A good case against God

[Tempus]

---

I'm not sure whether you understood the first sentence of my reply. It wasn't intended as an argument; it was, as you correctly identified, a statement.

---

In this thread, I am looking for a case against God. Cases require evidence and argument.

Right. I don't think you're going to find one.

---

You're right. If there were no good arguments (or any arguments at all) it wouldn't follow that there are no gods, since arguments don't affect reality. It would follow, however, that there's no good reasons to believe there are gods. Just because there's no good reason to believe X it doesn't mean that X isn't true. Observing this fact doesn't strengthen a case for gods any more than it does for a tooth fairy.

---

It doesn't follow that if we have no good arguments for God, (which I have not accepted) then there is no good reason to believe God exists. There are no good non-circular arguments for the fact that there is a past or that the external world is real.

Re-reading the part of my post quoted here, I should've written "It would follow, however, that there's no good reasons to believe there are gods." as "However, it would follow that, given no evidence or good argumentation, there's no good reasons to believe there are gods." So yes, what I wrote there was wrong and I would agree with your first point here.

---

By the way, the Kalam and moral arguments suck, frankly. The former is like a child took a five minute crash course in philosophy and came up with it.

---

Then why are they debated in professional philosophical journals by world class philosophers, some of them atheists, who take them seriously?

Because WLC (used as a specific example since he's a proponent of Kalam) is a shit philosopher. He makes big, unjustified jumps in logic, similar to the ones you make which I examine below. Your response would be akin to asking "why do some colleges / universities teach homeopathy, creationism or astrology if they're not valid?". The reason they teach that nonsense is because they're shit colleges or universities. You can tell they're wrong by doing studies and inferring from known facts that neither homeopathy, creationism or astrology work / make accurate predictions. Similarly, with the Kalam or moral argument all you need to have is a good grasp on logic to see why those arguments suck. Having a prestigious title like "University of X" or "Doctor X", or being very popular does not lend credence to them or their claims.

---

Can anyone give me a good case against the existence of Goblins that can stand up to scrutiny?

---

Half of humanity believes that there is a God…

Appeal to popular opinion. Besides, it's currently much more than half last I checked.

and this has included such brilliant minds as Charles Darwin (a deist), Aristotle, William of Occham, Einstein, etc

Appeal to authority. Also, you're conflating a lot of different beliefs / equivocating... Darwin's beliefs changed over the course of his life from Christian, to a sort of deist, then to what he called "agnostic". Einstein, to my understanding, was never a theist or a deist. He believed in Spinoza's god, which has nothing to do with some intelligent deity beginning the universe.

1. Darwin and Einstein would not seriously believe a children's fable is true
2. Darwin and Einstein seriously believed God existed
3. Therefore God is not a children's fable

Please don't interpret this as me being rude, but you have an abysmal understanding of how logic works. Firstly, the conclusion doesn't follow the premises, making it a non-sequitur; you'd need to add an additional premise, something like "Darwin and Einstein can't be wrong", for example. Darwin and Einstein could simply be mistaken; after all, they've both been wrong before. Secondly, the premises themselves aren't known to be true - how do we know #1? And #2, as I highlighted above, is flat-out wrong. Thirdly, the whole argument is an appeal to authority. The argument is both invalid and unsound.