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.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 190 by otseng]

I think that what is implied or seriously considered, is that while energy is obviously a form of energy, and matter is also a kind of energy, that gravitational fields are negative energy.

The idea is that the total energy isn't really destroyed, it just changes form - similar to how charge is always conserved (in non-weak interactions), but neutral particles with no charge can produce positive and negative charges and vice versa - it's the overall sum that's conserved.

So a zero energy world could become a negative + positive energy world, because it'd still be a total of zero

[otseng]

OK, I'll get to my point. What evidence do you have that gods do not exist?

1. If you are standing on a street corner without traffic lights you look left and right and left and listen for any cars coming. If you detect no evidence of any cars coming you assume that no cars are coming and cross the street. That is the rational approach. If two people are standing on the street corner and one detects no evidence of any cars coming and gets ready to cross and the other stops him and asks "why did you deem it safe to cross, what evidence do you have that no cars are coming?" I would assume that something was wrong with this person. Wouldn't you?

However, that's not what (strong) atheists are claiming. They are claiming that no cars exist at all.

2. At http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... elieve-in/ there are two lists. The list on the left is a list of gods Christians believe don't exist, on the right is a list of gods strong atheists believe don't exist. Both Christians and strong atheists believe these gods don't exist, but for some reason Christians have made one single exception to their belief that gods don't exist. The only difference between Christians and strong atheists is that strong atheists haven't made this one exception. What is your justification for believing all these gods don't exist?

Why do people keep asking for theists to provide justification for specific gods not existing? There is no burden in this thread for Christians to argue that Thor or whatever fictional god one presents is not real.

For simplicity sake, strike out all those gods that nobody really believes in (everything in the left side of the list). There's no need to even bring those up anymore in the discussions (including Santa, Easter bunny, etc). That only leaves Yahweh. What evidence do you have that Yahweh does not exist?

[otseng]

There are many models of how the universe came into existence, none of which require a supernatural explanation.

Depends on how you define supernatural. If it means outside our universe, then our universe must've had a supernatural origin.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 193 by otseng]

The Universe doesn't need an origin.
It can simply not come, or come from no thing (which some people think is different to coming from nothing).

Is that supernatural?

[Divine Insight]

However, that's not what (strong) atheists are claiming. They are claiming that no cars exist at all.

No, that's not what they are claiming. They are claiming that it's justifiable to believe that no invisible cars exist at all.

They give full credit to regular car existing whether they are coming down the road at the moment or not.

Why do people keep asking for theists to provide justification for specific gods not existing? There is no burden in this thread for Christians to argue that Thor or whatever fictional god one presents is not real.

Sure there is. If a Christian believes they can justify that Thor does not exist, then surely they are in a far better position to understand why a non-Christian can justify that Yahweh doesn't exist. Because now we're speaking "Atheist-to-Atheist". The Christian is an Atheist with respect to Thor whilst the non-Christian is an Atheist with respect to Yahweh.

For simplicity sake, strike out all those gods that nobody really believes in (everything in the left side of the list). There's no need to even bring those up anymore in the discussions (including Santa, Easter bunny, etc). That only leaves Yahweh. What evidence do you have that Yahweh does not exist?

Didn't I already try to do that in this very thread and you suggested to me that I was "off-topic" because this thread is about disbelief in gods in general and not any specific God.

I'll be more than happy to provide evidence to justify my disbelief in Yahweh.

And remember, in this thread, I don't even need to prove that Yahweh can't possibly exist. All I need to do is show why it's justifiable to dismiss this God.

And that is extremely easy to do.

In fact, IMHO, any God who is claimed to be a supernatural supremely intelligent being who is supposedly infinitely wise and loving, yet he created a situation where he had to have his own corrupt priests brutally beat and nail his only begotten son to a pole before he could forgive the objects of his creation their failings which he clearly designed into them when he created them, would necessarily be so utterly stupid that he couldn't possibly be supremely intelligent.

Right there alone, is more than sufficient evidence to justify a disbelief in this God as having absolutely no more merit than Zeus, and you've just agreed that it's justifiable to dismiss Zeus as being absurd.

So there you go.

What's wrong with my justification? You tell me?

You need to convince me that an omniscient all-intelligent loving God couldn't do any better than this. You would need to convince me that this supposedly omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely intelligent God, couldn't figure out a better way to create souls and test them to be his eternal pets without having his very own priests become pathetically corrupt and beating his only begotten son to a pulp, and nailing him to a pole.

Good luck with that.

[wiploc]

OK, I'll get to my point. What evidence do you have that gods do not exist?

I have posted my argument repeatedly in this thread.

Would you agree that evidence is not the same thing as an argument?

Yes.

And yet, I can come up with evidence that the earth exists, and I'll be surprised if you come up with evidence that gods exist.

I have no burden (in this thread) to provide any evidence that a god exists.

That's a gimme, then. We've shown that it is reasonable to believe that no gods exist, whereupon the opposition rests.

Actually, I have high regard for Dr Craig. Yes, he uses the same arguments over and over. But, interestingly, atheists still have a hard time debating him, even though they know exactly what he'll say in a debate. (For example, the William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens - Does God Exist? debate)

I grant you that he's good on his feet. A master debater.

As for evidence that turns out to be false or fraudulent, that is a gross misrepresentation of apologetic arguments. Sure, some are false, but not all are.

I think they all are. They are generally based on an equivocation, or some similar debater's trick.

I don't understand the one about halos. Some kind of rock halo. But, I generalize: since the rest of them are bad, I assume that one is bad too.

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.

Actually, it doesn't matter what the motivation of the person is. The only thing that matters is the arguments and evidence that he presents. He could have improper motives, but he could still be correct.

Theoretically, yes.

But there turns out not to be any reason to think that such gods exist.

So, your argument boils down to that theists have not presented any evidence for theism so atheism is true?

I think that's unfair, a misrepresentation.

[wiploc]

However, how does that preclude any possibility that there is a god out there that nobody has described to you?

Preclude the possibility? That's a strawman argument, isn't it? Don't you have beliefs that could possibly be wrong?

Of course. I'm quite certain that I do...but until I know which ones, I can't really change 'em.

True, you don't know which ones are wrong. That's not the point.

The point is that you can have rational beliefs that are wrong. We all do. So the key to having a rational belief is not "preclud[ing] any possibility" of error.

We can rationally believe that there are no gods without "preclud[ing] any possibility that there is a god out there that nobody has described to" us.

We have given our justification for our belief, and your response is to move the goal posts, claiming, in effect that we can't justify a belief without proving that there's no possibility that we're wrong.

That said, your question has nothing to do with anything. The question in front of us is 'justify the belief that gods do not exist," not "well, maybe you are wrong, so if maybe you are wrong, you can't be right, therefore there are no gods."

At least I THINK that's where you were trying to go with that.

That's not where I was going. You were trying to say I can't reasonably believe there are no gods unless I 100% prove I'm right. My point is that we often believe things---and do so quite reasonably---on less than 100% proof.

Because that is the question of this thread. "justify the belief that NO gods exist."

We all have beliefs that are possibly wrong. We all justify beliefs without precluding possibility of error.

With all due respect...nobody has. Nobody has even attempted it so far on this thread. Everybody so far has attempted to justify the belief that no gods exist by attempting to disprove the ideas of the gods they know about.

I've made my case over and over, in different ways. I'm not going to accuse you of not reading my posts, because I get so tired of people doing that. But I'm frustrated. I make my case, and you act like you didn't see it.

I hope that you can see that this isn't what was asked.

I can go into an almond orchard here and point at all the trees. I can say 'hey, you aren't a pomegranate, and you aren't, and you. Over there. Hey. YOU! You ain't no pomegranate either!" That doesn't prove that there aren't any pomegranates.

You are correct.

Now let's discuss magic pomegranates that vacation on the moon and cure cancer for five thousand dollars.

Not 'justify the belief that none of the gods I"ve heard of so far exist," but that none exist. At all, Period. No possibility of one of any description or attributes whatsoever.

We've done that repeatedly in this thread.

Actually, no, nobody has. Nobody has even tried.

That's bunk.

Everybody attacks descriptions of deities they know about, but nobody has actually attempted to justify the positive statement 'there are no gods."

I dealt with them by categories, and the categories were exhaustive. I dealt with them all.

The most anybody has done...even if I accepted their arguments, which of course I can't, completely, being that I'm a theist...is justify the statement "the god YOU believe in doesn't exist."

Not the same thing.

Right, that's not the same thing. But that's also not what we've done.

[Divine Insight]

But there turns out not to be any reason to think that such gods exist.

So, your argument boils down to that theists have not presented any evidence for theism so atheism is true?

I think that's unfair, a misrepresentation.

I absolutely agree here. This thread is not claiming that atheism is "true". It's simply arguing that atheism is a justified worldview.

The greatest argument that the theist have is the idea that since the universe exists at all there must have been a conscious intelligent creator. But that argument falls flat. In fact it's completely unwarranted. The reason being that if this universe can only exist because it had a conscious intelligent creator, then the same logic must be applied to that creator itself. In other words, any conscious intelligent creator that exist must have had a conscious intelligent creator.

In short, the argument that anything that exists must have had a creator is a bogus argument to begin with because that argument would necessarily need to also apply to any imagined Gods that might exist. They too then must have been created by an conscious intelligent creator, and that becomes an infinite regression. It's not a solution to anything.

It's basically a bad argument.

If that is the justification for believing in any God, then it's not sound justification.

Moreover, that particular justification, even if it had any merit, most certainly wouldn't point to any particular world religion. So that is certainly no argument or justification for any specific religion.

So even given that argument there are still very sound reasons for rejecting Hebrew mythology as having no more merit then Greek mythology.

[Divine Insight]

Especially in mathematical terms where gravity potential energy is given a negative sign and matter is given a positive sign, summing up the universe we get zero.

Yes, this is what is commonly claimed. But, I'd have an easier time believing this claim if it can be demonstrated that gravitational energy can destroy matter. Why would it only be a one way process where out of nothing came gravitational energy and matter, but it cannot go the other way?

There's no reason to believe that it can't go the other way. On the contrary we have evidence that it does go the other way. This is precisely what happens when matter and antimatter meet. Moreover, every time new matter is created it is always created in matter/antimatter pairs.

Now it's important to realize here also that because matter and energy are basically the same stuff, energy too causes spacetime to warp. In other words energy generates gravity just like mass does. So energy is also paid for in terms of distorted spacetime, or gravity.

Yes, I understand this. But, spacetime is only warped locally. For the entire universe, I believe the spacetime fabric is actually flat.

If you believe that then you reject scientific knowledge. We know that precisely the opposite is true. The fabric of spacetime is anything but flat. On the contrary it's a seething sea of quantum foam where matter and antimatter particles are constantly popping into and out of existence.

And that is not flat. It only seems flat to us on a macro scale.

Plus it's definitely a two-way street. If all that stuff that is popping into existence wasn't also popping back out of existence the universe would quickly become filled with matter and antimatter. So the two-way nature of this process is clearly evident.

[instantc]

In short, the argument that anything that exists must have had a creator is a bogus argument to begin with because that argument would necessarily need to also apply to any imagined Gods that might exist. They too then must have been created by an conscious intelligent creator, and that becomes an infinite regression. It's not a solution to anything.

This is nonsense. Nobody's ever said that everything that exist must have a creator. Some say that the universe must have a creator. Whether or not the same logic applies to that supposed creator is wholly irrelevant. An explanation stands on it own merits that are not dependent on whether or not that explanation demands further explanations. Besides, for you or Richard Dawkins (I don't know any other serious academics who publicly use this "argument") to demand that the creator must then have a creator of its own is already a tacit admission that the original creator-argument stands to reason. That's why I would not recommend that approach.

As a reminder, you are yet to respond to my previous post, whereby I showed the fatal flaw in your 'invisible car analogy'.