What are some good checkmate arguments against religion?

[MindForgedManacle]

Two words that can be used against any and all theist arguments: Prove it.

Strictly speaking, theists can provide a logical proof of God's existence (think ontological arguments in particular). The real question should be what actually follows from those proofs, i.e if successful, do they necessarily establish God's existence?

Likewise the mystery of consciousness is the weakest point for materialistic atheism.

I have no problem in comprehending consciousness. I honestly cannot understand why people get so hung up on it, as though it is the end all.

I doubt this. Consciousness is generally considered among academics to be one of, if not the, most mysterious known phenomenon, and it's not particularly well understood by anyone.

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A few minutes googling shows that he isn't the only atheist who converted to a religion. So, in my opinion, arguments about lack of education and indoctrination should be used with caution.

Or rather, broad generalizations about that should be used with caution. Life is too nuanced to make sweeping blanket statements about all but the simplest of positions; exceptions to a rule don't necessarily invalidate the rule in a general sense.

That said, I do wonder why it is that so many of these "former atheist" stories we hear include such inaccurate portrayals of what atheism actually is. Sometimes it seems like every atheist-turned-christian we hear from was of the gnostic stripe, or rather, convinced themselves that they were after the fact to distance themselves from the more cogent atheist positions out there.

To be fair, atheists-turned-Christians stories tend to do this same sort of thing. They're generally like the following:


1) Atheist was a stupider, more gullible person as a Christian and had no good reason to be a theist.

2) They became an atheist by a rational consideration of the evidence on both sides.

3) They found the theist side to have no evidence at all and they're all either idiots or just indoctrinated morons on the topic of religion.

4) The Christian-turned-atheist's change to atheism was a result of rational skepticism, and had no emotional or non-rational component to it.


I hear this general story from fellow atheists all the time and it reeks of the same strain of bullshit as those atheist-turned-Christian stories, because it paints a picture of people and how they usually change more fundamental beliefs about the world that is very against the grain. Sure, it happens sometimes, but this sort of thing certainly does not happen nearly as often as fellow internet atheists like to pretend (especially in cases where the reasoning they present is less rationally sound than they seem to realize).