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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

I Love "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal"





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10 comments:

  1. nonmagicSeptember 24, 2008 at 1:44 PM

    Here's what bothers me about people attributing answered prayer to situations in their lives.

    If they pray for a certain outcome and they get it, then they say 'Goddidit!'

    If they pray for a certain outcome and they don't get it, then they say it was God's will.

    If they pray for a certain outcome and nothing happens, they say it was God's will.

    So prayer is set up in the minds of the ones doing the praying so that it can not fail, regardless of evidence to the contrary that intercessory prayer has no effect at all.

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  2. MrFreeThinkerSeptember 24, 2008 at 4:06 PM

    So instead of answering all the ontological , teleological ..etc arguments for God you make funny cartoons and don't answer.

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  3. nonmagicSeptember 24, 2008 at 4:18 PM

    Mr. Freethinker,

    No one on this site made that cartoon, Yaeger linked to it.

    Also, if you have specific arguments for the existence of a deity that you would like to put forth and have answered, then why not do so?

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  4. Debunkey MonkeySeptember 24, 2008 at 4:18 PM

    Creationist logic is too strong for us to counter. Cartoons work though. ;)

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  5. MrFreeThinkerSeptember 24, 2008 at 4:40 PM

    Don't get me wrong this blog has a lot of funny pictures and cartoons but you should really put some responses to Ray's aguments up.
    Here tackle one of Ray's arguments.
    Didn't he use this argument from the creation of the universe in the nightline debate?
    p1)Everything that begins to exist has a cause
    p2)The universe began to exist
    c1)The universe has a cause.
    This cause is timeless, immaterial and transcends space and time. It must have the ability to change at will (like a disembodied mind).That's a minimalist definition of god.
    q.e.d. god exists

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  6. nonmagicSeptember 24, 2008 at 4:57 PM

    Mr. Freethinker,

    Ray's arguments have been defeated numerous times online, but perhaps you are right.

    Maybe we should do a section, maybe on the sidebar, where we take arguments that Ray has specifically used and refute them. Good idea.

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  7. KelleySeptember 24, 2008 at 9:56 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. KelleySeptember 24, 2008 at 10:11 PM

    mrfreethinker,

    I'm confident someone will be willing to give your argument the full dressing down it deserves, especially if you post it on a more popular entry.

    But since you offer me such a wonderful opportunity to procrastinate on my homework... In brief:

    What basis do you have for the supernatural guidelines you have set for this god? Anything sufficiently advanced enough to create the bare minimum of matter necessary for the formation of a universe would suffice. (I am taking for granted here some type of big-bang event, evolution, abiogenesis etc. since you did not specify any particular creation myth, just a "god" being to perform the duties of an uncaused first cause.)

    The qualifications you set for this god being, however, are hardly even relevant when you consider that introducing God (especially a complex god like the one you describe) only makes the problem worse. Where did God come from?

    (Obviously anyone who's read Dawkins's popularization of it recognizes this as "The Ultimate Boeing 747" but it would be gauche not to give credit where credit is due. Not to say that almost anyone who has ever given this matter even the slightest moment's analytical though hasn't wondered, "If god created everything then what created god?")

    As I said, however, this is a pretty quickly written and overly simplified treatment of freethinker's argument (to give him the benefit of the doubt). Someone else should really give it a proper burial...

    Edit: Reposted to fix a confusing grammar typo and did some touch-ups in the mean time.

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  9. MrFreeThinkerSeptember 24, 2008 at 10:17 PM

    This is for Kelley R.
    I don't hold much credence to Dawkins. the boeing 747 argument is riddled with fallacies and unsupported premises.
    I suggest you look at some of the responses to Dawkin's material ( the one by analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga is pretty good)
    First of all you have to prove a cause should be more complex than its effect. Your logic is "god is the cause of the universe so he must be more complex than it". I think it is an unsupported assumption to say a cause should be more complex than its effect.
    Secondly god is immaterial - so he isn't composed of any parts. So unless you come up with a good definition of complexity I really don't know how to respond.

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  10. MrFreeThinkerSeptember 24, 2008 at 10:21 PM

    Oh and secondly if you do say that a cause MUST be more complex than its effect- you still have the problem of an infinite regress ending with an infinitely complex entity.

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