How about a communal refutation

[allthewhile]

Came across a list of a bunch of different arguments against the existence of god. Since the list is REALLY long, I thought maybe we could all take a different one, and refute them, thereby getting to all of them. It might be kinda fun. Pick one that hasn’t been refuted on this post!

Proverbs 14:15 “The Simple Believeth Every Word… but the Prudent Man Looketh Well To His Going.”

ARGUMENT FROM NON-BELIEF
1.) If the Christian God exists, he wants ALL humans to know he exists.
2.) If the Christian God exists, he knows what evidences are sufficient for ALL to know that he exists.
3.) Not ALL people believe in God.
4.) God’s evidences, thus far, are insufficient for ALL to believe.
5.) God either wants non-christians to exist or there is no Christian God. (from 2,3 and 4)
(If God wants atheists to exist… why all the threats of Hell and damnation in Christian theology?)

OMNISCIENCE-HUMAN EXPERIENCE INCOMPATIBILITY ARGUMENT
1.) Fear is a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger. (The American Heritage® Dictionary: 2000)
2.) If God exists, God cannot feel agitated, anxious or feel endangered.
3.) If God cannot know fear, he is not all-knowing.
(Some would claim that it is against God’s nature to be afraid. Exactly, then he cannot be omniscient. There are at least some things for which he is completely ignorant of. Stating that it’s against his nature is a cop-out and a concession simultaneously.)

ON GOD’S JUSTICE AND MERCY
1.) If God is “all just” then he always dispenses justice with the exact amount of severity deserved by the crime.
2.) If God is “all merciful” then he always dispenses justice with less severity than is deserved by the crime.
3.) You cannot dispense justice with less severity and exact severity at the same time. - Dan Barker

ON GOD BEING ATEMPORAL
1.) God, an atemporal being, created the Universe.
2.) Creation is a temporal processes because X cannot cause Y to come into being unless X existed temporally prior to Y.
3.) If God existed prior to the creation of the Universe he is a temporal being.
4.) Since God is atemporal, God cannot be the creator the Universe.
(This is explained and discussed more HERE.)

ON GODS JEALOUSY 1.) "God is love." 1 John 4:8. 2.) "Love is not jealous." 1 Cor 13:4 3.) "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God." Exodus 20:5. 4.) The Christian god cannot logically exist. (Basically love is NOT jealous, yet god is jealous, then God cant be love. But if god IS love he cannot be jealous. Be he is. Yahweh cannot possibly exist if he has both the attributes of love and jealousy.)

infidelguy.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=36

 

[allthewhile]

ON FREEWILL
1.) God has an unchangeable plan for everything past, present & future.
2.) Everything that occurs past, present and future will be part of God’s unchanging plan.
3.) Thoughts and actions occur and are part of God’s unchanging plan.
4.) Thoughts and actions cannot be anything other than what God has planned.
5.) Free-will doesn’t exist.

ON FAITH
1.) A prerequisite to believe in a Faith is faith.
2.) Having faith is all that is required to accept a Faith (belief) as true.
3.) All Faiths are true.
(Of course all Faiths aren`t true, but this is the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from a person that states that, "Through faith one can know God.)

FREEWILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NONEXISTENCE OF GOD
1.) The Christian God is a personal being and is omniscient.
2.) Personal beings have free will.(according to most Christians)
3.) To have freewill, a personal being must be able to make a choice.
4.) A being who knows everything can have no “state of uncertainty”. It knows its choices in advance.
5.) God has no potential to avoid its choices, and therefore has no free will.
6.) Since a being that lacks free will is not a personal being, a personal being who knows everything cannot exist.
7.) Therefore, the Christian God does not exist. - a syllogistic view of Dan Barker’s F.A.N.G

ON PRAYER
1.) Humans can’t change God’s mind for he has a divine plan and is unchangeable.
2.) Prayer doesn’t change things.
(Prayer may make you feel better emotionally, but it doesnt change Gods mind.)

ON LOVE & HELL
1.) God’s love is superlative.
2.) God’s love of man exceeds man’s love of self.
3.) Man’s love of self prohibits torture.
4.) Considering God’s greater love for us, Hell (eternal torture) is illogical. - Hank & IG

ON GOD`S LIMITATIONS
1.) God knows infallibly what will occur in the Universe before it occurs.
2.) God can’t change the future because he knows everything absolutely.
3.) God has no Free-will.
(Who’s driving?)

ON HELL
1.) God is all-knowing.
2.) Before I was born God knew I wouldn’t believe in him.
3.) I was born to go to Hell.
(Sure you may say I have a choice, but I think Ive proven already that I really dont. Im simply fulfilling the will of God by being an atheist arent I? If Im not, I shouldnt exist: For God would have known that before I was created that I wouldn`t believe in him.)

That’s the rest of the list.

 

[allthewhile]

THE MORAL-KNOWLEGDE ARGUMENT FOR ATHEISM
1.) If God exists, then he is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent.
2.) If God exists, it would be in God’s interest and within his capacity for all human beings to know his ethics perfectly.
3.) All human beings do not know God’s ethics perfectly, which is shown by their disagreeing about many moral values.
4.) Therefore: God does not exist. - Niclas Berggren
(If one disagrees with P2, why would God NOT realize this option? “We could imagine two scenarios. First, a God which shows favoritism in the sense that he reveals his ethics only to some, or in the sense that he reveals it to a higher extent to some than to others. But this would be inconsistent with our assumption of benevolence, since such favoritism would imply that God cares more about some than about others (where knowledge of God’s ethics must be considered a good, from the point of view of a benevolent God). (And in the Christian case, it is explicitly stated in Acts 10:34: “Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism’.” (NIV)) Second, we could imagine God spreading a limited knowledge of his ethics in equal proportions to all of humanity. But (i) what could possibly be the point in such a self-imposed limitation of spreading something which, from the point of view of the benevolent God, must be considered a good? and (ii) this can hardly be the case, since not all people agree normatively on any issue of ethics (and if my point (ii) is disputed, the burden of proof is on the person claiming that there is such agreement - and this has not been shown).” - Niclas Berggren

ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN
1.) God is omniscient (all knowing)
2.) God knew that before he created man that they would eat of the tree of knowledge.
3.) God placed the tree of knowledge in the Garden anyway.
4.) God wanted sin to enter the world.
(If God didn`t want sin to enter the world, why create Adam and Eve at all? He knew what would happen. Why place the forbidden trees in the Garden in the first place?)

ON THE BODY OF CHRIST
1.) God’s flesh was known as Jesus.
2.) Flesh cannot enter into Heaven.
3.) Jesus was Flesh.
4.) Jesus no longer exists.
(Many at this point will state that the spirit lives on so therefore Jesus lives. This really depends on what you believe about Jesus. Is Jesus the son of God or God in flesh? If Jesus is merely the son there is no problem. However, if Jesus “is” God himself, we do. You see, Jesus is called Jesus because of the attribute of Flesh. If Jesus = God (who is spirit) then the entity known as Jesus ceases to exist. The flesh/body of Jesus, no longer exists and the spirit of God is still the unchanging spirit of God. No Jesus at that point. The Flesh, called Jesus, is dead.)

 

[allthewhile]

EVIL IS GOOD?
1.) God is good all of the time.
2.) Everything that God creates is good. Amen?
3.) God created evil according to Isaiah 45:7. (look it up)
4.) Evil is good.

ARGUMENT FROM MORAL IGNORANCE
1.) If God exists, it is probably the case that all sentient beings whose behavior God considers morally significant have extremely good knowledge of correct moral judgments.
2.) If God exists, he considers humans’ behavior morally significant.
3.) Humans are sentient beings.
4.) If God exists, it is probably the case that humans have extremely good knowledge of correct moral judgments.
5.) Humans do not have extremely good knowledge of correct moral judgments.
6.) Probably, God does not exist.- Cole Mitchell: Adapted from Niclas Berggren’s “On the Nature of Morality”.

ON UNIVERSAL THEISM
1.) All gods are the same god.
2.) The various gods practiced by differing faiths all have different or even contradictory views of what they want for mankind.
3.) All gods are not the same God.

ARGUMENT FROM MORAL PARITY
1.) If God exists, rational theists are probably noticeably morally superior to rational atheists, on average.
2.) Rational theists are not noticeably morally superior to rational atheists, on average.
3.) Probably, God does not exist. - Paul Draper

ON SPIRITS
1.) Spirits are not physical entities.
2.) Brains are physical entities.
3.) Past experiences are stored in our physical brains, we call that, Memory…
4.) Injury can damage portions of the physical brain that store memory and can alter or erase memories completely.
5.) If human spirits exist… after death, spirits can have no memory.

[Note: Some will say the spirit stores physical memories as well, but if true, the spirit would have to be physical at least to a degree. How could a non-physical spirit store, physical memories?]

ON GOD’S IMMUTABILITY - Unchangingness
1.) If God exists, then he is immutable.
2.) If God exists, then he is the creator of the universe.
3.) An immutable being cannot at one time have an intention and then at a later time not have that intention.
4.) For any being to create anything, prior to the creation he must have had the intention to create it, but at a later time, after the creation, no longer have the intention to create it.
5.) Thus, it is impossible for an immutable being to have created anything (from 3 and 4).
6.) Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5) - Theodore M. Drange

 

[allthewhile]

Logical Arguments in Response to Really Stupid Claims

ON SATAN FOOLING US - Evidence of Evolution
1.) God is omniscient (all knowing).
2.) God knew that before Creating Satan, that Satan would trick people with fossils and other evidence for evolution.
3.) God created Satan anyway.
4.) God wants, at least some, people to be tricked into believing in the evidences for evolution.
5.) It’s logical to not believe in “divine creation”.
(This is a response to those that seriously believe Satan created fossils and that all of the sciences that support evolution are twisted by Satan. In regards to Divine Creation I am responding to the story of Adam and Eve.)

whew sorry for it being so long!

 

[Sherlock]

I’m no theologian, and so I am venturing here with great trepidation—but let me take a stab at a couple. This is going to be brief, as I’m just going off the top of my head and have not thought out these questions as thoroughly as I could—maybe later I’ll exercise the “leetle grey cells”, as Poirot would say.

Argument number one:

ARGUMENT FROM NON-BELIEF
1.) If the Christian God exists, he wants ALL humans to know he exists.
2.) If the Christian God exists, he knows what evidences are sufficient for ALL to know that he exists.
3.) Not ALL people believe in God.
4.) God’s evidences, thus far, are insufficient for ALL to believe.
5.) God either wants non-christians to exist or there is no Christian God. (from 2,3 and 4)
(If God wants atheists to exist… why all the threats of Hell and damnation in Christian theology?)

It strikes me that an obvious piece has been left out of this puzzle, namely, free will. We are free to reject the “evidence” God provides. Hell is separation from God, and we are free to go there if we so choose. It is not a wise choice, hence the warnings.

Argument number two:

OMNISCIENCE-HUMAN EXPERIENCE INCOMPATIBILITY ARGUMENT
1.) Fear is a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger. (The American Heritage® Dictionary: 2000)
2.) If God exists, God cannot feel agitated, anxious or feel endangered.
3.) If God cannot know fear, he is not all-knowing.
(Some would claim that it is against God’s nature to be afraid. Exactly, then he cannot be omniscient. There are at least some things for which he is completely ignorant of. Stating that it’s against his nature is a cop-out and a concession simultaneously.)

Since Jesus did experience anxiety prior to the Crucifixion, having a human nature as well as a divine nature, God does “know” fear and anxiety. Also, apart from that consideration, God can know fear and anxiety (know what it is), without experiencing it—good heavens, He made us and is intimately acquainted with our emotions. Duh…!

As I mentioned, those are just off the top of my head. I would be most interested in knowing the insights of the better minds here on the forum.

 

[Sherlock]

Just another quickie from scanning the list:

ON GOD’S IMMUTABILITY - Unchangingness
1.) If God exists, then he is immutable.
2.) If God exists, then he is the creator of the universe.
3.) An immutable being cannot at one time have an intention and then at a later time not have that intention.
4.) For any being to create anything, prior to the creation he must have had the intention to create it, but at a later time, after the creation, no longer have the intention to create it.
5.) Thus, it is impossible for an immutable being to have created anything (from 3 and 4).
6.) Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist (from 1, 2, and 5) - Theodore M. Drange

The key words used here are “at one time”; “prior”, “at a later time”. God is outside of time, thus this linear argument doesn’t make sense. I’ll grant that the idea of being outside of time is mind-boggling for a human, but God IS. He is at my conception, my present moment typing at the computer, and my death all at once. Ditto for the creation of the universe.

 

[captainkidd]

I’ll take a stab at these. In reverse order:

1. ON GOD’S JEALOUSY
   We have to remember that jealousy is used metaphorically of God. Strictly speaking, jealousy does not exist, since it is the privation of something good. Thus, God cannot technically be jealous. It’s a term we attribute to God to help us understand him in certain contexts.
2. ON GOD BEING ATEMPORAL
   When God created the universe, he created space and time. There was no space or time prior to creation. Thus, it makes no sense to speak of a time before creation.
3. ON GOD’S JUSTICE AND MERCY
   We believe that God is both infinitely just and infinitely merciful. How that translates into actual punishments is a mystery.
4. OMNISCIENCE-HUMAN EXPERIENCE INCOMPATIBILITY ARGUMENT
   Like jealousy, fear is not a thing in itself but the absence of a thing–in this case, courage. God cannot know something that does not exist; therefore, he cannot know fear. But this does not undermine his omniscience, since not knowing an non-existent thing is not an imperfection. The fact that we experience fear shows our limitation.
5. ARGUMENT FROM NON-BELIEF
   God wants us all to believe in him, not necessarily to know that he exists. While his existence can be proven by natural reason, he still wants us to make a leap of faith: “Blessed are those who do not see yet believe.”
6. ON HELL
   God’s knowing something does not determine it. Since there is no time in God (i.e., there is no past or future but eternal presence), his knowledge of the future is similar to our knowledge of the past. God “remembers” the future in that he knows what is going to happen, but it could happen another way.
7. ON GOD`S LIMITATIONS
   Again, God’s knowledge of the future does not determine it. We remember our past actions, but our remembrance of them does not mean that it was determined, that we had to act in that way. Similarly, God’s “remembrance” of his future acts does not mean that he cannot act in any other way.
8. ON LOVE & HELL
   In my view (and the Catholic Church has not prohibited this view), hell is not a place but a condition–the condition of being eternally separated from God. Since God is goodness itself, separation from God is evil itself–the total lack of goodness. By rejecting God, we put ourselves in hell; we do so by our own free choice.
9. ON PRAYER
   We pray not to change God’s mind but to draw ourselves closer to his will. Prayer is primarily for the pray-er and secondarily for the person or thing being prayed for. However, we can have hope that our petitions were God’s will all along.
10. FREEWILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NONEXISTENCE OF GOD
    Again, uncertainty is a privation of a good, and therefore cannot apply to God. But uncertainty is not necessary in order to have free will.

More coming in a separate post . . .

 

[captainkidd]

1. ON FAITH
   Faith is not all that is necessary to believe. The belief system also must not contradict anything that is known to be true. So if a religion tells us that 2 + 2 = 5, we ought not to believe it.
2. ON FREEWILL
   Answered in 6 and 7.
3. ON THE BODY OF CHRIST
   We first must realize that the Incarnation is a mystery; that is, we cannot hope to fully comprehend it in our lifetime. Second, we believe that flesh *can * enter heaven–both Jesus and Mary were taken up into heaven body and soul. Exactly how this flesh still exists in heaven is something we can never hope to understand.
4. ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN
   Simple: O Felix Culpa. God allowed sin to enter the world so that he could redeem us by his very blood.
5. THE MORAL-KNOWLEGDE ARGUMENT FOR ATHEISM
   God’s ethics have in fact been revealed to us all by means of the natural law, which is written on the human heart. The fact that all humans do not know these ethics perfectly is an indictment of man, not God.
6. ON GOD’S IMMUTABILITY
   Again, it makes no sense to talk of a “time” before creation.
7. ON SPIRITS
   This assumes that memory exists post-mortem in the same way that it does pre-mortem. It begs the question.
8. ARGUMENT FROM MORAL PARITY
   This is a subjective judgment, and I’m not sure what it’s supposed to prove anyway.

[Have you noticed that my answers are getting shorter? I’m getting tired.]

1. ON UNIVERSAL THEISM
   It is true that all monotheistic religions worship the same God; they just differ in what they believe God has revealed about himself.
2. ARGUMENT FROM MORAL IGNORANCE
   I would say that humans do have good knowledge of correct moral judgments; it’s just that living up to those standards is difficult given our inclination to sin.
3. EVIL IS GOOD?
   When God created the universe, he separated being from non-being. This non-being, or absence of being, is known as evil. But evil, being a privation of good, does not exist. Nothing can be created that does not exist.
4. ON SATAN FOOLING US
   This does not apply to Catholics, since we are free to believe in evolution.

 

[zange]

I don’t have the time or patience to go through the whole list.
But it seems to me that many of the arguments proceed from an assumption that the logic employed is capable of addressing the question of the Creator of the universe (and the logic as employed by a limited human being). That’s the problem. For example, “God is omniscient, but God can’t know pain” or “God wants all humans to know him”. How do we know what is in God’s mind, or what “love” means to Him or HOW he wants people to come to know him? We can talk of how we experience God’s love in our lives, but it would be arrogant in the extreme to conclude that our experience of God’s love defines the limits and possibilities of His love. Those who aren’t conscious of God’s love have even less grounds for concluding what He can or can’t do.

In short, it is not the arguments themselves that fail to prove the non-existence of God. (how could any argument, conceived and framed in the logic of a created world EVER be sufficient for defining and controlling the existence of its Creator?). Rather, it is the pride invested in the effort to reduce the question of God’s existence to our puny standards of what is possible (logically, epistemologically, ontologically) that is fatally flawed.

 

[Mike_Rainville]

:nope:
ARGUMENT FROM NON-BELIEF

1.) If the Christian God exists, he wants ALL humans to know he exists.
2.) If the Christian God exists, he knows what evidences are sufficient for ALL to know that he exists.
3.) Not ALL people believe in God.
**
4.) God’s evidences, thus far, are insufficient for ALL to believe.
**
5.) God either wants non-christians to exist or there is no Christian God. (from 2,3 and 4)
(If God wants atheists to exist… why all the threats of Hell and damnation in Christian theology?)

We would not presume one, unless we had been told, and we have.
God made man to know, love, and serve Him, in this world and the next. Faith is a gift, that depends on following the moral law. Loss of Faith can occur from disobedience to the natural moral law. Point four does not follow from one, two, and three: Man has free will to reject the evidence.
People can and do repent, from freely given graces and the prayers of the Church.

The WARNINGS of Hell are the mercy of God, and the promise of His Justice. The pains of Hell are because the slightest sin is an offense against the infinitely loving God, using the very work of His hands against Him, and if we do not accept the gift of His infinite sacrifice, the just punishment is infinite.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

2088 The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith:

Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.

Dominus Iesus (Cong. for the Doctrine of the Faith)

1. …
   In the New Testament, the universal salvific will of God is closely connected to the sole mediation of Christ: “[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:4-6).

Romans Chapter 1
…
18 (12) The wrath (13) of God (14) is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness. 19 For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; 21 for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.

 

[Mike_Rainville]

ON GOD’S JUSTICE AND MERCY

God’s Justice rightly demands infinite punishment for the smallest offence against against the infinte Good. His Mercy offers the Infinite Only Son of God for us; in effect He offers Himself in the Second Person of the Trinity, to satisfy the penalty, which we must ask by repentance, and augment by sharing in His sufferings in our life.

Mercy is not possible without justice. It reduces or eliminates the just penalty.

 

[Mike_Rainville]

:nope:ON GOD BEING ATEMPORAL

1.) God, an atemporal being, created the Universe.

2.) Creation is a temporal processes because X cannot cause Y to come into being unless X existed temporally prior to Y.
**
3.) If God existed prior to the creation of the Universe he is a temporal being.
**
4.) Since God is atemporal, God cannot be the creator the Universe.

One is true but more properly stated as “God is eternal”

Two is undoubtedly just badly written: Creation IS made up of temporal proceeses, by which prior causes produce subsequent effects.

Three is false. God is eternal. All temporal beings are semi-infinite: they have a beginning in time.

God is. He does not change. All creation is present to Him; his view of creation in time, of three dimensions of space and one of time is comparable to our limited perspective that view three dimensions in two dimensional perspective drawings.

Cause and effect means that the cause is before the effect in time. God always existed. He caused “creation” to come into being, at the first moment of time itself. The material Universe, governed by His natural laws, is constantly changing, which is how time is measured and observed. God’s view is of a fixed unchanging extension of three material dimensions over time.

Strictly speaking, ONLY Creation comes into being, by the action of the Creator, the First Cause, who clearly exists. Time is finite, because it has a beginning, God is infinite, without beginning or end.

 

[Mike_Rainville]

:nope:ON GOD`S LIMITATIONS
1.) God knows infallibly what will occur in the Universe before it occurs.
2.) God can’t change the future because he knows everything absolutely.
3.) God has no Free-will.
(Who’s driving?)

God is omniscient (all knowing), so we can accept premise one, although its wording is cast in limited human terms: God simply knows what will occur in the universe. (Adding “before it occurs” is doubtless to help guide the mind of the reader to believe, falsely, that God is limited to the same present moment that we are.)

God is pure, uncreated spirit, with no beginning or end. It may help to think of the universe is a static four dimensional entity in God’s view, but remember that all of creation is one Divine idea.

God has no need to change the future, because He already made it. He sees every cause and its effect from the beginning to the end of each life in His present. Humans are limited to a single moment in time, lived one moment after another.

Our past, present, and future are all laid out in God’s “present.”

He did not have to create our Heavenly Mother or send His only Son to die for us.