Could you spell this out a little better? Thanks.
Let’s assume for a minute that the First Cause argument is accepted, and we agree that some creator force made the universe. What else can we conclude?
We have several possible sources for “god-given” morals. One is the holy books of various religions. However, we look inside them and find that their creation stories don’t correspond to the facts we know of about creation. If the creator god had inspired them, he could have inspired an accurate account. So, the existence of a creator god doesn’t give an credence to the holy books, in fact it diminishes them. It is possible that the creator god gave moral guidance without telling the creation story, but we’d need independent evidence for it and our acceptance of the creator god doesn’t give us any reason to conclude it happened.
Further, early cosmologies made it clear that the creator god considered us special, for instance by putting the earth in the center of a small universe, or creating the earth before the stars. However, when we look at the universe our creator god made, we find first that we are nothing special, and second, that our Sun didn’t get formed until very late. It would make sense for a creator god who created the universe for benefit of an intelligent species to arrange things so the species shows up early. We can’t tell if the creator god actually appeared someplace else, or created the universe without the intention of intelligence showing up. We can’t rule out the creator god working in mysterious ways and intending that we are the purpose of the universe, but it doesn’t look that way.
To sum it up, even if we accept a creator god, we have no reason to think this god has had anything to do with us, and in fact have negative evidence, more than just the lack of evidence atheists point to. We can’t argue logically from the First Cause god to any human religion. Thus, given a lack of evidence that the creator god has visited us, let alone provided a moral code, the believer in him should act just like an atheist does. Jefferson’s argument about god-given rights, by the way, assumes I think special creation by a god who then left. We don’t even have that much.
My guess: If we know there is a first cause, all we know about it is that…it’s a first cause. It could be a subatomic quark fart, for all we know. Or a spontaneously appearing Barcalounger.
Any argument for god that pretends to argue from a logical standpoint inevitably results in a “god” with few, perhaps just one, properties - and not usually very informative properites at that. The theists inevitably stack on piles of other properties as argued for by their Unsubstantiated Religion Of Choice - but the addition of all the other assumptions is always an illogical leap as far as their original argument goes.
Thanks. I agree 100%.
Cool. Between us, if there was a creator, I think it was a grad student in some other universe. And he probably got yelled at by his adviser too.
Not “pooh-poohed,” categorically debunked. Your assertions were factually incorrect. You were corrected. This is Great Debates. That’s what happens.
I don’t know what poster that would be, but I know that your assertion was false. I don’t think you were intentionally lying, I just think you’re comically misinformed.
In other words, you want to pretend to victimhood and moral superiority, but aren’t willing to actually produce a charge that can be disproven. Just that someone unspecified made an unspecified charge against you. And was so subtle that no one else but you noticed.
It’s the next step in martyrdom for the faith; the martyrdom itself has to be taken on faith !
“I’ve been persecuted !”
“How ?”
“Guess.”
I agree completely.
Sorry, I didn’t have the time to read the complete thread, but this point is nicely made in a Douglas Adams essay that I recently found on the net.
It’s called “Is There An Artificial God?” and is about how the idea of the existence of god came into being.
Had a big influence on me on my way to Atheism, for sure.