Epic atheism fail

I have chosen to write this response here because in the OP, in a response to one person who read and commented on his article he wrote

 Most comments from atheists are sent to spam. I have a lot of atheists that attempt to “refute” articles on my website on a daily basis. I simply do not have time to debate all of you through comments on my website. If you must know what I thought of your response, I thought it was crude, logically incoherent, and highlighted some of the glaring issues in the atheist worldview.

and since we are most of the time quite generous and polite, we will have no problem if he chooses to respond to us. However, we will not allow an insult on the host or his friends. That would be against house rules.

On this blog atheism means the lack of belief in god[s]. We spend time once in a while reading posts by theists to just to get to know what new argument they have developed in their arsenal of non arguments for  god. We are here pleased to present to you the existential argument against atheism. If you have never come across it, don’t worry, we too had not heard about it till a few days ago. And here is why you may not have heard it

The Existential Argument is an argument that I developed, and it focuses on how the atheist must borrow from the Christian worldview in order live their own lives.

Let us pause for a while here. The Muslim must borrow from the christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Baha’i, the adherent of Africa Traditional religion! You see what happens when we close our eyes and minds? But let us read on, he tells

I have developed this argument to bolster the Transcendental Argument for God, and I consider it to be an extension of Van Tillian and Clarkian philosophy. This argument can be used by Van Tillian presuppositional apologists, Classical apologists, and Clarkian presuppositional apologists

in the name of all that is reasonable, who are these people and why are several arguments needed to justify  an omnipotent god. Please tell me and tell me clearly, what part of omnipotence requires apologetics. The universe is, nobody argues against its existence. The philosophical question that I have heard is

how do we know that what we see around us is the real deal, and not some grand illusion perpetuated by an unseen force?

More on this for a future post.

We are told the argument has two aspects

These two aspects are meaning(anthropology) and morality(axiology)

and we are told

The argument shows the atheist that they have to borrow from the presuppositions and implications of the Christian worldview in order to live a coherent lifestyle

in a short while we will hopefully be told what these are. Just be patient. However, we will digress just a moment to clear things up. A delusion is defined as

 a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary

and we must ask for a justification for

The Existential Argument is a deductive argument that falsifies the atheist worldview by demonstrating that it is a delusion.

The argument has been formulated thus

1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview.

2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview.

3. If you can’t live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality.

4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion.

5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true.

Conclusion: Atheism is false.

Each of these premises are problematic. Premise #1, a worldview must not be true for one to live consistently with it. My grandfathers believed there were spirits everywhere, good and bad, who needed appeasing and they lived consistently with such a worldview. It wasn’t true. So the premise falls on that point.

#2 unless one is an atheist, this premise is open to disproof. If atheism is a lack of belief in gods, what are these presuppositions it makes?

#3 falls with two.

#4 delusions deal with beliefs. We could grant that 4 is correct

#5 it is this that is in need of proof. It cannot be the argument and at the same time a premise.

There is no way in getting to the conclusion using the above premises. They are weak, poorly formulated and tell us nothing.

A spoiler, the arguments you are yet to see read like WLC copycat maybe it is a clone, we can never know, can we? He lists these as the starting point for Christianity

1. Axiology-There are moral values that have prescriptive value. That is to say, there are things we are morally obligated to do or not do.

2. Metaphysics- Nature exists, but there are also things that exist beyond nature.

3. Epistemology-In the Christian worldview, God is omniscient. Thus, knowledge must be possible, for if an all knowing being exists, then it is necessary that knowledge also be possible, or else the being could not really be all knowing. You can’t have a description of reality where knowledge isn’t possible and still have an omniscient being.

4. Teleology- The universe and its inhabitants have a purpose in life.

5. Theology-God exists.

6. Anthropology-All individuals have purpose in life.

7. Cosmology-God created the universe.

and these

1. Axiology-There can be no objective moral values in atheism, they must be relative to each individual.

2. Metaphysics- Nature is all that can exist.

3. Epistemology-Nothing can ultimately be known because we don’t have perfect knowledge.

4. Teleology- There is no purpose for humanity.

5. Theology- God does not exist.

6. Anthropology- There is no ultimate purpose for the universe.

7. Cosmology-Evolution is the only game in town for atheism.

and these for atheism. In order to refute those  listed under atheism, in no particular order, we contend here that theology being the study of god has offered no results. We are where we were in 212 BCE with Tertullian. Anthropology is the study of humankind, past and present, that draws and builds upon knowledge from social and biological sciences, as well as the humanities and the natural sciences and has nothing to do with whether the universe has purpose or not. And while here, why must things have ultimate purposes. What is the theist’s obsession with absolutes, ultimate-s and infinites? Cosmology  is the study of the origins and eventual fate of the universe and has nothing or little to do with the beginning and progress of life. Naturalistic evolution, the only game in town, deals with the progress of life in the universe and ID or creationism isn’t an alternative theory.  The theist as we have said elsewhere must first tell us what god intended to arrive at the conclusion that the universe is designed. Moral values are subjective but have an objective appearance because of our shared humanity. Nature is all that is. Show me that which is non nature and I will change my mind. Our knowledge is infinite in the extent that we are always able to discover something new about the universe but this is provisional. There can always be a better explanation.

One more point that I need to add; I plead guilty to the charge of nihilism. This doesn’t mean I can’t find things that give my life meaning, on the contrary the realization that life is absurd calls for a revolt not suicide. And to not commit suicide, I have to create meaning or look for those things that would make my days worthwhile. If the theist thinks there is an ultimate purpose in the universe, please tell me what this is. I need to know it.

He tells us about the absurdity of life without god[how he knows this is still unknown] and writes

Loren Eisley writes, “Man is the cosmic orphan. He’s the only creature in the universe who asks, ‘Why?’

He’s the only creature we know asks why, we don’t know whether baboons do. We have no way of telling.

Apart from reading Craig, is lying also part of the deal for apologists? We are told

 Ever since the period of Enlightenment there has been a part of humanity that has been trying to shake off ‘the shackles of religion.’ They began trying to answer the questions in life without God.

which is not true. The Greeks several years before the christian era started questioning the existence of deities. Democritus was a thorough going materialist and determinist. To say the question of a godless universe started with the enlightenment demonstrates that one is either ignorant of the facts, a liar or both, you decide.

He tells us this about the answers, and it is good to hear it from him

the answers that came back were not at all exhilarating, rather, they were dark and terrible: You are nothing more than the unintentional bi-product of matter, plus energy, plus time, plus chance. There is no ultimate reason for your existence, all you face is death.

There is nothing dark about the answers. That they are dark is a subjective judgement of one individual and is not true for all. It is a great mystery being alive considering we are just atoms combined just slightly different from the combination in the stone. This is not a terrible or dark thing, at least I don’t find it so.  It is terrible to think you are the product of a god who is jealous, angry and vengeful. A god who punishes up to the fourth generation and has decided in his great wisdom that a great percentage of our race will be punished for eternity [and that’s a long time] for not believing in him, when there was never evidence for his/ her/ its existence. Please tell me which is darker!

I could be wrong, but Christians have been telling for a long time now we live in the end times. Science in talking about the eventual death of the universe doesn’t anticipate a divine destroyer waiting to pass judgement, it makes a prediction based on mathematical models of what would happen in different scenarios and not so with the theist. Their god is waiting on the day of judgement to try us for mind crimes. He makes no argument against atheism by writing

The universe also faces a death of its own. The universe is expanding, galaxies and other heavenly bodies are growing farther apart. As the energy dissipates the universe will grow colder, stars will become dark, all matter and will collapse into black holes and there will be no light. There will be no heat, no life, but only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the darkness. The entire universe is moving irretrievably to its grave. There is no escape, no hope.

I will go with Dante when he said if god did not exist, one had to be created. I will also agree with the philosopher who said with god everything is permitted. I disagree with anyone who argues that without god there is no morals. The universe is ultimately absurd consider the things you do daily; you eat, shit, eat again an endless cycle just so you don’t die from hunger or showering every so often and still having to repeat the exercise, all absurdity. In the dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro, we learn that introducing gods in the discussion about piety/ good does not solve the problem. In fact looking at the argument, it is immediately obvious that good and bad are independent of gods.

When the author tells us

The Christian worldview is the only worldview that is logically consistent when you take all seven presuppositions into account

he ignores the question of their truth. An argument can be logically sound but still invalid. The above presuppositions for the christian worldview though consistent with it are utterly false when checked against reality.

The author anticipates some of the objections and one I already mentioned here. But then he writes

Atheists, like Christians, have a theological portion of their worldview; however, their particular presupposition is that there is no god.

Theology is the study of the nature of god and his interaction with the world/ universe. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. How, tell me, does a person come up with such a ridiculous statement?

In conclusion he writes

 From the very time that an atheist begins to try to engage us, they end up losing the debate because they had to presuppose ideas that are not kosher with an atheist worldview

A statement that has been shown to be false every time we engage theists. They scatter to the nearest hole to bring up Craig, Platinga and CS Lewis or at worst Lee Strobel.

Am done here, if there is anything we have learnt from this argument, it is a rehash of WLC bullshit and makes not a stride against atheism.

As a bonus

Atheism epic fail