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Debate Score:40
Arguments:11
Total Votes:45
Ended:08/31/08
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 Can you argue this? (11)

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Can you argue this?

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Ravi on How do you know there is a God?

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8 points

Hell yeah I can. I'm going to open the video in another tab and write this argument as it's playing.

1. Here, this guy has fallen into the logical trap of there having to be a creator, which instantly falls down when you point out that, by this logic, god would have to have a creator, as would that creator, as would that creator, etc, etc. It's an argument that just doesn't stand up.

2. Wow, what bothers me here is this guy's use of the word random. He keeps saying it; random, chance, by accident. Anyway, let's go:

The currently accepted possible pre-biotic conditions of the young earth can result in the creation of certain basic small molecules of life, such as amino acids. This was demonstrated in the Miller-Urey experiment in the 1950s. Phospholipids (of an appropriate length) have been shown to spontaneously form lipid bilayers, a basic component of the cell membrane. Nucleotides polymerize to form RNA molecules, and this sort of generation has shown to randomly create self-replicating RNA. At this point, good old evolution starts to kick in. Selection pressures result in RNA which start the formation of small proteins. Thus the first ribosome is born, and protein synthesis becomes more prevalent. Proteins out-compete ribozymes in catalytic ability, and therefore become the dominant biopolymer.

Enzymes built up slowly; they didn't just suddenly appear. It's silly misunderstandings like this that are constantly peddled. Just remember, when someone starts using the terms "chance", "random" and "by accident", they're probably either not fully informed of maliciously deceiving.

And once again, he talks about this perceived intelligence requiring a prior mind. Firstly, why does it? He didn't prove it did, he just said it and left it their as a gospel-like assumption. It doesn't require a prior mind at all. Secondly, we fall back into the "who created the creator" problem.

3. Oh wow. So, let's put the two theories here up against each other. Firstly, we have god. The explanation here seems to be that "well, we have morality, and that couldn't have happened any other way... so, there must be a god." That's about as much weight as that argument can muster to be honest. Secondly, we have evolutionary theory. Treating others as you wish to be treated is exactly the sort of behavior that is conducive to the survival, welfare and reproduction of those who engage in it. A tribe whose members treat one another well will prevail in competition with other tribes, or will do well in adverse natural circumstances, and will therefore gradually predominate among the human species. Being a successful tribe depends on this social and moral aspect. (Interestingly, this tribe theory is why I think there is so much racism in the world... we're still all biologically set up to accept our own tribe and reject others). This also appeals to strong family bounds outside of the tribal instinct... People who help their relatives may not themselves have so many offspring, but as a result of their behavior the kin group will have more surviving offspring who will carry the genes of the self-sacrificing individuals. Thus the genes that dispose people to behave that way will not be eliminated by natural selection but will in fact do well in competition with the genes of people who do not help relatives. Now we have a situation where we are nice to all people, regardless of if they are in our tribe. This still follows perfectly with the evolutionary model. Our whole development has been geared up to try and be nice to the people around us, and those who were nicer and more social and had a better moral standing were more likely to survive and pass on their seed. But then again "god did it" does sound like a good argument.

"Only god is big enough to explain this universe."

No. That should actually read as "I don't really understand the full implication of the alternatives", or "I understand evolution and I'm deliberately deceiving you." Let's take a quick look at those four points he made right at the end:

1. Origin - Evolutionary theory, backed by evidence, observation and logical conjuncture, or a complex creator who, by their own logic, also requires a more complex creator.

2. Meaning - Why? Why do we need to have a reason for being here? Why can't you just accept that we're here because we are, not because we have some purpose. The conditions on earth were correct for us to evolve and develop, and here we are.

3. Morality - Once again, evolutionary theory explains it well. Why would an all powerful complex being instill morality into us when we're now realised that we are such an unimportant small part of the universe. We have fantastic explanations of morality evolving, again the old "god did it" argument, for which there is no evidence at all.

4. Destiny - Once again... why? Who said we're here for a reason? You just assume it because you're unwilling to accept that we're lucky to be here, we have no "other-worldly" purpose for being here, and when we die we're dead. I can accept that, and therefore evolution is the perfect explanation for my existence.

The whole video is a load of crap peddled by a guy who doesn't understand evolution, or isn't willing to understand it as it doesn't fit in with his religious views.

Side: utter nonsense
4 points

Ha ha, I agree. Nice response.

I found this video after watching the same guy talk about the problem of evil, perhaps I'll do the same with that one. It's a little longer though.

Side: utter nonsense
5 points

Yeah, I've seen that video too. It's fantastic to see how he attempts to assert known problems, then makes a fantastic leap to imply that god did it.

I think his argument in the video I saw was along the lines of "There is good in the world, right? We can all accept that. And, there is evil in the world right? ... So, that proves god." ...WTF?

Side: utter nonsense
3 points

Flip a coin 100,000 times and after each flip record whether you got a heads or a tails. After you are done you have a 100,000 long chain of heads and tails written. Now ask a mathematician what the probability that this chain of heads and tails will ever be flipped and he/she will say that it is 1/2^(100,000). But you just flipped this exact same sequence! Amazing.

It would be foolish to argue that God had to be involved because an event of extremely low probability occurred. Likewise, it is foolish to argue that since humans evolving randomly is an extremely low probability event then God must have had a hand it it.

Side: utter nonsense
2 points

This old dude sure is a good talker, I'll give him that. But I disagree with him. Here are my counter-arguments:

1) first cause argument

This could be restated as "How could something spontaneously generate out of nothing?" This is the question I was pondering when I created the "How did the universe begin?" debate.

The fact is that no one knows why or how the universe came to exist. To say that God did it is simply giving an easy answer to a question that is very hard, perhaps even impossible to answer.

And even if the universe was created by some external force, there's no reason to believe that force was godlike. The first cause could just as easily have been a random accident.

2) argument "to design"

I feel this is his strongest argument. It makes a lot of intuitve sense. I mean really, how could everything in the universe, so incredibly complex yet at the same time so beautifully organized come out of random events? In fact, I think this question deserves it's own debate.

3) something about morals and history

He just kinda glosses over this third argument. It's not clear what he's saying so I want bother refuting it.

Side: yes
Mahollinder(900) Disputed
5 points

The only reason an argument "to design" seems intuitively correct is because the human brain is pattern seeking. What you're referring to as complex is indeed complex, but broken down it's a series of simple, compounded elemental reactions. That's why you can have simplified equations in physics like E=MC^2. it explains relativity because it "essentializes" its properties.

Side: yes
2 points

This man has five primary statements with five erroneous and flawed assumptions:

1 - However you section physical reality to its minutest form you end up with a physical entity or quantity that does not have the reason for its existence in itself; it cannot explain its own origin.

Assumption: There is a first cause.

Fact: Even the first cause needs a cause.

2 - Argument to design. Where you see information you assume there is a mind.

Assumptions: the observable world is 'information' rather than raw data; random events cannot produce order from chaos.

Facts: Humans order raw data into information it is not inherently that way; order is human perception of the random arrangements within chaos.

3- Moral issues, human issues, social intercourse demand the explanation of a moral reality.

Assumption: Humanity is inherently moral

Facts: Societies require morality of some form--humans do not and many humans live without or beyond accepted morality in every society.

4 - There are 4 fundamental questions - origin, meaning, morality, destiny

Assumptions: the Originating entity does not need an origin; meaning is not subjective to the human experience; morality is a necessity of survival; humanity must have a destiny

Fact: a rule of the universe must apply to every fact of the universe; humanity's perceptions and interpretations clarify and therefore change experiences; societies create morality, not humans; no destiny has been proven and the concept is a manifestation of humanity's self-absorption with self-importance--it's pure ego.

5 - Only god is big enough to explain the four fundamental questions.

Assumption: the answer to those (very childish) questions has a simple explanation such as God.

Fact: Even "Why is the sky blue" has a much more complex answer, so this over-arching questions obviously have a much more involved explanation.

Side: Assumptions
1 point

His context in argument assumes a god, there's no way around this bias in his argument.

1. Assume that matter should have the reason for it's own existence. Reason is a human trait, and to look upon something that is not human with reason is wrong. I mean, this is the whole reason that religion and the belief in a god comes about. You look for a reason for existence. I don't mean, what caused existence, when I say reason I mean intention. Which is a lot different. When people see something happen, when they do something or when other people do something, there is a reason or an intention, no matter what is done willfully by a person, there is intent. To take that same reasoning and apply it to reality is to do something completely different. You are essentially personifying everything that you see, like watching a cartoon from the 40's, everything moves and everything has a thought. This isn't correct or at least there is no way to know that everything has a thought. Existence is not reasonable, just as a diamond isn't breakable by a crabs claws. The crab's claws haven't evolved to cut diamond just as the human mind hasn't evolved to accept the idea, naturally, that things don't require intent, and almost as important, things do not have a definable beginning or end.

This is another inherent flaw of the human mind and reasoning with experience. When the sun rises in the morning, we call it a day, when it falls, it's called night. The next time the sun rises, it's a "new day". Nothing has changed, I mean, life is not reset, the real world didn't pause for you. This is more apparent now, and a day is measured from 12am to the next 12am. It's a lot more precise now and people know when a new day is by looking at the time... but the same bias is there. Everyone feels like the next time the sun rises, it's a "new" day... But really, it doesn't matter. So everyone's biological clocks have kicked in, many people sleep and start off feeling better. That new day feeling is natural for humans. This is a bias that says yesterday has ended and today has begun. We do this with EVERYTHING. Even time, a man made concept has a definitive beginning and end, in history, where it began however long ago, and the the present, it's end. When we are born, we all grow up to find that we don't remember not being alive. We began, and we see people die, we know there is an end. When something changes somewhere, and you come to find it has changed, like where something used to be, and now is gone. You think of the time that it was there, the beginning, and when you found that it was gone, an end.

Do you see what I'm getting at? The human mind is so naturally bonded with a beginning and an end, that it seems extremely hard to grasp that not everything began at one point, and will eventually end. Realistically though, nothing ends and begins accept on a micro, very superficial scale, as far as we know. The matter in our bodies and the matter across the universe is all the same, and there is no way of telling if the stuff has a real end. Matter doesn't disappear, though it does seem to lose it's properties, nothing is really lost, it's transferred. As far as we can tell, with all of our tools and evidence provided in nature, nothing really ends. Can we say it had a beginning? We can tell that all of the matter in the universe is moving away and expanding from a single point in space, but that doesn't mean it's the beginning. Look into M theory, just because there's a "big bang" doesn't mean that's a beginning. That's just an event in reality. Matter reacting with different properties of different dimensions... or if M theory is too complex and you want to believe that this universe is all there is to reality, then physics show that the universe is constantly expanding and collapsing.

This is reality, and it's nearly impossible for an intelligent creature to come into existence and question it for 3000 years and be able to grasp it's complexity. We have no idea how far the rabbit hole goes, but to say that there was a something from nothing that created something is entirely the wrong direction when trying to understand reality.

SOMETHING FROM NOTHING THAT CREATES SOMETHING, that is fairly human.. Hell, no animal on earth is as like a human as god itself, yet animals are very much like us in that they are real like us, have all of the same parts as we do and function mechanically as we do. Think about it. The idea that god created everything in existence is just ludicrous and the only way you could come to believe this is if you cannot fess up to your own inherent flaws in reasoning and logic.

(P.S. I didn't argue everything this man said because it is all tainted by that one single mistake.)

Side: utter nonsense
1 point

He is one hell of a smooth talker. However, he sounded like a rehash of Ray Comfort, whose banana argument was thoroughly discredited.

You can google for the counterarguments; there are plenty.

P.S: Always nice to see more people skeptical of creationism.

Supporting Evidence: Ray Comfort's Banana argument. (www.ecclesia.org)
Side: utter nonsense
xaeon(1095) Disputed
3 points

It's the same old, same old. The words "chance" and "accident" are thrown around in a way that clearly indicates the speaker does not understand evolution.

What Ray Comfort obviously forgot, when he chose the banana as a tool to disprove atheism, is that the banana as we know it now HAS been designed by humans, through the power of evolution. Bananas are a farmed domesticated fruit, that for the last 8000 or so years have been designed by humans to have the qualities that they have today.

Regardless of this obvious point, we have the enormous leap from "yay, a banana is perfect for a human hand" to "well, god must have done it!" No, actually, it's kind of well suited for the human hand because it has been domesticated by humans for the last 8000 years.

"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." - Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species, Chapter 6

Taken out of context. Anyone who has read The Origin Of Species knows that the next few paragraphs attempt to show how the eye could have evolved. Regardless, since Darwin's time, we have become plenty aware of how the eye can evolve.

"I could prove God statistically; take the human body alone; the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen, is a statistical monstrosity." - George Gallup, the famous statistician

Maybe so. But, see how the word "chance" is used. Yep, evolution isn't chance. Evolution is a random mutation that leads to beneificial mutations having a higher likelihood of being passed on. A constant misunderstanding by the religious in regards to evolution.

My favourite coming up:

"Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble." - Einstien

Einstien did not believe in God. Firstly, the above quote has been grossly edited and taken out of context. The actual quote was:

"Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive."

Bit of a different message when the whole quote is used in context, eh?

I wonder why that Enstien quote was chosen. Hmm. Anyway, there are plenty of other Einstien quotes to choose from (ones that haven't been edited). Why not these one:

"I believe in a Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings."

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. "

EDIT: Sorry, I actually wanted to favour you.

Side: utter nonsense