God’s not dead…

I watched this movie so you won’t have to. I actually do like Kevin Sorbo, but he should have stuck to the other, more interesting myths..

"God is not dead. He is alive and working on a much less ambitious project."  -- graffito
Firstly to counter the title of this movie with an interesting point, God is not dead, you can’t be dead if you never existed… badum tsh.

Another one I find humorous is the Professor at one stage telling a student they get extra credit for not capitalizing the “G” in God, problem is it is a name so it has to be capitalized. Without the capital you would need to define which one of the thousands of gods humanity has dreamt up that you are talking about.

But on to the meaty rebuttal of this movie’s “arguments”, arguments like this one;

So 34minutes in before they finally get onto their arguments and over their story.

The first argument is weak seemingly on purpose. The protagonist (Josh) is only starting out in defending his faith, he has yet to do his Christian apologetic montage. Josh simply attempts to shift the burden of proof, no one can disprove god doesn't exist, see Hermoine's response above. He talks about God being on trial, but that has already been done, much better with the TV Movie God on trial.
Josh then goes on to attempt to fit the scripture to evidence to the scripture, basically cherry picking out parts that sound like they could mean the big bang; https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/the-texas-sharpshooter He then quotes Steven Weinberg description of what the big bang would have looked like, "in the beginning there was an explosion and in 3 minutes 98% of the matter that is or ever will be was produced". Funnily enough I can't find this quote verbatim, but that matter that Josh alludes to that was produced from energy was simply Hydrogen, which later formed Helium, and inside stars via stellar nucelosynthesis it formed heavier elements, something we can witness via stellar spectography, a technique over a hundred years old, so surprising that its recentness has been overlooked.

Josh then goes on to compare the previously held scientific belief of steady state, claiming science was wrong, while the bibles idea of a point of creation was correct... just off by billions of years and in its chronology, but regardless... This is further cherry picking, science adjusts its views based on what is observed, religious people attempt to fit the bible to science of the day. I am sure if there is enough evidence found for the multiverse some religious will claim this is where God lives. Sorry but you can't do that, either you make a prediction based on your belief and let your beliefs continued existence rest on if the prediction is found true, or you leave the discussion up to the adults.

2500 years bible right, science wrong. The bible also states that the earth is a flat circle,
 "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" - Isaiah 40:22 In this case the word circle (gh) in hebrew is used in Isaiah 29:3 for the troops to encircle the city. And Sphere (rwd) is used in Isaiah 22:18. So the common complaint that sphere and circle where not known to biblical authors is erroneous, either take the missed predictions with the successful ones or toss the the whole thing away.

38 minutes in; Wahoo we have the "Argument from design". I attacked this one recently here. Basically the counters revolve around either negative design (flaws in Gods perfect creation) which all creationists will counter with, the fall... which is rather convenient especially when some of these flaws define our existence, and other ones such as the wasted space must have existed pre-fall: Basically 99.99999% of the universe is not only unhospitable but downright hostile to life. All this space is described as being created in the bible, not post the fall.If you apply the argument from design to a designer you have an issue, how did something that is more powerful come to be? So it requires a William Lane Craig word game of the un-caused creator. But if you accept that then why not save a step and accept the un-caused universe?

Josh then goes on to state "nothing jumps into existing out of nothingness, atheists say except the universe". I have mentioned this before, but things do pop out of nothingness, virtual particles. That being said, no one is saying that the universe necessarily popped out nothing, the energy may have always existed, it could have been caused by some external event in the multiverse, we don't know, and until we have evidence we can't claim it was any of these or for that matter God.

Josh then goes on to state that the argument that god doesn't need a cause as Christians *believe* in an uncreated god. Well the universe doesn't care what you believe, the universe is despite of it, so far there has been no evidence of the supernatural, no evidence of a God, only evidence of natural causes, so which is more likely that a natural cause was the first cause, or that there was a supernatural cause? Josh then asks his smart sounding question "If the universe created you, then who created the universe". This can be turned around quite easily, if God created the universe, then who created God. If you want to say God is eternal then bite the bullet and admit the universe could be eternal, and admit that the universe being eternal is much less complicated.
The Professor and atheist then uses argument from authority to Stephen hawking argue for a godless universe beginning. This is a pretty weak argument, there are so many more points this professor of philosophy could have attacked, yep Hawking is an atheist, great. My atheism doesn't depend on authorities or celebrities being atheists, that sounds more like a religion. To counter this, would all Catholics abandon their faith if the Pope or another Catholic celebrities lack of faith were discovered, would all Chrisitians accept homosexuality if the Pastor they looked up to was caught with a gay masseuse? Obviously neither of these events has happened, so they either refuse to believe what has happened, dismiss it with magic (the devil had its way with them), or construct some other special pleading.
I don't do that, Anthony Flew was an atheist, maybe he did become a deist, so what, people are fallible. Dawkins could as he has said cash in and get the Templeton prize in his dotty old age, and that wouldn't sway my lack of belief one iota. The fact that you think it should shows how fragile you think reasoned belief is.

1h3min in "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing" - Hawking, grand design (this whole bit looks like it could have been taken from WLC's site).

Obviously here the authors of the movie are trying to make God the law giver, the fine tuner of these laws and constants. The problem with this is the universe could have been made a different way, could have been better. To imply that God needed to "fine tune" the universe for life to exist denies God's supposed omnipotence, if you have unlimited power you could ensure lifes creation in a universe that had no such fine tuning.

Josh then goes on to quote John Lennox, who claims there are three errors in that, of circular reasoning, the universe exists because it needed to exist, it therefore created itself. Uh no, not really. I think they are referring to Lennox's article here. Lennox a Christian, states his bias upfront, regardless I don't disregard someone outright necessarily due to their beliefs, I like writing by CS Lewis. Lennox here is right, the laws of physics are just laws to describe the action, the laws don't cause anything. They are just like the word Pool doesn't cause a pool, it just describes it to someone who knows English, but I don't think Hawking was saying that. He was saying because gravity follows the law, because it is predictable, because it is negative in energy, it could allow for a universe to come out of nothing. The quote is misunderstood and taken out of context.

Really here using John Lennox is Argument to authority, sure he is a Mathematician, Philosopher and a Christian apologist, so what, he can be wrong, as can and has Hawking and every other human who ever was.
Josh tries to counter his professor with a quote from one of Hawking's recent books, the grand design,  he says page5, obviously that is going to depend on the version, but here is a hint it is the first page of Chapter 1. Hawking says "philosophy is dead", in context I, an amateur philosopher agree with him, and I agree with Lawrence Krauss who expanded on this. The philosophy of science is dead (Lennox's chosen field). It is dead, as simply thinking about a scientific issue will not bring out an outcome that comports to reality. Krauss uses the apt example, you don't have computer science philosophers. Just as you shouldn't have chemistry, biology, quantum physics or cosmological philosophers, it makes no sense.
Philosophy has its place, the philosophy of things science can't yet explore, consciousness, thoughts, emotion, language, arts.... give it time.
 
1h7m Darwinists have been saying you don't need god. Darwin assumed lightning hit a stagnant pond. Life came from a simple beginning, but nature cannot jump, pre-Cambrian explosion.
Wow, OK there is no such thing as a Darwinist, I have said this before... But lets go, a Darwinist is someone who believes in the since massively refined Darwinian view of natural selection as a driving force behind speciation. There are a heap of people who accept evolution as I have described it and still believe in a God, people like the Pope and most of his clergy, various Muslim leaders (with the exception of human evolution of course), and people like Francis Collins (once head of the Human Genome project). In fact there is a famous saying "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", which is the title of an essay from a devout Russian Orthodox Christian called Theodosius Dobzhansky.

Another Argument from design here... really, already repeating your arguments hey.
1h21m Josh starts this bit with the problem of evil, stating it is the atheists most potent weapon, OK. I'll bite, it is a good one. Not what convinced me, and actually some recent article I read suggested the shear enormity of the universe is a big convincing factor (source escapes me presently)."I can't believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth mind you, and look at what's out there. It isn't in proportion." - Richard Feynman

Lets quickly look at the good summation of the problem of evil from Epicurus
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

Or the more recent one from Sam Harris
"Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist.
So God is either: impotent, evil or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely."

So this is the issue Josh has to contend with, how does he chose to do it? Free will, oh of course. So all the people killed every year of starvation through no fault of their own can simply will food to get to them, the people killed in earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, that's all either their sin or simply their own will? A good example I heard from Darkmatter2525, how about the victims free will, does God simply favour the murder or rapists free will over their victims?

Oh and then Josh goes to the ultimate special pleading "God tolerates evil temporarily, his intention is to one day destroy it." That's nice of him, why not now, what's he waiting for? It is kind of like seeing someone getting beaten while you hold in your hand a stun gun, do you wait till the victim is almost dead to step in, or do you start stunning the perpetrators left and right? If you wait, then you are a horrible human being. Josh then goes on to say the Professor doesn't believe in moral absolutes, yet at his exam in finals week, if he where to cheat he would be punished as though there is an absolute morality. God gives him a basis for morality, it is wrong to cheat, what basis does atheist have. No god there is no reason or standard morality, if God doesn't exist then everything is permissible. 

I love this argument, the good old argument from morality, I have attacked it here. Basically, humanity has determined morality through a long process of trial and error (mostly error unfortunately), if the bible is a basis for morality it is a bad one preaching genocide, slavery, rape and vengeance.
Atheists could actually be deemed more moral as they do things without expecting an afterlife treat, they do good for goodness sake.

Josh then tips his hand with the "life is meaningless" rhetoric. If your life is meaningless without an unjustified belief system this isn't an argument for that belief system, anymore than life is more fun when you shirk work and get drunk and party all the time being an argument for drunkenness.
Life is what you make it, if you suck at it don't lean on a crutch, make it better. If you are dealt a bad hand then hope others will help you, or simply be happy to be alive for a fleeting moment on this beautiful planet.

I love the closing bits where the professor all callous says;“I’m going to enjoy failing you”. Why would a professor state this. I am not a professor, but if I was I would shoot down all his arguments publicly, I would ensure his peers learnt from his logical errors, and yes I would still fail him.

Ah of course the old chestnut "do you hate God, why." Hehe, "Do you hate Zeus? Why?" Nope don't hate God, don't even hate believers, I don't even hate all religions. I hate magical thinking, I hate indoctrination and I hate the anti-science rhetroic. There is good some religions do, but mostly it is outweighed by the pompous preening and damage it has done to our society.
"Science supports gods existence", really. The aforementioned Templeton foundation has done their own studies into prayer, it has failed every time. Every time we have looked for the solution to a question that has plagued us it has been caused by a natural event, not once has the answer been supernatural, I would say that God being a supernatural entity is precluded by science.

Pascals wager

One last argument, this time not from Josh, but from the in-firmed mother, Pascal’s wager,  all-be-it with a poetic flair. Satan tempts us to stay in the cage, makes it comfortable even leaves the door open till it is too late and it slams shut.... OK so forget about the fact here that the devil is supposed to have rebelled against God yet still keeps his prison running, so what. Pascals wager has been destroyed loads of times. For those who don't know it, here it is;

Either God exists or he doesn't, if you believe in him and he does and you die then you are rewarded with an eternity in paradise. If you believe in him and he doesn't exist, then you have lost nothing. If you do not believe and he does exist, then you will be tormented for all eternity or at least miss out on this eternal bliss.

The issue of course with this is the God existence isn't binary, it isn't either yes or no, and it isn't 50% one way and the other. There have been around 10,000 Gods worshiped by humans thus far, as Bart said you could just make the real one madder and madder by worshiping the wrong one, of course it could be one we have yet to devise/receive word from, or it could be one who favours the use of our reason and only lets in ones that don't believe, or there could be no God.
It also doesn't take in the personal and societal cost of religion, Churches currently shirk billions in taxes, people pay tithes, and waste part of their free time.

Marcus Aurelius(possibly, a dubious source) answered Pascal before he was even born;
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust,
then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
 
Finally the gem I have heard before, "The letter his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts." The old God works in mysterious ways, his thoughts are higher than ours, it'd be like an ant trying to comprehend us.

Sorry but no, if we were powerful enough to be able to communicate with an ant as god can communicate with us then we could make ourselves and our intent known to the ant, we could likely even get it on our side. This is a cop out, and beyond a weak argument it is horribly demeaning to your fellow human.

Muslim paedophilia Slur

Atheism a road to paedophilia?
Yep, that is the bow that was drawn at a recent debate between Sydney atheists and Sydney's Muslim students association. The debaters on our side as I am sure I would have been where flabbergasted by this, or simply missed it amongst the barrage of other non-sequiturs and logical fallacies.

Let’s get to the crux of it. Their argument is that basically, atheists have no moral arbitrator so thus anything is eventually acceptable. Why they didn't use some less heinous crime is beyond me, may be a psychologist can weigh in on why they would deem this as an action they would take if they felt there was no divine policemen to keep them in check.
OK so if there is no moral enforcer, no God(s) who can define moral law then moral law needs to be defined as we go along. This comes back to Euthyphros dilemma; Is something good because God deems it so, or does God do things that are only good. If you pick the first then God could arbitrarily change the rules, could all of a sudden decide that killing your own child is morally good... don't laugh he did this to Abraham, Jephthah, the 42 children that God kills with bears and his own son, if you believe the bible.
If you take the second option, then Morality is over and above God, and God is not omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent (all good) as he is deemed by some, all-be-it not by some Muslims.

So you either are worshipping a being that deems murder is good on its whim, or cannot change morality and thus morality arises independently of this being.

Let’s look where the atheist view gets us, independently arisen morality.
I will state first up I believe that morality is objective, meaning that the same morality doesn't necessarily hold for all situations. For example I think murder is abhorrent and wrong... but if I was thrust into combat I would fight and kill to save me and my families lives.
I think rape is wrong (actually above murder, but that is personal disgust), but can see that the Angler fish in which the male effectively rapes the female as the only means of perpetuating their species is not morally as wrong as letting the species die out.
I think you get the picture, morality in life is a grey area, you need to think about things a bit and not be moraly lazy, besides who wouldn't steal a loaf of bread to feed their starving family.

Society, to work in cohesion develops rules however. We don't need to rape to survive as a species, so it is outlawed, leniency is shown the thief doing so out of necessity, killing in self-defence is also shown leniency. These rules have been built up over time in secular legal systems all over the world, independently of each other, and often times independently of religion.

Now to the argument of paedophilia. Most societies deem sex between consenting individuals as OK, if there is no consent then it is simply rape.
I believe every country has an age of consent, and this is deemed by their legal institution as the age at which a child can make possible life changing decisions, such as moving out on their own, or consenting to sexual intercourse, this varies country to country which is a little odd, but interestingly averages around 16 years of age.
This makes sense as children are naive, they are overly trusting and they are easily influenced/ picking an age that allows for mental maturation in a majority of children, allows for these decisions to be made with greater foresight. If they can't consent then it is against their will and thus rape, where paedophilia is just rape of a minor.
So for our society paedophilia is rightly outlawed.

But let’s create a hypothetical world, one where a disease causes all males of the intelligent species inhabiting this world to be sterile shortly after they first become sterile, long before mental maturation, lets also say IVF for whatever reason is not discovered or doesn't work.
A law maybe passed that enforces these young boys to continue the species is it wrong, in our eyes, yes. In this species eyes they wouldn't exist without it.

This post was mirrored from sydneyatheists.org

Argument from morality

We have been invited to debate in the coming months, below are my arguments against the Christian standard argument from morality that I used in our mock debate.

Christians and other religious people will often argue that without religion how can you be moral? Where do you get your morality from if not from God above? I am here to argue that not only do we get our morals from elsewhere, but that being moral without God is actually a higher good.

It is said we get our morals from the bible, but this is patently not true. The bible endorses slavery, (Leviticus 25,45, Exodus 21, NT: Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2), murder (http://www.evilbible.com/Murder.htm) and all of the so called seven deadly sins. Even where it makes moral judgements they are not moral. Of the Ten Commandments, only 2 are actually against the law, and these are only punishable by the civil gaol time in Australia, not the death sentence that most of the commandments call for.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is a nice thought and a damn site better than the 10 commandments, but it has a huge flaw. What if the person living by this law is a sadomasochist deriving pleasure from others pain, or even enjoying pain being inflicted on themselves? I don’t want to be cut and tortured but they wouldn’t be breaking this golden rule. The better version of this rule; do unto other as they would have you do unto them.

What about turn the other cheek, again excellent sentiment. But something that wouldn’t get you far if you practised it against an invading force.

Love your neighbour as yourself, is lovely as well. But it devalues your own worth, and doesn’t cover the aforementioned issue of an invading force made up of people you may consider your neighbours. It also doesn’t put more emphasis on kin, is it moral to save your 20 year old fit and healthy neighbour from a house fire over your helpless 6month old child or invalid parent? Regardless who would begrudge a person saving their wife or child over a stranger?

Evolutionary psychologists will say that morals developed so that we could survive as a species that lived in communities. If you criminal and everyone knows you are a criminal, then come winter when you and your children are hungry, your neighbours are less likely to give you some of their food and thus you are less likely for your possibly criminal genes to pass on. This can be seen as moral actions can be performed by animals of lesser intelligence than us. Dogs are known to defend and tolerate children's rough behaviour. Dogs have also been seen to risk their own life to rescue a dog or person they don’t even know. Piranhas one of the most vicious of fish, even during a feeding frenzy will not attack other piranhas. Ducks that sometimes eat fish have been known to feed them a share of their bread or grain. All these are animals, according to Christian religions not imbued with a soul and not capable of determining right from wrong. Yet somehow they act kindly and morally.

There are some cases were being amoral are of benefit though. Look at the Mongol hoards, or early warring tribes. If you lacked empathy the very definition of a psychopath then you would do very well in one of these cases, thus having a likelihood of passing on your genes. But society now frowns upon violence and crime, we have built up laws to defend the weak and punish the criminal. Psychopaths still exist though and have been shown to show no empathy for their actions to another human being, only seeing them as barriers to getting what they want, these place a challenge for the argument of morality coming from God as Psychopaths can be shown from birth to lack empathy and thus have no moral compass that one would imagine should be imbued by the divine. David Koresh (Waco TX), Timothy McVeigh (OK Bombing) and Marshall Applewhite (Heavens Gate) are all examples of people that have been posthumously claimed as having Psychopathy and using religion to further their goals.

Morality that has been built up over time can be seen in our current legal system here in Australia and similarly in most developed countries. Guidelines such as innocent until proven guilty, the right to a fair trial, evidence beyond reasonable doubt. All of these guidelines have been built up through trial and error, developed from earlier legal systems. These tried cases then build up our body of law, if an event occurs that is not illegal and brought to a court of law and tried and found to fail the test of law then a precedent is set and it can only be repealed through further cases to prove the act was not immoral.

There is a famous dilemma called Euthyphro’s dilemma. Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? Either answer has issues; if God can change what is Good then all of a sudden he can deem infanticide good, as he did with Abraham before reneging and Jephthah (Judges 11:30-40) where he followed through. If God only does good because it is good, then morality and good are outside of God and there is morality above and beyond God.

Let’s take the example of two young Children. One knows his parent is watching and is gentle and kind, sharing their toys with their younger sibling, oh how sweet you say. The other child doesn’t know their parent is watching and is sweet and kind to their sibling in the same way. I put it to you that the greater good is the child who does good while no one is watching, with no possibility of reward or fear of reprisal. So it is with non-believers who don’t believe there is anyone on high watching them and keeping score as they work in their community to make the world a better place, volunteer their time and money to educate or help people with their lives.

So I say we are moral not because of religion but despite it.

This post was mirrored from sydneyatheists.org