Justify the belief that gods do not exist.

[wiploc]

Some people believe that gods do not exist. (One can call this position "atheism" or "strong atheism" or "anti-theist perversion," anything you want. But we aren't going to argue terminology in this thread. Clarity is good, so you can explain what you personally mean by "atheist," but you shouldn't suggest that other usages are inferior.)

This thread is to make a list of arguments, of reasons to believe that theism is false.

And we can discuss the soundness of those arguments.

I'll start:

1. The Parable of the Pawnbroker.
(I'll just post titles here, so as not to take too much space at the top of each thread.)

2. Presumptive Falsity of Outrageous Claims.



Feel free to add to this list.

[dianaiad]

Which is why this thread is so fun. It is aimed at those who claim, outright, that 'there are no gods." It is demanding that those who make such a claim support it, since in that case, it is they who are actually making the claim.

From the same link: "The person making a negative claim cannot logically prove nonexistence. And here's why: to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the claim that X does not exist one would have to possess abilities that are non-existent. Obviously, mankind's limited nature precludes these special abilities. The claim that X does not exist is therefore unjustifiable."

Or....'lack of proof is not proof of lack."

And I believe that you have hit on the whole point of the thread.

It's a 'turn around' for those who insist that theists prove, empirically and objectively, that any claim they make is true.

However, some of these same folk make the claim 'there are no gods' and 'there is no such thing as a god' and do not feel the same obligation to prove their declaration.

Indeed, this thread is full of folks who figure that criticizing one belief in deity is somehow proof that no deity exists.


It doesn't, any more than proving that there is no true blue rose proves that there is no such thing as a flower.

We are quite aware that being unable to prove that no flowers exist does not mean that there must, then, be a blue rose....

but that's a whole 'nuther discussion, isn't it?

[dianaiad]

[Replying to post 103 by dianaiad]

For instance, the idea of a soul that cannot be harmed is inconsistent with brain damage and drug consumption such as intoxication.

Of course a soul may be harmed by these things. It's the spirit that might not be affected...though since a spirit requires a body to interact with the physical world (according to most descriptions of 'spirit,' anyway) then of course, when you harm the body, you are harming the spirit. Harm to either body or spirit harms the soul.

(You weren't paying attention when I wrote about how picky, obnoxious and pedantic I was going to be about this, were you? )

Imo, the words you choose don't really matter since you seem to understand me.

Not completely, as you find later on, but....

I am, right this moment, wearing an orthopedic 'boot.' It imobilizes my left ankle so that I cannot bend it, but can walk on it. Now, one can argue that my ankle is damaged (well, it's the Achilles tendon, but let's not get too picky here)....but isn't the brain 'damaged,' as well, because the signals it is sending to the ankle/heel are prevented from being acted upon?

Yet there's nothing wrong with the brain. It's working fine. When I take the boot off, I can move the ankle. I may not WANT to, but I can. The brain is 'damaged' temporarily because it cannot do what it's supposed to do...move my ankle.

So then would a spirit be damaged when the body is: like a broken tool (or a bad ankle) that makes it difficult or impossible to do what it wants to do.

but when the spirit and the body separate, the spirit is as it always was: not damaged in itself, but certainly without the ability to do what the body can do.

At least, that's the idea.

...............as the idea of the resurrection, as believed in by many Christians, is all about reuniting the spirit with a really GOOD body that won't break down.


But this is going off in a direction this thread wasn't intended to go in. Just sayin'.

What justification can there be for this? Why is the damage duplicated? How exactly is the soul damaged when the body is damaged? Will the afterlife be full of the mentally handicapped and psychpathic?

It's all very redundant - what function does the brain actually serve?

It's irrational to believe that every time your car is damaged, that on a planet far away a rock unique to your car is damaged.

Wait,

What?

Doesn't God need a body to interact?

Don't look now, but I'm a Mormon. I believe that God HAS one. A body, that is. Sorry....

If we're going to be pedantic, what do you mean by physical? The only definition that fits that isn't an analogy to a body/mind divide (which would be circular in this scenario) is things which can be sensed. Is the soul incapable of sensing?

If you are going to be pedantic, BE pedantic. A soul is capable of sensing because half of it is physical body. The spirit, evidently, doesn't do so well in that area.

At least, not here.

I'm actually wondering more about this spirit-physical thing. If the 'bridge' is either spiritual or physical, there won't be a connection - the spirit wouldn't be able to interact with a physical bridge and vice versa for a spiritual bridge. There has to be either an exception, a rejection of the claim or another kind of thing.

OK, perhaps my IQ is lowered more than I thought.

Huh?

Split brain patients raise multiple issues for the idea of souls.

Explain, please?

The corpus collossum is the sole bridge that connects the two brain hemispheres.
Sometimes, because of some diseases (I think a last resort to treat a kind of epilepsy), the corpus collossum must be cut.

When the corpus collossum is cut, we get two very different people. Different people with conflicting beliefs. One for each hemisphere.

That's not, quite, accurate. Same person. Different tools available.

Temporary patient death and resuscitation raises issues with the idea of a soul that 'transcends death'.

How so? Indeed, NDE'S seem to be evidence for the existence of something 'other than' simple physical brain function.

NDEs are fully consistent with naturalistic models. They in no way are evidence against a naturalistic world - however - multiple inconsistent NDEs (including the absence thereof) is evidence against the reality of an NDE.


A form of hallucination is a reasonable interpretation of an NDE - just as it is an interpretation of the effects of certain drugs. An interpretation as reality is not (given the inconsistency and lack of explanatory value, it is likely a false positive).

Saying that these aren't problems is like saying that the fact noone saw a UFO abduct a person in a crowded area, and that many people saw the person during their abduction isn't a problem for the idea that a person was abducted by a UFO at that time. Ad hoc and unparsimonious assumptions are irrational.

Wait.

What?

If a person is in the streets, surrounded by 5 or 6 other people, and is observed to completely normally walk down the streets, would you say that is evidence against the idea that he was abducted by aliens and put back down while walking? If noone saw or heard the UFO, and someone actually barged past him and felt his presence during his alleged abduction?

If so, what if the UFO had a cloaking device, both optic and auditory? What if the UFO put down a kind of hologram, that used some kind of solid light technology, to make it seem like he was continuing to walk down the street, and then replaced him at the last second?

... Is it still reasonable to believe that he wasn't abducted by aliens? Yes.

Yes, it is reasonable to believe that he was not abducted by aliens. Who claims that he was, and what evidence do they have to support it?

.......................and how would disproving that event prove that no alien exists?

I repeat: any attempt to disprove a theistic idea is simply an attempt to disprove a theistic idea. For one thing, I seem to have missed a huge part of the conversation, since I don't really understand what the heck you are talking about here. For another, even if you COULD disprove the idea of 'spirit,' how does that prove that there is no God?

The core idea of a spirit is mind body dualism.
If it's unreasonable to believe in mind body dualism, it's unreasonable to believe in most definitions of a God.

"most definitions" does not disprove all possibilities of any definition, even if you were correct.

If your idea of a God is one with a physical body, then you're in the minority compared to theologians, and it's not especially godly or religious (being it isn't particularly supernatural), though it is significantly more possible.

If your idea of God requires that he be detached from any kind of body, he requires the existence of mind-body dualism.

Yeah, well, see above. Mormon here. We believe that God has a body. Not that it affects the basic problem you are running into here.

This isn't proof, but it is evidence.

Evidence of what?

The same kind of evidence that says when you find someone pulling a bloody knife out of a man with no one else around whose just died as you walked in says "He probably did it". The fact that you can make excuses does not mean they are rational excuses.

huh?

I know I have chemo brain, but I have to admit that I don't get this. You have been asked to show evidence that no god exists, or that 'gods do not exist."

The example given is that while the evidence does point to the idea that the man was stabbed, there are many explanations you can give in which he didn't. These can be entirely consistent with the evidence. But they aren't reasonable.

.............besides, things are not always what they seem; the EMT pulling a knife out of a victim so that he can administer CPR is not guilty of killing him.

Yes, that would be a good explanation being that it'd be an assumption justified by EMT uniform/equipment or other factors.

Every additional assumption involving spirits isn't made based on new evidence - it's based on "this is required to avoid this problem".

OK...but if the evidence that avoids the problem is actually there, there's no problem.

But again, I'm not the one making a claim here. Actually, I don't make claims like that, as a rule, in this forum, period.

THIS thread is about those who claim that there are no gods, period. A very solid, 'positive' claim. The OP asked for evidence of this statement "there are no gods." Not 'prove that this aspect of that theistic belief system is silly," but 'there are no gods."

you know, prove that there is no possibility of any sort of god, no matter how described, exists.

Proving ME wrong won't do that. Proving that there is no 'spirit' won't do that. Proving that a specific miraculous event wasn't miraculous won't do that....but y'all keep coming up with those arguments as if they would.

No, the question is specific; what evidence is there that there are no gods?

If you try doing this by shooting down every description of deity ever come up with, you would be on the target range forever...and you still wouldn't be doing what is being asked here.

The claim (and I have seen it made many times, in strong, definitive and loud voices) is 'there is no god!" Not "I see no reason to believe in a god," but "there aren't any/isn't one."

Surely you see the difference between the two statements?

THIS thread is aimed at those who make that very strong claim of 'there are no gods.' Prove THAT, please.

Disclaimer: I am quite aware that an inability to prove that there are no gods is not proof that the One I believe in is True...or indeed that any iteration of god is real.

I'm just waiting to see if anybody on the other side of this debate actually GETS THE JOKE...or sees the point, or something.

[wiploc]

Of course, being the pedant that I am, I'm going to keep TRYING to get this word used correctly; it's not 'soul,' but 'spirit.' The spirit and body together make one soul.

How cool! I don't believe I've ever heard of that.

This is why, when counting people on a ship, for instance, you hear 'we have 120 souls on board."

That would work either way, with either meaning of "soul." It could even be metonymy, like when they said, "I spoke three sail of ship." (That means three ships, regardless of how many sails they had, and they didn't actually talk to the sails, but rather to the people who were on the ships that were associated with the sails.)

A 'soul' without a body is a spirit. A soul without a spirit is dead.

Interesting. Like I said, that's a new thought.

OK, got that out of my system.

I'm a pedant too. For instance, I keep lecturing people about the difference between sin and evil, with no expectation that I will persuade a single person.

This thread, as I have mentioned before, is chock a block FULL of folks who come up with the same-old, same-old, criticisms of specific theistic belief systems, as if proving one specific view of God to be wrong automatically proves that ALL definitions and possible iterations of God to be impossible.

No, it just proves that the disproved god doesn't exist. The PoE (problem of evil) for instance, proves that the PoE god doesn't exist. It doesn't touch other gods.

The question is: give us evidence/proof that god does not exist. Any god. Proof.

Disproving any, or even many, descriptions of Him is not proving that no deity, ever, of any sort, exists.

And that was the question in the OP.

The OP asks us to "justify the belief that gods do not exist," and it asks for "reasons to believe that theism is false."

...
Which is why this thread is so fun. It is aimed at those who claim, outright, that 'there are no gods."

I believe that there are no gods. That feels like a slightly softer claim. I believe that there are no gods, and I claim that this is a rational belief. I can go that far.

It is demanding that those who make such a claim support it, since in that case, it is they who are actually making the claim.

Yes, burden of proof (or, as the guy who inspired this thread (but whose name is impossible to spell) would say, epistemic burden) is on us.

Nobody in the thread...even (and perhaps especially) the OP, expects that an inability to prove that there are no gods is evidence, much less proof, that there are.

I had to read that over and over. But, yes, it is correct.

'lack of proof is not proof of lack."

[\quote]

Unless the thing discussed is such that it would leave proof if it did exist. In that case, lack of proof is indeed proof of lack.

... this thread is full of folks who figure that criticizing one belief in deity is somehow proof that no deity exists.
[\quote]

Seems to me that we've done a good job of justifying the belief that no deities exist.

Where there is a specific claim of deity, it is refutable.

Where there is no claim, no evidence, no reason at all to believe, then we have an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence---without any evidence at all.

Reasonable people tend to reject such claims, to assume that they are false.

I feel like we've done our side proud. So I'm surprised that you don't.

... "most definitions" does not disprove all possibilities of any definition, even if you were correct. [\quote]

I think we've covered all possibilities, dealt with categories that included them.

Let's first divide gods into ordinary and extraordinary:

Ordinary gods: Examples of ordinary gods were Julius Caesar, Pharaohs, little piles of rocks. If you say, "I worship this pile of rocks," or, "This is my dog Rufus. Rufus exists, as you can plainly see. I say that Rufus is a god. Therefore a god exists. Case closed."

That's just not what we're talking about. There's nothing special about Rufus. The fact that someone calls him a god does not mean that gods exist. There has to be something extraordinary about you before you can be a god (according to the meaning of "god" as used in this thread).

Theism can't be made true just by someone calling something a god.

I labor this because you complained that we hadn't proved "all possibilities of any definition." We aren't responsible to disprove anything that anyone can call a god.

We undertook only to show that it's reasonable to believe that there are no extant things that fall in the category that we call "gods." This doesn't necessarily include "all possibilities of any definition."

For me, nothing counts as a god unless it is extraordinary in some way. If you can't fly, or smash suns, or walk on water, or create universes, or stop time, or otherwise have some extraordinary power, then, by definition, you aren't a god.


Extraordinary gods:

These I divide into two categories:


- Those we have absolutely no reason to believe in:

Call this the Russell's teapot category. It would be weird if that teapot were there. And there's no reason to think it is there. Reasonable people, then, assume that the teapot is not there.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Gods in this subcategory are extraordinary, but they have no evidence at all.

Thus, reasonable people can assume that they do not exist.

Which disposes of this subcategory.

Which leaves only the extraordinary gods that do leave evidence.


- Those we do have reason to believe in:

These are gods who would leave tracks, gods for whom evidence would exist if the gods existed, gods for whom there would be proof.

Theists are eager to claim that these gods exist. They offer up evidence all the time. But the evidence turns out to be false or fraudulent. (You can't tell me that William Lane Craig, for instance, doesn't know he's talking nonsense.)

In this subcategory, we use either examples (the PoE absolutely proves that the PoE god does not exist) or generalizations (whenever someone fields a "proof" of this kind of god, the "proof" turns out to be ignorant, silly, fraudulent, or otherwise lame.)

The generalizations come down to this: We believe, based on countless examples, that the evidence for the kind of god that leaves evidence, is always the work of a motivated believer. People with the will to believe will grasp at any straw in the attempt to persuade themselves that their belief is warranted. But there turns out not to be any reason to think that such gods exist.

Thus, once again, we find ourselves dealing with extraordinary claims and no evidence.

Gods in this subcategory are, once again, presumptively nonexistent.

-

Thus, we can describe the two categories this way: There are "gods" that, by definition, aren't really gods. And there are gods that we have no reason to believe in, and that, in the absence of such reasons, are presumptively nonexistent.

[otseng]

I'll be happy to discuss it.

OK, what do you consider acceptable evidence?

If I was claiming you believed in the Easter bunny, it would be a straw man.

That could be. But, just bringing up the Easter bunny (or any other fictitious gods that nobody believes in) would also be a straw man.

[otseng]

How is it morally justified to condemn someone for not believing in things that are neither dependable, nor clear?

Like I said, the basic message of the Bible is clear. If the Bible was incomprehensible, then sure, I'd agree that it would be wrong to hold people accountable to something that nobody could comprehend.

I'm not suggesting that the story of the Bible is not clear.

OK, good.

But what I'm saying is, "Why should anyone believe that the Bible speaks for any God?"

That's a good question. It's worthy of an entire thread to discuss that. And I don't want to derail this thread by going into that now.

[otseng]

If we agree that a miracle is a supernatural event, akin to having the laws of nature superseded, then we can easily agree what constitutes a miracle.

Well, at the risk of derailing this thread, I would say the creation of the universe would be miraculous. The laws of nature were superseded by the creation of the world. And its origin must've been outside our universe since our universe was what was created.

[otseng]

From the same link: "The person making a negative claim cannot logically prove nonexistence. And here's why: to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the claim that X does not exist one would have to possess abilities that are non-existent. Obviously, mankind's limited nature precludes these special abilities. The claim that X does not exist is therefore unjustifiable."

So, do you agree then that the claim that God does not exist is therefore unjustifiable?

[Divine Insight]

But what I'm saying is, "Why should anyone believe that the Bible speaks for any God?"

That's a good question. It's worthy of an entire thread to discuss that. And I don't want to derail this thread by going into that now.

I disagree. I think it fits the topic of this thread precisely.

This thread is entitled:

Justify the belief that gods do not exist.
What are the arguments that there are no gods?

There can be no single argument that rules out all possible gods. Therefore anyone demanding that is making an unrealistic demand.

To show there there are no gods, a person must show why each and every god that is claimed to exist does not exist.

Since this is in the Christianity and Apologetics forum it makes sense to start by showing that the Christian God does not exist.

That's actually quite easy to show. And one of the many reasons we can know why the Christian God does not exist is precisely because the Christian religion has this God condemning people for merely not believing in him. Yet at the same time they proclaim that he is all-righteous and can do no wrong.

That's a logical contradiction thus proving that this God does not exist.

To not believe in the Bible is not justification for eternal damnation. Thus the Christian God cannot be as righteous as the Christians demand. In other words, it cannot exist as they claim.

If any god exists it cannot be the Christian God.

So we have at least shown why one god does not exist.

And actually in a forum on Christianity and Apologetics we're done. Because the Christians are already convinced that no other gods exist, or at least if they do exist the Christians aren't interested.

[Divine Insight]

From the same link: "The person making a negative claim cannot logically prove nonexistence. And here's why: to know that a X does not exist would require a perfect knowledge of all things (omniscience). To attain this knowledge would require simultaneous access to all parts of the world and beyond (omnipresence). Therefore, to be certain of the claim that X does not exist one would have to possess abilities that are non-existent. Obviously, mankind's limited nature precludes these special abilities. The claim that X does not exist is therefore unjustifiable."

Actually this is not true. This can depend entirely what is being claimed to be "X".

If there is sufficient descriptions of X so that logical contradictions would be required for X to exist, then X can indeed be logically shown to not exist. Mathematicians use this method all the time to show why certain solutions to equations do not exist. They don't need to be omniscient to say that X does not exist. All they need to do is that that if it did exist it would be a logical contradiction. In fact, proof by contradiction is used in mathematics quite often. In fact, it is actually considered to be one of the best proofs possible. If you can prove that something leads to a contradiction in mathematics, then you have sufficiently proven your case.

So you don't need to know everything about X to disprove X. You only need to know enough about X to show that if it did exist it would be a logical contradiction.

If X = Biblical God. Then it's easy to show the X does not exist because there are endless contradictions in the Bible to show that if X existed it would be a contradiction to itself, or to character traits and principles that it is supposed to stand for.

[wiploc]

I'll be happy to discuss it.

OK, what do you consider acceptable evidence?

Whatever would be persuasive on another topic. That is, no special pleading.

If I was claiming you believed in the Easter bunny, it would be a straw man.

That could be. But, just bringing up the Easter bunny (or any other fictitious gods that nobody believes in) would also be a straw man.

I don't believe you can defend that claim.

If you had a good argument, and I rephrased it to make it weaker, so that I could refute it more easily, then I'd be making a strawman argument. But I'm not doing anything like that.

I wrote:

And that is my whole argument: we don't believe in god because we don't believe in the Easter bunny. Jupiter and the Easter bunny, Shiva and Santa Claus, Thor and the Great Pumpkin, in each case the reason for disbelief is the same.

I'm offering illustration. Santa and the Easter bunny are extraordinary. That is, it would take amazing evidence to justify the claim that these amazing things really exist. And we don't have any evidence that they exist that isn't better accounted for by alternative explanations.

I expect you to agree with me on this, not to claim I'm cheating somehow. Wild claims are presumptively false unless they are impressively supported.

The Easter bunny is an example illustrating this point.

What would it take to make you believe in a rabbit that lays eggs? Something impressive, right? How about a rabbit that lays pretty colored eggs? Chocolate eggs? All over the whole planet, right on Easter morning?

That would be amazing! But I don't have any amazing evidence for you, so you are being rational by assuming the story of the Easter bunny is made up.

That illustration accomplishes two things.

First, it shows you how I feel about Jesus, why I think I'm right, not merely to doubt, but to believe the Jesus story is fiction.

Second, it invites you to field the evidence that you think I'm overlooking. "But wait, Jesus isn't like the Easter bunny. The astounding claim is supported by astounding evidence, and here it is now: ..."

I don't see how I could be fairer, but you accuse me, unexplained, of falsity.