All right, let me just make clear up front that by “God” I am referring to any of the traditional, scripture-based concepts of God that are actually worshipped by people on this planet, and NOT some theoretical construct of an immaterial “first cause” that either cannot be known or who “chooses” not to reveal himself to us, and whose existence can therefore, by definition, neither be proven nor disproven. Got that? Good.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, now I remember…
I realize that there are many people on this board who claim to be atheists of one stripe or another, and I thought it would be interesting to find out what argument against the existence of God you personally find to be the most convincing. For some it may be the whole “problem of evil” thing. For others, it may be lack of consistency in the description of God and his actions and/or words. For others it may be the fact that all the miracles ascribed to God can be explained without the need to “multiply entities” (thank you, William of Occam). For others it may simply be the lack of any credible evidence that he does, in fact, exist, and that as a skeptic you refuse to believe a wild claim without supporting evidence. And I’m sure there are plenty more possibilities (write-in votes are accepted).
For me, I think it’s the fact that there are so many different religions and denominations of religions in the world, each claiming to know “the truth” and each disagreeing (in whole or in part) with all the others. As far as I am concerned, if there really were a God who cared about what we believed and how we acted, he wouldn’t have set up a system (or allowed a system to be set up) whereby the vast majority of his “children” would never be able to learn what they were supposed to believe and do simply because of how when and where they were born. I guess I would call this the “overabundance of contradictory religions” argument, and I nominate it as the Most Convincing Argument for the Non-existence of God.
Anybody else care to make a nomination or vote for an existing nomination? Please avoid “all of the above,” since it makes tallying the votes difficult. “None of the above” is also discouraged, unless it is followed by a nomination of a previously unmentioned argument.
I should also note that believers are also welcome to comment as to why they feel a particular argument is not very convincing, but I’d appreciate it if we could keep the witnessing down to a minimum (read “none”).
I am genuinely happier and have a greater sense of inner peace now compared to when I had a personal experience of and relationship with God.
I would imagine I might be the only vote in this pile, since I do not know any other atheist who has cried tears of joy at experiencing God and gone on to believe that this was essentially a natural psychophysical phenomenon.
I don’t have an affirmative belief in God’s nonexistence; I do, however, lack any affirmative belief that God exists.
Just to be clear, you’re excluding all mystical traditions and polytheistic traditions in your first paragraph, right? Sufis, Unitarians, Bahaiists need not apply?
Because the contradictory-religion theory is handled nicely by such traditions. A Sufi once explained it to me by saying that water has many different names in many different languages, but each word is only a symbol pointing to the Reality of Water.
Even non-mystical traditions such as Southern Baptism explain contradictory religions easily: The Divvil’s behind 'em. When you’ve got a Good Guy and a Bad Guy, you can use the Bad Guy to explain any contradictory religion.
For me, the lack of evidence is my primary impediment to believing in a God. If and when I got evidence God existed, I’d need strong evidence that God wasn’t a grade-a yutz: when I look around me, I see precious little evidence of an omnipotent benevolent being.
I don’t know who said it or when, but in some old thread on the SDMB a poster had an interesting point on this.
Whe talking with a believer this poster said to ask them to think about the reasons they have chosen not to believe in the god and gods of other religions. When you understand why you have chosen not to believe in them, you will be closer to understanding why I don’t believe at all.
(I am probably paraphrasing poorly, but you get the point.)
Debaser, I’ve heard it phrased as something like this: “You are an atheist, too: I just disbelieve in one more God than you.” I’ve looked for a source for this argument; although it appears on a lot of different atheist websites, nobody seems to attribute it to a single source.
Yes, well, except that Hinduism and Shamanism and Fundamentalist Christianity are not really different words for water … more like water, whiskey, and gasoline.
The reason in the OP was probably what made me atheist to begin with. I also thought it simply improbable that I happened to be born into a family that just happened to believe the “One True Religion”, which helped me on to believe there was no true religion.
Things that help along my unbelief are stuff like the very poorly-designed digestive system of the rabbit. If there was a even a half intelligent designer involved in that project, all it would have had to do was place the gland that secretes the enzyme to break down cellulose a little higher up in the system, and it wouldn’t have to eat its own shit.
The realization that everything can be explained better via natural causes, and seeing the ease at which people assign supernatural causes to clearly natural events neatly explained why religions came to be in the first place.
This argument was, once upon a time, the reason why I considered myself an atheist. But the more I’ve thought about this argument, the less satisfying it has become.
I think my problem with it is that you have to draw that line in the sand which you draw at the beginning of the OP. It’s only an argument against certain specific notions of God, namely those advanced by others. Or in other words, the existence of hundreds of millions of Hindus does suggest that Baptists may not be entirely correct, but it doesn’t suggest that atheists are.
Or to put it another way still: contradictory evidence is not evidence.
Ultimately I now suspect that my beliefs regarding the existence of God will never be satisfied by external evidence. No religious argument I’ve ever heard has ever presented such evidence, and neither has any atheistic argument. Unless, of course, you accept as an axiom the idea that the scientific method is the one and only way to truth, which is as dogmatic and unprovable a notion as any ever conceived.
Not necessarily, not to mystics. Hinduism might drink water from many small cups, shamans straight from the stream, and fundies only after it’s been blessed by the priest, but they’re all drinking water. Mystic traditions suggest that it’s not the container, but rather the water itself, that matters.
A relevant story recounts the Hindu holy man who decided to inventory the Gods of India, and travelled from village to village counting every River god, every Harvest Goddess, every heart deity and death spirit he could find. He spent years, decades making this count, and travelled the length and breadth of his country. Finally, an old man, he finished, and collapsed exhausted. His travelling companion realized the holy man was dying, and asked him quickly, before he died, how many gods there were in India.
“One,” the holy man answered.
I may be an atheist, but I sure dig on those mystical stories :).
When I was a kid, I recall thinking silly the whole concept of a heaven that only admitted Catholics. That may have been one of my first reasons for disbelief.
Just wanted to add a little wrinkle to the “lack of evidence” argument. That is, lack of a need for a supernatural entity. As I viewthe universe, I just don’t see any broad areas or “gaps” that need the inclusion of any particular or general mystical explanation. I prefer to glory in the wonderful complexity or nature. Personally, I prefer that mindset to any of the religious explanations/systems I have encountered.
I also prefer a Humanist emphasis on this life for its own merits, rather than as a means for a ticket to another life, or a reward/punishment for a past life.
Finally, I was unable to accept why people - even if they felt the need to inject a supernatural being into their perception of the universe - why they felt they could come up with a detailed story such as most religions do. IMO it is a monstrous, unnecessary, and undesirable leap to go from “Science can’t explain X” to "This particular unprovable story and no other explains X."
To me, the reason I find it impossible to believe in any of the ideas of “God” is the Anthropomorphism (“in the shape of man”) all of them display. All these deities are clearly not something different from man, but rather something that could be, and therefore almost certainly is, a figment of human imagination.
Genesis says: “na’ase adam b’tzalmenu kidmutenu” - Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26). This use of the plural form has always bothered believers and non-believers alike, showing up as it were in the midst of the crux of monotheism. I have always believed that this was a sentence uttered by people, somehow transplanted into scripture, which would originally have read “Let us make God in our image, after our likeness”
To me, the most convincing reason is that if you start out with some basic premises and then try and reconcile them with some fundamental beliefs in organised religion, it just doesn’t fit.
Take, for example, the basic premise that the way that God designed humans is an indication of his nature. Humans are born with an endless curiousity for the world around us and deep hunger for order and understanding. Its almost something at an instinctual level that we seek to know how the universe ticks. From this, we have managed to build an entire platform of Scientific analysis of claims and healthy scepticism and I think this is the way that we SHOULD be evaluating the universe. Given that it is entirely reasonable to follow such a world view and not ever find evidence of a supernatural cause, I think that disbelief in god, if not an inevitable conclusion, would be at least an allowable conclusion if a truely good god did exist.
Secondly, the concept of Heaven and Hell which is central to Christian thought seems deeply offensive to me. Again, looking at humans as an example, Human children go through three rough phases of moral development (Kohlberg summarised as:
Its moral because I get something out of it
Its moral because everyone else is doing it
Its moral because its right
While other precepts in the bible clearly target 2 and 3, it seems the fixation with Heaven and Hell is clearly based on principle 1. I’m not disputing the existance of Heaven and Hell, merely that any god which reveals such a thing to humans specifically in order to induce compliance is more a demon that a god IMHO. If god can’t make a cogent argument for his code of ethics without resorting to petty bribes and threats, then why is it worth following?
The last thing is to specfically refute creationism is that, if we look at nature, and look REALLY closesly, then we are forced to the inevitable conclusion that god is a sadistic bastard. There are literally hundreds of examples in nature which contain needless cruelty to animals. [Revtim] explained the rabbit’s digestive system but that is merely one of many. There is a species of wasps in Southern America which paralyze their prey and then inject their eggs into them so that the hatchlings have a fresh source of food. The thing is, the animal is paralyzed but still alive and feels pain for the entire time. I understand that animals need to die for others to live and all that but how small a change would it have been to give the animal a painless death before maggots start devouring him from the inside? A god who could envision such a system must truely be twisted indeed.
In short, I think the most compelling argument for the non-existance of god is to simply look at nature and ourselves and draw an conclusion on a creator based on his creations. I cannot imagine a truely good being creating what currently exists.
To me, the most convincing reason is that if you start out with some basic premises and then try and reconcile them with some fundamental beliefs in organised religion, it just doesn’t fit.
Take, for example, the basic premise that the way that God designed humans is an indication of his nature. Humans are born with an endless curiousity for the world around us and deep hunger for order and understanding. Its almost something at an instinctual level that we seek to know how the universe ticks. From this, we have managed to build an entire platform of Scientific analysis of claims and healthy scepticism and I think this is the way that we SHOULD be evaluating the universe. Given that it is entirely reasonable to follow such a world view and not ever find evidence of a supernatural cause, I think that disbelief in god, if not an inevitable conclusion, would be at least an allowable conclusion if a truely good god did exist.
Secondly, the concept of Heaven and Hell which is central to Christian thought seems deeply offensive to me. Again, looking at humans as an example, Human children go through three rough phases of moral development (Kohlberg) summarised as:
Its moral because I get something out of it
Its moral because everyone else is doing it
Its moral because its right
While other precepts in the bible clearly target 2 and 3, it seems the fixation with Heaven and Hell is clearly based on principle 1. I’m not disputing the existance of Heaven and Hell, merely that any god which reveals such a thing to humans specifically in order to induce compliance is more a demon that a god IMHO. If god can’t make a cogent argument for his code of ethics without resorting to petty bribes and threats, then why is it worth following?
The last thing is to specfically refute creationism is that, if we look at nature, and look REALLY closesly, then we are forced to the inevitable conclusion that god is a sadistic bastard. There are literally hundreds of examples in nature which contain needless cruelty to animals. Revtim explained the rabbit’s digestive system but that is merely one of many. There is a species of wasps in Southern America which paralyze their prey and then inject their eggs into them so that the hatchlings have a fresh source of food. The thing is, the animal is paralyzed but still alive and feels pain for the entire time. I understand that animals need to die for others to live and all that but how small a change would it have been to give the animal a painless death before maggots start devouring him from the inside? A god who could envision such a system must truely be twisted indeed.
In short, I think the most compelling argument for the non-existance of god is to simply look at nature and ourselves and draw an conclusion on a creator based on his creations. I cannot imagine a truely good being creating what currently exists.
To me, the most convincing reason is that if you start out with some basic premises and then try and reconcile them with some fundamental beliefs in organised religion, it just doesn’t fit.
Take, for example, the basic premise that the way that God designed humans is an indication of his nature. Humans are born with an endless curiosity for the world around us and deep hunger for order and understanding. It’s almost something at an instinctual level that we seek to know how the universe ticks. From this, we have managed to build an entire platform of scientific analysis of claims and healthy scepticism and I think this is the way that we SHOULD be evaluating the universe. Given that it is entirely reasonable to follow such a world view and not ever find evidence of a supernatural cause, I think that disbelief in god, if not an inevitable conclusion, would be at least an allowable conclusion if a truly good god did exist.
Secondly, the concept of Heaven and Hell which is central to Christian thought seems deeply offensive to me. Again, looking at humans as an example, Human children go through three rough phases of moral development (Kohlberg) summarised as:
Its moral because I get something out of it
Its moral because everyone else is doing it
Its moral because its right
While other precepts in the bible clearly target 2 and 3, it seems the fixation with Heaven and Hell is clearly based on principle 1. I’m not disputing the existence of Heaven and Hell, merely that any god which reveals such a thing to humans specifically in order to induce compliance is more a demon that a god IMHO. If god can’t make a cogent argument for his code of ethics without resorting to petty bribes and threats, then why is it worth following?
The last thing is to specifically refute creationism is that, if we look at nature, and look REALLY closely, then we are forced to the inevitable conclusion that god is a sadistic bastard. There are literally hundreds of examples in nature which contain needless cruelty to animals. Revtim explained the rabbit’s digestive system but that is merely one of many. There is a species of wasps in Southern America which paralyse their prey and then inject their eggs into them so that the hatchlings have a fresh source of food. The thing is, the animal is paralysed but still alive and feels pain for the entire time. I understand that animals need to die for others to live and all that but how small a change would it have been to give the animal a painless death before maggots start devouring him from the inside? A god who could envision such a system must truly be twisted indeed.
In short, I think the most compelling argument for the non-existence of god is to simply look at nature and ourselves and draw an conclusion on a creator based on his creations. I cannot imagine a truly good being creating what currently exists.
