I had some fun sparring with a commenter over at the Christian Alert. He dismisses all arguments for the existence of God, including those from causation, design and morality. It isn’t as if he just doesn’t give the arguments much weight, he dismisses them altogether. For him, the exceptions make the rule when it comes to eternal matters – no matter how far-fetched or whether they have been shown to really exist.Yet I noticed that he constantly uses inferences from causation, design and morality himself. Here’s how I responded to one of his comments:
I think there has been a big misunderstanding here. You responded to a comment that appeared to have been written by me, but it wasn’t. I checked with Dan and Edgar and they confirmed that they didn’t do it. No, it just appeared without a cause. Those things happen – you know, quantum physics and all.
Now I can see why most people would think I wrote it (or at least that some person wrote it). After all, we observe that 100.00% of the effects we see have causes (give or take 0.00%). But in your worldview you know that things can happen without agent or event causation, so I’m not sure why you jumped to the conclusion that I wrote it. Maybe you were overly conditioned by your environment, but you really should try to live more consistently with your worldview.
I can also see how most people would assume that it was designed by me. After all, it has the tell-tale poor grammar, syntax, spelling and humor you’ve come to expect from me. And again, everywhere we look in life the more complex something is the more likely it had a designer. So even that poorly written comment appeared to have been designed by someone. Again, a mistake most of us would make, but not someone with your worldview.
And if you think the above paragraphs are lies and inconsistent with my worldview, then you are misapplying your own. You know that there is no universal morality that you could apply to me.
I guess you are right. There is no way to prove that effects need causes, designs need designers and moral laws need moral law givers. And of course, even if one (deliberately?) misunderstands the nature of God then all their reasoning about him could still be accurate, right?
Gosh, I hope that doesn’t happen again. In the mean time, try to live more consistently with your worldview. Otherwise we might think that deep down you don’t really believe it.
Do arguments from cause, design, morality (and many others) give absolute, 100.00000% proof of God? No, but they are completely rationale arguments. Critics tip their hands when they give them no weight and dismiss them cavalierly with “imaginary friends in the sky” and “pink unicorn” digs, especially when they use the same reasoning 24×7 themselves with everything else in life.
Filed under: Apologetics, Christian worldview | Tagged: atheism, atheists, Bible, design, first cause, God, Jesus, morality, religion
Good come back.
Very good reasoning. One of the reasons I love coming here is that you constantly point out the fallacies in our opponents arguments with piercing truth. It’s wonderful to read. Keep it up.
Blessings
Haha! That’s great, Neil! Ditto what both commenters said above.
Great response!
I wonder why their worldview only applies to religion, morals, ethics, God’s existence etc.. and does not apply when choosing to drink a cup of water or a cup cyanide?
With all due respect, Neil, you are the one(s) who believes that something can come from nothing. You are positive that God has always existed and had no creator – and you are quite content with that position.
When asked “Who or what created God?” Your reply is “No one. He has always existed.”
When I am asked “How did man come to existence?” My reply is “I don’t know. I have a theory based on scientific principles. However, I can’t prove it just yet – and it may change as I gain more knowledge.”
You believe your answer makes more sense than mine. I believe quite the opposite. Believing that something has always existed makes no sense to me. Frankly, I don’t see how it makes sense to anyone.
Mark:
Thats because you don’t understand the argument.
1.Everything that has come into being, has a cause.
2.The Universe has come into being.
3. The Universe therefore has a cause.
Simplest form of the argument. Where your logic flaws is your assumption that God has been caused. The very definition of God suggests he has not been caused.
Mark,
You said, Believing that something has always existed makes no sense to me. Frankly, I don’t see how it makes sense to anyone. Does this mean the universe hasn’t always existed? If so, then how did it come about? Because if the universe has not always existed, there had to be a point in time where it came into existence.
Or was it just the stuff that makes up the universe that has always existed? Nope, that can’t be true, because Believing that something has always existed makes no sense to me. Hmm, so the stuff that makes up the universe had to come into existence at some point in time. I wonder how that happened?
Just a point of information, I pray it’s accurate information: isn’t the point of the big bang that it was the origin of both space AND time…? Then you couldn’t speak of the universe appearing at a “point in time.” Nor could you speak of God existing BEFORE the big bang. You could weasel about his timelessness and eternity, but s’far as I’m concerned “existence” goes hand in hand with time. If God’s nothing, fine, He could exist “before” time. If He’s something, no. Don’t we disrespect Einstein if we fail to realize that time and space are not truly distinct, that you can’t have a creator before a creation?
I’m just playing out the line, you understand. I haven’t researched these points with any rigor. What’s anybody think?
The big bang is one of so many cosmological and physical conclusions that just don’t fit into our intuition very well. Even the law of identity fails, particle=wave etc. Such things are far too ambiguous for bullet-point apologetics sophistry.
“The very definition of God suggests he has not been caused” is the very definition of begging the question.
Hey Neil, I know this is totally unrelated to the post but I just wanted to give you a heads up that I posted a review of the Wii Fit over on my blog. See you there.
seaofbrightjuice… Actually, that argument is dealt with, in of all places, the Bible.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” 2Peter 3:8
If God created the universe, and the universe adheres to the dimension of time, then time is a created concept as well (which “Big Bang” adherents also believe). Who is God to be governed by a concept he created?
If we create a work of art, are we constrained by it? No. We exist outside of it, yet retain ownership of our creation and yet can interact with it.
A few years ago, I read a philosophical argument by a Christian. I am still digesting it after all these years. The argument states that… to a point within a line drawn on a piece of paper, there appears to be only ahead, behind, and the present… very similar to our concept of time. And yet to a person, viewing that line, we see much more than that. The single piece of paper surrounds all the points on the line at the same time… and the argument goes on to point out that this is much the same as God. A lot of seemingly odd verses in the Bible suddenly make sense if we view God as existing simultaneously across all points on the timeline. The Bible says to pray, but not “hurry up and pray before the event happens.” It explains a lot about his foreknowledge, and prophesies. To me personally, it explains a verse in one of my favorite chapters…
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” –Ephesians 2:10
If God doesn’t know the future (constrained by time), how can he prepare works in advance for us?
fourpointer
You are making my argument even stronger, thanks!
brooksrobinson
You said, “The very definition of God suggests he has not been caused.”
Well what if I said the very definition of the universe suggests that it has not been caused? You’d say I was crazy! And no – I’m not saying that. Just making a point.
Hi Mark,
Every effect has a cause and nothing can cause itself. But there is nothing that says God couldn’t have existed eternally as an uncaused cause.
The universe didn’t create itself. If you work backwards, something caused the universe. If it wasn’t God, then it was some other action or agent, but then you keep working backwards from there. At some point there had to be an uncaused cause.
Also, designs required designers and moral laws require moral law givers.
These arguments can be worked through in much more detail, but that is an overview. Lots more here if you are interested – http://rationalperspective.wordpress.com/theism/ – or check out the links under the Apologetics section to the right.
This article from last year might be an interesting read for all involved in this discussion
“An Athiest Conundrum: Who Made God?”
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2007/06/11/an_athiest_conundrum_who_made_god
Neil
I’m certainly not the smartest person. But when you say, “…there is nothing that says God couldn’t have existed eternally as an uncaused cause” my head explodes.
You’re right when you say the if it wasn’t God, it was some other action or agent. I just don’t understand why you’d bring a supernatural being into the argument. Why can’t you work with what is known and accept that you don’t have all the answers?
And PLEASE will you stop with the “moral laws require moral law givers” nonsense! You believe I have no “foundation” for my morals and I believe you are full of it. We’ve had this conversation before and I don’t want to rehash through it all.
If you persist in stating the the “designs required designers and moral laws require moral law givers” – which I’ve seen over and over and over here, please get it right. The way you word it, it sounds like you believe in multiple gods.
Designs require a designer – not designers.
Moral laws do not require a giver or even givers, but if you must say it again, please keep it in the singular. Unless you really do believe in more than one god.
The point that needs to understand about God is that He is so vast and infinite we cannot understand Him, so our heads should explode when trying to grapple with His existence and being.
One note that will help, we need to realize that God is transcendent of His creation. Creation is not a part of God, because His essence is complete other than that of creation. He is also immanent, in that He works in creation at the same time, and stepped into it, in the person of Christ.
The point being that when we study the universe, and it’s vastness, complexity and uniqueness, it points us to the fact that there is a Creator, but we cannot fathom that Creator’s essence and being, any more than we can fathom the complexities of the universe.
Timothy
I don’t agree with you, but that’s the best wording of the issue that I’ve seen yet.
Neil, how do I know you really wrote this?
According to some, the universe sprang out of nothing from a sea of quantum particles. (Never mind that quantum particles aren’t nothing–atheists don’t have to explain themselves.) Perhaps this piece from you did the same 
Dan
According to some, a supernatural being sprang out of nothing from a void of nothingness. Perhaps your head is the container for this void. (Never mind that your head isn’t nothing – except for the void inside – you don’t have to explain yourself).
Is this your tactic, Dan? Lurking in the background wait for the “perfect” time to jump in and snipe someone?
I’m not trying to snipe anyone, but I sure wish a string of zeroes would spring out of nothing behind the numbers that ARE in my bank account!
ahem…
Amen
to that!
The non-believer has to get rid of God some way to escape judgment for sins. To take God out of the equation with regards to creation, is one way they do it.
If the Bible is indeed right about creation, there being God who created it all, then what else about the Bible is true, too? THAT’S a terrifying question when you stand apart from Christ. You face your own mortality on one hand, and eternal life in another. The geography of where that eternal life will occur at that point is most alarming.
No, the evolution debate is FAR, FAR from being scientific when you get to the heart of the matter.
Interesting topic Neil
Good fight in you Mark.
If I may take a stab at brooksrobinson’s proof?
Its a bit problematic for two reasons. One, what supports the first premise? How does one *know* everything has a cause? Additionally, wouldn’t that proof work just as effectively if “God” was substituted for “Universe”?
Neil said: No, that proof wouldn’t work with “God” substituted unless you are Mormon and assumed that God came into being at some point. We’re talking about the real God who is eternal.
Re. the first premise: Seems scientific to me. And again, we’re back to the point of the post: My guess is that nearly everyone infers causes 24×7, but some suspend that when considering the universe. Wonder why?
Neil,
The thing is, when it comes to proof by design, the argument tends to fall flat on a premise with no substance behind it. “Its too complex for us to understand so God had to do it” just isn’t compelling.
Neil said: Maybe that isn’t compelling, but for the record that isn’t what I said. Designs imply designers.
Don’t even get me started on how utterly lacking an “argument from morality is”.
Neil said: Convince me why I should care about what you believe is moral, then. If it is just whatever we choose then that isn’t morality at all, just personal preferences. Really, it is a very strong argument. I wouldn’t dismiss it so quickly>
Elisa,
That’s a sad way of viewing things. I believe in God, but not the bible. Not at all. And frankly there is no terror at all for me when I think about the veracity of words in a book. I find the phrase “God-Fearing” to be more than a little abhorrent. One ought to love, not fear, God.
Neil: They are both logical feelings if you have a proper understanding of who He is.
The evolution debate is only far from scientific because one side prefers to use the faulty logic in place of empirical evidence and testable theories.
Neil said: Does not
. Stick around. The Darwinists know they have lots of holes in their theory. That is why some people are taking idiotic theories like “multiverses” seriously. They know they are going to have to move on to another argument against God’s existence when their current one can’t be dressed up anymore.
I can’t help you then, my friend. The vast majority of the world has no problem with the concept of an eternal God. I’m not saying they are all right in all there beliefs – in fact, I’m saying most of them are wrong with many beliefs – but the concept of something existing eternally makes a lot of sense.
Remember, if there was ever a time when nothing existed – no God, and no universe – then there would still be nothing. So I only see two options: An eternal God or an eternal universe. Science tells us that the universe is most certainly not eternal.
That is a very defensible argument and I won’t be dropping it. Without a lawgiver there is no reason to obey, because there is nothing there to obey.
OK, Mr. Language Person, I thought my point was pretty clear but I’ll try to watch my singular vs. plural.
Hi dominigan,
I dig “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” It’s true that time is wholly paced by thought, and thought is dream stuff. But when it comes to time having a beginning yet God being eternal, you’d get more mileage out of that line of reasoning if you were defending a Hindu “Unmanifest Brahman,” rather than a personal God.
Neil said: We’ll be glad to stack of the evidence and logic for the Christian worldview against Hinduism any day. I have many Hindu friends that I love dearly, but the worldview is flawed.
Foreknowledge? The essence of knowing is time, as indeed the essence of time is knowing. Unknowing-knowing, diffuse awareness-as rather than awareness-of, unconscious consciousness: these easier-said-than-done Brahmanish notions could survive debate a little longer without space-time. But “before” creation, Jehovah’s omnipotent style would be rather cramped by the lack of time in which to move, to know. Or was there still time in heaven, just not on earth? Oy this theistic multiplication of entities…I need a tea ceremony.
Neil said: Do you know him so well that He would have been “cramped?”
Nagarjuna (seminal Mahayana Buddhist philosopher) would argue that something with an essential nature (like God) could never ACT—acting changes the actor. Creation certainly changes the creator. (Time sure changes a timeless God)! A cause can’t have an effect and still remain as it was. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (That’s Yeats, not Nagarjuna).
Anything with an unchanging nature is quite useless, inert and isolated.
Neil said: That is a rather odd and unfounded claim. As a mere bag of chemicals that evolved to the state of self-awareness, it seems bold as well to judge the whole universe in such a way.
Luckily there is no such thing under or over the sun.
Neil said: Actually, there is much evidence for God.
Cause and effect dissolve into one another.
Neil said: No, they are quite distinct. You typed on your keyboard (cause) and we see the effect (your comment). Do you say those things because they sound spiritual? Because it doesn’t make sense logically or scientifically.
Existence is one interdependent whole, with no ultimately separate parts, certainly no first cause that then remains forever coolly unchanged and inviolable while its effects go on about their business. (Anyway a God of love would have to DISAPPEAR into every dusty corner of his creation…anything left behind in himself, any essence, that would be pride).
Neil said: Again, a bag of chemicals judging an eternal creator of the universe? Seems humorous to me.
Re the line on the paper: again I feel a touch of sympathy but sympathize much more with the Advaitin version. Says Harilal Poonja, “nothing ever happened.” There’s an unconquerable conundrum at the heart of things, wherein separate objects, people, events continually appear, yet one feels at the heart of awareness that somehow nothing has ever happened, nothing apart or bereaved has ever had authentic substance. Each production of time is none other than the unchanging furnace of presence, oneness, which is much too hot for time.
Neil said: Is this that Eckhart Tolle . . . stuff? Do you really take yourself so seriously?
This presence-wholeness furnace: “being-consciousness-bliss,” as the Hindus have it: does this phenomenology reflect ontology, or is it just that “man is the measure of all things?” My instinct is that I can’t dismiss either half of the equation: both subjectivity and reality must come into play, and probably it’s forever unknowable how much each side weighs. Unknowable what Brahman looks like unfiltered by a human brain, or expressed in a whale or finch or fern or iMac brain. But I think my primordial awareness, presence, (awareness unmistaken for any one appearance), must SOMEHOW, in some way I really really don’t understand, express nature, which I am. Or reflect, at least. How much can be known about it…? Certainly I think one’s closer to it with a silently illuminating mind, primordial, unknowing, aware as phenomena rather than aware of them, than with a descriptive mind. (Sez Mary Oliver, about the trills of birds I think: “It is the damp and sonorous exultation of the dead, or the not yet born, who still know everything”).
Or an interplay between primordial and descriptive mind, that can be productive and yields the most numinous poetry.
Neil said: Wow. I encourage you to examine the Christian worldview more. It conforms to reality much more than Tolle’s views.
Neil: does too. En garde!
I think the main problem with understanding the concept of an eternal God is when we choose to look at Him through the lense of physical law, which He created. I always thought a good illustration of the relationship between God and His creation is the author and his novel. The novel is the universe the author created. If the author so chose, he could insert himself into the story in a numberof ways and make himself known to his creation. But the author is never affected by the creation apart from his own desire to be affected, but his influence on the characters in the story are totally reliant on the author’s whim. All the while that the story is progressing, the author knows the outcome. The timeline of the story holds no suprises for the author while each page brings new discoveries to the characters. The universe created by the author only exists at the whim of the author. If the authore destroyed the manuscript before publication, he could burn it and the universe will end, or he could indeed have it published and the universe will go on as long as copies are available to be read. The whole time, the characters don’t know the difference.
Thus, our knowledge of causation only extends as far as that which exists within creation. We can’t easily wrap our minds around what it might be like to be outside of creation where God resides. The physical laws which rule every created thing simply do not apply to He who is the creator.
Hi Neil, my response has grown a tad lengthy so I’ll break it in two: the first comment on Tolle, Hinduism etc., the second on cause and effect (ugh) and a changeless God.
Neil said: We’ll be glad to stack of the evidence and
logic for the Christian worldview against Hinduism any day. I have many Hindu friends that I love dearly, but the worldview is flawed.
Well and I’d probably readily agree with many of your criticisms, yet I think a coherent and liberating philosophy—also deeply coherent experientially—can be coaxed from the best of Hinduism.
Even “Brahman” (and most definitely “Atman”) deserves some vigorous battering, a service performed historically by Buddhism. But anyway you can’t speak of the flaws of a Hindu “worldview” as easily as you can of a Christian worldview. Hinduism is a marketplace of ideas. There are even atheist strains. Take on Nisargadatta’s “I Am That” and I’d be willing to do battle.
Neil said: Do you know him so well that He would have been “cramped?”
That was just my point about Brahman. The Christian God (unless maybe the God of Meister Eckhart or Thomas Keating) is too well defined, too personal, to allow also for great claims about his unknowability. A jealous God, for gosh’s sake?
Neil said: I’d look into the jealous thing more, and the context. He is the only one who can be rightly jealous. And also the “don’t create him in your own image” part . . . we really, really don’t get to define who the creator of the universe must be. He created us. The only question is whether He revealed himself to us. I think the facts and logic point to the Bible being an accurate – though not completely revelation of him.
Neil said: Is this that Eckhart Tolle . . . stuff? Do you really take yourself so seriously?
I-yi-yi Neil, now you just sound like you’re trying to be mean. What purpose does that “seriously” comment serve?
Tolle’s a fellow-traveller, but he speaks of things spoken of many times before. He’s quite a gifted simplifier and popularizer, his words have the delicate overtones of live knowledge, and I respect his heart as being deep and clear (as far as I can tell). But as I’ve said before, he’s also something of a flake.
Neil said: Your credibility just shot up 20 points with me.
You ain’t yet lodged one substantive criticism of him, by the by.
Neil said: I had a link in a post a while back that I thought covered it well. I don’t always feel the need to re-hash things that others are covering thoroughly. I’ll be sure to link more or address specifics about him.
My last night’s rant looks so sad all broken up into separate paragraphs by your interjections… certain hyperboles require breathlessness for their effect, ask any preacher.
Neil said: Oops . . . sorry . . . and now I’ve done it again! That is just a big timesaver for me instead of copying and pasting everything bit by bit.
The seas spoke: cause and effect dissolve into one another.
And Neil said: No, they are quite distinct. You typed on your keyboard (cause) and we see the effect (your
comment). Do you say those things because they sound spiritual? Because it doesn’t make sense logically or scientifically.
My point might have gone over easier if I’d said “bleed into” instead of “dissolve into.” There’s SOMETHING to cause and effect, obviously; I’m not blind. You can make useful distinctions between the two, but they’re conceptual merely. Watch any process minutely and you’ll find no definite demarcation point where a cause ends and an effect begins, a seed ends and a plant begins. Everything we experience acts only by entangling itself with the situation it affects. A bat is changed by every ball, and obviously its STATE is changed when it’s swinging rather than resting. And since there is no eternal bat apart from swinging-bat or resting-bat except conceptually—for one thing, since matter is energy, it’ll be a physically different system when in motion—a state change is a true change. And the impact of the ball, of course, affects the bat as well as the ball.
God could act, could enter time, and there could still be significant continuity between pre-act and post-act God, as there is significant continuity between me when I go to sleep and me when I wake up. But a truly unchanging God can’t be sometimes in motion, sometimes at rest. An unchanging God can’t act.
Phenomena are universally interdependent, but still individual systems and patterns have integrity and endure through time, patterns like you, me, keyboard. Even so, nothing under the sun stays the same for two consecutive moments. The traditional analogy is a whirlpool in a stream: it’s not the same water from one minute to the next, and indeed it couldn’t keep its whirlpool shape if it were. Every pattern (certainly including each of us) is dynamically dependent for its shape on every impinging system (physical or mental/social), expanding finally perhaps to all existence. How could God act on this swirling world without spilling one drop of stale eternal water?
(Neat factoid: I’m told river banks also flow to the sea, just more slowly).
–That’s to analyze the conventional physical level. At the level of meditative phenomenology, of mind, non-separation is yet more immediate and overwhelming (between subject and object, between cause and effect in thought and perception, etc.). (Although our ten thousand emotionally laden concepts about me-you-it obscure this ever-present reality). Perhaps at the quantum level, too, there’s a tighter entanglement than at the level the senses perceive. (Nonlocality, particle and wave, etc.). Does consciousness reflect this level in any way? It’s not a question quickly answered, for me.
Seas said: (Anyway a God of love would have to DISAPPEAR into every dusty corner of his creation…anything left behind in himself, any essence, that would be pride).
And Neil said: Again, a bag of chemicals judging an eternal creator of the universe? Seems humorous to me.
How can you love someone without changing? How can you be CREATIVE without changing? Should not a creator be creative? The transcendent quality of creativity is precisely its unpredictability, its EMERGENCE. There’s no rush of the sublime unless whatever strange creature appears through the creative process SIMPLY WASN’T THERE BEFORE, not even as an idea—at most an inchoate urging. (Albert Low calls evolution “slow-motion creativity”…which may be slightly more poetry than science, but he cites for support the crucial role of UNCONSCIOUSNESS in creativity, of the wholly-unmanifest becoming manifest. I recommend his “The Origin of Human Nature,” highly original. He actually takes Dawkins as his adversary). Is there no novelty in being God? No play? No freshness?
…No sleep? No interludes of forgetfulness? Of light fading to blackness and back into light again? Only fluorescence all the time? No rhythm, no rocking of waves? You see not only does theism multiply entities that must always be imagined—that never appear clearly—thus turning our eyes from the vividness of this moment which is huge and all there is—not only that, but the entities it posits are so vague and unsympathetic—un-relate-able to—as to be inhuman, and unnatural. Everything I’ve ever met is in some way sympathetic, but not this Person.
A rough-and-tumble Greek god, that’s infinitely more defensible. It invites a much less stiff act of imagination than the one required by an All-Perfect All-Knowing All-Planning (stays-indoors-all-day-planning) God. Or a Hindu God is more defensible, who regularly shirks duty to play flute with the milkmaids, who manifests now as a mother, now as a suckling child, now as a devastatingly truthful naked woman.
I mean God becoming flesh as Jesus, that’s an exquisitely pretty tale. But only if he really is flesh even unto the craving to be loved. Not as still a remote and changeless God.
“I-yi-yi Neil, now you just sound like you’re trying to be mean. What purpose does that “seriously” comment serve?”
Sorry, I shouldn’t have typed that.
Neil said: Sorry, I shouldn’t have typed that.
Thanks Neil, and no worries.
Neil said: Oops . . . sorry . . . and now I’ve done it again! That is just a big timesaver for me instead of copying and pasting everything bit by bit.
Oh, and I know it makes good sense. I was just observing. You may continue so long as I can complain.
Neil said: Deal!
Neil said: Your credibility just shot up 20 points with me.
Pleased to hear it. To score 20 points off me, you should endeavor to see below the surface of Tolle’s sometimes blurry thinking to his pellucid non-thinking. Or feel below the surface, really. Which you can’t do with many theological distinctions in mind. They can come later.
Neil said: I’ll be sure to link more or address specifics about him.
I’ll be curious what you object to the most.