Sure.
It didn't take long to reach the first errors. On page 5 there are three big ones.
I hope you are genuine enough to keep your heart honest, in this back n forth. Time is the most valuable thing, after all.
First, the author states that something cannot come from nothing. What the author does not understand is that "nothing" is highly unstable. If anything happens to nothing, then nothing is irrevocably gone, and since something clearly did happen, we exist after all, we can safely assume that "nothing" no longer exists. So as counter intuitive as it seems, the universe can, and most likely did, arise form nothing.
That's an highly illogical assumption.
Even Professor Lawrence Krauss (also atheist), admits that nothing is the absence of everything, and anything, including "voids" and this
nothing cannot be affected by
anything. Because that
anything - is a
something which can only affect another something - not a nothing. See
A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing is a non-fiction book by the physicist
Professor Lawrence M.
Krauss, initially published on January 10, 2012 by Free Press. You've not gotten off on a good foot here. But I'll bite. There are physicists like
Lawrence Krauss that argue the "universe from
nothing", really
mean "the universe from a potentiality" - and that, I see as a plausible theoretical construct, however the problem here is that his theory find contention among other atheist physicists, because they all compete for dominance with their theories. Ironically, they say different things.
I can't say for certain what the first cause was, but there is absolutely no reason to assume that it was a being more complex than the entire universe.
I like your honesty. No one can say for certain that they have scientific proof of the first cause/prime mover because it simply cannot exist. Your second point is unreasonable logically, philosophically and scientifically. Even the human genome consists of data far more advanced than anything an human can code, this
irreducable complexity shows intent behind design and not just the idea that there is an intelligent and complex designer - it shows intent!!! From a purely philosophical standpoint, there are many objective arguments against your subjective opinion, and I'll name one here. I cannot give you something I myself do not possess. Take for example, the fact that we have life - the raison d'etre for existence itself is the BIGGER question, but when you deny your own purpose and reduce your existence down to just subjective whimsical reasoning in the vein of Dawkins, Krauss, Brockman, Myers etc then what you end up with is a rather sad outlook on your reason for existing. Humor the idea that
God gives life, and free will, within limitation so you can find purpose, for a moment will you? And contrast that to your philosophically dead atheist caveat of "survival of the fittest" which itself is a great excuse for justifying wars, theft, r*pe, and a heck of a lot of other bad things, and try to tell me how philosophically, practically and purposefully you stand on better, higher, more virtuous ground than I do - you simply can't!
Do not multiply entities unnecessarily.
I agree, the Occam's Razor is a valid argument. There can only ever be One God! In the Qur'an God states:
Had there been within the heavens and earth gods besides Allah, they both would have been ruined. So exalted is Allah , Lord of the Throne, above what they describe. - Quran 21:22
Reading the commentary of this verse is a philosophical masterpiece in itself. I won't go into it here, but I will summarise the Occam's Razor instead for the sake of clarity. Occam's Razor is the idea that the most simple explanation is the best one. For example, if you heard a knock on your door, you'd assume someone was knocking - this is the most natural assumption. You wouldn't think there's an entire army waiting for permission to enter your house, unless you was expecting an army. But that would beg the question "why does an army need to knock when it ram raid the door down?"...
... By the same train of thought, if God is all powerful, then the existence of another all powerful God would cancel each other out, as the two "all powerful wills" would be locked in a eternal battle to over power each other, proving that they were not all powerful to begin with, and the universe as well as the gods, would be destroyed.
One could argue "what about having an all powerful God and another, not so all powerful God?" well that still means there is one divine will, as the all powerful God will subject the lesser to His will which takes the idea of a lesser God (or demi God) and throws this into a trashcan.
I can keep going but I guess we agree - if there is a God - there can be only One!
In the Quran God states:
Say, "He is Allah, [who is] One, (A unique One, a One without a second and indivisible one - Ahad in Arabic)
Allah, the Eternal Refuge. (He relies on nothing but all creation is contingent and dependent on Him)
He neither begets nor was He begotten. (He is the uncaused cause, the infinite)
And there is nothing like Him" (You cannot imagine Him, He is beyond the limited human scope of imagination) - Quran 112
Second, the author assumes that appearance of design is proof of a designer. This is false. Appearance of design is good reason to look for a designer, and we have been looking, but we have never found one.
By proof, you mean empirical evidence. Hmm. The fallacy of this type of proof is that it is a one trick pony which has made a mockery of atheism since the fifties, my friend.
Let me ask you a question.
Is a creator, contained by his creation? for example, if you built a house, does this now mean you have to live inside it and never leave it? Of course the answer is no.
Humor this, if you will: So why then, do you presume that God is contained inside of a universe which He creates? Did he not exist before the creation of this universe? Is His place not in heaven? Is He not transcendent? Or is the point of faith, to have faith or instead, to have ultimate evidence which negates
the beautiful reasoning of faith itself? These are ideas which gel with the natural disposition of human beings and even have a root inside of philosophy, epistemology and knowledge proving that they are not constructs but rather - axioms - Innately coded knowledge which is naturally understood by human beings. And not constructs based on limited and faulty observations subjected to theoretical interpretations which go against the axiomatic truths which point towards an un-caused cause that we identify as God.
You cannot, by any measure of truthful inquiry, deduce that you can find
empirical proof of a creator. Because the Creator is not subjected to His creation, it is instead the other way round. We are subjected to Him. And this is why, in Islam, we submit and surrender our will to His.
The Absence of Proof does not equate to a Proof of Absence - if you can understand this, then go one step further with your intellect and understand also that you now know God has made it impossible to prove He does not exist. Because
The Absence of Proof does not equate to a Proof of Absence.
When you are able to know this truth, you will see all creation as proof of God.
We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth. But is it not sufficient concerning your Lord that He is, over all things, a Witness? - Quran 41:53
There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for how life diversified into the myriad of forms we currently see, evolution. The process of reproduction with alteration, coupled with natural selection, over thousands of generations can have profound effects on a population of organisms. The author attempts to support this argument bu using cellphones as an analogy to living organisms. This is disingenuous because cellphones, unlike living things, do not have a method to reproduce them selves.
As I mentioned, you are lost in a maelstorm of theoretical constructs which are inferred by limited human observations and are subjected to faulty reasoning, re-modelling, and re-constructing, over and over again. A theory today will be tomorrow's BS. That's what you have decided to follow? Did I not give the example of the theory for phlogiston and the eventual discovery of nitrogen in this thread somewhere already to demonstrate this fallacious dichotomy of reason?
I love science, but I don't see that science makes one an atheist - au contraire, mon pote - science makes me marvel at God's ability to create with a divine and intelligent will which is all powerful, yet extremely merciful as well.
Third the author states that for any system there must be a designer that is greater and more complex than that system. This immediately begs the question what designed the designer? The obvious response is that the designer, God, is eternal and had no need of a designer. But then if something can be eternal why can't we just say that the universe is eternal, maybe not this time line, but the universe, or multiverse could easily be eternal.
I don't think you can do science. We have observed the bodies in space moving away from each other and so we can postulate that the reversal of this movement in space would lead to a common origination point which we call the Big Bang.
The real question is - what caused it. And we say God - if you now ask "what caused God?" you do a complete U-turn on your Occam's Razor... not to mention you also enter the
Infinite Regress and if that were true, we wouldn't be here! Nothing would. Which leads us back to here:
nothing is the absence of everything, and anything, including "voids" and this nothing cannot be affected by anything.
You know what's amazing though? It would take a will bigger than the laws it creates to make matter from nothing - that will is God! And God has to exist outside of our space-time continuum because He is not affected by time - He is the Creator of time! Time is His to command. And He has... just take a look at the universe, and how time moves differently in different parts of it... heck even in our own solar system, the celestial dance of planets around the sun tell us that their days are not like our days.
I started this post with the comment
'Time is the most valuable thing', after all and now I will quote Surah Al Asr from the Quran:
By time,
Indeed, mankind is in loss,
Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience. - Quran 103
The arguments in the book are consistent with it's own internal logic, the problem is that several of the premises that logic is based on are wrong.
You wasn't able to prove to prove that. In fact, you gave me a very strong opportunity to prove otherwise. I've been able to show you the faulty reasoning you have become prey to, and how you have not grounded your atheist epistemology with anything concrete because you arfe entirely reliant on a one trick pony called "empiricism" which, as I demonstrated, is an handicap to your intellect.
Thank you for replying,