The Elliot Argument

You can read the full argument here

Though I have tried I haven't found anything to refute this argument, it can be flipped to try and prove the existence of intelligent design (this doesn't have to mean god in the classic sense of common doctrines) and works rather well. The short idea is that Atheism only leaves us with two incorrect choices for existence, infinity and that it came from nothing, therefore it cannot be correct. You will need to read the formal argument in order to get the context for the incorrect choice definitions if you plan on trying to refute it, as they are much more detailed and encompassing.

What are your thoughts on this argument? Has this changed your mind at all if you are currently an Atheist? And if not, why?

Please read the formal argument if you plan on making a rebuttal.

The atheist position is that the claim made by religious people, that 'A' being exists, is unprovable, very likely false or unreasonable to believe in.

The premise of that Elliot Argument is already false. It assumes we (the human species) know there to be only two options and it assumes we know to certainty that they are incorrect. (I could be wrong about this, since i didn't read anything else except the picture on your post.)

The only thing the atheist position puts forth is that the religious position could be false. Everything else is just straw manning.

Atheism claims that god is false, not that it could be. Agnosticism claims that it could be false or could be true. Atheists only have two fallacious reasons to support their disbelief, so they cannot be correct until a third option is proven true.

We do know to certainty they are incorrect because he explains them as a logical impossibility; "I don't know" isn't a choice and isn't a reason for existence (unless you can prove this) so it doesn't make the argument a false dichotomy. You either have to prove there is a third option, or accept that you have made no rebuttal to the argument and have no valid reason to believe in Atheism. Meanwhile, people who believe in intelligent design have technological genesis (Mitchell Heisman - Suicide Note) and other theories (uncreated creator, as noted by Elliot) that are not susceptible to the same logical flaws.

In his own words:



I was once a pretty hard-atheist; but now I realize that I was wrong to so quickly assume that intelligent design is an impossibility. Sure, it is very unlikely there is a Christian god running around telling people to kill their sons and giving us mystical powers, but that's not the only type of God intelligent design encompasses, and to insinuate such is shooting the complexity of the universe in the foot the same way the Christian bible does and puts you on the same level.

Please read the formal argument if you plan on making another rebuttal. He has already covered your response and likely many others you will make.

If a god exist he doesn't deserve to be served

Wrong, all atheism claims is that the religious proposition could be false. Atheistic position is not an affirmation of knowledge, it is the doubt on someone elses claim of knowledge.



Wrong, the support on atheists disbelief is the very fact that religious don't have any evidence for their claims.



"I don't know" is the default position and has always been the default position on everything. Yes, nobody chooses to not know, but you cannot choose to know either without evidence.

There is no reason to our existence or to anythings existence, as far as we know. We just exist.



The premise of the argument is wrong, so there is no need to or no way to rebuttal it, and you have yourself shown it here. Atheism is not a belief in it self, it is a proposition that a claim could be false. Saying "I believe in atheism" is a nonsensical statement, being an atheist is the default position for everybody, nobody chooses to not know.

It is the religious, the faithful who are making this leap from 'i don't have knowledge' to 'i have knowledge'. It is them who make the magical jump from "I don't know" to "I do know" without any evidence and without any logical or rational reason.



Sigh, nobody has made the claim that the words "I don't know" could be responsible for anything. Of coarse they are not. Saying "I don't know" is the honest admission that you don't have knowledge on the matter. What is so hard to understand about this? It is the religious who wrongfully claim to have knowledge about the state of the universe, information which they do not have, information which they cannot have, information which they will not have.

This Elliot Argument is starting to sound more and more a very childish attempt to disprove something which cannot be disproved, as atheism is not a claim or statement of knowledge. Thankfully didn't waste my time reading his entire piece.



Well making the assumption of impossibility was your own mistake, i haven't done that, and you want to know why i haven't. Because i - don't - know what the ultimate truth is, neither does this elliot guy or any living being on planet earth for that matter.



Waste of time, instead go watch any debate or lecture given by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkings or Sam Harris.

why bother going too all the effort of making an argument like this or even trying to counter it.

WE WILL LITERALLY NEVER HAVE AN ANSWER
so if you believe in a higher power, go on doing that, if you don't, keep doing that too.

if there were a higher power watching us and judging us, and I'm not saying there is or isn't, it would be on how we live our lives and how we treat the people around us, not on whether or not we believed in it.
Im paranoid, so i tend to error on the side of caution, but even if I'm wrong, and i usually am, its just more satisfying and healthy to live a morally balanced life anyways.

I'm not Atheist, but close enough. I'll read the Elliot Argument later, but before I do, I'd like to point out that anything it proposes about the options Atheists lay out in regard to the origin of the universe is simply a theory. There is no consensus among the scientific community that clearly states the Elliot Argument is not null. With that said, I believe the universe never had a beginning (or rather the properties that make up this universe never had a beginning). Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, so its safe to assume that its always been around in some form or another. While there are cases where matter can pop in and out of existence, I theorize that they are traveling through mini wormholes linked from another dimension. Whether those other dimensions are macro or micro have yet to be determined. Anyways, I think the matter that exists in this universe came from a previous universe that has already died. The matter traveled in a super massive black hole and eventually, enough matter and energy collected to create a new big bang thus creating this universe. This process probably occurs for an infinite amount of times. Thats just my take on the origin of existence. Okay, this is just a preface for my actual rebuttal, I'll respond again after reading more about this so called Elliot Argument.

Edit:

Reading into it, I can already spot a few flaws in the logic of the Elliot Argument. The first one being that it assumes when Atheists talk about something coming from nothingness, they are refering to absolute nothing. This isn't the case. When scientists refer to nothing, they are refering to an entity that carries properties inside of it.

The second problem lies with the definition of God being spaceless and timeless. Doesn't that sound a lot like the "nothingness" the Elliot argument refutes? How can an entity that is spaceless and timeless create anything? According to their own logic, you need causality in order for something to be created. If something is spaceless and timeless, then it can't possibly have the capabilities to create let alone exist itself. This is where the argument falls under its own weight.



Here it says space is the "initial potential to exist", yet they claim God is spaceless. Hmm...

I'm honestly not sure if I want to waste any more time with this, but I'll keep reading if you can at least address these issues OP.

Atheism and agnosticism are not separate positions.

If you are a self proclaimed agnostic you are also an atheist by default because you aren't actively worshiping a god or subscribing to a certain religion. Even though what you think an atheist is doesn't follow any religions or worships any higher being, that doesn't mean they can't consider the existence of a higher power. I think it's extremely dishonest to argue that atheism is a system of beliefs.

If the premise of the argument is indeed that there is some formal belief system among atheist and that there are only 2 possible options they see available, then the premise is wrong.

This so much. If you consider yourself an agnostic in that you can't prove/disprove the existence of gods, but are even 51% sure that gods don't exist, or you live your life as if they don't, you're atheist. It's what's known as an agnostic atheist. The other side of the coin is an agnostic theist, one that knows that the existence of gods can't be proven/dis-proven, but they believe anyway (this is where faith comes in), or live their lives as if deities exist.

They answer two different questions. Gnosticism asks what you know, and theism asks what you believe.

Agnostic for life

Jokes aside.

If you want my opinion on atheists like thunderfoot and Amazing Atheist. I think they have some good points but are generally over zealous in their hatred of anything religious.

But to the topic of your post.

I've never really been completely convinced as to why the Universe would exist when it makes far more sense for it to not have. According to a completely atheistic viewpoint. (That it happened by chance).

As in, if you believe that there is no God at all, what would have sparked the universes creation in the first place?

If one can argue that the universe was an accident you would have to wonder why would such an event occur. It's basically impossible for the universe to have been created if it that were the case.


Also you would have to think why the laws of the universe are what they are. Seeing as there was no predetermined reason for it.

Edit:

Isn't the position of an agnostic that you can't determine if a God exists or not?

so you can't say that they're atheist by default because they're not denying a God exists.

I remember the movie hotfuzz:

"I'm open to the idea of religion but I'm not completely convinced by it."

Edit2:


What is the idea that a god might exist but he's probably completely non interference?


I know there's a word for it but I don't know what it is.

@cruz737

There are three types of agnostics: Agnostic-Atheist, Agnostic-Theist and Agnostic. Agnostics don't pick any side and are satisfied with not knowing whether god exists or not. Agnostic-Atheists acknoledges that they don't know whether god exists or not, but assumes the being doesn't exist. Agnostic-Theist realizes they don't know whether god exists or not, but assumes the being does exists. You seem more like an agnostic-theist than just plain agnostic. BTW, the term for the assumption god exists but doesn't intervene with his creation is Deist.


I don't believe in the random chance theory either. I think the particles that made up the universe have always been around. Its just that, they came from another dimension via a black hole, or perhaps they were in a quantum dimension and gradually expanded out of that space.

So probably Agnostic-Deist then?

Eh, that sounds more science fiction to me. Not saying it's not possible, but it's just as much of an assumption as saying god created the universe.

It still doesn't really explain why the universal rules (physics) exist or are they way they are.

Not really, saying god exists is equivalent to saying magic exists. The theory I proposed is more realistic. Because even if God does exist, it wouldn't explain how he created the universe or why he created it the way he did. Most of the universe is very hostile to us, even the earth was once unable to sustain life. We're only here now, because the environment is now capable sustaining lifeforms like us. When the environment changed, we adapted in order to continue living. The environment is forever changing, therefore we will coninue to adapt to its pace. Now, unless god came down and told us how and why he created the world this way, we'd never be able to figure it out. At least with the theory I believe in, we can use the scientific method. Maybe not now, but one day.

If we assume that God is like the traditional meaning of the word.

I don't see how a God wouldn't be able to create the universe.

And personally I don't think we'll ever find evidence that supports either side completely.

-I would argue that point if I was an atheist, but I'm not, I'm a pantheist, so my meaning of the word god isn't exactly traditional either.


-Never claimed a god wouldn't be able to create the universe. My point was rather, couldn't he have done a better job if there was phenomenal intellegence behind the creation of the universe? If you keep tabs on space news, you'd know that very little areas in the universe are capable of breeding life. Hell, 99% of the universe is made up of Dark matter/energy. If a deity is out there, they did a crappy ass job.


-We have a better shot at finding evidence for the theory I believe in since it coincides with the scientific method. Meaning, it is capable of being researched, studied and tested when the time is available. You can't prove or disprove god. If a being were to come down from who knows where and claim they are god, would you believe them right off the bat just because they can do freaky shit that can't be explained? Or would you insist that being is just an advanced alien? Where do we draw the line between god and alien (especially since the god you're implying might exist isn't exactly traditional)?

Well, the Judaic god is a mary sue created by a guy who ended up creating the jews, the same character was then used by some Jesus guy to create his own cult, and much later a certain Muhammad found it fun to create his own splinter sect.

The other gods never had that much power, according to mythos Zeus could fuck your wife in the form of a bull and throw lightning but nothing fancier.

Jews and Christians haven't come first, and there are a shit ton of other religions that predate the "New Religions" (term used by some druidic friend of mine).

Needless to say I have no respect for a bunch of people who love the embodiment of Mary Sue. They are on equal footing with those who think 50 shades of grey is BDSM and those who think Twilight is a good love story and a good vampire story.

It will still be on a higher footing than those who believe in a cult created by a failure of a Sci-Fi novel writer. Cult that allowed my country to shine by banning it and giving it the middle finger.

Wouldnt that make the assumption that God was planning on creating life?

I don't see how a being could create something like a universe by accident. That's no different than saying it all occured by chance, which is something we both clearly reject.

Well I think of it like how I imagine my dream civ game.

I create a world, I create the basis for how it works.

Then I make it so that it can change itself to become better.

Then just press play and watch what happens.

Kinda like how programmers do those learning AI things.

But on a massive scale.

That doesn't sound like a god, just a highly advanced alien programmer.