God and Reality (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 17:51 (4167 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I could hardly have made it clearer that I regard both hypotheses as fantasies. I just want you to acknowledge that if you yourself believe in "an infinite number of universes" designed by a designer, you can hardly dismiss atheists' theories about an infinite number of universes as poppycock devised purely to avoid the design theory! -DAVID: Yes, I can dismiss atheist theories. My reasoning is that we know that a first cause (my God) created this universe in a Big Bang. I then make the assumption from this knowledge that God has been doing this back into eternity. Current multiverses are pink elephant theories with no basis in what we know has occurred. I'm using historical fact to extrapolate-I trust you don't mean "we know my God created this universe in a Big Bang". Both God and The Big Bang are theories, not something we can claim we "know". However, that makes no difference to our discussion. While you argue that conscious first-cause energy would not have done nothing for ever and ever until it exploded itself, an atheist can say exactly the same about unconscious first cause energy. If it exploded once, it could have exploded over and over again. However, that is still not the point. You and atheists can both assume an eternal first cause, conscious or unconscious (I don't buy the something from nothing argument either), and extrapolate the existence of an infinite number of past universes from the historical fact of this one. It is therefore illogical to dismiss an atheistic infinite number of universes as a poppycock dodge to avoid design, when you yourself believe there have been an infinite number of universes! If you can have an infinite number of universes, so can an atheist, and that slashes the odds against one of them happening to be suitable for life.-dhw: A huge mystery on a par with our not knowing where intelligence or consciousness came from. That is why your solution (God) is not a solution at all, but merely the substitution of one mystery for another.-DAVID: First cause intelligence/consciousness has always existed. You cannot conjure up intelligence and consciousness out of raw energy. I've covered this before.-You have left out what I was responding to: namely, your own statement: "Yes, we don't know where God came from or why He bothered to exist. One of those huge mysteries." Your argument against atheism is exactly the same as the atheist argument against your theism. You cannot conjure up intelligence and consciousness out of "first cause" just by stating that it is so. Sorry, but it's still one "huge mystery" in place of another!