Honest Question to Atheists - Best Argument?

[Pyrrho]

No.  Many miracle stories are still from primitive, superstitious people, so we have no reason to believe them.  We also know about magicians, who seem to do miracles, but do not do miracles.  Stupid and ignorant people can be fooled by magicians into believing some miracle really occurred.  So whatever is beyond the observable universe (if anything) does not make the miracle stories believable.

And even if you were right about this (and you are obviously not; see previous paragraph), you would have zero justification for singling out the miracle stories of one religion rather than the miracle stories of any other religion, or those miracle stories not associated with any religion.  Are you really silly enough to believe every ridiculous story that anyone tells you?

Whatever is beyond the observable universe, we still observe regularities in the observable universe.  Any claim that violates the regularities is automatically suspect, as usually (or always) things happen in the regular way.




Even if there is something beyond the observable universe, you still don't get a personal god out of that, or anything with a consciousness.  You are just making stuff up, and have no basis for saying that any of it is real.

Your argument is essentially an argumentum ad ignorantiam.  Your argument is essentially:

    We don't know what is beyond the observable universe, therefore God is beyond the observable universe.

Your reasoning is completely fallacious.

No all we can surmise by use of related sciences is that God   cannot be ruled out. I never singled out any one God. There is but one God. That is single, and One, and all encompassing.

Here again you are going from "God cannot be ruled out" to "There is but one God. That is single, and One, and all encompassing."  You have no basis for that leap.

From the idea that God cannot be ruled out, it does not follow that there is a God at all, nor does it follow that there must be only one god, nor does it follow that it must be "all encompassing" (whatever that is supposed to mean).

You are committing the fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam.


To give you an analogy for what you are doing:  Suppose I cannot rule out the possibility of quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of a well.  From that, it does not follow that there actually are quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of the well and they are Irish.  It is essentially going from not knowing something, to making up stuff.  Doing that is irrational and unfounded.

[popsthebuilder]

No all we can surmise by use of related sciences is that God   cannot be ruled out. I never singled out any one God. There is but one God. That is single, and One, and all encompassing.

Here again you are going from "God cannot be ruled out" to "There is but one God. That is single, and One, and all encompassing."  You have no basis for that leap.

From the idea that God cannot be ruled out, it does not follow that there is a God at all, nor does it follow that there must be only one god, nor does it follow that it must be "all encompassing" (whatever that is supposed to mean).

You are committing the fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam.


To give you an analogy for what you are doing:  Suppose I cannot rule out the possibility of quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of a well.  From that, it does not follow that there actually are quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of the well and they are Irish.  It is essentially going from not knowing something, to making up stuff.  Doing that is irrational and unfounded.

Nope.

It's going off the fact that sciences best description for existence in that it is all of a similar immaterial substance.

From that substance all being of the nature that we know it to be coupled with ancient text and centered sense of self(selfless, all are one consciousness) we can easily deduce that there is indeed one creator, and two opposing forces that are very similar yet work in opposing directions.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Here again you are going from "God cannot be ruled out" to "There is but one God. That is single, and One, and all encompassing."  You have no basis for that leap.

From the idea that God cannot be ruled out, it does not follow that there is a God at all, nor does it follow that there must be only one god, nor does it follow that it must be "all encompassing" (whatever that is supposed to mean).

You are committing the fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam.


To give you an analogy for what you are doing:  Suppose I cannot rule out the possibility of quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of a well.  From that, it does not follow that there actually are quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of the well and they are Irish.  It is essentially going from not knowing something, to making up stuff.  Doing that is irrational and unfounded.

Nope.

It's going off the fact that sciences best description for existence in that it is all of a similar immaterial substance.

From that substance all being of the nature that we know it to be coupled with ancient text and centered sense of self(selfless, all are one consciousness) we can easily deduce that there is indeed one creator, and two opposing forces that are very similar yet work in opposing directions.

Just suppose there is one creator.  So what?  What's the creator's interest in one tiny speck of dirt and the people who live on it on one very tiny planet in the universe?

[robvalue]

Ancient texts are horse shit. I'm afraid it's extremely gullible to just believe supernatural claims written by primitive people.

[Pyrrho]

Here again you are going from "God cannot be ruled out" to "There is but one God. That is single, and One, and all encompassing."  You have no basis for that leap.

From the idea that God cannot be ruled out, it does not follow that there is a God at all, nor does it follow that there must be only one god, nor does it follow that it must be "all encompassing" (whatever that is supposed to mean).

You are committing the fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam.


To give you an analogy for what you are doing:  Suppose I cannot rule out the possibility of quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of a well.  From that, it does not follow that there actually are quantum leprechauns living at the bottom of the well and they are Irish.  It is essentially going from not knowing something, to making up stuff.  Doing that is irrational and unfounded.

Nope.

It's going off the fact that sciences best description for existence in that it is all of a similar immaterial substance.

From that substance all being of the nature that we know it to be coupled with ancient text and centered sense of self(selfless, all are one consciousness) we can easily deduce that there is indeed one creator, and two opposing forces that are very similar yet work in opposing directions.

No.  There is no reason to believe any particular ancient texts.  They were written by primitive savages, so there is no reason to trust them.  Additionally, there are other ancient texts that contradict your favorite ancient texts, which you inconsistently reject in favor of the ones you happen to like.  The rest of your post is gibberish.  There is zero reason to believe that there is one consciousness.  Indeed, we have good reason to believe that there are many separate consciousnesses.  Otherwise, you should know what other people are thinking.  But you don't, because other people's consciousness is separate from yours.  So you are not only reasoning fallaciously, you are coming to conclusions that we have good reason to believe are false.

[Brian37]

This is all long winded crap. Science is saying a god is not required on top of the abundance of evidence that humans make them up.

[MTL]

Has there ever been a Christian argument, or something a Christian said, that made you, for even a split second, question whether your current atheistic stance is right?

Even if the argument turned out to be completely fabricated or disprovable, did it at the very least draw you closer to believing the Bible is God's Word and all that such a belief entails?

If not, has there ever been an argument that you didn't know how to answer, or that surprised you  against your expectations?

Not looking for "All Christian arguments are idiotic" replies. This is an honest question.

SamS,

I hear the sincerity of your query,

but, as someone who was raised with Christianity and found her way, on her own, through logical thought, to Agnosticism,
my reply is not meant to be antagonistic, but nonetheless is a resounding "No".

The more I examine religion, Christianity included, the more poorly it stands up to scrutiny.

[IATIA]

Has there ever been a Christian argument, or something a Christian said, that made you, for even a split second, question whether your current atheistic stance is right?

Even if the argument turned out to be completely fabricated or disprovable, did it at the very least draw you closer to believing the Bible is God's Word and all that such a belief entails?

If not, has there ever been an argument that you didn't know how to answer, or that surprised you  against your expectations?

Not looking for "All Christian arguments are idiotic" replies. This is an honest question.

Emphatically, No.

I gave up that mythology with Santa and the Easter Bunny. Without a single shred of evidence to support the theistic stance, their arguments are nothing more or less than simply, "IMO".

[KevinM1]

To answer the OP, no, I haven't encountered a compelling argument because Christianity actually hinges on two premises:

1. That the Christian god, and everything attached to it (most notably Jesus as a divine being) existed.
2. That they warrant worship if 1 is true.

1 is easy to refute.  There's no valid evidence of the divine.  We've had many threads in this sub-forum that try to argue for the divine, some going well over 100 pages, but ultimately the 'proof' rests on the historicity of an actual Jesus (which seems to be up in the air, but let's go with it for argument's sake) and a bunch of tertiary sources that really only provide context for what certain groups of Middle Eastern people believed in at the time.  Those sources are all presented as "Here's what they believed, and here's proof that they believed it, and perhaps here's proof that some of the places/names/events existed/happened" but none of them then conclude with "therefore, their beliefs are validated."  Because they can't be.  And, let's not forget that the bible cannot be used to verify itself.

Jesus may have existed.  But his existence isn't evidence of his divinity, just like Gautama Buddha's existence isn't evidence of Nirvana.  Archaeological evidence doesn't imply the divine.

2 is a matter of ethics.  Christians seem to worship god out of a weird mix of love and fear, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny either.  The god of the OT is an asshole.  NT Jesus isn't much better since his story introduces hell.  There's also reprehensible things like Original Sin, the necessity of a blood sacrifice by proxy to clear it, and whatnot.  Christians tend to defend these bad and often contradictory things by invoking the "mysterious ways/how can you, a finite being, judge the plans of an infinite god?" appeal to ignorance, but that's hardly compelling since it's utterly irrational.  Asserting that everything you do is good does not make it so.  Nor does the threat of omnipotence.  Might doesn't make right.

Christianity's hook is based on a psychological fear of authority.  Literally the fear of a father figure.  "What if you're wrong?" is really an implied "Wait until your father gets home and sees what you've done!"  But, here's the thing: I'm not a child any longer.  Threats of punishment for not adhering to arbitrary and, frankly, silly rules aren't going to affect me.  Especially when the purported punishment is eternal, vaguely defined torture for finite 'crimes'.

So far, nothing I've encountered satisfactorily addresses the issues I have with both premises.

[robvalue]

Beautiful!