Poll: The best argument against God, capital G.

[dybmh]

If you had to choose one, and only one, argument against the God of Abraham as described in the Bible ( both Hebrew and Christian ), what would it be?

Please vote in the poll. I tried to cover all the major objections, and I'm interested to know if I missed anything.

My vote? God doesn't listen. I think that's the single best argument against God.

• No evidence? It's not really an argument against.
• Harsh / evil actions in the bible? The NT and Christian theology explains most of that stuff.
• The bible is unrealistic / fake? It doesn't bother me.
• Suffering / Starvation / Disease / Pests / Pestilence? It's a really good argument, my 2nd choice.
• No intervention against tyrants and the worst of the worst criminals. This is my 3rd choice.

Thank you in advance for your response.

...God never listens ... to what I say... and you don't get a refund ... if you over-pray...

Spoiler: lyrics

Swinging on the lifeline
Fraying bits of twine
Entangled in the remnants of the
Knot I left behind
And asking you to help me make it
Finally unwind

But God never listens to what I say
God never listens to what I say
And you don't get a refund
If you overpray

And when the line is breaking
And when I'm near the end
When all the time spent leading
I've been following instead
When all my thoughts and memories are
Left hanging by a thread

God never listens...

Stranded on this slender string
The minutes seem to last a lifetime
Dangling here between the light above
And blue below that drags me down

But God never listens to what I say
God never listens to what I say
And you don't get a refund
If you overpray

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Other. That I don't have to believe in a theistic God to have a life as such.

 

[Sand Dancer]

All of them, but I picked "no evidence."

 

[Tinker Grey]

What do you mean "against God"? Against its existence, or against the worship of this hypothetical being?

 

[Brickjectivity]

I would bring up the history of belief in God and argue that belief in God is recent. Anybody not accepting this I would consider uninterested in the facts.

 

[Erebus]

When I think of God with a capital G, I tend to think of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being. As such, I had to go with "Suffering / Starvation / Disease / Pests / Pestilence" as my main reason for not believing. I don't see how a god that possesses those three qualities can exist in the universe as it is.

Drop any of those qualities (particularly omnibenevolence) and my position becomes much more agnostic. I genuinely don't know if there's an omnipotent being out there that just doesn't care about us for example.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I chose "no evidence" because essentially, that covers most of the other choices (depending, of course, on how you define "God"). End especially if you are talking about the three-omni (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) God posited by much of Christianity. There is certainly no evidence for such a being, and even worse, there is an immense amount of evidence against, accounting for all the theodicies that Christian apologists have been groaning over for centuries.

 

[Koldo]

The lack of evidence, or more properly: The evidence we have doesn't match what would be expected.

No Garden of Eden, no flood, no Noah's Ark, no plagues, no Tower of Babel...

 

[dybmh]

What do you mean "against God"? Against its existence, or against the worship of this hypothetical being?

Against its existence as described in the bible.

 

[idea]

When I think of God with a capital G, I tend to think of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being. As such, I had to go with "Suffering / Starvation / Disease / Pests / Pestilence" as my main reason for not believing. I don't see how a god that possesses those three qualities can exist in the universe as it is.

Drop any of those qualities (particularly omnibenevolence) and my position becomes much more agnostic. I genuinely don't know if there's an omnipotent being out there that just doesn't care about us for example.

Me too. Capital G would require God to be love/light/present. When I was young I rationalized god/suffering with free will and appreciation - no up without down, more dramatic heaven if you had been through worse hell.

Having been acquainted with suffering - it doesn't bring added appreciation. It brings paranoia, mental illness, isolation, anger, detachment. In other words, you don't learn love by hate. You don't learn anything by its opposite - don't learn how to play piano by getting your fingers broken and your ear drums blown out. Don't learn to cook by working in cyanide plant. Don't learn to read growing up as refugee. You do not learn to love through abuse and hate - you learn to mistrust, be on guard, pull up walls.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Against its existence as described in the bible.

Now you tell us.

No problem; lack of evidence would likely stand as Number 1 regardless.

But, just out of curiosity, are you prepared to defend God "as described in the bible," i.e., a remarkably anthropomorphic deity?

 

[SalixIncendium]

Other...

 

[dybmh]

Now you tell us.

No problem; lack of evidence would likely stand as Number 1 regardless.

But, just out of curiosity, are you prepared to defend God "as described in the bible," i.e., a remarkably anthropomorphic deity?

As far as I know, there are only a few, tiny anthropomorphisms. There's a pair of feet. There's God's finger. There's God speaking and being heard. There's some stuff in psalms, but its poetry. Same with Isaiah. And towards the end of Isaiah the author seems to be getting desperate, which would explain the exaggerations.

Am I missing anything? Is there anything specific you would like to discuss? I can try to defend it and see what happens.

 

[Twilight Hue]

If you had to choose one, and only one, argument against the God of Abraham as described in the Bible ( both Hebrew and Christian ), what would it be?

Please vote in the poll. I tried to cover all the major objections, and I'm interested to know if I missed anything.

My vote? God doesn't listen. I think that's the single best argument against God.

• No evidence? It's not really an argument against.
• Harsh / evil actions in the bible? The NT and Christian theology explains most of that stuff.
• The bible is unrealistic / fake? It doesn't bother me.
• Suffering / Starvation / Disease / Pests / Pestilence? It's a really good argument, my 2nd choice.
• No intervention against tyrants and the worst of the worst criminals. This is my 3rd choice.

Thank you in advance for your response.

...God never listens ... to what I say... and you don't get a refund ... if you over-pray...

Spoiler: lyrics

Swinging on the lifeline
Fraying bits of twine
Entangled in the remnants of the
Knot I left behind
And asking you to help me make it
Finally unwind

But God never listens to what I say
God never listens to what I say
And you don't get a refund
If you overpray

And when the line is breaking
And when I'm near the end
When all the time spent leading
I've been following instead
When all my thoughts and memories are
Left hanging by a thread

God never listens...

Stranded on this slender string
The minutes seem to last a lifetime
Dangling here between the light above
And blue below that drags me down

But God never listens to what I say
God never listens to what I say
And you don't get a refund
If you overpray

If you can't ever produce or show what you say is there, its pretty much a sealed deal. At least in the non imaginary world.

 

[an anarchist]

Well, for me what killed my faith in the Bible was reading the Bible and deciding I didn't like Yahweh. Violent fella. So I chose the second option.

 

[vulcanlogician]

What convinced me wasn't any one argument in particular, but that (when I opened my mind and tried to give as much leeway as I possibly could for theists to convince me) I came up empty handed. I guess I could have put "no evidence"... but I think it goes further than that. There are simply no convincing arguments for God's existence that appeal to someone who doesn't already believe.

I think the landscape of arguments for theism is plagued by a bunch of arguments meant to keep theists from doubting rather than to convince a nonbeliever. That worked out well in ancient times and the middle ages, when the default was belief. But now that "nones" are growing across the world, I think the religious folks are beginning to realize how useless their old arguments are.

 

[Revoltingest]

God is a particular god, as defined by the Bible.
The book gets many things wrong, therefore
that god (ie, "God), doesn't exist.
Of course, this doesn't disprove the existence
of other gods.

 

[dybmh]

I would bring up the history of belief in God and argue that belief in God is recent. Anybody not accepting this I would consider uninterested in the facts.

Thank you, that's a new perspective I had not considered.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

God is a particular god, as defined by the Bible.
The book gets many things wrong, therefore
that god (ie, "God), doesn't exist.
Of course, this doesn't disprove the existence
of other gods.

"Of course, this doesn't disprove the existence
of other gods."

Yes, that's true. So all you need do is provide a thorough description of any other god, and we can then consider the likelihood of their existence.

I suspect we'll generally come to the same conclusion...

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

"Of course, this doesn't disprove the existence
of other gods."

Yes, that's true. So all you need do is provide a thorough description of any other god, and we can then consider the likelihood of their existence.

I suspect we'll generally come to the same conclusion...

Of course, we could always define a god that:

a) exists
b) doesn't do anything
c) can't be detected

but then, even though we could not prove the non-existence of such a marvel, why would we give a rat's tiny hiney about it?