Bob Enyart writes:
Misrepresentations were the theme of Zakath’s seventh round. The theme of his eighth post is to assume victory in disagreements for which he has not rebutted but simply Ignored My Argument (marked below by [IMA]). Where he does this, I think it would be more effective for him to show how my arguments are ineffective, rather than to simply assume them so, or even just to completely ignore them. For example, Zakath’s main argument is the God of the Gaps claim [IMA], which I challenged in post 2 and presented a specific, significant rebuttal to in post 5. I have agreed that “ignorance is no evidence.” And until Zakath attempts to answer my Gap rebuttal, perhaps in round 10, he has no grounds to write: “Despite Pastor Enyart's attempts to assert otherwise, ignorance is not evidence for the existence of God. Ignorance is merely there result of a gap in knowledge.” What is Zakath’s defense to my Gaps rebuttal? No one can know from reading the debate thus far, because he has simply ignored it and the suspense builds as we wonder if he has an answer.
Bob just doesn't get it, does he? He's been harping on this one issue since the beginning, and Zakath keeps telling him the same thing. The God of the gaps argument IS A LOGICAL FALLACY -- It does not follow through that the gaps in our knowledge are evidence of God. Bob has been told this over and over, yet he doesn't seem to understand that it means that his argument is INVALID. It is an IRRATIONAL and ILLOGICAL argument. It violates the basic principles of logic. This is why Zakath is not responding to it, and repeating exactly why he is not responding to it. The fact that Bob doesn't seem to understand the invalidity of this argument is proof of his inability to debate. He simply doesn't know when an argument is flawed.
BQ28: Zakath, please indicate if my estimate is incorrect that mathematics predicts that it will take more than a trillion years to form a single protein molecule by chance.
ZA28: Zakath presented the “game of poker” as evidence that “random events” can produce an “ordered result” [by which he unreasonably ignored that men designed playing cards and poker rules to achieve those very results based upon probabilities, and conversely he ignored my reasonable appeal to casino operators regarding mathematical probabilities].
Bob is really showing his ignorance of science and mathematics here, but mostly his lack of an understanding of PROBABILITY. When I get a straight-flush in poker, the probability against it is enormous -- (52^52^5, in the millions). Yet, plenty of people end up with a straight-flush all the time, including a few times by myself, BECAUSE THERE ARE MILLIONS OF GAMES OF POKER GOING ON AT ANY MOMENT AROUND THE WORLD. The number of games being played INCREASES the probabilty. The chances of the hand being achieved is millions to one, yet it happens all the time. This is because PROBABILITY does not tell you how many hands need to be dealt BEFORE you get the results, but rather, WHAT THE LIKELYHOOD IS that the next hand dealt will get the results. The odds are millions to one against, but your next hand COULD BE THE ONE.
Secondly, Bob is laboring under the delusion that evolution is a CHANCE or RANDOM process. Nothing in nature happens by chance. Any scientist will tell you that everything in the universe is driven by CAUSALITY. Everything is caused by something else. The causal chains interact with one another, creating predictable patterns in nature. But there is a level of nature that we cannot predict -- not because it is random, but because we are unaware of all the factors involved. If we knew all the factors involved in any equation, we can predict all outcomes. The fact that we are not aware of all the factors involved for a given equation, and thus, are unable to accurately predict some things, DOES NOT PROVE GOD. It merely proves that we do not know all the factors involved.
If you can understand anything, Bob (and other creationists, too), please understand that NOTHING IN NATURE IS RANDOM. EVOLUTION IS NOT DESCRIBED BY SCIENCE AS A RANDOM PROCESS. Please refrain from using the argument about the "random" or "chance" nature of evolution. It is not chance or random at all, and anyone who says so is dealing with outdated material.
Unlike animals, human beings have a sense of embarrassment about various bodily functions which humor can exploit.
This is absolute hogwash, Bob. This embarrassment is not NATURAL. it is determined by SOCIETY. The culture we live in PROMOTES the notion that we should be embarrassed, mainly due to religious notions about purity and modesty. Embarrassment at bodily functions is IMPOSED on people BY SOCIETY. Go from culture to culture (I mean look at non-Christian, non-western cultures) and you will see that certain bodily functions are not taboo subjects universally. Your ignorance of other cultures, and ignorance of what, in human psychology, is natural versus what is created by your culture and society makes your argument very silly indeed.
Why do people commonly laugh and feel uncomfortable in public regarding reproduction and expelling waste?
How about "because society taught them to be that way"? Is it so hard for you to accept that certain cultures can program individuals to be automatically embarrassed about things? You need to read up on feral people (People who were raised by animals away from human society). Children found in the wild had no problem deficating in public and sniffing other people's crotches. It is human society and culture that programs those values into us, not God or nature.
If human beings were not at all spiritual but strictly made of matter, consisting only of atoms and molecules, then we would have no context from which to view our base bodily functions as funny or embarrassing.
What about the context of "Because religious leaders declared such things to be sinful or unclean."??? That's why I think we have these quirks. Of course, if a human being is AWARE, though education, that defication and urination in public areas CAN SPREAD DISEASE, and CAN BE VERY UNHEALTHY, as we know today, then that's plenty of reason for not crapping on your neighbor's kitchen floor, or urinating on your living room carpet. Humans are aware of the unhealthy nature of waste, and have been for quite some time. That is plenty of reason to reguard public pooping as "dirty", "unclean", "unhealthy", and "uncivilized".
Bob, this is, by far, the WORST and possibly DUMBEST argument I have ever read, for the existence of spirits or God. It's just plain silly.
Now let’s move from jokes to fears, specifically, fears of the dark, of ghosts, and of the dead. We humans differ from animals in strange quirks which theism readily explains. Evolution supposedly selects so well for survival that human brains advanced quickly to now process quadrillions of instructions per second. Yet if atheism were true, then natural selection has introduced the most backward oddities only among human animals. According to Isaac Asimov, the human brain “as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe” (Asimov, In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can’t Even Break Even, Smithsonian, August 1970, p. 10). And yet people, the greatest supposed achievement of evolution, are the only animals that are afraid of the dark, afraid of spirits, and afraid of dead bodies. A little mouse moves about fearlessly at night. A fish calmly sniffs at the recently deceased corpse of its own mother. No snake is afraid of ghosts. Yet human beings have an uncanny fear of these which we overcome to varying degrees. But why do these experiences exist for humans and not animals? Why? Because human beings, being spiritual as well as physical, are inherently aware of the spiritual realm, the domain beyond death, of spirit beings, the realm that cannot be seen with the eyes.
This is even sillier than the above argument! Allow me to laugh my head off. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! There. I'm done.
I would argue that it was RELIGION, or RELIGIOUS MEMES, in particular, that has given mankind it's silly bunch of superstitions. Why are humans afraid of the dark? I think it's because we can't see very well in the dark, and we are afraid, as any diurnal creature typically is, of the dark. Mice are nocturnal, and are not afraid of the dark, because they see very well in the dark. the same is true about cats. Noctural animals are not afraid of the dark.
The fear of the dark is not a supernatural one, either. It is mostly about safety. We fear tripping in the dark, being attacked by nocturnal animals, or other realistic fears. The fear of ghosts and spirits is COMPLETELY CULTURAL IN NATURE. I am not afraid of ghosts, spirits, demons, or any other monsters. I am only afraid of OTHER PEOPLE (like criminals and thugs), and dangerous animals (like rattlesnakes, scorpions, stinging insects, viscious dogs, etc). This is because I dumped all religious thoughts long ago. When I hear a bump in the night, I do not assume it was a ghost or monster. I usually suspect a cat, the wind, or a prankster human.
Religion has created many superstitions which creates irrational fears in people. These religious ideas - the spirit world, the existence of devils and satanic monsters, etc, has evolved over time and has taken on many forms in many cultures. Religious ideas have spawned werewolves, vampires, demonic beasts, and various other things, which people were told to believe in by priests and proselytizers -- people whom societies highly reguarded, some revered, and others (and erroneously so), revered, and even placed absolute authority in. When your kings, leaders, and highly respected people in your society tell you to believe something (and some under pain of death like biblical societies), and you do not know any better, you will tend to believe it. It is the educated, the scientific, and the inquisitive in society who have dispeleld these myths throughout history, while religious authorities dragged society back. In this modern age, we still have a bunch of irrational baggage left over - palmistry, astrology, faith healing, magical spells, card reading, tea-leaf reading, crystals, and other religious rubbish from older societies still permeate us -- not because they are true in any way, but because people still discuss the ideas, write and read about them, and because religions perpetuate similar myths.
Bob, your lack of cultural knowledge is astonishing. I find it hard to believe that anyone with a college-level education, much less a high school diploma, would ever make such a ridiculous argument for "spiritual proof" as you did.
Psychology leads us also to consider beauty. Can we accurately reduce the recognition and appreciation of beauty to simply a ploy of evolution. Or is beauty independent of any human or biological observer? Atheists have claimed that evolution produced the beauty in flowers, butterflies, and peacocks; but what of the splendor in snowflakes and galaxies? The universe is filled with evidence that beauty exists independently of biological observation. The beauty of deep sea plants and distant nebulas awaited discovery by man. If beauty does not exist independent of man’s observation, then it does not exist as evidence for God, but if a mountain stream or a wheat field is objectively beautiful, then God exists. The atheist can tell his wife she is not truly beautiful, or he can mimic the Christian and tell her the truth.
Bob, what was true in Aristotle's time is still true today. BEAUTY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER! I know men who like fat women. I personally find fat women to be unhealthy and grotesque, but these men who like large women have formed their own opinions that are counter to mine, and to the society which gave me the notion that thin=beauty.
Ever see the artwork of H.R. Giger? He's the Swiss artist who designed the monsters from the ALIEN films. His art is very contraversial, often using sexual and groteque imagery. Yet, there is beauty in it. The repetition of patterns, the smoothness of lines and shade -- all tell my trained artistic mind, that a landscape painting of his portraying organs and monsters, is a thing of beauty. Sure, it is disturbing on a level, but the execution of the art -- the skill that the artist used and demonstrated, the time it took to complete, and how interesting the composition is, are all very well done. You would see the same pictures and probably be made sick by them, but because I come from a different background, I see beauty in the grotesque. Grotesques in art have a very old history. Churches once forbade artists (like Da Vinci, Duhrer, Michelangelo, etc) from painting grotesques. These artists painted grotesques in secret as a result.
BEAUTY IS ALL IN YOUR MIND. There is no universal standard for it. Some men like large buttocks on women, some like atheletic figures. Some women prefer "Teddy bear" bodies on men, while others prefer the boney, skinny look. To say that BEAUTY is proof of God is to beg the question "What is beauty" -- which would open up a can of worms, ebcause everyone has a different opinion of beauty. ou have proven nothing, Bob.
