Atheism is Inherently Self-Defeating pt. 1, by Pastor Scott Mitchell

Pastor Scott Mitchell walks through part 1 of a presentation to logically follow the process of discovering why atheism is a self-defeating philosophy. In part 1 the groundwork is laid for the next video presentation.

[AnotherViewer]

3. Moral Argument - begs the question as to whether morality is in fact ultimately authoritative, and whether morals actually exist or have meaning independently of us or whether, as many believe, there are alternative explanations for the existence of morals. In reality, it is neither necessary to follow a religion in order to be moral, nor is a religious person necessarily a moral one. Certainly, there appears to be no good reason to suppose that the absence of religion predisposes a person to be “bad”. Furthermore, atheism is quite compatible with philosophies like humanism which does have a system of ethics and purpose. For theists who argue that atheists have no motivation to be moral, the atheist could answer that virtue is its own reward and that, as Aristotle believed, being good and living virtuously is the only way to a fulfilled, self-actualized life. God and religion do not need to come into the equation at all.

The idea that morality flows from religion received a major set-back in the public perception with the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when nineteen Al-Qaeda suicide hijackers occasioned the deaths of almost 3, 000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, secure in their expectation of a special place in paradise, complete with the use of 72 virgins, as a reward for their martyrdom. In fact, according to the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, 224 of 300 suicide terror attacks between 1980 and 2003 involved Islamist groups or terrorist acts in Muslim-majority lands.

Similarly, the incidence of pedophilia and child molestation among Catholic priests has been well documented in recent years, and more evidence comes to light with each passing year, suggesting that even the devoutly religious are far from immune from immoral behavior (as well as bringing into question the wisdom of the Catholic doctrine of celibacy).

Studies by the biologist Marc Hauser, involving a series of hypothetical moral choices, have shown that there is no statistically significant difference in the moral judgements made by atheists and religious believers, nor by members of the Kuna, a small Central American tribe with little or no contact with Westerners and no formal religion.

There may in fact be good Darwinian reasons for altruism, generosity and “moral” behavior, which have applied throughout history and prehistory, for instance, the favoring of genetic kin, the giving of favors in anticipation of reciprocation or payback, and the social benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity or kindness (as in the potlatch custom of North American native groups). Even if circumstances have changed in the modern world, such hard-wired urges likely persist, in much the same way as the sexual urge persists even when the Darwinian pressure to procreate is not the primary motive.

Moral codes clearly do change over time. For example, the practice of women working outside the home in Western societies has changed over time from being considered immoral to moral as changes have occurred in how women are valued as well as in what women themselves value in their lives. In the same way, the torture and burning of possible witches in 17th Century Europe can be seen as either a supreme act of morality or as the product of evil incarnate, depending on one's perspective.

It is also clear that moral behavior is highly malleable, and subject to psychological, social and cultural pressures. The well-known “shock” experiments of Stanley Milgram and the “Stanford Country Jail” experiments of Philip Zimbardo in the 1960s were graphic illustrations of this malleability, especially where the subject is just an intermediate link in a chain of evil actions and under social pressure to demonstrate obedience to authority. It should be remembered that these experiments were conducted in the wake of the Adolf Eichmann Nazi Holocaust trials, in which the phase “the banality of evil” was first coined.

[AnotherViewer]

2. In the 18th Century, David Hume counter-argued against the Argument from Design by pointing out that, although we know that man-made structures were designed because we have seen them being built, the analogy does not necessarily hold for non-man-made structures. For the analogy to hold, the theist must be able to demonstrate that natural objects in the universe (such as trees, rocks and humans) were manufactured in some way. This in turn requires the demonstration of the existence of an intelligent designer, the very thing the argument purports to be trying to prove.

In fact, our ability to recognize design depends on our ability to discern characteristics that are not found in nature, and designed objects such as watches and airplanes stand in stark contradistinction to the characteristics of natural objects such as rocks and trees. When we see a watch, we may look for a watchmaker, but when we see a dog, it does not follow that we would look for a dog-maker, because we know that dogs are produced through the well-understood natural processes of mammalian reproduction. Proof of design cannot therefore be produced within the context of nature itself.

If a design has to have a purpose - and identifying a purpose seems to be essential to recognizing design - then we need to know the intentions of the designer. But, before we can know God's intentions, we must first prove that he exists, so it is necessary to begin by assuming as true the very thing in question, the existence of God (a fallacy known in logic as “begging the question”).

The argument also begs the question of how, if orderliness in the universe requires the existence and intervention of God, God’s mind itself can be orderly. Was God’s mind created by an even greater God? Certainly, to say that God’s mind is in some way self-explanatory or necessarily existing begs the same questions already refuted in the Cosmological Argument. Insisting that it is just a brute or ultimate fact is unjustifiable, and the same claim could be equally made for material orderliness.

Order appears to be an inherent characteristic of the universe itself, and the assumption that a god of some sort is needed to impose the order is unwarranted and indefensible. Additionally, order and complexity are very much dependent on subjective judgments: where one person may see order, another may see chaos; where one person may see indecipherable complexity, another may see elegant simplicity.

The implicit assumption in the Argument from Design is that we humans are somehow the purpose of the universe, rather than ants or bacteria or star systems or black holes, and that we are not in fact just some irrelevant and rather unfortunate by-product. This in itself seems an unlikely scenario and certainly an unjustifiable conjecture.

The theist argues that, when blind chance operates, there are billions of different possible combinations of atoms that could come into being and, if out of all those billions the one successful one that we see occurs, then it must have been the result of divine interference. However, we should be very wary of jumping to the conclusion that the existence of a galaxy or of an eye, for example, is a planned event just because it is statistically improbable. Winning the lottery is statistically improbable, but someone wins it almost every week.

The spontaneous origin of life on Earth, for example, may have been improbable, but it only had to occur once. Indeed, in the billions of galaxies throughout the immense reaches of the known universe, over a period of billions of years, it would be extremely unlikely if such an unlikely event did not occur. Even if the odds against it were billions to one, that would still point to life arising in billions of planets throughout the universe. In fact, it is quite possible that it occurred several times independently on the very early Earth, when conditions finally became propitious.

It seems strange to speak of present conditions as designed when these conditions differ, sometimes radically, from those of the distant past, and are in constant transition under the evolutionary forces of mutation and natural selection. The Argument from Design is forced to assume that all parts of a complex system must always have functioned expressly as they do today. Otherwise, it would imply a designer who is always at work adjusting or fine-tuning his creations, which were presumably faulty to begin with. The theory of evolution gives a much more convincing explanation of the constantly unfolding changes observed by science, and provides a workable and testable explanation of how complexity arose from simplicity.

Although science would never claim to understand everything about how the universe was created and how it works, we certainly understand much more than we did five hundred years ago (or even a hundred), and phenomena which then seemed miraculous turn out to have rather mundane scientific and natural causes and mechanisms. While we may never completely understand the workings of the universe, it seems likely that we will continue to progress in explaining apparently unexplainable things.

[AnotherViewer]

1. Cosmological Argument - Is the universe is in fact contingent? We have no idea whether this universe “had” to exist or not, nor whether it is in fact the only one and not just one of a potentially infinite number of different universes in a “multiverse” for example.

Why God should be considered a “necessary being” and inexplicably exempted from the argument that everything has a cause. If a God exists to cause the universe then, by the same argument, this God must itself have a cause, leading to an infinite regress unacceptable to most theists. Simply asking "does God have a cause of his existence?” therefore raises as many problems as the cosmological argument solves.

The accepted Scientific Theory of Big Bang Cosmology does show that the Universe we live in had a start and that start was not from nothing, the Cosmological Argument does not explain why there could not be more than one first cause/mover, or why the chain could not lead back to several ultimate causes, each somehow outside the universe (potentially leading to several different Gods). Neither does it explain why the something which is “outside the universe” should be “God” and not some other unknown phenomenon. There is no compelling reason to equate a First Cause with God, and certainly Aristotle did not conceive of his Prime Mover as something that should be worshipped, much less as the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God of later Christian, Jewish and Muslim tradition.

[iljuro]

*Atheism is inherently self-defeating*
- That's just an argument from consequence and thus completely and utterly irrelevant.
- That's also just an assumption based on assumptions.
- Atheists can, and sometimes do, base their reasoning on more or less anything that is not a theistic deity. And as far as we can tell, it works good enough.

*1. The cosmological argument*
Is an assumption based on other assumptions that at best leads to an uncaused first cause. Anything beyond that is pure speculation. And any attempt to shoe horn in a specific deity we have no reliable evidence of is special pleading.
We *don't know* enough about what fundamentally makes up the universe to say anything about its supposed origin with any amount of certainty.
The only thing that we can say with reasonable certainty is that this universe used to be much smaller.

Evidence-less hypotheses and miracles within a specific theistic framework is even more self-defeating since there's no reliable evidence of that framework.

*2. The design argument*
Is also an assumption based on assumptions. Or possibly begging the question.
We *don't know* enough about what fundamentally makes up the universe to say anything about its supposed origin with any amount of certainty.
We often mistake designed things for being natural and vice versa because we assume too much.

*3. The moral argument*
Is also an assumption based on assumptions. Or possibly begging the question.
Morality is only somewhat universal as far as it applies to basic instincts like survival, reproduction, and possibly social cohesion. Because it helps us survive as a social species.

[ApPersonaNonGrata]

#3 "Morality is universal"
---
In what universe?
And do you have a way to get back there?
I'd like to visit.

[maxdoubt]

There's no such thing as morality that's specifically "atheist." But as an atheist you are free to adopt a moral position that puts that of any Xian to shame. Xian morality is lame. Xians end up with bad moral priorities and morality that's disgustingly situational. As an atheist you are free to hold your moral values _absolutely, _ i.e. without exception or condition. Atheists are free to view some acts as _always_ immoral. No caveats, provisos, waivers, exemptions or excuses. _Never_ moral. Atheists can have an infinite number of such moral absolutes. Xians are restricted to just 3. That's deplorable! Here are a microscopic faction of my absolute no-nos: slavery; torturing people to death; killing the women and children of captured enemies; killing people for complaining about their hunger; threatening to make people eat their children; killing people for complaining that your killings are getting out of hand. Xians can't hold any of these acts as _absolutely_ immoral. That would be to admit that their god acted immorally in the bible, a strict taboo. Yet ask Xians to list some acts that they _do_ feel are absolutely immoral and compare them to these acts (and many others condoned, commanded and committed by their god in the bible) which they are forbidden to judge as absolutely immoral and their wacky moral priorities come oozing out. Clinical abortion? "Absolutely immoral!" Abortion by God's command and performed with a sword? "Not absolutely immoral." Homosexuality? "Absolutely immoral!" Eternal torture for believing the "wrong" way? "Not absolutely immoral." Is it ever moral to punish - let alone kill - someone for what another person did? Me: "Never!" Xians: "Well...usually not, but if those killings are 1: condoned, 2: commanded or 3: committed by God, that's a different situation." What's that called? _Situational ethics!_

[ApPersonaNonGrata]

#2 "There is design in nature. Therefore, there must be a designer".
--
Imagine if people knew what snowflakes look like under a microscope, back when bible stories were being written.

There would be an entire Bible book about the magical workshop in the clouds ... about the myriads of tiny angels with tiny chisels ... creating individually complex snowflakes with balanced patterns; because "nothing so prefect and complex can just naturally, autonomously form,
from only basic physical forces acting upon basic physical elements.

Meanwhile,
if there is a "designer":
that designer is either inept, habitually drunk, or a psychopath.

So it still wouldn't make sense to call it a "God";
as Epicurus pointed out.

[ApPersonaNonGrata]

Honestly, it's not rational
to speak of a time
when there was no time.

"Was" and "wasn't" are time-dependent statements.

Saying something like "Back before my god created time, there was no time, at that time.
"But then my god made time. And so then, after he made time, there was finally time"

is really just a mess of contradictions.

There was no "before time".
Therefor, there was no BEING who existed "before time".

You could place a theoretical entity outside of our river OF time.
But they'd still need "time" to make more/other "time".

Also:

Thinking
is a time-based concept;
because it's a series of chronologically ordered events.
One thought leads to another.
Ideas form.
Decisions are made.
Actions are taken.

Also:
"When" did any theoretical entity HAVE any particular thought?

Did he have any thoughts "before" he made our "time"?
If yes,
then time = true.

Also:
Notice in bibles
that "God's" sense of time and relationship to time is different than ours.
That's not the same thing as existing and functioning independently from time

He also changes his mind about things; at times.
He progresses, chronologically, from one emotional state to the next.
So he's very tied-in to our chronology; to our flow of "time".
He's surfing the same river of time that we are.
He's thinking and acting within the same sequential paradigm that we are.
He is not experiencing his own existence independently (or: detached) from it.

[theoskeptomai]

_How_ is suspending any acknowledgement as to the existence of a god until sufficient credible evidence is introduced, self-defeating? It is natural, rational, and even prudent to be skeptical of unsubstantiated claims, especially extraordinary ones. Wouldn't you agree?