A belief in what humans are capable of from a philosophical point could be a counter. Author Clark (sci-fi writer) postulated 3 ‘laws’ as I remember them. 1: What is said to be improbable is in fact possible 2: even things that are said to be impossible are highly probable and 3 technology at a high level is indistinguishable to magic.
If so then humans are capable of everything, and if so we are at the level of any god that can be imagined.
Trying to stay with the OP here. The God I know wants a relationship with us above all else. So the way we find God is to desire such a relationship. As such trying to counter God’s existence by using evidence or logic logically doesn’t make sense as God (the God I’m talking about) does not want to be found that way.
Also it is illogical for someone to have to learn logic to find God, that would be unfair as not all can in their lifetime.
This feels too much to me like the “no true Scot” argument. Many peoples’ conception of God is omnimax, but we have no reason to believe that God must have those traits. God could be weak, dumb and malicious, but still God.
At some point this becomes absurdity though, right? There musts be some quality required for “God” to have any meaning.
A powerless, undetectable, unknowing God is no different than, well, you or I.
There are a few that I’m aware of:
Argument from non belief (another resource)
Non cognitive argument against god
Properties arguments
Perfection argument
Arguments from evil
And here’s a bunch
The main problem with them is that ‘God’ isn’t very well defined, or that the definition is apt to shift.
Not a logical argument, exactly, more a literary/aesthetic one:
God (any gods I’ve encountered, not just the Christian god) always sound like the kind of thing a human mind would make up - the kind that happens in stories. Since there’s no evidence provided to distinguish the story of god from other stories we know to be fictional (let’s say … Noddy stories) , we should act as though they are fictional. Sure, we can learn moral lessons from Noddy’s adventures, but they’re ultimately human moral lessons - Noddy has no special secret wisdom to teach us, how can he? Same-same for god.
Note that the idea of the Christian god, as presented in most arguments, is largely internally incoherent. Which points to more than just a fictional character - it points to a fictional character with multiple, widely-differing authors. Yes: Jehovah is the Dune prequels of the deity world!
My argument is not so much an argument for no-God, but an argument against faith in a God.
Human beings are inherently fallible creatures. Historically, we have been mistaken in our beliefs about things in the material world so often that it appears that mistakes are the rule, not the exception. E.g., world is flat, spirits cause disease, masturbation causes blindness, women are less intelligent than men, cats are evil, etc.
Given this, let’s take 30 seconds to ponder how accurate we probably have been in our assessments about matters in the immaterial world, assuming that such a world exists. I’m thinking it’s even worse than our error rate in the material world, which is really saying a lot.
People should question the wisdom in believing any unfalsifiable ideas that have largely been informed by ancient stories. It takes a certain amount of hubris to think one’s own beliefs in the immaterial just happen to represent The Truth while everyone else is wrong, and it takes self-imposed naivety to blindly accept that stories written by primitive men are unsullied by primitive biases and ignorance. Therefore, someone who truly embraces the principles of humility and honesty, and is fully cognizant of man’s fallibility, should inherently second-guess beliefs that are the product of religious indoctrination. Humanity’s penchant for Getting Things Wrong should always be in the back of their mind. Unfortunately such uncertainty is incompatible with faith. In fact, it errodes it.
God supposedly created a humanity that is prone to Getting Things Wrong, but that is also capable of being self-aware enough to realize its own fallibility and act accordingly (via self-doubt). Therefore, it would unreasonable for God to demand that humans be faithful to Him. Although it is within humanity’s power to faithful, to do so we have to fight against our God-given ability to reason. It also means we can’t be humble or honest with ourselves*. Ergo, we should not have faith in God.
That would be Arthur C. Clarke, and the “laws” are:
The best non-good argument is that we don’t really need God to exist, do we?
Please give a description of the “god” I am supposed to disprove.
“Created the universe and decides whether each of us spends the afterlife suffering in hell or enjoying paradise in heaven.”
That describes his actions, not his being.
“Describe a cat”
“The cat jumped on the couch”
Hmm. Okay, how about “bearded guy who created us in his image and likeness and decides whether we spend the afterlife in heaven or hell,” then?
Let’s see.
Bearded guys exist-no problem there.
Could you tell me where he can be found, how old he is, how big he is etc.?
Even easier-Bearded guys are by current definition human, and having him create himself is a paradox.
The argument assumes that all constraints on X are imposed by a cause of X. Depending on what you think numbers are, numbers (and other abstracta) may be counterexamples to this principle. But also, can’t constraints come from effects independently of causes? For example, if a teapot appears in the middle of nothing for no reason whatsoever, aren’t there constraints on it imposed by its effects on things?
(BTW I like your argument and I don’t remember ever hearing it before.)
Apparently he, uh, art in heaven, at least most of the time; some folks say his voice was once heard in the desert, calling out from amidst flaming shrubbery that wasn’t burning up, which is a neat trick; AFAICT, he can change size easy as do pillar-of-smoke-and-pillar-of-fire tricks. He’s said to be older than the solar system; I’m not sure by how much.
Well, I said humans were created in his image and likeness; he’s not a human, he just looks like one. Specifically, he looks like a bearded guy – well, most of the time – but has powers that bearded guys who are mere humans lack. If the sticking point is the word “guy,” then swap in, uh, “entity who usually looks like a bearded guy,” I guess. (Would it disprove the existence of Superman to describe him as a guy with superhuman strength? Or more-than-human strength? I doubt it, but I’m not sure; eh, drop the “guy” part.)
That’s not describing where to find him-that’s only adding another term that needs to be defined.
“Where is the cat?”
“The cat is in Bollololland”
“Where is Bolololand?”
The only constraints I can think of are ones that we would usually take for granted in the declaration of X’s existence, ie, for example, that the teapot has stable self-preserving properties, such as being composed of ceramic rather than mercury. I think it’s fair to implicitly assume in such a proof that when we say “teapot” we don’t mean “self-destroying teapot,” though I agree that both kinds of teapot are possible. For parsimony I purposefully left out of the proof that there are self-consistency constraints like the above, but I think they are trivial. You have a good point about numbers, but I think the constraints on numbers are imposed by humans, in that the set of all groupoids or magmas or however general you want to take it, is unconstrained. Humans constrain the set by imposing that they be abelian, associative, etc.
Sorry but no that doesn’t follow. I think therefore I am. My consciousness is real any way you slice it. Things I observe have evidence to support their existence in that I can observe them and so they are infinitely more likely to exist than anything that has no evidence.