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are to facebook share to pinterest labels christian science faith god jesus past religion skeptic saturday august 1 2020 the lottery and the fine tuning argument to be clear we are not certain the physical constants of the universe can vary and if they can by how much it is the assumption of those who use the fine tuning argument for god that they can vary by a great degree let s assume they re right and for the sake of argument nail it down to five constants the following compares winning the universal lottery to winning the actual lottery to win a state lottery one needs to match five specific numbers for humans to live in this universe it needs five physical constants to have specific values if i alone play the only draw of the lottery ever allowed and i guess the five numbers at random the odds of me winning the lottery are 1 in 100 000 if the only universe to ever exist forms randomly the odds of that universe having the variables that support human life are 1 in 100 000 can either scenario happen by chance yes but i ll grant that it s enough of a long shot to be suspicious that the lotto was fixed or the universe was designed now imagine 100 000 people play the lottery there s about a 64 chance someone will win imagine 100 000 universes form either concurrently or sequentially there s about a 64 chance that one of these universes have constants that support human life this illustrates how a sufficiently large multiverse should remove any suspicion of a cheater nor a designer now imagine a lottery in which each player plays different numbers so every combination is covered when 100 000 play when the number is drawn someone is ensured a win while everyone else loses imagine a universe in which every combination of constants can support some manner of intelligent life human s might not exist but whatever is here in our place could likewise make a fine tuning argument for their god it would not be a valid argument because whatever the constants someone is here to claim that no one could be here otherwise this illustrates the anthropic principle at work posted by grundy at 1 56 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels apologetics argue atheism debunk fine tuning argument god religion tuesday june 4 2019 god both is and can t be unchanging christians believe jesus has a set of attributes on the authority of scripture classic christian apologists took these attributes and formed arguments around them that lead to their god the cosmological argument which argues that a first cause is needed for our universe s origin emphasizes god s atemporal and aspacial attributes to signify that only god is outside time and space god is then uniquely qualified to create time and space under the reasonable assumption that the cause of time and space cannot come from within time and space apologists then recognize a necessary consequence of god s independence from a dimension of duration god is unchanging which leads to an inconsistency that can be laid out in a syllogism much like the cosmological argument itself premise 1 everyone that acts changes from a state of inaction to action premise 2 if there is a creator of the universe that creator acted when creating the universe conclusion therefore if a creator of the universe exists that creator changed the apologist is left arguing for a god with attributes in conflict with the implications of their argument posted by grundy at 11 22 am 17 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday may 17 2019 what motivates a pro life stance what motivates a pro life stance i ask myself this as the abortion issue once again takes center stage let s consider the possibilities a ruling against abortion affects women more than men for obvious reasons we might expect that difference to point to a disagreement on the issue between genders that s not significantly so women are not pro choice on average much more than men however the characteristic that is predictive of a person s stance on abortion is religiosity believers tend to be pro life more often than nonbelievers surprising no one this probably fits with your anecdotal evidence so what it is about religion that makes people pro life to limit confounding factors let s focus on the faith most relevant to america christianity christians believe abortion is a sin and unforgiven sins lead to hell this should be enough for them to want to make abortion illegal right not so fast there are a lot of sins and for most christian denominations they are all equivalent in their weight on the soul murder is as bad as stealing or even lying catholics have a category called mortal sins in which abortion is included but so are many other actions that are legal why do christians put so much time into ending abortions compared to ending divorce or premarital sex both mortal sins i think the answer has to lie in the quality christians believe abortion share with other illegal activities its affect a non consenting second party stealing rape and murder are all sins made illegal because they hurt someone else who did not necessarily want to engage in said sin the same is true for abortion under the assumption that the unborn is someone else so is this the hang up for believers i m not so sure if it is why do believers assign personhood to embryos and fetuses when nonbelievers often do not the best distinction is perhaps the assumption that a soul is created or is otherwise linked to cells at conception i say assumption because the soul of course cannot be detected the soul as a real thing is a belief taught consistently in christianity and has biblical foundations what isn t biblical to the best of my knowledge is that the soul is tied to conception there is no reason a christian could not believe the soul starts at birth as easily as one could believe it starts after parental sex when tissue goes from being soulless to soulful seems to be an arbitrary distinction i suppose without it being outlined in scripture christians are left to guess when the soul is in play and conception is as good a place as any we are left with legislation that will severely alter the course of the country over a guess about a soul for which there is no evidence welcome to america posted by grundy at 12 24 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday february 14 2019 according to the bible god either changes or lies the following is a real exchange with a christian apologist who s written a book and everything christian if christianity were true would you become a christian me i would become christian but i would try to persuade god to make some changes christian because you re so much wiser than omniscient god me hey he occasionally takes the advice of humans in the bible and if i was christian i would believe that christian he takes advice from humans give me an example me exodus 32 shows he changed his plans based on moses advice commentary in exodus 32 9 10 god says he is angry at the people misbehaving down below and is about to destroy them moses advises god to not destroy the people and god listens don t take my word of it read for yourself there are other biblical examples of god saying is it about to do something and a human talking him out of it but exodus is the first that i know christian i d hardly call answering a prayer taking advice me god literally spoke to moses telling him what he was about to do moses persuaded him not to and god did not what else specifically would you like to see from this exchange to qualify christian no comment links to a gotquestions which claims god does not change his mind this exchange reminded me that christian apologetic arguments occasionally conflict with the bible apologists depend on maxims like god does not change because they support other claims for example change denotes time and god is outside time and therefore can not change the author of exodus wasn t aware of that maxim and therein lies the problem apologists must then make their maxims work within scripture in this case if we accept that god does not change that means he always knew he would say he would destroy those people listen to moses and then not destroy those people this reasoning while convoluted feels comfortable to the apologist in that it fits both god s omniscience and god s unchanging nature within the context of exodus but the implications this means that god knowingly lied to moses when he said that he was going to destroy those people god knew that he was not going to destroy those people when he said he was a textbook lie an earlier me might argue that god sinned but i now know how unfruitful that argument is with an apologist god doesn t sin full stop and i can t argue the rules of a made up concept like sin god simply lies which is actually more damning to the christian worldview it throws the word into question how can we trust what god says given proof that he lies to us at this point the apologist can only argue that god lies to us for some good reason because god is good he said so and we can believe him posted by grundy at 10 45 am 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels analysis apologetics apologist atheist bible christian exodus moses religion thursday february 7 2019 without god does morality mean whatever we want a favorite claim among christian apologists is that without god morality can mean whatever we want that s what happens when good and evil is not grounded by a divine standard all we have are individuals with personal preferences judging others with preferences that may well be very different as best an individual or group can only impose their rules and judgements on others with a show of force often referred to as might makes right those human rules and judgements can not be said to have inherent validity while i d love to rebut this claim entirely i can not do that any more than i can grant them that they are fully correct language and ethics are very complicated and both are at play here at the most literal level yes moral terms like good evil right and wrong can mean whatever we want why because moral terms aren t special any word can mean whatever we want this should go without saying but languages are invented and maintained by the population of speakers if enough speakers evolve english so that evil means good that is how it shall be moving forward a single speaker redefining words will find himself unable to effectively communicate with everyone who hasn t adopted his fringe definition that s why the meanings of good and evil tend to remain roughly the same within cultures secular or religious it s hard to get everyone on board for an arbitrary remapping of terms the secular definition of moral good is essentially to behave in a way that is beneficial to others regardless of the letters written or sounds made to communicate this concept it would not change it s value in other words if good is renamed evil tomorrow that would just mean that we would start to value evil over good now the question is do we value the concept we call good because a divine third party made us there s no way to know but we do know that there are reasons for social beings to value the concept we call good independent of supernatural mandates being good to others earns more opportunity for earn friends and make families here i could argue that the odds of finding mates and living longer are increased with this behavior making the instinct to be good a selected trait but i think this argument is only additive and not required for my points since people who do not accept evolution will likely read this i will not argue this further being good allows for the creation of culture and societies that provide benefits ranging from the division of labor to shared resources being good rather than evil keeps animosity from others low and makes for a more safe and stress free life there are many more reasons to be good rather than evil but evildoers still exist apologists argue that people who do wrong do so because they separate themselves from god or ignore that divine moral compass within them some even say that it s an acceptance of moral relativism that swings open the door to sin while it is always wrong for the slave to strike an owner it may be right in the owner s mind for the owner to strike a slave the rapist isn t wrong to rape because in the rapist s mind what s right and wrong are up to whatever we want and the rapist wants to rape while there are individual defectors who periodically discard their value of good to serve base desires they are rarer exceptions more common are those who maintain their value of good with a more narrow view of equality the slave owner treats other whites as peers with the same understanding of good as you or i but define blacks as a class in which the definition does not apply the same could go for the rapist and how he sees women it may not be the definition of good that s a moving target it could be the definition of human there is more to the secular meanings of good and evil after we take into account context motives consent ect what s most important to the point is that every culture has a name for this concept and places a high value on it apologists who admit this attribute it to the aforementioned god given moral compass within us i ll stick with the alternative that all humans share something else a desire to not be alone don t underestimate how lonely and short one s life would be if they placed no value on being good posted by grundy at 12 01 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels apologetics atheist ethics evil god good morality objective right secular subjective wrong tuesday january 8 2019 rights responsibilities justice so an apologist on twitter put out a challenge and i thought that seems easy enough not easy to convince her per se just easy to fulfill the task here it is critics here s your homework assignment begin with the brute facts of existence and a bare minimum of defensible assumptions then using meticulous logic syllogistically arrive at a basis for 1 rights 2 responsibilities 3 justice 4 systematic inquiry science 5 hope sarah salviander sarahsalviander january 6 2019 i can take on the first three at once i ll address the other two if we reach some agreement on the first three off we go premise 1 people exist premise 2 most people don t want to be hurt premise 3 most people don t want to be alone premise 4 hurting others tends to cause either retaliation or isolation premise 5 most people meet the minimum intellectual requirements to notice the validity of the above premises from social experience conclusion 1 from premises hurting others is avoided by most people the concepts of rights responsibilities and justice all serve this conclusion we collectively declare and...