You should change the title of your thread.
Just because Santa doesn’t exist doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist.
I think one of best arguments against the ancient religions is all the other theories and pseudoscientific belief structures that have gone out the window, while religion remains (not that I’m endorsing Scientology or other idiotic modern “religions”).
What is the difference between Christianity and the theory of the four bodily humors?
BTW my vote is for “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence,” Lord Russell’s defence in case he gets hauled before the Almighty. Whoever posted that first gets to split the prize (antique watch? Godzilla cufflinks?) with Bertrand.
To paraphrase why believers say there is a god:
God whispered in my ear, and told me he does not exist
But seriously folks… My vote is the great gap between the Bible and the real world. We only know of God through the Bible (the god you are asking about) and the Bible is so full of holes, errors, and inconsistencies that it is totally untrustworthy. Thus there is no reason to believe in a Biblical god. I was brought up Jewish, so I have never believed in Jesus, and the whole god-man story is so absurd and against the nature of the god I learned about and worshipped as to be totally unbelievable.
Well, I am not an atheist, so allow me to cast a vote for the most convincing although I’m not convinced …
You’ve limited the thread to “traditional scripture based” God concepts. The best argument against those have been that literal scriptures are generally shown to have inconsistencies both internally and with reality. God would know pi, for example. Moreover a traditional God would have no reason to appear in so many so very different containers as to provoke killing using interpretation of his true essence as the excuse.
Yes, let’s change the title to, “In which flonks completely misses the point”
And yet people complain that the Trinity is something which they cannot comprehend. It seems to me that the Trinitarian God is decidedly non-anthropomorphic, even if one of its persons did assume human flesh for a time.
The flaw in “We only know of God through the Bible” and its equivalents would be, of course, the number of people who believe themselves to have had direct personal experience of the divine, including of what they believe to be the god mentioned in their particular sacred scribblings, whichever texts those may be.
I would say that there isn’t any single argument which leads me to believe there is no God, but rather the crushing weight of evidence which leads me to that conclusion: the lack of overt interaction with Mankind since the the Bible stories; the inconsistencies within the Bible itself of both God’s message and nature; the state of the world today, as well as the state of the world throughout history (a “benevolent, all-powerful” deity would surely not permit evil to flourish in the hopes of testing the faith of a select few); the lack of need for God’s existence in order to explain said world-state; the lack of need for a Divine presence to explain the workings of nature; the seemingly innate nature of humans to latch onto just about any story and accept it as “Truth” (whether religious in nature, or as mundane as an Urban Legend).
Now, I cannot truthfully say that God does not exist - He still may, and He could very well be as capricious and/or mean-spirited, if not outright Evil, as He might seem to be. But as far as that goes, I fall into the agnostic category: I don’t know, and it is my opinion that I cannot know, one way or the other. I just don’t see any positive evidence for His existence, no matter where I might look.
Except, of course, for the fact that so many people claim to have heard God’s voice say different things, that we run into the same problem I mentioned with having so many different religions and denominations in the first place.
Plus, there are enough perfectly plausible physical reasons why somebody might imagine “sensing God’s presence” that there is no need to bring something as improbable as God into the equation. Why should we give a “direct personal experience of the divine” any more credance than a “direct personal experience with alien abduction”?
Barry
Which, seeing as I’m a polytheist, doesn’t strike me as being a problem to start with. But other people have spoken to that point already. I’ll just add that I think an expectation that everyone will follow the same gods is about as plausible as an expectation that everyone will be in love with the same people.
You consider the divine implausible; other people don’t. No big deal; if we were all the same, think of the oatmeal shortage.
My reason is the same as the OP. If God were real, I feel that all humans would have no question about if He were real. The fact that there are so many religions and so many gods means that there is a lot of confusion. It doesn’t make any sense that we would be confused about if God existed or not.
Another thing that supports the OP is that no religion has a majority of people in it. The largest, Christianity, has about 33% of the world’s population. I would think that that if a certain god were real, there would be a most definite majority of people who believed in him–like 90%. So even if you believe in the largest religion, there’s 67% of the world who believes in something different.
I know that shifting the burden of proof is a logical faux pas, but seriously…
What would be wrong with operating under the principle “Nothing exists until proven otherwise”? The alternative would be “Everything [including God, no doubt] exists until proven otherwise,” and it seems that we atheists have been forced to submit to this given the largely inexplicable preponderance of religious types in the world.
Let’s consider a couple of less polemic concepts like “gravity” or “unicorn.”
I presuppose the existence of neither.
But now, I see that, for all intents and purposes, things tend to fall toward Earth. Okay, so that’s pretty good evidence in favor of gravity.
(As an aside: Every day I tacitly operate under the assumption that there is gravity, merely for reasons of convenience. But I have no proof that gravity exists. I believe in gravity less than a theist would claim he believes in God. I don’t think I’m wrong in being skeptical about gravity. After all, I have no absolute proof that it exists. So if I can’t even be convinced of something as apparent as gravity (or anything else for that matter, take your pick), I don’t understand how anybody could possibly think that they know that there is a God. In other words, I am in search of the truth, whatever it may be. As such, I have absolutely no qualms about abandoning my current beliefs if they prove to be wrong; indeed, my beliefs are mere assumptions that are convenient for me to make to get me through the day. Religion, with its demands of “faith,” seems to rob humans of this flexibility. IMO, that’s why it’s appealing to weak people.)
Now let’s consider the unicorn. I’ve never seen a unicorn, and I don’t know anyone who claims that they have seen a unicorn. That’s pretty good evidence that it doesn’t exist. But still, I’m not sure. What if I started a new thread in Great Debates, “Most convincing argument for the non-existence of unicorns”? That would be unfair. Why should I place the burden of proof in a such a way that if no one can adequately argue against the existence of unicorns? (This is tantamount to arguing against the existence of God, IMO) That would be unfair.
Now back to God. What evidence is there? The faith of millions of people. Sorry, not good enough. I explain that away by attributing it to the need humans have to convince themselves that there is something more powerful out there, or that in the end, everything will be okay. Now, maybe if these millions of people, in addition to having faith (which they can’t share with me), were also running experiments that gave evidence that there was indeed a God, maybe then I might examine the data and adopt a belief in God for convenience’s sake. Still, it wouldn’t be anything holy. Just a tentative belief awaiting its demise pending contradictory evidence.
So in a word, put my vote in for lack of evidence…
As a number of others have said, there is no single reason that tips the balance. Rather, it is the sum total of how all the various ways of looking at the question seem to point at the same result. Taken individually, any of them can be argued with; taken collectively, the conclusion, to me, is inescapable.
I ran through half a dozen of them in that “Why Don’t You Believe?” thread a while back (link; it’s a good thread). My comments there (starting midway down page two) are a lot more detailed than the following brief summary.
Multiple religions. As described by others above. Every human society has a mythology, the primary purpose of which is to provide answers for the unanswerables: who made us, what happens after death, what are the rules for living, and so on. How do you know you have the right one?
Knowledge gaps. Related to the above, religion used to address a lot of formerly unanswerable questions (why do we have seasons, what makes lightning, why are we getting less rain this year than we did last year). The more questions we answer, the more we run into religious people being “offended” by their sudden obsolescence.
Useful knowledge. As far as I can tell, everything human beings know has been either stumbled upon by accident or developed through organized trial and error. The rigorous scientific method, indisputably a creation of the human intellect, has repeatedly proved its superior usefulness as a means of understanding the world as compared to received revelation. I’ll be happy to reconsider this one if we find a lost book of scripture in which a prophet details the germ theory of disease or the double helix of DNA as recounted in a heavenly vision.
Epistemology of narrative. Every Scripture of which I’m aware captures its wisdom in “once upon a time” format, from which we are supposed to glean the necessary lessons. The power of a compelling narrative to supersede rational thought is exemplified by the folks who try to live as Tolkien’s hobbits or who obsessively nitpick the details of The Matrix to make its universe more “real.”
Mysterious ways. Over and over, we’re told that we must trust the deity even though his ways are “unknowable.” And yet we entrust leadership to a priest class that promises to understand what the deity wants and how we’re supposed to behave. If the deity is truly unknowable, then belief is a crapshoot, even beyond lucking into the right faith to begin with.
The fallacy of morality and meaning. Related to the first couple of items about unanswerable questions, some of the biggest center on the concepts “why are we here” and “how do we know the difference between right or wrong,” and the fact that there is no satisfactory answer for questions of this type is offered as an argument in favor of meaning being provided from some external supernatural source. First, history shows us that unanswerable inquries are almost invariably given a supernatural placeholder (e.g., lightning) until a better answer is found. Second, humans are always looking for things they can ask “why” about; the fact that a question cannot be answered does not make the question worthwhile. (“Why is a goldfish?”) And third, evolutionary utility can easily suggest the origin of morality: We try not to kill each other and steal one another’s stuff because to do so would destabilize our tribal unit. The stable tribe is more likely to be successful in the long run than the unstable tribe. Hence, evolutionary pressure encourages the spread of stable tribes and discourages the success of unstable tribes. It cannot eliminate these “negative” behaviors entirely, because we must still be capable of killing the Bad Tribe over the hill and taking their stuff (or, conversely, defending ourself when said Bad Tribe shows up to do the same to us).
There, that’s six different vantage points on the same question. Each one, taken by itself, while not unanswerable, is suggestive that the deity is a construct of human intellectual and emotional need. But taken together, the ultimate philosophical synthesis is nigh-inevitable.
True, the multiple god argument does not work against polytheism. The Greeks, at least Alexander the Great, seemed to have no trouble accepting the gods of other cultures. However, it does argue against those religions who claim that their god is the only god. Why just come to one land and wait for colonialism to be invented to spread? That god can’t really be that interested in getting worshipped by as many people as possible.
To theists: imagine what the world would be like if God didn’t exist.
If God didn’t exist, there would be wars between nations;
If God didn’t exist, millions of people would die of starvation;
If God didn’t exist, there would be earthquakes, floods and hurricanes;
If God didn’t exist, some babies would be born with birth defects;
If God didn’t exist, we would have diseases with no cures or treatments;
If God didn’t exist, many people would never know freedom;
If God didn’t exist, many people would be intolerant of other people’s differences;
If God didn’t exist, some people would be murderers, rapists and child molestors;
If God didn’t exist, many people would have babies, and not take care of them;
If God didn’t exist, many people would live their entire lives in poverty and despair;
If God didn’t exist, many kids would not get a decent education;
If God didn’t exist, we could never be sure when or how our lives would end;
If God didn’t exist, we would never feel totally secure about the future.
But -
If God didn’t exist, there would be peace more often than war;
If God didn’t exist, millions of people would have enough to eat;
If God didn’t exist, we would learn to minimize the danger of natural disasters;
If God didn’t exist, most babies would be born with no serious birth defects;
If God didn’t exist, we would find cures or treatments for most diseases;
If God didn’t exist, millions of people would live a life of freedom;
If God didn’t exist, many peole would understand and respect our differences.
If God didn’t exist, most people would not be murderers, rapists and child molestors;
If God didn’t exist, many people would be wonderful, responsible parents;
If God didn’t exist, many people would be able to rise above poverty and despair;
If God didn’t exist, many kids would get a superb education;
If God didn’t exist, we’d be more concerned with how we live than how long we live;
If God didn’t exist, we would not always dwell on life’s uncertainties.
If God didn’t exist, the world would be exactly the world we have. The sun would rise in the east and set in the west, the stars would twinkle at night, and the tides would ebb and flow. Just as they do.
This is the best argument I’ve ever found for the non-existence of God.
What’s the point, really, of imposing such limits? You want to hit a baseball off a tee in a cage? Fine, hit a baseball off a tee in a cage. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re engaging in anything more meaningful than hitting a ball off a tee in a cage.
You might want to read, or re-read some of the “traditional, scripture-based concepts of God” that you’re on about, then decide whether the first paragraph of the OP contains any misrepresentation.
Oh yeah, FWIW, I’m agnostic. (I was raised fundamentalist, and have experienced a rabidly atheistical phase.) I haven’t seen – and don’t expect to see – evidence to convince me either way in my lifetime.
Because a thread called “What’s your best argument against a thing that I’m not going to tell you anything about?” would be rather silly.
Like your post very much. I don’t believe God can be rationalized either as existing or not existing. God, or whatever name you use, can only be experienced. When you can feel the power of Love within yourself and others, you will know God.
Love
I have only a brief introduction to most of the major religions in the world. With the exception of Christianity, being born in the United States, it is difficult to avoid. I cannot begin to outline the indiscrepancies I have encountered in my experience. I can however agree that most religions are created to explain something that is not understood.
There are things we cannot deny, as much as we’d like to.
- Miracles do occur, and not as rarely as we may think.
- Supernatural events do occur.
- People of FAITH (not religion) do experience the powerful all-encompassing feeling of great joy and love and happiness.
So, I have concluded that are levels of existence that we are only vaguely aware of. Just as we were unaware of the atom at one point.
Religion is basically a set of rules of ethics. Faith is entirely something different. It does not matter what religion you choose. They are all basically “right”.
What if you do not believe in anything? I believe your life may be missing something. I do not mean to say please join a religion. I just mean to say that when you put your trust in a higher form of existence, you will realize on your own why so many others do. Then you will not need “evidence” you will have it, you may not be able to explain it to another, but you will have it for yourself.
God is just a name we’ve assigned to something too great for us to understand. Someday, I believe that we will understand.
I have many more details, if I have inspired questions. Feel free to request more.
All right, now what did I say about witnessing?
For the record, though, those are things which intelligent people can and do deny, as much as you’d like to think otherwise.