Well, since you asked, one of my favorite, dumbfoundingly stupid versions of this is William Lane Craig’s version of the Kalam cosmological argument, which essentially claims a universal rule that everything has to have a creator, which proves the existence of a being that violates this universal rule, and that proves that being is not only god, but a personal god, therefore Jesus. (WLC’s version has much more tap dancing.)
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Cool!
Which god?
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And also wrong. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics deny either localism (no breaking the speed of light) or realism (properties have values independent of whether they’re measured), but none of those interpretations have been proved. Or as many physicists would say, “shut up and calculate”.
And then we have this:
2 What conditions can human life exist under?
() Human life can exist under many different sets of physical conditions
() Human life requires a very specific set of conditions
which for a mathematician is shockingly sloppy, as both are right, the many sets of the first answer (e.g. the traditional lifestyles of the Inuit on one hand and Tuareg on the other) being subsets of the single set of the second.
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Isn’t that always the way though? I read a number of similar books that were recommended to me on the way out of the church door. They seemed to argue quite well for standard scientific theories like evolution, but then they tried to tie this to their idea of how science was actually perfectly in line with the Bible. That was always the weakest part of the argument, and somehow the Bible clearly showed them an interpretation that was generally not a mainstream Christian view, or even one shared by the other apologists.
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The vast majority of professional evolutionary biologists aren’t engineers, and frankly I’d consider something that reads like it wasn’t written by an engineer to be a virtue. 
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Well, yes. And it is pretty common for creationists to be engineers. It’s a profession that seems to lend itself to the mindset that everything must be created by an entity.
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Or chemists.
* Shakes head *
* Is a chemist *
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Personally, I’m open to the idea that there was a force that caused the big bang. However, that doesn’t conflict at all with my philosophy that even if that were the case, said force doesn’t care about what I do with this life, if I choose to worship, or if I believe in it at all.
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Yeah that’s basically my thought. It is a huge old universe and well there might be something that for all it matters to us is god… however whatever that thing is, it probably gives zero fucks about this tiny speck of dust much less the things squirming around on the surface.
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Deism is non-falsifiable.
What I find amusing/annoying is how people try to take arguments that are, at best, ones for deism and try to claim “ergo Jesus!” as William Lane Craig and so many others attempt to do.
The idea that there is a supreme god of the entire universe, and it has a plan just for you and your life, is one of supreme egotism. Most people don’t even personally know the mayor of their city, but lord of the universe? They are sure they have a personal relationship.
I like Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God - her journey seeking affirmation of her religion, which, instead, led her to gradually realize there really was no there there.
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It seems obvious that he was a fauxatheist, who never really lost the desire for a god, that was drilled into him as a child. So eventually, he decided to invent his own. All it takes is a determined resolve to ignore reality.
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Yes, I cough-BenCarson-cough agree with you.
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For what it’s worth, as it is completely useless, a master’s degree in theoretical (no one calls it that) mathematics is basically a consolation prize given to dropouts in math PhD programs. Without knowing anything more about a person than that, I would better trust someone who stopped at the undergraduate level.
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I’m kinda stumped as to the logical steps that take you from realising the universe is too clever by half to subscribing to ancient malarkey.
Any ‘atheist’ who becomes a Christian is just succumbing to cultural pressure - there’s no good argument that Christianity explains anything.
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Oh, quite the contrary. It explains everything. As a theist you don’t need intelligence, years of study or advanced degrees to understand the nature and function of the universe. Nope, as a theist, you have the answer to the life, the universe and everything: God!
How did humans come to exist? God!
What is the meaning of life? God!
What is the cure for all cancers? God!!! (If he’s in the mood…)
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I always had a problem with “God is” arguments. Much prefer Maimonides’ “negative theology”.
I’ll let y’all continue your Jesuit looking atheistic acrobatics now.
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His “insight” is similar to the Powerball Lottery winner, who believes that, since the odds of drawing the same exact numbers that he has chosen is 1 in 292 million, only god could have made it happen.
Whenever I run across one of these “only Earth has all the right conditions for life, therefore, God” people, I ask the following:
Assume for a moment, that there are actually 100,000 planets with the right conditions, and have developed intelligent life. Wouldn’t it be true that the beings on each one of those worlds might also think that their world is unique in having intelligent life?
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My previous link addressed that
With lots of ambiguity and unclear definitions.
Is there any chance for an experimental proof, or will the concept of deities be forever stuck as a weak hypothesis?
