miditek wrote:I have a business partner and longtime friend that was a student of J.P. Moreland, the renowned American Christian apologist and author, while he attended St. John's seminary while studying at UCLA.
I can recall one conversation that we were having, and he remembered Moreland answering an atheist that was among the students in the class.
Moreland mentioned that he once came across an old, rusted VW Beetle that had long since been abandoned while walking in the forest one of California's large state parks. He found the notion that among all of the wonders of nature in the park, that the VW Beetle (according to the atheist's logic) just "happened" to be there- or that it came from "nothing"- a bit too simplistic of an explanation- and one that certainly did not follow the scientific method that the atheists keep ranting on about.
The Beetle must have never been designed, manufactured, tested, delivered nor sold. It never had an owner, was never driven, was never new, it never rusted, and then somehow came (again from nothing) to its current location in the state forest.
Another argument that Moreland used with another student was the cash in his wallet. It too, according to the school of "something from nothing" thought must have never been plain paper (that had never been manufactured from trees that never grew) prior to never having been printed by the U.S. Mint, never distributed to a bank (which itself was never built by people that never exited) then somehow magically appeared in his wallet after never having worked for it at a university that had never been built.
"If you were to force people to do something against their free choice, you would be dehumanizing them. The option of forcing everyone to go to heaven is immoral, because it's dehumanizing; it strips them of the dignity of making their own decision; it denies them their freedom of choice; and it treats them as a means to an end. When God allows people to say 'no' to him, he actually respects and dignifies them." — J.P. Moreland
So you rely on the world seeming to be designed (+ for us)
First of all I might give you an agnostic comment by one of my favorite philosophers David Hume: We live in one universe and we can't compare it to any other universe. We can't say if the universe we live in has a good or doesn't have one because we can't compare it to a universe that has one or doesn't have one.
Now that would be just agnostic but quite interesting thought.
And now about the design.
First of all the universe is a huge place. Just our galaxy is a big one and last month they found another galaxy that looks identical to milkyway but happens to be twice as big.
It is statistically quite propable that there are millions or billions of planets among those billions of billions planets that have proper living conditions.
And the world can only seem perfect for us since if it isn't there won't be anyone wondering how bad it is. So having good living conditions here on earth only proves that we are indeed alive and that there is life on earth (for now)
Then again. Earth as it is happens to be quite different from what it would be if it was created by an alloving and almighty God to be the a place for mankind to live in. Ulric Neissers theory of cognitive psychology explains quite well how you start with one opinnion. In this case "The world is perfectly designedfor us to live in" then you will start noticing things that back up that opinnion while ignoring all those that are against it. For example you might notice that there is lots of food and water in here while ignoring that most of water is salt water or that there are big deserts and natural disasters killing a lot of people or even that the inner clock of human being isn't fit for the spinning rhythm of the earth (I am trying to say that we would live 26-28 hour days if the sun wouldn't be influencing our sleeping rhythm) Overall the world doesn't seem so well designed to me.
Now a couple of points:
(according to the atheist's logic) just "happened" to be there- or that it came from "nothing"- a bit too simplistic of an explanation- and one that certainly did not follow the scientific method that the atheists keep ranting on about.
Now that is a straw man of atheist logic (actually the very example the the finnish sceptics use in their list of bad arguments)
To say atheists would leave things unexplained or to explain things to simple happen to be some way.
Yet a simple solution is often better and at least according to occams razor God doesn't exits because his existance would not explain things but simply make more questions than he solves. Evolution for example explains life as it is a lot better (to think that all different bacteria lived on a single ship when God decided to kill everyone and also decided to warn about it is quite ridiculous but consiodering that people who came up with the story didn't know about them seems to be a lot more believeable.)
However saying things about scientific method that you obviously aren't familiar with is a bad move.
Scientific method gives us undeniably true information in the long run.
These are the core thoughts around it:
Science should be: (wikipedia)
-Reproducible. Makes predictions that can be tested by any observer, with trials extending indefinitely into the future.
-Falsifiable and testable. See Falsifiability and Testability.
-Consistent. Generates no obvious logical contradictions, and 'saves the phenomena', being consistent with observation.
-Pertinent. Describes and explains observed phenomena.
-Correctable and dynamic. Subject to modification as new observations are made.
-Integrative, robust, and corrigible. Subsumes previous theories as approximations, and allows possible subsumption by future theories. ("Robust", here, refers to stability in the statistical sense, i.e., not very sensitive to occasional outlying data points.) See Correspondence principle
-Parsimonious. Economical in the number of assumptions and hypothetical entities.
-Provisional or tentative. Does not assert the absolute certainty of the theory.
Another argument that Moreland used with another student was the cash in his wallet. It too, according to the school of "something from nothing" thought must have never been plain paper (that had never been manufactured from trees that never grew) prior to never having been printed by the U.S. Mint, never distributed to a bank (which itself was never built by people that never exited) then somehow magically appeared in his wallet after never having worked for it at a university that had never been built.
Err... So you just proved that humans exist because theyd o exist and therfore they have been created
That actually has nothing to do with this conversation.
You don't simply seem to understand the atheistic point of view. We are simply saying the world isn't created by a personal creator being and there are lot fo reasons to say that. we aren't saying the world just happens to exist (Yet why wouldn't it) or that something appeared out of nowhere. Actually I personally don't believe there is a beginning to existance.
I am in bit of a hurry so I will skip to the end and I still hope someone watches the video I have been spreading around (No one here has given a comment on it yet)
I have one question for you. Are you really willing to take the risk that the religion your parents have chosen for you is the right one? Over 90% of all people take that risk and in any case over half of the worlds population is wrong.