24 December 2008

Answers to Questions Atheists Can’t (definitively) Answer

This is a post by Ray Comfort before I started this blog. I am not going to repeat his assumed answers from his imaginary atheist. Let me just put in my own answers to these questions.

1. What was in the beginning?
Answer: I don't know. I am assuming that Ray would say, according to the bible that god created the universe. May I then ask who created god. In other words, neither 'god created the universe' answer the same question. However, my answer is still better than saying that god created the universe because we are not admitting defeat. I don't know and may be I will never know. But one day, human may know. By assuming god, which is a non-answer, will ensure that human will never know.

2. Do human beings have more intrinsic value than animals? Well this is not the question itself. The real question was in his answer.. [If your pet dog and your neighbor are drowning, and you can only save one of them, who would you save? If it’s your neighbor, why?]
Answer: We do not need a bible to tell us whether we should save the pet dog or the next door neighbor. See value theory for an introduction. This is a question philosophers have been tackling long before the bible even appear. From evolution point of view, it obviously makes sense to place more value on your own kind than other.

3. What happens after death?
Answer: Surprisingly, Ray is right on this one - to a certain degree. The only way any of us can speak with any authority about the subject of death, is to have reliable information from someone who has been there. First of all, it depends on how to define dead. Is someone clinically dead dead? If yes, then I have a friend who recently was clinically dead for two days told me his experience of dead. His family has a history of early dead due to heart failure. Without modern medicine, he would have died. During those two days when his heart stopped beating, he was kept alive only by machines. Do we qualify him as "have experienced death"? If yes, I can definitely tell you his experience of death is just like falling asleep without dream. Nothing! Death is death! Nothing! Again, referring to bible is no answer because bible was written by men before these men died.

4. What is the purpose of life?
Answer: To reproduce. [Isn't this also what the bible says? In the few chapters of Genesis I have read so far, god rewards by blessing the selected many children and descendents.] Does bible provide an answer to the same question?

5. Why there is order in all of creation?
Response: What was the question again? Looking into the answer provided... Why then is there order from the tiny atom through to the massive universe? Why do summer, fall, winter and spring come around each year, at different times of the year, in different parts of the world--always in the same order? Why can we predict the sun’s rising to the second a 100 years into the future? Why is there order in the makeup of the eye, the ear, the brain, the blood, the heart, liver, kidneys, hands and feet? Ah, the same question as 1 formulated in a different form. May I ask who created the creator? I can also add a point about the "order". What we observed in our "human size" is the statistical average of the random fluctuations in the quantum world. Don't understand what I am saying? Instead of reading that fiction called bible, you may start your research here and here.

7. Why does every civilization believe in a Creator?
Answer: Great question! There have been many proposed creators, why that Christian god and not the others? To really understand the answer to this question, read Dan Dennett's books, or watch this TED video.

8. Why does every sane person have a conscience, even when it is not dictated by society?
Answer: survival! watch the linked video above.

9. Which came first--the chicken or the egg?
Answer: Wrong question! Study evolution please!

10. How did nothing create everything?
My question: How did you god come from nothing and created everything? - ie see my answer to question 1.

BTW, other atheists have different answers to these questions too.

Here is a video on 10 questions that every intelligent Christian must answer

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