The Theist Strikes Back, episode IV

Mike,

"Why" is precisely the nature of this debate. There is a "why" the universe exists, just like there is why I love my wife, why I am back in school at 32 years old, and why I am engaged in having this debate with you. Why do trees grow the way they do, why do mountains exist where they do, why are there only 2 "dead" lakes in the world? There is "why" all over the place; should the universe be any different? My son asks me "why" all the time, and eventually I say something assinine like "just because" just to get him to stop pestering me. But "just because" can't be the end of the answers. Even trying to craft this argument, I can't get away from asking "why" questions - all of this evidences to me the idea of a greater purpose. This is, again to me, the line of distinction between us and animals. Animals are content with how, and never go into why. We are the only animal that asks why. This is the reason that I suggest that we would never have thought to question the existence of God - for it is God that inspires us to ask why. I can't think of any other purpose for our insatiable quest for understanding - our search for the "why" - than that we are inspired to it. I concede that this search creates hair-brained ideas all the time, like teapots and pasta monsters, but that doesn't by implication mean the intent is flawed.

Even if the Bible is a wholly human creation, it at least speaks to the idea that the concensus of mankind is towards an omnipotent being - again using the Bible as a generic to sum up all of religious text and thought. The various texts of most other faiths all point to the same idea. But at very least the 3 big faiths -Judaism, Islam and Christianity - all stem from the OT of the Bible in some form, so it seems appropriate to use it as basis for argument. That said, the Bible doesn't prove that God is the answer, at least logically speaking, but it at least puts the idea of God as more likely than a tea pot so far as popular sentiment is concerned. Unless you have some widely accepted text that makes the case for some celestial hot beverage that a majority of people revere as deity.

Love. I have only 2 things to point out about this part and then I'll let you have it back. First (and I know you'll argue this point but we are probably at a standstill here), all of your physiological explanations only provide observed reactions, in essence answering how. You make no insightful explanations for why these things happen. Why do dopamine levels raise when someone sees a photo of a lived one? What is the cause of that physiological reaction? Second, and my favorite point you made, is thus: "does knowing how it works take away any of the beauty of this feeling?" Mike, I couldn't have made a better case for God than that. Does knowing how the universe works take away the beauty of its creation? Is love any less real because we understand how it effects the body? Likewise, is God any less real because we understand how He manages the universe? If God and love are both observable conditions, the one through natural phenomena (gravity, atmospheric condition for life, or whatever) and the latter through CT imaging, does it change the fact that both are real things? I know you won't concede this point if only for the fact that it would be concedeing the debate in total, but think about your argument for a moment and see if you can explain it in a different manner. You are offering an explanation of love that focuses on observation of the condition and its effects, but offering nothing to explain how the condition occured in the first place. You offer no reason as to why one person comes to love another, or better yet why the condition of love exists in the first place, yet you seem satisfied that it does. Likewise your position as regards God offers only observation of the natural world with no explanation of why such a thing occurs in the first place. So the implication I am making is that you either reject that love exists on the same grounds that you reject the notion of God, or you accept that things exist beyond their observable elements - i.e. that God, like love, can exist in the absence of impirical proof for its very existence and not simply for its observable effects.

This is a tricky idea and I hope I have explained my position well enough to get a meaningful response. If not, well give it a shot and we'll see where we end up.

Cory