Explain this Atheist logic to me.

As I read TNWPsycho, his argument is explicitly regardless of “heaven or hell”. In other words, you can leave heaven and hell out of his argument, and his argument is not substantially changed. He is not, therefore, presenting Chriistian belief in heaven and hell as central to any understanding of religion.

But I think he is invoking another Christian (though not exclusively) Christian concept; that of God as universal creator. In the Christian view (and many other religious views), God is the fundamental reason that anything exists. The existence of anything at all – including myself – points to the existence of God since, if there is no God, there is no reason why anything should exist.

Athiests – at least of the materialist variety – find this unconvincing. The fact that we cannot identify a reason for anything to exist is not proof that nothing exists. Materialism starts from the observation that things do exist, and does not generally seek to explain why an alternative state of affairs, in which nothing would exist, does not prevail.

Thus, for a Christian, the answer to the question “why does God not give evidence of himself” is “everything that exists – including yourself - is evidence of God, but you choose not to see that, by not interesting yourself in the question of why things exist”.

An omnipotent god with perfect intelligence and wisdom may or may not decide that “making his actions known to us in a anthropomorphically-understandable manner?” is appropriate. There is simply no way to determine what that being should behave like.

so you choose to believe that “god works in mysterious ways”
atheists choose to believe that “he would make himself known”

i mean that’s mickey mouse level philosophy, no?

Actually, I think that’s incorrect. Communication isn’t just about the sender, but about the reciever. We can (to an extent) understand our own minds and reactions; thus we can assume that a perfectly intelligent and wise god will perform the actions that give the exact correct message as would be understood by us. We can determine the actions of the god by understanding ourselves, the recipients, and our reactions to possible actions.

For example, we know that our reactions to a god simply snapping its fingers and making us know about it would be, well, to know about it. And that would be the most effective course of action in terms of simply getting us to acknowledge its existence. Ergo, that god must have another motive beyond simply us knowing of it. If the message were flawed, then it would be more tricky to guess, but in fact in this instance that very perfectness means it’s much more easy to than would be, say, near-omnipotence.

If there are thousands of different religions, each one saying that they are “the truth”, and one of them possesses a deity with the powers to create every single thing in the universe and yet who personally cares about the salvation of little specks of dust like us, it should be very easy for him to convince us of his reality. Why he would choose not to do so doesn’t lead to any possible options that paint him in all that great a light.

The official stance (for as official as one can get, given the Christian religion itself is very fragmented and has taken every moral stance on every moral issue there is over the last 2000 years) would probably be something along the lines that, “If God revealed himself, then there would be no true test of our faith in Him and His Word.” But, really doesn’t that just seem like an awfully handy explanation? Any religion could say the same thing. And again, if he’s a caring deity then why is it more important to test our own proclivity to act morally than to act to inspire us with the impetus to do so? These two stances seem mutually contradicting.

See, I can’t see life as some sort of “gift”, because no one gave it to me. Life is probably the result of a random electrification of proto-amino acids. Everything since then is a result of random mutation and natural selection. No one, not even an omnipotent being, “gave” anyone life. Life is an inevitable continuation from that original electrical event, barring some major calamity that destroys all life on the planet (which is unlikely to ever happen…not even major asteroid impacts or supervolcano eruptions have destroyed ALL life. We may have to start over with the cockroaches, but it will go on).

I’m agnostic, but I don’t exactly understand what you mean here. If there is a God (and I don’t particularly care) I don’t understand why it would necessarily make itself known. Perhaps it’s a God in the deist “watchmaker” model. Perhaps it’s a Romantic pantheistic god. Why would the existence of a God necessarily compel itself to be known? Or are we only talking God in the Judeo-Christian sense?

The argument as you have presented it is capable of two interpretations. The first and more persuasive is that the evidence of God would necessarily be manifest by virtue of the fact that he tinkers with the world. In other words, evidence of his existence would become manifest despite God’s best attempts to cover it up.

The second suggests that God would have an interest in unmistakeably revealing himself. It is less persuasive because it assumes the knowability of God’s motives.
Turning to the first interpretation:

In dealing with non-sentient phenomena, one is entitled to judge the reality of the phenomenon under question by reference to the extent to which it would be likely to manifest itself compared with the extent to which it does manifest itself.

Thus, if, as advertised, psychic powers belonged to us all but only some people seem to have mastered them, one could argue that given the evident usefulness of psychic powers and the evolutionary advantage they would give, one should expect to see vastly more unmistakable examples of it. Footballer kickers who had telekinetic powers should self-select as being able to make the ball go further and more accurately in a way that would result in two populations of kickers being apparent - those with telekinetic powers and those without. Yet notwithstanding that there are good and bad kickers, they still all seem to come from the one population “talent” curve.

Indeed, psychic powers should be a well-understood part of everyday life, not an elusive phenomenon only “detectable” at the very boundary of detectability, and generally within the error limits of the detecting systems. If they were true. And this is a good argument for their non-existence.

Similar arguments can be made for intelligent creatures, but they are subject to the observation that intelligent creatures can make a choice to avoid being seen. One can imagine some sort of “prime directive” that would mean that aliens from other planets might not wish to be seen. Nevertheless, assuming for the moment the existence of little green visitors, we can infer that their capacity to hide is not perfect, otherwise there would be no claims of sightings at all. And there are no secondary phenomena - fragments of space ships, alien corpses, etc. Once again, there are just purported dubious observations at the limits of detectability, when if people were being abducted as frequently as claimed, even covertly, one would expect to see something much clearer. After all, all criminals do their best not to be detected, yet they typically fail in the endeavour.

The atheists’ argument is like that. Even if God does not want to interfere too obviously, he can’t tinker with the rules of physics too often (by performing miracles) without it leaving unmistakeable traces. The assumed existence of miracles at all disproves the idea of a clockmaker God who simply set the world in motion and left it to its own devices. And the rate of miracles claimed by various of the televangelist persuasion indicates a huge rate of tinkering. So you would expect to see secondary phenomena.

The response of theists is, of course, “Look around. The evidence is there for anyone to see. The beauty and majesty of the world . . . blah de blah de blah.”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If someone expects me to believe Sauron is real, handing me a copy of The Lord of the Rings isn’t going to cut it. A good start would be to provide any evidence of superhuman knowledge or power at all, rather than relying on hearsay. Even if it’s not enough to prove that He is a god, it would at least give people a sane excuse not to dismiss the idea out of hand.

I’m an atheist, but even’t if I wasn’t, such an argument isn’t logical at all - even if there were a god there’s no reason to assume it would necessarily leave any impression all one way or the other.

As has been said, though, the burden of proof is on those making the claim for existence of supernatural being(s), not me.

shrug If God is the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-compassionate, all-forgiving deity He (She?) claims to be, then heaven is not an issue. I’ll be forgiven for not believing, and God knew I wouldn’t believe even before He (She? It?) created everything, so I’ll go where everyone else (all-loving, remember?) goes: Heaven.

If God doesn’t exist, I’ve lost nothing. I return to the soil, nourish the earth, and feed the worms. The “me” in me becomes nothing, because I don’t exist anymore, except in memory.

If God is some two year old throwing a tantrum, I.E., “If you don’t believe in me, or give me enough attention, or ZOMG PRAYER POWER, I’LL BURN YOU FOREVER AND TORTURE YOU AND BE REAL MEAN!!!”, then I don’t really want to be near Him/Her/It anyway. I’d actually PREFER to be atheist in that case. Otherwise, I’d rather burn than give in to an annoying toddler.

If the All-loving deity-entity wants me to worship Him/Her/It, he/she/it’ll come down and say so. In person.

Can’t see how prayer has helped anyone else, honestly. No difference in medical outcomes, no difference in poverty level, etc., inclines me to believe that believing in an all-powerful deity is a way for churches and religions to get your money.

I have a big problem with the reasoning of any religion (of which there are several), which have an eternal afterlife of either reward or punishment in which the good afterlife requires you to be a follower of that particular religion.

The fact is that there are multiple religions with such views (in fact some Christians say that other Christian denominations are not saved), of which for someone who is not already a believer there is no way to distinguish that one of them seems more likely to be right than the others seems to rule out there being a just God as described by said religions.

The reason for this is that for the vast majority of people are extremely unlikely to become a follower of any such religion that is not that of those who raised them or common in their community, which is the case for all religions for the majority of humanity. In fact until modern times when there was communication throughout the whole world, for any religion a significant portion of humanity would never have even heard of that religion.

I do not believe that any God which would condemn to eternal suffering people solely on account of where and when they were born could be considered “good” by any reasonable definition of the word.

Being God isn’t easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you; and if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safecracker or a pickpocket. (Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!) Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.

As others have said, if I am to believe in God there needs to be proof of God. When I opened the thread, I thought the quote was going to be something really off the wall, but in fact it is quite simple: there is not real proof that God exists.

I could see it helping people as a coping mechanism. I don’t have much doubt that the many of the truly faithful can find psychological solace in prayer or their beliefs. I mean, the cornerstone of a lot of religions seems to be to weather the suffering in this world, and you’ll get your reward in the next, after all. If you really believe in that, I could see how that might help you get through your day.

The OP quote only makes sense in the context of the Abrahamic deity (or similar). Most people don’t really think of the existence of other religions in modern day America. The wide world is very unlike the SDMB where everything must be strictly qualified and not trust to stereotypes.

I think you are incorrectly assuming something about my beliefs. I don’t just think god works in mysterious ways (if it exists). I think that you can’t use a human context to determine how god should behave, it doesn’t make sense.

“Correct” or “proper” behavior is based on an entities goals and the current state of the environment (inputs). How can anyone assume to know the goals of a perfect being? Even if we could, our brains do not have the computing power to be able to grasp those goals and at the same time account for all possible inputs in the universe and then come to the same conclusions as god.

I can see that. Prayer-as-meditation or Prayer-as-coping sounds fair. But Prayer-as-appeal-that-has-success? I have a teeny issue with proof. Plus, why would the all-knowing, all-powerful deity who knew exactly what was going to happen before he/she/it created anything change the course of the universe because a random human said “please”?

ETA: I’ll add that I’d be more inclined to believe in a direct-intervention deity if that deity was more limited in scope. That deity might be more likely to actually do something, because he/she/it doesn’t already know exactly what will/won’t be the consequences.

Living in the wide world, I do understand it’s not like the SDMB. And I do assume the argument is probably made toward someone believing in an Abrahamic-type deity. However, I would hope an atheist, who doesn’t believe in the existence of any type of deity, not just an Abrahamic one, would have a better all-encompassing argument than the one given in the OP, which presupposes just one possible (although extremely popular) model for a supernatural being.

I don’t believe it, either.