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.

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 1 by wiploc]
Only one thing. The continual failure for theists to demonstrate the existence of any gods, for the past 6000 years. That is enough for me to shift from weak atheism to strong atheism.

[wiploc]

The Parable of the Pawnbroker:

Let me tell you a story. I call this the parable of the gold chains. I call it a parable, but you need to know this is true. I was a pawnbroker, and this happened to me.

A man came into my store. He dipped into his pocket with his right hand, and he brought out a necklace. He said, "I'd like to sell this fine gold chain." I put a file on the necklace, I notched it, and I showed the man the brass or whatever at the core of that necklace. The necklace was made of some base metal, which was plated over with gold.

I gave him back his necklace, and I was ready for him to leave. As far as I was concerned, he had attempted to defraud me. But he didn't leave. He dropped the chain into his left-hand pocket. He reached into his right-hand pocket, and he pulled out another chain. "This one's the real thing," he told me. I have to say I was skeptical, but I put the file on it for him; and I showed him the base metal at the core.

He dropped it in his left pocket, and pulled a third chain out of his right pocket. He told me that this one was good. I said, "Nobody puts this kind of clasp on a real gold necklace," but he insisted. So I showed him the stamp. Real gold might have said "14K," for 14 karat, where this one said "14KEP," for 14 karat electroplate. But he still insisted, so I notched it for him. Whattaya know, it was another fake. There was base metal at the core.

He pulled out a fourth chain. <gesture> I have to tell you that I did not think this one was going to be real. I expected this one to be a fake. How about you? How many of you think this chain was real? In fact, he showed me a total of seven or eight chains that day. How many of you think they were all of them fake? <gesture and pause> I can't believe it! Halleluiah, I am blessed with a room full of skeptics!

Apparently this is sometimes called the Parable of the Pawnbroker, and sometimes the Parable of the Gold Chains. It comes in versions.

The point is that atheism is a reasonable response to the arguments of, say, William Lane Craig.

[Divine Insight]

Clarity is good, so you can explain what you personally mean by "atheist," but you shouldn't suggest that other usages are inferior.

I personally see the term "atheist" in general to mean a-theism (i.e. without a theism). So for me, the term generically simply means that an atheist does not embrace or believe in any particular theism. It does not mean that they feel they can prove that no possible concept of God cannot exist.

That's how I use the term "atheist" in general.

I also do not consider myself to be an atheist in general. Although that itself is difficult to know for sure because I'm not even sure what actually qualifies as a "theism". Does a consideration that reality could fundamentally be mystical or spiritual qualify as a "theistic" view? If it does, then I entertain the possibility of theism.

However, things change dramatically when we speak of a specific theism. I am definitely an atheist with respect to the Biblical theism of God. I am not only an atheist, but I would go further and say that I am an anti-theist with respect to Biblical theism. In other words, I can prove logically that the literal Bible is blatant example of many logical contradictions. The Biblical God that is literally described by the Bible cannot logically exist because the bible literally contradicts its own God countless times throughout the biblical literature.

It actually appears that most Biblical theists are in agreement with me on this point. I say this because they continually argue for non-literal interpretations of the Bible. In other words, they openly confess that my position is indeed correct. The Bible is a literal self-contradicting theism. And so to try to save it they pretend that they can imagine that it's saying entirely different things from what it is literally saying.

So as far as I am concerned I've already proven my case the Biblical God literally does not exist. The non-literal biblical theists have a non-literal God that they have made up. A God that is quite literally not the God of the Bible by their own admission. They God they have made up is quite literally something else.

In fact, non-literal theists all make up entirely different non-literal Gods. So its hard to say what their individual Gods are actually like. Although, it's been my experience that even the non-literalists have created self-conflicting Gods as well. They almost always demand that their made up theism still retain gross logical contradictions. I've never seen a non-literal version of the Biblical God that is free from logical contradictions. Unless it is so extremely non-literally that it has become something so non-Biblical that it doesn't even remotely resemble the original theistic literature.

So I can safely say that I am a very strong atheist with respect to biblical theism. I am even an anti-theist in this regard. In other words, I feel that biblical theism is actually a hazard to humanity and should be treated as a theistic cancer. It's an abomination to any God or Gods that might exist. It's an insult to humanity. And it's a disgrace to the very concept of morality.

But I would never claim that no spiritual or mystical concepts cannot be true. That would be silly.

[wiploc]

2. The Presumptive Falsity of Outrageous Claims

How does a rational mind handle an unusual claim? Let's look at some examples:

Suppose I told you that I had $30 in my pocket. There wouldn't be anything particularly strange about that claim. We can call that a mundane or normal claim. You'd probably take me at my word if I made that claim.

If, however, I said I had $30,000 in my pocket, you might think that a little strange. I could be telling the truth, but you might reserve judgement, draw no conclusions.

What if I said my pocket, this pocket here, contains $3,000,000 in cash? That would be deep weirdness. Most of you would just assume I was lying.

And if I claim that I have three hundred trillion dollars in my pocket, and add that I have been to Mars seventeen times, and that on Mars I found the body of President Lincoln, and that I revived it to life? That would be beyond weird; that would be wacko! You would no longer think I was just lying. If you thought I was serious at all, you would assume I was sick, deranged.

This is how the rational mind works. The weirder a claim is, the less credence it is given.

The principle I illustrate is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Rational people dismiss extraordinary claims as false. That is the rational position. That dismissal is the fruit of a rational mind. There is nothing wrong or illogical about dismissing wacko propositions as false.

What would be wrong would be to close your mind entirely. If you do look at the evidence for an extraordinary claim, you have to weigh that evidence objectively. You can't twist the evidence so as to allow you to reach whatever conclusion you are comfortable with. No, so long as there is any possibility that a claim is true, you cannot entirely write it off.

The only claims that we can be certain are false are those claims which involve contradiction. Dr. Craig has already spoken to us about contradiction. Dr. Craig is death on contradiction. If something contradicts itself, then we know: it is not true. Contradictions cannot be true. Therefore, they are not true. No amount of evidence could even begin to support a contradiction.

There we have it, a continuum, a range of possible claims, from the mundane through the strange, and the weird, and the wacko -- with each additional level of weirdness requiring an additional level of proof -- until we finally reach the claims that are logically impossible, where no amount of proof can suffice.


A range of gods

Gods, also, range from the mundane to the impossible. There are an infinity of possible and impossible gods, so I cannot refute them one by one. As Dr. Craig would be sure to point out, we don't have that much time. So I'll have to take them by categories.

Let's look at the mundane gods. I have a friend who wonders whether hydrogen is god. Another friend thinks maybe nature is god. And lots of people believed the Egyptian pharaohs were gods. I am not concerned to disprove the existence of hydrogen. I will not stand here tonight and tell you that nature does not exist. And I cannot disprove the pharaohs---because I personally believe they existed. I just don't see any reason to think they were gods.

Why don't we think they were gods? Technically speaking, they are just not weird enough. You have to have at least wacko powers to be a god. If you behave normally, then you are a normal person; you do not deserve the title "god." Well, actually, as Clint Eastwood said to Gene Hackman in Unforgiven: deserving doesn't come into it. If you don't have wacko powers, you simply aren't what we mean by the word: you aren't a god.

So there is a continuum, a variety of things-that-might-be-called-gods that range from the mundane to the impossible, from the non-god-like to the non-existent. What generalization can we make about this entire smorgasbord of divinity?

We see these generalizations:

1. The more likely that something exists, the less likely that it is a god.
2. The more likely that something is a god, the less likely that it exists.

In short, anything weird enough to be a god is presumptively non-existent.

[wiploc]

So far, we have

1. The Parable of the Pawnbroker.

Poor theistic argumentation indicates that theists have no good arguments.


2. The Presumptive Falsity of Outrageous Claims. Or, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.

If it's unlikely enough to be a god, it's presumptively nonexistent.


3. Theists make claims that they say are justified, but the consistently fail to provide that justification.

(With thanks to Bust Nak.)


4. The bible god is shot thru with errors, contradictions, absurdities, and cannot therefore be real.

(With thanks to Divine Insight.)

[Divine Insight]

A range of gods

Gods, also, range from the mundane to the impossible. There are an infinity of possible and impossible gods, so I cannot refute them one by one. As Dr. Craig would be sure to point out, we don't have that much time.

If Dr. Craig did point that out he would be a hypocrite of the highest order. Dr. Craig supports ONE GOD and ONE GOD ONLY. And that is the God of Hebrew Bible and specifically the Christian version of that folklore.

Therefore Dr. Craig himself has already renounced infinitely many Gods. The only difference between Dr. Craig and an atheist is that an atheist believes in one less God than Dr. Craig.

To defeat Dr. Craig only requires demonstrating that the Bible cannot be literal truth. And that is extremely easy to show. In fact, it's so easy to show that even Dr. Craig will be the first to confess to this. He will instantly argue for "non-literal interpretations" of the Bible.

So Dr. Craig has already hung himself by literally rejecting the Bible in favor of arguing for a non-literal God that has nothing at all to do with the Bible.

The God that Dr. Craig argues for isn't even God of the Bible. It's nothing more than Dr. Craig's invention of a non-literal God. Dr. Craig simply uses the Bible as fodder from which to proclaim that his non-literal interpretation have some sort of "merit". But how ironic is that when Dr. Craig himself confesses that the Bible literally has no merit when taken literally?

Dr. Craig appears to me to be a theistic clown or jester who is doing nothing other than using non-literal claims to support a literal bible whilst mocking science and refusing to confess that science has indeed proven itself to be quite literally true all the while that Dr. Craig himself literally rejects the Bible.

Dr. Craig's lectures and debates truly are a comedy show, IMHO. We should all be laughing at his act and he should be paid as a stand-up comedian instead of taking himself so seriously.

[wiploc]

And I'll add

5. The Problem of Evil.

This refutes only a specific type of god, but it is relevant because this is the type of god that most theists believe in. If they didn't think this god existed, if they weren't grasping at straws trying to justify their belief in this particular type of god, then they wouldn't keep floating all the terrible pseudo-justifications for believing. Religion might not even be a topic of conversation.

[Divine Insight]

Here is one more to add to your list:

Theists who argue for non-literal interpretations of the Bible have already confessed that the Bible is literal nonsense.

[Divine Insight]

And I'll add

5. The Problem of Evil.

This refutes only a specific type of god, but it is relevant because this is the type of god that most theists believe in. If they didn't think this god existed, if they weren't grasping at straws trying to justify their belief in this particular type of god, then they wouldn't keep floating all the terrible pseudo-justifications for believing. Religion might not even be a topic of conversation.

The problem of evil is a theistic problem. There is no such thing as a problem of evil in a secular world.

The problem of evil stems directly from the hypothesis that the world was created by an all-perfect benevolent God. Then the question of "Why is everything not Perfect" becomes "The Problem of Evil"

"The Problem of Evil" is the same as asking "Why is the world not perfect?"
(In a natural secular world there is no reason to expect that the world should be perfect. Only in a theistic world is this a problem.)

So "The Problem of Evil" is already a confession by theists that theism is fundamentally problematic.