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.

[Divine Insight]

Logic is different for everyone- at least in the sense that people work off of different axioms.

Are you saying that logic is fundamentally subjective in the sense that there doesn't exist any logical statement that can be said to be objectively true?

I would definitely say that this is true. And precisely because of what FarWanderer had pointed out. People work off different axioms, and it's in the acceptance of axioms where the subjectivity comes into play.

Before you can even begin to create a logical statement you must necessarily make some preliminary premises or axioms upon which to begin your logic. And it is in those unprovable premises and axioms where subjectivity resides.

Logic is not as absolute or objective as many people believe it to be. And neither is mathematics. In fact, a lot of mathematics is nothing more than the subjective opinions of historical mathematicians who were lucky enough to have their subjective opinions accepted as "axioms" by the mathematical community.

In fact, if you ask me whether we can construct a system of morality based upon pure logic, I would say yes. But unfortunately we would then need to sit down and subjectively decide via mutual consensus what unprovable axioms we would like to bring to build our "logical morality" upon. And therefore our "logical morality" will necessarily be built upon a foundation of subjectively chosen axioms.

In other words, our final "Logical Morality" will only be valid to those people who also accept our unprovable axioms upon which we have built this logical model of morality.

The idea for success is to being with foundational axioms that most people will easily agree with.

[instantc]

Logic is different for everyone- at least in the sense that people work off of different axioms.

Are you saying that logic is fundamentally subjective in the sense that there doesn't exist any logical statement that can be said to be objectively true?

I would definitely say that this is true.

In the light of this statement, it's difficult to see how anything at all could be said to be objectively true. It is true that before one accepts the truth of a logical argument, he has to accept logical axioms, such as the law of non-contradiction, and before one accepts the truth of a moral argument, he has to accept moral axioms. Similarly, before one accepts any truth about the world, one has to first accept that our reasoning faculties and sensory data are proper tools for measuring reality accurately. We always have to start from somewhere before we can know anything at all. In your view, is all knowledge then subjective?

[Divine Insight]

We always have to start from somewhere before we can know anything at all. In your view, is all knowledge then subjective?

Yes, all knowledge is necessary subjective.

The only "Truth" that we can know is that we are having an experience. Some people like to say that the only think they can truly know is "I AM".

But itself is subjective knowledge. It's a subjective experience.

We can't even disprove solipsism. We simply accept on pure faith that the world is something more than just our own subjective imagination. It's a reasonable faith to have I think. But that's obviously a subjective claim right there, because a convinced solipsist would argue otherwise and I couldn't prove them wrong in any objective way. So to even move beyond solipsism we must accept unprovable premises. (i.e. that we believe that everyone is having an individual subjective experience).

That assumption alone might seem to imply some sort of "objective reality". But actually we don't even need to move all the way up to that immediately. The next step up from solipsism is pantheism or, pantheism if you prefer. Pantheism simple states the unprovable premise that "All are One". Or if a person wants to get theistic about it, "All are God".

In other words, Pantheism simply says, "Ok, so the only thing we can be certain of is our own subjective experience. But if we accept that everyone is having a subjective experience we can conclude that there is a master entity or master Mind (call it God if you like) that is having the experience of reality and we are merely facet of this subjective experience. Each one of us are simply having a different subjective experience.

They we realize that we share many common subjective experiences. And when we recognize those common subjective experience we categorize those as being "objective phenomenon". We have even learned that we can define these "objective phenomenon" pretty well in terms of "physical laws".

We have even concluded that these "physical laws" that we directly experience are due to a "Macro universe" that we have come to describe as a "fabric of spacetime" This fabric include matter and energy as we normally understand it on the macro scale.

Amazingly we have even been able to discover and determine that this macro reality actually stems from an underlying micro or quantum reality where the "Rule of Physics" are quite dramatically different from the "objective rules" of the macro world we are used to experiencing.

We then ask, "Are these quantum rules the ultimate "objective nature" of reality?

Perhaps they are. Perhaps their aren't. We certainly don't know. And even if they do define an objective reality what is that they are defining? A fabric of quantum-spacetime? Maybe they are actually nothing more than the properties of an underlying "mind" or "God" that is subjectively dreaming up all of reality, and all of us, and therefore subjectively having the experiences that each and everyone one of us subjectively have.

Let's assume that's true. Let's assume that there is a "Creator Mind" behind all of reality. The reality is nothing more than the subjective dreams of this creator.

Would anything be carved in stone? Probably not because there would be no such thing as objective stones. Stone are nothing more than a subjective dream of God. And if God can dream up anything it so desires, then it can surely dream up different imagined schemes of morality too.

I don't see how a totally subjective reality can be avoided no matter what. Even if we conceded to a "God" reality is still going to be subjective with respect to that God.

The only kind of "objective" reality that could ever truly exist would be a purely secular and godless materialistic reality where reality is indeed reducible to some ultimate tiny material particles that just objectively do there thing.

So ironically the only place were there can be any objective reality would be in a purely materialistic world. And then a concept like morality wouldn't even have any meaning at all beyond the subjective opinions of any sentient beings that might evolve in such a world.

I don't even see where a God who creates reality could be a source of objective morality. At best all it could offer is a subjective opinion on morality where no one is permitted to trump God's subjective opinions lest the God himself will unleash horrible cruelty upon them. And isn't that already an ironic concept when talking about morality.

Just look at Christianity. It's based upon a God who is claimed to be the epitome of righteousness and morality, yet he threatens to cast anyone who disagrees with him into a state of eternal punishment.

That is a system of morality that is self-contradictory.

If you like logic so much you should be able to see the oxymoron in a supposedly moral God who threatens to be mean or hurt people who don't obey him.

And Christianity takes this to the extreme by having this God have his son horribly beaten and nailed to a pole to "pay" for our salvation. Since when is it moral to beat an innocent person and nail them to a pole as justification for atrocities?

I mean, if you think that is "objective morality" then more power to you.

But IMHO that's the most absurd thing I ever heard in my life.

[otseng]

Please either retract your claim that the universe's beginning is evidence that Christianity is true, or accept that science saying stars existed before the earth is evidence that Christianity is false.

You mean you don't want to hear my argument of why I believe the earth existed before the stars did?

On the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

The argument starts with refuting the mediocrity principle. I created a separate thread here to discuss it:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... hp?t=26442

The mediocrity principle cannot be wrong because it's simply a truth of probability. Do you mean to say that the mediocrity principle applied to the earth may be wrong? Also what evidence has come up in the past few years that makes you believe the earth is special?

Yes, I believe it's wrong about the earth. We can debate that in the thread I just created.

So the only way that science would ever accept this claim would be to confess that science is all wrong and has no clue whatsoever about the physical universe. And why would they do that?

There is one main thing that I think is wrong with cosmology -- the assumption of the principle of mediocrity. If this assumption is incorrect, it would totally up end current cosmology.

That is an utterly absurd claim if I ever heard one. Cosmology does not stand alone.

The science of stellar nucleosynthesis is a guaranteed experimentally confirmed fact.

What I'm primarily disputing is the assumption of the mediocrity principle. We can discuss that in the other thread about the assumption and how it affects cosmology.

[otseng]

So if it is objectively evil for a man to kill, then it is objectively evil for a god to kill.

Again, I believe there is a distinction between killing and murder.

If sex is objectively evil before marriage, then it is objectively evil after marriage.

That does not follow. What it means is that sex before marriage would be objectively evil for anybody, regardless if they think it was OK.

If slavery is objectively evil now, it was objectively evil in biblical times too.

Actually, slavery is subjectively evil, not objectively evil. Why do you say it is objectively evil?

I need to ask this because your association of absoluteness and objectiveness is foreign to me.

It's not as foreign as you think. We can say that 2+2=4 is an absolute and objective fact. Some people might think 2+2=3, but they would be wrong.

You said something confusing about cultures and countries, and I'm trying to dope out the meaning. Are we sure, on the grounds that only one country did it, that the Holocaust was not objectively evil?

You can say it's objectively evil, but on what basis can you then say that? Is there a global law that everybody in the world is under? If not, then it would only be under another nation's laws, which would be subjective.

You're the one who said their can't be objective morality without god.

Yes, I did. But, we had to go back to the beginning and just define the terms.

The question stands: can it be objectively right (or wrong) to do something on one day of the week if it is not objectively right (or wrong) to do the same thing on another day of the week?

I assume you are referring to resting on the Sabbath. In that case, it specifically mentions a day of the week, so not all days of the week are the same.

If I understand it correctly, Jehovah (or Minnie Mouse, if you prefer not to talk about gods) cannot have one objective moral system for Old Testament times, and another for New Testament times. Those rules would have to be subjective because they are not universal.

If something was truly objective evil, it would apply in both Old Testament and New Testament times.

[otseng]

If Jesus didn't write a guide to salvation then there isn't one.

Why would it need to be written down? Are we to dismiss someone because they did not write anything down?

Are you kidding me?

Jesus was supposed to be "The Word Made Flesh".

Yes, that's true. It didn't say however "The Word Written Onto Paper."

Are you telling me that "The Word" doesn't know the importance of writing things down.

Actually, I do think God knew that. That's why we have the Bible.

Now, the question would be, why didn't Jesus write anything? I'm not really sure, but I have some ideas. One, the culture back then, unlike now, focused on oral communication, not textual communication. Things were learned by mentoring, not reading a book. Second, the time of Jesus' ministry was short. He would not have had much time to minister if he had to write. Third, people would pay more attention when they see a miracle than read about a miracle. Fourth, books at that time were a rare commodity. Fifth, the Old Testament set the pattern of things written down by people. This continued in the New Testament.

And do you believe that they are being "punished" by a God?

No.

I think it's far more reasonable to believe that it's just a "poor design" by evolution.

Hmm, do other animals go through pain and suffering during delivery?

In fact, if a God purposefully designed (or cursed) childbirth to be painful, they I could never respect him. As far as I'm concerned that would be absolutely disgusting behavior on his part. Only a sadist could enjoy inflicting needless pain on people for his own enjoyment.

If Eve had not sinned and God just inflicted pain on them, I'd agree with you. But, like all sin, they have consequences. We might not like the consequences, but we unfortunately cannot escape them.

A Creator God, should at the very least have respect for the act of procreation.

I believe he does. He was the one who invented sex in the first place.

And keep in mind that the Taliban and ISIS believe that everything they are doing is totally inline with this same mythological God. And they have the Old Testament on their side. They even have Jesus on their side!

Strange if they do since they also persecute Christians.

[FarWanderer]

Logic is different for everyone- at least in the sense that people work off of different axioms.

Are you saying that logic is fundamentally subjective in the sense that there doesn't exist any logical statement that can be said to be objectively true?

Yes and no. "Objectively true" is simply predicated on an "if".

Like, it could be said that it is objectively true that if premises X, Y, and Z are true, then conclusion A is true.

Although I should say that this is only in the strictest sense of word "objective". In everyday conversation I think it's perfectly fine for people to say things are "objectively true" when all the premises involved are universally accepted by (nearly) all humans.

For example, some people refuse to entertain the idea that infinite regresses are possible. That's an axiom. Another axiom would be the assumed validity of induction (for the purpose of doing science). Axioms are something you "can't put in a test tube". What is universal (objective) about logic are the rules in which conclusions are built from axiomatic premises.

Just because there are disagreements about logical conclusions does not mean that logic is different for everyone. Is the law of non-contradiction not objectively true in your view?

I'm not talking about logical conclusions; I'm talking about the axioms that lead to those conclusions.

As I was saying, the rules are objective. The law of non-contradiction would be one of those rules, and therefore objective. It's the axioms to which we apply these rules that are subjective.

And reasoning requires both the axioms and the rules.

Morality is the subset of logic that deals with value axioms. That means the rules for it work exactly the same as other logic.

I like this approach.

To say that something seems utterly absurd to you, implies that it is absurd on an objective level.

If there's a "to me" in there, the speaker is going out of his way precisely for the purpose of denying that implication.

I think you are confusing something here. To say that it seems to me that the earth is in fact round, does not mean that the earth's roundness is somehow my subjective opinion that varies from person to person. "It seems to me" simply indicates that this appears to me to in fact be the case. It's an indication of some level of uncertainty, not an indication of a subjective opinion.

The person might not be fully convinced that everyone who says they like chocolate ice cream genuinely like it. In which case, talking about how it's absurd that anyone would like chocolate ice cream is an attempt to get people to realize their own repressed negative feelings towards chocolate ice cream.

That does not make it absurd for someone to dislike chocolate ice cream.

The objective truth of the matter of ice cream preferences is beside the point. We're talking about whether someone's beliefs about ice cream preferences are internally consistent with their behavior.

The point is that the speaker doesn't necessarily accept what your earlier scenario presupposes- he doesn't accept that we don't all share the same taste of ice cream.

[Divine Insight]

Are you telling me that "The Word" doesn't know the importance of writing things down.

Actually, I do think God knew that. That's why we have the Bible.

But the Bible is nothing but totally undependable hearsay rumors that aren't even consistent in what they claim.

Now, the question would be, why didn't Jesus write anything? I'm not really sure, but I have some ideas.

Yes, and after reading all your ideas I must say that I think they are extremely weak excuses for a supposedly omnipotent God:

One, the culture back then, unlike now, focused on oral communication, not textual communication. Things were learned by mentoring, not reading a book.

So are you suggesting that Jesus and God were totally unaware that thing things were supposed to withstand the test of time and speak to cultures that would exist thousands of years later? I personally think this would be an extremely lame excuse for God.

Second, the time of Jesus' ministry was short. He would not have had much time to minister if he had to write.

This excuse if even more lame, IMHO. An omnipotent God is pressed for time and needs to be "rushed"? I wouldn't buy that excuse if it were on sale for 90% off.

Third, people would pay more attention when they see a miracle than read about a miracle.

There is absolutely no reason why Jesus couldn't do both. Again, an omnipotent God has no excuse for not having the time, energy, or ability to do things right.

Fourth, books at that time were a rare commodity.

That's irrelevant. If this God is omnipotent and intended for this message to remain in tact in written form until the current day, surely he could have found a way to preserve the writings of Jesus.

By the way, I'm not saying that I would necessarily believe those writings anyway. But at least he's have documents written by the man in question instead of contradicting hearsay rumors.

Fifth, the Old Testament set the pattern of things written down by people. This continued in the New Testament.

Again a totally unimpressive excuse. Moreover, I have rock solid reasons for rejecting the entire Old Testament as having no more merit than Greek mythology already anyway.

And do you believe that they are being "punished" by a God?

No.

So you don't believe that God's punishment for Eve was supposed to carry over to all mortal women?

I personally believe that this fairytale was actually written this way precisely because the men who wrote it already knew that women went through pain when giving birth. They just pretended that this was God's doing as a means of holding that over women to further support their claims that God supports their male-chauvinism.

I find it very difficult to believe that people actually believe that a genuinely intelligent supreme being would behave this way, and will even argue that this should be accepted as being an intelligent thing to do.

I think it's far more reasonable to believe that it's just a "poor design" by evolution.

Hmm, do other animals go through pain and suffering during delivery?

Yes, I'm certain that they do. Which is yet another reason why it's silly to think that this was a curse placed on women because of Eve's fall from grace.

In fact, if a God purposefully designed (or cursed) childbirth to be painful, they I could never respect him. As far as I'm concerned that would be absolutely disgusting behavior on his part. Only a sadist could enjoy inflicting needless pain on people for his own enjoyment.

If Eve had not sinned and God just inflicted pain on them, I'd agree with you. But, like all sin, they have consequences. We might not like the consequences, but we unfortunately cannot escape them.

The very idea that people keep suggesting and supporting the idea that to do cruel things to people as consequences of "sin" is a "Godly and Divine" thing to do is truly scary. It's precisely that kind of thinking that causes people like the Taliban and ISIS to believe that what they are doing is divinely justified.

A Creator God, should at the very least have respect for the act of procreation.

I believe he does. He was the one who invented sex in the first place.

So that gives him the right to use it as a mean curse?

I'm sorry but I don't buy into any "righteous" God being mean or cruel to anyone. That is just disgusting. And there would be nothing "righteous" about it. Especially according to the biblical story of Eve. Eve didn't even rebel against God. On the contrary she totally cooperated and did precisely what any good like Christian girl is supposed to do. She should have been forgiven of having been "beguiled" right then and there on the spot.

If you daughter was innocently beguiled by a psychopath would you be mean and cruel to your daughter over it?

I sure as heck wouldn't.

And keep in mind that the Taliban and ISIS believe that everything they are doing is totally inline with this same mythological God. And they have the Old Testament on their side. They even have Jesus on their side!

Strange if they do since they also persecute Christians.

So what? Christians are heathens. The Christians aren't obeying Jesus. Jesus said that not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from law. Therefore if Christians are still going around killing heathens then they are totally refusing to obey the teachings of Jesus.

Christians don't obey Jesus. They aren't even close to obeying him.

We can certainly be thankful of that, but still, they aren't obeying Jesus. If they were obeying Jesus they would still be obeying every jot and tittle of the Old Testament. And they clearly aren't.

So the Taliban and ISIS still have Jesus on their side even when they kill the heathen Christians.

[FarWanderer]

Please either retract your claim that the universe's beginning is evidence that Christianity is true, or accept that science saying stars existed before the earth is evidence that Christianity is false.

You mean you don't want to hear my argument of why I believe the earth existed before the stars did?

On the contrary, I'd love to hear it.

The argument starts with refuting the mediocrity principle. I created a separate thread here to discuss it:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... hp?t=26442

I'll probably weigh in in the other thread, but I don't see how refuting the principle of mediocrity makes the the stars any younger (or the earth any older) than today's science tells us. All it would imply is that the earth is "special"- whatever that means.

So your problem remains. You need to justify taking science as authoritative regarding the universe's beginning, while simultaneously taking it as non-authoritative regarding the relative ages of the earth and stars.

Or you could always just retract your claim that Christianity is supported by how today's science tells us the universe had a beginning.

[wiploc]

So if it is objectively evil for a man to kill, then it is objectively evil for a god to kill.

Again, I believe there is a distinction between killing and murder.

You said that objective evil can't exist without a god.

So I asked you to justify that claim.

You said we had to agree on definitions first.

So I'm trying to understand your definition of objective evil.

You say objectivity has something to do with absoluteness.

So I'm trying to grasp what you mean by absoluteness.

But you seem stubbornly cryptic on the subject. It's like you don't want me to understand.

Can the problem be that I didn't use the subjunctive properly? Should I have asked, "IF it WERE objectively evil for a man to kill, then WOULD it be objectively evil for a god to kill?"

Would that take care of the problem? Would you be willing to explain or elaborate then?

I can't substitute "murder" for "kill," because I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "absolute." And murder, as distinct from killing, involves distinctions or exceptions. That is, murder seems to me inherently not absolute. You can kill some times but not others.

So I'm trying to understand: IF it WERE objectively evil for a man to kill, then WOULD it be objectively evil for a god to kill?

You don't actually have to answer that specific question if you'd rather be inspired by it to explain something about what you mean by "absolute." Because I don't have a clue. I don't see why we're talking about absoluteness in the context of objectivity. I don't see the relationship.

Any way you can help me out will be appreciated.

If sex is objectively evil before marriage, then it is objectively evil after marriage.

That does not follow. What it means is that sex before marriage would be objectively evil for anybody, regardless if they think it was OK.

Okay, that helps. I can go back and read how we got on this topic, and try to apply that information. Thanks.

If slavery is objectively evil now, it was objectively evil in biblical times too.

Actually, slavery is subjectively evil, not objectively evil. Why do you say it is objectively evil?

I'm not saying it's objectively evil. I'm asking hypothetical questions in the attempt to figure out what you mean by "absolute." And you're being strangely unhelpful.

I'm curious now, why you think slavery is subjectively evil. I'm curious too as to what
"subjectively evil" means. For that matter, I want, at some point, to know what just the word "evil" means, when you say it.

But I don't want any of that to distract us now. Right now I want to know what "absolute" means. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated.

For instance, you might tell me whether, if slavery WERE objectively evil now, WOULD it follow that slavery was objectively evil in biblical times?

I need to ask this because your association of absoluteness and objectiveness is foreign to me.

It's not as foreign as you think. We can say that 2+2=4 is an absolute and objective fact. Some people might think 2+2=3, but they would be wrong.

If I were defining terms, I'd say 2+2=4 is absolute because it is always true everywhere and for every person. I'd say it is objective because it is true regardless of what you think.

But you could have objective things that aren't absolute. Mars is objectively red without being absolutely red. (It might look blue to people approaching at relativistic speeds, but they could still calculate exactly what appearance it would have to us, and the color doesn't depend on how they feel about redness.)

I'm not saying any of this to insist on my definitions. Rather, I'm just sharing my reactions in the hopes that you'll offer some instruction in return. How is your "absolute" different from mine? Or your "objective."

You said something confusing about cultures and countries, and I'm trying to dope out the meaning. Are we sure, on the grounds that only one country did it, that the Holocaust was not objectively evil?

You can say it's objectively evil, but on what basis can you then say that? Is there a global law that everybody in the world is under? If not, then it would only be under another nation's laws, which would be subjective.

You're the one who said their can't be objective morality without god.

Yes, I did. But, we had to go back to the beginning and just define the terms.

The question stands: can it be objectively right (or wrong) to do something on one day of the week if it is not objectively right (or wrong) to do the same thing on another day of the week?

I assume you are referring to resting on the Sabbath. In that case, it specifically mentions a day of the week, so not all days of the week are the same.

Thank you for answering the question asked. I'll go back and try to plug that into whatever inspired the question.

If I understand it correctly, Jehovah (or Minnie Mouse, if you prefer not to talk about gods) cannot have one objective moral system for Old Testament times, and another for New Testament times. Those rules would have to be subjective because they are not universal.

If something was truly objective evil, it would apply in both Old Testament and New Testament times.

Okay, now I'm confused again. A rule that only applies on Sundays is objective, but a rule that only applies to the Old Testament is Subjective?

I'm not seeing a pattern. It's as if "absolute" means "arbitrarily admitting of objections in some cases, but not in others."

Can you help me out?