Poll: The best argument against God, capital G.

[Revoltingest]

"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...

I don't need to disprove anyone's god.
I just answered the question & poll.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I don't need to disprove anyone's god.
I just answered the question & poll.

I'm sorry, I consistently forget to say "one doesn't need" rather than "you don't need..."

 

[Revoltingest]

I'm sorry, I consistently forget to say "one doesn't need" rather than "you don't need..."

OK.

 

[VoidCat]

I think God not listening. For me that was the final nail in the hammer for me to leave Christianity. I never had my prayers answered. Who cares what an old book says...if I don't feel a connection with that god why follow?

Other gods I felt a connection to and felt answered my prayers. So i followed them instead

 

[Heyo]

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.

It is.
A theistic god (in contrast to a deistic one) is expected to intervene in the cosmos. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence in such a case.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I suppose I had to answer no evidence, given that much of the rest didn't and don't really affect any thinking as to coming to this conclusion. I just view all such religious texts as coming from humans, and reading enough tells more about when they were written than about what they purport. And the human condition alone, and life itself, answers as to why humans have so many things to complain about - but not to some imaginary God.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

As far as I know, there are only a few, tiny anthropomorphisms. There's a pair of feet. There's God's finger. ...

... and God's hand,

and God's arm,​

and God's face,​

and God's back,​

and God's sense of smell,​

and ...​

Never mind. Apparently you are OK with "tiny anthropomorphisms" and either unaware or unconcerned about the rest.

 

[Zwing]

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.

The apparent lack of appropriate evidence is not able to validate the proposition that “God does not exist” (the antitheist position), but it is a valid premise to the proposition that “I should not believe that there is a God which does exist” (the atheist position). Do you appreciate the distinction? It should be noted as well, that since the fact of a God represents a supernatural proposition, evidence validating that proposition should be supernatural in nature, as well as being objective and able to be a shared experience, of course.

Believe me, if I were to see a great pillar of fire (or, some such phenomenon), and feel the great heat thereof, and smell the smoke of burning structures and vegetation and such, and I tapped Steve standing by me on the shoulder and said, “hey, man, you see that?”, and Steve replied, “holy $£!t, yeah!”, and the thing was then following us around for a few days in an utterly unnatural manner, then I would be the first guy to put on sackcloth and roll around in the ash pile.

 

[PureX]

None of the above.

My argument would be that the "God of Abraham" is a human depiction of a God that even the Abrahamics, themselves, said and believed was beyond human comprehension. So why are they touting this depiction of God, then?

 

[Colt]

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

Shouldn't the question be, what is the best proof against the existence of man's preconceptions of what a God is supposed to be? Because we make assumptions about what God is, about what he should be doing, about how the world should be and about how prayers should be answered.

But if the Bible is the standard for what God is and how he behaves or how he responds then yes, we will be disappointed by expectations growing out of the Biblical foundation for a deity.

* The first half of the Bible is a religious, nationalist production for consumption by the Israelite community. Drawing upon certain epochs of revelatory history the Hebrew priest class developed a comprehensive story of origins. They converted a relatively normal secular history into a miraculous fiction!

* The second half of the Bible has Jewish believers in, or followers of the Son of God incarnate as the long-expected Messiah wherein they disastrously exploited the OT prophets and false expectations in an attempt to justify their beliefs about Jesus.

My faith in God is such that none of the questions are really adequate.

* I see and have experienced evidence everywhere for God.
* Harsh because the accounts are fictional, untrue, fashioned in mans own image!
* The problem with the Bible is that some of it is true!
* God listens, rather its man who doesn't listen. Often the answer to our unenlightened, childish requests are NO!
* For not liking suffering man sure causes a lot of his own! Sadly we also suffer the consequences as a group for the missteps of our ancestors.
* Humanity needs to manage tyrants! The responsibility for self-government was given to man. Rather its God that doesn't intervein in the evolution of wisdom. When we lament "where is God?" we should be asking where is humanity?!

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The apparent lack of appropriate evidence is not able to validate the proposition that “God does not exist” (the antitheist position), but it is a valid premise to the proposition that “I should not believe that there is a God which does exist” (the atheist position). Do you appreciate the distinction? It should be noted as well, that since the fact of a God represents a supernatural proposition, evidence validating that proposition should be supernatural in nature, as well as being objective and able to be a shared experience, of course.

Believe me, if I were to see a great pillar of fire (or, some such phenomenon), and feel the great heat thereof, and smell the smoke of burning structures and vegetation and such, and I tapped Steve standing by me on the shoulder and said, “hey, man, you see that?”, and Steve replied, “holy $£!t, yeah!”, and the thing was then following us around for a few days in an utterly unnatural manner, then I would be the first guy to put on sackcloth and roll around in the ash pile.

The problem is, that is a norm and not a fact for a certain belief system. If we can agree on explore that, then we can move on to the limit of evidence and how it works in a sense and not as an absolute.

 

[Zwing]

The problem is, that is a norm and not a fact for a certain belief system. If we can agree on explore that, then we can move on to the limit of evidence and how it works in a sense and not as an absolute.

I’m not sure what your precise meaning is, perhaps you could rephrase. I do feel that my position provides a basis for a belief system (particularly for one involving skepticism) if that is your meaning. To me, “I should not believe that there is a God which has existence” is the very definition of atheism. Beyond that basic atheistic statement, one can take a number of stances: that “it is possible that a God exists for which I have no evidence” (which keeps one firmly in the camp of atheism), or “it is not possible that any God exists (which pushes one into the camp of antitheism), and others.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I’m not sure what your precise meaning is, perhaps you could rephrase. I do feel that my position provides a basis for a belief system (particularly for one involving skepticism) if that is your meaning.

The difference is that you accept evidence differently than me. You are in effect a scientific skeptic where as I am a general one.
The problem is that a lot of people claim they have knowledge, but they don't ask, how do I know than I know?
They rather state that other people don't know in the correct way without doubting how they know themselves individually.
Not that they state they know, but how they know that they know.

The everyday problem is to explain how people who don't know for a standard can in effect live in the world. How do you explain don't know, because we can observe it all around?

 

[dybmh]

... and God's hand,

That's what we are told to tell our children... Children. Are we adults?
And on Sinai, it's not a "yad" it's different word in the Hebrew. It would be good for you to check these things.

and God's arm,​

Isaiah? the author was getting desperate.
The exodus story? Was there ever a literal arm descending from the clouds like some pagan-myth?
A mighty arm... so what?

and God's face,​

The face of God's glory. And anyway a brick has a face. So not "anthro"

and God's back,​

Ummm, a brick has a back... not "anthro"

and God's sense of smell,​

Umm, God enjoyed it, doesn't mean God has nostrils.

and ...​

and what?

Never mind. Apparently you are OK with "tiny anthropomorphisms" and either unaware or unconcerned about the rest.

I might be unaware. But I think your "anthro" meter needs recalibrated. The best you've got is a "mighty arm". God can operate as something described as an an arm, a finger, feet, a face, a back, without being "anthro".

And let's pretend that God did lower itself into some physically anthro recognizable forms. Who cares?

Do you / did you have any pets? Did you ever get onto the floor and play with them? What about your children, grand-children, even your great-grand-child(ren)? When you play/played with them, do you/did you play with them on your terms as an adult? I hope not. That doesn't sound fun. Or did you lower yourself to their level and play with them on their terms?

The same thing happens anytime a person teaches anything. A good teacher brings down the information, whatever it is, to the level of the student.

Any objections to this?

 

[Zwing]

The difference is that you accept evidence differently than me. You are in effect a scientific skeptic where as I am a general one.

Curiously, I answered “lack of evidence” to @dybmh’s question above, but my evaluation of the evidence was prompted by my (emotional) suffering, which suffering was caused by my injury which itself was pursuant, in my view, to my faith in God. So, I could have answered “because of suffering”, as well.

 

[Zwing]

A good teacher brings down the information, whatever it is, to the level of the student.

Haha, I have experienced the lack of this. In their Principia, etc., Russell and Whitehead failed to “bring down” the logical bases of maths to my level of competence, with the result that you might expect! (Let’s just say, the Polish part of my ethnic ancestry was more “facially manifest” than ever.)

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Curiously, I answered “lack of evidence” to @dybmh’s question above, but my evaluation of the evidence was prompted by my (emotional) suffering, which suffering was caused by my injury which itself was pursuant, in my view, to my faith in God. So, I could have answered “because of suffering”, as well.

Well, in practice because I live in Denmark religion as a cultural and political force is absent and thus my view on religion is personally: What is all that about?
And yes, I get that it is not so for all of the world, but personally standard religion has never been a big part of my life.

 

[Zwing]

Well, in practice because I live in Denmark religion as a cultural and political force is absent and thus my view on religion is personally: What is all that about?
And yes, I get that it is not so for all of the world, but personally standard religion has never been a big part of my life.

Even though I am an atheist, I consider religion to be very important. All that religio means from a semanto-etymological perspective is “that which I evidence an abiding concern for time and again”. Religion, then, is that which we ritualize in order to express an abiding interest and concern. The ritual aspect is healthy because it adds structure and routine, and the repeated expression of care for something dear to us adds purpose to human life. I also believe, however, that our religions should be based on fundamentals which we can feel assured of…fundamentals which possess an aspect of truth, even if they are not absolutely true. This way, our sense of purpose in life can be based in truth of sorts, and we need not delude ourselves or divorce ourselves from reality.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

That's what we are told to tell our children... Children. Are we adults?
And on Sinai, it's not a "yad" it's different word in the Hebrew. It would be good for you to check these things.



Isaiah? the author was getting desperate.
The exodus story? Was there ever a literal arm descending from the clouds like some pagan-myth?
A mighty arm... so what?



The face of God's glory. And anyway a brick has a face. So not "anthro"



Ummm, a brick has a back... not "anthro"



Umm, God enjoyed it, doesn't mean God has nostrils.



and what?



I might be unaware. But I think your "anthro" meter needs recalibrated. The best you've got is a "mighty arm". God can operate as something described as an an arm, a finger, feet, a face, a back, without being "anthro".

And let's pretend that God did lower itself into some physically anthro recognizable forms. Who cares?

Do you / did you have any pets? Did you ever get onto the floor and play with them? What about your children, grand-children, even your great-grand-child(ren)? When you play/played with them, do you/did you play with them on your terms as an adult? I hope not. That doesn't sound fun. Or did you lower yourself to their level and play with them on their terms?

The same thing happens anytime a person teaches anything. A good teacher brings down the information, whatever it is, to the level of the student.

Any objections to this?

No. Clearly you did your best.

 

[Twilight Hue]

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.

For me the air/heat conditioning system was more real in church than the supposed spirits , angels, God etc that were supposedly there.