Questions for the Not-Yet-a-Believer

[Skeptic Pete]

Morning all.

After reading some of Vinnies excellent rebuttals I have decided to try my hand at compiling a web page to respond to these questions from christiananswers.net.

It is a work in progress and any advice will be appreciated.

Response to Questions for the Not-Yet-a-Believer (http://www.petespuzzles.com/christianexcuses/)

Cheers

Pete

[Skeptic Pete]

40 views and no comments.

That either means it's very good and needs no refinement .......or it's not even worth looking at?

[TheBigKahoona]

I think that your rebuttal was exceptionally good for 1-4 sentence answers to those questions. But, if I may play devils advocate, I think that some answers were inadequate and did not get to the root of the question.

Question 1:How do you explain the high degree of design and order in the universe?

Answer : I see no design in the universe.
Where is the design evident in the human eye, with its limitations, flaws, blind spots etc?
Where is the design in our Solar System, with our own planet only being suitable for life for a relatively short period of its history?
Where's the design in a predatory food chain that involves much pain, suffering, torture and death?
Where's the design in a planet that regularly trembles and spews causing destruction and death?

Question 11: If man is nothing but the random arrangement of molecules, what motivates you to care and to live honorably in the world?

There is nothing random about the arrangement of molecules in my body.
Common sense motivates me to care and live honorably in this world.
If humans did not have empathy and compassion for their fellow man, society would never have evolved beyond the family unit.
What motivates a Christian to have empathy and compassion? Surely not fear of punishment or promise of reward?

Couldn't these answers be misinterpretted as contradictory?

Question 12: Explain how personality could have ever evolved from the impersonal, or how order could have ever resulted from chaos.
Answer: Through a long series of events in which favourable traits were selected by the lower survival rates of those without those traits.
Intelligence, and hence personality, were among those traits.

With regard to order from chaos, it seems there never was a time when the universe was completely chaotic. Certainly, the physical laws which allow local order can exist (for instance in the form of crystals) and have been with us since very early in the universe, so it seems to be a question unrelated to evolution, which was able to take place because of the order provided by those physical laws.

Intelligence is certainly necessary for a human's survival, but laughter and a sense of humor don't do much survival wise.

[Gunnaheave]

The black and white stuff is pretty good, but I personally don't have the patience for reading the red parts of that link these days. There was a time when I loved to talk to people like that, but I just can't do it anymore.

There is a level of willful stupidity that finds religious thought to be a useful outlet, and the stuff you are responding to fits that bill as far as I can tell. I have to keep reminding myself that such tripe is no reflection on the many thoughtful Christians I have met. That, and I have to keep reminding myself that I can't really do anything about the shear dishonesty of other people. Otherewise I start to bublle and steam. So for my own part, I try and avoid arguing with those who present dubious claims with such a matter of fact tone. I'll hurt myself otherwise.

Best of luck to you, and don't forget to come up for air every once in awhile.

[Arctish]

I think it looks good so far. Since you invited comment I would like to suggest a few additions.

Question 2 states:
2-How do you account for the vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories, places, and people?

I would add that the historical documentation of the places and people of Homer's Oddessy is about the same as the historical documentation of the people and places in the Bible (some correlation but not very accurate). This does not mean that the Oddessy presents a convincing case for the existence of Posideon, Zeus, Hera, Zephryr, Circe, Cyclops, etc. Why is the evidence of the Bible considered to be convincing and that of the Oddessy is not?

Question 3 states:
3-Since absolutely no Bible prophecy has ever failed (and there are hundreds), how can one realistically remain unconvinced that the Bible is of Divine origin?

I would add here that a very important prophecy, repeated more than once, was that Jesus Christ would return within the lifetime of the people who were hearing the gospel in the 1st century. This is one prophecy that utterly failed.


Question 6 states:
6-Wouldn't it make better sense, even pragmatically, to live as though the God of the Bible does exist than as though He doesn't?

Taking this bit of advice to it's logical conclusion, as a matter of pure pragmatism it would be better to behave as though all gods exist so you don't annoy any of them. Get the chickens ready for sacrifice, some of the gods require appeasement.

Question 7:
7-In what sense was Jesus a 'Good Man' if He was lying in His claim to be God?

This is 2/3 of the Lord, Liar, or Lunatic argument. Jesus could have been a good man who was delusional. Also the Lord, Liar, or Lunatic argument ignores another possibility: Legend. Jesus may have been a blending of various mythic and historical characters into one story line.

Question 9:
9-If the Bible is not true, why is it so universally regarded as the 'Good Book'?

I would add that "The Good Book" is a good advertising slogan. Is Coca Cola "the Real Thing"? Is VISA "everywhere you want to be?" What does it matter what the Bible is called by it's followers? They could call it "The True Believer Instruction Manual" or "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy" and it wouldn't make a bit of difference regarding it's accuracy and usefulness.


That's all I have time for right now. I will post a few later if you still want my input, Skeptic Pete.

[Vinnie]

""""""Where is the design in our Solar System, with our own planet only being suitable for life for a relatively short period of its history?
"""""""""

Actually our planet has had life most of its history so this is false. Unless you meant "Solar System History" as our sun is third generation isn't it?

[Skeptic Pete]

Good points all.
I truly appreciate you taking the time.

Like I said it's a work in progress for a few more days so I will amend a few things as suggested.

yes Vinnie I think you are right about life on earth. I didn't think that one through.

Thanks again.

[Skeptic Pete]

I am assuming that none of you mind if I use those comments?
I don't claim this to be all an original work.

[Skeptic Pete]

Intelligence is certainly necessary for a human's survival, but laughter and a sense of humor don't do much survival wise.

No, but surely a sense of humour is closely tied to our intelligence.
I don't know that it has survival value but I suspect it does in a very indirect or subtle way.

[Skeptic Pete]

That's all I have time for right now. I will post a few later if you still want my input, Skeptic Pete.

Your input is very intelligent and well stated Gemma, thank you.

I do realise the pointlessness of the whole exercise.
I don't expect anyone to really care what i think nor to get a response back from the original authors of the questions.

However I thought it might actually help me a bit to attempt a rebuttal and practice my amateur science/debating skills. I am not a scientist as in professional, and I have no area of expertise........but as a layperson I think I have a good overall knowledge of science and religion and history.

I have learnt much here at IIDB, not so much facts, but debating styles and common fallacies and errors.

[Vinnie]

My response to number one is below. I'll publish these on my site once I get more up...



"""""""""1-How do you explain the high degree of design and order in the universe?""""""""""

Teleological arguments are not convincing for a number of reasons.

1) The most complex things in the entire universe evolved. The overhwelming evidence for descent with modifcation completely hurts any design arguments.
2) There are a number of design flaws with biological creatures. One human flaw concerns wiring in our eye and a resultant blind spot. For others see Oolan's big list of design flaws.
3) Design arguments are contradictory. First it is claimed that life is so improbable it must have had a designer. Yet it is also explained that there is a high order of design in the universe. If the universe was designed by a clever being to harbor life, why is life so damned improbable in our universe?
4) God as an answer to probability is insufficient since regardless of how improbable life was, we can only guess the odds that if there was an infinite being, he would desire//choose to create life. Maybe the odds of an infinite being deciding to create life are far lower than life arising naturally and luckily (for us).
5) Design arguments assume life is "special". For example, if we dealt out 52 shuffled card the odds of that sequence occuring beforehand are ridiculously great but granted we are dealing we know one sequence must occur. Now if we tried to guess the sequence beforehand we never would. In this case the design proponent is arguing that the sequence here is somehow special but why is life special or notworthy? Why does it need explaining? Why does life qualify as a "pre-guessed" sequence? Its only evidence for desing if we assume it has some transcendental importance and that assumes what it is tying to demonstrate.
6) The universe is vastly too large if life was its purpose. How ridiculous an engineer to make not only billions of planets, but billions of uneeded stars in our galaxy and not only that, but billions of uneeded galaxies with billions and billions of their own irrelevant stellar systems.
7) The universe is 99.9999....% empty space. As big as stars are and as huge as galaxies spand, the space between stars and especially inter-galactic distances are so huge that if we were transported at random to any random spot in the universe we would find ourselves in complete nothingness. We may see tiny specks of ligth which would not be stars but galaxies. The temperature would be near absolute zero and space would be completely empty. If we were to ask our ancestors to imagine the most frightening image of the universe imaginable, they scarcely could have created an image more scary than the one painted by modern science.
8) We don't know if the universe could have been any different than it is so asking about the probabilities of physical constants is irrelevant.

So the universe looks nothing like it was designed for life. We need to reverse the question:

How does the theist explain the cold, dark and emptiness of existence?
How does the theist explain design flaws in humans and other creatures? How does the theist explain the improbability of life in our universe? How does the theist explain the vast size of our universe? How does the theist explain the huge number of star systems and galazies?

[J-D]

If you genuinely want a fair debate, you don't insist that your interlocutors begin by responding to a set of prefabricated leading questions. You allow them to being by stating their own views in their own way.