Can you say egotist? Every page of the debate is headed with a photo of the guy for heaven's sake! However, that is a personal observation which is nothing to do with why I think his arguments hold very little water.
Now with respect to the first question, I'll leave it up to Dr. Curley to present the reasons why he thinks that God does not exist. Atheist philosophers have tried for centuries to disprove the existence of God. But no one has ever been able to come up with a convincing argument. So rather than attack straw men at this point, I'll just wait to hear Professor Curley's answer to the following question: What good reasons are there to think that God does not exist?
He says he doesn't attack straw men, but has actually done so, primarily by denying that any atheistic philosophers have ever come up with a convincing argument. Being one of those who believes that it is extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence, I'm not sure why the atheists have to be so convincing.
5. 1: God makes sense of the origin of the universe. Have you ever asked yourself where the universe came from? Why everything exists instead of just nothing? Typically atheists have said that the universe is eternal, and that's all. But surely this doesn't make sense. Just think about it for a minute. If the universe never began to exist, then that means that the number of events in the past history of the universe is infinite. But mathematicians recognize that the idea of an actually infinite number of things leads to self–contradictions. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? Well, mathematically, you get self–contradictory answers. This shows that infinity is just an idea in your mind, not something that exists in reality. David Hilbert, perhaps the greatest mathematician of this century states, "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea."
But that entails that since past events are not just ideas, but are real, the number of past events must be finite. Therefore, the series of past events can't just go back forever. Rather the universe must have begun to exist.
First of all, he's implying that most atheists today believe in a steady state universe. No, we don't, since the evidence for a Big Bang is overwhelming. Personally I have the same problem Bill Craig has with the concept of an infinite series of events, and yet he's using this to prove God created the Universe. How about the infinite series of events God participated in beforehand? how about the infinite series of events in the afterlife (heaven
or hell)?
The astrophysical evidence indicates that the universe began to exist in a great explosion called the "Big Bang" about 15 billion years ago. Physical space and time were created in that event, as well as all the matter and energy in the universe. Therefore, as Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle points out, the Big Bang Theory requires the creation of the universe from nothing. This is because, as you go back in time, you reach a point in time at which, in Hoyle's words, the universe was "shrunk down to nothing at all."{3}
This is quite a common Creationist tactic - to use a well known scientist's opinion to promote the incorrect Creation "Science" concept. Craig is assuming the Big Bang is correct, and then using Fred Hoyle's
rebuttal of the Big Bang to somehow prove his point! Hoyle was trying to demonstrate that the Universe could never have come from a Big Bang (the actually derisive term Hoyle invented himself!) but was in fact a Steady State universe of the kind that Craig was disposing of in the previous paragraph! Hoyle was wrong, and it is only the
dimensions of the Universe which expanded from (as near as dammit) nothing - but still contained all the mass (in fact likely many orders of magnitude times the mass) of the current Universe. That science does not have an answer to how this came about does not mean that we have to rely on God (and again I have to ask the question, who created God?) However, energy can form itself into objects of mass, producing a particle and an antiparticle. You need a concept of anti-energy, but it's not ruled out as far as I know by any known principle. Isaac Asimov wrote about this many years ago, despite what Craig says here:
7. Now this tends to be very awkward for the atheist. For as Anthony Kenny of Oxford University urges, "A proponent of the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing."{4}
Not difficult to believe at all!
8. But surely that doesn't make sense! Out of nothing, nothing comes. So why does the universe exist instead of just nothing? Where did it come from?
The fact that this is an unanswered question does not form any kind of supporting evidence that God exists. This is, in fact, the question that is posed by well known atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking at the end of
A Brief History of Time. "Why does anything exist instead of nothing? Why does the Universe go to all the trouble of existing?" Believe me, Hawking did not pose this question in order to have us all fall into believing in God after all!
Lastly (I am not going to bore you with the rest of the debate, just in ways that he can be successfully debated)
There must have been a cause which brought the universe into being. And from the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe. It must be uncaused because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless––at least without the universe––because it created time. Because it also created space, it must transcend space as well and therefore be immaterial, not physical.
And yet this changeless timeless and immaterial being somehow decided that one microscopic lifeform on a microscopic dot called "Earth" needed to stop engaging in activities you could call "sin" and so created a member of that life form (known as his "Only Begotten Son") to live a life and then die a violent death in order that humanity would be "saved". But if this being is timeless, changeless and immaterial, it's not entirely certain as to exactly
how this being would achieve this, let alone
why.
Sorry, one more:
16. Professor Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at the University of Guelph, agrees. He explains:
Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction...and any deeper meaning is illusory.{13}
Friedrich Nietzsche, the great atheist of the last century who proclaimed the death of God, understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life.
I think that Friedrich Nietzsche was right.
What is with this guy with referring to Authority? A logical argument (which is what he's supposed to be engaged in) stands or falls by its own merits, not by who is promoting it. Some philosopher "agrees" with Craig - but I do not agree with that philosopher, so where does that leave Craig's argument? Of course he's arguing that a scientist's argument that there is no such thing as morality, when there
are moral absolutes, proves the existence of God. But I don't agree with Ruse, just because he's a philosopher of science. And I disagree with Nietsche, too. I have a moral code, and I don't require the promise of hellfire to make me stick to it. It's just a matter of "is this going to hurt anybody?"
