The practical impossibility of atheism
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1375-the-practical-impossibility-of-atheism
Atheists believe, they are intelligent, based on their brains, which were not intelligently designed
The atheistic worldview cannot account for the laws of logic/absolutes, and must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to rationally argue.
Atheists assume their senses and ability to reason are accurately digesting the information around us. That is an unprovable presupposition. Like the laws of logic. You have to assume them in order to prove them. Which is another presupposition most all humans hold. Atheists also presuppose that objective moral values exist - like it is wrong to torture, rape and kill babies for fun. But atheists cannot consistently claim that any moral values exist, if there is no prescribing entity. So they borrow constantly from the Christian worldview. But the atheists can not consistently account for the validity of his presuppositions while the believer in God, and in special, Christian, can. God has given us our ability to reason. Atheists have no reason to believe in their own reasoning and any of anyone else. The naturalistic worldview collapses right here. Unless the truth of Gods existence is presupposed, and so, that our thinking reliable, logically sound and trustworthy, we can not make sense of the world whatsoever. The logical evolution of an honest thinker which bases his worldview on naturalism is nihilism. If he is weakly constituted he may fall victim to despair, the recognition that life has no intrinsic meaning.
To overcome this, Nietzsche invented and imagined a person as the “overman” (Übermensch), the one who teaches “the meaning of the earth” and has no need of otherworldly supports for the values he embodies. He understood that taken naturalism, materialism, existentialism, atheism as true, nihilism is the ultimate meaning of the moral point of view, its life-denying essence, and he reconfigures the moral idea of autonomy so as to release the life-affirming potential within it. Nietzsche also rationalized a way to overcome the vacuum of the existence of objective moral values based on prescription, " ought to be's ", which can only exist in face of a prescribing entity, by suggesting an autonomy “beyond good and evil.” But if one is to speak of autonomy, meaning, and value at all, the mode of being beyond good and evil cannot simply be a lawless state of arbitrary and impulsive behaviour. If such existence is to be thinkable there must be a standard by which success or failure can be measured. Nietzsche variously indicates such a standard in his references to “health,” “strength,” and “the meaning of the earth.”
If our biological features, and more importantly our cognitive machinery evolved from some random forces of nature can we trust our brain and our thinking? the very thinking, belief or trust in naturalism which are the products of blind or random forces of nature?? If we are just an evolved, ape-like being, the result of random mutations, why should someone believe in someone else's arguments? How could I trust that our rationale makes actually any sense?
“But then with me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
[ Charles Darwin To William Graham 3 July 1881]”
C.S.Lewis: One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview].... The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears.... [U]nless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.
"Is Theology Poetry?", The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
http://mirror1.booksdescr.org/ads.php?md5=9BFA0EA873D6877852A258BE06FC0A5E
C.S.Lewis:
“Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of the primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole [i.e. materialism], then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”
“To find the metaphysical beliefs…governing scientific research…it would have been enough to speak of one belief, the belief in a personal rational Creator. It was this belief, as cultivated especially within a Christian matrix, which supported the [scientific] view for which the world was an objective and orderly entity investigable by the mind because the mind too was an orderly and objective product of the same rational, that is, perfectly consistent Creator.
Dr. Stanley Jaki, Templeton Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of physics, Seton Hall University
An atheist must believe ( as it is the only alternative to a creator ) that he is the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its supposed chemical and biological evolutionary progress, the by-product of natural, undirected and spontaneous causes. When he claims there is no evidence of Gods existence, he presupposes that he can trust his senses and rational thoughts, a product of these natural processes and that the world and sensory perceptions are objective and orderly entities. Unless the inferences based on sensory observations and reason are valid and trustworthy, the whole picture disappears and is in ruins. But, as Darwin stated, if man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, how can it be of any value or at all trustworthy? Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? Here is an obvious contradiction. Atheists ask me at the same moment to accept their conclusions and to discredit the only basis upon which that conclusion can be based. As Dr. Stanley Jaki stated: Science started in the past centuries based on the Christian matrix, which supported the [scientific] view for which the world was an objective and orderly entity investigable by the mind because the mind too was an orderly and objective product of the same rational, that is, perfectly consistent Creator.
Materialism claims that everything has a material cause. That would include human behaviour. That would include the workings of the brain, which is said by atheistic materialists to be equivalent to the mind. Therefore we are the directed, not the directors of our actions. This, in turn, leads to the inescapable conclusion that no human belief, rationalization, or mental process can be relied on with respect to anything. A deterministic view such as this obviously undercuts the ability to direct one's own destiny or thoughts, for that matter. That view leads furthermore to the claim that there is no free will, but that all our actions are pre-determined by atoms, molecules, and organic chemistry.
Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God. 1
The strong atheist which claims that most probably, no God(s) exists, has no rational basis to make any meaningful and trustworthy claim, if his brain is developed from the mind of the lower animals, evolved from some random forces of nature, some random mutations, why should someone believe in anyone else's arguments and claims? Atheists are irrational and atheism is self-defeating.
John Bynum : The only way to know anything at all is to know everything.....***OR***..... have revelation from someone who does.
The atheist worldview can not account for knowledge. So as soon as he makes a knowledge claim he has already abandoned his worldview and borrowed from the theistic / judeo-christian worldview. Which means he has lost as soon as he begins to debate. Christianity is true by virtue of the impossibility of the contrary.
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Atheist: We rely on logic, reason, and science.
Answer: How did logic and reason emerge? randomly? luck?
" aghmm .....&*$#@..... - scratching head - science is working on it. "
Truth said: Atheists rely on wishful thinking, blind faith, and random chance as a powerful mechanism to explain our existence. Its a perfect example of non-reasoning, and self-delusion. Atheists are irrational and atheism is self-defeating.
"DNA neither knows nor cares, DNA just is, and we dance to its music." Richard Dawkins The forgoing militates against every innate sense of our own nature. Assertion justified.
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course, I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
― C.S. Lewis
Atheists assume their senses and ability to reason are accurately digesting the information around us. That is an unprovable presupposition. Like the laws of logic. You have to assume them in order to prove them. Which is another presupposition most all humans hold. But the atheists can not consistently account for the validity of his presuppositions while the Christian can. God has given us our ability to reason. Atheists have nothing. Their worldview collapses right there. Unless the truth of Gods existence is our presupposition we can not make sense of the world whatsoever.
The only way to know anything at all is to know everything.....***OR***..... have revelation from Someone who does.
The atheist worldview can not account for knowledge. So as soon as he makes a knowledge claim he has already abandoned his worldview and borrowed from the Christian worldview. Which means he has lost as soon as he begins to debate. Christianity is true by virtue of the impossibility of the contrary.
Atheism shoots science in the foot and then shoots itself in the head! Atheism cannot account for the existence of logic and it has to deny the existence of truth ( Darwin himself doubted that the human brain which was the result of irrational processes could be trusted to be rational ) Without this two science is impossible! If you take the view of common ancestry and macroevolution as true, you cannot trust anything about what you think is true. How are you sure your thoughts are logical if they derive from a lucky evolutionary accident that was not logical at all?
You believe ON SHEER FAITH, that something came from nothing (absolutely nothing?) -for no reason. Therefore, according to your belief system, non-material entities such as objective truth is a myth since even the most basic principles of logic are all produced by a random accident, as is even your brain. This, in turn, means that your every thought is a random, meaningless chemical fizz. So, if your belief system is true, then the comment you just made is nothing more than the accidental result of a meaningless chemical reaction, in a randomly formed chunk of brain matter. Newsflash my friend. No one gives a hoot about any so-called data produced by a randomly programmed computer. Such a computer would be inherently unreliable and the data would be presumed faulty. Therefore, when atheists say that the Universe is an accident, and nothing within it is designed for a purpose, including their own brains, they cede any right to have their randomly produced thoughts taken seriously. So, when you call anything "superstitious", your comment is nothing more than a bad joke, or more accurately, a self-deception that you pull on yourself. Like all atheists, you want to have your cake and eat it too when you claim that 1. God is a superstition and 2. You'd do well to constantly remind yourself that your thoughts,(according to atheism) are completely meaningless chemical reactions, occurring in a long chain of cause and effect from mechanical, purposeless physical forces acting on your equally random and accidentally produced brain chemistry and therefore, within an atheistic framework, your thoughts could never be meaningful or worth sharing.
The difference is not in the existence of the soul, or mind itself but in the concept of a designed, planned product of an intelligent Mind, as opposed to an accident generated from blind random chance. If your brain is designed to think according to rational, logical patterns and if it comes with an organic version of pre- installed software that allows it not only to function rationally but also to recognize its own rationality, then you can proceed to analyze problems with confidence that your thoughts truly possess rationality, meaning, value, and purpose.
The only design gives you that certainty of rationality, meaning, value and purpose. Blind chance can only produce a more random blind chance. Without the prospect of an Eternal Mind, all is meaningless. Plato and Aristotle recognized this and hence their concepts of non-material Forms and the Unmoved Mover. Later, Aquinas realized that the great minds of Plato and Aristotle had paved a road that can only possibly lead to the Triune God of the Christianity.
from all practical appearances we just shouldn't be here but here we are, you and i, and although we disagree on fundamental issues of life we are both apparently rational beings. But where does rationality come from? Ask that and we're back in the loop of causation. Every effect has a cause. That is, as you well know, one of the Basic Principles of Logic. It follows then that no effect is greater than its cause and as we observe our material world, sure enough, we can point to nothing that was not caused by something that was powerful enough as a secondary, instrumental, or material cause, to cause that effect. But when we come to the sticky, no material effects that we observe and even intuitively acknowledge, such as rationality, morality, objective truth, and objective standards of aesthetics, as well as the Virtues such as, "love of our family and fellow man is better than hate" suddenly atheism chokes! Thanks to Mac Howell
If a man, obviously drunk, whom you have never met, stumbles up to you on the street and says to you "Your mother told me to tell you not to go home, the house is full of spiders." You will not trust what he says. Why? Because he is irrational, because, he is drunk, and we know that we cannot trust irrational sources.
But if our brains are ultimately the product of a series of blind, irrational causes then how could we possibly know what truth is?
You might suggest that natural selection is not blind in the sense of being irrational, it picks the best, or picks what works. But blind, deaf, senseless random mutation has to produce anything and everything from which natural selection selects. Natural selection cannot create ANYTHING. It cannot select a green bug from four brown bugs. It is totally dependent on totally random forces.
It may select what works, but how or why would we imagine we could know "truth". Why would we imagine the idea of truth? Why would we imagine? And yet we do. And we believe there is such a thing as truth and that we can know it. Credit to Rick Swindell
Is God Real? Evidence from the Laws of Logic 2
If you take the view of common ancestry and macroevolution as true, you cannot trust anything about what you think is true. How are you sure your thoughts are logical if they derive from a lucky evolutionary accident that was not logical at all?
Most of us don’t think much about the physical or non-physical laws of the universe necessary for us to exist (and make sense of our existence). As an example, we usually take the law of gravity for granted; it doesn’t really matter how the law operates or what forces lie behind it. We simply accept the fact we live in a world where gravity is a reality. In a similar way, there are many conceptual laws we also take for granted. These abstract truths order our world and guide our exploration and experience. One area of conceptual truth involves a body of concepts we call the Laws of Logic. Is God real? The existence of the Laws of Logic may provide us with an answer.
Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God. 1
If the Bible were not true, nothing could be true - and if nothing were true then you couldn't even make sense of your question! (Or any question or any knowledge ). That's the absurdity of denying God - the one true source of truth. It's important to realize that to determine truth we need to not only have the right sources, but we must put them in the correct order of importance. Our own personal bias can also often play a big part in determining what we choose to believe is true. And if you don't have a solid basis for knowledge and truth, the result is you can't know anything and you will end up being deceived. Truth can be defined as that which corresponds with reality. (A correspondence theory of truth). However, the problem is - how do you know what reality is? How do you know what is real?
"What is "real"? How do you define "real"?" (Morpheus - The Matrix)
In order for our reasoning process to be trustworthy and valid, it would have to be the result of a rational creation process of the creator of man. How could non-reason produce reason? Non-logic produce logic? If apples cannot produce bananas, how could unanimated matter produce logic and that reason discover physical truths which involve complex math and metaphysical truths which are essentially non-materialistic? Naturalism is like someone sitting on a branch of a tree and saw it off. Atheism is self-defeating.
Atheists argue about being right based on a thinking process, which has no foundation or validness to be trustworthy if its origin is not rational.
Only the believer in a rational God, which is the ultimate source of rationality and intelligence, and created humans in his likeliness, equipped with the same ability of reason, logic, sound thinking process and able to reach metaphysical truths can trust his mind, because he believes to be the result of a higher mind, which has all these faculties in a perfect, superior manner.
Under atheism, all life is a mere accident of a mindless, non-rational, meaningless universe. How does any non-rational process create mind and rationality? To anticipate the usual responses to this problem – such as that we have observations that confirm the reliability of our minds – I add, no we cannot trust the reliability of the human mind by using the human mind to test its reliability. This is an evident contradiction!
This is a good & valid argument in the toolbox of an apologist, but in my view, not enough or the only way to provide justification for a theistic view of origins. I do not see any attractiveness for that reason to stick to the presuppositional approach, which excludes the traditional method, which permits a much broader spectrum of arguments and views which point to God. Exploring these proofs is an exciting intellectual adventure, full of surprises, and awe-inspiring things that the creator has prepared for the ones that seek deep enough.
If you are an unbeliever.
Could it be, that the arguments that have been provided by theists, ARE sound, and the God of the Bible does indeed exist, and you are just self-delusional?
No you say?
How could you possibly know ?
According to natural materialism, your rationality is nothing more than neurochemical wiring, therefore you are forced to think whatever the particular chemical wiring in your brain makes you think.
Knowing truth is subservient to wellbeing, on the evolutionary worldview.
So it is quite possible that you believe what you believe because of the comfort it provides, not because it is true.
And how would you ever know?
You'd have to use the very thing (chemical reactions in your brain) to try to ascertain if the chemical reactions in your brain is accurately assessing truth.
A vicious circle, from which the atheist cannot escape.
The passion upon which materialists defend their worldview does not add weight to its truthfulness. Unbelievers can claim that it is justified to remain agnostic, or to reject that there must be a supernatural reality beyond the physical world. They rest their confidence in their finite minds, and sensory perceptions.
Since we are limited, the truth of ultimate reality must be revealed to us. God has done this. He has given us the book of nature, scriptures, and consciousness of moral values. Therefore, incredulity is not justified. Wisdom is to trust the Lord and his revelation which makes theistic belief rational.
http://www.turtlereader.com/authors/charles-darwin/the-life-and-letters-of-charles-darwin-day-99-of-188/
1. http://www.bethinking.org/is-there-meaning-to-life/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god
2. http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is-god-real-evidence-from-the-laws-of-logic/
3. https://www.godorabsurdity.com/truth.html
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1375-the-practical-impossibility-of-atheism
Atheists believe, they are intelligent, based on their brains, which were not intelligently designed
The atheistic worldview cannot account for the laws of logic/absolutes, and must borrow from the Christian worldview in order to rationally argue.
Atheists assume their senses and ability to reason are accurately digesting the information around us. That is an unprovable presupposition. Like the laws of logic. You have to assume them in order to prove them. Which is another presupposition most all humans hold. Atheists also presuppose that objective moral values exist - like it is wrong to torture, rape and kill babies for fun. But atheists cannot consistently claim that any moral values exist, if there is no prescribing entity. So they borrow constantly from the Christian worldview. But the atheists can not consistently account for the validity of his presuppositions while the believer in God, and in special, Christian, can. God has given us our ability to reason. Atheists have no reason to believe in their own reasoning and any of anyone else. The naturalistic worldview collapses right here. Unless the truth of Gods existence is presupposed, and so, that our thinking reliable, logically sound and trustworthy, we can not make sense of the world whatsoever. The logical evolution of an honest thinker which bases his worldview on naturalism is nihilism. If he is weakly constituted he may fall victim to despair, the recognition that life has no intrinsic meaning.
To overcome this, Nietzsche invented and imagined a person as the “overman” (Übermensch), the one who teaches “the meaning of the earth” and has no need of otherworldly supports for the values he embodies. He understood that taken naturalism, materialism, existentialism, atheism as true, nihilism is the ultimate meaning of the moral point of view, its life-denying essence, and he reconfigures the moral idea of autonomy so as to release the life-affirming potential within it. Nietzsche also rationalized a way to overcome the vacuum of the existence of objective moral values based on prescription, " ought to be's ", which can only exist in face of a prescribing entity, by suggesting an autonomy “beyond good and evil.” But if one is to speak of autonomy, meaning, and value at all, the mode of being beyond good and evil cannot simply be a lawless state of arbitrary and impulsive behaviour. If such existence is to be thinkable there must be a standard by which success or failure can be measured. Nietzsche variously indicates such a standard in his references to “health,” “strength,” and “the meaning of the earth.”
If our biological features, and more importantly our cognitive machinery evolved from some random forces of nature can we trust our brain and our thinking? the very thinking, belief or trust in naturalism which are the products of blind or random forces of nature?? If we are just an evolved, ape-like being, the result of random mutations, why should someone believe in someone else's arguments? How could I trust that our rationale makes actually any sense?
“But then with me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
[ Charles Darwin To William Graham 3 July 1881]”
C.S.Lewis: One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the naturalistic worldview].... The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears.... [U]nless Reason is an absolute--all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.
"Is Theology Poetry?", The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
http://mirror1.booksdescr.org/ads.php?md5=9BFA0EA873D6877852A258BE06FC0A5E
C.S.Lewis:
“Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of the primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole [i.e. materialism], then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”
“To find the metaphysical beliefs…governing scientific research…it would have been enough to speak of one belief, the belief in a personal rational Creator. It was this belief, as cultivated especially within a Christian matrix, which supported the [scientific] view for which the world was an objective and orderly entity investigable by the mind because the mind too was an orderly and objective product of the same rational, that is, perfectly consistent Creator.
Dr. Stanley Jaki, Templeton Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of physics, Seton Hall University
An atheist must believe ( as it is the only alternative to a creator ) that he is the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its supposed chemical and biological evolutionary progress, the by-product of natural, undirected and spontaneous causes. When he claims there is no evidence of Gods existence, he presupposes that he can trust his senses and rational thoughts, a product of these natural processes and that the world and sensory perceptions are objective and orderly entities. Unless the inferences based on sensory observations and reason are valid and trustworthy, the whole picture disappears and is in ruins. But, as Darwin stated, if man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, how can it be of any value or at all trustworthy? Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? Here is an obvious contradiction. Atheists ask me at the same moment to accept their conclusions and to discredit the only basis upon which that conclusion can be based. As Dr. Stanley Jaki stated: Science started in the past centuries based on the Christian matrix, which supported the [scientific] view for which the world was an objective and orderly entity investigable by the mind because the mind too was an orderly and objective product of the same rational, that is, perfectly consistent Creator.
Materialism claims that everything has a material cause. That would include human behaviour. That would include the workings of the brain, which is said by atheistic materialists to be equivalent to the mind. Therefore we are the directed, not the directors of our actions. This, in turn, leads to the inescapable conclusion that no human belief, rationalization, or mental process can be relied on with respect to anything. A deterministic view such as this obviously undercuts the ability to direct one's own destiny or thoughts, for that matter. That view leads furthermore to the claim that there is no free will, but that all our actions are pre-determined by atoms, molecules, and organic chemistry.
Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God. 1
The strong atheist which claims that most probably, no God(s) exists, has no rational basis to make any meaningful and trustworthy claim, if his brain is developed from the mind of the lower animals, evolved from some random forces of nature, some random mutations, why should someone believe in anyone else's arguments and claims? Atheists are irrational and atheism is self-defeating.
John Bynum : The only way to know anything at all is to know everything.....***OR***..... have revelation from someone who does.
The atheist worldview can not account for knowledge. So as soon as he makes a knowledge claim he has already abandoned his worldview and borrowed from the theistic / judeo-christian worldview. Which means he has lost as soon as he begins to debate. Christianity is true by virtue of the impossibility of the contrary.
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Atheist: We rely on logic, reason, and science.
Answer: How did logic and reason emerge? randomly? luck?
" aghmm .....&*$#@..... - scratching head - science is working on it. "
Truth said: Atheists rely on wishful thinking, blind faith, and random chance as a powerful mechanism to explain our existence. Its a perfect example of non-reasoning, and self-delusion. Atheists are irrational and atheism is self-defeating.
"DNA neither knows nor cares, DNA just is, and we dance to its music." Richard Dawkins The forgoing militates against every innate sense of our own nature. Assertion justified.
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course, I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
― C.S. Lewis
Atheists assume their senses and ability to reason are accurately digesting the information around us. That is an unprovable presupposition. Like the laws of logic. You have to assume them in order to prove them. Which is another presupposition most all humans hold. But the atheists can not consistently account for the validity of his presuppositions while the Christian can. God has given us our ability to reason. Atheists have nothing. Their worldview collapses right there. Unless the truth of Gods existence is our presupposition we can not make sense of the world whatsoever.
The only way to know anything at all is to know everything.....***OR***..... have revelation from Someone who does.
The atheist worldview can not account for knowledge. So as soon as he makes a knowledge claim he has already abandoned his worldview and borrowed from the Christian worldview. Which means he has lost as soon as he begins to debate. Christianity is true by virtue of the impossibility of the contrary.
Atheism shoots science in the foot and then shoots itself in the head! Atheism cannot account for the existence of logic and it has to deny the existence of truth ( Darwin himself doubted that the human brain which was the result of irrational processes could be trusted to be rational ) Without this two science is impossible! If you take the view of common ancestry and macroevolution as true, you cannot trust anything about what you think is true. How are you sure your thoughts are logical if they derive from a lucky evolutionary accident that was not logical at all?
You believe ON SHEER FAITH, that something came from nothing (absolutely nothing?) -for no reason. Therefore, according to your belief system, non-material entities such as objective truth is a myth since even the most basic principles of logic are all produced by a random accident, as is even your brain. This, in turn, means that your every thought is a random, meaningless chemical fizz. So, if your belief system is true, then the comment you just made is nothing more than the accidental result of a meaningless chemical reaction, in a randomly formed chunk of brain matter. Newsflash my friend. No one gives a hoot about any so-called data produced by a randomly programmed computer. Such a computer would be inherently unreliable and the data would be presumed faulty. Therefore, when atheists say that the Universe is an accident, and nothing within it is designed for a purpose, including their own brains, they cede any right to have their randomly produced thoughts taken seriously. So, when you call anything "superstitious", your comment is nothing more than a bad joke, or more accurately, a self-deception that you pull on yourself. Like all atheists, you want to have your cake and eat it too when you claim that 1. God is a superstition and 2. You'd do well to constantly remind yourself that your thoughts,(according to atheism) are completely meaningless chemical reactions, occurring in a long chain of cause and effect from mechanical, purposeless physical forces acting on your equally random and accidentally produced brain chemistry and therefore, within an atheistic framework, your thoughts could never be meaningful or worth sharing.
The difference is not in the existence of the soul, or mind itself but in the concept of a designed, planned product of an intelligent Mind, as opposed to an accident generated from blind random chance. If your brain is designed to think according to rational, logical patterns and if it comes with an organic version of pre- installed software that allows it not only to function rationally but also to recognize its own rationality, then you can proceed to analyze problems with confidence that your thoughts truly possess rationality, meaning, value, and purpose.
The only design gives you that certainty of rationality, meaning, value and purpose. Blind chance can only produce a more random blind chance. Without the prospect of an Eternal Mind, all is meaningless. Plato and Aristotle recognized this and hence their concepts of non-material Forms and the Unmoved Mover. Later, Aquinas realized that the great minds of Plato and Aristotle had paved a road that can only possibly lead to the Triune God of the Christianity.
from all practical appearances we just shouldn't be here but here we are, you and i, and although we disagree on fundamental issues of life we are both apparently rational beings. But where does rationality come from? Ask that and we're back in the loop of causation. Every effect has a cause. That is, as you well know, one of the Basic Principles of Logic. It follows then that no effect is greater than its cause and as we observe our material world, sure enough, we can point to nothing that was not caused by something that was powerful enough as a secondary, instrumental, or material cause, to cause that effect. But when we come to the sticky, no material effects that we observe and even intuitively acknowledge, such as rationality, morality, objective truth, and objective standards of aesthetics, as well as the Virtues such as, "love of our family and fellow man is better than hate" suddenly atheism chokes! Thanks to Mac Howell
If a man, obviously drunk, whom you have never met, stumbles up to you on the street and says to you "Your mother told me to tell you not to go home, the house is full of spiders." You will not trust what he says. Why? Because he is irrational, because, he is drunk, and we know that we cannot trust irrational sources.
But if our brains are ultimately the product of a series of blind, irrational causes then how could we possibly know what truth is?
You might suggest that natural selection is not blind in the sense of being irrational, it picks the best, or picks what works. But blind, deaf, senseless random mutation has to produce anything and everything from which natural selection selects. Natural selection cannot create ANYTHING. It cannot select a green bug from four brown bugs. It is totally dependent on totally random forces.
It may select what works, but how or why would we imagine we could know "truth". Why would we imagine the idea of truth? Why would we imagine? And yet we do. And we believe there is such a thing as truth and that we can know it. Credit to Rick Swindell
Is God Real? Evidence from the Laws of Logic 2
If you take the view of common ancestry and macroevolution as true, you cannot trust anything about what you think is true. How are you sure your thoughts are logical if they derive from a lucky evolutionary accident that was not logical at all?
Most of us don’t think much about the physical or non-physical laws of the universe necessary for us to exist (and make sense of our existence). As an example, we usually take the law of gravity for granted; it doesn’t really matter how the law operates or what forces lie behind it. We simply accept the fact we live in a world where gravity is a reality. In a similar way, there are many conceptual laws we also take for granted. These abstract truths order our world and guide our exploration and experience. One area of conceptual truth involves a body of concepts we call the Laws of Logic. Is God real? The existence of the Laws of Logic may provide us with an answer.
Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God. 1
If the Bible were not true, nothing could be true - and if nothing were true then you couldn't even make sense of your question! (Or any question or any knowledge ). That's the absurdity of denying God - the one true source of truth. It's important to realize that to determine truth we need to not only have the right sources, but we must put them in the correct order of importance. Our own personal bias can also often play a big part in determining what we choose to believe is true. And if you don't have a solid basis for knowledge and truth, the result is you can't know anything and you will end up being deceived. Truth can be defined as that which corresponds with reality. (A correspondence theory of truth). However, the problem is - how do you know what reality is? How do you know what is real?
"What is "real"? How do you define "real"?" (Morpheus - The Matrix)
In order for our reasoning process to be trustworthy and valid, it would have to be the result of a rational creation process of the creator of man. How could non-reason produce reason? Non-logic produce logic? If apples cannot produce bananas, how could unanimated matter produce logic and that reason discover physical truths which involve complex math and metaphysical truths which are essentially non-materialistic? Naturalism is like someone sitting on a branch of a tree and saw it off. Atheism is self-defeating.
Atheists argue about being right based on a thinking process, which has no foundation or validness to be trustworthy if its origin is not rational.
Only the believer in a rational God, which is the ultimate source of rationality and intelligence, and created humans in his likeliness, equipped with the same ability of reason, logic, sound thinking process and able to reach metaphysical truths can trust his mind, because he believes to be the result of a higher mind, which has all these faculties in a perfect, superior manner.
Under atheism, all life is a mere accident of a mindless, non-rational, meaningless universe. How does any non-rational process create mind and rationality? To anticipate the usual responses to this problem – such as that we have observations that confirm the reliability of our minds – I add, no we cannot trust the reliability of the human mind by using the human mind to test its reliability. This is an evident contradiction!
This is a good & valid argument in the toolbox of an apologist, but in my view, not enough or the only way to provide justification for a theistic view of origins. I do not see any attractiveness for that reason to stick to the presuppositional approach, which excludes the traditional method, which permits a much broader spectrum of arguments and views which point to God. Exploring these proofs is an exciting intellectual adventure, full of surprises, and awe-inspiring things that the creator has prepared for the ones that seek deep enough.
If you are an unbeliever.
Could it be, that the arguments that have been provided by theists, ARE sound, and the God of the Bible does indeed exist, and you are just self-delusional?
No you say?
How could you possibly know ?
According to natural materialism, your rationality is nothing more than neurochemical wiring, therefore you are forced to think whatever the particular chemical wiring in your brain makes you think.
Knowing truth is subservient to wellbeing, on the evolutionary worldview.
So it is quite possible that you believe what you believe because of the comfort it provides, not because it is true.
And how would you ever know?
You'd have to use the very thing (chemical reactions in your brain) to try to ascertain if the chemical reactions in your brain is accurately assessing truth.
A vicious circle, from which the atheist cannot escape.
The passion upon which materialists defend their worldview does not add weight to its truthfulness. Unbelievers can claim that it is justified to remain agnostic, or to reject that there must be a supernatural reality beyond the physical world. They rest their confidence in their finite minds, and sensory perceptions.
Since we are limited, the truth of ultimate reality must be revealed to us. God has done this. He has given us the book of nature, scriptures, and consciousness of moral values. Therefore, incredulity is not justified. Wisdom is to trust the Lord and his revelation which makes theistic belief rational.
http://www.turtlereader.com/authors/charles-darwin/the-life-and-letters-of-charles-darwin-day-99-of-188/
1. http://www.bethinking.org/is-there-meaning-to-life/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god
2. http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is-god-real-evidence-from-the-laws-of-logic/
3. https://www.godorabsurdity.com/truth.html
Last edited by Otangelo on Tue Dec 28, 2021 5:33 pm; edited 24 times in total
