Then you must accept the same is true of the religious? surely they must be so emotionally invested in god being true that their judgement of any evidence is skewed as well?
I’m sorry but that is simply childish. You’ve got great evidence but you can’t tell us? Ridiculous. The evidence should be able to stand on it’s own merit. If my reasoning for rejecting it isn’t justified then I’ll look foolish, I’m quite willing to take that chance.
I suspect that the reason you won’t share it is because you know how wishy-washy and thin it is, and that an appeal to a supernatural explanation is not required.
Why should I present you for evidence for the existence of God? If your position is that there are no arguments for the existence of God that are not “utterly unconvincing” (as Princhester put it) then you should already know all of the arguments for the existence of God so that you could evaluate them. If you are saying that it is possible that there is arguments and evidence that you are not aware of then that contradicts the statement that there are no reasonable arguments for the existence of God. If there are arguments that you haven’t considered, how do you know that there are no good arguments for the existence of God?
So while I could talk about, say the modal ontological argument, the telological fine tuning argument, the Leibnitzian and Kalaam cosmological arguments, the moral argument, the argument from the historicity of the resurrection, qualia based arguments, Thomist first cause arguments, ect, presumably atheists already know all of the ins and outs of these arguments in order jusdge that they are not compelling. I would rather just wait to hear what defeater arguments you have against these arguments and why you find them unconvincing.
So, why do you think that all of these arguments are utterly unconvincing?
I think Calculon assumes that atheists think they know there’s no God or that they have an “active belief” that there is absolutely no God or something similar.
No. Atheists simply lack the belief. God could possibly exist. But so could a huge variety of other entities. They’re all without proof. So we don’t believe in any of them until we have compelling evidence.
I honestly think you already know the defeater arguments to these arguments.
So why should I repeat them here.
You would just handwave them away and do your little dance again.
For you. I am a resolute atheist reader and have more sympathy to your actual belief. Your position has been pretty systematically dismantled.
For what it’s worth, Calculon, this is exactly my position. I find organized religion distasteful for reasons x, y, and z and do not believe in God myself, but others’ belief is absolutely warranted.
At least the religious typically have rational positive arguments for their positions. So even if they reject all atheist arguments they still have arguments of their own that establish their position. So far I haven ot gotten any positive argument for atheism, so the two situations are not really the same.
The position that atheists give that there are no good arguments for theism necessarily means that atheists have already discovered all of the typical arguments for theism, so there is no need for me to explain to you all of the arguments.
Secondly my concern in presenting arguments is that people actually take the time to think about the arguments. Typically what happens when evidence for the existence of God is discussed here is that any evidence or argument presented is simply dismissed without actually interacting with the argument. That can be done quite easily in a way that doesn’t make the person look foolish, especially if it is done with some sort of witty remark. I have better things to do then to type thought out arguements for the existence of God only to have some people call me an idiot and refuse to actually engage with what I am saying.
But really I think that for a lot of atheists the quality of the arguments for the existence of God don’t matter. They are atheists because they feel that God is inherently ridiculous, not because the arguments for the existence of God are bad or “wishy-washy”.
By that token, leprechauns, unicorns, brownies, and trolls could exist. There’s no evidence for their existence one way or the other so they exist and they don’t exist are equally valid, according to you. Yet people have no problem telling little kids that there is no monster under the bed.
I get that you like to assert that God cannot be logically necessary. Now let’s see if you can come up with some sort of argument that demonstrates why you think this is the case.
Why should I? I am happy to grant that such a universe may or may not exist. If the universe is parallel to my one and therefore inaccessible to me, why should I care whether it exists or not?
In other words, “I have evidence but don’t wanna share it because I don’t feel like having my asshole widened.”
There are all sorts of retarded arguments people have put forth to argue God’s existence – too many to count. Instead of explicitly asking everyone to waste their time addressing arguments you may not make, why don’t you actually make your argument and see how it stands?
Yes, it is possible for such evidence to exist. It’s just that nobody has provided it.
Because all of those arguments you listed are well-understood and have huge holes in them. If that’s the best you have to offer, then yes, your “evidence” is going to get slaughtered and torn apart like a bleeding, wounded gazelle in the Serengeti.
I’ll bullet-blast a few of these real quick:
Modal ontological argument: Possibility is not proof. It can still be wrong. Hume torn this one apart a long time ago. If I can conceive of something’s existence, I could also conceive of its nonexistence. None of it is proof, in any case.
Teleological fine-tuning argument: There’s no proof of teleology, as this implies a designed, guided process/end goal. It’s just more intelligent-design/creationist garbage.
Leibnitzian and Kalaam cosmological arguments: Longwinded way to say “The universe had a beginning that was caused by something, therefore God.” Such reasoning does not hold.
Moral argument: Morality comes from evolution. Some sense of morality is required in stable societies, otherwise they collapse. If we stole and killed each other all the time, we wouldn’t be here. The societies that learn to cooperate survive. Those that don’t, die. This is basic game theory. Morality doesn’t require supernatural explanation and morality doesn’t support any supernatural explanation. It’s entirely explainable in terms of natural phenomena.
Historicity of the Resurrection: You mean how there’s no evidence for such a thing? Alright.
Qualia-Based Arguments: “Qualia” doesn’t prove anything supernatural. Qualia is just the brain’s method of encoding stimuli. It’s a very interesting question to debate, but again, it doesn’t prove anything supernatural. Qualia is still a natural phenomenon.
First-Cause Arguments: More verbose BS that theists try to use to say “There was a first cause that caused itself, therefore God.” Again, you can’t just blindly insert “therefore God” into something that doesn’t necessarily follow.
I mean, you can dance around these all day. They’re all incredibly weak attempts to basically say [Complicated toss of logic!] + [Possibilities] + [Let’s ignore whatever science has to say about things] + [Therefore God!].
For most of these entities positive arguments for their non-existence can be formed along the lines outlined above. So for instance in the case of unicorns
Since unicorns are by definition large animals, if they existed there should be wide-spread reportings of unicorn sightings
These reports do not exist
Therefore unicorns do not likely exist.
The rest of the cases are left as an exercise for the reader.
My non-belief in these entities is based on positive arguments for their non-existence, not merely on the lack of evidence. No-one thus far has come up with a similar argument for the non-existence of God.
BTW Inner Stickler what do you have against brownies? They are delicious.
Just because there’s no evidence for something doesn’t mean both statements are equally valid, lmfao. What the fuck are you smoking? Both statements are invalid and are without proof.
Just a quick reply to note that it only took the first argument to show that you don’t really have a good handle on what you are talking about. The modal ontological argument was only put forth by Alvin Plantiga in he 20th century. Hume wrote in the 18th century. Unless he had access to a time machine I don’t see how Hume could have torn apart an argument that did not exist in his time.
The ontological argument goes back much further than the 20th century, dude. Plantinga’s modifications don’t change the underlying problems with the argument.’
From wiki:
Again, I’ll repeat: Possibility is not proof (let alone necessary). It can still be wrong.
Feel free to continue dancing and mincing words though.
So basically, you’ve decided that it is not necessary for god to interact with reality in a quantifiable way but refuse to allow anything else the same benefits. Interesting. And by interesting, I mean yawn.
Same goes for God. I am happy to grant that God may or may not exist. If God is inaccessible to me, why should I care whether it exists or not? Same goes for Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Keeping on topic, though, Dawkins has his head on straight even though I think he might be a bit too cold in his delivery. I tend to prefer NDT’s approach. He’s a very personable guy and I think he has an easier time getting people to listen and engage.
