We

A messages for the theists.

We – homosexuals – were here when humanity still lived in caves.

We were here when the first human settlements developed in the hills of what is now Ethiopia.

Remains of homosexual couples buried as ‘man and wife’ have been found in Neolithic grave sites dating back over 5,000 years.

We are known to have existed and been accepted and even honoured in every ancient culture on Earth, including the 60,000 year-old culture of the Australian Aboriginal peoples.

We have outlasted the Egyptian Empire, the Chinese Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.

We have survived the European “Dark Ages.”

We have outlasted the Spanish Inquisition, the Protestant Reformation, and the witch-burnings of Europe, where homosexuals were thrown on the fires as “faggots.”

We have outlived the death camps of the Nazis, the pogroms of Stalin, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields of Cambodia.

We have outlasted the discrimination of the 20^th century, where we were branded as mentally ill, subjected to electroshock therapy, and chemical castration.

We have survived the AIDs pandemic.

We will survive your religion.

We were here at the very dawn of humanity’s existence and we will still be here when Christianity, Islam, and every other religion are nothing more than forgotten entries in abandoned history books; long after the names of your prophets and your gods have become overlooked relics of a barbarous age; long after your holy books have rotted into dust in the derelict remains of your mosques and churches and temples.

We will endure because we are part of the natural order.

Your religions are not.

They will NOT endure.

Why so negative?

Why do so many people see the human race so negatively; at one and the same time as only destructive and trivial? It seems to me that such an attitude is a hangover from the monotheist lie that humanity is "inherently evil" and destined for destruction. I do not subscribe to that belief.

There is much that is terrible in what we have done, but there is also much that is amazing.

200 years ago, the idea that humans could fly was "impossible"; 100 years ago, the idea that humans could walk on the surface of the moon was "impossible"; 50 years ago, the idea that you could carry your entire music collection or library around in your pocket was "impossible".

Never assume that anything cannot be done or cannot exist.

As a species, we have been on the Earth for the blink of an eye, relatively speaking. And yet, look at all that we have achieved in that fraction of time - both bad and good, and there is plenty of both.
There may be other civilisations beyond our solar-system that have achieved far more (I find it highly unlikely that there are not), but we do not KNOW that - yet.

For good or ill, we are the dominant species on this planet; and we are a remarkable one!

Another failure for Chad

This is my response to Chad's  attempt to defeat my refutation of TEA which he posted to a Face Book page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Elliott-Argument-Defeated/1464406860456511) recently

Before I begin, I must point out that all of the claims I make regarding my critiques and commentaries on Chad’s arguments have proof in the form of dated blog entries and screen-caps.

Most of his exceedingly long response (it runs to over 10,500 words) is just a series of cut-and-paste sections from his blog and is largely irrelevant. I’ll respond to the few bits that actually deal with my critique.

//It has just been brought to our attention however, that Mr. Godfrey recently submitted a formal refutation to TEA (The Elliott Argument).  //

Actually, I have written critiques of all of Chad’s arguments which I submitted to his blog between December 2012 and May 2013. He never responded directly to any of them, although it became obvious that he was reading them when he referred to one of the counter arguments I posited on his COL page without actually referencing that it was me who raised the argument; once in response to my “yellow shirt” example of epistemological inquiry (Feb 1^st 2013) and once in response to my raising of Descartes’ “cogito” (Feb 20^th 2013). So needless to say, the claim that it has “just come” to his attention is an outright lie. I wonder why it has taken Chad until now to respond to any of them (27^th March 2014).

// If he ever changes he mind and wants to accept our live debate challenge we would be more than happy to publically dismantle him.  //

I attempted only once to enter one of Chad’s “live debates” on Feb 25^th 2013; he blocked me from the chat room as soon as he saw my name appear. I have a screen cap of it.

// Apparently Mr. Godfrey has written numerous blogs, all of which seem to be similarly fallacious in nature, so this will be our only mention of him.  //

Actually, he attempted a refutation of one of my arguments on Feb 1^st 2013. Naturally he got it all wrong.

//'SCPNCEU' actually has been reduced to 'SCPN' but Ill let that slide for now, as more than likely you don't keep up on your apologetics.//

It was still SPNCEU when I wrote the critique over a year ago. Chad likes to move the goalposts and then claim they were where he put them all along.

// We have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that STE is not only illogical, irrational, and incorrect, but also has no supporting evidence.//
and
// Therefore this proves that not only did space exist prior to the expansion of the singularity, but also that the concept of time was in play because ''events'' were in fact occurring.//

and

//It's important to note that in The Elliott Argument, STE is defined as spacetime eternal, not space AND time eternal.//

Interesting, since this is a direct quote from your version of the argument in 2012:
// P1: Both "Space and time are eternal, without a timeless personal mind." (STE) and "Something can come from pure nothingness and then create the entire Universe." (SCPNCEU) are illogical, irrational and have zero evidence.//

It seems the goalposts have shifted yet again.

Apparently Chad can’t see the contradiction in claiming first that STE (Space -Time Eternal) is “illogical, irrational, incorrect”, and without “supporting evidence”, and then immediately claiming that space-time must have pre-existed the Big Bang.

// just because spacetime existed prior to the expansion of the singularity in the Big Bang model, that does not therefore mean that spacetime was eternal in the past without true beginning.//

He seems to think this solves the problem with the argument; the assertion (without the slightest evidence to back it up) that space-time was created prior to the Big Bang. However, this begs the question of what kind of environment God existed in prior to the creation of this prior-to-the-Big-Bang space-time. In a previous discussion with Philosotroll in 2012, he makes the claim that God exists in a kind of “meta space-time” – again without the slightest shred of evidence to back it up. When Philosotroll pointed this out, Chad blocked him.

Regarding my identification of SPCNCEU as a straw man fallacy, he says:

//...It's not a strawman because even though we agree that SCPN is irrational illogical, incorrect, and has no evidence, it still remains an OPTION for atheists. Not a good one I agree, but still an option//

What Chad fails to acknowledge is that few if any atheists actually hold to the idea that the universe came from “Pure Nothingness”. Thus, it DOES qualify as a straw man fallacy, since Elliott contends that they do in blatant disregard of this fact. He creates the argument in order to knock it down.

// So you think the words 'I DONT KNOW' could be responsible for the existence of our Universe?? Do ya huh, Mr. Godfrey?? LOL!!//

And here we have a classic example of Chad deliberately failing to understand the meaning of a statement made by an opponent. What I contended was that the admission of a lack of knowledge by an atheist of how the universe came to exist is a valid answer to the question. His assertion is that I am claiming the actual words “I DON’T KNOW” brought the universe into being. Another straw man fallacy, this time tinged with his grade-school form of personal expression.

// On the basis of P2, this claim is entirely disingenuous; while the argument makes no explicit claim to support the UC option, by (falsely) asserting that there are only two other options.//

This is actually a misquote; here is the full sentence without the period incorrectly placed:
“On the basis of P2, this claim is entirely disingenuous; while the argument makes no explicit claim to support the UC option, by (falsely) asserting that there are only two other options besides this that could be taken and that both are actually invalid, it very clearly implicitly supports that option to the exclusion of all others. Attempting to claim in light of this that it lends no support to the UC option is thus quite simply fallacious – it’s dishonest.”

And chad’s response to the “quote” he has manufactured:

//FAIL...We have not 'falsely' asserted that atheists only have two options. Rather it remains to be an absolute fact that atheists only have two options.//

I should be obvious by now that he has failed to establish his contention as fact.

// The same is true with the acronyms STE an SCPN. I give the correct definitions to my opponent, appeal to human logic and the law of non-contradiction, and then challenge them to prove that some other option could logically exist.//

Actually, I provided a third option in the very response he is attempting to refute here; namely that the universe could have come to exist through a completely natural, non-sentient phenomenon or series of phenomena that exist outside out space-time. As can be seen, this falls under neither STE (since it does not exist in our space-time) nor SPCN (since the universe does not emerge from “Pure nothingness”. This is Chad’s response:
// Simply saying it can be a natural, non-sentient phenomena which exists outside of space-time is nothing more than a baseless assertion.//

This is nonsense, of course. Chad has absolutely no basis to make such a claim and I challenge him to show how the argument is flawed.

// This is where we would challenge our opponent to prove that a non-personal cause (UCNPC), could also in fact be space-less, timeless, immaterial, and unchanging.//

The opposite of course is also the case; I can just as easily challenge Chad to prove that a non-personal cause of the universe cannot be “space-less, timeless, immaterial, and unchanging” – whatever that means.

As usual, Chad’s “defence” of his “undefeatable argument” cannot withstand even the most basic scrutiny.

Chalk up another fail to the AK.

I was angry at Chad for a while after discovering that he was a major plagiariser of other people’s work and was entirely comfortable with misrepresenting facts concerning scientific discoveries to support his botched argument (see entry from 20th Apr 2014).

 However, after reading up on his history, I’ve realised that his behaviour is directly attributable to his failure to achieve the greatness he once saw as inevitable. I have been down that path; on the cusp of seriously big success, only to see it vanish due to some bad luck and bad decisions. Fortunately, I found another path just as fulfilling (although less glamorous). Chad, obviously, did not.

Now I just feel sorry for him.

Chad cheats again

Chad has posted more information his his TEA blog; this time about the WMAP research that indicates that time may have existed before the expansion of the Universe. Chad has deliberately edited the original material to hide the fact that it implies a cyclic cosmos with Universes sequentially coming into being.

From Elliot’s blog:-

Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford, has published a new paper saying that the circular patterns seen in the WMAP mission data on the Cosmic Microwave Background suggest that space and time perhaps did not originate at the Big Bang. His paper also refutes the idea of inflation, a widely accepted theory of a period of very rapid expansion immediately following the Big Bang. Penrose says that inflation cannot account for the very low entropy state in which the universe was thought to have been created.

From the original article:-

One of the great physicists of our time, Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford, has published a new paper saying that the circular patterns seen in the WMAP mission data on the Cosmic Microwave Background suggest that space and time perhaps did not originate at the Big Bang but that our universe continually cycles through a series of “aeons,” and we have an eternal, cyclical cosmos. His paper also refutes the idea of inflation, a widely accepted theory of a period of very rapid expansion immediately following the Big Bang.

Penrose says that inflation cannot account for the very low entropy state in which the universe was thought to have been created.

http://www.universetoday.com/79750/penrose-wmap-shows-evidence-of-%E2%80%98activity%E2%80%99-before-big-bang/

As you see, Elliott has edited the material (italicised in the original text) to remove any reference to a cyclic model of multiple universes, a theory he specifically refutes. The man is an unconscionable liar.

Chad Elliott - cheat, thief, liar.

Well; I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I just read through some of the new stuff that Elliott has added to his blog. There was quite a bit of new material on The Elliott Argument, so I started to read it; I soon realised that it was of far too high a standard to be Elliot's own work - even the writing style was significantly different from what he usually posts. So I did some online detecting. There are whole sections that he has lifted virtually word-for-word from other people's work - personal blogs, answers.com, Wikipedia; he hasn't even bothered to paraphrase most of it. He's been smart enough to credit those pieces from well-known or easily verified sources, such as scientific papers or William Lane Craig's page, which he references often; but there are great slabs which are taken directly from uncredited sources which he then passes off as his own work. He's mixed-and-matched the sentences a bit and changed a word here and there, but a random sample of sentences copied into a search engine revealed the extent of his cheating.

I'm honestly disgusted; I knew he did a bit of that - most of us have used a sentence here or there in our work without crediting the original author properly. But the extent of his cheating goes way beyond that. He's passing off a great deal of writing as his own, when it clearly comes from others, and worse, he is using that material to support, not only his fallacious and childish arguments, but the image he is trying to project of himself. He is stealing other people's hard-won success in order to bolster his ego. I sent him what is probably my final message (below); whatever shreds of respect I had for him are now completely destroyed and I simply will not waste my time on him any more.

OK, Elliott; now you've pissed me off. I really don’t mind that you bang on as if the Elliott Argument was anything other than an easily defeated and fallacious piece of nonsense; if your fragile little ego needs such a myth to make it feel better, who am I to disparage that?

But I’ve just read through some of the new pieces you’ve added since my complete deconstruction of it, (the sections on absolute zero research and so forth) and you have very clearly plagiarised almost all of it. You have added in links to SOME of the pages you got your material from, but there are whole sections you have simply lifted lock, stock, and barrel from other people’s work; answers.com, Wikipedia, you’ve even stolen slabs from other Facebook users – word-for-word. You haven’t even displayed the fractionally small level of common sense needed to unify the fonts, or to paraphrase those segments you pilfered from others with better minds than yours.

Well, Elliott; unlike you, I am a REAL academic, and if there is one thing I despise within my field, it is unbridled plagiarism of this sort.  If this were a paper you had submitted as one of my students, I would haul your sorry arse before the Academic Disciplinary Board so fast you’d get friction burns.

You are NOT an academic, Elliott; you’re not even fit to sweep the floors of a University. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable from anyone, even someone with the superficial reflection of intellect you display. I am disgusted with you. I thought you were, on some primitive level, actually attempting to improve yourself and expand your intellectual capacities; but it is now clear to me that your intent is no more than a childish and artificial attempt to make yourself appear greater than you are by stealing other people’s hard-won success and passing it off as your own.

You are not just a failure, Elliott; you are a cheating failure.

Chad and his Homophobia

This is my response to Elliott’s commentary on the supposed Biblical admonitions against homosexuality. I admit, I’m trying to provoke some response, though so far he has only referred to my posts obliquely; perhaps stirring this particular pot will get some action, as I suspect his long and very rambling condemnation of homosexual acts (he even advises no contact with Gay Christians!) indicates a barely concealed fear of latent – or perhaps NOT so latent – homosexual tendencies. No surprises there.

 So, Elliott ….. you claim that the Christian bible condemns homosexuality. For the sake of argument, I will allow that claim, although the latest biblical scholarship has questioned the translation of words such as arsenokoitai  and malakoi in 1 Corinthins 6:9 (http://btb.sagepub.com/content/34/1/17.abstract), along with interpretation of the Levitican texts and all the other “clobber passages” traditionally used to support homophobia (http://www.psa91.com/pdf/whatthebiblesays.pdf). It needs to be noted that these passages are all open to question, especially since the word “homosexual” did not exist at the time the texts were written down (it was first coined in 1892 by psychologist  Karoly Maria Benkert; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/) , and was in fact not used in the bible at all until 1946 (http://carm.org/word-homosexual-english-bible-1946). These verses when correctly translated are a best obscure about their references to homosexual behaviour per se.

The Bible is much more clear about the issue of sex outside marriage. The verses listed below make it quite clear that such practices constitute “fornication” or “sexual immorality”, which is specifically condemned, as are the children of those unions. It is my understanding, from those who have followed your exploits of FaceBook, that you are not married to the woman with whom you have produced children. Thus, by your own words, you and your children are condemned to Hell.

Fortunately for you (and them), the Christian bible is nothing more than a book of mythology written by Bronze- and Iron-age goat-herders who believed the earth was flat. It has exactly as much authority as the Chronicles of Narnia and frankly is a far less interesting book to read (and yes, I have read both cover to cover). I’m afraid that, unless you can unequivocally prove the existence of the God you happen to believe in (or any God for that matter) to the exclusion of all others, using the Christian bible to support your contentions is about as useful as spitting into the wind.

Deuteronomy 23:2

A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. (KJV)

Sorry, Elliott, but it looks like your children (and their children’s children’s children’s etc. children) are going to burn.

1 Corinthians 7:1-2

1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: [It is] good for a man not to touch a woman. (KJV)

2 Nevertheless, [to avoid] fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. (KJV)

Fornication is sex outside of marriage.

1 Corinthians 7:9

9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn in passion. (KJV)

1 Corinthians 7:28

28 But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned. (KJV)

Ephesians 5:3

3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints (KJV)

Hebrews 13:4

4 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. (KJV)

1 Corinthians 6:9

9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…(KJV)

I repeat; fornication is sex outside of marriage. You are condemned by the very same verse you are using to condemn homosexuals; MAJOR FAIL there, Elliott. Try again.

(On “Proof of God” post)

I've just demolished all that BS you posted about the eeeeevills of homosexuality; I've also shown that your own sexual immorality condemns you AND you children to Hell according to your own "Holy" book.

I just want to add that pretending I don't post here by ignoring my comments doesn't constitute a victory; it just means you're wimping out.

Response to Chad's "Proof of God" argument.

Couldn't resist (and it's a slow day at work); I popped back to see how Chad was doing and found a few new posts that are, if possible, even more ridiculous than the earlier ones. I've responded to the so-called "Proof" of god he has posted and will get around to the (not one, but two) posts about how eeevil-'n'-nasty Homersekshules are. Again, no great challenge here, but I live in hope that one day he will at least manage one coherent, logical argument. Response below:

Hi there, Elliott. I just thought I’d do what I promised and check in on your progress; sad to say, I’m not impressed. You don’t seem to have advanced much at all in your capability to develop and defend a logical argument. I’ve deconstructed this one for you as I see you are still constructing it, so there is a chance of giving it some kind of logical coherence. As it is, if it were a ship it would never make it out of dry-dock. This is only a brief analysis of the most obvious problems; I have broken the lesson into two sections, as it is again too long to post in one hit.

//Everyone (atheists and theists alike) must admit that either something is without beginning, or that something came from pure nothingness.//

Why? This is just a reiteration of your “Golden Question”, which is a classic false dichotomy; there is a plethora of theoretical possibilities as to how the Universe came to be, a fact which effectively discounts this assertion. I myself have presented you with at least one logically consistent, theoretically sound possibility (which you have flatly refused to address) which accounts quite effectively for the existence of the Universe without having to resort to the “God-did-it” theory.

//No reason to believe that pure nothingness have ever existed or could ever be achieved//

There is similarly no reason to believe that “pure nothingness” did NOT exist at some time, unless you have access to some physics research the rest of the world knows nothing about. Besides which, as I have pointed out to you before, there are few if any Atheists who would assert that the Universe came into existence “out of pure nothingness”; a classic Straw-man fallacy there, Elliot.

//Pure nothingness has no creative powers.//

How do you know that? What evidence can you present to support the contention? Also, see above.

//Discriminatory//

Meaning? I know this probably means something to you, but it is totally meaningless to everyone else. Why would the contention that pure nothingness is possible be “discriminatory”?

//You cannot disprove or undermine mathematical absolutes//

Again, meaning? What does this have to do with the argument? Mathematical absolutes are the very things that have successfully been used by (for example) Dr Stephen Hawking to support his contention that a god is unnecessary as an explanation for the Universe’s existence. In what way do they support your contentions? I tried to tell you before, Elliot; making these bald assertions without anything to back them up makes no sense and does NOT constitute a rational argument.

//There is no evidence to support the claim that something can come from pure nothingness.//

Again, see above; there is similarly no evidence to support the claim that a god exists or ever has.

//…whatever existed in the past without beginning must be timeless. Present our infinite regress argument and remind them that we are using all standard and formal definitions of 'Time', and that all eternal cycles such as string theory and multi-universe theory, big bang, big bounce, etc. are also covered.//

and

//…we can prove that events were happening prior to the expansion. Thus, the concept of time certainly was in play!!//

I really shouldn’t have to point this out, Elliott, but the two statements above are contradictory; if something “existed in the past” then it cannot be timeless, as the past IS A MEASUREMENT of time. The statement is ontologically meaningless. Furthermore, in the very next paragraph, you make the claim that you “…can prove that events were happening prior to the expansion”. Quite aside from the fact that, if this is the case, you are up for the Nobel Prize in Physics, the contention that events were happening prior to the expansion means that time, and therefore space, were already existent; that is elementary relativity any high-school student could figure out. If that is the case, then whatever it was that caused the expansion was a temporal agent and subject to (ergo, not the cause of) time and space per se. I know you have already tried to wiggle out of this one by inventing a kind of “meta-space-time” in which you claim your god exists, but that is just a furphy; the fact is, if you are claiming that space-time existed before the big bang, then you are admitting that your god is subject to temporality and therefore MUST have had a beginning also.

//…we know the event (the creation of the universe) must have been beyond space and time. Therefore it cannot be physical or material.//

As pointed out above, you contend earlier in your exegesis that space and time must have existed prior to the expansion, so you have just contradicted one of the key premises of your argument; in common parlance, you have just shot yourself in the foot.

//There are only two types of things that fit this description. Either abstract objects (like numbers), or some sort of intelligent mind…//

Why? Even if we ignore the glaring contradictions in your argument that I have already pointed out, there is no logical reason why something existing in such a “timeless, spaceless” state could not be some kind of natural force that is neither abstract nor sentient. If you have the mathematical and scientific research that shows otherwise, feel free to present it.

//…only a free agent can account for the origin of a temporal effect from a timeless cause. If the cause of the universe were an non-personal, mechanically operating cause, then the cause could never exist without its effect. For if the sufficient condition of the effect is given, then the effect must be given as well.//

Again, why “only a free agent”? You have already stated that space-time MUST have existed prior to the expansion in order for “something” to be able to cause the Universe to begin. If that is the case, there is no logical reason to assume that there was only one element existent in that state. It is just as logical, given the conditions you are basing your contentions on, that there were two or more – perhaps an infinite number – of non-sentient, concrete elements existent prior to the expansion that could have reacted with each other in an entirely random manner. In the natural world, we have countless examples of non-sentient elements causing reactions of all kinds; physics is based on the study of just such phenomena.

//…if the cause were a non-personal set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without its effect...//

As pointed out above, postulating an entity that exists outside our space-time continuum necessarily permits the postulation of any number of elements existing in the same state. There is absolutely no logical reason why the cause of the Universe could not be the interaction of two or more such elements.

As you see, Elliott, this argument is simply not strong enough to withstand even a brief assault. You really MUST try to learn more about formal logical argument, physics, scientific method, and philosophy. I will do my best to educate you on such matters, but I simply do not have the time to do more than expose the basic flaws, as I have done here. I suggest attending a community college or some other such institution where you can get in some serious study time on these subjects; otherwise, you will continue to be the butt of the jokes about you that are currently flooding the internet.