Lame “arguments”
So lately i’ve been going back and watching many old debates (mostly featuring two of my favorite people Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens) on the existence of god. More and more I find that the theologians who debate fall back on some common apologetic arguments, and ones that I feel are complete and total bunk. While much of this information may come out on the show I thought I’d give a brief on each of them and tell the readers why i personally feel these arguments are fundamentally flawed. These are my personal stances on these arguments and do not necessarily represent the views of my fellow charioteers, although if they’re willing and have the time I’d love for them to join in and have them post their takes on each of these arguments. The short summaries of these arguments are taken from wikipedia
- Cosmological argument – Argues that the existence of the universe demonstrates that God exists. Various ancillary arguments from science are often offered to support the cosmological argument.
The age old question “Why is there something, instead of nothing?”. The answer to this one is pretty basic, if there was nothing, we would not be here to ask why is there nothing. This argument is ridiculous on it’s face and it’s support usually falls into a “god of the gaps” argument with the theologian assuming that since science does not have an answer (yet), then the answer must be god.
- Teleological argument (argument from design) – Argues that there is an intricate design in the world around us, and a design requires a designer.
Another classic, and the refutation can be as simple as for the Cosmological argument. But I’ll give this one a little more credit than that, it’s a very interesting proposition. The scientific hypothesis on this one is an interesting one, a multiverse theory where alternate universes exist in which all of the possible “settings” for the physical laws are represented. But once again, I say If the laws of the universe were different enough that formation of life was not possible then we wouldn’t be here to ask such a question. The basis of this argument has gained some momentum as computer simulations have apparently been run where these laws are modified and it seems that the tolerances are extremely low when it comes to fiddling with the universal constants and getting anything we recognize as our present universe.
- Ontological argument – Argues that the very concept of God demands that there is an actual existent God.
More patently ridiculous, I can conceive of a wide range of things that do not exist, it in no way affects the existence of such things.
- Moral Argument – Argues that if there are any real morals, then there must be an absolute from which they are derived.
This one always grates on me as it is so patently obvious that the paradigms for moral behavior have shifted radically just within the bounds of recorded history. There is also incredibly strong evidence that instinctual behavior is something that evolved, and much of what we consider “moral” could fall into this category (a revulsion to killing our own young for example). I would easily argue that there are very few “absolute” morals and those that do exist could easily be explained by evolutionary instinctual behavior.
- Transcendental Argument – Argues that all our abilities to think and reason require the existence of God.
I’ve never got this argument, it’s incredibly anthropocentric. it is quite possible that a wide range of species can think and reason and that this is a mere evolutionary development shared by many creatures with advanced brains. The restriction is the bounds in which humans think and reason is incredibly wide, we’ve got the “giraffe’s neck” of brains.
- Presuppositional Arguments – Arguments that show basic beliefs of theists and nontheists require God as a necessary precondition.
I relate this one to the Ontological argument above, it’s flawed at it’s base. Beliefs in a condition do not require that condition to actually exist. People believe in Aliens and people do not believe in aliens does their actual existence affect this belief, is the belief dependent on either condition? What about the earth being flat? Or earthquakes being caused by the wrestling of giant Minotaurs beneath the earth, do the basic beliefs of Minotaurists and non-Minotaurists require the Minotaurs as a precondition?
I would also like to point out that not a single one of these arguments back up any single set of holy texts as an argument, at their very best they could only be used to support a deist-like claim of god’s existence. Of course most theologians will take any failed attempt to refute these arguments as a win for thier specific theology. For a theologian to have any credence for me you must not only win the debate that god exists, but that your particular scripture is the correct one, over and above any other religions scripture. This is where a lot of other arguments fall flat, the Argument in defense of Miracles falls flat when you consider that miracles have been reported as coming from people of a wide variety of faiths, most of which are dogmatically and scripturally incompatible with one another. in fact when this argument is brought up it tends to make me lean toward a polytheistic view as the only possible supernatural explanation.
Of course, the naturalistic explanation always wins out over any supernatural explanation, and “we don’t know” is another acceptable answer. One thing I’d like to see these theologians say is “I don’t know”, they usually tend to attribute things they don’t know to thier dieties in order to cover thier ignorance while attempting to bolster thier arguments.