Quentin Smith and his Argument for Atheism

Newbie First Class Joined: Mar 16, 2006 Posts: 47

I'm just curious if anyone has looked into this in depth. Have there been any serious rebuttals?

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/uncaused.html

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/atheism.html

Or, the other similar ones.

I know Craig had a breif rebuttal, but I wasn't convinced.

However, I just thought I'd bounce it off you guys to see if anyone has seen a good rebuttal.

Plus, I love to see another rewording, too,.

i'm trying to get my head around it and am going to debate it with a theist.

Any help would be appreciated.

Newbie First Class Joined: Jan 08, 2008 Posts: 31

The argument from evil is not an argument against God's existence, only against God being all-good. Anyone who makes the positive claim that God must be all-good in order to be God must defend that claim, including atheists. If atheists do not believe that God must be all-good in order to be God, then they believe the first premise of the argument from evil to be false (or, they don't believe it is true). But if it is not true, then neither is the conclusion since in any valid deductive argument all of the premises must be true in order for the conclusion to be true.

Newbie First Class Joined: Jan 08, 2008 Posts: 31

In regards to arguments against the universe being caused, this is my counter-argument:

Huh?

I am not a physicist, and never will be. If an atheist cannot defend his view that the universe exists "just because" without giving me some crazy, mumbo-jumbo mathematical formula, then I am simply incapable of agreeing with him. When I read Quentin's argument it was like reading Beowulf. I can neither agree nor disagree with jibberish.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:49 am

Speaking of jibberish:

Quote:

... without giving me some crazy, mumbo-jumbo mathematical formula

translated into more honest English:

Quote:

... without giving me a more complex and indepth explanation that cuts against my theology that I am devoted to

How'd I do? Wink

Garth P.

Newbie First Class Joined: Jan 08, 2008 Posts: 31

GarthP wrote:

Speaking of jibberish:

Quote:

... without giving me some crazy, mumbo-jumbo mathematical formula

translated into more honest English:

Quote:

... without giving me a more complex and indepth explanation that cuts against my theology that I am devoted to

How'd I do? Wink

Garth P.

Dok pot jot sho, dak deek sak soe. Bak pey say bok-fay ak bay dak-pak.

Newbie Joined: May 27, 2006 Posts: 11

Atheists are now trying to formulate some sort of philosophical idea that makes the universe uncaused?

Perhaps they realized a Catholic priest came up with the big bang theory and thought "oh shit".

Anyone that can't understand the universe is caused simply by taking a shit, is a lost cause.

See the Kalam Cosmological argument located below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument

Resident Joined: Aug 31, 2006 Posts: 315

architecto wrote:

I'm just curious if anyone has looked into this in depth. Have there been any serious rebuttals?

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/uncaused.html

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/atheism.html

Or, the other similar ones.

I know Craig had a breif rebuttal, but I wasn't convinced.

However, I just thought I'd bounce it off you guys to see if anyone has seen a good rebuttal.

Plus, I love to see another rewording, too,.

i'm trying to get my head around it and am going to debate it with a theist.

Any help would be appreciated.

Two hypotheses:

1. the universe is uncaused.

2. god is uncaused.

Occam's razor says the first wins.

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 9:30 am

mawst wrote:

Atheists are now trying to formulate some sort of philosophical idea that makes the universe uncaused?

No.... some atheists are trying to figure out the truth and some have come to consider the possibility that the universe is uncaused.

Quote:

Perhaps they realized a Catholic priest came up with the big bang theory

completely and utterly irrelevant.

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 4:53 am

Mawst said:

Quote:

Atheists are now trying to formulate some sort of philosophical idea that makes the universe uncaused?

There is no evidence of a 'creation', and a singularity is insufficient evidence of a creation or 'creator'. I suggest that matter and energy have always existed, in an infinite, eternal, uncaused cosmos. To stop at the Big Bang, simply because Christianity requires a creator , and not consider other ideas such as Lee Smolin's evolving universes is short-sighted to my mind. ('The Life of the Cosmos', 1997)

Quote:

Only a quantum theory of gravity, that combines general relativity and quantum theory, could tell us wherher there really are singularities in the world..... Nor has anyone shown that conventional ideas of time and causality must fail when a singularity is approached." Smolin, p82

Quote:

A collapsing star foms a black hole, within which it is compressed to a very dense state. The universe began in a similarly very dense state from which it expands. Is it possible that these are one and the same dense state? That is, is it possible that what is beyond the horizon of a black hole is the beginning of another universe? This could happen if the collapsing star exploded once it reached a very dense state, but after the black hole horizon had formed around it..... Several cosmologists speculated that we live in what they called a "Phoenix universe", which repeatedly expands and collapses, exploding again each time it becomes sufficiently dense. Such a cosmic explosion was called a "bounce", as the repeated expansions and contractions of the universe are analogous to a bouncing ball. What we are doing is applying this bounce hypothesis, not to the universe as a whole, but to every black hole in it. If this is true, then we live not in a single universe, which is eternally passing through the same recurring cycle of collapse and rebirth. We live instead in a continually growing community of "universes", each one of which is born from an explosion following the collapse of a star to a black hole.

But perhaps you would wish me to believe that something can arise from 'nothing', whatever that could mean. How much nothing does it take to make a cosmos? Or perhaps there is an 'edge' to the universe, with something in the middle, and nothing all around. Perhaps nothing is simply the absence of something, as darkness is the absence of light. And perhaps there is a 'creator god' that 'created' itself from nothing, but I wouldn't bet one penny on it. Nothing comes from nothing.

You need to open your mind a little, Mawst. You've got an agenda of superstition and myth.

Just Arrived Joined: May 22, 2008 Posts: 2

"Nothing" turns out to be the perfect vacuum! Hawkings and other have discovered the vacuum fluctuation in which the nothing is actually random electromagnetic oscillations that find themselves in the form of vacuum fluctuation energy, whence comes matter in accordance with laws of mass-energy conservation.
So, Existence is eternal if in only as an empty oscillation vacuum. All this a paraphrase from David Mills's '"Atheist universe."
Furthremore, the God-notion, as the ignostic challenge shows, is no personal explanation , contrary to Richard Swinburne, as i t is no more than God wills what He wills:God did it!
All cosmological arguments redound to that!
As Existence is all [Lee Smolin] any god would have to be immanent [ only in it] and contingent [ aaableto go out of existence] .
The Big Bang was only a retransformation of Existence. How do bounces or buds figure into all this is the real question, not the pseudo-question why is there something rather than noting [ See Bede Rundle's book of that name.] How could someone with a straight face state there could be nothng?
Yes to Quentin Smith! He is in line with Smolin. Yes to corinski!

Confident Learner Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 71

the Big Bang theory is flawed.
It claims that that the universe once fit into a space the size of a coffe cup then grew at a finite speed which would mean that it would always be a finite size. If it is a finite size there would be a center and an edge of the universe. Rolling Eyes

It is a matter of time before they rethink the steady state theory they dismissed.

As for the Good God hypothosis
http://www.geocities.com/zacherystaylor/therealgodmaybe.htm

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:09 pm

Hello Zachery

"It is a matter of time before they rethink the steady state theory they dismissed."

I agree. My objection is that the 'Big Bang' has been widely accepted as the 'creation' by Christians, the work of a 'creator', and the 'beginning' of time and space. At best the BB is a theory, based on some hypotheses and alot of mathematics, not observation.

I can accept that my limited consciousness cannot even conceive of an eternal universe, or an infinite universe, but that certainly doesn't mean such can't exist. Just the size of the universe that we can 'see' now with our instruments is so awesome it boggles my mind, but what could possibly be a limit, a boundary to all this? What would be beyond the limit? If the universe we know were in fact to be surrounded by 'nothing', would it be infinite 'nothing'? And are not 'vacuum fluctuations' something, as opposed to 'nothing'? Something must cause vacuum fluctuations.

Christians could use some humility. At least Smolin and others are working to understand reality, while superstition and religion say they already have the answers. Hubris, pure and simple. The scientific method is the only way to distinquish reality from unreality to my mind.

Religions and myth have a place in society I think, as they act as conservative brakes on change within a society, a stabilizing effect. But they must not be accepted as reality.

Confident Learner Joined: Jul 07, 2008 Posts: 71

What often annoys me more than when religous people ignore simple obvious facts is when rational people ignore simple obvious facts.

I don't expect religous people to be rational although I think it would be in every ones best interest if they did including their own.

Rational people should be held to a higher standard.
When rational people ignore obvious facts it makes it hard to tell them apart from religious people.

Did I just say some thing to piss off everyone? Rolling Eyes

Graduate Thinker Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 550

Quote:

But perhaps you would wish me to believe that something can arise from 'nothing', whatever that could mean.

I'm just speculating here, but particle theorists have theorized that the universe contains antimatter (for example, an electron with a positive charge is called a positron. There are also antiprotons) These antiparticles can form elements just like regular matter. A particle of antihydrogen has actually been created in a lab. When matter and antimatter come into contact, they are annihilated and release pure energy. If the universe collapsed and all the antimatter and matter came into contact, it would create a huge amount of energy, resulting in possibly another big bang.

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:17 am

I think it depends alot on whether a person is emotion based or rational based. Emotional people buy into all the liturgy and stories and music and art and the drama of it all to convince them of religion's truth. But rational people in turn evaluate religious experiences using reason and method instead. The emotional folks don't seem to worry about the rationality but depend on revelation (or someone else's revelation) to determine the reality of it all.

Think about C.S. Lewis and Anthony Flew, both men who said they were atheists, but when you read their books you find myth and fable and romance and tremendous emotion, not reason. They were never really atheists.


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