The God Delusion: A Logical Fallacy?

My entire point is the problem is unsolvable. Those who have put aside all things supernatural are also often guilty of not looking past the end of their noses. It's not just how this universe exists. That goes back to the big bang, but it's not like there was nothing happening before the big bang.

When you compare creation myths, ultimately they sound no sillier than "there was nothing and then there was a big bang." This is the understanding of the scientifically minded, and it's equally absurd on the face of it. When there is nothing there is nothing to produce something. So what existed before the big bang is just unknown and different, not nothing.

There is tremendous complexity in astronomy and physics, but it's easy to leap far beyond any current knowledge with "and before that, and before that." What sense does "there is no before that" make? None. Nature is as supernatural as God.

Stating something is unsolvable or unknowable, and then inserting a supernatural agent into that space is a really worn out practice.

I don't know if we'll ever know everything, but I hesitate to declare anything "unknowable" or "unsolvable"

I hesitate too, but we're dealing with the singular big one here. This is not manned flight. Or intergalactic space travel. Or curing death. We're talking about the origin of reality. Not gonna happen. 100% guaranteed. If anybody thinks it is, that's a leap of faith actually bigger than any religious one.

My point is that you're making an equally irrational leap of faith when you say the origin of reality is knowable, as the religious people are.

You refuse to even think about it yourself, independently, again just like the religious people.

I have no idea what I'm talking about when I say what was before the big bang, and what was before that? It's a simple question where just by repeating it science is quickly out of its depth.

No, I'm not saying that the universe is too complicated to have come out of nothing. One speck of dust can't come out of nothing.
It has nothing to do with creationism or intelligent design, because God equally can't have come out of nothing and have no precedents.

Why then do so many people believe something that is not logical and for which there is no proof?

Can't be wrong on what? No proof for a deity?

Evidence. lol. Like I said, you'll be waiting a long, long time for that. BTW, the origin of this universe is the big bang. But that's not the beginning I'm talking about. I won't repeat this anymore, but evidence can't keep up with the question "and what came before that?" when repeated enough times.

If faith is defined as belief without evidence, then everyone has faith in something.

I am NOT saying that you should believe in a god because of faith, all I am saying is that people who claim ¨you should not have faith in anything¨ or ¨I don´t have faith in anything, everything that I believe is based on evidence¨ have either not thought about it long enough or have some rare epistemology that I would be interested in hearing about.

So true. Even evidence often leads to misplaced faith in some overgeneralized concept.

Just in case nobody has mentioned it The God Delusion is on again at 9.00 on More 4 tonight (Wed).

I was actually refering to something else entirely. I was refering to certain axioms that cannot be proven to be true, but that we take to be true without evidence. There could not possibly be evidence for these beliefs because they need to exist to even get off the ground and examine evidence. We have to believe these things without evidence, with faith.

These include metaphysical and logical truths. There is no way to prove that the external world is real, that you senses are consistent, the law of identity, the law of non contradiction, the law of excluded middle, etc. The only way to attempt to prove these is to assume these things are true to begin with, but that would be circular. The foundation of all of our beliefs are based on faith.

This shows that the belief ¨you have faith in X, therefore, it is invalid to believe in X¨ is not only wrong but it is also self defeating.

'Before implies time as we perceive it. If there was no time, there's no before... therefore the question's meaningless.

The question is actually the same. How would "no time" ever turn into time? People have such blind faith in science that they don't realize that everything or even anything is not as knowable as they assume. When you think you have an acceptable answer and there are no more questions to be asked in a certain direction, there is very little difference between that and simplistic religious faith.

That question can be answered:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5667803493810086553#

People do not have 'blind faith in science'. Science is based on theories being backed up by evidence. Religions rely on faith because they lack evidence.

Every clergymen or religious preacher would much prefer to have irrefutable evidence that their religious teaching are true, however they strangely all lack this evidence and have to rely on blind faith. They even often attempt to make out as if having to take a position based on faith alone (due to lack of evidence) is somehow a position of strength when it is clearly a position of weakness when proselytizing.

So in effect you have a multitude of different preachers all claiming that they are telling the truth despite contradicting each other and all of them offering zero evidence that they have it right and the others are mistaken. Zero evidence is hardly a compelling argument imo in helping to determine the truth.

If some deem that there is not enough compelling evidence for the Big Bang Theory to accept it then fair enough. However it is not intellectually honest to then assert that God must have been the initiating force as there is zero evidence of this. Wishful thinking does not count as evidence. The truth of the cause of the Big Bang is currently unknown. It is not satisfactory to simply explain the unknown as being the work of God. It was this false reasoning that led many to believe supernatural explanations for various previously unexplained phenomena such as wind, the tides, earthquakes, eclipses etc.

I can't really follow this, but this guy makes very clear that nobody knows what happened before the Big Bang, experts don't even know how to begin to talk about it yet, and that his own wild ass guesses are purely speculative and require "leaps of faith"--he uses those very words.

People do have blind faith in science. Most scientifically-minded people take it for granted that reality ultimately has a coherent explanation, and from that standpoint call the idea of a god, irrational. But it's pure faith to think that the orderliness we perceive exists anywhere outside our bubble of perception, instrumental or otherwise. Or even that the seeming coherency is not just a function of homo sapien consciousness.