Much interesting discussion. I am surprised to find, however, that (unless I missed it) the most important argument against the existence of god in my mind has not been mentioned:
Quite simply, the idea is rather overtly ridiculous.
I would venture that the Chinese aren't even good communists... :D Communism for all its pros never managed to erradicate religion.[Deep Godlike Thor Voice]
Finally someone gets me!
[/Deep Godlike Thor Voice]
Anyways, my own athiesm, like most things in my life, seems to come from a general laziness.
I really see there are a couple possiblities.
One, there is a big-G God out there (Islam, Christianity, whichever), and he’s like he is in the Bible. I use the Bible as an example because, well, that’s the one I know.
If this is the case, then this bastard is schizophrenic. Not only that, but he’s also a horrible, horrible being. You can feed me all the bullshit you want about some ineffible plan, but there’s no reason for a year-old puppy to get squished by a car, there’s nothing good about priests molesting children, and there’s no justification for hundreds of thousands to be hacked apart with machettes in Rwanda.
So, if number one is the case, fuck 'em. You have a child, you’re responsible for it. You have six billion of them (plus a universe), you’re responsible for them, too.
A neglectful god doesn’t deserve worship, respect, or, in my opinion, even attention.
Case number two is that there is no god.
Not much to say on this one except it seems most likely from what I see around me day after day.
Given the choice between an all-powerful creator who just doesn’t give a shit or one who doesn’t exist, I’ll take the one who doesn’t exist.
There are, of course, other things that just throw a wrench into any sort of divine being’s existance.
Why create human beings (and most other animals) with natural curiousity and then punish them for it?
Why put that old apple tree in the Garden of Eden and then point to it and say, “Whatever you do, don’t touch this”. Anyone who has ever met, well, anyone knows exactly what’s going to happen. And the thing is, an omnipotent god could have simply eliminated the option. Hell, a semi-impotent Merijeek could put up a chain link fence with a smattering of razor wire on the top.
If Jesus was divine, and his message was Straight From God, why allow it to be perverted as it has been? I don’t think he was divine, just a man who actually tried to make the world a better place.
Why are people born with an “Original Sin”? Sounds like a factory defect to me. How’d a perfect divine being fuck up like that?
-Joe, effible
So are Taoists. So really, China is still something like 80% atheist even by conservative estimates.
Joe, of course hits the nail rather squarely on the head.
I can understand some rationalizing being done in certain cases…to make the case that sharks and crocodiles are not as vicious as we humans think they are, for example. To humans, from our distorted perspecitive, we often commit some form of the “availability heuristic”(I believe it’s called) error in thinking. We will worry greatly about shark attacks when we have tremendously greater odds of drowning than being attacked by a shark, so it is upon marine biologists to convince us that we are misinformed about sharks in general.
But God and the Bible…I am sorry but I don’t see how ANY amount of rationalization and reinterpretation should be necessary to plainly see what his message is or that he exists if in fact he does. STILL, theists go to incredible lengths to explain away obvious discrepancies and contradictions. They will bend over backwards(literally) to get around the commandments listed in Levictus or reconcile their “loving God” with the God in the Bible who commits massive genocide on people for the crime of being born in the wrong region under the wrong king. They will dance all day long around the problem of free will and omniscience or the problem of evil.
These are not just cases of small apparent errancies/discrepancies which result because of sloppy scholarship on the part of the Bible’s critics. These are straightforward errors and contradictions of great magnitude which require such bizarre twists of logic to get around that it takes more than “faith” to hold the Bible and God’s existence as true…it takes brainwashing and patent dishonesty.
There comes a time when you have got to just admit you were wrong about something and move on.