Category: Atheism

Someone calling themselves Shadow of the Dead God has issued a critique of our proof for the existence of God. As per usual his “critique” is nothing but pompous pseudo-scientific drivel riddled with logical fallacies.

His first false claim is that we’re redefined God to be the universe. This is the second atheist criticism we deal with right in the proof in the section “Atheist Criticisms”. That he missed it or could not understand it does not bode well for his comprehension abilities.

We are not redefining anything. We are simply saying that the Universe is a being, the supreme being, God. Pantheism was the first conception of a supreme being. If anyone has redefined the concept of God it is every non pantheist.

The second false claim is that we’re “conflating” the terms God and Universe. We are not. We are equating them, saying that they are one and the same thing, not confusing two different things. There is no conflation whatsoever. He does not seem to understand what the concept of conflation refers to.

The third false claim made is that we err by assuming that there is not some physical stuff other than energy. He claims that to assert that one “would need to have a complete theory of quantum gravity, that unifies general and special relativity with quantum mechanics to assert that”. He provides no justification for this odd view presumably because there is none.

Next he falsely claims that “Laurence Krauss demonstrated that the total net energy of the universe equals zero.” Kraus did no such thing. His cancellation hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis. A hypothesis with inconclusive experimental proof to support it. At any rate, these cancellation theories are not claiming that there is no energy, only that the effects of positive energy cancel out the effects of negative energy.

Next is a false claim that our proof commits an equivocation fallacy. He claims that we are equivocating “electrical and neurological synapsis that create (sic) brain activity” with “gravitational pull of black-holes”. We don’t do that at all. We’re simply saying that both such interactions ultimately involve field interactions. So he has misrepresented our argument and attacked that misrepresentation, i.e. he committed a straw man fallacy.

Next he claims that our “assertion that the universe is just one massive system of interacting energy, is patently wrong, and lacking of understanding.” He does not justify this claim and instead rambles on about how the universe does not work and nothing interacts with the universe which is something we’ve not said. He appears to be making the bizarre conflation that we’re claiming that the fact that the Universe is a system of interacting energy somehow means that we’re interacting with the Universe as a whole. It doesn’t though. This is just some nonsense he made up because he seems to have a pathological need to misinterpret what we write.

Next he make the false claim that heat death of the Universe is inevitable. It is not. Few physicists actually believe that and for those that do, their justification is merely theoretical, not an established fact. He then makes the false claim that the Universe had a beginning. The known universe possibly did but the Universe itself for all we know has always existed. A big problem here is his repeated faulty equivocation of theories with fact. This betrays a severe lack of understanding in basic science.

Here’s where it gets pretty absurd. He agreed with the following statement: “It’s important to understand that interacting energy wouldn’t cause a mental state to magically arise out of nowhere”. But he had a big problem with the following conclusion: “Energy itself must have the simplest possible default mental state”. If everything is interacting energy and the interactions do not cause mental state to arise from nowhere, the only alternative is that energy has a simple mental state that gets shaped by interaction. He proclaims that this is absurd without any justification.

With the following statement:  “It would be wrong to assume that only energy packet interaction results in mental states. Any sort of energy interaction should also produce mental states” he conflates mental states with minds and then rejects the statement with an appeal to incredulity fallacy. Because he can’t imagine that energy interactions result in changed mental states, the notion is simply proclaimed to be nonsense.

In responding to the argument summary he proclaims that while energy interactions in the brain produce mental states, no other interactions do. That shows that he is engaging in special pleading. Somehow energy interactions in the brain are special in that they alone magically bestow mentality.

He dismisses our observation that treating mentality as a special case from physicality involves special pleading by simply proclaiming that mentality supernaturally arises from the physical. No explanation is given, we are just meant to take this dogmatic statement on blind faith.

He dismisses our objection to the supernatural concept of strong emergence of mentality by simply proclaiming that mental states require a brain. Again, no justification is given, we must simply believe this on blind faith.

He dismisses our conclusion that energy has simple mentality by simply proclaiming that it is an “unfounded, unsupported and absurd assertion” and “absurd, incoherent and illogical nonsense” without finding any holes in the argument’s logic.

His rebuttal is nothing but an incoherent mishmash of pseudoscience and logical fallacies. His many unjustified proclamations amount to bare assertion logical fallacies. This is the very kind of tripe you’d encounter with young Earth creationists who are trying in vain to show that your science based arguments are wrong.