RE: My argument for atheism +
November 26, 2019 at 5:53 pm
(This post was last modified: November 26, 2019 at 5:54 pm by Belacqua.)
(November 22, 2019 at 10:22 pm)Tom Fearnley Wrote: My counter for atheism that beats all arguments for God: God doesn't have a brain or neurons - he's immaterial not made of matter or energy - so how can he think thoughts or have knowledge?
I suspect that there are a lot of Christian fundamentalists today who assume that God thinks in the way that people think. So if you're arguing against those people, what you say makes sense: it is impossible to think in the way that people think if you don't have the brains that people have.
In fact I think this is a pretty obvious argument -- so obvious that no philosopher or theologian from at least the time of Plato has asserted that God thinks in the way that people think.
Have you read Plato's Parmenides? As far as I can tell, this is the earliest written argument stating that God is absolutely simple. It says God doesn't "have" thoughts in the way that people have thoughts. It's a very difficult dialogue, and people continue to interpret it in different ways. However it has been enormously influential among people who think about God, following the Neoplatonic tradition (like that of Plotinus), and that tradition as it enters Christianity with Dionysius and Augustine. Theologians and philosophers who are not specifically Neoplatonic, as well (like Aquinas and Spinoza) also hold that God is absolutely simple, having no parts, and is absolutely impassible, having no changes or developments. So among any Christian who has studied these things, your argument that God couldn't possibly think in the way that people think would be old news -- dealt with millennia ago.
Quote:Without a brain or neurons he couldn't create a universe or create anything else.
Here again you're assuming that a God would be like a big person, and could only create in the way that a person creates. So if the sola scriptura literalists at your local church are thinking in this way, you could present your argument there. (Not that they'd listen, probably.)
Maybe you yourself picture God in this way? I think it would be common among Sunday School kids or people who just haven't bothered to study the subject.
So when you say your argument "beats all arguments" for God, that may be true, if you ignore all the arguments ever made by any well-known theologian for the last 2500 years.