Assuming God does not Exist

Today I stumbled onto a relatively old video of a debate concerning the existence of god. The debate took place between Christopher Hitchens, who argued against the existence of god, and Frank Turek, who argued for the existence of god. Both participants were very good and made some interesting points. However, I thought that Mr. Hitchens could have done a better job of addressing some of the issues Mr. Turek brought up.

One issue was that Frank Turek raised was that if god does not exist, what caused the big bang? Surely, something cannot come from nothing. Hitchens mentioned that humans lack the capacity to understand the nothingness that preceded the big bang, but he didn't explain this point. That sort of nothing is something that no living human could ever experience as even the vacuum of space has dimension and contains energy. Consequently, we cannot claim that something cannot come from the nothing that was before the big bang, as any such notion is based on our experiences within space and time. This does not exclude the possibility that a god exists, however it certainly doesn't imply that god does exist either. It proves absolutely nothing. Of course that is assuming that there was a "before the big bang". Since time was created by the big bang, there could be no "before the big bang" as that would imply time existed before it was created, which is a logical contradiction. If we accept a contradiction as a possibility, then by the principle of explosion, anything is a possibility and so the big bang could have come from nothing.

Another issue that was brought up was the claim that without a god there can be no objective right or wrong. Since humans tend to consider some actions right and other actions wrong there must be a source for our shared morality. Frank Turek then questioned how materialism explains this by repeatedly asking if it comes from various elements. Once again Hitchens mentioned an answer to this dilemma. The key to this is that not all people have a sense of right an wrong. People with antisocial personality disorders or sociopaths cannot internalize social norms and often lack the capability to feel remorse or empathy. Such disorders are also thought to have genetic and environmental causes. All of which implies that a sense morality is not common to everyone, that a sense of right or wrong may be just be a result chemical reactions in the brain, and that morals are a product of society. This does raise doubts about free will, which was mentioned by Turek. However, the existence or non-existence of free will implies nothing about the existence of god.

The final issue that I am going to discuss was brought up during the question and answer session and is somewhat related to the previous issue, and that is what is the purpose of life in a universe without god? The obvious answer is that there is no purpose. Hitchens made several comments that I think were along those lines, which I will not repeat here. Purpose is a human concept, it is not a requirement for existence. A negative reaction to any philosophical idea such as a lack of free will or purpose to life is not proof that those concepts are wrong. Reality is what it is and the inability of anyone to accept that does not change it. Once again a personal need for purpose says nothing about the existence of god.

There were several other issues that I did not mention, which were brought up in the debate among them were the complexity of DNA and the problem of fine tuning. As it turns out, there are explanations for these issues that do not involve god many of which can be explained mathematically or through scientific evidence. However, I merely mentioned the three issues that I thought were the most interesting philosophically. If you want to see the debate for yourself, there is a video of it posted here: http://vimeo.com/1863517
Also some of the ideas I have mentioned are very well explained on wikipeida, which also has a listing of some more scholarly sources.

EDIT: I have stumbled onto an article which discusses similar objections in regards to another argument for the existence of god, which can be found here.