apeman

hello mate, i'd say the chief presumption of atheism is that this is all there is.

the reason that they hold such a position is that they require proof in order to believe. they are unable to conceive of God as transcendental.His only proof is primarily therefore subjective faith and His truth measurable in the success (or not) of societies built in His name.

people using the argument that we learn of God only through education ,therefore He is false....hilarious!

weltschmerz

Hello,

We are creatures of God and hence God created (whether this creative power was through evolutionary processes or some other manner) us to function in such a way (throwing in a little Plantingian flavor) that given properly working cognitive functions, we know God. For a baby, this is obviously a process that develops as her cognitive abilities increase. In short, we are made to know God.

Thanks,

~ Alexander

DiamondH

You seem to have the mind of god in the palm of your hand.

If we are made by god why dos'nt he tell the mothers.

Autonemesis

The same methods we use to verify that anything real exists. Observations, induction from observations, and testing those inductions by more observations. If gods are not subject to these methods, then they are not like the other things we consider real, they are instead unreal.

Autonemesis

But we don't know what any particular person in the West believes when they use the term "God." There are very many different conceptions of God in Western Christian discourse.

It's a preemptive rebuttal of the counterclaim that the God the atheist is criticizing is not the god the believer believes in. Happens all the frakking time. So to head that one off at the pass, we often like to ask the believer to describe his god so we don't waste time critiquing some other conception of God that the believer doesn't subscribe to.

Timetospend

While I know that you jest, the answer is clearly yes per the Apostle Paul and the quote given earlier. Actually, he would probably say it a little more negatively.

Thanks,

mighty_duck

That is not the presumption, it is a conclusion.

The presumption is, like you later point out, that evidence is required before an existence claim is to be believed. A subsection of this presumption is that special pleading is to be avoided.

Strangely enough, these are also presumptions that the theist holds near and dear. Ask a theist to accept a ridiculous claim without evidence, or to accept that evidence is not required only for this particular ridiculous claim, and they will easily be able to refute it.

weltschmerz

Hello,

I am not sure what you are asking here. My response is that we are created to know God. Is there any logical inconsistency that you find with what I am saying or some incoherence with it? It would seem to me that if the God of the Bible is who He says He is, then we are creatures of God and it would follow that we would then have been created to know God. That is, our cognitive abilities as such would develop as they were designed to do and part of that function would be to know God in some manner.

Thanks for your thoughts,

~ Alexander

Gawen

Actually, there is a tribe of nomadic herds-folk in the east Govi Basin of the Democratic Republic of Mongolia that is entirely without a creation/armageddon/what's-it-all-about mythos. They are completely without a thought of a God(s), and the mention of such a concept is met by a polite response of sheer bewilderment. When asked why something’s are, they respond "Because they are that way."

That was just one counter-example to yours. Indeed, people throughout the ages have not evidentially known/seen God, while at the same time spiritual to some extent.

I don't know about you, but the vast majority of Christians I know and/or speak with through my day-to-day life believe in God. God/s belief is taken on faith (see the faith thread) and things taken on faith cannot be "evident".

The universe made by an supreme creator is not readily seen. One may wish it to be so. But that one must take it on faith once again.

I do not involve myself in 1'st cause arguments. But I will say this:
There are many things in the universe which theologians have pointed to as evidence for the existence of design and order in the universe. For example, the human eye could not have simply happened by chance and must be the result of an intelligent Creator's design. As Paley argues, to say otherwise is to suppose that a watch found lying in a field has been formed by the accidental outworking of natural forces rather than being designed and constructed by a watchmaker. Another 'evidence' is the existence of order. Things always act, in the same way. We know that the earth moves round the sun, oxygen exists, plants grow under the right conditions and we need to eat to stay alive. These are processes that point to order and structure in the universe. Our scientific enterprises are founded on the basic notion of order and regularity in the world and universe.

All this (and more) is used as evidence for the existence of a Divine designer. One of the problems with using such types of argument is that they sometimes rely on analogies between things that have been created by humans and the world around us, which for each of us has always existed since the day we were born yet, is believed to have its origins outside remembered history. These analogies break down in a number of ways. Firstly, can we say that the universe exhibits design and regularity as a watch does? Such a 'mechanistic' view of the world has been rejected and replaced by one, which is more random and 'chaotic'.

Secondly, we are comparing a designed and human made product with a world, which the argument assumes, has been made and designed by God. If the argument is to be successful then we need to compare this world with one that has not been designed. This is clearly not possible.

Thirdly, the argument assumes order and purpose to be key features of a world that has been designed but this may not be the case. Furthermore, if the world and everything in it has a purpose, what is it? Is it to bring forth varieties of life, to evolve conscious beings, to act as a place to test one's commitment to God, to find salvation, to glorify the Creator (Psalm 19:1-6), all of these, some of these or none of them?

Finally, even if one moves away from using analogies with man-made created things, to those processes which we often gather under the heading 'nature' or the way things are, we are no less ambiguous. Although we can argue that so far as we know the world has always revolved around the sun, and that we have always needed food and oxygen, it might be that one day these things may change. The world we live in today may change at a later stage and look significantly different to the so-called 'designed' world we have today.

Although, through presupposing, we can reconcile evolution with the Judeo/Christian/Islamic teaching that God created the universe (the Cosmological argument), there is no necessary reason to presume that God exists. Evolution is believed to be a self-contained process. The fact that the world displays order does not require us to posit the existence of God but shows us that evolution is simply an ordered and structured process. We merely exist today because the right conditions for our existence came about in the past. Despite the fact that the Anthropic Principle contends that the universe has been set up to allow human life to evolve and to sustain it is not necessary to accept that the present biological conditions were created in order for us to exist.

In the end the design argument flounders in the same way the cosmological argument (which I have left out due to time constraints) does. One may assume or presuppose that order/structure/purpose in the world reveals a creator but it does not lead us to the Creator. These are assumptions made outside the scope of the argument. Furthermore, which Creator in the many religious options available today and which process of creating would we chose (Out-of-nothing? Emanation? Etc.)? Once again, which deity is believed to be the cause of the universe will be assumed prior to the argument and in any case is often the catalyst for developing such arguments anyway.

Who made that rock?
God.
Uh uh...

Nice but hot.

You're welcome.

Timetospend

I would assume that you would agree that this is rare, not the norm. (By the way, I find evidence for this tribe to be a little spotty, the only report using the exact words that you used, word for word.) I would not be surprised for a tribe to exist somewhere or which existed some time in the past; I have yet to see any compelling argument for one. Even if one exists, the norm, by far, is for human societies to be theists, which is the more important point.

Billions of people believing in theistic entity/ies probably have some basis for their believe, even if you do not accept it.

The universe in which I live is readily seen. Earlier tonight I was reading a thread on whether shorelines exist. Before reading it, I thought that they did, but afterwards… If we try hard enough, we can use theoretical rhetoric unaligned to reality to convince ourselves of just about anything.

I used first cause because of its excellence in showing that God exists and the difficulty in defeating it. I think that design is much better than I see represented on this data base, even though it is discussed ad nauseum.

I did not quote your three or four reasons. Let me just say this: If it walks like a duck, and if it looks a duck, and if it quakes like a duck, then it might just be a duck. To use created, contrived rhetoric to convince yourself that it is not a duck, regardless of how profound those words might be, is not really beneficial to anyone.

Of course, that was my original proposition in my original post in this thread that atheist tend to practice debating to deny what is obvious. I guess that I stand there still after this exchange.

I respectfully disagree.

I agree with this. I believe that I have stated that my originally stated argument does not allow one to focus on the God of the Bible.

Thanks again.