Originally posted by novice
For Zakath to be successful in this debate he will have to give compelling evidence that everything that exists from the universe, to our solar system to the first cell to the human being could come into existence without help from a supernatural force.
Or at very least Zakath will have to give us a conceptual idea of how this might have happened.
So far, he has failed miserably.
This is indeed the weakest side of the position of Zakath, which is due to the fact that he is not a consequential materialist, and therefore can not claim to be a true atheist.
Here is what materialism has to say about this issue:
Matter denotes the category of that what exists outside and independend of the mind.
Matter and motion / change are inseperateble, cause nowhere we can detect matter without motion or motion without matter.
Space and time just denote the "modes of existence" of matter.
Materialism acknowledges the fact that matter is infinite.
This acknowledgement does not direct to any specific age or spatial extent of matter, but it denotes that material transformations are endlessly evolving in time, without begin or end.
Infinity of matter means that any material form residing within a finite spatio-temporal extent, transforms into a new material form, also within a fine spatio-temporal extend.
And this can be said to be the case for all scales of material formations, and throughout all of time, without begin or end.
As such, no "begin of matter" can be conceived of.
Outside of matter, nothing exists, at least not in an objective and independend way (outside and independend of our mind).
As such the concept of a deity has no existence outside and independend of our mind.
And as a comment on this discussion, it also makes clear that this whole discussion is in fact senseless, since the discussion is not about wether or not the existence of that supposed deity, has some objective existence, outside and independend of the mind.
I see no reason to reject the idea that God exists as a concept of language and of mind, meaningfull to many people. Why should one reject that?
The real issue is however wether or not such a deity has objective existence, that is : apart from and outside of our mind.