely considered one of the school of thought that is considered a form of "objective morality" though it's more accurate to consider it a form of non cognitivism.

It is false for you to claim it as a form of objective morality because there is nothing objective nor moral about what you are describing according to the definitions of those terms.

You aren't describing right or wrong, which is the current and historical definition of morality. You are only describing successful or unsuccessful. Which logically has nothing to do with right or wrong. You can be successful at achieving a given task of murdering someone but still be morally wrong for doing so. You can be unsuccessful at trying to save someone from a burning building but still be morally right for trying to do so.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of circular reasoning by simply trying to redefine the term morality to mean something different than what it has always meant in order to justify your claim that morality can exist under atheism. But you do so by defining morality in a way that is no longer morality by definition.

It is both intellectually dishonest and invalid logic.

By your actions you actually prove that morality doesn't exist under your atheistic worldview because you're forced to completely abandon it's existing meaning and invent a new meaning for that word.

Are you then saying I can't create intent and purpose for myself despite the fact I am actually doing it.
Are you implying that I don't intent to write those things and am actually following the instruction of someone or something else?

Not if you are a materialistic atheist.
If your worldview is true you don't even have free will. So you can't make an choice. Therefore you can't have intent about anything because intent requires will. A robot doesn't have intent, it merely acts out it's programming. Intent implies an intelligence that makes a choice.

You believe you have free will. And you do good to believe so - but your belief is contradicted by your a priori commitment to materialistic atheism.

They can't both be true because they contradict each other.

That's actually incorrect. Temporal changes are still changes even though they can be negated. It might have no value in your opinion, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. I ate a meal six years ago. It no longer feed me and one day I will die, but I still ate it and it still fulfilled its role of keeping alive, healthy and happy a little longer. I am small, my purpose and my impact thus reflect my stature, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Your argument is fallacious because you are failing to make a distinction between two different concepts.

Assigning functions to the task in front of you is not the same as assigning a purpose to your existence.

An example of why that is the case:

Food fulfills the purpose of keeping you alive another day.
But what purpose is fulfilled by you being alive another day?
Let's say you claim you need to go to work and build something.
But then what purpose is fulfilled by doing that task?
You might say it does something for someone else.
But what purpose is achieved by helping someone do something?

This can go on ad infinitum without you ever being able to resolve the question of what your ultimate purpose is for existing.

You can never give an answer for why you exist because you will cease to exist and nothing of your existence will matter.

In contrast, a Christian theism worldview tells us our reason for existing is to love God and have relationship with Him for eternity, and that what we do now has eternal consequences.

Except that's purely speculative

You are misusing the word speculative. That is not the correct word for this instance.

Christian belief is not speculative by definition because it claims to be a known truth via self evident experience (ie. meeting with God Himself). Christianity also makes further claims that observational evidence can be used to prove the truth of the Bible (Ie. Creation science).

Speculation by definition has no evidence to support it.

Christianity, by definition, claims to have evidence to support it.

Your rejection of that evidence doesn't mean it becomes speculative by definition.

Many theoretical physics theories would be a good example of what a truly speculative viewpoint is. And the creators of those theories would admit they are purely speculative in nature. Because they make no claim to have any evidence which would cause them to believe their viewpoint is true. They have invented a purely speculative model of how they think things work but have no evidence to believe it's true. They can't even believe it's true by appealing to logic as evidence because they can't lay claim to their speculative model being the only possible way of explaining what we observe.

Logical fallacy, argument by repetition.

I already refuted your claims with logical arguments, and you have ignored them. Merely repeating your original claim doesn't prove it's true.

In order to defend your claim you need to be able to refute my arguments with logical counter arguments.

You are demonstrating you don't know how to wield logic properly.

Refuted what exactly?
You aren't making any sense with regards to what you are quoting.

Because I wasn't making an argument in what you quoted, and therefore I can't be repeating an argument if I'm not making an argument, and therefore you can't have refuted an argument I never made.

I simply made a factual statement about what the Christian worldview believes. I did not try to assert it's true in that particular statement therefore I can't be guilty of an argument by assertion.

Unless you want to dispute that Christians believe what I say they did, there's nothing for you to refute.

Incorrect, I said that human flourishment is the objective of morality and morals are the way to accomplish that objective.

Quibbling over the details of what you believe doesn't ultimately have any result on the outcome of the debate because you've already admitted you don't believe objective morality can exist in your worldview.
Thus proving my original claim that atheistic materialism cannot lay claim to any morality being objective.

The issue with what you are saying is that you aren't describing morality by definition.
You have no basis for saying human flourishment is right and the opposite is wrong.

By claiming that our idea of morality is nothing more than a tool to achieve an objective, you are admitting you believe that morality as a concept doesn't truly doesn't exist (right and wrong) and it's just subjective towards achieving the ends of the person.

That's what morals are: rules, axioms, parable, councils that all have the same intent to make humans flourish. There are no morals that do not have that intent.

You are right to say that morals cannot be morals by definition without intent behind deciding how things out to be.

But you admit your worldview only believes in subjective morality, as it comes forth out of people and you have no objective way of saying who is right vs who is wrong when two moral opinions differ.

Your worldview isn't workable, or consistent with our self evident experience, because it leaves you with no way of telling the nazis that they can't kill the jews. You would just be giving them your opinion, and have no way of objectively telling them their opinion is wrong.

You, not understanding the implications of this, might try to argue "but I can tell them it's wrong because it doesn't benefit human flourishing".
But if the person you are talking to responds "I don't believe human flourishing is right or desirable".
Then you are left with no way of telling them they are wrong.

I never claimed it was immoral to do it. You assumed its what I was claiming in that instance, but wasn't the case.

Then I don't see how you think your statement was at all relevant to the topic.

For that matter I do believe it's immoral for a parent to attempt to exert full dominion over a child because it harms a child and thus go against his or her flourishment which is against the objective of morality.

Who are you to say that its immoral to harm the child in that way?
Who are you to say that it's immoral to go against the flourishment of that child?
Who is to say that your objective for life is right, and that others must live by your objective for life?

You can't answer any of those questions. You have no basis to.
It's just your opinion against theirs.

Without an objective source of morality, there is logically no reason why someone with the power to force their morality on you should not do so. You have no basis to tell them that they don't have the right to force their morality on you because it's the wrong morality.

 

[sayak83]

You have no basis for defining what is objectively successful.
Because that is placing a value judgement on saying one activity constitutes the definition of success as opposed to failure.

Who is to say that success is determined by " human flourishing"?

There are people out there for whom "success" would be defined as seeing humanity exterminated.

How are you going to tell them they are objectively wrong for defining success in a way that is the opposite you do?

You can't.

You might be able to define what constitutes success at a particular task, but you aren't in a position based on your worldview to assign value judgements to what qualifies your existence itself as successful, or what makes you successful as a being.


It is false to claim it a form of objective morality because there is nothing objective nor moral about what you are describing according to the definitions of those terms.

You aren't describing right or wrong, which is the current and historical definition of morality. You are only describing successful or unsuccessful. Which logically has nothing to do with right or wrong. You can be successful at achieving a given task of murdering someone but still be morally wrong for doing so. You can be unsuccessful at trying to save someone from a burning building but still be morally right for trying to do so.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of circular reasoning by simply trying to redefine the term morality to mean something different than what it has always meant in order to justify your claim that morality can exist under atheism. But you do so by defining morality in a way that is no longer morality by definition.

It is both intellectually dishonest and invalid logic.

By your actions you actually prove that morality doesn't exist under your atheistic worldview because you're forced to completely abandon it's existing meaning and invent a new meaning for that word.



Not if you are a materialistic atheist.
If your worldview is true you don't even have free will. So you can't make an choice. Therefore you can't have intent about anything because intent requires will. A robot doesn't have intent, it merely acts out it's programming. Intent implies an intelligence that makes a choice.

You believe you have free will. And you do good to believe so - but your belief is contradicted by your a priori commitment to materialistic atheism.

They can't both be true because they contradict each other.





Your argument is fallacious because you are failing to make a distinction between two different concepts.

Assigning functions to the task in front of you is not the same as assigning a purpose to your existence.

An example of why that is the case:

Food fulfills the purpose of keeping you alive another day.
But what purpose is fulfilled by you being alive another day?
Let's say you claim you need to go to work and build something.
But then what purpose is fulfilled by doing that task?
You might say it does something for someone else.
But what purpose is achieved by helping someone do something?

This can go on ad infinitum without you ever being able to resolve the question of what your ultimate purpose is for existing.

You can never give an answer for why you exist because you will cease to exist and nothing of your existence will matter.

In contrast, a Christian theism worldview tells us our reason for existing is to love God and have relationship with Him for eternity, and that what we do now has eternal consequences.



You are misusing the word speculative. That is not the correct word for this instance.

Christian belief is not speculative by definition because it claims to be a known truth via self evident experience (ie. meeting with God Himself).

Speculation by definition has no evidence to support it.

Christianity, by definition, claims to have evidence to support it.

Your rejection of that evidence doesn't mean it becomes speculative by definition.



You are demonstrating you don't know how to wield logic properly.

Refuted what exactly?
You aren't making any sense with regards to what you are quoting.

Because I wasn't making an argument in what you quoted, and therefore I can't be repeating an argument if I'm not making an argument, and therefore you can't have refuted an argument I never made.

I simply made a factual statement about what the Christian worldview believes. I did not try to assert it's true in that particular statement therefore I can't be guilty of an argument by assertion.

Unless you want to dispute that Christians believe what I say they did, there's nothing for you to refute.



Quibbling over the details of what you believe doesn't ultimately have any result on the outcome of the debate because you've already admitted you don't believe objective morality can exist in your worldview.
Thus proving my original claim that atheistic materialism cannot lay claim to any morality being objective.

The issue with what you are saying is that you aren't describing morality by definition.
You have no basis for saying human flourishment is right and the opposite is wrong.

By claiming that our idea of morality is nothing more than a tool to achieve an objective, you are admitting you believe that morality as a concept doesn't truly doesn't exist (right and wrong) and it's just subjective towards achieving the ends of the person.


You are right to say that morals cannot be morals by definition without intent behind deciding how things out to be.

But you admit your worldview only believes in subjective morality, as it comes forth out of people and you have no objective way of saying who is right vs who is wrong when two moral opinions differ.

Your worldview isn't workable, or consistent with our self evident experience, because it leaves you with no way of telling the nazis that they can't kill the jews. You would just be giving them your opinion, and have no way of objectively telling them their opinion is wrong.

You, not understanding the implications of this, might try to argue "but I can tell them it's wrong because it doesn't benefit human flourishing".
But if the person you are talking to responds "I don't believe human flourishing is right or desirable".
Then you are left with no way of telling them they are wrong.




Then I don't see how you think your statement was at all relevant to the topic.



Who are you to say that its immoral to harm the child in that way?
Who are you to say that it's immoral to go against the flourishment of that child?
Who is to say that your objective for life is right, and that others must live by your objective for life?

You can't answer any of those questions. You have no basis to.
It's just your opinion against theirs.

Without an objective source of morality, there is logically no reason why someone with the power to force their morality on you should not do so. You have no basis to tell them that they don't have the right to force their morality on you because it's the wrong morality.

I am not entirely sure where this debate is heading but here is my position. You cannot get to objective morality even with a God. In this case it will only be God's subjective desires about what ought to be that will be imposed on the universe. We simply have a case where "the mightiest has decreed by force what is right". Still it's entirely subjective even if everyone is forced to act according to it.

 

[Rise]

You cannot get to objective morality even with a God. In this case it will only be God's subjective desires about what ought to be that will be imposed on the universe. We simply have a case where "the mightiest has decreed by force what is right". Still it's entirely subjective even if everyone is forced to act according to it.

I wanted to clarify what your position is:
Are you denying that objective morality could ever exist or are you claiming it can exist but God cannot possibly be the source of it?

A related question: Do you believe objective truth exists?

 

[sayak83]

I wanted to clarify what your position is:
Are you denying that objective morality could ever exist or are you claiming it can exist but God cannot possibly be the source of it?

A related question: Do you believe objective truth exists?

I do not believe objective morality exists, and certainly that God cannot be a source of objective morality.
Mathematical and logical truths are objective. So are many types of truths about the world's properties and physical laws. So objective truths exist.

 

[Rise]

That's a baseless assertion.

I gave you a basis in logic.

Logically you have no basis for saying God must be constrained by the laws he creates. Anymore than you can say a programmer is constrained by the rules of the computer program they create.

He certainly cannot do something that can only happens within the purview of a law without being under the purview of that law.
That would be breaking the logical law of non contradiction.
You can't paint without paint. You can't solve mathematical equation without doing mathematics. You can't cause things without causality. It would be a self contradiction and the laws of logic don't permit such things.

The critical error in your thinking is that you are trying to define the law of causality in a way that is incorrect.

You are committing the logical fallacy of false equivalence by trying to draw a false equivalence between the ability for God to create something from nothing and the requirement that effects observed in our universe must have a cause.

These are logically not the same concepts.

The law of causality is merely a way of describing what we observe about the laws of physics that govern our world - That every effect has a cause.

Your error is that you taking a term that is used to describe how effects are related to causes in our observed universe and then trying to falsely apply that to the concept of creating something from nothing.

You therefore falsely conclude that nothing can be created until the physics of the universe are created because you falsely posit that the laws of physics are necessary for acts of creation to take place.

But you have no logical grounds for your claim that something cannot be created from nothing prior to the laws or our universe being created.

You falsely assert that acts of creation cannot take place before the law of causality as though the law of causality is required for creation to take place. No, the law merely describes creation. The law is not the means by which creation takes place.

There is also another way in which your position fails: because we know logically the universe had to have a beginning and come from nothing to become something. And you never refuted the logic behind that conclusion.
Because the argument you are trying to make would mean it is impossible for that to happen we can therefore conclude your argument is false. Because an act of creation had to have taken place before the universe existed in order to create the universe.

I did. I provided an example of a spontaneous phenomenon: radioactive decay. That phenomenon doesn't have a cause.

You are misusing the term “spontaneous” from a physics perspective. In physics it has a specific meaning but you are trying to apply a different meaning of your own invention.

Spontaneous radioactive decay doesn’t mean there is no cause.
It simply means the causes are internal to the element and not caused by external forces acting upon it.

Furthermore, the ultimate cause of the radioactive decay can be traced back to the creation of the elements themselves along with the creation of the laws which governed how they would decay.

This gets back to the same problem you made with talking about causing the law of causation. You are distorting and misrepresenting certain concepts because you are trying to insert your own spin onto certain words that aren’t related to the concepts you are trying to discuss.

Your arguments in both of these cases amount to little more than word games that are disconnected from the actual concepts you are referencing. You misrepresent and distort the meaning and implication of these concepts by taking a word and inventing your own meaning for it instead of looking at what the intended meaning was by those who put forth the concept.

We thus can't say that all phenomenon with a beginning have a cause.

Since the premise behind your argument is proven false, your argument becomes invalid.

 

[MikeF]

There are two problem with your response, one of which is a critical error.

1. We were talking about self evident truths. ... , is a demonstrable complete and utter fabrication on your part with no basis in anything I have actually typed in this thread.

First, I must apologize. I have inadvertently conflated conversations you and I are having on two separate threads, Hitchens was wildly overrated as a thinker/debater and Moral argument my version - proof for God.. The threads are related to the same topic, however, as the second thread split to address the moral argument specifically.

And now to address what you characterize as my two critical errors, the first being:

1. We were talking about self evident truths. Like the existence of free will, our existence in a physical reality, objective morality, or the observation of gravity's effects.

These are shared, common, and self evident without the need to be proven. That's the definition of self evident - it doesn't need to be proven because it's self evidenced already. Because of this, self evident truths are also truths which people appear to have always known throughout history. It was never something that had to be arrived at.

You haven't given me anything that is self evident in life that is contradicted by the Bible.

All of the examples you gave are not self evident, but conclusions that were only arrived at in modern times after a great deal of research, evidence, and reasoning went into trying to construct a non-Biblical narrative for creation.

I asked you for evidence of category A and you gave me arguments for category B.
So your argument is invalid due to the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion. Even if we assumed your claims were true, they would be irrelevant to proving your original claim that the Bible contradicts self evident truths.

This brings me back to my point about the apple falling from the tree and why it would be nonsense to deny the self evident truth that the effects of gravity exist: Because there are many areas where materialistic atheism is denying self evident truths. Yet ironically they try to lay claim to the scientific high ground while they are in the process of denying the existence of so many of our most fundamental self-evident truths.

There is only justification for one of your self-evident truths, and that is that our personal existence is self-evident to ourselves. After this fact, everything else is what we perceive and what we can reason from that perception. What we think we know is simply reasoned expectation based on experience. We confirm what we perceive and what we reason about what we perceive through intersubjective corroboration. Since human beings are not perfect, we are fallible, we cannot rely solely on intuition or unverified belief. The mere fact that we can believe things that are not true demonstrates the weakness of the concept of Proper Basic Belief.

Proper Basic Belief cannot be used to support your arguments.

As to your second point:

2. Your argument also requires assuming your examples are undisputed truths. But you can't take for granted that those things are true beyond question. There is a great body of evidence and arguments put forth by creation affirming scientists who believe the evidence can be rightly understood to be in line with the Biblical account.

But getting into a debate over those issues is not necessary because it would be irrelevant to prove your original argument - because none of the examples you gave represent self evident truths. Which was the issue being contested.

To be clear, you did not ask for “self-evident truths”, but rather, you asked for “obvious observed reality.” In your post from thread Hitchens was wildly overrated as a thinker/debater post #69, you stated:

Your argument is also fallacious because you are operating from the unproven assumption that the Bible contradicts obvious observed reality. You would need to prove your assumption is true before you could try to draw any such analogy and have it be taken as valid.

In your original request, you at least acknowledge the important role of empirical observation and evidence. And there are no self-evident truths outside of the reality of our own existence. We only have reasoned analysis of empirical evidence that we corroborate through intersubjective agreement.

To your request for examples of observed reality (empirical evidence) that contradict the bible, I provided the following in post #73 of the thread Hitchens was wildly overrated as a thinker/debater:

As to where the bible contradicts empirical evidence, here are some examples:

1. The claim of a seven day creation is not supported empirically.
2. That man and animals were created by a creator entity in that seven day period, as opposed to Evolution, is not supported empirically.
3. The global flood as described is not empirically supported.
4. That linguistic diversity occurred as described in the Tower of Babel myth is not supported empirically.
5. Referring to the heavens as firmament is Genesis conflicts with empirical evidence.
6. Genesis has the earth formed before the Sun, which conflicts with empirical evidence.

Hopefully, that is enough to support the point. There are many other errors and contradictions in the bible.

These are not undisputed truths, rather they are reasoned conclusions based on the empirical evidence, empirical evidence being required for observed reality. Outside of the scriptural documents, there is no corroborated empirical evidence to support the scriptural assertions.

MikeF said: ↑
”You only specifically allow for Christian scriptural support and Prior Basic Beliefs (of religious people only, it seems).

I have demonstrated why we must disregard the notion of Prior Basic Belief and you have not countered that. That leaves you only with scripture.

To limit a debate on the existence of your creator entity to arguments based and supported by Christian scripture seems like stacking the deck in your favor. Wouldn't you agree?”

So for you to try to claim I am arguing from scripture, and refusing to allow anything but scripture as evidence, is a demonstrable complete and utter fabrication on your part with no basis in anything I have actually typed in this thread.

As to the quote above, I based my conclusions on your following statements:

From the thread Moral argument my version - proof for God. post # 120:

There are two problems with your statement:
I said there is more to proving something exists than only using the laws of logic and mathematics. You are operating from the false presumption that anything real or true can be proven by math and logic.

This gets into the philosophical area of what is called proper basic beliefs. Which is that there are certain things we know are true but which are impossible to prove by the laws of logic or mathematics (ie science).

And here is just one example of your Appeal to Scripture, in the thread Moral argument my version - proof for God. Post #98:

...
The Bible tells us that morality is based on the character of God.
...
The Bible tells us God gave us this inner witness to moral right and wrong. We are born with it. That’s why the Bible says no man is without excuse in the day of judgement for the responsibility of their sin.
...

As we can see, you do call on scripture as a source of true and factual information and you have made an argument that there are real and true things that cannot be proven (or refuted in your mind) by science. Science, by the way, which you have misrepresented as being only logic and math. Science is empirical evidence from which we can draw reasoned conclusions using both logic and math, all of which requires intersubjective corroboration to have any value. You cannot disqualify out-of-hand empirical evidence as a source of valid information, especially that evidence that has been vetted through intersubjective corroboration.

To claim that there are areas of knowledge shielded from the scrutiny of science simply allows you to create an artificial construct of reality in which your biblical narrative works.