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Can atheists refute arguments or proofs for the existence of God?

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Here's a particularly amusing answer penned by Uthman Badr from Australia.

In the beginning, there was nothing.

One day, about 14 billions years ago, as this ‘nothing’ was going about its business, doing, well, nothing in particular—if only because it couldn’t do anything in particular, because it didn’t exist—it happened to randomly explode in a big bang! Next minute, or next fraction of a Planck second to be exact, and viola! space, time and matter were born, along with fixed, universal physical and mathematical laws to regulate them. Convenient accessories that ‘nothing’ had packed along for the trip.

The universe that resulted was fine-tuned by remarkably, mind-bogglingly precise constants just perfect for the formation of stars, galaxies and planets, which, in turn, began to form after roughly a billion years. They were ridiculously improbable as the results of pure chance, but so it was!

And even better was to come.

Fast forward about 10 billion years and we quite fortunately have our galaxy, the Milky Way, complete with a perfectly temperatured Sun, and a life-supporting Earth. Another billion years later, with the scene set for life, it emerges. Just as miraculously as the original ‘nothing’—by now missing in action but around in spirit—had produced the universe, so too cold, inanimate matter produced life circa 4 billion years ago.

How, you ask?

Well, it wasn’t all that hard. One sunny morning, as many different chemicals were floating aimlessly in the oceans of the life-supporting Earth, minding their own business—much like the original ‘nothing’ from whence they ultimately came—a lightning strike hit, all of sudden, without warning, and lo and behold! the first single self-replicating Prokaryotic cell was born: a unicellular organism carrying DNA. Others suggest that the necessary inputs fly in to Earth from extra-terrestrial asteroids or comets. Perhaps, it was a both this and that.

Either way, completely randomly, by little more than stroke of luck, we had the building blocks of life, amino acids. These amino acids got to work straight away, combining in just the right way to form proteins, which folded in just the right ways to form living cells, which carried genes and DNA, which held remarkably complex information needed by the amino acids to form correctly. And once again, completely randomly, not only did we get the just-right inputs, we also got the just-right laws and mechanisms that would regulate their existence: most prominently, evolution by natural selection. Convenient accessories.

Now that we had life, it was time for evolution by natural selection to do its thing. This biological law acted upon living things, exploiting variations in the gene pools resulting from random mutations to sustain those more suitable to the survival of living organisms. Over millions of years, this process took us from unicellular organisms, to multicellular ones, to sponges and fungi, to jellyfish and arthropods, to tetrapods, to birds and mammals, and eventually gave rise to all the millions of species which we know today and the appearance of design they display.

Yet though we had life of much variety and elegance, we did not yet have conscious life. Until about 300,000 years ago, when conscious life quite simply evolved from unconscious life, just like previous rounds of miraculous, completely by chance, stupendously improbable, developments. The human species was born, with consciousness, rationality, language, thought, emotion, and morality, and again, of course, the necessary accessories to make these work. Just like that. So here we are to marvel at it all, to discover it through science and talk about it, and appreciate how far little old ‘nothing’ came against all odds and how benevolent it has been to us.

Unfortunately, many humans insist on ascribing all of this to a sentient, knowledge, powerful Creator. Imagine! How outlandish a belief!

The fundamental pillars of the Atheist worldview are the following:

1. Science is the only way to ascertain truth [scientism].

2. The material, 'natural' world is all that exists [naturalism].

3. The universe came from nothing (or it is eternal).

4. Morals, by which we are obliged to act, evolved by natural selection.

5. There are no objective meanings, values or purposes in life. We make our own.

6. Religion must be relegated to the private realm [secularism], if not done away with entirely.

Remarkably--or perhaps not so!--what they all share in common is that each proposition has not a shred of evidence to substantiate it and it is incoherent within the broader framework.

Every single one.

Scientism is self-refuting because science cannot evidence the notion that it is the only way to ascertain truth. The proposition is extra-scientific, beyond the remit of science. Further, science cannot establish any of propositions 2-6. Checkmate.

Naturalism contradicts the very basic logical principle that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It's like the 'Pics or it didn't happen' meme, which is cool but everyone knows it's not true.

Saying the Universe came from nothing is little more than an appeal to magic and is outright nonsensical. If it were to be taken seriously all rational, including scientific, inquiry would be frustrated. A past-eternal universe is a logical impossibility because it requires an infinite regress of contingent phenomena.

As for morals evolving, we have no solid evidence for this. We only have colourful theories. Further, if we accept for argument's sake that morals evolved, then that is a descriptive account of how they came to be. It carries no normative force whatever and you cannot derive any moral obligation.

Finally, secularism (as popularly understood) singles out religion for relegation to some private realm, without any consistent basis for why it should be singled out. It is imagined to be imposing and prone to violence and oppression, yet we know that it is no more prone to these things than secular ideologies, like communism for example and of course, that most violent and totalitarian ideology called liberalism.

Atheists pride themselves for being critical of all religions and claim to live a way of life that is not ‘religious’ in any sense.

However, a lot of the neo-militant atheism resembles religion in many ways. Here are a few:

  • Object of worship (glorification and sanctification) – Universe/ mother nature
  • Dogma – Scientism, philosophy
  • Mosque/Church – Public school, university, church of atheism
  • ‘Prophets’ – Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens
  • ‘Holy’ scriptures – The God Delusion (Gospel of Dawkins), God Is Not Great (Gospel of St.Hitchens), Universe From Nothing (Gospel of Krauss) and many more...
  • Scholars/Priests – Scientists/Greek Philosophers/Enlightenment thinkers
  • Annual Pilgrimage – World Atheist Convention
  • Law and Jurisprudence – Secular Liberalism/Marxism/Communism/Democracy (many madhabs)
  • Denominations – Communists/Capitalists/Feminists/evolutionist/naturalist/humanist
  • Articles of faith – scientific rationalism/freedom of expression/humanism/religion is man-made
  • Rituals – mocking/cursing religious beliefs and concepts
  • Arguments for Atheism – mocking/cursing religious beliefs and concepts
  • Testimony of belief – ‘Science answers all truths’/’religion is nonsense’.

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