The Jolly Nihilist Responds! (Part 2)

As I said I will be blogging my responses with "The Jolly Nilhilist" from www.mycaseagainstgod.blogspot.com . I first starting explaining his views in my post ' "An Atheist attempts to refute the Transcendental argument".

For some it might be wise to re-read that post before looking at his new responses.

This the follow one to that one,

The problem is not so much that TAG presupposes god's biblical nature; the problem is that, in the act of presupposing god's biblical nature, one is also presupposing the veracity of the Bible. If one presupposes the veracity of the Bible, one implicitly presupposes the existence of the god contained therein. Again, the Bible is not a book of definitions; it presents a narrative in which its characters are very much extant. Presupposing the Bible's truth presupposes Yahweh's existence. TAG is shameless question beggary.

As to rationality and other "transcendent" phenomena springing from material roots, I will quote Richard Carrier, a noted metaphysical naturalist.

"[The presuppositionalist approach] is like trying to argue that bricks, being just bricks, can never create a house. Obviously, a house can be reduced to mere bricks, none of which has doors or windows or a living-space inside. Yet those bricks can be organized so as to produce such a thing—a thing that can exist in no other way except as such an assembly of simpler things that are not themselves a house. After all, must a wheel be composed of parts that are themselves 'in the last analysis' round? Obviously not. Yet the wheel can roll, even when its parts cannot. Causal properties thus arise from the organization of material, not just from the material itself. A gold ring will roll down an incline, but a gold block will not—despite these objects being made of nothing whatsoever but the very same gold. In the same way, a teleological system can arise from the organization of simpler nonteleological systems."

This is emergentism, and both consciousness and rational thought emerge from brain activity.

My response,Thank you for your reply

You didnt answer my question very well. so I will define it again "what justifes your reasoning upon your reasons"? Why is this not question begging?

All thinking starts off with presuppositions...If reality as a whole has no interpretation, then all you are doing is labeling matter with your absurd opinions. Without God there are no facts to be found.

You presuppose there is no God, so all evdience you look at will be interpreted without God, so you would doubt the Bible. I presupose God does exist...

As for Richard Carrier I dont think his argument works. For a start he has to presupoose that there is such a thing as a "metaphysical naturalist". That again is his starting point, first principle. But many other people believe that metaphysics is something totally diiferent than matter and chemicals. His presupposition forces his interpretation.

For one, the bricks are being used to build an "idea" that being a house. So we start of with mind, then matter is shaped in to the plan, and then we have a house repersenting the idea. What we dont have blind random bricks turning into a house.

This is the same with rationality, God is the source for our rational thinking.

Also please tell me if brain activity process is rational in itself. Would you say then that our thoughts are controled by random chemical reactions in the head, which i do not have control over. So does this eliminate free will ?