The atheist and his incredible imagination

Linkity.

Link to "The future is wild."

Article synopsis: The author uses the web site "The future is wild" a site that speculates on the direction of evolution in the future, to set up the argument "Speculation is all scientists do when describing past events related to evolution."

This article is probably the most vapid in the "Pull the plug on atheism" series so far. It asserts that because some people speculate about the future, that is exactly what people do for the past. The author does not offer any evidence to validate his position he just states it as fact then ends the article. Which is ironically delicious in my opinion.

Of course the amount of validity, in this case the amount of evidence, you submit your claim with is equal to the amount of validity with which it must be dismissed. So if you assert something as true but offer no evidence to support your position, it can be dismissed with an equal amount of evidence. Just for fun though, I thought I'd leave a link to a fraction of the evidence those crazy speculating scientists have to offer to support their. . .um. . . speculations.

Observed instances of speciation.

A challenge to an atheist

Linkity

Link to Mr. Myers' blog

Article synopsis: A guy by the name of P.Z. Myers, a biologist from the university of Minnesota, criticized the "Pull the plug on Atheism blog." The author claims this is the result of his statement that "atheists believe that something came from nothing." He then uses a Quote from Mr. Myers' blog to set up the argument: "Prove god doesn't exist."  

The first thing to point out is all of the criticisms were for varied reasons, and were not solely leveled against the strawman "atheists believe nothing created something." That is not really a big deal considering that most of Mr. Myers' criticisms could be accurately presented against such a claim.  So the major point of the article is that Mr. Myers must admit that somebody created the universe (This is implied in the loaded statement: "He doesn't know how the universe got here, but he somehow knows the creator wasn't a 'who'.")  

Loaded statements can be called fallacious reasoning because they require the assumption of some point as fact in order for the statement to be considered. For instance, the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is presented as requiring a binary yes-or-no response when in fact, the answer may be "I have never hit my wife!"  So in the author's case, referring to the origins of the universe as the anthropomorphic "A creator" requires the assumption that there exists some sort of conscious "world maker." 

 

After this the author "calls Mr. Myer's bluff" asserting you cannot be one hundred percent certain that god does not exist. He then demands that Mr. Myers explain how he knows god was not involved in the creation of the universe. This argument comes from not understanding the concept of the burden of proof. If you are going to assert something as fact then the burden of proof lies (or is it lays? I can never remember) with you. Even if you are not the first to speak in an argument, if you are defending a claim, then you must prove it to be so. In other words, if somebody said "There is no god" and you said that there is, then you would have to prove your position with facts and evidence. So in this case the author is making the positive claim and ignores his responsibilities in debate. Using similar reasoning, I could claim to be god and challenge disinters to "Prove me wrong. " This is most likely why Mr. Myers dismissed the author's challenge in this response. That, or he is just a dirty heathen.     

The Atheist and the eternal universe.

Linkity

A synopsis of the article: Atheists believe that nothing made everything, Once an atheist concludes that that is logically impossible, he claims that the universe is eternal. The universe cannot be eternal because of the laws of thermodynamics. god exists, we are morally responsible to him.

Obviously the first thing to address here is the strawman argument in the first sentence.

"When the atheist understands the impossibility of his belief that nothing made everything, he often defaults to the belief that the universe is eternal."

I don't really know of a single atheist that holds the belief that the universe was created from nothing. If one does, it is certainly not a common belief. Why would it be? It's just silly. I think a more accurate opening sentence would be:

 "Once I assert that you believe the universe was made from nothing and you correct me, we then move on to discuss the nature of the universe's existence."  

Now the meat and potatoes of the bit.  The author makes the argument that the universe cannot be eternal because "the laws of thermodynamics cause everything material to run down in time." He then proposes a hypothesis. "Rock + a billion years = dust" I think this argument stems from a lack of understanding regarding the second law of thermodynamics. That law basically says that if the value of entropy in an isolated system is not in equilibrium then that value will increase over time until it hits a maximum value which is at equilibrium. For instance if you swing a pendulum its momentum will decrees until the pendulum stops moving. As the "useful" energy decreases, the entropy of the system increases. Unless of course you push the pendulum again.  So a rock in a vacuum is pretty much already in equilibrium. To cause the rock to erode you would need an external force such as moving wind or water or the impact of other rocks. 

As for the other part of the argument (The claim that everything material runs down in time) It is somewhat correct. It would be more accurate to say that according to the second law of thermodynamics, regions of concentrated energy will disperse and become "less useful" over time, but we all knew what he meant. So suns will eventually burn out and the entropy of the physical universe will eventually reach a limit at equilibrium. (Baring any unforeseen external influence.)  Here is the thing though. It is likely, acording to the general theory of relitivity anyway, that all matter and energy in the universe was contained in a singularity along with all known dimensions before the big bang . It is important to note that the universe did not "start" with the big bang . It is more accurate to think of the big bang as a transition point between two states of the universe .  So all energy probably has been moving toward equilibrium since the big bang. (about 13 billion years ago. )  But entropy inside  our perceptible dimensions does not really indicate that the universe is finite because it began at the big bang. So there really is not any evidence to indicate that the universe is finite. Its also kind of a misnomer to say that the universe had a beginning because physical time existed only in a singularity up until a certain point and since that is the case the universe existed outside of time. Therefore the universe is eternal. Well, according to the article anyway.     

The first set: "Pull the plug on atheism."

This resource pool comes from an evangalism group called "Living waters."  These short articles deal with what the author thinks are inconsistencies in atheism. Here are the articles I wish to address:

• The Atheist and the Eternal Universe
• A Challenge to an Atheist Professor
• The Atheist and His Incredible Imagination
• Atheism: the Intellectual Embarrassment
• An Atheist's Challenge
• The Atheist and the First Dog
• The Atheist's Creation Problem
• The Atheist's Problem with Females
• The God of the Atheist
• Atheists Start their own Religion
• The Unanswered Prayer of the Atheist
• The Atheist Pretend Game
• The Atheist's Leap of Faith
• The Intelligent Atheist is Not an Atheist

Argument from volume is a tactic employed in online forum debates. Basically a poster, trying to prove a point, submits a large volume of information in a short span of time (usually in the form of hyperlinks and usually from a resource pool that existed before the debate occurred.) This is done in order to overwhelm an opponent. Because the poster's opponent cannot address such a large volume of information in a short time the poster is able to make the claim that his opponent is unable to formulate a response to the post because his position on the issue is superior.

 Obviously this is a logical fallacy and, as a countermeasure against this tactic, I decided to address the resources directly. In this blog I will make counter-arguments to groups of resources in their entirety. I imagine this will be a somewhat tedious effort but it should be interesting none the less.