Best and worst arguments against the existence of God

[afleitch]

Just my thoughts on the above.

If 'god' is the right question to ask of the universe (and there's no steadfast reason to think that it is) then the 'answer' isn't anything remotely close to most historical understandings of god.

If god exists, then that doesn't mean that it has to matter if god exists or not, or can ever be found
unless god has to have a material effect on any part of the universe, that it established or oversees outside of what the universe already does.

One of the universe 'happenings' is the conditions in which we are all here. As Antonio says, we are here and able to do what we do because of those conditions. We don't have a truly 'free' will because we are bound by that. What we do is set within those parameters as a species. Within our species there are different parameters for each of us. For example, a neurodivergent person cannot experience or assess the world (which may include postulating 'god') in the manner in which a neurotypical person can.

As far as the universe is concerned everything we do is amoral. We may personally or collectively sort things and events along good/moral lines, but the only acts 'immoral' to the universe are acts that the universe doesn't allow us to do (like levitate, transform into a gas giant, or become a housecat)

For god to be anything close to an Abrahamic god, what we do has to 'matter' which results in consequence. And the effect of that 'mattering' is our actions either influencing decisions and outcomes here (which undoubtedly they do, just as a product of engaging with our environment) or in another place, which has to be proposed, where we can be judged on them. And what 'matters' to this universal god has to specifically be what matters to us if you want to argue for any universal system of ethics and much else that underpins this world view.

There are living things that devour their mate after sex. That is what those things 'do'; the universe set conditions in which this happens so we cannot ethically judge the rights and wrongs of this so we have to assume that the universe/god doesn't do so either. So why would the universe/god judge us? We're all acting inside the boundaries of how we are allowed to act. Unless somehow we matter more to the universe/god which is special pleading, or the universe/god also has a special place to sort good living things from bad living things based on how many bites they take to finish the job or some other moral and ethical framework.

[afleitch]

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.