http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm
So classylady posted this in the thread with the obscenely stupid title (The day Kirk Cameron out-sciences Stephen Hawking is the day that Rick Santorum stops being a bigoted douchefag), and I felt something of a need to, well, take it apart.
Now, unfortunately, what the author failed to do is create a TL;DR version of each argument. They’re all ridiculously long. I mean, seriously, you don’t need 6 paragraphs to hash out bullshit like this. So I’m going to do my best to lower this down to its concise, logical tautology.
1/2. The argument from change/cause
Premise 1: Everything that changes requires a changer/everything has a cause
(Premise 2: the universe is changing)
Conclusion: The universe requires a changer/cause and this changer/cause is god.
I reject this argument on every level.
I find the first premise incorrect because causality may or may not apply to the universe itself; in fact, it’s been argued that because time essentially began at the big bang, causality before that point is senseless. In short, the jury is out on that one.
I reject the second premise in the case of the first argument because there is no reason to believe that the universe’s inherent nature, beyond the individual parts within it, are changing.
And finally, I reject the conclusion for two different reasons.
On the first argument, it is because change can be circular. If I change something, there’s nothing stopping it from changing me; in fact, according to newton’s second law, this is kind of a necessity. In changing the things around us, they change us, and the same applies to the universe.
On the second argument, it is because the creator does not necessarily have to be god. It’s simply a non–sequitur. It’s thoroughly possible that an infinite regress of universes is possible. Furthermore, causality has not been demonstrated to work before time existed.
Argument three is essentially exactly the same as argument two.
3. The Argument from degrees of perfection
Premise 1: There are varying degrees of “more or less” for everything
Premise 2: For every such degree, there is a “most” where more is not possible
Premise 3: Premise 1 applies to goodness
Conclusion: there must be a “most” good being, and that is god.
And here begins the intellectual train wreck. :smack:
Premise 2 is simply not true. There is not a “most” heavy. There is not a “most” tiny. There are simply things that are infinite, and as such go on forever-there can be no “most” because no matter how big it is, I can one-up you.
Furthermore, “goodness” is such an arbitrary concept. The article goes on and on about how it’s self-evident that our lives are better than the existence of a stone, or an animal. This whole argument presupposes that “goodness” is an objective good, which simply is not the case. In fact, it presupposes an entire philosophical framework which is unjustifiable.
5. The Design Argument
P1: The universe is so wonderful
P2: this could only have come from intelligent design or chance
P3: it wasn’t chance
…no, I shit you not.
(there’s 5 and six but this argument falls apart long before then)
“Not chance”? That premise is so ridiculously unfounded it makes me want to laugh. Or cry. Not sure which. But sadly a lot of people use this argument as a basis of their belief in god. But this argument has been dissected so many times, wikipedia has it ffs. Seriously, it’s a stupid argument. Premise 3 is completely unfounded. You could project order into anything, but that does not make it truly ordered. Anything governed by basic physical principles will seem ordered. The universe would seem ordered whether we had the laws like this, or if it was different.
No. The teleological argument has been taken apart time and time again. It’s not a good argument, shame on you for invoking it.
6. The Kalam Argument
Literally argument 2.
7. The Argument from Contingency
P1: If something exists, there must exist what it takes for that thing to exist.
P2: The universe—the collection of beings in space and time—exists.
C1: Therefore, there must exist what it takes for the universe to exist.
P3: What it takes for the universe to exist cannot exist within the universe or be bounded by space and time.
C2: Therefore, what it takes for the universe to exist must transcend both space and time. This is god.
Nope. Again, this may or may not apply to the universe as a whole. It probably doesn’t. And furthermore, what does god need to exist? It transcends backwards infinitely, making either P1 or C1 faulty.
**8. The Argument from the World as an Interacting Whole **
See: Teleological argument.
**9. The Argument from Miracles **
P1: Things happen that can only be explained by god
You can stop right there. No, seriously, this argument is retarded. Why?
If a man from the bronze age saw a modern machine gun mow down a row of 20 soldiers from 60 yards, would he consider it naturalistic or “spooky sky magic”?
What about a caveman when seeing a zippo lighter?
Hell, what about the ancient greeks when seeing thunder?
Or, you know, “bizarre coincidence”.
The argument from miracles is simply stupid, lazy thinking based on poor logic and “goddiddit”. NEXT!
10. The Argument from Consciousness
P1: We experience the universe as intelligible. This intelligibility means that the universe is graspable by intelligence.
P2: Either this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence, or both intelligibility and intelligence are the products of blind chance.
You know what, I’m not going to call this a premise: Not blind chance.
C: Therefore this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the products of intelligence.
Fuck off you stupid moron. This is the same goddamn argument as has been seen before, and it still does not work. In fact, this time it’s even less excusable–we know where our minds came from, and it sure as hell wasn’t blind chance-it was natural selection. STOP BEING STUPID, YOU’RE DRAGGING MY IQ DOWN WHEN I READ THIS SHIT!
11. The Argument from Truth
P1: Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being. (NO WE CAN’T)
Come on, you’re not even trying! “Eternal truths”? Are you shitting me? There is no such thing as an eternal truth. What is an eternal truth? Tautology? Even that is subjective. Dumbass needs to read some Nietsche.
12. The Argument from the Origin of the Idea of God
Please god make it stop… this list is getting retardedddddd.
We have ideas of many things.
These ideas must arise either from ourselves or from things outside us.
One of the ideas we have is the idea of God—an infinite, all-perfect being.
This idea could not have been caused by ourselves, because we know ourselves to be limited and imperfect, and no effect can be greater than its cause.
Therefore, the idea must have been caused by something outside us which has nothing less than the qualities contained in the idea of God.
But only God himself has those qualities.
Therefore God himself must be the cause of the idea we have of him.
Therefore God exists.
Our idea of god may be real, but we cannot envision a perfect, infinite being. So in short, the idea which is necessary for the rest of the baloney framework is a load of horseshit.
I’m sorry, I get testy when confronted with so much stupid at once.
13. The Ontological Argument
Oh you didn’t.
Same. Fucking. Argument. Again?! God dammit, if you’re going to make every single question a fucking Tolstoy novel, you could at least not repeat yourself!
For anyone still interested.
**14. The Moral Argument **
SHUT UP YOU IGNORANT CUNTBAAAAG singsong
This argument presupposes objective morality, sets up a false dichotomy between “atheist” and religious moral values, and uses that to try to prove religion. This just keeps getting worse and worse…
15. The Argument from Conscience
Ugh I’m done summing up the arguments here. But basically he sets up four possibilities of where our conscience comes from, and then disregards all but “god”. Never mind that this is his answer to the scientific one:
Duh… EVOLUTION? Fucking moron.
16. The Argument from Desire
Basically argues that because everything we desire matches up with a real thing, and that there is a desire that we have that can never be satisfied, the thing that satisfies it must be real and must be god.
Never mind that the second premise (a desire that can never be satisfied) may or may not actually exist. And that if it does, it does not necessitate that it matches a real thing. TBH I think that what some of these people consider an “unquenchable” desire is not only quenchable (they’re just greedy motherfuckers who are never happy), but also implanted in them by very stupid, very greedy people who bought into the same crap from their parents.
17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience
Yes. That’s directly quoted. And yes, that’s the whole argument. Actually, lemme fix that one a little bit…
**18. The Argument from Religious Experience **
Basically comes down to this: “some people have had flashes of brief insanity where they “saw” a god that their mind created for them, therefore a god who cares about us”.
No. NO! God dammit you fucking moron NO! LEARN TO LOGIC ARGHHHHHHH
**19. The Common Consent Argument **
Because people believe in god and always have, god is true.
WHAT?!
Okay first of all, let’s get something straight. A lot of people believing in one stupid idea does not make it a good idea. Honestly though, the human mind is naturally drawn to replace gaps in its knowledge. It’s just that saying “I don’t know how this fresh-killed buck came to be here in front of us” doesn’t quite boost morale like saying “god wanted us to have this fresh-killed buck”.
In other words, a belief in god is easily explained via tribal and cultural influences, and evolutionary biology. And that’s without the whole “believe in god or we kill you” part!
Also, feel the biting irony here:
No shit, sherlock.
20. Pascal’s Wager
:smack:
…
:smack:
…
:smack:
…
:smack:
…
Repeat unto infinity. Pascal’s wager asserts that by believing in god and being wrong, you lose nothing, but by not believing and being wrong, you lose everything and burn in hell. Everything to lose, nothing to gain; on the other hand, everything to gain, nothing to lose. Therefore you should believe.
Not only is this fallacious as hell (just because something would be nice doesn’t make it correct), it’s also just flat-out stupid. Yes, those who are atheists may not go to heaven anywhere. But christians aren’t safe from hell. What if the muslims are right? What if the mormons are right? What if some future religion that has not yet been invented is right? What if the right religion just hasn’t come about yet?
All in all, the only ones that really made me need to think were 1-7. And even then, those have famous refutations.
But what’s more, most of these are straight-up copypasted from William Lane Craig. A christian.
…
Yeah, I think it needs to be said. Even if you could prove that there was a god, the very best you could do is demonstrate that naturalism is false. You cannot extrapolate from that to discern any qualities of god. It simply is not possible. Why not?
Well, imagine a box. Without knowing anything about the box, what’s inside of it?
…See the problem? The question is meaningless because there’s an almost infinite number of things that could be in the box (outside of our reality it becomes truly infinite), but you can only ever say anything about the things that can’t be in the box (i.e. the logically impossible ones).
Reality is outside the box. God is inside the box.
Can you say anything about god?
Video very much related.
In fact, “what can we know about god” was answered a while back by Kant. The answer? Unsurprisingly, not very much. The very most we can truly know about god is whether or not he exists, and even on that count, the jury is still out as to whether it’s truly possible or not. Even a “divine event” would be indiscriminate from, say, an alien race with extremely advanced technology (see also: Clarke’s third law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”).
So yes, we cannot know about god. There is nothing to say about him. And christianity, islam, judaism… They are all senseless, baseless assumptions that are completely unprovable.
Also, ClassyLady can eat a bag of dicks for somehow convincing me to do this.
Discuss.
