The atheists best argument?

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t doubt that that is your opinion and the opinion of millions of Christians. However, there are millions of people (Jews) who believe that Moses was greater than Jesus. And there are millions of people (Hindus) who believe that Krishna was greater than Moses and greater than Jesus.

Moses never claimed to be God. He never pretended to be anything but a human being

Jesus did claim to be God by his acts, words and fulfillment of Jewish prophecies.

That alone makes Jesus, on its face, infinitely greater than Moses, no matter what millions of people (Jews) believe.

What millions of people (Hindus) say about Krishna is neither here nor there. What is required is some documented support for the life of Krishna and a direct verifiable claim by him to be God. Otherwise, any claim about Krishna vis a vis Jesus, is merely conjecture.

 

[Tomdstone]

Moses never claimed to be God. He never pretended to be anything but a human being

Jesus did claim to be God by his acts, words and fulfillment of Jewish prophecies.

That alone makes Jesus, on its face, infinitely greater than Moses, no matter what millions of people (Jews) believe.

What millions of people (Hindus) say about Krishna is neither here nor there. What is required is some documented support for the life of Krishna and a direct verifiable claim by him to be God. Otherwise, any claim about Krishna vis a vis Jesus, is merely conjecture.

There is no doubt that Roman Catholics claim that millions of Jews and Hindus are wrong and that Jesus is greater than Moses and Krishna. But the Jews and the Hindus disagree. Further, the Jehovah’s Witnesses say that Jesus did not claim to be Jehovah God and millions of Jews say that Jesus did not fulfill any of their prophecies. The Roman Catholic Pope has shaken the hand of Hindus and Jews, which some claim is an indication that he respects their beliefs.
See:
Pope Francis: A Photographic Portrait of the People’s Pope
By Father Michael Collins
The question was whether there was any other ancient moral teacher better than Jesus?
There answer is that there are going to be some who say yes and others who say no.
There is no universal agreement on the answer.
Jews have high regard for Moses.
Buddhists have high regard for Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha
Hindus have high regard for Krishna and the various other incarnations of Vishnu such as Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, etc.
Followers of Confucius have high regard for Confucius.
Each group regards their particular leader as better.
This contrasts sharply with other questions such as whether or not the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal in Euclidean geometry. Everyone agrees that the answer is yes. There is universal agreement on the answer to this question.
I don;t see the same universal agreement on who was the best moral teacher.

 

[inocente]

I didn’t attribute it to you.

Your first quote in post #142 has my name on it but I never said it. Please don’t attribute to me things I never said.

I am certainly not justifying child abuse but explaining why I believe God permits it. I believe God is a loving Father who intervenes very often to prevent such atrocities but, as I have pointed out, if He prevented every atrocity it would defeat the purpose of giving us free will.

If God intervenes sometimes then there is no moral excuse for God not intervening always. You cannot claim that God is the source of morality and then claim God stops some abusers but allows others free rein to abuse victims. If we sometimes turned a blind eye to child abusers then we would be immoral, so by the same token if God sometimes turned a blind eye to child abusers then God would be immoral.

It would be a far greater evil not to create anyone with free will simply because a minority will abuse it because then we would all be incapable of the highest form of love.

Both the abuser and his victim have free will. The pervert violates the child’s free will. Any normal person would prevent that by intervening to instead violate the pervert’s free will. It is nonsensical to claim that the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God wouldn’t do the same. Someone’s free will is going to be violated, better God violates the abuser’s than the abuser violates the child’s.

To successfully answer the Problem of Evil you will need much better arguments than these.

 

[o_mlly]

Moses
Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha
Confucius
Sage Vyasa
Maharishi Valmiki
Bharadwaja rishi
Shri Brahmarshi Vishwamitra
Sukadeva Gosvami
Rishi Agasthya
Thirumoolar
Cleobulus of Lindos:
Solon of Athens
Hippias
Alcidamas
Callicles
Socrates
Maximus of Tyre

The least these others could do is raise themselves from the dead.

 

[Wesrock]

The argument from absence seems to be the strongest one for me, and that’s only saying no God seems more probable than God, so it makes more sense to believe there is no God than there is God.

That said, I see God in action in all things in existence, but I know not everyone follows this line of thinking.

 

[Peter_Plato]

There is no doubt that Roman Catholics claim that millions of Jews and Hindus are wrong and that Jesus is greater than Moses and Krishna. But the Jews and the Hindus disagree. Further, the Jehovah’s Witnesses say that Jesus did not claim to be Jehovah God and millions of Jews say that Jesus did not fulfill any of their prophecies. The Roman Catholic Pope has shaken the hand of Hindus and Jews, which some claim is an indication that he respects their beliefs.
See:
Pope Francis: A Photographic Portrait of the People’s Pope
By Father Michael Collins
The question was whether there was any other ancient moral teacher better than Jesus?
There answer is that there are going to be some who say yes and others who say no.
There is no universal agreement on the answer.
Jews have high regard for Moses.
Buddhists have high regard for Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha
Hindus have high regard for Krishna and the various other incarnations of Vishnu such as Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha, Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, etc.
Followers of Confucius have high regard for Confucius.
Each group regards their particular leader as better.
This contrasts sharply with other questions such as whether or not the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal in Euclidean geometry. Everyone agrees that the answer is yes. There is universal agreement on the answer to this question.
I don;t see the same universal agreement on who was the best moral teacher.

The “universal agreement” of humans with regard to the question of whether one human being is God or not is simply the wrong method of determining the answer. Human beings have no clue as to the answer. Jesus made that point to Peter when he said, “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, only the Father in Heaven.” Jesus alone is the compelling argument for his divinity. The “universal agreement” of humans who on our own don’t and can’t reliably know the answer to the question is a useless method for getting a reliable answer.

You are barking up the wrong tree. It would be like using the universal agreement of dogs with regard to which theory of quantum physics is the correct one.

 

[Peter_Plato]

If God intervenes sometimes then there is no moral excuse for God not intervening always.

You would have to be God to know whether this claim is true or not. Since you aren’t God, I don’t find it very compelling. It amounts to you expressing your uninformed opinion. That is all.

 

[Tomdstone]

The least these others could do is raise themselves from the dead.

According to Hindu belief, Krishna is an Avatar of Vishnu. So he descended, but did not die like a mortal does. So there is no question of his resurrection.

 

[Tomdstone]

The “universal agreement” of humans with regard to the question of whether one human being is God or not is simply the wrong method of determining the answer. Human beings have no clue as to the answer. Jesus made that point to Peter when he said, “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, only the Father in Heaven.” Jesus alone is the compelling argument for his divinity. The “universal agreement” of humans who on our own don’t and can’t reliably know the answer to the question is a useless method for getting a reliable answer.

Many early Christians were Arians as are some Christians today.
arian-catholic.org/

 

[inocente]

You would have to be God to know whether this claim is true or not. Since you aren’t God, I don’t find it very compelling. It amounts to you expressing your uninformed opinion. That is all.

Then I take it you agree with Tony that God “intervenes very often to prevent such atrocities” [child abuse]. So unless you’re expressing an uninformed opinion, you must have evidence that God “intervenes very often”. Please let’s see it.

And if you agree with Tony, then God very often intervenes but sometimes doesn’t. Why does God sometimes not intervene? Is being raped good for some children? Does the occasional child abuse make the world a better place? Or is it a big mystery? In your informed opinion.

 

[tonyrey]

I’d say most atheists are agnostic…and vice versa. The definitions are blurry.
We don’t believe gods exist, but cannot prove it and are open-minded enough to change our belief if proper evidence is presented. Dawkins and Hitchens say this all the time.
Theists, I often find, are not as open to change their beliefs if presented with evidence to the contrary.

The reason is that most atheists are materialists and don’t have spiritual values. It’s certainly not open-minded to restrict evidence to what you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. To regard persons as products of impersonal events is in my view the height of folly and no one will ever change my belief in that respect, not because I’m dogmatic but because it’s absurd!

Many who visit here may have gone from Christianity to atheism…but still, in my experience, the atheist is more open to new information and flexibility re their beliefs than the theist.
I was talking about my own experience here, as I stated.

I think that polls/studies are showing that Christianity is on the decline, so that may be why the theist-turned-atheists you find here were once Christian rather than another religion.

Also, in my experience, I was a theist when I joined this forum. The discussions here were a big part of the reason why I became an atheist.

You say “many of the atheists who have visited this forum…”
I’ve been on here for five years now and have barely come across maybe 10 atheists. There have been many more?

Unless you read these posts every day you are bound to miss many who ask or answer questions and disappear within a few days or weeks. There are also many questions. Today for example there are thirty in the Philosophy section alone. Those you come across are probably the regulars…

So…tonyrey…for argument’s sake; if we had proof tomorrow that there was no bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth…*what would you think and believe? *

How could there be proof there was no bodily resurrection? Jesus appeared with a glorified, spiritual body which appeared and disappeared. How could it be proved all the Apostles and disciples were hallucinated? Do you believe Jesus didn’t exist? If so where did His teaching come from?

Why has Dawkins admitted His teaching was ahead of His time? Why has His Church survived for more than two thousand years? What is the origin of His teaching that God is a loving Father and why is it the only rational basis of the principles of liberty, equality and - above all - fraternity? Do you live according to Christian principles? If not why not? Do you believe all the reports of miraculous cures in answer to prayer are false?

If you can answer these questions convincingly I am quite prepared to become an agnostic.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I don’t doubt that that is your opinion and the opinion of millions of Christians. However, there are millions of people (Jews) who believe that Moses was greater than Jesus. And there are millions of people (Hindus) who believe that Krishna was greater than Moses and greater than Jesus.

Do you think Moses was greater than Jesus? Why? Be specific.

Do you believe that Krishna was greater than Jesus? Why? Be specific.

Judaism, other than its influence on the rise of Christianity, has continued to have a very limited following. It has not followed the urging of Jesus to go out and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. If the truth is for everyone, the very name of “Catholic” means “universal.”

 

[tonyrey]

Again, this is your opinion and your welcome to it, of course.

But when I see people help the sick and poor, donate their money to helpful causes, help a friend or family member in need, give love and care to children, and live lives of honesty and generosity among their fellow human beings…and they happen to be atheists…it doesn’t seem negative and empty to me.

That is because they are living according to moral and spiritual values and principles which are intangible and beyond the scope of science - which is restricted to physical causes and cannot give reasons for what we should do. It tells us nothing about the nature of truth, goodness, freedom, justice and love…

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The argument from absence seems to be the strongest one for me, and that’s only saying no God seems more probable than God, so it makes more sense to believe there is no God than there is God.

The argument from absence proves nothing. So far as we know, extra-terrestrials are absent from this planet. Does it follow its probable they do not exist?

Also, how does one define presence. Certainly an atheist cannot see God in the empirical sense. But then God is not a material being, so why would he expect to? A materialist cannot say spiritual beings don’t exist because he cannot see them . It is in their very nature not be physically seen.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The argument from absence proves nothing. So far as we know, extra-terrestrials are absent from this planet. Does it follow its probable they do not exist?

Also, how does one define presence. Certainly an atheist cannot see God in the empirical sense. But then God is not a material being, so why would he expect to? A materialist cannot say spiritual beings don’t exist because he cannot see them . It is in their very nature not be physically seen.

But now you’re mixing things up. We have no reason to expect that aliens would care about or talk to us. But most accounts of God would require him to care about us and want us to do and know certain things. God’s absence constitutes a violation of that expectation, and therefore is evidence against God.

I don’t think the argument from absence works against all possible conceptions of God, but I do think it can be effectively deployed against most popular conceptions of God.

 

[Wesrock]

The argument from absence proves nothing. So far as we know, extra-terrestrials are absent from this planet. Does it follow its probable they do not exist?

Also, how does one define presence. Certainly an atheist cannot see God in the empirical sense. But then God is not a material being, so why would he expect to? A materialist cannot say spiritual beings don’t exist because he cannot see them . It is in their very nature not be physically seen.

You’re right that it proves nothing. Someone who used this argument would have to believe atheism is the more probable reality and believe it logically follows that they should believe what is more probable. But it’s not definitive proof.

I disagree with the argument from absence for my own reasons. I’m just stating that I think it’s the best argument there is for atheism. Objections based on the problem of evil, denial of PSR, denial of non-contradiction, etc… strike me as faulty and unconvincing.

 

[Wesrock]

The point made earlier about objective morality having no existence without God is pretty sound. It has nothing to do with punishment and reward or incentives to do good, or whether a person can recognize good (which from a theist’s pov, objectively exists) and act on it without first believing in God. It’s just whether or not goodness and morality is an inherent part of being (that is, inherent in something’s existence), and atheists have put a lot of effort into denying such non-material “causes” for existence being inherent in nature. Once you admit them back into your model of reality you’re back on track towards theism anyway.

Certainly people can have subjective morality, still, but no moral evil is actually real, objective evil. Same for good. It becomes nothing more than a social construct, but it’s ultimately meaningless in and of itself. Someone who acts contrary to it is not doing anything actually wrong.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

How does STEM, and “prior” to that nothing (even in the weird Kraussian sense,) endow meaning, significance or value?

Unless I’m mistaken, we weren’t talking about the “endowment” case, but rather the “it’s inherent to existence” case.

Explain why or how the “existence itself” position might be available to atheists in the sense of underwriting a moral world. You provide the rationale and I will be happy to listen.

It is not sufficient to ask, “Why isn’t…?”

Sure. So the position is this:
It is the “natural” state of affairs for this universe to exist, with morality/significance as an inherent part of its existence.

What do I mean by “natural?” Specifically, I mean “what we get in the absence of overriding external cause.”

Now, you might argue that this is too close to being a brute fact. You might instead assert that in the absence of overriding external causes, nothing would exist. But if my assertion that the natural state of affairs is X constitutes a brute fact, then so does your assertion that the natural state of affairs is Y.

Here X = “a universe with significance exists” and Y = “Nothing exists”

Because God is not “an individual” being in any sense of the word. God is Being or Existence Itself from which all “things” (AKA individual beings) that exist get their substantial existence. Classic Theism 101.

It seems very likely to me that you are equivocating on “individual.” When we were talking about individuals earlier, I understood it to mean “a rational, conscious, entity, acting independently from a group.” The fact that God is other things aside from that is irrelevant. Are you denying that God is rational or conscious? Or are you denying that it is possible for God to act independently of his creation?

Or, put another way, the theistic view assumes you cannot get more in the effect than exists in the cause. Ergo, whatever exists in the universe (including morality) has to exist in source form in Existence Itself.

But that’s irrelevant, isn’t it? Even if you CAN get more in the effect, morality could still “exist in source form in Existence Itself.” That is, denying the theistic view does not make that view of morality unavailable to an atheist.

 

[Tomdstone]

Do you think Moses was greater than Jesus? Why?

The original question was whether or not there were any other ancient moral teachers better than Jesus. As I already indicated above, I don’t think that you are going to find agreement on the answer,. It would probably take a couple of books and a lot of study to understand why Jews or why Hindus or etc. believe what they do and then a couple of more books to give a counterargument and still, even after that, you will have disagreement. This is unlike the situation in Euclidean geometry where the Pythagorean theorem can be proven conclusively. Similarly with the arguments for and against atheism. At the end of the day, you are still going to have the discussion with some people arguing for and others arguing against. I doubt that you will have agreement on this issue one hundred years from now.

 

[o_mlly]

You *seriously *know atheists who have personally told you this?
I’m not sure how you are defining “evil” but most of the atheists I know work hard to create a peaceful, loving, fair world.

And what most atheists say to you when the world is not peaceful, loving and fair?