Speaking of intellectual cowardice from creationists, we have another shining example: Pastor Tom Estes. You remember Pastor Tom; squirrelly fella who darted up to shake my hand at the Creation “Museum” before running away to hide behind the creationist staff, shrill commenter, proud owner of a very silly blog? Well, he has just declared his blog an atheist-free zone. All you annoying people who wouldn’t simply accept his patriarchal authority finally compelled him to restrict his readership, and you had to register to comment. Somebody was trying to register under my name (I suspect his troll-pal Shaun), too, so I’ve received a few snide emails from Pastor Tom crowing about how he wasn’t going to let me in.
Anyway, while atheists drive him insane (OK, insaner) and won’t be allowed to criticize him, he’s still ranting away about us. Here’s an example of his inadequate tirades.
This is why Biblically based logic and rationality will always work. It begins with God. It has a foundation that cannot be shaken. And before I get into that, let me explain how ridiculously simple the atheist logic is, when it comes to God. Atheists often say, “Well, if God created the universe, than who created God?” They actually believe this logic is sound enough to dismantle the argument that God created everything. But let me share with you a quote I found at EveryStudent.com, made by Aristotle:
there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin.
Do you see what I’m saying? It’s all circular. If God was created, then someone had to create who created God, etc, etc, etc. And if that logic were true, nothing would exist.
Yes, Pastor Tom. We know. We knew it all along. That’s the point.
There has to be an uncaused starting point to the universe, or it’s an exercise in infinite regression (which it may be; it’s as good a proposition as saying it had a beginning). But let’s just assume that there was something that popped into existence without a causal agent behind it. Now the question is, what was that first something? I think it’s perfectly fine to suggest it was a singularity, that first tiny pinpoint of incipient mass and energy. We gain nothing from saying the first cause was a ‘god’, which is an undefined and inconsistent being of significant complexity with human-like qualities of intelligence, who then by mechanism unknown initiates the singularity. It’s an unnecessary complication, especially when one of your reasons for bringing it into the equation is that you can’t comprehend how matter and energy came into being, so you’re going to invoke magic and push the problem back onto a superman.
Pastor Tom completely misses the point of the argument. What he has to answer is why he thinks the first thing to exist has to be an Old Testament Patriarch with some cranky obsessions about fabrics, diet, and sex rather than a simple expanding sphere of hot space-time.
