Arguments against existence of God.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

I think it's a stretch to say anything doesn't exist unless we can demonstrate it's supposed to be within a closed system and we have absolute knowledge of everything within that system. I don't believe that pink unicorns exist, but they very well could beyond my scope of vision. If I limit it to existence within a closed room I'm in, then it becomes physically evident if I don't see at least one pink unicorn running around.

[Angrboda]

I think it's a stretch to say anything doesn't exist unless we can demonstrate it's supposed to be within a closed system and we have absolute knowledge of everything within that system.  I don't believe that pink unicorns exist, but they very well could beyond my scope of vision.  If I limit it to existence within a closed room I'm in, then it becomes physically evident if I don't see at least one pink unicorn running around.

Great. Then we grant provisional existence to every batshit thing and have to incorporate an infinite class of nonexistent things into our contingencies.

Sounds like a stealth version of Pascal's Wager, with all its itinerant flaws, not the least of which is inconsistency and an inability to act due to the sheer number of possible worlds to be contemplated.

This is simply the gambit of those who want you to take their ideas seriously, but not anybody else's. It is simply a way to smuggle a special pleading into the discussion under the guise of being reasonable.

Nobody reasons this way, and for good reason.

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't have to go searching the cosmos for a unicorn when you can demonstrate the nature of the unicorn in your room.  We know, for example, that the unicorn myth arose in the indus...much derived by glyphs in profile, and entered the western mind through the greeks not as myth or magic but as a sort of compendium of the wonderful animals living in the mysterious east.  They, in effect, took these stories and the glyphs at their word and appearance.  In doing so they also considered a number of creatures both extinct and extant interchangeably with this horned horse.  Because of the presence of this creature in the stories and records of antiquity, and it's usefulness as a thematic element in religious art, the latter stories concocted by europeans are completely outside the remit of any description of an actual animal...and whatever animal or animals the greeks may have been referring to with their own secondhand stories have absolutely nothing to do with the unicorn that does exist, in your room, in your mind.

This is why it's both pointless to go looking for a unicorn out on the heath...and why you don't need to travel to every heath to rule out the presence of a unicorn.  

More broadly, as a principle...we don't need to know everything, to know something. The idea that there is a requirement of full knowledge in some general sense for specific knowledge is both absurd, and self defeating. Consider this...you don't know everything, you haven't traveled to every heath, so how could you know that you have to travel to every heath in order to rule out the presence of x on a given heath. You don't, you can't, and absent such full knowledge -every single one- of your own knowledge statements are thus..not knowledge. You don't have full knowledge, so how could you rule out the proposition that your name isn't really your name?

[unfogged]

I think it's a stretch to say anything doesn't exist unless we can demonstrate it's supposed to be within a closed system and we have absolute knowledge of everything within that system.  I don't believe that pink unicorns exist, but they very well could beyond my scope of vision.  If I limit it to existence within a closed room I'm in, then it becomes physically evident if I don't see at least one pink unicorn running around.

It is not a stretch to say that there's no good reason for you to accept the claim that a pink unicorn exists under those circumstances.

It becomes much less of a stretch when you've looked at the results of thousands of years of people combing the globe trying to find evidence for pink unicorns and they've turned up nothing demonstrable.

Many things might exist that we are currently unable to detect but the time to believe that they exist is when we figure out how to detect them and not before.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

You don't have to go searching the cosmos for a unicorn when you can demonstrate the nature of the unicorn in your room.  We know, for example, that the unicorn myth arose in the indus...much derived by glyphs in profile, and entered the western mind through the greeks not as myth or magic but as a sort of compendium of the wonderful animals living in the mysterious east.  They, in effect, took these stories and the glyphs at their word and appearance.  In doing so they also considered a number of creatures both extinct and extant interchangeably with this horned horse.  Because of the presence of this creature in the stories and records of antiquity, and it's usefulness as a thematic element in religious art, the latter stories concocted by europeans are completely outside the remit of any description of an actual animal...and whatever animal or animals the greeks may have been referring to with their own secondhand stories have absolutely nothing to do with the unicorn that does exist, in your room, in your mind.

This is why it's both pointless to go looking for a unicorn out on the heath...and why you don't need to travel to every heath to rule out the presence of a unicorn.  

More broadly, as a principle...we don't need to know everything, to know something.  The idea that there is a requirement of full knowledge in some general sense for specific knowledge is both absurd, and self defeating.  Consider this...you don't know everything, you haven't traveled to every heath, so how could you know that you have to travel to every heath in order to rule out the presence of x on a given heath.  You don't, you can't, and absent such full knowledge -every single one- of your own knowledge statements are thus..not knowledge.  You don't have full knowledge, so how could you rule out the proposition that your name isn't really your name?

We don't know that. What we know is that you stated it was true, so we would need to confirm where you got said information and how you went from point A (the question of unicorns) to B (They were and always have been a myth).  In other words, the source(s) need validation or the information is little more than someone's take on how events played out in the past.  Some swear Bigfoot is a myth and some spend their entire life trying to track him down.  Who's right? I dunno, and I'm good with that until someone shows me a high resolution photo that hasn't been photoshopped.  Until then, it's fine just to continue to say, "I dunno."

[Angrboda]

You don't have to go searching the cosmos for a unicorn when you can demonstrate the nature of the unicorn in your room.  We know, for example, that the unicorn myth arose in the indus...much derived by glyphs in profile, and entered the western mind through the greeks not as myth or magic but as a sort of compendium of the wonderful animals living in the mysterious east.  They, in effect, took these stories and the glyphs at their word and appearance.  In doing so they also considered a number of creatures both extinct and extant interchangeably with this horned horse.  Because of the presence of this creature in the stories and records of antiquity, and it's usefulness as a thematic element in religious art, the latter stories concocted by europeans are completely outside the remit of any description of an actual animal...and whatever animal or animals the greeks may have been referring to with their own secondhand stories have absolutely nothing to do with the unicorn that does exist, in your room, in your mind.

This is why it's both pointless to go looking for a unicorn out on the heath...and why you don't need to travel to every heath to rule out the presence of a unicorn.  

More broadly, as a principle...we don't need to know everything, to know something.  The idea that there is a requirement of full knowledge in some general sense for specific knowledge is both absurd, and self defeating.  Consider this...you don't know everything, you haven't traveled to every heath, so how could you know that you have to travel to every heath in order to rule out the presence of x on a given heath.  You don't, you can't, and absent such full knowledge -every single one- of your own knowledge statements are thus..not knowledge.  You don't have full knowledge, so how could you rule out the proposition that your name isn't really your name?

We don't know that. What we know is that you stated it was true, so we would need to confirm where you got said information and how you went from point A (the question of unicorns) to B (They were and always have been a myth).  In other words, the source(s) need validation or the information is little more than someone's take on how events played out in the past.  Some swear Bigfoot is a myth and some spend their entire life trying to track him down.  Who's right? I dunno, and I'm good with that until someone shows me a high resolution photo that hasn't been photoshopped.  Until then, it's fine just to continue to say, "I dunno."

You're ignoring his point that you've eliminated the grounds for believing we know anything, thus leaving us with no rational way to decide what we should do as individuals and society. That's a problem you simply aren't grappling with by saying, "I dunno," to unicorns, because saying, "I dunno," to unicorns for the reasons you gave means saying, "I dunno," to everything, leaving us paralyzed and unable to act any way except irrationally. Is that a good thing?

[The Grand Nudger]

You don't have to go searching the cosmos for a unicorn when you can demonstrate the nature of the unicorn in your room.  We know, for example, that the unicorn myth arose in the indus...much derived by glyphs in profile, and entered the western mind through the greeks not as myth or magic but as a sort of compendium of the wonderful animals living in the mysterious east.  They, in effect, took these stories and the glyphs at their word and appearance.  In doing so they also considered a number of creatures both extinct and extant interchangeably with this horned horse.  Because of the presence of this creature in the stories and records of antiquity, and it's usefulness as a thematic element in religious art, the latter stories concocted by europeans are completely outside the remit of any description of an actual animal...and whatever animal or animals the greeks may have been referring to with their own secondhand stories have absolutely nothing to do with the unicorn that does exist, in your room, in your mind.

This is why it's both pointless to go looking for a unicorn out on the heath...and why you don't need to travel to every heath to rule out the presence of a unicorn.  

More broadly, as a principle...we don't need to know everything, to know something.  The idea that there is a requirement of full knowledge in some general sense for specific knowledge is both absurd, and self defeating.  Consider this...you don't know everything, you haven't traveled to every heath, so how could you know that you have to travel to every heath in order to rule out the presence of x on a given heath.  You don't, you can't, and absent such full knowledge -every single one- of your own knowledge statements are thus..not knowledge.  You don't have full knowledge, so how could you rule out the proposition that your name isn't really your name?

We don't know that. What we know is that you stated it was true, so we would need to confirm where you got said information and how you went from point A (the question of unicorns) to B (They were and always have been a myth).  In other words, the source(s) need validation or the information is little more than someone's take on how events played out in the past.  Some swear Bigfoot is a myth and some spend their entire life trying to track him down.  Who's right? I dunno, and I'm good with that until someone shows me a high resolution photo that hasn't been photoshopped.  Until then, it's fine just to continue to say, "I dunno."

Well, "we" do..even if you don't...but it's not really surprising that you don't know something..since you can't know anything, eh?

As for bigfoot...even if there is some undiscovered primate wandering around...there is still the separate issue of the mythical or legendary bigfoot. The greeks unicorn was, in effect..an undiscovered set of creatures (undiscovered to them, at any rate). Your unicorn, however, is the latter. The mythical or legendary thing. You aren't exactly talking about a fucking rhino..huh..but, surprise..the greeks were (among other things), lol.

Saying "what is truth, anyway, who can know...these two people are saying different things" only establishes that you..personally, are incapable of sorting fact from fiction. It doesn't establish that the two can't be sorted. You say your name is whatever your name is. I argue that it's not that. Who can know?

[Rahn127]

1. Let's call the universe the set of things that exists.
2. Anything outside that set doesn't exist.
3. A theist believes that something that doesn't exist created existence.

[Cherub786]

I'd like to know what is the evidence the universe was not created ex nihilo.

[Gwaithmir]

I'd like to know what is the evidence the universe was not created ex nihilo.

Negative Evidence Fallacy or Reversing the Burden of Proof Fallacy.