ARS:

Wow, thanks for the thoughtful response. And thanks also for watching the video.

First off, I concede that these arguments are not absolute proofs and that they do make assumptions that not all nonreligious people will accept. But I think they do succeed in giving some reasons for why belief in God is not completely illogical or unreasonable.

And you’re right in saying that not every human feels the need for a divine presence. But the presence of religious belief in wildly diverse and disconnected cultures I think does speak to a general attribute of mankind as a whole, and that is a desire or longing for there to be a higher power than us. Obviously that doesn’t prove the existence of that power, but it’s an interesting observation. Why is it that people everywhere independently came up with this idea of a supernatural being? For one, it argues for a universal ancestor from which such a concept could be passed down. But the idea’s survival shows that such belief fills a need that has been a part of man for as long as we have historical record.

I did not mean to imply that skeptics deny that religion serves other purposes in the lives of its believers. However, since my focus here is on more concrete concepts such as existence of matter, time and energy, I focused on the skeptic’s response to religion in that area. When it comes to how we explain existence, I believe an atheist/agnostic would summarize a theist’s belief in God in the way I have: as essentially a crutch for someone not willing to explore the real answer.

The existence arguments really only apply to our universe, since that is all we can observe. Whether there’s another universe outside ours is an entirely theoretical and untestable theory. But to make the argument that the big bang happened in another field of existence is exactly the point I’m making. Science cannot explain creation ex nihilo, thus it must conclude that the universe’s existence is either eternal or that some sort of “imaginary time” or field of existence was around before the big bang. Eternally existing matter would lead to the conclusion that our universe would be perfectly unordered now because without the intervention of something outside us, entropy dictates that all ordered matter would become disordered. Similar to the other alternative (other field of existence), the eternal universe argument requires the existence of something outside of it to preserve order. Either way, we’ve come to admit that there must have been something existing “before” or outside of our universe. If you repeat this argument for the external field of existence, you are left with a non-terminating recursion that forces us to conclude either that material existence is infinite (which again introduces the problem discussed earlier), or that there is a supernatural being that caused it all in the first place. Either way, you are led to a supernatural conclusion. Whether this is a judeo-Christian deity or something completely different is an entirely different argument.

What I just mentioned is what we cannot explain by science. The big bang is a natural phenomenon, thus we can observe it through remaining evidences such as background radiation, as you mentioned (and I talk about this in the next video). But that “other field of existence” which sparked the big bang is not observable, and thus not something science can address.

As I mention in this whole video, my purpose here is not to argue for Yahweh’s existence, but of the much more general existence of some sort of supernatural being. This video is simply setting the basis for belief in God in general, upon which the later videos depend.

I’m not sure what your point is regarding Anselm and the idea that existence is perfection. I’ll admit that Anselm’s argument is kind of a logical trick and not all that convincing in a concrete sense. But the idea that God being by definition greater than anything else implies his existence (since existence is greater than non-existence, one being something and the other nothing) is one that I think at least makes sense.

As addressed before, I’m not saying the cosmological argument establishes the existence of a specific type of deity. It’s simply pointing out that at some point you have to either conclude that matter has an eternally regressing tree of dependency, or that at some point there’s an “uncaused cause” that forms the starting point. I never said here that this uncaused cause was anything more than a “spark.” Again, to argue for anything more than that is outside the scope of this argument.

As for Lewis’s moral argument, his main point is that from an individual standpoint, there is no practical reason for the concept of self-sacrifice. Certainly from a larger perspective there is, but when people choose to sacrifice their own safety for the safety of others, it’s generally not because they’re making a conscious decision to do whatever serves society best regardless of what it does to them. There’s something present in the human psyche that is absent in other animals instincts which allows us to recognize slights even when there is no injustice, and which causes us to accept personal suffering out of genuine concern for another rather than a strictly utilitarian idea of “serving the greater good.” This isn’t an unassailable argument, but I think Lewis makes a valid point.

To your last point, the moral argument doesn’t only apply to religious people, but to mankind as a whole. It’s speaking to the concept of a conscience. So whether a person chooses to embrace or ignore this instinct is not necessarily tied to their religious beliefs. Nor do the behaviors of a “believer” prove or disprove the truth of their beliefs as we are all imperfect (an assumption inherent in the Christian faith).

Thanks again for the comments! I may need to set up a better place for these debates to occur so there isn’t such a huge block of text beneath each post…

Hi Daniel:

Actually, my point was simply that in the Christian religion, faith in God, not simple knowledge (which Satan also has), is the key to salvation. You don’t have to know all the factual arguments for Christianity in order to be a Christian. Basically, I was saying that I didn’t deny the salvation of Christians who choose not to explore these issues. I wish they would since it would make the more critical thinkers, but whether they know why something is true doesn’t affect whether or not it actually is.

As for me countering with “it’s true because I want it to be,” that’s exactly the mindset I’m trying not to have. Yes, I have faith in God, but my whole intent here is to not let that be a blind, untested faith/belief. Reason is a valid test of truth, and the tool I’m trying to apply to the Christian religion in these videos. I don’t believe human reason to be the “only” arbiter of truth, however, because our reasoning capabilities are imperfect. If God exists, by definition he would be THE arbiter of truth. Reason and logic are tools we can use to come to valid conclusions based upon what we can observe and test empirically. Nothing more. And that’s how I intend to use them in these videos.

Thanks for watching.