I love how in online debates people think volume equals victory.
Somehow the fact that 200 angry commenters at the world’s biggest atheist blog all disagreed with me makes them correct.
And atheists are the first to suggest that majority rule does not make a position automatically correct. When it suits them of course.
This tactic is up there with giving a phenomena a name (eg “Godwin’s Law”) and thus making the use of long held positions and ideas somehow laughable. It’s name it and shame it rather than name it and claim it. It’s odd. Similarly, having some sort of well known theory like Pascal’s Wager “debunked” by people who disagree with it… I’m glad atheists have rebuttals for every position put forward by Christians. It probably helps them to sleep at night. The issue really rests on that which separates theists from atheists… if theists are correct then every rebuttal atheists make on the basis of “logic” or “science” will be shown to be incorrect, and vice versa.
This is the problem I was trying to address in my list also… the question of whether God exists divides down the line of people who think everything came from nothing and the people who think that everything came from God. Either the universe came first, or God did. That’s the complexity I was referring to in my list. While some atheist philosophers think a watch in a field lends itself to chance – other philosophers think a watch in a field lends itself to the idea of a watchmaker.
Just because you’ve made up your mind on that issue doesn’t make the other answer any less rational. It’s probably more rational – because the simplest answer is to assume a creator, not the other way around.