A discussion I had yesterday and today (November 9/10, 2023) with an atheist. Here is (some of) my conversations with him.
"You, whoever you are, use argument ad hominem. Sad. But you asked for my sources. Here is one:
"Interestingly, this renowned scientist made no appeal to what the Bible teaches for his defense that a Creator exists. There are many scientists who argue for intelligent design for creation of life, yes, creation of life by a personal Creator. The way some of them make their argument is by exposing the absurdity of the only alternative: undirected, stochastic motions of molecules in some primordial, chemical-laden soup exposed to an early-earth hostile environment--or if, as some atheists prefer their version of a just-so story, then ready-made biochemical building blocks supposedly transported to earth's surface via a meteorite.
"But protagonists for creation of life need not become initially engaged with atheistic detractors into their (the protagonists') defending the Biblical portrait of its God (Jehovah) as championed in its pages. That can come later, perhaps. No, they have only to show that the concept of a Creator does not violate scientific fact, although it does contradict the dogma 'scientism,' which has it that all that is Real is explicable per the scientific method. That is patently false dogma. Moreover, there is logical fallacy in attacking the concept of creation on the basis of a (dubious) interpretation of what the atheists think that the Bible says about Jehovah, for it is like saying, 'So-and-So DID NOT build yon lovely house because So-and-So, as we have learned, is a dangerous scoundrel.' First, prove that So-and-So didn't build the house in question, which is the main point in contention, and when once you prove that, then you need go no further, for how was it ever imagined that So-and-So's moral character necessarily had any bearing for establishing that he could not have built the house? But if it can be shown that there is no other credible, reasonable, non absurd explanation but that So-and-So built that house, then the antagonist's contention that the builder of the house is immoral becomes suspect, too. I simply don't want to put the cart before the horse.
"At this stage of the argument with an atheist, the logical focus is on what science and other disciplines (e.g., Information Theory) can bring to the table. Now, I am convinced there is a Creator. But some atheists become atheistic because they are certain that those who believe in a Creator don't take seriously the contention that has it that the Bible is controverted by science, written history, archaeology, and psychology, and that the Bible's apologists are hypocrites who hide their nefarious and dangerous deeds. For sake of logically coherent argumentation, stay on one side or other of the fence: either discuss science, or else if you have a beef against the portrait of God presented in the Bible, then we can commence discussion with that. But we need not begin by conflating the issues, as would be done by someone who imagines that (s)he has scored points against the very concept of a Creator's existence merely because the antagonist imagines (s)he has succeeded in shaming a particular portrait of Him as presented in the Bible.
"Deists--at least those deists of generations past and who were involved in fashioning a Constitutional, representative democracy for a federal government of the United States of America--did not conclude on the basis of reason that there is no Creator. So, would you have succeeded in disabusing their mind of belief in a Creator should you have commenced with a discussion of what you imagine to be errors in the Bible? Your entire approach would have been a non sequitur. If I had been the contemporary of men such as Thomas Jefferson (he objected, among other things, to the concept that the Creator was a Triune God) or Benjamin Franklin, then why should I have wasted our time together by seeking to limit discussion to something we were already agreed upon? But if their deism was prompted by their taking offense to certain ways they were expected to confess their belief in God, and that they were supposed to accept without question what they imagined was in the Bible--or what they were taught by clergymen to believe about the Bible when the clergy of their day and age and on up until our day had no convincing explanations for why the God of the Bible, in Whom they were supposed to believe, could tolerate evil, disease, and death--, then I am prepared to discuss that thing offensive to them, too. I can gladly share the Bible's own defense of the God it champions. But anytime there are folks who think that science has made the very concept of a Creator to be nonsensical regardless of whatever (they imagine) the Bible says, then I am ready to discuss that with them, too, and to limit the discussion to what they themselves should have to logically hold, namely, that it is their scientism that makes irrelevant to commencement of our dialogue whatever the Bible teaches. And only when they feel that dialogue has reached an impasse via that tact, and if they want to do so, then we may consider what the Bible itself does teach and what it does not teach. If they have harbored some offense against the very concept of God as the Bible presents Him, then maybe they will come to have a mind disabused of their prejudice against the Bible."
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