You’re not naive, you’re a sane person in a world controlled by the insane.
When a billion people are clucking like chickens the tendency is very strong to wonder why you’re not.
Thanks, man. I’ve got a few ex-girlfriends who might disagree… 
I don’t want to bash Christians as deluded sheep. Many Christians are much smarter than I am, and I’m sure they’ve wondered about such things themselves. I just can’t get past it, though.
Aprreciate the props, though. 
:Yawn:
I continue to be unimpressed by the whole process of defining the traits of an unknown thing & proceeding to determine it should or should not exist.
The conclusion I came to was about the nature of the so called holy books and certain doctrines beings taught. It isn’t nessecary to dismiss every concept of God simply because certain concepts don’t make sense.
All religions and the people in them struggle in their own imperfect way to understand God. None have a complete understanding. Some twist it so much that they use their beliefs to justify some of the horrible crap they do. Others find real growth and express great kindness and generosity. It is a worthy struggle.
Oh please. Perhaps that makes you feel better about your own feeble arguements.
There are a lot of illogical and unsupported beliefs scattered across the religous spectrum but don’t delude yourself that all believers are gullible fools and intelectual inferiors.
Could someone please explain how this debate has continued to go on. Better yet, what is the debate?
Ex Machina’s OP stated:
-
“Imagine a world where there is no God. Where life forms, intelligence, and self-awareness are physical phenomena as inevitable and unplanned as a rainbow is the result of light through a mist.”
-
“Now imagine the intelligent life forms wanted to create a God; to believe in a God which didn’t, in fact, exist.”
-
“Their description of that imaginary God would be exactly as it is here on planet Earth.”
As I stated in post 48, there is a flaw of logic in his conclusion. The word “would” does not necessarily follow from his first two premises. At best, it should be “could”. Which means that the insightful conclusion should logically read:
- Their description of that imaginary God COULD be exactly as it is here on planet Earth.
which, restated is:
3) Their description of that imaginary God EITHER WOULD OR WOULD NOT be exactly as it is here on planet Earth."
There for, there is nothing to debate! Right?
ExMachina? ANYONE?
magellan01, I’m as confused as you about the longevity of this thread. The OP consisted of two hypotheticals and a bald assertion supported by nothing. As restated by you, the assertion becomes an undeniable but pointless statement. So, where’s the argument? I don’t see one in the OP. So what’s to debate?
Tim Staab, Thank you. Thank you. Sanity.
I am still curious to read a reply from Ex Machina to magellan01’s posts, regarding the fact that the OP was not, in the logical sense, an argument at all.
As I have stated before, the proposition of “God” is unprovable.
The OP is not a syllogism, it is a hypothetical proposition.
Imagine…Imagine…
There are no logical arguments which prove or disprove the existence of God.
Proposition: I have a full-grown flying pink elephant living in the freezer compartment of my refrigerator.
Prove I don’t. (You see, he disappears when strangers open the door, etc.)
Now tell me whether you believe in my pink elephant, or even tell me if he exists.
Some propositions are reasonable and others are not.
The OP is not to prove the non-existence of God, it is to consider the reasonableness of the belief.
This is “Great Debates”
An "argument " is defined as a debate or a contention in a debate, not necessarily a definitive logical formulation. Otherwise you would never have debates, you would only have uncontested logical conclusions.
There is no evidence of a personal God in this world. Every description of God is the same as if He didn’t exist.
Why doesn’t He talk to us? Why do innocents die horrible deaths? If He wants men to believe in Him why doesn’t he make His presence known? Oh, He did in olden times. Then why not now?
Every answer to questions such as these would be the same as if the non-existence of God were knowable and known by most.
From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: 3b:a coherent series of statements leading from a premise to a conclusion. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=argument
Your thread title is “My best argument for the non-existence of God.” So, it appeared to me that you presented your three statements as an argument. magellan01 has demonstrated that they did not constitute one. You seem to agree.
What did you intend to debate?
Greater minds than ours have wrestled with this question for centuries. Ex Machina, please do not labor under the idea you have brought anything new to the table. Your argument seems to change with each post - first there was the “no evidence” idea, and then we moved off into a low-rent edition of Hume’s Problem of Evil. Then the horribly contrived flip-flop of Pascal’s Wager. And then, of course, labelling the believers as insane controllers of the world - not a technique to foster honest debate.
At least you realize there can be no proof - as for the reasonableness of belief, it is only more unreasonable to believe than to not believe if one subscribes to Occam’s Razor, as I suggested so many posts ago.
And even that’s not a given - I’m fond of the razor myself, but do believe.
The OP is not even expressed in the form of a logical syllogism. Why would you then focus on the definition of ‘argument’ as a logical formation and apply it to something which is only vaguely reminiscent of scholarly logic?
If a word can mean A, B, or C and a person uses it in sense A, it doesn’t make sense to inappropriately construe it as C and base a criticism on that interpretation.
Now instead of fabricating nits to pick, show me an instance where an explanation of worldly events referencing God would be different in a world where god was merely imagined.
Question: Why did God allow the tsunami to happen? (Answer this in terms of the current God-fearing world.)
What about my freezing-cold flying pink elephant? I brought him to the table.
He’s fond of trite cliches too.
On the reasonableness of belief :-
In a “Great Debate”, as in any debate, people argue for and against positions. You don’t propose one, other than possibly something like , “Isn’t this a great argument for the for the non-existence of God?” If that is it, then the easy answer is NO, for the reasons already mentioned.
You can ask us to “imagine”. Those are your premises that you are asking us, for sake of agument, to be accepted as givens. Fine. But your #3 does not logically flow from your 1 and 2.
Your asking us to consider something that is patently absurd: that based on your first two “Imagines” (premises we’re ready to accept as givens), doesn’t it follow that “Their description of that imaginary God EITHER WOULD OR WOULD NOT be exactly as it is here on planet Earth.”?
That’s the position you are asking us to debate or comment on!
If you look at it afresh, I thnk you’ll see that your “proposition” doesn’t follow from the assumptions you’ve asked us to make.
Here, too, is a logic problem. We can all take sentence one as an assumption. But sentence two does not necessarily folow from sentence one, so you lose me right there, If you want me to accept it as assumption, then your asking to comment on your “position” that you’ve asked me to accept as a given.
If you’d like, these are questions that would lead to a meaningful discussion. I think there is a current thread having to do with"is god just?" or something like that.
Now, if this is what you’d like to debate (your position) we’re all better off. But it is not what you posited in your OP. But if this is your position I would say I disagree. I think that if God was something “known”, meaning that his existence no longer required an act of faith, that we might know some of the answers, or all. It all comes down to what new knowledge we would have gleaned from that event(s) that moved God from the unknowable column to the knowable.
Because He felt it would ultimately lead to greater good.
One of many possible answers.
Are you done now?
So it is ok to kill people, since it will lead to “the greater good”?
Now, how is this answer different, in explanatory content, than a similar answer given in a world where god is imaginary.
In other words, in a world where god doesn’t exist men would give similar answers.
That’s not the debate. It also assumes he actively willed their deaths, rather than simply allowing them to happen. The OP asked why. I provided him with a plausible answer. Done.