I have seen and heard the one true God!

Okay, this is a continuation on my previous post on the issues of miracles or personal religious experiences being evidence for the existence of a god. As I stated before, all alleged supernatural experiences that are used to prove that God exists are circular arguments since the person making such arguments has to already pressupose the theistic worldview, unless of course, they are omniscient and can rule out all possible natural causes.

Let's say, hypothetically, that Yahweh manifests himself to me. Not only does Yahweh clearly speak to me from a burning bush but he demonstrates to me his awesome power. And I'm not talking about watered down vague examples of God's power that most Christians refer to. Usually when Christians attest to how awesome God's power is, they are referring to events dealing with them going through hard times, someone recovering from an illness, or a person turning to the christian faith. As opposed to these insignificant examples, let's say that Yahweh literally (not metaphorically) causes an entire mountain to move from one location to another right before my eyes. And then, at my request, God causes all the mountains to disappear and causes brand new mountains to form. As proof that I am not hallucinating, I have hundreds of people who are witnessing AND recording such events. Then, God causes the earth to shake and causes the earth to start splitting in two. As a means of protecting us, he elevates us from the ground and keeps us suspended in mid air while he demolishes the ground beneath us. And then within seconds he repairs all the damage done and brings us back to the ground. Any type of supernatural act that we can think of, God does per our request. One person asks that all the fish, sharks, and whales be taken out of the ocean and suspended in mid air for us to see. Everyone of us marvels.

After all the miraculous events take place, God then tells us about who he is. He states that he infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient (characteristics of the theistic God). Now, have all these "miracles" provided evidence that this being possesses all the characteristics that he claims to have? Not at all. Of course, if there are theistic minded people in my group then they immediately will be convinced. It is, however, blantantly obvious that there is a higher being that has extraordinary powers. That point is clear. But it is not clear that this being created the cosmos, or is eternal, or has any of the omni -attributes. Any person in my group that says otherwise has to already presuppose theism.

How do we know that this "god" is even telling us the truth? How do we know that this "god" is not an highly evolved extraterrestrial that has technology so advanced that it is able to manipulate matter and energy in finite ways that it deems fit? How do we know that this being is even a person? It could just simply be a immaterial/spirit machine that is inherently programmed to interact with finite human beings in accordance to how those beings respond or act towards it. Without omniscience, we have no way of knowing or identifying the source of all the phenomena that we have witnessed. All we can know is that there is something that exists that is higher than us. Theism, based on my hypothetical scenario, cannot be established.

Matt Slick's cosmological nonsense

I'm going to take a brief respite from posting arguments against the existence of God and take some time to address a Christian apologist named Matt Slick. Matt Slick owns an apologetics website called CARM (www.carm.org) where he has spent an enormous amount of time writing against practically anything that is against fundamental Christianity. He has a category for secular movements and has atheism in that category. Um, excuse me Matt, but atheism is not a secular movement, it is a lack of belief in a god. If lack of belief in a god is a movement then so is lack of belief in any imaginable being that our brains can come up with.

Matt also has a strong tendency of treating atheism as if it is a religion that teaches doctrines opposed to Christianity such as evolution, big bang cosmology, etc. While it may be true that a good majority of atheists hold to these doctrines, it is not true that atheism is defined as a system of belief that includes these things. As stated above, it is merely a lack of belief in a god, nothing more, nothing less. With that said, when Matt accuses atheism of not being able to provide answers to issues such as cosmology he is presupposing that atheism is even suppose to answer such questions. It is not. Does Matt think that atheism is selling something such as concepts or ideas in the way that religion sells its nonsense? Atheism is not selling anything, rather, we are not buying into what religion is selling. That is what atheism is.

Matt has a few pet arguments which he keeps in his immediate arsenal and uses heavily in debates. These arguments are the cosmological argument for the existence of God, the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG), and the argument from morality. In this post I will focus on his cosmological argument. One thing that I personally enjoy about deconstructing Matt's argument online as opposed to live verbal debate is that he tends to accuse his opponents of misrepresenting what he says. In this case, I'm going to be posting from his website and addressing it point by point to where there's no room for any misrepresentation. Let's begin.

As a worldview, atheism is intellectually bankrupt and is wrought with philosophical problems. One of the biggest is its lack of ability to account for our own existence.

Matt seems to be of the idea that if someone does not have all the answers, especially to issues regarding origins, then their position is bankrupt. Matt elsewhere shows irritation to the alleged arrogance and pride that he sees from atheists but when an atheist humbly states, "I don't know" as opposed to adhering to some dogma, then they are now bankrupt.

Okay, so we exist. That's obvious. And though atheists like to tout the evolutionary flag, evolution isn't the issue here. Instead, we need to go way back and ask, where did the universe come from? You see, whatever has come into existence was caused to come into existence by something else. The universe came into existence. So, what caused it to come into existence?

Of course Matt dodges the evolution issue. I'm sure he is aware of the fact that there is mountains of evidence demonstrating that it is a fact. Matt is seemingly unaware of the fact that evolution does partially refute theistic cosmology. If evolution is true, then the Genesis account is clearly false. Though theistic evolutionists try to spiritualize Genesis, people like Matt who hold to a literal interpretation of it cannot use the Bible as a frame of reference to support the idea of a god creating the universe.

Not only that, but the fact of evolution lends credence to the idea that our universe probably was not designed because of the chaotic nature of our planet as well as flaws in evolutionary design of species. So while evolution does not deal directly with cosmology, it does indirectly.

Matt's second point, that whatever has come into existence was caused to come into existence by something else is fallacious. He is applying the laws of cause and effect to the universe when he should know that to infer a necessary causality on the whole -- the universe -- on the basis of the attributes of the parts, is a fallacy of composition. We have absolutely no empirical basis for stating that something coming into existence (that is, an absolute beginning out of nothing) has to have a cause.

When answering this question, there are only two possibilities to account for the cause of the universe: an impersonal cause and a personal cause. This is an antonymic pair that exhausts all possibilities. It is either one or the other. There is no third option. Let’s first look at the atheist option to explain the universe, an impersonal cause.

Matt has not even established that something coming into existence requires a cause. His argument cannot even get off the ground. While I might agree that a personal and impersonal cause is an antonymic pair, that point is irrelevant since he is working off a false premise.

If the atheist were to say that the universe brought itself into existence, then that would be illogical since something that does not exist has no nature and with no nature, there are no attributes, and with no attributes, actions can’t be performed such as bringing itself into existence. So, that doesn’t work.

I agree whole heartedly that the universe bringing itself into existence is illogical, just as the concept of a God making nothing turn into a universe is also illogical. Just as Matt said, nothingness is devoid of any nature or attributes. Therefore, a god cannot act on nothing and bring something (the universe) out of it.

I kind of suspect though, that Matt may also be addressing the idea of the universe not being able to spontaneously form ex nihilo (out of nothing), hence, the need for a cause. As stated above, we have zero empirical evidence to support the idea that something coming into existence ex nihilo requires a cause. But he could argue saying that logically, if the universe cannot bring itself into existence out of nothing then something else has to do it. But I contend that this is a false dichotomy. If we assume that ex nihilo is true, then the universe could have formed spontaneously due to the 'nature' of nothingness. Let me explain. True nothingness, lacks any possible property and any possible law. If this is so, then nothingness lacks any law that would prohibit the formation of something. If nothing does not permit something, such as an expanding universe, to start existing for no reason at all, then it's a fact about this nothing that the probability of something coming into existence is zero, and such a general fact would be a law, the nothing in question would not be true nothing.

In light of that, we can have a universe forming without either being from a personal or impersonal cause and neither by bringing itself into existence. It would simply be a 'by-product' of the nature, or more specifically, the naturelessness of nothing.

If the atheist said the universe has always existed, that doesn’t work either because that would mean the universe was infinitely old. If it is infinitely old then why hasn’t it run out of useable energy by now as the 2nd law of thermodynamics would state. Also, in order to get to the present in an infinitely old universe, an infinite amount of time would have to be crossed. But, it is impossible to cross an infinite amount of time to get to now. These problems would also mean that there could not be an infinite amount of past cycles of the universe where it expands and contracts forever. So, those explanations can’t work.

Matt is essentially making 2 points here. First point is:

1. If the universe always existed, it would have run out of useable energy

2. The universe cannot be infinitely old since an infinite amount of time cannot be crossed.

Just a quick note, point 1 is contingent upon point 2, so by addressing point 2, point one is also refuted. The problem of actual infinity is not just a problem for atheistic cosmology but for theistic cosmology as well. Unless a theist subscribes to a timeless view of God then he/she falls to the same problem of infinity not being able to be crossed.

Matt's argument is contingent upon a major assumption here, namely that the universe has always existed and acted in the way we perceive it today. Prior to the big bang, we do not know how the universe behaved. According to physicists, prior to the Planck time, our understanding of the laws of physics (including the 2nd law of thermodynamics which Matt makes reference to in his argument) break down. For all we know, cause and effect relationships of matter (requiring time) may not have existed. If so, then the universe could be said to have only existed for a finite amount of time but have no beginning. This might appear as a contradiction at first glance but it is not. Time is the measure of change, of movement, or motion. An asteroid flying from one position to another requires time. Even matter itself which is composed of atoms and kinetic energy requires time. But all this is how the universe as we perceive it today behaves. We have no evidence to suggest that the universe behaved prior to the big bang in the same way it does now.

The alternate view, that the universe formed spontaneously out of nothing also nullifies all of Matt's points.

If the atheist says that matter and/or energy have somehow eternally existed before the universe, just in different forms, then the same issue of crossing an infinite amount of time to get to now would negate that idea. But, this explanation would pose yet another problem. If the necessary conditions for the cause of the universe have always existed within the pre-existent matter and energy, then the effect of the universe being formed is a necessary result of that matter and energy, and the universe would have been formed an infinitely long time ago. But this can’t work since it would mean the universe would have already run out of useable energy by now (entropy problem again), not to mention the perpetual problem of crossing an infinite amount of time to get to now. So, that explanation doesn’t work either.

If the universe existed in a form where there was no motion, then Matt's argument fails. We have no clue how the universe used to behave so neither theists or atheists can make any claims either way. If we assume that the universe could have existed in a timeless state, for instance, then saying that the universe would have formed infinitely long time before would be incoherent since there is no 'before'. Again, his argument implicitly makes hidden assumptions regarding the nature of the universe pre-big bang.

This same reasoning applies if we assume that the universe had an absolute beginning. To ask why the universe formed spontaneously out of nothing at one time and not before, or infinitely before, presupposes time.

But there is another problem that Matt fails to realize (and this is if we assume that time did exist before the big bang). If the laws of physics breaks down prior to planck time then it does not follow that there are even necessary conditions for the universe' formation. Without governing laws, the formation could occur randomly or just once for unknown reasons or no reason at all. If it could occur for no reason (and I see no reason to think that the concept of "reason" or "cause" has to exist prior to big bang) then it is futile to ask why the universe did not form an infinite amount of time before it did.

Okay, so the universe, which is comprised of matter and energy, cannot be infinitely old, in its present form or any other form. So, how did it, and ultimately we get here? Atheism can’t help us here. So, let’s turn our attention to the other option: a personal cause. If there is a personal influence, which means a personal being that acted upon the universe, then we have an explanation for the cause of the universe. Let me explain.

And how does Matt know that the universe could not have always existed in another form? He has no evidence for such an absurd claim. And arguments such as incoherency of divine creation, apathetic god, imperfection from perfection, and the argument from scale, nicely demonstrate that Matt's conclusion of a personal cause is most likely not the case. Theists (as well as Matt right here) time and time again always ask the question, "How did it all get here?" Such a question makes that simple category error that practically every theist falls victim to. If the existence of the universe is a necessary fact then asking, "How it all got here?" is completely futile. There is no 'how' and there is no 'why'. The brute existence of the universe is inherent and does not come from an outside source.

A rock doesn't suddenly change from being a rock into say an axe head unless acted upon by something else. For matter and energy to change and form something new, they must be acted upon from the outside. So we must ask what acted upon matter and energy and caused the universe to exist?

This again presupposes that cause and effect exist outside of the universe. Not only that, but we have counter examples to show that even within the universe, cause and effect does not always apply. For instance, the radioactive decay of an atom is scientifically proven to be uncaused. A shift in the orbit of an electron also has no cause at all, in the sense of pre-existing set of conditions that determined that it had to occur. In terms of the universe around the time of the Big Bang, unimaginably hot, unimaginably dense, unimaginably disorderly, and unimaginably tiny, is this more like a rock turning into an axe or the shift in an electron's orbit? It strikes me as very unlike a rock into an axe, mainly because it is so disorderly.

Whatever caused the universe, existed before the universe. Since the universe had a beginning in time, and since matter and energy do not spontaneously change and arrange themselves into something new, then the best explanation for the cause of the universe is an action that was a decision.

Matt's position still continues to break down. If God existed timelessly then there is no, "before the universe". In order for Matt to avoid his own problem of crossing over an infinite time gap, he has to place God outside of time. The problem is that he cannot say that, "God created AND THEN the universe came into existence." Such a notion requires time. Rather, Matt has to say that God's existence, his volition to create the universe, and the universe itself coming into existence was all simultaneous. But this would imply that the universe would come into existence at the same exact moment with when it does not exist -- a logical contradiction. This is unless Matt wants to admit that the universe has existed eternally alongside God, but we know that Matt will not go there.

In other words, a decision to act at a specific time in the past is the best explanation of the existence of the universe. Of course, we Christians would say this decision was made by a personal being who we call God.

And of course, such a notion places God in temporal eternality, which nullifies creationism because God would have to wait an infinite amount of time to create. By Matt saying that it was, "a decision to act at a specific time in the past" he is refuting his position with his own arguments of impossibility to traverse infinity.

You see? The atheists have nothing to offer us with the important issue of explaining how we got here. Atheism can’t answer one of the most important philosophical questions pertaining to our own existence. It is deficient and lacking and at best can offer us only ignorance and guesses.

By now we have seen that the only one making guesses regarding the nature of the universe pre-big bang is Matt Slick, not atheists. If anything, Matt would prefer to be in pure willful ignorance than to be humble enough and simply admit that there is not enough evidence to give us a verdict on the definite origins of the universe.

And speaking of having nothing to offer, we know already that the term 'god' is absolutely meaningless. A god that does not manifest and cannot be defined is equivalent to absolutely nothing. It is Matt Slick that is promoting absolutely nothing. Atheists promote beliefs that are reality based. That reality manifests clearly. It is axiomatic. It is the theist that is trying to add meaningless concepts that are.. quite bluntly.. purely asinine.

Okay, finally, even though it isn’t necessary in this video, I’ll deal with one of the standard objections atheists have when this topic comes up. What brought God into existence?

The answer is simple. Nothing brought him into existence. He has always existed.

And I have dealt with the standard theistic objection of what brought the universe into existence. The answer is simple. Nothing brought it into existence, it has always existed.

He is the uncaused cause. Think about it. You cannot have an infinite regression of causes. It’s like having an infinite line of dominos falling one after another. If you go back infinitely in time to try and find the first domino that started it all, you’d never find it because you’d have to cross an infinite amount of time to get to it which is impossible to do. This would also mean that there you can’t have an infinite regression of causes. Furthermore, this would mean there would never be a first cause. If there is no first cause, then there can’t be a second, or a third, and so on and you wouldn’t have any of them falling at all. But since they are falling, there had to be a first cause, that itself was uncaused that started the whole thing moving at a specific time in the past. So too with the universe. It was caused to exist at a specific point in time. The uncaused cause is God, who decided to create the universe and who, as the Bible says in Psalm 90:2, “is from everlasting to everlasting.”

Matt's conclusion, that an infinite regress cannot exist, is indeed valid. However, he presupposes that only a god can terminate that regress. When a built object is slowly taken apart, it is regressing back to its inferior state. As you keep regressing, eventually, it is the object itself that terminates the regress, because you cannot regress anymore. Matt may state that this is a categorical error. However, that would only be correct if the universe was static, it is not. The universe is expanding, and when you rewind time back, the universe regresses back to it's previous simpler state.

It is the universe itself, not a god, that is the first cause. The universe forming into its current form involving time, motion, change, was inherent within the universe itself. It does not need to come from any outside source.

Nature itself exists eternally without beginning and without end. It is that nature, which laws, fills the heavens.

Non-Cognitivism

Sometimes, I encounter non-fundamental theists who hold to a version of God that does not fall prey to the host of problems that a good majority of my arguments against the existence of the God of classical theism (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) would attack. Attributes such as infinite nature, love, creating ex nihilo, omniscience, perfection, and others makes it impossible for theists to maintain logical consistency. However, non-fundamentalists who eliminate all these troublesome attributes and define God in a vague way by simply calling him Creator will claim that God, defined in a vague and general way cannot be disproven. Indeed, many atheists concede that a god defined in a vague way cannot be disproven since we lack the data to examine the claim to determine if it is logically consistent or makes sense. As I will demonstrate in this article, an undefined, meaningless god does not need to be disproven, because belief in such a concept is senseless and invalid by default which leaves only strong atheism (the positive belief that no gods exist) to be the only default.

In order for concepts to be valid, not only do they have to be logical but they must have meaning. As I said earlier, non-fundamentalists like to define God as "Creator". But what is the substance that composes this Creator? Theists leave it undefined, or they define it negatively by calling it a spirit (non-physical). Terms that are defined negatively are meaningless. Thus, the statement that "a god exists" is meaningless and any position that even relies on the possibility of a god existing is also meaningless. A meaningless concept cannot exist. To even propose the possibility of some unknown god existing presupposes that there is even a meaning to the term 'god'. A concept that lacks meaning is equivalent to nothing. So I can claim as a certainty that God does not exist because the meaninglessness of the term is equivalent to non-existence.

Even in light of the above, theists will try to maintain that the term 'god' is meaningful. They ascribe characteristics to God such as creator, loving, perfect, all powerfull, all knowing, father, redeemer. The attributes that theists always identify are secondary and relational attributes. Examples of secondary attributes are generous, kind, good. Relational examples includes creator, greater, etc. Where theists lack a definition always deals with God's primary attributes. The primary attributes is the basic nature that a particular thing is composed of.

If I was to say that a hoolyutoboo exists, not only is the term hoolyutoboo meaningless but saying that a hoolyutoboo is an architect or a creator is also meaningless because secondary and relational attributes are dependent upon primary attributes. No possible relation can be established between a concept and its secondary or relational properties if the existant's metaphysical identity is unknown.

Another example to help drive the point is that we could say that, "Paul has fininished his math homework." Understanding that Paul is an average human being of the age of nine, we can say that this idea is entirely plausible. Because we understand that human beings of this age are entirely capable of doing math. Thus, we must first identify what a thing is before we can apply any further characteristics or traits to its being.

A theist could object and argue that while the concept of a god might be meaningless, the concept of 'creator' is not. Though the concept of creating is not entirely meaningless in the sense in which we understand it to mean a final product (whatever it may be, let's say a car) coming in existence, whether by the re-combination of pre-existing materials or ex nihilo (out of nothing, which is incoherent), the mechanism by which the creative act is done is unknown or undefined, which renders the creative act meaningless. Theists would argue that we do not need to be aware of the mechanism of how God creates. The problem here is that when theists say that they believe that, "a God creates", what such a statement implies, in light of the argument of noncognitivism, is that a meaningless unknown entity, by some meaningless unknown mechanism, created the universe. Another way of wording this is that theists essentially believe in a relational attribute (creator) that they attempt to relate to an unknown concept. But as I have shown before, relational attributes cannot be related to an undefined concept. So theists essentially just believe in the relational attribute 'creator'. Any attempts at connecting relational or secondary attributes to an undefined god is impossible. They cannot even make sense of it.

But that only address someone who already believes in an undefined creator. What about the individual that posits the possibility of an unknown being that creates in an unknown way? As I have demonstrated in the previous post, creating ex nihilo is logically incoherent so such an idea is not even a possibility. But what if a theist proposes that this unknown creator in an unknown way took the pre-existing energy and formed the universe from that building block as opposed to ex nihilo? I would acknowledge that this is a possibility and it is not the intention of this article to disprove such a possibility. While there may not be nothing wrong to propose such a possibility, what this post addresses is that already believing in such a meaningless concept is senseless. Theists who claim to believe in a creator god really just believe in a mechanistically unknown relational attribute tied in or related to absolutely nothing (god).

Theists cannot propose that nothingness (god) exists. Unless properly defined, the term 'god' holds no actual or potential place in reality.

Incoherency of divine creation

According to Christianity, all things in existence was created by God and that before all things were created, only God existed. Such a notion is strongly supported by the Bible in John 1:1-3 and Col. 1:16. The concept of a God as a creator is a big part of theism, if not one of the core foundations. I contend that the notion of a God creating is logically incoherent, thus making the God concept logically incoherent and impossible. Let us take a few statements that virtually every theist will agree with.

(a) God caused the universe to exist

(b) God produced the universe

Again, theists contend that the universe at one point in time did not exist. How is it that they can say that God caused the universe (which did not exist) to start existing? The laws of causality deals with the recombination of pre-existing materials. Something which exists cannot cause something that does not exist to do anything, let alone start existing.

Theists cannot escape the notion that their God created the universe out of nothing. And by 'out of nothing' I mean that God caused absolutely nothing to start existing in the form of a universe. This is a necessary conclusion because theists, who invoke cause and effect to prove that God created us, cannot say that God caused something that already existed to become the universe since theism necessitates that all things once did not exist. So if there was no object for God to cause to become the universe then it had to have been nothing. But as I already pointed out, the universe cannot be said to have came into existence from non-existence since non-existence, by definition, cannot do anything, cannot be affected, and cannot be acted upon. It is logically incoherent because it ascribes an identity of something to nothing.

Some theists who try to act arrogantly clever will attempt to avoid the problem by saying that God neither acts on something or acts on nothing to make a universe. Rather, they claim that God simply just produces a universe from himself in the same way that the brain produces thoughts. But every notion of the term 'produced' that we as humans are aware of utilizes pre-existing materials to make something else. As much as theists hate the idea, I see no reason to think that the brain doesn't produce its thoughts from the pre-existing energy that already exists within it (though dualists would adamantly disagree with this). This is a deceptive way of arguing because it tries to conceal the mechanism of how God manufactures the universe and limits the argument to vague and general terms of how God "just produces the universe from himself". If a theist wishes to argue in such a vague fashion then I will simply appeal to noncognitivism, namely that their statement of God producing the universe is meaningless and consequently invalid.

But regardless of how vague they try to be, no theist can deny that God caused the universe go from a state of non-existence to existence, that point is irrefutably clear. And going from a state of non-existence to existence is equivalent to saying that the universe went from nothing to something. The theist would still be left with God creating the universe out of or from nothing. Again, to do this, God has to cause the non-existent universe (nothingness) to become something. But the concept of God acting upon nothingness to produce something imposes an identity upon nothingness that is logically inconsistent. Nothingness lacks potentiality and actuality which makes it impossible to act upon it. I do not mean to be redundant but the overall point here is that the theist at this point is merely just playing word games to conceal the fact that his/her worldview has God creating the universe out of nothing.

For the sake of those who still might lack understanding as to how creation out of nothing is a logical incoherence, let's word it this way. As we said in the beginning, we have God who is causing the universe to go from non-existence to existence. Theists at times appeal to cause and effect to try to prove that God is the creator of the universe. In this case, the cause is God, or his word, and then you have the recipient of that cause, which is what leads to the final product (the universe). So God, by his word, causes the non-existent universe/nothingness (which is the recipient of God's creative power), to become an existent universe. In order for something to be the recipient of something, that something HAS to first be something. How can nothing receive anything? There's nothing there to do the receiving. The very act of receiving something, by definition, requires that there is SOMETHING there on the other end to do the receiving. When theists invoke the law of cause and effect to prove divine creation, they are claiming utter nonsense.

The second problem of divine creation deals with the 2 possible states that God existed in before creating. Theists are divided on which state God existed in but both positions do not allow for a God to divinely create. The states are:

(a) temporal eternal

and

(b) atemporal eternal

Temporal eternality says that before God created the universe he existed for an infinite amount of time fellowshipping with other members of the Trinity or (whatever else he was doing depending on your theistic viewpoint). The question to be asked is how long did God wait before he decided to create? If God is eternal then he waited an infinite amount of time before deciding to create. This cannot work because if your waiting for an infinite amount of time then you would never stop waiting.

The second position, which is favored by William Lane Craig, states that God did not exist in time but was timeless. In a timeless state, there are no causal chain of events, there is essentially no movement at all, everything is held in its place without any movement. In this viewpoint, God did not all of a sudden come to a point where he said "I am going to create the universe" and then he creates it and the universe comes into existence. This is a casual chain of events that requires time. Instead, people like Craig argue that God's act of creating and the effect (which is the universe coming into existence) is simultaneous, which eliminates the need for time. But this can't be because the universe would come into existence at the same exact time with when it does not exist -- a logical contradiction.

As much as how most theist's are convinced by cosmological arguments, I contend that the fallacious nature of them provides evidence that the theistic god does not exist and is a logically incoherent concept.

Moving beyond the miracle hungry phase

An iphone is a cool little gadget to have if your interested in something media based at the expense of basic phone necessities. Anyways, when I used to have one I downloaded an application that allowed me to post any topic that I wished to discuss and people who saw my advertisement would have access to send me a text message (your phone number would be next to your advertisement). So knowing me, I posted an advertisement which asked the question regarding something along the lines of whether or not God existed and by doing so it allowed me to have countless one to one discussions with people via text messaging regarding why they believed in the existence of God. I would say, that roughly around 95% of people who I talked to believed in God shared one of a few reasons, and that reason is:

Miracles.

Each and every person out of that 95% had their own unique miraculous experience which they believed that only the existence of a god could explain. Though I do find it odd as to how they could invoke god as an explanation for these alleged miracles when the term 'god' is essentially meaningless and that any claimed function that this god performs is consequently meaningless as well. But that issue is for another day. For this post, we will assume for the sake of argument that the god concept does have meaning.

A good percentage of the miracles, in my opinion, could be easily explained by natural processes or simple chance. For instance, alleged medical miracles seems to convince quite a lot of people. One example is someone who is diagnosed with cancer and who prays and is instantly healed of the illness. The theist may take such an example as convincing evidence for the existence of god but I do not. This is not necessarily because I am closed minded but because if I am not there to witness and monitor such an event as well as not having any idea if there were any other factors involved that aided in the healing of that individual. Let's deconstruct this simple but common reason for belief in a god.

First of all, it could be very well possible that the individual was misdiagnosed and never really had cancer at all. Misdiagnoses are not uncommon. Second, even though the theist reports that the individual just prayed and was healed, how do we know that the individual did not take any immune system stimulating herbs? We know that certain herbs, such as the medicinal mushrooms (reishi, chaga, etc) are very effective at boosting the immune system. How do we know that they didn't start reducing the stress in their life, eating a cleansing diet, getting plenty of rest, water, sunlight, laughter, all of which have been shown effective (when taken together) at fighting cancer? Just so you know, apart from nutritional and herbal methods, the mind itself can be a powerful weapon against the fight against cancer. It (the mind) can affect virtually every cell in the body. Third, how does the theist know that the person's recovery was not simply due to the fact that the human body is extremely resillient and self healing? For example, we all know how dangerous free radicals are to our health by causing premature aging and cellular damage. However, even though they are dangerous, free radicals can be a benefit to the body. In cases like these, when the body's immune system is overwhelmed by foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells, the body can take those same free radicals, harnass them, and fire them at the body's enemies.

Another issue that I would like to briefly discuss is chance. Most theists are of the idea that chance is completely out of the question when it comes to explaining their personal miraculous experiences. For example, one person I spoke to claimed that he tried to kill himself by purchasing a gun and putting it to his head. Upon pulling the trigger, nothing happened, he then pointed the gun elsewhere and pulled the trigger again and the gun fired. This convinced him that god exists. Another example is where another individual was in a car and the car came under heavy gun fire. Not only was everyone in the car killed except him, but the bullets hit every part of the seat with the exception of his body. This convinced him that god exists.

Before I explain why neither of these examples substantiates the existence of a god, I need to lay some brief ground work regarding chance. A lot of theists claim that they do not believe in chance or luck. I have noticed though that some people define chance or luck as if there is some type of magic to it. Such a notion is evident when people make claims like, "don't do that, thats bad luck", or "wear this rabbit foot, it will bring you good luck". That is not what I am talking about when I refer to luck or chance.

Chance, according to the dictionary, simply means the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled. When a ladder detaches from a moving truck and falls on the freeway, such an event happens by chance, meaning that it was unpredictable or unexpected. Now, when dealing with chance or luck, we have to ask ourselves how much luck are we able to invoke. If a person takes all the necessary precautions and adequately ties and secures that ladder to his truck, then the chances of it dislodging is minimal, if not nonexistent. However, when dealing with millions of trucks on this planet, the chances of there being many ladders dislodging from trucks is high, because with so many different people and different situations, there will always be those who do not adequately secure their ladders to their trucks. So numbers is a critical factor when dealing with luck/chance. Another factor is time. The chances of a ladder dislodging from a truck of someone who is vigilant to secure it properly is minimal or close to damn near none. However, take that same truck driver and have him secure a ladder to his truck everyday for a million years. Considering such a vast amount of time and possible circumstances that could occur, it is clear that the ladder dislodging many times is high.

In regards to my two above examples, let us address the gun example. My friend is adamant about the fact that it could not have been due to chance, but we know now that he is wrong. The United States alone contains anywhere from 170 to 300 million guns. This does not include the amount of guns that the rest of the world has. Considering the millions of guns that are manufactured, is it unreasonable to suppose that there will be guns that malfunction? With such a high amount of guns manufactured, I see no reason to believe that every one will function perfectly. Considering the time aspect of chance, there have been countless of people over time that have committed suicide by gun point to the head. Of the thousands of millions of people who have attempted suicide, it is not surprising to see that few along the way ended up with guns that were not manufactured properly. I think the overall concept that I have outlined so far should suffice at demonstrating that chance can easily explain a group majority of the alleged miracles that people appeal to.

Of course not every personal experience is this simple. Some are in fact more complicated and/or more difficult to explain by natural means. Indeed, there have been cases where I have not had an immediate answer to a person's miraculous personal experience(s). But as I said earlier that there are so many possible unknown variables so its wise to take theistic experiences with a grain of salt.

People generally ask me what will convince me that God exists. My response for a while has been that any of the supernatural examples in the Bible would suffice for me. Christians of course come up with all kinds of excuses as to why their God does not intervene and manifest in the world today as he did in Bible times. However, over time I have slowly moved away from this approach of asking for a clear crisp divine intervention as evidence for a god. Why?

As stated above, when it comes to theistic claims of miracles being evidence for the existence of their god, there is almost always an alternative naturalistic explanation that comes to mind. Even if a naturalistic explanation cannot be thought of, a theist would have to negate every possible one before they can substantiate that their alleged miracle proves their god. But in order for them to do this they would have to be omniscient! Without knowledge of every possible naturalistic/materialistic cause in our universe, nobody can make the claim that they know that this miracle or that miracle is coming from an eternal God, let alone the god of their religion.

With that being said, we can conclude that all appeals to alleged miracles as evidence for the existence of a god are fallacious. They are begging the question (a logical fallacy of assuming to be true that which their trying to prove). Without omniscience or knowledge of every possible naturalistic explanation, to say that so and so was cured by cancer because God healed them or that this man was raised from the dead because God did it is entirely circular because they have to first assume that God exists and intervenes in the world. Again, I repeat: if they do not know of all possible materialistic causes then they cannot know it is a god. So claiming that it is a god thats doing it presupposes the theistic worldview. Arguments that are based off of assumptions as opposed to evidence are not arguments at all.

This, however, is not surprising to me. Nobody in the history of man has ever provided a valid argument for existence of any god whatsoever. Either the argument is logically invalid/fallacious, or, the argument is logically valid but lacks evidence, which would also render the argument invalid and irrational.

Some might accuse me of being closed minded and that no evidence would convince me that a god exists. But unless theists can first ascribe meaning to the term 'god' then the issue of whether or not god exists is a nonissue. There is absolutely nothing to consider. Something meaningless is equivalent to nothingness. But if the term did have meaning, then convincing people would not be an issue for such a being. With omnipotence, nothing is hard at all for that god, let alone convincing finite human beings that he exists. If anything, theists are more concerned about people believing that their god exists more than their god is concerned about it.