05-19-2007, 05:45 PM
05-19-2007, 11:52 PM
I have not read any of the books...Dawkins, Harris, Dennett...but I can guess the arguments. In the end, the atheist has no explanation for why anything exists....Dawkins and Hawking cannot answer the question why....
I cannot answer anything about God...but to me...God represents why anything exists versus nothing.
I cannot answer anything about God...but to me...God represents why anything exists versus nothing.
05-20-2007, 12:28 AM
I came across this in a Google search on the topic:
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/045298.htm
"Second, the question of why anything exists to begin with is matched by the question of why "God" exists to begin with. The theist who asks questions like this is not really looking for an answer because the question itself is merely pushed back to a different point in a continuum: from the universe to the theist's god. If this question is supposed to be an argument against atheism, the corresponding question serves equally well as an argument against theism."
Granted, I cannot explain God...but the athiest response is a dodge. A non-answer.
God, as Mortimer Adler argued in his book "How to Think About God", can be rationally deduced:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=How...bout%20God
"Adler puts forth a very strong argument for God's existence, discrediting the arguments ontological and cosmological and slapping Kant around a bit en route. For the layman in philosophy, this is a short, well-rounded course in the core problems of theology."
"The existence of an effect requiring the concurrent existence and action of an efficient cause implies the existence and action of that cause.
The cosmos as a whole exists.
The existence of the cosmos as a whole is radically contingent, requiring a preservative efficient cause.
IF the cosmos needs an efficient cause of its continuing existence to prevent its annihilation, THEN that cause must be a supernatural being, supernatural in its action, and one the existence of which is uncaused, in other words, the supreme being, or God.
1, 2, and 4 are variously self-evident, or evident through definition of terms. In support of premise #3, Adler contends that the really existent cosmos is but one of a number of imaginable cosmoi; its existence is not necessary, therefore its existence must be contingent. Existential contingency is either superficial (the object ceases to exist in a form, but its constituents then lend themselves to other forms), or radical (the object and all its parts cease to exist in any manner). By definition of "cosmos", its contingency can't be superficial: if it becomes a different cosmos, it's still the cosmos, but if it stops being the cosmos, there is no cosmos nor any of its parts."
What does the atheist offer in response as to why? A blank stare and / or criticism of organized, mythological religion.
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/045298.htm
"Second, the question of why anything exists to begin with is matched by the question of why "God" exists to begin with. The theist who asks questions like this is not really looking for an answer because the question itself is merely pushed back to a different point in a continuum: from the universe to the theist's god. If this question is supposed to be an argument against atheism, the corresponding question serves equally well as an argument against theism."
Granted, I cannot explain God...but the athiest response is a dodge. A non-answer.
God, as Mortimer Adler argued in his book "How to Think About God", can be rationally deduced:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=How...bout%20God
"Adler puts forth a very strong argument for God's existence, discrediting the arguments ontological and cosmological and slapping Kant around a bit en route. For the layman in philosophy, this is a short, well-rounded course in the core problems of theology."
"The existence of an effect requiring the concurrent existence and action of an efficient cause implies the existence and action of that cause.
The cosmos as a whole exists.
The existence of the cosmos as a whole is radically contingent, requiring a preservative efficient cause.
IF the cosmos needs an efficient cause of its continuing existence to prevent its annihilation, THEN that cause must be a supernatural being, supernatural in its action, and one the existence of which is uncaused, in other words, the supreme being, or God.
1, 2, and 4 are variously self-evident, or evident through definition of terms. In support of premise #3, Adler contends that the really existent cosmos is but one of a number of imaginable cosmoi; its existence is not necessary, therefore its existence must be contingent. Existential contingency is either superficial (the object ceases to exist in a form, but its constituents then lend themselves to other forms), or radical (the object and all its parts cease to exist in any manner). By definition of "cosmos", its contingency can't be superficial: if it becomes a different cosmos, it's still the cosmos, but if it stops being the cosmos, there is no cosmos nor any of its parts."
What does the atheist offer in response as to why? A blank stare and / or criticism of organized, mythological religion.