Best and worst arguments against the existence of God
Tartarus Sauce:
I think you guys are making things a little more complicated than necessary. The best argument against the existence of any deity is that all arguments proposing their existence either fail to pass empirical demonstration or are by their very nature unfalsifiable. Those are the two logical criteria that lead people to reject beliefs in almost every other matter of an assertive nature, and it's patently simple to invoke for gods as well.
Antonio the Sixth:
Quote from: Tartarus Sauce on August 05, 2022, 01:12:25 AM
I think you guys are making things a little more complicated than necessary. The best argument against the existence of any deity is that all arguments proposing their existence either fail to pass empirical demonstration or are by their very nature unfalsifiable. Those are the two logical criteria that lead people to reject beliefs in almost every other matter of an assertive nature, and it's patently simple to invoke for gods as well.
I'd say this is an extremely weak argument, actually. Falsifiability is a criterion for the validity of scientific arguments, but science is only a sliver of the realm of human inquiry. There are plenty of extremely important areas of life of which we can only speak in unfalsifiable terms. Moral, political, philosophical, even in some cases historical and cosmological arguments very often are beyond any human ability to test. If you want to go the hardcore materialist route and say all these arguments are worthless, fine, but you have to accept that for the vast majority of us, these questions matter and are worth discussing regardless of whether they can be tested in a lab or not (actually all the more so because they can't!).
afleitch:
Quote from: NUPES Enjoyer on August 05, 2022, 04:23:40 AM
Quote from: Tartarus Sauce on August 05, 2022, 01:12:25 AM
I think you guys are making things a little more complicated than necessary. The best argument against the existence of any deity is that all arguments proposing their existence either fail to pass empirical demonstration or are by their very nature unfalsifiable. Those are the two logical criteria that lead people to reject beliefs in almost every other matter of an assertive nature, and it's patently simple to invoke for gods as well.
I'd say this is an extremely weak argument, actually. Falsifiability is a criterion for the validity of scientific arguments, but science is only a sliver of the realm of human inquiry. There are plenty of extremely important areas of life of which we can only speak in unfalsifiable terms. Moral, political, philosophical, even in some cases historical and cosmological arguments very often are beyond any human ability to test. If you want to go the hardcore materialist route and say all these arguments are worthless, fine, but you have to accept that for the vast majority of us, these questions matter and are worth discussing regardless of whether they can be tested in a lab or not (actually all the more so because they can't!).
Why would the universe reflect human enquiry? Science is at least a measurable and testable 'language' of the universe. Because we can observe it, it reflects on us and we can reflect back on it. Other intelligent entities are likely to have this relationship with it too. But there's nothing to suggest that the philosophical questions we can ask of ourselves or construct and discuss with people like us have any bearing on the universe.
If humanity woke up tomorrow and had lost the basic understanding of mathematics and had no texts to refer to we would be able to figure it out again. There are times where various understandings have been effectively lost. But if humanity woke up tomorrow with no knowledge say of Christianity and no Bible or associated texts that understanding would never come back. There's no ability to 'retread' thousands of years of lost events. No way to 're engage' with concepts like the resurrection or the trinity. Or the divinity of Jesus.
We could ask the same question about god, as we do with mathematics, but unlike mathematics the universe would not give us the same answer (whatever of the current answers those who believe in god subscribe to) a second time if we 'lost' the first.
For me, that's because theres no answer. Because it's the wrong question.
Antonio the Sixth:
Quote from: afleitch on August 05, 2022, 06:01:35 AM
Quote from: NUPES Enjoyer on August 05, 2022, 04:23:40 AM
Quote from: Tartarus Sauce on August 05, 2022, 01:12:25 AM
I think you guys are making things a little more complicated than necessary. The best argument against the existence of any deity is that all arguments proposing their existence either fail to pass empirical demonstration or are by their very nature unfalsifiable. Those are the two logical criteria that lead people to reject beliefs in almost every other matter of an assertive nature, and it's patently simple to invoke for gods as well.
I'd say this is an extremely weak argument, actually. Falsifiability is a criterion for the validity of scientific arguments, but science is only a sliver of the realm of human inquiry. There are plenty of extremely important areas of life of which we can only speak in unfalsifiable terms. Moral, political, philosophical, even in some cases historical and cosmological arguments very often are beyond any human ability to test. If you want to go the hardcore materialist route and say all these arguments are worthless, fine, but you have to accept that for the vast majority of us, these questions matter and are worth discussing regardless of whether they can be tested in a lab or not (actually all the more so because they can't!).
Why would the universe reflect human enquiry? Science is at least a measurable and testable 'language' of the universe. Because we can observe it, it reflects on us and we can reflect back on it. Other intelligent entities are likely to have this relationship with it too. But there's nothing to suggest that the philosophical questions we can ask of ourselves or construct and discuss with people like us have any bearing on the universe.
If humanity woke up tomorrow and had lost the basic understanding of mathematics and had no texts to refer to we would be able to figure it out again. There are times where various understandings have been effectively lost. But if humanity woke up tomorrow with no knowledge say of Christianity and no Bible or associated texts that understanding would never come back. There's no ability to 'retread' thousands of years of lost events. No way to 're engage' with concepts like the resurrection or the trinity. Or the divinity of Jesus.
We could ask the same question about god, as we do with mathematics, but unlike mathematics the universe would not give us the same answer (whatever of the current answers those who believe in god subscribe to) a second time if we 'lost' the first.
For me, that's because theres no answer. Because it's the wrong question.
That sounds a bit more like the second argument I developed in the OP than like what I'm talking about here. I'm not saying that the relevance of metaphysics to our human lives is proof that this or that religion is true (obviously I wouldn't do that, since I'm agnostic). What I'm saying is that the relevance of metaphysics to our human lives (and all the other subjects of study I described!) shows that we cannot and must not limit ourselves to studying what the small sliver of human thought that we happen to be able to empirically test. It might well be that "the universe" (or rather, the sum of our observations of the universe - as Kant made clear, we know nothing of the universe in itself) has nothing else to tell us beyond this sliver, but that's not going to stop us from trying to figure it out anyways. No one can possibly go through their lives caring merely about empirical facts without any consideration of abstract, non-empirical concepts. The former wouldn't even make sense to us without the latter.
°Leprechaun:
The best argument that I am aware of is that the absence of evidence is evidence for absence.
This is self evident to me.
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