[atheists/theists] what's the best argument you've encountered against...

Great Debates
161

No, but it proves that God is not good. And since the original atheist argument you were addressing was against the existence of a good God, you’ve not done anything to refute the basic premise, nly slightly changed teh parameters of the argument.

Perfect? What’s perfect? Why introduce arbitrary concepts into this? Without that arbitrary concept, then yes: God’s “morality” is every bit as arbitrary as a farmer’s “morality” toward his herd of pigs.

At any rate, it is clear now that you were playing semantical games before when you kept talking about how no atheist moral system could be valid, which is exactly what I suspected; that’s why I refused to engage with you on the issue. It’s a shame that you were deceptive about the issue for so long, but there it is.

Daniel

162

No, we don’t want that. God, this is wearing me out. Is there any chance, any chance whatsoever, that you actually don’t know what it is we’re asking you? I believe not, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you for the eighth time. Why do you keep dodging this question?

Shodan: You have several times stated that no atheist morality is valid. That is true, as we have acknowledged many times. By specifying atheist morality, as I’m sure you understand, you imply that theist morality is in fact, or at least can be, valid. If you do in fact hold that position, say so and motivate.

You can, as I’ve said once before, of course take the coward’s way out and say you only said “atheist” and “non-theist” all those times because we’re discussing atheist arguments against theism. That path is entirely open to you. It’s just that we were all expecting a bit more of you than that.

163

Somehow missed this during my first read. This is as close an answer to the actual question as we’ve got so far. My answer is “yes, it is”. Why wouldn’t it be? What is this purpose for human life, and why is it somehow higher or more valid than, say, the electrical activity that is experienced as enjoyment?

164

Sorry, not even close. There is no way that an arbitrarily based system of morality can be used to disprove the goodness of God. This is exactly like saying that God is not good because soda pop is too fizzy - the premise of a soda pop-based morality has not (and cannot be, by your own admission) established as valid as it relates to God.

Come on, this is just weak. Pick some completely arbitrary statement. Offer no support for it - indeed, make it entirely clear that you deny any support is possible. Then use it to condemn others - God, or anyone else.

This sounds valid to you? Please.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a big steaming pile of horseshit. You are trying to change the subject of an argument you are losing.

And you call your multiple posts to the thread “refusing to engage”? Pardon my condescending snicker.

Sticking to the OP - you call it “playing semantical games”. Priceguy calls it “the coward’s way out”. Yawn.

My mistake, then.

Regards,
Shodan

165

Fine, I’ll call it something else: Disingenuous stringpulling for your own amusement. You’ve been perfectly aware, for a long time, of our interpretation of your statements. Yet you have refused to clarify and continued to dodge the questions (as you are now dodging it for the eighth time) that would have clarified the misunderstanding. Is that what you consider good, honest debating technique?

And, as I said, you’re, once again, dodging the question. Answer it.

166

Even animals can learn the golden rule.

167

Nonsense. If the concept of good and evil is arbitrary, then the statement “God is good” is an incoherent statement; therefore, we know that god is not “good”, since the word “good” is meaningless.

That’s a lie. I’ve been trying forever to get you to clarify your point, and you refuse to do so.

This is one of your lower points, Shodan. Note that not a single person in this thread thinks you’re behaving honestly. You know that I’ve agreed with you on issues in the past; I’m not just approaching this kneejerkingly. You’re lying to me in this thread, and to the other posters; the only question is whether you’re lying to yourself as well. Take a good hard look at what you’re doing here, and ask yourself whether you’re behaving in a manner you can be proud of.

Daniel

168

What do you mean by “goodness?” If you have a definition, I can show you how God fails your definition. If you don’t have a definition then it is meaningless to say that God is “good” in the first place.
[/quote]

169

Or the definition is “Good is whatever God says”, in which case saying that God is Good is circular.

My analysis of what Shodan is saying is that he’s desparately trying to get an agnostic or atheist to admit that, at some point in their construction of a system of morals, there are assumptions being made. Which is something I freely admit. I just think that I make fewer, and less sweeping, assumptions than a theist. Thus, Occam’s Razor.

Oh, and to answer the OP, which now seems to have been lost in the mists of time, the only pro-God argument I do not take issue with is “I have had personal experiences which lead me to believe in God”. You have? More power to you. I’ve never seen an attempt at a logical argument that particularly impressed me.

(I don’t, however, put particular weight on the God-being-good-with-evil-in-the-world-leads-to-a-contradiction school of thought. Life, the universe and everything are far too complicated for there to be an actual logical contradiction without much stronger statements being made, ie “God is infinitely merciful” and “sinners rot in hell”.)

170

OK, I’ll try a different tack with Shodan.

Shodan, I agree with everyone that any system of morality is arbitrary. We call what we like “good” and what we don’t like “evil”. So yes, everything is arbitrary and pointless in this meaningless universe of ours.

So why not arbitrarily define chopping babies in half as “good” and playing the piano “evil”? Because as human beings we are not free to choose what we like and don’t like. Take me. I love chocolate. There may be events that would change me into an entity that doesn’t like chocolate, but I’m not free to choose to dislike chocolate, I just like it, I can’t help it. I can certainly choose not to eat chocolate, I can decide to eschew chocolate, but I can’t help liking it.

Now, why do I like chocolate? Isn’t it arbitrary that I like chocolate and not boiling hot sulfuric acid? Yes and no. In a very real sense it certainly is arbitrary that I like chocolate and not sulfuric acid. I can easily imagine an entity that quaffs sulfiric acid and thinks chocolate is poison. Except that I’m not that entity. It is not arbitrary that I, a human being from planet earth, like chocolate.

Likewise, I love my wife and daughter, I enjoy fresh air and sunshine, I like certain kinds of music, etc etc and on and on. Other humans may differ from me, but they are also going to have some similiarities.

So my wants are arbitrarily given to me by the meaningless and arbitrary process of evolution. It is completely arbitrary and meaningless that an entity in the middle of Puget Sound on planet earth in the milky way galaxy likes one particular plant extract and not another. But it is true nonetheless. I like that plant extract, so it is important to me. I want to eat chocolate because I’ve learned that chocolate tastes good. Why does chocolate taste good? Because evolution provided me with certain physiological needs and limitations, and that plant extract satisfies those needs. If I were different I’d want different things…but I’m not different, and so I want what I want, and I can’t decide what I want, I am pretty much powerless to choose to want other things.

I want to live and be happy, because I come from a long line of organisms that wanted the same things, and I am similar to those organisms, because if they didn’t want those things they wouldn’t have bothered trying to live and create offspring. And so here I am. A meaningless creature with meaningless wants. But those wants are real nonetheless, I don’t stop wanting them just because I exist in an uncaring universe.

Now, as a particular type of animal from a particualar place with a particular evolutionary history, I find I am a social organism, I am pretty much required to live with other humans. And so I have some given needs that only other humans can supply. So in order to get my needs met, I also find I have to satisfy the needs of other humans. Utterly meaningless I know, but I have no choice if I want to live, and I have no choice about wanting to live, I HAVE to want to live. And so I try to figure out ways of living alongside these humans. And they try to figure out how live with me. And so we work out some mutually agreeable rules.

And those rules are ultimately meaningless, since it is meaningless whether I get along with the other humans or not. Except that I can’t not care, I’m obligated by the sort of creature I am to want to get along with the other humans, and so I have try. See, although I recognize intellectually that the universe is meaningless and my efforts to be happy are meaningless, I can’t help but act otherwise because that is the sort of creature I am. And because of the way creatures are created by evolution, most creatures would have to be pretty similar in that they consider their lives important, even if they prefer sulfuric acid to chocolate, or lay their eggs in a hole and leave them rather than spending 18 years caring for an extremely altricial offspring.

I think what bothers Shodan so much is that we humans have an intuitive sense that our lives are meaningful, yet if we believe in a meaningless universe then our lives can’t be meaningful. So atheists should just curl up and die if they really believed it. So why don’t I curl up and die? Because I don’t WANT to, and I don’t want to because I’m a human being with a particular nature that I didn’t choose, and that nature is to want to live no matter if the universe is meaningless or not.

171

So things are created,…but there’s no creator.

OK…If creatures are created not by a creator but by evolution, it makes one wonder…then who created evolution? What if evolution is, as Darwin suggested, an effect rather than a cause–an effect of a creator having breathed the spark of life into the first microorganism? And if not, then specifically where did that first spark of life come from? (The First Cause argument…often disputed, never disproven.) In two semesters each of inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry and biochemistry and four of biology I encountered no evidence whatsoever that living, organic matter can either spring spontaneously (or even be deliberately created in a lab) from inorganic matter. If anyone has any scientific data to dispute this fact, it would be greeted with great interest.

172

“Created” does not imply intelligence or intent. Canyons are created by rivers. Islands are created by volcanos. New species are “created” by normal evolutionary processes. Don’t get too excited about the word “created.” It’s just a convention of language.

The question is senseless. No “creator” is necessary.

I guess you’re speaking of abiogenesis. Again, no intelligence is required. It’s not something that is subject to falsification, if that makes you happy, but there has never been any denmonstrated necessity for it so Ockhm says presume the natural processes which already have been demonstrated to be perfectly plausible (unlike invisible magic “spark-breathers”).

Actually, it’s not a first Cause argument. First Caues only applies to the origin of the universe…and it can be quite handily disproven.

Well, I don’t know what you mean by “spring spontaneously” since no such claim is made for abiogenesis. There are a number of intermediate steps between inorganic material and the beginning of what we would call organic life, None of those steps are especially remarkable and they don’t require invisible magic spark-breathers, just a lot of time.

173

Did you encounter any evidence that gods can breathe sparks into things?

174

Shodan

The problem of evil is a logical inconsistency. Anyone, from atheists to archbishops to trapeze-artists, can argue agaist theism using the problem of evil.

Is the problem of evil something to do with trapeze artists?

175

E. O. Wilson said in one of his books (and this is not a direct quote) that “religion is simply an enabling mechanism for survival”.

That summed it up nicely for me.

176

Most atheists were theists originally, and took the matter of religion very seriously. In fact that is half the reason they deconverted.

Um, you realize that by postulating that God exists and then asking atheists to disprove God is a logical fallacy (an argument from ignorance), right?

If I were going off of what I’d like to be the case then theism would be what I’d choose.

Here’s an interesting article on morality, btw.

177

I grew up in a YEC, baptist home. I was going to be a minister, then a missionary. I took religion seriously, and I loved God and all things about my religion. My conversion was nowhere near immediate, and it certainly was not a decision based off of reason and logic. Nor was it a gut feeling.

I started having doubts and thinking when I came on this board. I was exploring several religions- Zen, druidism and was even seriously exploring the Hindu religions. This board taught me to think critically and in the year or so before I actually could consider myself Athiest, I first became a skeptic. A true Missourian. Now, it is open to debate whether or not that is a good thing, of course. I see it as a positive though, it sure has saved me a butload of cash.

Now, on this board specifically you could classify me as a Hard athiest. That is really just the side I take though. My true feelings are not so set in stone. I feel that pandering to sheer possiblities in debates makes debates pretty much useless. Concrete extremes make the best debates. Now in real life people know I am non-religious, as I don’t go to church or talk about God or reincarnation or anything else like that. They would probably assume I am merely non-religious with an open mind- I hold pretty good conversations with friends. The internet medium is certainly one that is hard to be 100% friendly on. (of course, so Is real life).

I see lots of good arguments for thiesm, and some of the people on this board bring up some good points. There are those jerks of course that have an axe to grind and tend to hijack threads bashing certain types. Whether they be fundies or athiests, or skeptics, there are constantly those that are threatened by the other side and strike out at every possible instant. I certainly have fallen in this category on several occasons. It is on my to correct list, and I do work on that list every day- trying to make myself a better person. Which is probably the best argument for religion I have ever heard. Not convicing enough to make me light a candle and chant, but certainly enough to make me think it has it’s place.

178

Why is it that theists often conflate three different things?:

  1. The origin of the universe
  2. The origin of life
  3. The origin of species

Now I happen to believe that there is no need to invoke theism to explain any of the above. But I can easily imagine a universe where any of the above was caused by a deity but the others were not, or any combination of the above (there should be exactly 8 possibilities). They are logically unrelated to each other.

And note that the postulated deity proposed as an explanation for the above need not have any sort of resemblance to traditional notions of God. We can easily imagine an uncaused first cause without imagining that It cares one bit about the life or death of individuals, species, solar systems, or even universes. And at the lower levels we can certainly imagine an entity creating species and/or life for malevolent or mischevious reasons, see the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

A theistic universe does not neccesarily imply any sort of afterlife, soul, absolute morality, or possibility of communion with the divine. Such things may be possible, but the fact that one or more entities that it would not be absurd to name “God(s)” exist says nothing about that.

And the argument from consequentialism fails too. Suppose atheism implies a meaningless and arbitrary morality, as Shodan argues. Well, suppose it does? It doesn’t follow that we should therefore reject or accept atheism.

Hmmmm. I realize that the OP has been forgotten long ago. So I’ll bring it back, even though the effort is probably futile. I guess I would say that the best argument for theism is the “meaningless” argument, since I’ve spent all this time trying to refute it, and haven’t bothered with other arguments in support of theism. I don’t feel like my life is meaningless, or the life of my family. My main counter-arguement against this is that our intuitions about the meaning of life are not likely to be very accurate, any more than our intuitions about how matter behaves at extremely small scales or extremely high velocities. We have pretty good intuitions about how things should behave at the scale that we human beings live at…rocks, water, wind, other people, animals, plants, etc. But those intuitions are survival tools honed by evolution. There is no evolutionary pressure to have an intuitive understanding of space-time at relativistic masses and velocities, or the behavior of sub-atomic particles. Likewise, as humans we are too immersed in being humans to expect to have our intuitive senses what it means to be human turn out to be accurate.

179

Hell, did he ever find the spark?

180

I made my decision rationally. It is true that some atheists had bad experiences with religion, and cast about for a spiritual home before landing in atheism. I had a very pleasant religious upbringing. All my Hebrew school teachers were great, I had a wonderful Rabbi, a nice bar mitzvah. I was and still am proud of my heritage. No one ever threatened me with hellfire. Like many people, I believed in god because, well, everyone did, and I liked going to shul. (I even went when I didn’t have to.)

Then, when I worked in the English book room my senior year of high school, I read the introduction to a Bible that was used for literature (no religion involved, very well done) and I learned of the three authors. I really read some of it for the first time, and it became obvious that this god I believed in did not insprire the Bible, and much of what I learned was well intentioned, but untrue. I had no gut feeling, no aversion, it was purely logical. So that’s one counterexample, anyway.