SmartyPants:

1. That was my definition of who God is. As you noted in your first reply, we need a definition. Are you recanting from that position now? This definition is the subject of the postulations beneath it.

Yes, I am aware that you've defined god as a supreme creator, you just haven't justified your use of such fantastical qualifications, nor have you justified why the universe is in need of a supreme creator. So please justify, or else, you're just speculating!

2. What do you mean “life isn’t way too ordered and structured”. It seems like you’ve not understood almost the entirety of this post. What I said or implied was life is way too ordered and structured to have happened randomly. I never said life is wholly ordered and structured. You have inserted that into my comments to make your argument easier.

This is a vague statement, not a logical argument. What's the meaning of "way too ordered and structured"? Have you measured the degree of orderliness in life? If so, at what point of orderliness do you draw a line between what's created by intelligence and what isn't?

I would have thought it obvious what I meant by the orderliness and structure of life, but I see an explanation is needed. Well, life is ordered and structured in terms of how everything can be grouped into living or non-living, genus, specie, family, class, gender etc. These phenomena are way too complicated to have been random occurrences. They bear the hallmarks of intelligent design.

It requires more than chance for the contraption of conception to work the way it does. It is way too complicated to have simply just happened.

You're good at creating false dichotomies. The counterpoint to Intelligent design is not necessarily randomness. Simple natural laws can bring about order without interference from some intelligent entity.

3. This is a truly odd claim. Surely the fact that atoms interact on the basis on their electrical charges is itself evidence of intelligent design! Someone created those atoms with electrical charges, and programmed them to behave the way they do! Your assertion here is akin to that of a village man who arrives at an ATM and believes bankers are useless because the ATM’s can dispense money on their own.

Atoms were neither created nor programmed by anybody. Atoms are mostly manufactured in stars in a process called Nucleosynthesis. Look it up!

Your conclusion, quoted below, on the first part of my previous reply is completely off point since it is entirely based off a series of misunderstandings and mis-readings.

“In all, you have provided no sound arguments. Instead, you have speculated about the existence of a supreme creator; incorrectly stated that life is wholly ordered; speculated, incorrectly, that orderliness can only come from intelligence; and then proposed that our ignorance should compel us to accept as strong, the possibility of a god. It is baffling how you don't see the monumental weakness in your "line of thought". I'm not even sure you put any thought into that at all.”

Lol...boy, wouldn't that be a convenient way to dismiss my argument!? I now have renewed confidence that my summary of your thought process is apt. I would just add to that, my observation that your ignorance is your god! Your misapprehension of how atoms are synthesised and your credulous misappropriation of their existence to someone's creation and programming is definitive proof that.

On the second part, you need to take your time and read me well. First of all, your mathematical calculations do not take into account the possibility of one religion being true. If one religion is absolutely true, then all probability calculations are meaningless.

You speak of probability as though we are tossing a fair die here. But we are not. It is fairly easy to examine different religions to sift out those that are less likely to be true. It is like a football match between Man utd and Enyimba. Mathematically, the probability of either side winning is 0.5, yet if you go to bookmakers, the odds will be stacked entirely in Man Utd’s favor. Paper maths is of no use here.

If there are 5000 permutations, each of which is contradictory then we know that only one is right, and its truth is a reality that is unaffected by some abstract misapplied probablities. Your probability calculations only apply if I were to pick any one of the options at random. Hope you understand the premise of probability??

And if you find the right religion (or choose the religion most likely to be true), then it means even if religion is wrong, you are still going to win either way. You cannot dispute this with a straight face!

For the atheist however, there is no win-win solution.

Your argument is defeated by your own admission that you came to your conclusion, not through fact, but by conjecture:

SmartyPants:

My argument, i freely admit, is based not on fact but on logical conjecture, which is the best we can do in the absence of full knowledge.

Unless you don't know the meaning of conjecture! If you had definitive proof that your religion is the right one, there would be no need for debate. You would simply have shown your proof to me. However, you are working with a lot of speculations and guesses. Well, guess what? All the other religions also have their own speculations and guesses which are just as unfalsifiable as yours. This evens out the probability, meaning my math is correct! Alas, your cognitive bias with a touch of selective amnesia blinds you to this glaring truth!

Mujtahida:

Don't you ever say that Judaism and Christianity(as it is called revolve around Christ). You know nada about Judaism. Who do you think the Jewish Messiah is? Judaism revolves around none other than the Jewish people and their quest to rule over the world. The Messiah they are looking up to is their own age long messianic hope fulfilled in the tribe's long for desire to rule the world. Christ came and attempted to spoil that dream. They nailed him to the cross. Who told you that they are looking forward to your Christ? Hahahaha hahahaha. Kai! I pity Christians. Read this:

1879 letter from Baruch Levy to Karl Marx:
The Jewish people as a whole will be its own messiah. It will attain world dominion by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy, and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this new world order the children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property, and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which it is said that when the messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands.

You are rapping ignorantly about Judaism revolving around Jesus. Do you know that the Talmud says that Christ was born of fornication by Mary a hairdresser from her illicit liason with a Roman soldier named Pantera and that he (Jesus) in a boiling cauldron in hell?

Get it into your head today that Christianity based on the Gospel and Judaism are not the same. You look at the old testament and reach those conclusions but boy you are so deceived. Judaism relies more on the Talmud than the torah!

Your ignorance is understandable. The Christ is a title, not a name. The Jews have always awaited the coming of the messiah, called the Christ, which means the anointed one. Even in my post to which you made reference, i clearly said the Jews do not accept Jesus as The Christ.

Clearly you are not very well educated except perhaps in the arabic language, so stay out of things that are beyond your grasp.

AgentOfAllah:

Yes, I am aware that you've defined god as a supreme creator, you just haven't justified your use of such fantastical qualifications, nor have you justified why the universe is in need of a supreme creator. So please justify, or else, you're just speculating!


This is a vague statement, not a logical argument. What's the meaning of "way too ordered and structured"? Have you measured the degree of orderliness in life? If so, at what point of orderliness do you draw a line between what's created by intelligence and what isn't?


You're good at creating false dichotomies. The counterpoint to Intelligent design is not necessarily randomness. Simple natural laws can bring about order without interference from some intelligent entity.

Atoms were neither created nor programmed by anybody. Atoms are mostly manufactured in stars in a process called Nucleosynthesis. Look it up!


Lol...boy, wouldn't that be a convenient way to dismiss my argument!? I now have renewed confidence that my summary of your thought process is apt. I would just add to that, my observation that your ignorance is your god! Your misapprehension of how atoms are synthesised and your credulous misappropriation of their existence to someone's creation and programming is definitive proof that.


Your argument is defeated by your own admission that you came to your conclusion, not through fact, but by conjecture:

Unless you don't know the meaning of conjecture! If you had definitive proof that your religion is the right one, there would be no need for debate. You would simply have shown your proof to me. However, you are working with a lot of speculations and guesses. Well, guess what? All the other religions also have their own speculations and guesses which are just as unfalsifiable as yours. This evens out the probability, meaning my math is correct! Alas, your cognitive bias with a touch of selective amnesia blinds you to this glaring truth!

1. I did explain this in fact, and right from the start. In simple words, a supreme creator is the only explanation that does not raise any further questions. With any other explanation, where the source came from would be a persistent issue. But with a supreme creator, you can have no further questions, since His nature itself would defy our understanding of scientific possibilities.

3. Natural laws? I wonder how you can say such things and deny the existence of God in the same breath! Do laws create themselves? Laws require the application of a conscious process of creating a rule in order to achieve an effect for which uniformity is required. It requires intelligence to determine:

a. what the need for a rule is
b. what rule would deliver the effect
c. how to ensure uniformity

These are without question, beyond the scope of random coincidence since random coincidence cannot think!

2. It is quite simply really. Life displays a level of orderliness and structure that random coincidence has never been able to produce. And it's not as hard as you think it is to measure the orderliness of life. For example, look at how many levels of order it takes for conception to occur.

a. asexual reproduction is possible and occurs with a lot of species. Why not man? for mankind and some other animals, reproduction requires some form of relationship. from an evolutionary perspective, we see how this relationship serves the purpose of protecting the family and ensuring survival of the offspring. but a random coincidental creation event would have no idea of purpose since it cannot think!

b. the man and the woman not have sexual organs that fit perfectly together. This is a function of intelligent design. Random coincidence cannot produce intelligent design since it cannot think!

c. once the human beings have coupled, their sperm and egg have meet at a point. The sperm have to swim in the right direction. The conditions in the vagina have to aid their survival, the egg has to also travel some distance to await the sperm. All these are evidence of operational masterpiece. Random coincidence cannot do this because it cannot think!

d. the baby grows and is ejected into life through the same canal that is tight enough to fit around a moderately sized banana fruit, yet expansive enough to eject a baby the size of a rugby ball. This is an engineering masterpiece. Random coincidence cannot be credited for this, because it cannot think!

This is four basic levels of order or structure, that are required for an even such as childbirth. Random coincidence has never been observed to bring about anything so detailed and so precisely designed, and that is what i mean by "way too ordered and structured".

As for how atoms are formed, your retort is dead on arrival. I would expect you to see the argument if you are not trying to obfuscate the clear pattern in your way of clutching at straws. Nevertheless, i put it to you, that if atoms did not suddenly wake up and appear in the universe, then whatever process by which they are created, and by which they have rules that guide their nature is the product of intelligent design (and very intelligent design at that!).

5. My argument is conjecture based on fact. Don't mislead yourself! Is it not a fact that everything must have a source? That is the central fact from which all conjectures i have made logically flow.

6. Your last paragraph is bizarre. I only made speculations and conjectures in my introductory argument on why i believe in God. I then present four reasons devoid of any speculation for why i believe in Christianity. It does appear that you are now thoroughly confused!

smart pants, these four cardinal points are set by you, do you need someone else to set his/her own four points that Christianity won't pass?

joshuakdboy:
smart pants, these four cardinal points are set by you, do you need someone else to set his/her own four points that Christianity won't pass?

As long as the points meet logical reasoning sure let them go ahead.

I set these four points based on what I expect everyone can agree that we would want to see from religion. Can you dispute the logic on which they are selected?

No one has been able to do that up until now

SmartyPants:

1. I did explain this in fact, and right from the start. In simple words, a supreme creator is the only explanation that does not raise any further questions. With any other explanation, where the source came from would be a persistent issue. But with a supreme creator, you can have no further questions, since His nature itself would defy our understanding of scientific possibilities.

All you're basically saying here is that anything you cannot explain results from some entity you choose to call the supreme creator. This seems more like a desperate excuse for intellectual laziness than an explanation. My request was simple enough to understand, and the possible ways to address my request are as follows:

1) Provide evidence that some supreme creator entity exists or
2) Provide evidence that the universe is in need of a supreme creator or
3) Admit your ignorance and accept that this hypotheses is nothing more than your preferred speculation.

3. Natural laws? I wonder how you can say such things and deny the existence of God in the same breath!

Can you point to where I've denied the existence of god?

Do laws create themselves? Laws require the application of a conscious process of creating a rule in order to achieve an effect for which uniformity is required. It requires intelligence to determine:

a. what the need for a rule is
b. what rule would deliver the effect
c. how to ensure uniformity

Natural laws also bring about the existence of things like antimatter, neutron stars and brown dwarfs. Pray tell, what's the intelligence behind the rules that cause these things to exist?

These are without question, beyond the scope of random coincidence since random coincidence cannot think!

2. It is quite simply really. Life displays a level of orderliness and structure that random coincidence has never been able to produce. And it's not as hard as you think it is to measure the orderliness of life. For example, look at how many levels of order it takes for conception to occur.

a. asexual reproduction is possible and occurs with a lot of species. Why not man? for mankind and some other animals, reproduction requires some form of relationship. from an evolutionary perspective, we see how this relationship serves the purpose of protecting the family and ensuring survival of the offspring. but a random coincidental creation event would have no idea of purpose since it cannot think!

b. the man and the woman not have sexual organs that fit perfectly together. This is a function of intelligent design. Random coincidence cannot produce intelligent design since it cannot think!

c. once the human beings have coupled, their sperm and egg have meet at a point. The sperm have to swim in the right direction. The conditions in the vagina have to aid their survival, the egg has to also travel some distance to await the sperm. All these are evidence of operational masterpiece. Random coincidence cannot do this because it cannot think!

d. the baby grows and is ejected into life through the same canal that is tight enough to fit around a moderately sized banana fruit, yet expansive enough to eject a baby the size of a rugby ball. This is an engineering masterpiece. Random coincidence cannot be credited for this, because it cannot think!

This is four basic levels of order or structure, that are required for an even such as childbirth. Random coincidence has never been observed to bring about anything so detailed and so precisely designed, and that is what i mean by "way too ordered and structured".

I feel disinclined to respond at this point, since you're just happy to waffle on about your preferred straw man. I never mentioned random coincidence anywhere; and I've in fact, made it quite clear that invoking random coincidence as the counterpoint to your intelligent design hypothesis is another of your false dichotomies.

As for how atoms are formed, your retort is dead on arrival. I would expect you to see the argument if you are not trying to obfuscate the clear pattern in your way of clutching at straws. Nevertheless, i put it to you, that if atoms did not suddenly wake up and appear in the universe, then whatever process by which they are created, and by which they have rules that guide their nature is the product of intelligent design (and very intelligent design at that!).

You can put it to me in as many ways as you want, the fact still remains that you have yet to demonstrate that natural laws can only result from intelligent design. To do this, you have to rule out all other possibilities (remember proof of impossibility?)! Until then, you are simply speculating. I should note also, that aside from speculating, your claim further reinforces the obvious: Your ignorance is simply your god!

5. My argument is conjecture based on fact. Don't mislead yourself! Is it not a fact that everything must have a source? That is the central fact from which all conjectures i have made logically flow.

If it is a fact that everything must have a source, then surely, your god MUST also have a source?

6. Your last paragraph is bizarre. I only made speculations and conjectures in my introductory argument on why i believe in God. I then present four reasons devoid of any speculation for why i believe in Christianity.

A speculation is a speculation. It is not fact until proven! I hope you do see that if your reason to believe in god is speculative, any conclusion resulting therefrom is baseless? Certainly, your argument for your particular god could conceivably proceed logically from your set of chosen speculations and conjectures, but the same is true for any argument, no matter how ridiculous! One just needs to invoke the right set of speculations and conjectures, and viola!

It does appear that you are now thoroughly confused!

Your Ad hominem is noted!

AgentOfAllah:

All you're basically saying here is that anything you cannot explain results from some entity you choose to call the supreme creator. This seems more like a desperate excuse for intellectual laziness than an explanation. My request was simple enough to understand, and the possible ways to address my request are as follows:

1) Provide evidence that some supreme creator entity exists or
2) Provide evidence that the universe is in need of a supreme creator or
3) Admit your ignorance and accept that this hypotheses is nothing more than your preferred speculation.


Can you point to where I've denied the existence of god?


Natural laws also bring about the existence of things like antimatter, neutron stars and brown dwarfs. Pray tell, what's the intelligence behind the rules that cause these things to exist?


I feel disinclined to respond at this point, since you're just happy to waffle on about your preferred straw man. I never mentioned random coincidence anywhere; and I've in fact, made it quite clear that invoking random coincidence as the counterpoint to your intelligent design hypothesis is another of your false dichotomies.


You can put it to me in as many ways as you want, the fact still remains that you have yet to demonstrate that natural laws can only result from intelligent design. To do this, you have to rule out all other possibilities (remember proof of impossibility?)! Until then, you are simply speculating. I should note also, that aside from speculating, your claim further reinforces the obvious: Your ignorance is simply your god!


If it is a fact that everything must have a source, then surely, your god MUST also have a source?


A speculation is a speculation. It is not fact until proven! I hope you do see that if your reason to believe in god is speculative, any conclusion resulting therefrom is baseless? Certainly, your argument for your particular god could conceivably proceed logically from your set of chosen speculations and conjectures, but the same is true for any argument, no matter how ridiculous! One just needs to invoke the right set of speculations and conjectures, and viola!


Your Ad hominem is noted!

If you will recall, or simply refer back to the first page, the topic of my argument is why i am a Christian. I never set out to establish scientifically, that there is God. You cannot use science to prove the existence of a being who surpasses science, since ostensibly He created created science! You can only make inferences as to His nature from science. I only set out my reasons for why i choose to believe in God in the first place. You are asking questions that answer themselves.

1. Why must there be a supreme creator? Because the universe could not exist without a source but that source must then be without a source. The original source must therefore be thought of as the supreme source from which all life and creation flowed. So if there is a God, He must be supreme.

It's that simple.

2. Natural laws conform to a pattern. Patterns are the product of intelligent design.

The evidence may be largely circumstantial but this is not a court of law and it need not be conclusive, for a rational mind to draw a logical opinion.

It really is all as simple as that.

P.s: ad hominem would be attacking your character or personality in order to discredit your opinion. I did no such thing.

SmartyPants:


Your ignorance is understandable. The Christ is a title, not a name. The Jews have always awaited the coming of the messiah, called the Christ, which means the anointed one. Even in my post to which you made reference, i clearly said the Jews do not accept Jesus as The Christ.

Clearly you are not very well educated except perhaps in the arabic language, so stay out of things that are beyond your grasp.

You are a fool wallowing in chronic ignorance as per your last paragraph. I will educate you ten times over on Christianity and Judaism since several of your post have revealed that you do not understand that Christianity and Judaism apart from the divergence on the messiah are fundamentally different religions wherein one considers the other it's absolute enemy. Unlike you religious Bible globbing slob whose heads are buried in the tomb of a cobbled religion, I think beyond narrow spectrums. You just looked at my monika and like a stupid brain dead lemming you concluded that I am Muslim hence the Arabic reference. Your subtle underhanded attempt to slight the Arabic language is lame. Arabic has a positive global distinction attained for centuries which your mother tongue will never attain.
One of your correspondents has inveigled your intelligence and I don't think he's far from the truth.

SmartyPants:

If you will recall, or simply refer back to the first page, the topic of my argument is why i am a Christian. I never set out to establish scientifically, that there is God. You cannot use science to prove the existence of a being who surpasses science, since ostensibly He created created science! You can only make inferences as to His nature from science. I only set out my reasons for why i choose to believe in God in the first place. You are asking questions that answer themselves.

No you didn't! What you did do, however, was set out to establish, logically, that there is a god. The clue is in the number of times you mentioned the word "logic" and its derivatives in your post (25 times if you recall). I set out to show that you hardly invoked the principles of logic in the things you attempted to pass as such!

1. Why must there be a supreme creator? Because the universe could not exist without a source but that source must then be without a source. The original source must therefore be thought of as the supreme source from which all life and creation flowed. So if there is a God, He must be supreme.

You have failed to provide any new insights, instead, choosing to relapse to your preferred soundbite: The universe couldn't exist without a sourceless source. Forget scientific proof, all you need do is provide logical proof as to why that is the case. Your obstinacy in acknowledging that you have no logical proof for that claim just shows you neither have respect for logic, nor any understanding of it.

2. Natural laws conform to a pattern. Patterns are the product of intelligent design.

You're quite wrong, actually. Patterns may emerge from natural laws, but the laws, themselves, are apparently arbitrary as far as we know. There's no pattern to which radioactive decay of any single nucleon conforms, there is no pattern to which the fundamental forces of nature conform, there is no pattern in the uncertainty principle. See, if you know of any patterns to which natural laws conform, I can guarantee you a Nobel prize in Physics! Natural laws may create localised order, but they are far more ferocious in their creation of pointless, degenerate things too. I asked you to explain the purpose of neutron stars and brown dwarfs because you seem to think there's intelligence in them. Yet again, your ignorance is exposed as your god!

The evidence may be largely circumstantial but this is not a court of law and it need not be conclusive, for a rational mind to draw a logical opinion.

It really is all as simple as that.

This is essentially now a debate about your mischaracterisation of fancy as logic! You are right about one thing though, this is certainly not a court of law. The rules in a court of law are subject to the interpretations of the judge or jury, whereas the rules of logic are immutable, and beholden only to themselves. Logic does not deal in extrapolations or probabilities, it deals in decisive, methodical precision. Anything short of this cannot be called logical.

AgentOfAllah:

No you didn't! What you did do, however, was set out to establish, logically, that there is a god. The clue is in the number of times you mentioned the word "logic" and its derivatives in your post (25 times if you recall). I set out to show that you hardly invoked the principles of logic in the things you attempted to pass as such!


You have failed to provide any new insights, instead, choosing to relapse to your preferred soundbite: The universe couldn't exist without a sourceless source. Forget scientific proof, all you need do is provide logical proof as to why that is the case. Your obstinacy in acknowledging that you have no logical proof for that claim just shows you neither have respect for logic, nor any understanding of it.


You're quite wrong, actually. Patterns may emerge from natural laws, but the laws, themselves, are apparently arbitrary as far as we know. There's no pattern to which radioactive decay of any single nucleon conforms, there is no pattern to which the fundamental forces of nature conform, there is no pattern in the uncertainty principle. See, if you know of any patterns to which natural laws conform, I can guarantee you a Nobel prize in Physics! Natural laws may create localised order, but they are far more ferocious in their creation of pointless, degenerate things too. I asked you to explain the purpose of neutron stars and brown dwarfs because you seem to think there's intelligence in them. Yet again, your ignorance is exposed as your god!


This is essentially now a debate about your mischaracterisation of fancy as logic! You are right about one thing though, this is certainly not a court of law. The rules in a court of law are subject to the interpretations of the judge or jury, whereas the rules of logic are immutable, and beholden only to themselves. Logic does not deal in extrapolations or probabilities, it deals in decisive, methodical precision. Anything short of this cannot be called logical.

1. What i set out to do, was to establish a chain of thought that follows logic, to establish why there could be a God. These are various excerpts of what i actually said:

"while this may not be scientific proof that God exists, it is a strong pointer to the fact that we, as a species are drawn by our capacity for intelligent thought, to the suggestion that there must be a God.

Logically, there must be a source for everything that we see in existence. Science and philosophy would argue that the source must be something explainable—some sort of scientific concept, which would explain how life and the universe came to be and would also explain the origin of the source itself. As of now, there is no such scientific explanation, but we can all agree that science and religion agree on one point, which is that there is a source from which life came, that is beyond current human understanding.

I personally choose to believe in God because it is hard to imagine any other explanation that, itself, would not raise further questions – "

2. I have explained several times why the universe has to have a source. Everything must have a source. This is a natural law of the universe. The universe itself must have come from a source. But this raises the question of where the source came from. So i put it to you that it is probable that the source itself is not subject to natural laws of the universe. These are logical conjectures. I did not state them as logical facts.

3. "Patterns may emerge from natural laws, but the laws, themselves, are apparently arbitrary as far as we know."

You may not know, but i can suggest that there is nothing arbitrary about natural laws, and they are created by a supreme law-giver. I anticipate that you will ask why the law-giver must be supreme and i will refer you to my previous contribution on why the source must be supreme.

4. "I asked you to explain the purpose of neutron stars and brown dwarfs because you seem to think there's intelligence in them."

Why should i be the one to explain this? Did i ever claim to be the supreme creator? Could i ask you to explain the purpose of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa? There is a point beyond which logical deduction is limited. Yet, even the oddities of life are pointers to an intelligent designer whose creation could likened to a work of both art and science at the same time.

So you might consider a creation pointless, but that is only because you are limited in your knowledge of its purpose.

Nice read.