Jonathan Moreyia wrote:

“But that’s where the problems arise: at this point, EVERY religion uses special pleading to grant their particular deity exemption from the physical laws from the creatures/"watches" they create.”

The maker of a car cannot by definition be him/herself subject to the inner workings of the car, because he/she is not part of the car. Otherwise this would imply self-creation which is self contradictory.

In the same way, the creator of ALL physical reality CANNOT be subject to the laws of physics, because he/she/it CANNOT be part of its own creation.

A creator of anything has to be outside the system of what he/she creates. If not, it resolves in self-contradiction. This is logically inescable.

So this isn’t special pleading at all.

“2. The something that was created is less intelligent then its creator. So to say that matter created itself is absurd ive never seen something create itself in the 3D world. have you? or am i crazy.”

This analogy fundamentally fails in logic. It explains one reason why the Watchmaker Argument is so riddled in fallacy. The watch, of course, is “less intelligent” (whatever that means, and of course, you haven’t defined the term) than the watchmaker… but the watchmaker, in every single way, without a doubt, is subject to the same physical laws as that watch.

But that’s where the problems arise: at this point, EVERY religion uses special pleading to grant their particular deity exemption from the physical laws from the creatures/"watches" they create. You cannot compare a watch being created to the universe being created, because the “creator” is given abilities outside of what its creation has! So the analogy utterly fails!

“...God is outside of our parameters so therefore he doesnt have to be created...”

Oh goodie! Special pleading! So therefore, by your definition (and by Dr. Lennox’s), a god is valid because the arguer’s god fits within THEIR parameters! So therefore, you have proven EVERY SINGLE DEITY AND MYTHICAL CREATURE OUT THERE!

Also to say that the universe is eternal without a creator is absurd. To say that matter was always here and needed no creation is a copout in a way because we observe matter in science ever day everyone observes matter we know that it cant create something just as complex as itself. We know of two rules that apply to this argument. 1. something within our parameters of the world has to be created by something, this is what we observe everyday and have never observed differently. 2. The something that was created is less intelligent then its creator. So to say that matter created itself is absurd ive never seen something create itself in the 3D world. have you? or am i crazy.

Show me something within our realm that has not been created. anything. By the observable standpoint everything has been created so why do we think differently about the beginning of our universe. A lot of you missed what this article says, which is that God is outside of our parameters so therefore he doesnt have to be created. Or maybe he was you really dont know, read deutoronomy 29:29. Try to comprehend what it would be like to be in a 4th dimension. Imagine what you would look like. Imagine the rules of that dimension and also how do you live in that dimension. You cant even begin to comprehend what the 4th dimension looks like. Maybe God is within another dimension where things can create themselves where matter is actually self-existent. But as we know in our parameters of our universe matter has never been self-existent so why believe in self-existent matter. My ultimate point is that we know for our universe that there has to be something that created it or put it into motion since matter is not self-existent. We know nothing else about any other dimension or its parameters and how physical laws work if there are any within that dimension. Just because you cant comprehend God doesnt mean he’s not real. Some people cant even comprehend the complexities of this earth but yet those things are still factual. I dont see how this is a hard concept for athiest to grasp it bewilders me at times.

Quite on the Contrary the God of the Bible is described as incomprehensible and partly comprehensible. In the book of Jeremiah God describes himself in this way: ‘Am I only God nearby...and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him...Do not I fill the heaven and earth’ (Jeremiah 23: 23-24) and in Isaiah as the one who has measured the heavens (Isaiah 40: 12).

King Solomon said: ‘But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less the temple I have built’ (1 Kings 8: 27). This passage indeed describes the incomprehensible side of God, the God that is not depended upon time, space, matter, energy, creation etc, from everything emerged, and secondly the side of God they could comprehend, which is the revelation of God in terms of prophecy and action or intervention in the created realm.

Hence when you state that the God of the Bible is a smaller God because he is comprehensible according to some of the biblical terms or because of creation you fail to differentiate between the God who simply is, whom we cannot comprehend, describe or phatom and the revelation of this God in prophecy and divine interaction within the created realm.

@ Douglas:

“God is the only logical way to explain why we are here.”

It’s a question that all creationists hate hearing (pointed out by Ravi Zacharias, who presented at my university last month), but it holds extremely valid: WHICH god?

All religions claim to “know” how the universe came about. As pointed out in my last post, Taoists believe all in the universe grew out of the Dao--how is this extravagant claim any less valid than your own? “Logically” only works when, under ALL circumstances, your reasoning will ALWAYS apply, no matter who looks at it. Therefore, all claims that “God did it” are illogical to atheists who lack a belief in God, Buddhists who lack a belief in any deity, Muslims who lack a belief in YOUR god, and everyone else who doesn’t believe in your god.

Claims prove nothing. Unless those claims are presented with factual evidence, peer-reviewed by scientists and other groups, your claims will remain nothing more than claims.

And they are certainly not logical. Special pleading fallacies are always used by those with no evidence for their claims. And so I say, justified under special pleading: “DAO DID IT!”!

I think people (my self included) have a hard time understanding or comprehending God. But ultimately we are here, so we had to get here some how. Romans 1:20 says “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” There are things you must take on faith either way you look at it because we have no eyewitness. IF God exists, then He cannot play by the same rules so to speak. IF He created everything, then He is not bound by the same laws as we are. What we need to do is not try to fit God into our parameters, because He is outside of them. Realize that God is ALL KNOWING, AND ALL POWERFUL. I would cite the fact that we are here as the most compelling argument. Matter cannot exist eternally, and cannot be self existent. God is the only logical way to explain why we are here. The fact we can reason about things like this proves there is an all powerful God. Colossians chap. 1 says “He is before all things, and by him all things are held together.” I hope this will help.

Whose word do we choose to believe?

The Word became flesh, and dwelt with us…

Learn who Jesus is; check him out in the book of Matthew, or Mark or Luke or John.  They were there.

Blessings to you.

The reason we talk of creation is that we notice that laws and rules apply to things in the universe. Then we think something must have programmed the laws. What if we talk about a programmer rather than a creator?

If we say “God” is “Something all-powerful” then I believe in God. Take an object. It’s not all-powerful because it has laws restricting it. What about those laws? Are they all-powerful? If not, there are laws restricting them.

Eager theists may be tempted to say “Well, if we go back far enough, we’ll find something with no laws. Hey presto, God!”

But the line may stretch infinitely back. I’m a theist, but I think it makes more sense if we think of the whole of existence as a single thing. Are there laws outside it? If yes, then we’re not thinking about all existence. If no, then it’s all powerful, for there is nothing outside it restricting it.

“So that something exists, something has to have existed forever, because the nothing, nothing creates.”
You either believe that God is self-existent, or that something else is. Because if you keep going back to “what created what?” you will always end up with something self-existent.

You play fallacy, then so will I.

What an incredible argument John Lennox points out. “Of course the Christian doctrine is that God existed eternally, so that, by definition, the creation *word?* so to speak, stops there.”

So, by definition, the Christian God is defined to be defined as out of anything rhetorically sound, right? What a fantastic argument. Anything that *would* be applied to God with any sort of scientific reasoning would simply be dismissed as, “Well, we define God to be outside of a naturalistic point of view,” or “Scientific laws don’t apply to those outside of the universe.”

Rhetoric likes to call such arguments Special Pleading Fallacies. And if John Lennox can perform such a fallacy and it is regarded as acceptable, then so can I. So I say, that by definition, MY god is outside of the rules of your Christian doctrine, but YOUR God is within the realms of mine.

His argument is just as valid as a Daoist argument of “creation,” which says everything grew from the Almighty One, the Dao itself. But unlike with the Christian God, the Dao is too great to be limited to simple HUMAN descriptions. The Christian God, then, is limited by the descriptions in the Bible--the Dao is not. Therefore, the Dao is much greater than God, because it is far too perfect to even be described.

You play fallacy, then so will I.

I am a Christian that thoroughly enjoys science and apologetics. There is a such thing as a response that might embarrass you, so please think about your postings before you actually do. I would also recommend watching these videos twice since they’re short and you might catch something you missed. Watch them without any other browser tabs open and be focused.

Please don’t make your statements in such a way that would portray itself as a debate ending statement. Nobody is here to convert someone to one side or the other. I’m assuming that most people make posts to share what they believe/think and why. This is a forum to ask questions and share ideas. Thought-out responses are received better, and help others think more critically, generating a better response and promoting more thinking.

I think it goes a little bit like this:

Faith: Life is too complex not to be designed. Someone must have created it.

Science: Ok, but the creator must be even more complex than the creation. Who created the creator?

Faith: Well, who says everything that is complex needs to have a creator?

Science: You just did!

Faith: Nah-ah.

One must believe in God to not believe in God.
Life is empty and meaningless....and it doesnt mean anything that it doesn’t mean anything.

Ha! eye rollingly silly for anyone who is willing to take the time to think about what his argument boils down to.
Lennox takes a legitimate argument against god the invocation of god to explain the universe requires god be explained, sorry to break it to him. Saying well in that case I define god as not requiring an explanation, or in this case as being not created.
He may as well have said, oh whats that, you have a valid argument that disproves my god? Well in that case I define my god as not being disprovable. Its an intellectual sleight of hand, if your able to see when someone is tricking you then this is obvious.

Yes, atheism or rather non-magical human minds created all these things.
We create all sorts of whacked out bunk, for better or worse: processed cheese, foam swimming pool noodles, bum fights, cliff diving, argyle socks and nose rings. What’s your point?

James - such arrogance. Are Prof Lennox, Prof Swinburne, Prof Collins, Prof Miller, etc, etc, irrational?
What qualifications have you got and what have you done for science and mankind?
As for “religion and dogma” - that’s an original one. Atheists just recycle the same “arguments”.

IF

If atheism and pure evolution is correct and true, theism is its child!

If atheism and evolution are histories only true constant, they produced all of histories holy writings!

If atheism produced such written records, why? How?

If evolved minds ponder theism why?

If we are a product of detailed concise evolution fighting through billions of years, we die, why?

The idea of a created creator originates from the apologist first cause argument.  The created creator is the hole in the apologist first cause argument.

IN RESPONSE TO GAVIN KIRBY:

I don’t think Lennox is dancing around the question at all. He’s saying that whenever we look at origins in the physical universe, there is an infinite regress.  But since God is outside of the physical laws, this puts an end to the regression that atheists are stuck with. Atheists say that matter, energy, and physics just always existed. But ‘extrapolating from experiences’ as Gavin called it, will never lead you to the conclusion that matter is eternal since all we’ve ever known is a universe confined to time and space. The God Christians speak of is timeless (2 Peter 3:8).  And although we can’t fully understand this through scientific means, it at least addresses the question of origins, unlike Dawkins who says:  “Matter just always existed”.  In his book the ‘God Delusion’ he even goes as far as to say that billions of universes existed void of cause and ours came about through a system of natural selection.  He requires theists to explain every feature of creation before he’ll believe it, but allows his own ideas to be ‘yet discovered’.  There is no room for this kind of hypocrisy in science.

In Gavin’s comment he makes bold assumptions that the Yahweh of the Jews is derived from the Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians that dates back to 1000 BC, but this is obviously impossible since Moses (who wrote the Torah) pre-dates them by 400 years, and Abraham pre-dates them by 1200 years (who would technically be the founder of Judaism).  So to say the first monotheistic religion didn’t appear until 1350 BC is at least 850 years off.  Atheists want to believe that Christianity is derived from pagan beliefs, but a simple study of history always clears up this misunderstanding.