#conversationalatheist

Cosmic Skeptic at the ACSJ: "Does The Universe Have a Cause?"

Fantastic talk by Alex J. O’Connor (CosmicSkeptic) about a flaw in the ontological argument. I’ve previously made posts about the cosmological argument and how it’s used by theists to support the idea of a god, but this is an angle that I never considered.

I highly recommend you take the time to watch this video, or at least until the 23 minute mark (after that he takes questions and has an open discussion with the audience). I also recommend that you go follow Mr. O’Connor on social media under the name CosmicSkeptic. He’s an incredibly smart guy who runs a youtube channel with awesome content, and I’m sure he’ll be making even more of a name for himself as time goes on.

William Lane Craig is a huge proponent for this argument for god, but this argument has a huge, pretty obvious problem. For those of you who don’t know the argument, here are it’s premises and conclusion, as found on the Wikipedia page “Kalam Cosmological argument”

Craig states the Kalam cosmological argument as a brief syllogism, most commonly rendered as follows:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause;

The universe began to exist

Therefore: The universe has a cause.

From the conclusion of the initial syllogism, he appends a further premise and conclusion based upon ontological analysis of the properties of the cause:

The universe has a cause;

If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful

Therefore: An uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.

I have nothing against the 1st set of premises and their conclusion, except possibly the use of the word cause. I would ask a person to define “cause” if they are using this argument.

 However I do have a problem with the 2nd premise of the 2nd set. And this is because it directly contradicts the first conclusion. How could an uncaused creator exist if everything that exists has a cause? It’s contradictory in it’s very nature. 

Of course, there is the addition of the clause that this creator is “sans the universe” and therefore does not need to follow the logic set out by the first set. But then an argument would have to me made of how this creator who is outside the universe can interact inside the universe without subsequently having to follow the logic of the first set.

Other versions of the ontological argument in the past (Like the original posed by Anselm) go into the idea that since we can imagine something like god who is “maximally great/perfect/god” then this god must exist. Then Gödel came up with a model for the ontological argument that says if a god has a positive property, then that property is necessary and therefore exists.

The most recent version of the ontological argument was proposed by William Lane Craig, and it goes like this:

It is possible that a maximally great being exists.

If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.

If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.

If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.

If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.

Therefore, a maximally great being exists

So the problem with the ontological argument at it’s core is that it assumes existence is better than non-existence. Except you can’t prove that objectively. So this argument would work fantastically if someone could prove that existence is objectively better than non-existence. The idea of a maximally great being- or to simplify, a perfect being- hinges on what the observer considers to be perfection. Once you flip the assumption and say that non-existence is perfect, rather than existence, you can use this model to argue that therefore a maximally great/perfect being such as god cannot exist.

I talked about the concept of hell with my friend the other day. This friend is catholic, and I’ve talked to them about theism/atheism before.

I asked my friend where they think I’m going when I die and their response was “I can’t imagine any of my friends in hell.” So I said I certainly wasn’t going to heaven being a nonbeliever (among other things) so I asked again where they thought I was going to go when I die?

Unfortunately, the conversation got off topic at that point and I didn’t bother bringing it up again and pushing them.

I understand my friend’s reluctance to say that I’ll go to hell and also their reluctance to admit the contradiction in their beliefs. However that reluctance can be frustrating since it’s very obvious. I wish they would confront this dilemma so we could have a constructive discussion about it.

The idea of hell is something I like to talk about, and it’s pretty easy for me to talk about since I don’t believe in it (for me it’s all hypothetical). The reason I like asking if people go think I’m going to hell is because it’s very obvious that based on their religion, they should believe I am. 

But it gets interesting when they very obviously contradict their religious beliefs with their personal beliefs about me as a person. My friend personally doesn’t think I deserve to burn for eternity in a pit of fire (Whew- thank goodness!) but their religious beliefs say that I do deserve that for being a sinner and nonbeliever.

Link to Omegle conversation --> http://logs.omegle.com/b2e15ce14f7ae2d0

This was a short discussion I had with a nice guy named Gabriel. The main topic was the big bang, and why I believe that the big bang theory is true.

Something this guy asked was what started the big bang. Now, I don’t know, nor does anybody else to my knowledge. Gabriel thought he had a “checkmate atheist” moment which I was expecting. He said “If you don’t know, then how can you say it happened?” I explained that he asked if I knew how it happened, not if it did happen. The example I used was the tides. Humans observed that the tides came in and out before they knew why. Not knowing that the moon moved the tides didn’t mean that they didn’t know that the tides were real.

This is the same for the big bang. Gabriel asked me what evidence there was for the big bang, and I told him about the background radiation of the universe, the expansion of the universe, and the concentration primordial elements in the universe. He then asked where I got that information. I got it from reading scientific journals and looking at the published papers on the topics.

This is something I encourage everybody interested in science does- read scientific articles that have to do with something you’re interested in. It’s by no means a requirement, but it’s a good way to learn new things. I read those articles and studies because I wanted to know what evidence there was for the big bang, and I learned a lot.

Link to Omegle conversation --> http://logs.omegle.com/98a672ff12cf8c05

I’ll be honest, this conversation- although short- got me fired up. From the very start where they asked me to spell god with a capitol g I knew it wasn’t going to go well. FYI, it’s a letter, it doesn’t matter.

So they asked why I was an atheist and I explained it’s because “I haven’t seen any good evidence or reason to believe a god or gods exist.” Pretty standard. Their response to this is to say that it’s obvious that there’s a creator god watching over us and the evidence is in front of our faces. Of course, when I asked them to explain why they thought that and what evidence I was apparently missing, they said:

“oh my goodness, listen i cannot force you to believe anything..... its not my place .....thats for life to reveal when the time is right....as it seems, your heart is already hardened to his existence and you probably came on here to just convince me with theories that ive already heard of that he doesnt. but all i can tell you is my life would have been a mess if it wasnt for him. ive been a christian for 2 years now. and never looked back”

Now this got me mad. One, because they assumed my motives and intentions (which was an incorrect assumption) and two, because they gave complete non-answers to my questions and didn’t seem like they’d be answering anything else I had to ask them.

I informed them that they were incorrect about why I was there, and proceeded to say that obviously they had already written me off with their idea of what an atheist is like. Then of course they apologized if I was offended, and I said I actually was pretty offended. I said “I could have come on here and been an asshole to you, assuming you’re some dumb bible thumping christian, but I didn’t. Because I respect you as a person and I don’t like to get my information from harmful and exaggerated stereotypes. I thought I’d get the same respect.”

Did I go off a bit? Yes, and I’ll admit that. But it’s so frustrating when you try to talk to someone and they’ve obviously written you off from the start. I have it right in my prepared opening: “I like having honest and friendly discussions with people...”

So as an atheist who talks to a lot of theists, I’ve found that you can run into two types of people. There are some people who understand that being an atheist is lacking a belief in a god, and usually also understand that the reason for this lack of belief is due to lack of evidence or reason. Usually they disagree with you (which is why they’re theists) on this, but they at least are capable of having an actual conversation.

The other type of people I’ve run into are the people who say things like:

“You just don’t want to believe.”

“You believe in god but you reject/hate him”

“Your heart has been hardened so you don’t want to believe”

“You want to sin so you don’t believe in god”

Etc

Firstly, the idea that belief can be a choice is ridiculous. When you believe that a claim is true, it’s because you’ve been convinced that it’s true. You can’t choose to be convinced of something, you either are or you aren’t at the present moment. One thing I like to do when this topic comes up is to ask the other person to believe in unicorns. Then I ask them if they honestly can tell me that they now actually believe in unicorns. I even say that they can choose to believe in unicorns right now for the experiment, then choose to stop believing in unicorns afterwards. Most times they write this off as silly, because it is. You can’t just decide to believe in something or not believe in something-which is what I was demonstrating. But they usually miss the point.

Second, there’s this idea that atheists just don’t want to believe in god because they don’t like the god character presented by religion. Now, part of that is true: the god character in the three abrahamic religions is a vengeful, conceited, moral thug who doesn’t seem to have any regard for human beings based on it’s actions, and often makes easily avoidable mistakes. If that god exists, I certainly wouldn’t worship it. But if it exists and there is evidence to support the claim that it exists, then I 100% would believe that it exists. Belief of existence is not the same as worship. I believe that murder exists even though I don’t like the concept of murder.

In the three abrahamic religions (I’m not very knowledgable about other religions in the world such as hinduism, buddhism, sikhism, etc) there are specific passages that deal with the topic of non-believers. These passages range from saying we’re liars who just want to sin to condemning us to death (Psalms 4:1 and Quran 4:89 for example.) 

Many theists believe the things said about atheists in their holy books, which is a real shame since it just shuts down conversations before they even begin. How am I supposed to have an open and honest discussion if the person I’m talking to thinks I just hate god and don’t want to believe in him? Usually they just tell me to “open my heart” and go pray- which isn’t constructive at all.