"If the world is governed by chance, how do laws arise? By accident? And then: If law is "accidental," then how can it be law? And if there is no law, then how can the world be the way it is, and not some other way?"Beautifully put. I would add one more. If there is no law, why does he act as if there is?
He must presuppose invariant laws of thought and morality or his utterances amount to meaningless gibberish. However, the existence of unchanging, universal laws of thought and morality are simply antithetical to an atheistic premise of matter ever in motion governed by omnipotent chance. He is oblivious to the problem:
"I quickly came to enjoy the deep and abstract thinking required of the class…"
"...we examined each side of the argument"
"...I came away with two conclusions. One, no higher being would ever tolerate millions of people being killed over the right way to worship him. Two, the differences between each religion made it unlikely that followers of both could be accepted into the same afterlife, meaning that, if there were a God, millions would be left out of eternal life—in my view, an unjust punishment for having the “wrong” belief."
"I had enough qualitative reasons for not believing in God."
"We also expanded our knowledge by reading a number of evolutionary passages, including a section from Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene (emphasis on gene). His work, in addition to meticulously explaining how natural selection works down to the genetic level, offered a solid explanation of how life began without a creator."
Looking beyond how idiotic his statements are on their face (i.e., natural selection working down to the genetic level to generate "explanations", or creating life, or his moral conflation of Islam and Christianity) either his philosophy classes were not very good or he wasn't paying attention because he apparently is ignorant of even the most basic problems of metaphysics and epistemology.
Cordially,
Oh I gather that's just standard operating procedure with atheists. They have all the benefit of a great cultural legacy, founded on Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome; but they just take it all for granted, so to speak. It is thoroughly internalized by them, and pushed down to some kind of unconscious level. Such that, for instance, most of them do believe in"good" and "bad." But they have no critical interest in discerning what constitutes the good and the bad, or elucidating the criterion whereby they are to be differentiated, so that we can actually discern them as such. They just reserve the right to willy-nilly "dispense with" any part of our cultural legacy they don't like. Like God.
Somehow, they evidently feel that a man cannot be "free" if God is lurking about, looming over them as it were. God just "puts a crimp in their style." Ergo, God must go; and along with Him, His moral law. But I gather that's the whole point of the exercise.
But what a joke!!! You referred to Sikora's "moral conflation of Islam and Christianity." Evidently he believes they are more or less the same: "The power of community provided by each faith throughout history was immense, and based on their shared teachings of peace and worship, it was easy to see why each has thrived and accumulated millions of members worldwide."
More on their alleged so-called "shared teachings" in a minute. One infers that this little brat agrees with Feuerbach that "god" is nothing more than a psychic projection, i.e., a projection of the human imagination, of all the things man most values. (That's pretty lame when you think about it — it doesn't answer the question why does man universally value these particular things?)
Or as he wrote: "Both the idea of a higher being, and the many religions of the world, were founded by man to inspire hope and influence human behavior."
Now for the "shared teachings," which Sikora says are "peace and worship."
Oh really? "Peace" in Islam is very close to the Soviet/Russian idea of peace, conveyed by the word "Mir": Mir means you will have peace only if you completely submit to our hegemonistic rule. If not, then there will be no peace.
Allah, unlike the Triune Christian God, is not in the business of making sons — who are ensouled mortals, made in His image possessing reason, free will, creativity. The Lord's universal rule is Love — our love of Him and of our neighbor.
Allah, again, is not in the business of making "sons." He is in the business of making slaves. His universal rule is: submission. That is what the word Islam means.
And then our little jughead sets himself up as a competent judge of religious matters, saying:
...the differences between each religion made it unlikely that followers of both could be accepted into the same afterlife, meaning that, if there were a God, millions would be left out of eternal life—in my view, an unjust punishment for having the “wrong” belief.Here he sets himself up in Judgment of God; and finds Him wanting.
This dude is dumb as a post! But at age 24, finds himself to be very wise indeed....
Good luck to him.
Thanks so much, dear Diamond, for your astute observations re: this honking donkey, Mr. Sikora.