Several months ago I read about atheism being self-defeating, but I forgot exactly how the argument went. I finally heard it again the other day so I thought I’d share.
Atheism comes from the Greek “a” – the negative, and “theos” – god. It not only means not believing in a God, it affirms the non-existence of God, period, meaning it absolutely affirms a negative. While that’s almost impossible to pull off, it’s also self defeating in this case. To give you an example, assume I told you that there are no yellow and red striped trees anywhere in this universe. I would have to have infinite knowledge of this universe in order to prove it, because I would have to know each and every spot everywhere in the universe to make that claim. So the atheist needs/claims infinite knowledge to tell us that there is no one with infinite knowledge (aka God), which doesn’t make any sense.
If you’re an atheist, now may be a good time to change your position to, say, agnostic. Wait, that’s self-defeating, too. More about that later…

Just watched the debate (direct link) from a couple of months ago. This is the first I have heard from both D’Souza and Hitchens and I am pretty impressed with the former; he’s a pretty sharp guy. I will let them speak for themselves, but being in the Roundtable I noticed a few things:

Maybe it’s me, but it seems like Hitchens doesn’t quite answer all the questions precisely and goes off on tangents. D’Souza did that a few times as well, but generally answered the questions very much to the point and only drifted off to answer Hitchens’ comments.

D’Souza didn’t use the bible at all in his debate, as he stated beforehand he wouldn’t. That’s a perfectly fine thing to do, as a matter of fact I love the arguments for God derived simply from logic. Some questions, however, are much easier to answer using the bible. One is the occurance of miracles. People like to question them, which is quite silly and shows the different presuppositions we function under.

1. God doesn’t exist
2. Miracles happen in the bible that are physically impossible
3. Therefore the bible/Christianity is wrong

It doesn’t take a philosophy degree to see the problem here. Independent from one’s own presuppositions, the situation taken in the context of the bible is this:

1. God exists
2. Miracles happen in the bible that are, at best, improbable
3. The bible is internally consistent

One cannot simply take the bible and its content, remove God, and question said content. It doesn’t make any sense, yet I still see it used.
Back to the debate and D’Souza not using the bible. The downside to using the bible is that it needs to be established as authoritative first, because most people don’t accept it as such, again mostly because they suppose it to be wrong/full of fairy tales from the start. In a recent discussion I had, this was still so after I gave a good amount of evidence for its authority or at least accuracy, without ever hearing a counter argument other than “it’s a fairy tale,” with an appeal to common knowledge: “Everyone knows that.”

Overall interesting debate to watch and I am looking forward to reading Dinesh D’Souza’s newest book.

Today I heard, again, that there is religion and there is logic, one or the other, mutually exclusive. But that’s not the case. Quite the opposite, without God we wouldn’t have logic or any foundation or absolute standard for anything. One logical argument I have never seen refuted is the cosmological argument for God.

1. Everything that has a beginning as a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

That cause needs to be uncaused and transcendent, meaning above and beyond all matter and time, and we call that cause “God.”

There are other arguments like it. Another one of my favorites is that of absolute moral law.

1. An absolute moral law requires a moral lawgiver
2. There is an absolute moral law.
3. Therefore there is a moral lawgiver.

Point 2 would be the most attacked one. My question is: “Is it right or wrong to torture and kill 5 year old girls?” – The answer for any atheist must be “I can’t say.” The only possible answer is that they dislike it, or they don’t approve of it personally, but they can’t say that it’s either right or wrong because they don’t have an absolute standard. Saying that our morals are shaped by society simply removes the problem one level; it’s still one person or many persons setting the standard based on their opinions, nothing more.
We all know the answer to the original question though: It’s wrong. Why can we say that? Because God set an absolute standard for right and wrong.
Some people are more fallen and evil than others and actually delight in horrible treatments like that, thinking it’s the right thing to do, but that really doesn’t make it so.

Only with God can we have a standard for what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, and logic (among other things) helps us figure that out. God gave us the ability to think, let’s do it and think these issues through!

Hello all from beautiful but too hot Oklahoma! I recently got my copy of Leopard and I must say I am impressed. It’s overall not quite as stable as Tiger, but that’s to be expected. The feature set is quite impressive, though I am with most people that the glass dock and transparent menu bars are less than useful. Transparent menu bar. Come on, Apple….

I am very very impressed with the new XCode IDE which has got a nice overhaul and streamlined workflow. I haven’t got a chance to play with Instruments yet (DTrace meets Garageband), but it’s supposed to be nice. I may give an update on that once I get my feet wet with new developer goodness.

Well, about the gecko. You guys knew I have a Leopard Gecko. I am planning on getting him a larger, 20 L tank instead of this small one, but I went ahead and bought some new sand (yeah I know the risks, really). Coupled with the slate rocks I got from my wife’s parents’ new farm I thought I’d rearrange his tank a bit before he gets to move to the big one eventually. It seems like he may have been a little freaked out by the new environment:

So I got him out and put him on my desk, where he got comfortable on a warm spot of my MacBook that is, incidently, running Leopard. Get it? Leopard Gecko – Leopard? Clever clever.

Anyway, staying busy with school, work, ethics roundtable and greek. Come Tuesday there will be yet another thing demanding my attention: Assassin’s Creed! Boy I can’t wait!