Originally posted by Clete
But you maintain that you are neutral about the evaluation of evidence. This is where your fatal flaw is.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Even though I am an agnostic, I am not a neutral with regard to the existence of God. While I cannot say with 100% certainty that God does not exist, I can say that I am tentatively quite confident that the probability of God's existence is small. I'm confident of this because there is no evidence for God's existence. Likewise, for the same reason, I'm confident that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy do not exist. In other words, the absence of evidence has biased me in favor of believing that God does not exist.
You are not neutral at all, you are an enemy of God and all the evidence in the world or lack thereof has nothing to do with why you are an unbeliever.
Why do you think I am an unbeliever? Because I am Satan?
I would like it very much if you could respond to the following quote from Battle Royalle VII...
Oringinaly posted by Bob Enyart
Transcendental Proof for God
As soon as the atheist says he wants to resolve this Battle Royale in a rational way, he has lost. Here’s why:
God exists because of the impossibility of the alternative.
It's impossible for God to not exist? :chuckle:
Atheists claim that only evidence based upon logic and reason is valid. But how do atheists validate that claim? They cannot.
So, evidence based on illogic and irrationality is valid?
For [BA10-9] if atheists attempt to justify “logic and reason” by logic and reason, then they have based their entire godless worldview on circular reasoning; and we find that rational atheism is an impossibility.
No one justifies logic and reason by logic and reason. That's nonsense. Logic and reason itself always does the justifying.
And if they cannot defend the foundation of their worldview by logic or reason, they leave themselves only with the illogical and irrational, which accounts for arguments actually offered by atheists.
But atheists and agnostics CAN defend their world view by logic or reason.
To justify logic apart from circular reasoning, you must seek the foundation of logic outside of logic itself.
Non sequitur.
Thus we learn that, apart from belief in God, nothing can be truly knowable.
There are lots of things that can be knowable. It is God that cannot be knowable.
If an honest and consistent atheist could actually exist, he would not claim that atheism is defensible by logic, since logic itself is indefensible by logic apart from circular reasoning.
Nonsense.
Therefore on the one hand, if the atheist claims to know anything at all, he unwittingly has shown that atheism (the alternative to God) is an impossibility, because apart from God, nothing is knowable, as demonstrated in this paragraph.
Again, it is God that is unknowable.
On the other hand, as a last ditch attempt to consistently defend atheism, the atheist may claim to be a no-nothing, that is, to know nothing at all, because by atheism, actual knowledge is impossible.
Atheism does not lead to the proposition that knowledge is impossible. Atheists know many things. I disagree with the premise that we can know with 100% certainty that God does not exist. This makes me an agnostic. I have no reason to believe God exists. So I don't. Some call my position "weak atheism." Atheists, on the other hand, think they have good reasons to believe that God does not exist. My nonbelief in God is based on an absence of evidence for God. Atheists who believe they have some evidence of God's nonexistence are called "strong atheists."
Popular atheism is moving in this general direction. When this happens, we theists point out that the pinnacle achievement of atheism is ignorance.
Nonsense. Atheists know many things. God is beyond our ability to know. Personal experiences, which lead to
private "knowledge," are as publicly unverifiable to others as is God.
As I have said, every observation provides direct evidence for God
No, every observation provides direct evidence for existence. It requires a leap of faith to jump to the conclusion God is responsible for existence.
while atheism struggles to account for anything whatsoever.
Atheism is not in itself a method of accounting for the way things are. Science does that.
The honest thinker who wants to work out a systematic atheistic worldview will find that without God, the only things that are possible are nothing and ignorance (the lack of knowledge).
Atheists have knowledge of many things. Belief in God adds nothing to our understanding of the world around us. What is the value of asserting that "God did it"? The notion of God has no explanatory value.
Apart from God, nothing can be known or justified, not microevolution nor heliocentricity, not a wit of logic nor even a half-wit.
Nonsense.
No certainty can exist without Him who is the foundation of truth, and those who love truth, love Him.
On the contrary, no certainty of God's existence can exist!
A fundamental difference between God and logic is that logic is a system of thought that attempts to rationally justify ideas, and as an idea itself, logic must somehow be justifiable, or found to be illogical.
More nonsense. Logic itself does not need justification. It is logic that does the justifying. We can disagree for a while what it means to be logical, but eventually such agreement can be had.
Saying that logic itself needs to be logically justified is like saying mathematics itself needs to be mathematically proven. It's akin to saying cooking itself needs to be cooked.
God is not a system of thought that needs to be justified. He is an actual being.
How does one come to this certain knowledge that God is an actual being? Through faulty logic. Is there independently verifiable empirical evidence for this alleged actual being?
And while the existence of logic apart from God is self-contradictory as just demonstrated in BA10-9, there exists no contradiction in the existence of the rational God whose very mind and thoughts provide the foundation for logic itself. And while we cannot see God, as we cannot see hope or love, the Bible defines “faith” as accepting “the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
We can see hope and love, because they are behaviors, not ethereal psychic things.
Accepting something as evidence without any kind of empirical observation it is not rational. Hence, faith, is not rational.
In giving my first eight lines of evidence (except for the epistemological part of [BA10-7]) I assume that atheists often use logic and reason (imitating Christians) even though they cannot logically defend doing so in their own godless worldview. But without a foundation for logic, I also realize that their intellectual discipline allows them to treat all evidence illogically, since they have no ultimate commitment to reason, not even to logic itself, and certainly not to truth or morality.
Nonsense.
So, in an atheist’s attempt to win a debate, there is nothing inherently inconsistent or wrong with lying, cheating, or quitting in an attempt to spoil the endeavor (which I will not let Zakath do); for there is no ultimate reason for honesty, no absolute commitment to truth, and no foundation for an unwavering determination to be logical. Word games, contradictions, unresponsiveness, slight of hand, obfuscation, misstatements, and ignoring arguments all can be used as consistent with atheism in order to attempt to win the debate, and in actual practice, such deception is the strength of the atheist’s ability to persuade.
More nonsense.
Yet surely, God either exists or does not exist. (Ahh, see, there I go again! I said “surely!” I’ve used logic here, which a theist can use with certainty, whereas the atheist cannot absolutely defend even such simple logic.)
What allows a theist to use logic, while the atheist cannot?
The atheist worldview is dysfunctional, and they can only operate by borrowing the certainty that is possible with God.
Belief in God can lead one to a false sense of certainty.
By the way, that is an insight we can find in Christ’s statement that, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), by which He was not claiming that square circles could be drawn, nor defending any irrationality, but that all things knowable or doable, especially evident in the matter of salvation itself, are only possible because of God.
Now I get it! All things are knowable because
the Bible says so!!
:doh: How ... illogical of me to think otherwise!!
In contrast to atheism, my theistic worldview is functional, because I recognize that logic and reason do exist, that they are absolutes, and that they are possible because they flow from the mind of God.
Logic and reason are not absolutes. They are merely ways humans have come to make sense of things.
Logic exists and can only exist as a consequence of the rational thoughts in the mind of God.
:darwinsm:
God is non-contradictory, truthful, logical, reasonable, and knowledgeable, and there is no other epistemological basis upon which we can absolutely defend truth, logic, reason, and knowledge.
Nonsense.
Popular atheism has come to accept that it rejects absolute morality. As mankind corporately continues to think through these matters, given enough time, popular atheism will also come to accept that atheism also rejects absolute truth, logic, reason, math, and science.
Nonsense.
Again: the pinnacle achievement of atheism is ignorance. We find examples of this in the early rounds of this debate and in the life of Bertrand Russell. Zakath readily talks about morality, and admits that he does not believe in absolute morality (although he recoils from the ramifications), whereas he is more hesitant to talk about truth, and posts 2a to 4b show that his intuition tells him that an atheist should resist defending even the existence of truth. While Zakath consciously acknowledges that atheism disallows absolute morality, only subconsciously does he fear that atheism also disallows truth, logic, and reason. So like most atheists, Zakath has yet to embrace the intellectual, though amoral, ramifications of atheism.
:blabla:
Apart from a righteous God, as Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason rightly observed, no such thing as absolute morality can exist; and conversely, if Zakath admitted the existence of absolute morality, he would thereby concede the existence of God.
Even if it were possible to know that a moral principle was absolute, it does not logically follow that such an absolute necessarily derived from God.
What atheists disdain most about God is absolute right and wrong (because they pridefully rebel against His moral constraints, desiring immorality with impunity).
Yeah, right. Atheists are
really atheists because the desire to live an immoral life to spite God. :kookoo:
Apart from God logic cannot exist, since it is illogical to prove something via circular reasoning, that is, you should not assume (or declare by faith) that which you are claiming to prove, so atheists cannot build a consistent, godless, logical worldview.
This guy is simply full of nonsense, isn't he? :yawn:
Notice that it is with foundations and origins that atheists have the greatest difficulty in even attempting to construct a defense, as regarding the origins of the universe, life, consciousness, personality, higher biological functions, and now, even of logic itself.
What "greatest difficulty"? I don't see any.
I suppose simply asserting that "God did it" explains everything? On the contrary, it explains
nothing!
Why is this? Because God is the foundation of all that exists, physical and spiritual, rational and logical.
Nonsense.
So atheists are stuck beginning with faith in their origins, apart from any evidence, science, logic, reason, or laws which predict or justify their faith in atheist origins, and then by faith they construct arguments for origins which, unlike the theistic origins claims, defy all evidence, science, logic, reason, and law, superficially and fundamentally.
The opposite is true.
So only with a rational God can the laws of logic can truly exist, as can math and the laws of science, and they can be known only because knowledge can exist.
:kookoo:
Bertrand Russell devoted his long life to providing an atheistic foundation for logic, reason, math, and knowledge, and after many decades, he became increasingly uncertain of almost all knowledge. Again, and again: the pinnacle achievement of atheism is ignorance.
Wrong.
With clarity Los Alamos scientist John Baumgartner reveals an implication of Einstein’s Gulf: “If something as real as linguistic information has existence independent of matter and energy, from causal considerations it is not unreasonable to suspect an entity [like God] capable of originating linguistic information also is ultimately non-material [i.e., spiritual] in its essential nature. An immediate conclusion of these observations concerning linguistic information [the existence of ideas, knowledge, logic, reason, law] is that materialism, which has long been the dominant philosophical perspective in scientific circles, with its foundational presupposition that there is no non-material reality, is simply and plainly false. It is amazing that its falsification is so trivial.”
I see no falsification. I see only nonsensical assertions.
What gives intelligibility to the world? Only the thoughts in the mind of God can make the cosmos understandable. Nothing but God can demonstrably or even conceivably allow for actual knowledge.
:darwinsm:
The reason Einstein could not identify any way for matter to give meaning to symbols is that there is no way, for the physical laws have no symbolic logic function, and they cannot have any such function because logic is not physical and so is outside of the jurisdiction of physical laws. No physical law can even influence symbolic logic, yet the rules of logic constrain the physical laws, showing Baumgartner’s point that the spiritual takes precedence over the physical!
What is this guy smoking? :dizzy:
... the atheist’s fear of the absolute will cause him to hesitate.
:noid:
If that phobia is strong enough, it could bring him to expose his own rejection of logic itself. A2-1: “No, the laws of logic are not absolute!” as the leading atheist Stein maintained in the above mentioned debate. And if logic is not absolute but rather a consensus of rules which some men have created, then any logical argument for atheism is really just an appeal to authority, an appeal to the authority of those men or those societies which agreed upon the current set of laws.
Even though logic is not absolute, it is not an appeal to authority either. Logic is a way humans can communicate with clarity, consistency and efficiency.
And since atheists reject the source of all authority (God), they especially despise appeals to authority.
Why are Christians so ready to appeal to some unverifiable authority?
(When pressing for an answer to Q2, expect some obfuscation, word games, or unresponsiveness.) When it dawns upon them, whether consciously or not, that denying its absolute nature turns logic into an argument from authority, some atheists then hesitate to say that logic is not absolute.
Denying the absoluteness of logic does not turn it into an argument from authority.
But the unbeliever must step out of his own realm of atheism and become inconsistent to answer yes. A2-2: Yes, the laws of logic are absolute. He will then face the immediate follow-up question for which we will not permit him a circular justification: “What validates logic?” What justifies your faith in logic? Atheists tell the theist not to beg the question by using circular arguments. So by his own worldview, we will not allow him to assume (by faith) that which he claims he should be able to prove by logic (remember A1).
Logic is a means of validation or clarification. The success of logic at validation validates it. One does not need faith in logic. Logic works! If one form of logic failed to work for us, we would modify it or adopt a more consistent form of logic.
This atheist finds himself with the same difficulty as his predecessors who tried to defend absolute morality apart from God: it can’t be done.
I don't try to defend absolute morality. I don't believe in it.
And so, popular atheism has long ago yielded absolute morality to theists. (With even knowledge, logic, and reason falling victim to atheism, not surprisingly, the godless long ago discarded wisdom and righteousness.) Paralleling their loss of absolute morality, apart from God today’s atheist cannot defend the absolute laws of logic either.
There are no Platonic absolute laws of logic.
Regarding A2-1, as with morality, atheism will move toward a consensus against the existence of logic. For eventually, either atheism collapses, or its trust in logic collapses. They will redefine logic to mean just convention, as they have redefined right and wrong.
Logic is more than just convention. It works!
Too bad the kind of logic that many fundies use does not work.
As atheists fall into denial by increasingly rejecting the universality of logic, they will eventually yield logic to theists, just as they did with morality. Such intellectual schizophrenia demonstrates the claim of Christians that atheism is inherently self-contradictory, and more than just morality, atheism also undermines logic.
Christianity is based on poor logic.
For, rational atheism is easily demonstrated to be impossible [BA10-9], and the transcendental proof for God affirms His existence by the impossibility of the alternative.
The "transcendental proof for God" proves nothing but that some people go to great lengths to justify in their beliefs in fairy tales and superstitions. One problem though, the "proof" does not work.
And so, which worldview is logical, theism or atheism?
Which world view is more consistent with empirical evidence? Atheism. Why? Because neither the workings nor the origin of the universe are not understood any better by an appeal to some all-powerful supernatural entity with a personality. Therefore, why believe in God when doing so is unnecessary and offers no explanatory value? The "God did it" hypothesis explains nothing.
Once again I will grant that if right and wrong does not exist, and now if logic does not exist, then God does not exist. So if Zakath wanted to resolve this Battle Royale disagreement over God’s existence in a rational way, he has lost, for atheism has no rational basis.
Sorry, but it is Christianity that has no rational basis.
