Evidence for God's nonexistence

[Autodidact]

Woowwww Guys! Seriously , do u guys really need a prove for God's existence, I mean at least I dont need any reason to believe in God, but since u guys need logic so simply just read about natural order or try to have some research over it ..................

Yeah, dude, like what is with all this logic stuff, man? Just believe, you don't need a reason. Just do it. Look at me--I believe in God, and I don't use logic at all!

 

[Autodidact]

I don't think you really get too far by framing the issue that way. I don't think people who become atheists see themselves as finding evidence for the non-existence of God; instead, I think most of them see it as evidence to support non-belief that trumps evidence in support of believing.

For example, theists often point to the wonders of nature as evidence of a god. But when I look at how plate tectonics works, and how it's a basic element of how the natural world works, I'm struck by how completely merciless the process is when earthquakes happen. One might reasonably decide that if it's a choice between 1) God's creation and 2) a natural, randomly generated process, the randomly generated process seems to make more sense when the human toll seems to happen with no evidence of concern from a benevolent creator.

Even the most "miraculous" healing is still something that's imminently possible. People who never were supposed to walk again due to paralysis sometimes find their nerves working again. But people who lose legs due to amputation never grow their legs back. Once in a while, it's reasonable to expect that a benevolent god would grow somebody's leg back. The fact that this absolutely never happens strikes me as something that an atheist could present as evidence in support of non-belief. It's not evidence that god doesn't exist, but it's evidence that it's reasobale not to believe.

I think this is an accurate statement of how atheists actually think, and come to be atheists.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Doesn't sound like my kind of guy.

:biglaugh:

 

[Penumbra]

I think there are two ways to go at this--the hard way, which is to come up with a definition for Gods in general, and the easy way, which is evidence against the existence of specific Gods. I think I'll start with the easy way:

It is easy to disprove the existence of a God who answers personal prayers or intervenes in the lives of individuals, which of course is the God most people actually believe in. That God either does not exist, or does not have this key attribute. We know this because actually answering prayers, or actually intervening in individual lives, is tangible in the real world, and can be measured. We have done so, extensively, and learned that it isn't there. God does not answer prayers in any way greater than random chance, and does not do anything in particular in the lives of individuals. God does not make his believers behave more morally, or effect any other observable change in their lives. All of God's actions are either invisible, or scheduled to happen after we are no longer around to observe them, that is, are dead.

The easy way makes more sense I think, but eventually the two paths nearly converge.

Evidence against specific god concepts:
-Various religions have had their creation myths shown to be false.
-Prayer has been demonstrated, more than once, to be statistically irrelevant. Plus I have personal experience in its irrelevancy, so that constitutes personal evidence for myself.
-Various religions from places around the world have constructed different gods. Some worldviews are completely opposite from each other, to the point where it's fairly clear that most or all of them have been imagined.
-Advancement in neuroscience has shown that personality, memories, and consciousness depend on the brain to function. Damage to the brain can result in change of personality, loss of memories, or the inability to sustain consciousness. This pushes aside the notions of some religions as to what the soul is supposed to consist of. In fact, the moment of death really isn't clear anymore, as it's a biological machine with several parts that fail on various timelines.
-Moral law of various religions has been set aside and is now considered barbaric in civilized parts of the world (genocide, slavery, blatant sexism, etc.)

As the easy way is followed, and various specific gods or specific claims about gods are debunked, the realm of activity of any potential leftover gods decreases. If this is done enough, the possibility of remaining gods becomes fairly irrelevant as they play no meaningful role or even have useful definitions to work with.

 

[TheKnight]

Well, congratulations on proving that God does not exist. To say "We cannot attribute existence to X" is the same as saying "X does not exist."

No, it's saying that we cannot attribute existence to it.

The reason we cannot is because it implies that our concept of existence exists external to God, which it does not.

This is where you go wrong. The fact that the universe changes is not evidence that it did not exist at one time. You cannot generalize from events within the universe to the universe itself. It is equally possible that the universe is eternal, and many physicists now postulate that it is.

Incorrect. If the universe were infinitely old and developing all the while then we would be infinitely advanced.

The only explanation you could come up with is that:
1. The universe is eternal and the changes are cyclical in nature.
2. The universe is eternal and we are infinitely advancing and will never reach a point where we can no longer advance. I would agree with that view. But I think it would be a matter semantics and would consider the "universe" to be God in that case.

And that thing could well be the universe. We don't know.

But see, that doesn't go against the idea of a God. All I'm saying is that whatever the first always-existing thing is, that thing is God. You're right, we don't know and cannot say that we know. The fact that we don't know is not evidence for or against its existence.

All I'm saying that logically speaking, there is an eternal thing that caused non-eternal things to be. At some point you MUST conclude that there is an eternal first cause (because we know we are temporary). For Jews that first cause is God.

However, the evidence is very strong that none of this is correct. It certainly does not in any way match up with "the thing that has always existed and caused the universe."

As soon as you start contradicting yourself, you know you're in trouble. As soon as you say we can't attribute existence to God, and then go on to do so, you know you need to go back and fix your work somewhere, because you are contradicting yourself.

There is no evidence on the matter of the first eternal cause thing's involvement. There is nothing (objective and replicable) to suggest that it is involved and there is nothing to suggest that it isn't. The only way you could say that the evidence for a non-sentient initial cause is to assume:

1. The first eternal thing isn't sentient.
2. If it were, we'd know what that would look like.
3. Even if we could know what it would look like, it wouldn't stop us from knowing.

and there is absolutely no way to know any of those things. The ultimate answer is that we do not know.

If the first eternal cause thing is not sentient or involved, then ultimately your life only has the purpose you give it. If the first eternal cause thing is sentient and involved, then presumably it gives us a purpose.

We believe that it is God and that it is both sentient and involved and that it has a purpose for us. However, even if we're wrong, then life only has the amount of purpose we give it, and that purpose (for us) is that of serving God as we perceive Him to be.

The whole argument of whether or not there is a God, to me, seems to be nothing more than a dispute over whether or not the eternal-thing-that-always-existed-before-all-of-us-non-eternal-things came along is sentient or isn't sentient.

 

[waitasec]

Such as?

your feelings are never a consideration...

 

[The Neo Nerd]

That is not an argument for Atheism. If anything it works against Atheism. The fact that almost every civilization comes up with a God concept doesn't mean that there must not be a God.

In fact, the fact that civilizations do it most likely means that somewhere in the murky middle is the truth; that there probably is some higher power that all of humanity seems to get as being there but can't put its collective finger on.

What it actually indicates is an inbuilt desire within the human psyche to explain the unexplainable. Let's face you find the same motifs popping up in religions on different sides of the earth.

-Q

 

[TheKnight]

What it actually indicates is an inbuilt desire within the human psyche to explain the unexplainable. Let's face you find the same motifs popping up in religions on different sides of the earth.

-Q

It doesn't indicate that at all. Unless we know the motivation behind civilization's creation of a God concept we cannot say it occurs for any one particular reason.

All we can say is that for some reason humans come up with God-concepts. Why do they do it? For many reasons. Unfortunately, I am not versed enough on the motivation of the founders' of various religion to be able to successfully debate the topic, and I would imagine that anyone who would claim to be well-versed in it basis his or her opinions on speculation.

If we were to look simply at what the religions say about their deities, I think it becomes clear that explaining the unexplainable was often not the reason for coming up with them because many times religious ideas of God are obviously not for the purpose of explaining things. If anything, they complicate things.

 

[Primordial Annihilator]

There are a couple of threads going on about evidence for God's existence. At some point, an uneducated theist will usually ask what is the evidence for God's non-existence, which then devolves into a usually unsuccessful effort to educate the poster about how stupid it is to shift the burden of proof for the existence of a supernatural being, which the poster will never give up, because they know it will lead to them losing the argument.

People do have evidence for their God's existence...the whole world for starters, their answered prayers, the symmetry of flower petals, the fact that Stars forge elements......I could go on.
What you are incapable of doing is emulating their perceptions of reality...you do not understand it and like so many other people resort to as your OP shows, denigration and the labelling of theists as 'uneducated'.
Uneducated with regard to the way your subjective mind works maybe.
You must understand that it is not that theists cannot offer you any evidence of their God (whatever that is), they can, and try to...the problem is the evidence you ask for to back their assertions is A Not qualified (you dont ask for any paricular type/form of evidence) and/or B Impossible to scientifically obtain..as yet.
But you cannot rule out the anecdotal of what they say they experience or feel, just because they are not scientifically validated froms of evidence...all you can do is deny that they have had anything more than a psychotic episode perhaps or some sensory hallucination or that they are simply being mendacious...
You certainly cannot rule out the philosophy as viewing the universe and everything in it a creation of a higher intelligence or power (what some might call God), because that is and remains scientifcally possible even if in your mind only remotely so.

 

[weirdpuckett]

angellous evangellous wrote:

Basically, Christianity stifles everything that it means to be human, and the will to power is the absolute freedom of the self to be free.

To be free? Whether you claim God or not ,you are still a slave to one of two masters-simply being oblivious to either does not change the truth however hidden it is from a person . . .
Even a dumb donkey knows who it's master is . . . ..

 

[waitasec]

To be free? Whether you claim God or not ,you are still a slave to one of two masters

god or myself?

simply being oblivious to either does not change the truth however hidden it is from a person . . .

and you know this, how?

Even a dumb donkey knows who it's master is . . . ..

some cannot ignore their integrity and take responsibility for their own actions?
scapegoat much?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Even a dumb donkey knows who it's master is . . . ..

True. Because a donkey is aware of the tangiable nature of its master - by whip and by voice.

But I doubt that a donkey can attempt to fulfill the command of the Delphic oracle "Know thyself."

 

[PolyHedral]

Identity is not a characteristic. It is a noun which describes a " sameness of essential or generic character in different instances" when as it pertains to various objects.

The logical proposition of identity is that iff (A=A), then A has identity. Since everything is itself, everything can be attributed "identity." If you can't make the statement that (God=God), then the concept of God is not logically coherent, and so 1) It is pointless to discuss, 2) it cannot exist in any meaningful sense.

At some point you MUST conclude that there is an eternal first cause

Only if we operate on the assumptions that effects must proceed their causes. If causality doesn't apply, and at this level there's not much reason to believe it does, then you can have a closed loop of non-eternal things that is nonetheless eternal.

 

[bhaktajan]

After all, since the damsels of Vraj forget that Krishna is God, why worry about the existence of God?

sincerely yours,
Bhaktajan

 

[ellenjanuary]

No, it's saying that we cannot attribute existence to it.

The reason we cannot is because it implies that our concept of existence exists external to God, which it does not.

I agree with TheKnight, only I word it a little differently: God does not exist for existence limits god.

Incorrect. If the universe were infinitely old and developing all the while then we would be infinitely advanced.

The only explanation you could come up with is that:
1. The universe is eternal and the changes are cyclical in nature.
2. The universe is eternal and we are infinitely advancing and will never reach a point where we can no longer advance. I would agree with that view. But I think it would be a matter semantics and would consider the "universe" to be God in that case.



But see, that doesn't go against the idea of a God. All I'm saying is that whatever the first always-existing thing is, that thing is God. You're right, we don't know and cannot say that we know. The fact that we don't know is not evidence for or against its existence.

All I'm saying that logically speaking, there is an eternal thing that caused non-eternal things to be. At some point you MUST conclude that there is an eternal first cause (because we know we are temporary). For Jews that first cause is God.


There is no evidence on the matter of the first eternal cause thing's involvement. There is nothing (objective and replicable) to suggest that it is involved and there is nothing to suggest that it isn't. The only way you could say that the evidence for a non-sentient initial cause is to assume:

1. The first eternal thing isn't sentient.
2. If it were, we'd know what that would look like.
3. Even if we could know what it would look like, it wouldn't stop us from knowing.

and there is absolutely no way to know any of those things. The ultimate answer is that we do not know.

If the first eternal cause thing is not sentient or involved, then ultimately your life only has the purpose you give it. If the first eternal cause thing is sentient and involved, then presumably it gives us a purpose.

We believe that it is God and that it is both sentient and involved and that it has a purpose for us. However, even if we're wrong, then life only has the amount of purpose we give it, and that purpose (for us) is that of serving God as we perceive Him to be.

The question of an eternal universe is still up for resolution. A definite beginning of earth and man has been resolved. The alligator is infinitely advanced at being an alligator, but we are still evolving.

The whole argument of whether or not there is a God, to me, seems to be nothing more than a dispute over whether or not the eternal-thing-that-always-existed-before-all-of-us-non-eternal-things came along is sentient or isn't sentient.

I disagree. The question of god's existence is a question of whether or not believers have the right to mess with non-believers. I mean, in the real world, I mess with non-believers; but only as far as I have the right to make conversation as long as the other party is interested. If not, I shut my hole. There is no divine mandate, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[bhaktajan]

Originally Posted by Sleekstar http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...ods-nonexistence-post2274724.html#post2274724
I don't think you really get too far by framing the issue that way. I don't think people who become atheists see themselves as finding evidence for the non-existence of God; instead, I think most of them see it as evidence to support non-belief that trumps evidence in support of believing.

For example, theists often point to the wonders of nature as evidence of a god. But when I look at how plate tectonics works, and how it's a basic element of how the natural world works, I'm struck by how completely merciless the process is when earthquakes happen. One might reasonably decide that if it's a choice between 1) God's creation and 2) a natural, randomly generated process, the randomly generated process seems to make more sense when the human toll seems to happen with no evidence of concern from a benevolent creator.

Even the most "miraculous" healing is still something that's imminently possible. People who never were supposed to walk again due to paralysis sometimes find their nerves working again. But people who lose legs due to amputation never grow their legs back. Once in a while, it's reasonable to expect that a benevolent god would grow somebody's leg back. The fact that this absolutely never happens strikes me as something that an atheist could present as evidence in support of non-belief. It's not evidence that god doesn't exist, but it's evidence that it's reasobale not to believe.

I think this is an accurate statement of how atheists actually think, and come to be atheists.

Yes Otto, I agree with you and thanks too for pointing out Sleekmeister's Post.

-jan

 

[TheKnight]

The logical proposition of identity is that iff (A=A), then A has identity. Since everything is itself, everything can be attributed "identity." If you can't make the statement that (God=God), then the concept of God is not logically coherent, and so 1) It is pointless to discuss, 2) it cannot exist in any meaningful sense.

We can say that God=God. We're just saying that we cannot say anything else about it. Obviously we can say that it=it.

Only if we operate on the assumptions that effects must proceed their causes. If causality doesn't apply, and at this level there's not much reason to believe it does, then you can have a closed loop of non-eternal things that is nonetheless eternal.

Then I suppose it would come down to whether or not things have causes. Either way, it isn't all that relevant because my point that "at some point in the chain of things before things after you must reach a thing before that is eternal" remains true.

If there were evidence that reality were nothing more than an eternal loop of non-eternal things then the eternal loop would be God.

I agree with TheKnight, only I word it a little differently: God does not exist for existence limits god.

Saying He doesn't exist is still applying your definition of existence to him.

The question of an eternal universe is still up for resolution. A definite beginning of earth and man has been resolved. The alligator is infinitely advanced at being an alligator, but we are still evolving.

1. Either way, at some point there will be an eternal something. Whatever that eternal something is, it is God.
2. How on Earth do you define infinitely advanced? I, personally, don't believe in a point at which we can become so advanced that we cannot advance further. Because from my point of view God is the asymptote towards which we grow ever closer without ever actually reaching.

I disagree. The question of god's existence is a question of whether or not believers have the right to mess with non-believers. I mean, in the real world, I mess with non-believers; but only as far as I have the right to make conversation as long as the other party is interested. If not, I shut my hole. There is no divine mandate, as far as I'm concerned.

That simply isn't true. A true discussion of God's existence is just that, a discussion of whether or not He exists.

 

[Dan4reason]

What good is what I believe if I cannot engage in a critical discussion of it??

Can I make that my quote?

You are absolutely correct. Life is all about choices. That is why we were created, to make choices. Regardless of the choice that Adam and Eve had made, life would have continued accordingly. Differently for sure, but accordingly nonetheless.

It wasn't a test because, at least I personally don't think so, God didn't care so much about the choice they made, just that they would make one. I do believe he would have preferred that they didn't eat from the tree, but I don't think He is upset that they did either.

Why would God give Adam and Eve a command when he doesn't really care what they do? What is the point with making the command? No matter how emotionally perturbed God was, he certainly was harsh so he did care. He cursed the snake, made man work, and made the woman submit to the man and have childbirth pains, and he applied the same punishment to the rest of humanity. I think he cared.

Essentially the word choice comes from the fact that certain parts of Judaism teach that all the possible translations of the words in the Torah have some bearing on the meaning of a passage. At the most basic level, the word "da'at" in Genesis means knowledge. But the most basic level isn't the only level we consider.

The reason for this is that the Torah, so we believe, is meant to be studied. Not read like a story, not understood once and then moved on from, but studied. Because of that, it has various interpretations, some contradictory, some unpopular, some unexplainable. Because it isn't supposed to be read like a history book. It is a guide for how to relate to God. And we enhance that relationship by studying it.

Initially I read Genesis and my relationship with God is basic. My view of the world is basic. I see it as a world created by God and that's about it. We messed up and reaped the consequences. But as I grow in my spiritual maturity (for lack of a better way of putting it) I read Genesis differently. I start to look deeper and thus my spiritual maturity deepens as well. Even now, I read Genesis and notice things I didn't before, realize things I didn't before, change beliefs I had before, etc.
The Torah is dynamic and meant to be lived by. It is a document that God gave, so we believe, for us to examine and apply to our lives from the moment we are capable of doing so, to our death, and even beyond.

It's not that they got it wrong, it's that they translated it at the most basic level.

I do believe that Adam and Eve had full knowledge (or as the Rambam put it better knowledge) of good and evil before they ate. Is it beneficial that they had such knowledge? Or is it beneficial that I believe that way?

As I see it, when it comes to a literal passage of events, only one word is right. Either the tree gave knowledge of good and evil or it creates confusion between these (or maybe both which is unlikely). As you said, the former explanation is the most basic and I think it should be accepted. These verses also bring some light on this confusion.

Genesis 3
22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

I think it is more reasonable to interpret this verse to mean that the tree gives humans knowledge of good and evil just like God. This verse definitely does not mean that humans now confuse good and evil just like God. If God is perfect, then seeing things in terms of good and evil IS the best way to go.

Essentially, Adam and Eve were neither mortal or immortal before they ate. They were given the choice of mortality and immortality. Neither was a punishment and neither choice was final.

I read all the way through part 4 of the Serpents of desire series, and it was great. I will however have to disagree with some of his arguments. The fact of the matter is that you are either mortal or immortal and cannot be both or anything in between.

This problem can be explained by assuming the Adam and Eve were immortal before eating the fruit. The reason God had no problem with Adam and Eve eating of the tree of life before eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that it would no have changed them at all. If you are a female and eat fruit which makes you a female, there is no change and you are still female. If you are male, then there is a change. The tree of life would not have affected Adam and Eve at all so God did not really care because they were immortal. The tree of good and evil makes a person mortal so when they did eat from it, they were changed into mortals. God didn't want them eating from the tree of life which would have reversed the punishment of mortality and make them immortal again, so he kept them from eating from it.

I suppose you could see it that way. However, I don't really look at it as moral or immoral. I will discuss morality in those terms for simplicity, but I don't ultimately believe in good and evil.

So as far as I'm concerned actions are, ultimately, neutral, and I think that they are such to God as well.

I think God would prefer that you behave morally because of your reason. You have nothing other than your reason by which to determine what is right and wrong. So why would God blame you for acting in accordance with the reason He gave you?

I don't see things in terms of good and evil either, however the bible does. I agree actions are morally neutral because morality does not exist. The only way we can see things is between pain and pleasure, and can use reason to direct the right course for us.

Assuming morality exists the difference between most people and sociopaths is that they don't have an intuition or special feeling telling them what right and wrong are. Determining what right and are, is not only rational but also emotional and intuitive. These emotions and intuitions are what many people think what the knowledge of good and evil are.

 

[Dan4reason]

angellous evangellous wrote:

To be free? Whether you claim God or not ,you are still a slave to one of two masters-simply being oblivious to either does not change the truth however hidden it is from a person . . .
Even a dumb donkey knows who it's master is . . . ..

So Christianity is a religion of slavery?

 

[Autodidact]

I just want to say that I'm enjoying our conversation, which is exactly the sort of thing I hoped to get out of RF, and your arguments are some of the most coherent and logical I've seen from a theist.

No, it's saying that we cannot attribute existence to it.

The reason we cannot is because it implies that our concept of existence exists external to God, which it does not.

Back up. Don't jump to the reason. Let's imagine we're having a very odd, stilted conversation about something that we're not sure whether it's real, like a bacteria or black hole or something, and I ask, "Can you attribute existence to it?" If you say, "Yes," aren't you just saying that it exists? Isn't attributing existence to something just the same as saying it exists? So you're sort of saying, "God exists, but we can't say so?"

Incorrect. If the universe were infinitely old and developing all the while then we would be infinitely advanced.

No, your conclusion doesn't follow. The universe is changing. That doesn't mean it's necessarily getting better and better. It's just changing all the time, and this is in fact what we observe.

The only explanation you could come up with is that:
1. The universe is eternal and the changes are cyclical in nature.

This is in fact a currently respected, if not mainstream, theory in physics. The universe is eternal and cyclical. Some call it The Big Bounce. I really don't get physics very well, but it's something about the universe expanding till it slows down and stops, when it contracts back into the singularity, when it Big Bangs again, over and over, for eternity.

That's just one of the eternal universe theories being bandied about these days.

2. The universe is eternal and we are infinitely advancing and will never reach a point where we can no longer advance. I would agree with that view. But I think it would be a matter semantics and would consider the "universe" to be God in that case.

I just don't think you can equate "change" or even "expand" with advance. What you're saying is that the sum total of all the matter/energy in the universe has always been here in one form or another, and just constantly changes and rearranges. And that looks like it might be the case.

Anyway, if universe = God, we don't need a separate word for God, do we? And it seems unlikely that the universe commanded us not to trim the edges of our beards, or to build houses without parapets, doesn't it? I don't think most people mean "the universe" when they say "God." "Blessed be the universe, which has commanded us..." "I, thy universe, am a jealous universe..." I don't think so.

But see, that doesn't go against the idea of a God. All I'm saying is that whatever the first always-existing thing is, that thing is God. You're right, we don't know and cannot say that we know. The fact that we don't know is not evidence for or against its existence.

I agree with this. Sounds like you've progressed to agnosticism.

All I'm saying that logically speaking, there is an eternal thing that caused non-eternal things to be.

Not quite. There is something that caused non-eternal things to be. It may itself have been non-eternal. It could have been a cosmic accident, we don't know.

At some point you MUST conclude that there is an eternal first cause (because we know we are temporary). For Jews that first cause is God.

Now this is the part where you don't even try for logic. Jews believe this because we're Jews. What? Because I'm born into a certain tribe, the world is a certain way, or I have to believe it's a certain way, whether it is or not?

This is a bit personal for me. I was born into the tribe of Jews, but I don't feel constrained to believe anything in particular because of that accident. The universe is as it actually is, and this is my only chance to figure out to the best of my ability what, how, and why it is, using my Jewish brain. The last thing I want to do is assume my conclusion, and cheat myself out of using evidence and logic.

There is no evidence on the matter of the first eternal cause thing's involvement. There is nothing (objective and replicable) to suggest that it is involved and there is nothing to suggest that it isn't. The only way you could say that the evidence for a non-sentient initial cause is to assume:

1. The first eternal thing isn't sentient.
2. If it were, we'd know what that would look like.
3. Even if we could know what it would look like, it wouldn't stop us from knowing.

and there is absolutely no way to know any of those things. The ultimate answer is that we do not know.

There you go--agnosticism again.

And for me, agnosticism is just the functional equivalent of atheism. What I mean is, agnosticism is more than just not knowing, it's an assertion that we cannot know. And if God, by nature, cannot be known, then to me that's the functional equivalent of non-existence. A thing that cannot be known is, for all intents and purposes in my life, a thing that functionally either doesn't exist, or may as well no exist.

If the first eternal cause thing is not sentient or involved, then ultimately your life only has the purpose you give it.

If it has a purpose at all.

If the first eternal cause thing is sentient and involved, then presumably it gives us a purpose.

Doesn't follow. If we are created, which seems extremely unlikely, it could have been for no purpose at all. We may be an accidental by-product of whatever the Creator was actually working on, the cosmic equivalent of static.

We believe that it is God and that it is both sentient and involved and that it has a purpose for us.

The fact that you believe something is not an argument in favor of it. People believe all sorts of silly things, as I'm sure you'll agree.

However, even if we're wrong, then life only has the amount of purpose we give it, and that purpose (for us) is that of serving God as we perceive Him to be.

A purpose of serving a non-existent entity, or an entity you cannot know to exist, seems like a colossal waste of your life.

The whole argument of whether or not there is a God, to me, seems to be nothing more than a dispute over whether or not the eternal-thing-that-always-existed-before-all-of-us-non-eternal-things came along is sentient or isn't sentient.

Assuming there is one, which we don't know.

Again, kudos, at least you've thought about these hard questions using evidence and logic. What I usually--well, almost always find with apologetics is:
1. Circular argument.
2. Special pleading.
3. Factual errors.

While I don't agree with your argument, I do not find it filled with these fallacies and inaccuracies, which is refreshing. I just think you assume things that we don't know.