Best and worst arguments against the existence of God (user search)
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  Best and worst arguments against the existence of God (search mode)
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Author Topic: Best and worst arguments against the existence of God  (Read 3399 times)
Skill and Chance
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« on: August 03, 2022, 07:18:50 PM »

Every thesis needs a good antithesis. We got some interesting discussions (and some... odd ones) from this thread, so let's see if we can do as well for the other side.

As I mentioned there, the strongest "argument" (again, understood fundamentally as an emotional appeal rather than a logical proof) against the existence of God is the Problem of Evil. It is an inescapable reality of the human condition that shaped all of our lives in some ways, and that few can seriously contemplate without being severely affected by. And fundamentally, all the attempts to explicitly reconcile a benevolent, omnipotent God with a world where cruelty and injustice are everywhere fall flat. The free will argument seems to work at first glance, but it only sidesteps the problem. Whether our will is free or not once created, it was nevertheless created by God in the first place, meaning that He set the parameters for how our will might express. And He gave us the capacity to experience suffering in all its infinite nuances. Honestly, the Calvinists have it right that if God is truly omnipotent and omniscient, then he must have willingly destined us for whatever fate awaits us, in both this life and the next. The other main retort is to simply assert that God knows best, and that we can't possibly hope to understand His designs and should just trust that they're for the best. That's how Job ends if I remember correctly. This, frankly, strikes me as an unacceptably authoritarian reflex. Some might be comfortable with that, but I've always believed that the powerful ought to account for their actions. With great power comes great responsibility, right? I don't see why this logic should be reversed when we get to absolute power. Besides, once again, God chose to create us with the desire to understand (if you want to argue that the desire to understand was a result of biting the apple, fine, but then he still gave Adam the willingness to bite the apple - you just can't get away with it), so why wouldn't He give us the faculty to do so? Ultimately, the best we can do here is believe that all our suffering is necessary to our moral edification in some way, and that we all will be compensated for it in the afterlife. I'm sure there are sound arguments theologians can make to the effect, but I can imagine it will ring a bit hollow to someone who's experienced a great personal strategy.

This is the best argument against the existence of God (defined as an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent creator with personal characteristics) in generic terms, but there's another argument that's very meaningful to me, because it is the one that first made me lose my faith. That is, the strongest argument against any given religion being the definite, complete truth is simply the fact that so many people around the world believe in a different one. Can I seriously believe that I, unlike the vast majority of humanity, am among the select few who Figured It Out? Even at 12, it struck me as hopelessly presumptuous. All the more so once it became clear how much one's religion is determined almost entirely by background factors. If there was a singular Truth, surely an Indian or a Chinese would be as likely to arrive to it than a European or an American? Of course, this argument can be turned against atheists just as easily - they make equally strong claims to knowing The Truth and are an even smaller minority! So tl;dr, that's how I became agnostic, and I've never been convinced to budge from that basic stance ever since. There is an alternative, of course, which is to embrace a form of ecumenism that accepts all or most religions as containing at least some kernel of truth and arguing that we're all trying to reach one single fundamental truth through different paths. This attitude can present its own pitfalls, of course, but it can't be dismissed so easily.


Now, the worst arguments. The worst of the worst has to be the sophomoric logical gotchas on the family of "can God create a rock so heavy He couldn't lift it?" These are basically the atheist's equivalent of the Ontological Argument, as both work by setting up their terms speciously such as to presuppose their own conclusion: the Ontological Argument by defining God as something that must exist, these gotchas by defining omnipotence as entailing power over oneself. Both are utterly devoid of substantive content and uninteresting even by the standards of silly logical games. If you want an answer, then the answer is obviously no: God can create a rock of whatever weight He wants, but that won't stop God from being able to lift it later if He so wishes. You'd have to be a complete imbecile to think this is a limit on His power somehow.

To take a slightly more serious argument, though (or at least one that's frequently trotted out by people who ought to know better), another one that really need to die is the idea that Modern ScienceTM somehow disproves God. Never mind that almost all the most brilliant scientists throughout history (including plenty in the past century and decades) were fervently religious and couched their research in specifically religious terms. Never mind that there are countless religious transitions that emphasize understanding the natural world as a way to better understand God. Never mind that, when it comes to the fundamental questions of our existence, all science can really do is climb up a ladder of infinite "why"s (a valuable task, but not one capable of filling existential void). Never mind that there are plenty of areas of life where ScienceTM will do nothing for you whereas religion can actually help. This obsession with pitting ScienceTM against religion is a particularly toxic product of the absurdity of religious discourse in America and other Anglo-Saxon countries that distracts from actually important and interesting debates.

I think your second paragraph, on the diversity of religions around the world and the dependence on one's family environment and local traditions is the strongest reason that would lead people to doubt any one religion is true.  As with the arguments for the existence of God, defending the validity of any specific creed is the hard part. 

I don't really agree with your 1st paragraph.  The existence of randomness or statistical processes and entropy in life isn't incompatible with God.  Those processes still had to start somehow.   If there was no sense of free will or creativity, if we were all stuck on train tracks fulfilling some Darwinian imperative as efficiently as possible, that world would be a stronger argument against God, and  for that matter against any transcendent meaning to consciousness.  The fact that we can consciously deviate from the plan vs. following a natural process in lockstep suggests the existence of the supernatural, even when that  deviation produces evil.   
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2023, 03:42:17 PM »
« Edited: January 22, 2023, 03:56:44 PM by Skill and Chance »

God is 'all knowing' is a common phrase across religion.

When an uneducated human populous pre-Roman-Persian times struggles to explain any Earthly phenomenon correctly, then religion is worthwhile because it is 'all knowing'.

That is, anything you don't understand is OK because God knows and protects against lightning, floods, geological phenomenon etc.

But in 2023, as we can now explain the Universe from the Super micro to the macro, we find that human beings have only been on the planet for 70,000 years out of 4.6Bn years.

So to have a God in human form exist before the creation of the Earth and heavens means that a human was around 5-6 Bn years ago but waited 99.99999999% of that time before placing Adam and Eve on the planet who subsequently bread intoba population who are hell bent on destroying the place.

As science develops, the role of religion as a social construct fades into obscurity.

This position was not common in ancient monotheistic religious teachings, and it has IMO done a huge disservice to the branches of Christianity and Islam who have adopted it over the past several hundred years.  Historically, these faiths were mobilizing against polytheistic religions that made every significant natural phenomenon explicitly divine and had their early base with the most educated part of the ancient population.  They were looking for moral law, not detailed explanations of why a particular weather or astronomical event occurred. 

 
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