"If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must already have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!"
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986), p. 316.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A Dawkins-ism
Feel free to add corrective where it's needed. And, man! Is it ever needed!
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3 comments:
http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/673-who-made-god
This little website has an interesting line of argument that, I believe, answers Mr. Dawkins. It certainly answers the Who made God? question in a very logical manner.
Cheers,
Wyatt
Thanks, Wyatt! I'll look it up tonight at work. As it is, however, I take Dawkins's comment on level with the twaddle that is the question "can God create a rock he cannot lift?" It's just gibberish. More later...
Problem is if god is infinite it cancels arguments such as Kalam's cosmological argument.
That then begs to ask, was there a beginning?
Not sure why you would accept that God created everything but nothing created god....
The whole thought that God is was and always will be is in Christopher's words absurd.
"The point is that science, Scripture, logic, math all assume a starting point for what is based on the fact that something is. Denial of that is absurd. Thus, we can determine an actual point where something had to have been 'created' or somehow initiated into being; it is scientifically and logically impossible to believe otherwise.|
Yes i know he was arguing a tangent point here. But if that argument is valid to explain that gos existed before the known universe. It is equally valid to argue that something existed before God.
Because for God to exist, assuming Kalam's argument is valid, then there must have been a beginning for God.
Of course if we can accept the possibility that the infinite can exist than we must be equally willing to accept the possibility that the universe has existed infinitely.
Or at least I am.
I fail to see logic behind arguing that an infinite creature created the universe because the infinite is not possible.
Questioning the beginning of God is not twaddle. It is paramount to the discussion of creationism in my opinion.
Also in that website that Wyatt linked to. In the Logically speaking area it argue that logically something has always existed.
Naming that something as God is purely a faith decision (based on that website)
Likewise the website makes the assumptions that the something that has always existed has been a constant.
Why is that? Why could it not be something that has changed forms throughout an infinite period of time?
So while the website that Wyatt linked to is interesting, the logic on the site falls very much short in logically explaining that God has always existed.
\to help clarify my reasoning a point by point dissection of that link.
1) Assume the law of conservation of mass, and the law of conservation of energy is true, than yes something has had to exist at all times.
This is reasonable and excludes arguments such as kalam's stating that the infinite is impossible.
Of course if those laws prove to invalid at some point it opens up the possibility of spontaneous creation. Which would be weird.
Of course when we include mass-energy equivalence then all we would need for spontaneous creation of matter would be a huge amount of energy. Again a starting point would be nice to have as in what created that energy, even if it has no mass.
2)Concludes that something has always existed but poses the questions, what?
Far cry from an proof that God has always been. it actually questions it.
3)How can it be demonstrated that the eternal something is not material?
Making the leap from non-material to spiritual is pretty large.
I think it would make much more sense and be demonstratable to say that the non-material would have to be energy.
I simply can not make a blind leap saying that every non-material thing is a spirit.
4)Assigning an age to the universe, or theorizing that the universe had a beginning and will have an end has no bearing on whether or not there is a god.
Simply that the universe started and will end.
5)Assuming that something has always existed and it is non-material, I can live with. Energy could have existed before matter.
Stating that anything non-material is spirit is far fetched.
Even if we agree with the website and believe that the eternal something is spiritual in nature nothing in this argument helps to state that the spirit is constant or even singular.
using these logical arguments we could argue a whole slew of different points.
Such as:
-God was created by a spiritual force before him that no longer exists, much like generations of mortals.
This still fulfills all the above logical arguments.
-Many spiritual forces simultaneously exist and always have and always will.
Again the only thing that states the everlasting is god is scriptural. I still fail to see any logical explanation that God has always existed. In fact I see arguments on this sight, in the logical section, that can be used to argue that God was created.
of course that only works if we ignore the scriptural evidence which I feel is difficult for one of strong faith.
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