The fact that there is no sensible alternative explanation for reality forces me to accept the only reasonable one available to me - the God of the Bible.

A sensible alternative would have answers to at least these questions:

The attempted answers of Carlos are embeded and responded to below. His original unedited e-mail may be seen by clicking here.

My response: Without giving any acknowledgement to the context above, displayed in large bold letters, Carlos launches into his attacks below. They expect me to follow them into their imaginary world of straw men and chaos simply because they do not like God and the Bible. I have freely admitted that there are parts the Bible I do not understand. I have stipulated that I have not convinced them, and have given up any notion that I ever will. I have acknowledged that there are parts of the Christian world view that I find unpleasant. I have offered them every opportunity to offer a constructive view that is useful and sensible. All they can do is keep attacking my view without any rational basis being suggested for their own.

A) We thirst and there is water. We hunger and there is food. We desire meaning and there is God. How could a desire come into existence for which there is nothing to fulfill it?

Carlos: A god does not add meaning to life. An eternity spent singing psalms in heaven is the most meaningless future I can imagine. The argument from desires is absurd. Human life is filled with desires with no viable satisfaction.

My response: Carlos asserts my argument is absurd but offers no evidence that it is. He asserts a god does not add meaning to life, when I know from personal experience that He does. I have never suggested that eternity will be spent singing psalms in heaven, but he insists on inviting his straw men to every discussion we have. He asserts that "human life is filled with desires with no viable satisfaction," but he offers not a single example of one.

B) Why is good powerful and evil powerless?

Carlos: Neither is good powerful nor is evil powerless beyond the person doing the good or evil act in question. As I already said, good and evil do not exist as objective features of the universe but as human, contingent qualifiers for deeds.

My response: I am aware of your previous assertions. I have offered arguments and evidence as the foundation of this question. (See www.tntcarden.com/atheist/evil.htm) Carlos addresses none of this. He simply contradicts me and moves blithely to the next question.

C) Why is there almost universal belief in the spiritual world?

Carlos: Touché. Consider this one: Why are spiritual beliefs currently disappearing in the more civilized societies?

My response: I am not aware of spiritual beliefs disappearing in the more civilized societies. I am not really sure what Carlos means by "civilized." In the United States and Western Europe Christianity is losing ground to Moslems, Hindus, and a variety of pagan cults. In China, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and most of the so-called third world, Christianity is on the rise. The Moslem countries are remaining solidly Moslem. What are you talking about?

D) How are the mathematics of Intelligent Design to be explained? (See www.geocities.com/worldview_3/mathproofcreat.html) Or if the Teleological argument does not demonstrate God, how do you account for the design and order of the universe? (i.e if it is all an accident, why doesn't it look like one?)

Carlos: The big, big mistake of ID advocates is that they do not take into account the huge amounts of time involved and the myriad simultaneous opportunities for events to happen. Their calculations are valid if we assume just one instance at just one time. Obviously the odds would be against the emergence of life if one only chance was all we had. But if you have millions of years and all the oceans of Earth to work with, life is not only probable, but inevitable. The apparent order of the universe results from a fundamental bias of the human mind. We're trained to organize reality in patterns we can work with.

My response: Carlos does not understand the mathematics of Intelligent Design. His answer is directed at the mathematics of Creation Science, and he is quite right there. ID does not look at events over time. It simply looks at the current state of things. It looks at several important aspects of the universe, like DNA and several biological processes, and says, mathematically this could not be the result of an accident.

Carlos is quite right when he says that it does not matter if the odds are a billion to one or a trillion to one against the emergence of life, given enough time its appearance becomes almost a certainty. But ID says the chances are not a billion in one. It says there is no chance at all. No matter how many times you throw a deck of cards in the air the cards will always land in some kind of blob, they will never land stacked again in the same order they were before you tossed them. The mathematics of ID describes how much order things are in. It says life is more like the cards stacked neatly than it is a blob. The accidental creation of life is impossible.

E) On what basis can we make sound ethical decisions and convince our children to do the same?

Carlos: Ethical decisions are based on goals. (Which goal you want to achieve is up to you; that's what freedom is for.) The most efficient way to reach a goal without producing adverse consequences that might later render the goal useless turns out to be the best choice. This seems like something Machiavelli would endorse, but a convincing case can be made that absolute selfishness often yields counterproductive results. When educating children, show them what works and what doesn't. Practical example is the best teacher.

My response: On what rational basis can you possibly claim that "ethical decisions are based on goals?" Yes, Machiavelli would indeed be quite comfortable with your ethics, or lack there of. I would be very interested in hearing you make the case that "absolute selfishness often yields counterproductive results." I thought ethics was part of what you used to choose your goals. Here we have the "what works" idea being offered again. Shaggy never could give me any criteria to use in determining whether it was working or not. Can you?

F) How can the Problem of Evil be solved?

Carlos: Loaded question. It can't.

My response: What evidence do you have that it is a loaded question? I have found an answer to the Problem of Evil that I find quite satisfactory. What is wrong with it?

G) If the Cosmological Argument does not demonstrate God, how do you account for the universe.

Carlos: The cosmological argument is no help. You would still be left with the task of explaining where God came from. Rather than answering the question, it only brings it back one step and leaves it at that. The cosmological argument is not an explanation, but an evasion of the problem. How do I account for the universe? I wish I knew. Do you?

My response: I understand the universe to be the creation of God. I am please to see you admit ignorance about something. That means you might still be open to learning something, all other evidence being to the contrary.

H) If the moral law does not imply a law giver, where did the idea come from that there is such a thing as morals?

Carlos: The requirements of our survival as a group of thinking individuals, all with different and conflicting interests, moved us to make increasingly more complicated agreements (from taboos to decalogues to codes to decrees to constitutions) so we don't bash each other's head over what to have for dinner.

My response: You offered a theory explaining the development of morals. That was not hte question. The question was where did the idea of morals originate?

Words fail to express how deeply disappointing it is that out of 40+ atheists there does not seem to be a single one that can rationally explain their position. All they can do is tear down the ideas of everyone else. This would merely be pathetic, and they would merely be the objects of my pity, except that these non-ideas and irrational views are the foundation for so much of the pain and suffering I see on a regular basis. I am therefore forced to view their endeavors to be evil.

I am certainly open to further discussion, but I have completely despaired not only of convincing you of anything, but of teaching you the rudiments of logical thinking. I will be posting nothing else on my site from any of you unless it is free of logical fallacies.

See also
www.trueu.org/dorms/stulounge/A000000690.cfm