Evidence. Tons of it.

This is the first post in a series of apologetics. I've been contemplating writing one for a long time, but never got off my rear and started. This will not be nearly so long, nor as eloquent as John C. Wright's A Universal Apology, but then again I am not a science fiction author.

I recently came across this video, which I suggest watching. In just a few minutes Ray Comfort presents two of the arguments for the existence of God, the argument from design and the argument from existence. While the video is somewhat terse and glosses over a lot of important details, at least it is a starting point for a discussion.



It always amazes me when people tell me they are atheist or agnostic, and claim to be open minded about it, but they have seen no good evidence or arguments for the existence of God.

If they said they haven't considered the matter important enough to investigate, or that they just didn't care, or that they found the idea of God too uncomfortable to accept, or even that they held their position out of faith (in a person or an idea) I could accept that; but to say that they are open to evidence, but dismiss all the evidence, is somewhat disingenuous.

There was one fellow who was militantly atheist (who was literally shouting me down in a series of posts) who admitted he had never heard of Aquinas' "five proofs." I posted a link, and within 15 minutes or so he replied that he had read them and they were "wrong." Understand that these five proofs would take about that long to read, let alone to understand what they were about, and people have been studying them for some 800 years without refuting them successfully, but this guy apparently did. And furthermore, his intellect was so dizzying he was unable to make someone as stupid as poor me understand exactly what the flaw in those proofs might be. The logic was jsut too dizzying.

What I hope to do in this post (and several more following) is to cover a few of the arguments for God in enough detail to at least demonstrate that these is overwhelming evidence for God, and if you want to remain an atheist or agnostic you need to think of an alternate justification than saying "there is no good evidence or argument."

The tools I will use for this are pretty simple. First is thought. There are a few principles I will use. The first is the law of non-contradiction. Two contradictory statements cannot be true in the same sense at the same time. If I ate breakfast this morning, I did not skip breakfast this morning.

The second is the law of the excluded middle. That is, for every statement, either it or it's opposite is true. Either I ate breakfast this morning, or I did not eat breakfast this morning. There is no other option. For those who immediately want to say "well, what if you ate something that was sort of like breakfast..." forget it. Remember we are talking about something in the same sense at the same time.

I will also be using boolean algebra and propositional calculus as well as a number of propositions. I will attempt to avoid straw men and other logical fallacies, but if something is not fully explained call me on it. I am not perfect, and my understanding of subjects is not infinite.

Well, having st the ground rules I hope I've piqued your interest enough to read part 2. I'm going to try to post at least one per week.

Link to Part 2

Posted in: atheism,God