YEC 2

[Januarymadness]

Right I am going to bite. I shouldnt have looked at the facebook but I did.

Mr Ruggles you have made some horrible accusations. You have claimed everyone who disagreed with you was an atheist who lacked logic and reasoning. You were wrong on ALL counts. Many people told you they were Christian or Theists, they just didn't agree with you. The thread was also full of valid scientific arguments which were well worded and full of logic and reasoning.

You have also accused us all of being bullies. Something I saw no evidence of. Not agreeing with someone is not bullying.

So please do feel free to justify your off board comments here as speaking behind peoples backs is really not on.

Please could someone link to the old thread. Thanks

"I might disagree with everything Best has said but he at least is polite."

Infamous, I hope you were indulging in a slight bit of hyperbole with your use of the word "everything." I can understand you disagreeing with my conclusions but, to reach them, I have always appealed to logic, reason and evidence. I hope you can agree with those things.

"As I already explained, they are not anti-theists. They believe they are beyond religion. Their battle is political. Tamils are predominantly Hindu."

In the same way Einstein was Jewish and Hitler was Catholic.

"But I can have a guess at your agenda in bringing up the Tamil Tigers as 'atheist suicide bombers,' rather than concentrating on, say, islamic jihadist suicide bombers - who genuinely are doing it in the name of their religion."

If I have any agenda at all, it is to raise awareness of the violence perpetrated by all people - theists and atheists alike. Yes, most suicide bombers are theists but the Tamil Tigers invented it (or at least the vest) and they are atheists.

I was having a discussion on FaceBook about the Tamil Tigers at the time I used that example so it was top-of-mind. But I think it serves to show that atheists are not beyond violence. In fact, more people have been killed by atheists in the past 100 years than by all religions throughout recorded human history combined. Religion accounts for less than 7% of the world's wars. Over half of those involve Islam.

Let's just stop shifting the blame and realize that the problem is the human heart. Keeping our collective heads in the sand because we want to believe that most people are really good is not going to stop the bloodshed.

"You keep conflating atheism - a lack of belief in a supernatural omnipotent being - with a lack of morality though. When this is not the case."

No I do not. I equate a lack of belief in a supernatural omnipotent being with the lack of belief in objective morality. If morality is not objective, it is subjective. Therefore, it cannot be said that torturing babies for fun is objectively wrong. It must be said that it is subjectively wrong.

You do realise that atheist and anti-theist are not necessarily the same thing?

And that anti-theism can be a completely pacifist endeavour? Use of words and rational arguments against organised religion? It doesn't have to be violent or mean waging war.

"What "force" is coming - is Dawkins raising an army?"

So to speak.

I would say mass genocide of the religious is only about one or two generations away. Things always go that way when atheists get into power. Hopefully I won't live to see it. But the Bible predicts it so it will happen.

"There we have it - it's like the year 8 girl having 'to ask' if she believes in purgatory, isn't it?"

Not quite. She had to ask her parents. I look to God's Word. Hopefully now that she's grown, she does that too. And what a wonderful world this would be if we all did what was right according to God's standard rather than what we feel is best for ourselves. In fact, it would be heaven.

"Morality is improving in much of the world, in many ways."

By who's standard?

"Mind you, the countries with the best moralities (ie they prohibit slave-owning and consider women - along with members of all ethnic groups rather than the dominant one - to be full human beings) are generally the ones with the lowest levels of superstition."

Christianity says human beings have value because they were made in the image of God. Evolution says humans have no inherent value. In The U.S. Constitution human rights are endowed by the Creator. If human rights are decided by the State, Hitler can have the Jews legally declared non-human so it is permissible to exterminate them.

Einstein was quoted upthread (not by me) as not believing in a personal god.

Hitler was born a RC - and there are accounts of him calling himself a christian. He frequently invoked 'god' in his speeches, and he claimed god was on his side. Here are a few:

"The anti-Semitism of the new movement (Christian Social movement) was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", Vol. 1, Chapter 3]

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."
[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]

"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."
[Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, pp. 239-40]

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed."
[Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted in Freethought Today April 1990]

"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator."
[Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 46]

"What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."
[Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 125]

"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."
[Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174]

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"
[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

But you don't want him, do you

I would say mass genocide of the religious is only about one or two generations away. Things always go that way when atheists get into power. Hopefully I won't live to see it. But the Bible predicts it so it will happen.

Oh do me a favour!

"Yes, they are indeed contradictory. That's what we've been saying all along. But I can't agree that I 'don't mind' a god that is logically contradictory, as I don't believe in any god."

But if you were to believe in God you would prefer He follow the laws of logic. Me too.

"If there was an all-powerful, supernatural god, though, surely he would be able to defy logic as well as the laws of physics?"

God is not "all-powerful" in that way. Do you think he should be able to exist and not exist at the same time? (Dawkins does. He made that argument in The God Delusion.) Do you think he should be able to make a square circle or a married bachelor or 2+2=5? Even God can't do those things because they are logically impossible. I think you said you didn't want to believe in an omnipotent God so maybe this is your loophole.

Plus it's christians (some of them, anyway) that go on about armageddon. Were you one of the ones waiting for The Rapture?

Some people were really scared by that. There were threads on here about it.

"You do realise that atheist and anti-theist are not necessarily the same thing?"

Of course. That's why most atheists are wonderful, kind and passive people. It's the ones who oppose religious vehemently that you have to watch out for. With the right person in charge they can be mobilized to wage war. Or genocide. All ideologies can have that affect, not just religion.

"And that anti-theism can be a completely pacifist endeavour? Use of words and rational arguments against organised religion? It doesn't have to be violent or mean waging war."

Yup. Same with religion. That's why Christianity has few "jihadists" who bomb abortion clinics and such but instead builds universities, hospitals and orphanages. It all starts with the person. The difference is that Christianity motivates people to do right because that is what God wants. Atheism motivates people to do what is best for them. Survival-of-the-fittest and all that.

I've just discovered a new rule of thumb. Anytime someone starts a sentence with the words, "You DO realize . . ." you can probably answer 'yes' without even hearing the rest of the statement. LOL! Just a little observation.

But if you were to believe in God you would prefer He follow the laws of logic. Me too.

No. He'd be omnipotent, so he'd be able to do what he likes. Logic is a man-made concept - developed by Aristotle - man's way of making sense of things, of studying, of rationalising.

Atheism motivates people to do what is best for them. Survival-of-the-fittest and all that.

Yes, I think that's what you want to believe. I think that's your justification for your beliefs, right down to young earth creationism.

Best, do you believe that people can do bad things in the name of religion?

Do you think that religion holds power for organisations and individuals?

Yes, you can detect design. (Check out the book "The Design Inference" by William Dembski.)

William Dembski the theologian? Why would I want to read a book about science by a theologian? What next? Cardiac Surgery for Dummies by Simon Cowell? Learn Algebra In Three Easy Steps by Lady Gaga? No thanks.

If SETI were to get the prime numbers coming through space (as in the movie Contact), they would immediately conclude the signal was coming from an intelligent source

Er...yes. So what? You need to compare this with something naturally occurring for the analogy to make sense.

We immediately recognize the four faces of the U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore were done by a sculpture and not the product of natural processes like erosion

Yes - because we know who sculpted them and we know who they are modelled on. Again, do you have any examples of this kind of thing occurring naturally WITHOUT an evident intelligent sculptor? Hint: Nope.

When an archaeologist finds a carved stone and determines it is an arrowhead, he is detecting design

Quite rightly. So?

If you saw, "John love Mary" written in the sand on the beach you would know immediately it wasn't done my the waves but that someone put it there intentionally

Yep. Because we have no examples of words written in a language WE INVENTED appearing magically out of thin air.

So - you have decided from all of this, have you, that we ought to pick up a leaf and automatically know it was designed? A leaf which has NOTHING in common with any of the above because it's NATURALLY occurring.

Can carved sculptures on mountains give birth to baby carved sculptures? Is there a mummy arrowhead? NO. IT'S DIFFERENT. Once again, you are equivocating and failing to compare like with like.

Can the Rushmore sculptures be described using biological processes that we know exist? No, they can't. A leaf can. THAT'S WHY IT'S DIFFERENT.

(And this is just the Watchmaker analogy re-worded anyway. Stop making me repeat myself).

Alexander Vilinkin said, "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning (Many Worlds in One [New York: Hill and Wang, 2006], p.176).

You've quote mined again. And it's not even you doing it - it's William Lane Craig. You're quoting him quote mining. Don't you have any arguments of your own?

The paper you cite (if you'd ever bothered to read it) goes on....

Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God ? So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist

Aside from the fact that the paper (a serious academic one) is not addressing "everything has a cause" - which is a stupid argument that has been refuted completely on this thread - but something called the BGV singularity theorem, and this is not accepted as fact across the physics community.

It is anti-theism which is dangerous and has killed millions

Utter, utter rubbish. You clearly know as little about history as you do about science* The Tamil Tigers were not anti-theist - they were fighting for a political cause. Just because you're not fighting FOR religion does not mean you're fighting against it.

And a quick Google has shown me that Alexander II was killed by a suicide bomber, so I'm not sure why you think the Tamil Tigers invented it.

• I'm going to have to explain Stalinism/Marxism/Secularism to you, aren't I? What fun . Or, you could save us both some grief and pick up a history book, eh?

It served my point. You said you wouldn't torture a baby for any reason and I found a scenario where you would

No, I didn't. I said it's wrong to do it for any reason - and doing it to save the world from annihilation doesn't suddenly make it "right". It becomes a necessary wrong when all considerations are taken into account.

By the way, I don't think I could bring myself to torture the baby - even for ten seconds

Don't believe you.

There are those who will say I am immoral for not saving the lives of a million but I did not kill them Yeah, me. Still don't believe you though.

I would not steal the milk. It's a false dichotomy. There are other ways to get money to buy the milk. And if I did steal the milk, I would not make excuses and I would admit that it was wrong

NO! You cannot do that Best. I might as well have said "I would have karate chopped the terrorist in the nuts and broken his rifle over his head rather than tortured the baby". But I didn't - I was given two choices - torture the baby or millions die. I gave you two choices too - now you're saying "There are other ways to get money for milk". . No - I gave you two choices, and you've chosen to let the baby die. How delightful. (Still don't believe you, though).

Yes they can. Just not satisfactorily. Do you appeal more to culture or to evolution? I've said repeatedly that I would ultimately have to appeal to evolution for morality if I were an atheist

Morality is evident across the animal kingdom - and they don't have "culture". We are pack animals, we need to cooperate. The more cooperative an individual is, the more likely they are to survive within a pack & pass on their cooperative nature. I don't think rebels do that well. Add in our intelligence, reasoning & culture and you have morality as we know it.

I find it beautiful and elegant. And I find the basis for atheism selfish and arrogant

Hmmm. What could possibly be more beautiful than babies being born in sin because some twit in a fig leaf fancied a fruity lunch 6000 years ago - and having to worship the bloody corpse of a dead Palestinian in order to say sorry and get a golden ticket into the magic kingdom in the sky? Just gorgeous. Honestly, I find more beauty in the Penguin Bumper Book of Serial Killers and Cannibals than I do in the Bible.

Kill means "murder" in this context. Murder is the killing of an innocent person by a guilty person. God never killed anyone who was innocent

God told you this, did he? Or can you give me the verse where this qualification/ explanation is made.

God never killed anyone who was innocent

Unlike the American Justice System. (And the British one when we had CP).

I'm not. I strive for accuracy. When the man's own writings say he was not an atheist, I take him at his word. The problem come in when we re-define words to make them suit our agenda. To Einstein, atheism was an active disbelief which he did not have. He was born Jewish but not practicing. So if Hitler was Catholic then Einstein was Jewish

1. You do not strive for accuracy. You quote William Lane Craig and hope that HE'S strived for accuracy. Alas, he doesn't.

2. Einstein was an atheist. Get over it already.

3. "Jewish" refers to an ethnicity as well as a religion - that's why there are so many atheist Jews around. Woody Allen is one - Einstein was another. Catholicism is not an ethnicity - Hitler could have opted out (like I have done). He didn't. Oh dear.

Bloody hell - even for me that's a long post. If you didn't get so many things wrong, Best, I wouldn't have to give so many long replies. Could you try to get a few things right? Please?

God is not "all-powerful" in that way. Do you think he should be able to exist and not exist at the same time? (Dawkins does. He made that argument in The God Delusion.) Do you think he should be able to make a square circle or a married bachelor or 2+2=5? Even God can't do those things because they are logically impossible. I think you said you didn't want to believe in an omnipotent God so maybe this is your loophole

Something is either "all powerful" or it is not. The clue is in the use of the word "all".

I realise that the paradoxes formed by having a god who is both omniscient & omnipotent is desperately embarrassing (in other words, that's logically contradictory & impossible) - but you can't worm your way out of it by subtly changing the definitions of words.

Is God all powerful or not? If he's not, please start describing him as "partly powerful", and leave out the "all" bit because that's a lie.

Partly powerful works better - but it's not very god-like, is it? I'm partly powerful too.

Hey.....maybe I'm God? I have long suspected as much

Best

Further to the quote Lane Craig you gave me - the physicist in question (Vilenkin) was asked about it in view of the way it's been used by Lane Craig:

I then asked Vilenkin, ?Does your theorem prove that the universe must have had a beginning?? He immediately replied

No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time

I Googled. You should have done the same.

Not quite. She had to ask her parents. I look to God's Word. Hopefully now that she's grown, she does that too.

Can't you think for yourself? How sad.

"Einstein was quoted upthread (not by me) as not believing in a personal god."

I didn't see that quote but of course Einstein did not believe in a personal God as I've said repeatedly. I quote him myself in my church presentations on "Arguments Christians Should Not Use." I had to skip that one for lack of time on my TV appearance but the quote goes:

"I do not believe in a PERSONAL GOD and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. My position concerning God is that of an AGNOSTIC."

Regarding your Hitler quotes, you might recall that I deal with this in my upcoming book, "How To Debate An Atheist." Objection #81 states:

81. Hitler was a good Christian. He never renounced his Catholicism and the Church never ex-communicated him. In Mein Kampf he wrote, "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Allow me to make a few observations about Hitler:

1. Mein Kampf is recognized by historians as Nazi war propaganda. In his book "Propaganda and Mass Persuasion," Nicholas John Cull writes:

"The nine months he spent in Landsberg Prison provided Hitler with the opportunity to write Mein Kampf. Unable to address his audience in person, Hitler dictated his ideas. The text of Mein Kampf is thus a piece of political demagoguery in prose, an outpouring of Hitler?s half-baked ideas and prejudices. It was clearly written as a work of propaganda."

1. Hitler had a public face and a private face. He advocated telling big lies over small ones because they were more likely to be believed.

1. In private, Hitler mocked Christianity and called it a "drug," a "disease" and likened it to Communism. He said Christianity would "die a natural death . . . before the advances of science" and eventually "the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity."

Hitler ceased to participate in the Sacraments after childhood. He said, "Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery. A Negro with his tabus is crushingly superior to the human being who seriously believes in Transubstantiation."

He said, "pure Christianity - the Christianity of the catacombs . . . leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind." He lamented that Christians had "brought about the fall of Rome" and blamed the Jewish-Christians for destroying the library of Alexandria.

1. He used the word "God" not because he believed in a personal Creator but as a synonym for the laws of nature (much the same way Einstein did and the way some scientists do today). He spoke of Providence as a guiding force of history. He was a strong believer in the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest.

1. Hitler said specifically on at least two occasions that he did not believe in miracles. The miracle of Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead is central to Christianity. Anyone who does not believe Christ's resurrection was a factual, historical event is automatically disqualified from being considered a Christian.

1. Although Hitler had respect for Jesus, he said Jesus could not have been a Jew and that the Jews themselves regarded him as the son of a whore and a Roman soldier.

1. A few more quotes form his private meetings:

"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things."

"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure."

"So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited
worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted
of absurdity."

"If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science
arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will
not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's
always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge,
to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does
so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual
conflict with itself."

"One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That's not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretise the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?"

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

"When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let's be the only people who are immunised against the disease."

"Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself."

"Pure Christianity?the Christianity of the catacombs?is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics."

"One cannot succeed in conceiving how much cruelty, ignominy and falsehood the intrusion of Christianity has spelt for this world of ours."

1. Finally, even if Hitler were a Christian, we can certainly admit that he was not following the teachings of Christ. He was therefore a hypocrite. But in attempting to breed the master race, he was being completely consistent with his believe in survival of the fittest and the laws on nature. He would have made a much better atheist than a Christian. But alas, he was pagan. In today's terminology, he might be considered New Age. I had created a god of his own design - not unlike some people on this board. And I suspect the atheists here too will find much to agree with in his words.

"Plus it's christians (some of them, anyway) that go on about Armageddon. Were you one of the ones waiting for The Rapture?"

In the late 80s I was really into eschatology. I was never one to believe the predictions of the end of the world. Jesus said no man knows the day or the hour. So when someone sets a date I tell them, "I don' know when it is but I know it's not then."

Incidentally, the founding of the nation of Israel was a big prediction made in the Bible that came true in 1948.

"No. He'd be omnipotent, so he'd be able to do what he likes. Logic is a man-made concept - developed by Aristotle - man's way of making sense of things, of studying, of rationalising."

Oh really? So I guess before the time of Aristotle things could just exist and not exist at the same time. Things would just pop in and out of existence (those quantum fluctuations will do it every time) and somebody must have said, "Hey Aristotle, can you do me a favour and devise some laws of logic? My chariot just disappeared again."

No, the laws of logic may have been discovered and formalized by man but they were there all along. It would be a little like saying Newton invented gravity.

But I still don't get why you would prefer an irrational god to a rational one.

If the laws of logic are a man-made convention and open to interpretation, what is preventing me from saying, "I'm right because cows are purple!" and declaring myself the winner of the debate. When someone tells me logic doesn't matter to them I pretty much don't know what else to say to them. Logic is everything. If there were no God, I would seriously consider worshipping logic.

I do not believe in a PERSONAL GOD and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.I do not believe in a PERSONAL GOD and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. My position concerning God is that of an AGNOSTIC

It was me who gave the Einstein quote up thread - and I took the trouble to explain exactly what was meant by the term "personal". (He does not mean personal to him - he means "person like")

The "My position concerning God is that of an AGNOSTIC" is a COMPLETE INVENTION by you and does not form part of the quote. What on earth are you doing?