When Atheists Can't Think Episode 1: No Evidence for God?

[The Grand Nudger]

You get your head checked.

On a more serious note, I don't expect any self-proclaimed atheists to find it compelling. Atheism is fundamentally an emotional position, not a rational position. You might have no rational criticism of any of the arguments, or even understand them.

But you just don't FEEL good about believing in the existence of God. 

So I'm not surprised. If you really want to figure out what's next, it would be to lay your feelings aside, think like a rational person, and figure out if there are problems with the argument.

And it would also help to get over your irrational feelings. But that's a long shot.

That wasn't any more compelling than the link...I still don't believe.   Next?

[Bard A Madsen]

I like intelligent, stimulating discussion. Hence I'm hardly ever here.

Could you lay out more clearly how you conclude the 1:99 ratio?

I thought you were one of those mensa types, if I have to explain stuff already we're never going to rise up to your expectations.  You know, where God promises no barren wombs or sickness to show his love or his love for us so he won't capriciously kill us at this moment verses down right anger, damnation, fire from the sky, and death kind of thing...  Surely you know more than I, as you have stated.  I suppose I have to tell you where the flood parts are...  I just happen to notice in my research that the love part that everyone thinks is in the texts isn't there and mostly death and destruction.  So, that was the question just in case you got lost.  Tell me where all the love parts are, don't worry there isn't much.  The 99% part is easy and don't forget no blanket existence and making the universe just for us stuff as a consideration of his love.  I want to hear the real stuff like what most humans understand as acts of love.

[drfuzzy]

---

 I like that she brought the list of arguments, as if they were new, and as if our unwillingness to go through and re-refute old arguments would mean we possess a lack of capacity to do so. Further, it is the machine-gun tactic, like the "Gish Gallop"; you fire a giant list of things at your opponent, too much to readily digest in a forum of this sort, then declare victory when the opponent shows an unwillingness to try to swallow your drivel in a single bite, writing the necessary dissertation to show why it is bunk (or else plagiarize arguments against them that have long since been made).

Most of the errors in the arguments were, however, pointed out as question-begging, defining your God into existence by assuming certain characteristics must be true without basis to do so.

Others are mere "wowie" arguments, such as the complexity and natural numbers arguments.

"A circle's diameter is always related to its diameter by a fixed number... therefore God."

"The universe formed as it did because these forces interact at a given strength... therefore God."

"Gosh, this or that thingey is just too complex for me to grasp how it works/exists...therefore God."

You might as well say, "Blue and yellow together look like purple to our eyes... therefore God." (How else would we have tulips, I guess?)

I mean, for fuck's sake, the first argument literally boils down to "Some things exist whether we think of them or not, therefore God thinks of them to make them exist." Fuckin' really!?!

As if a rock cares if my eyes/brain ever notice what frequencies of light are absorbed or reflected from its surface, to make it "grey" colored. (And as if it's okay to presuppose that a thing must be thought of by a living intellect before it can be considered true even in the abstract, as we imagine this particular rock that no one has encountered on the surface of the moon, say, but can say for the sake of argument that it is both unnoticed and yet would be truly grey if so. And as if it's okay to suppose that this rock can only be grey in the mind of God, in order for it truly to be grey. It just spins greyly on through the universe, not noticing its lack of notice, being just a damned rock that is emitting frequencies that would be seen as truly grey if ever it was looked upon by human eyes.)

Having seen such a terrible argument, I was loath to do more than scan the rest of it, and I saw nothing that looked much better... I couldn't hit Page Down without seeing a presupposition or false conclusion. I certainly hope that's not the best your apologists can do, lady.

I just stopped randomly to try one of them... and I get the "argument from colors and flavors" and "the argument from love", both things that are reasonably well-understood from a biological point of view, and don't even constitute arguments for God at all, except in the laziest, most intellectually-devoid sense of the term: "I don't know how this works biologically, and I guess no one else does either...so, must be God".  

---

And you have the audacity to insult us over our intelligence? That drivel wouldn't pass a freshman philosophy course. Even I can see ways to clean up some of those arguments, and they still would fail the "provides actual evidence of God" test.

Go home, Christian Apologetics, you're drunk.

Yep.  That TWO DOZEN (OR SO) THEISTIC ARGUMENTS article should really be used to teach basic logic fallacies 101.  In fact, I think I'll show it to a Philosophy Professor friend - he might have fun using it for an assignment.

[Longhorn]

Sorry if you have talked about this before, but may I ask what is the evidence you are speaking of? Just curious.

There's a lot to say about the evidence, and how it's supposed to sit with Christian theism.

But here's a taste: https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosop...uments.pdf

Those are arguments. I can make arguments for the existence of Bigfoot, or the tooth fairy. It doesn't make them exist. You can't reason something into existence.

[KevinM1]

There's a lot to say about the evidence, and how it's supposed to sit with Christian theism.

But here's a taste: https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosop...uments.pdf

Those are arguments. I can make arguments for the existence of Bigfoot, or the tooth fairy. It doesn't make them exist. You can't reason something into existence.

Especially when several/many of the arguments start out with "With what we know about what I'm trying to prove...."

[Longhorn]

I didn't find the link you gave compelling, I still don't believe.  What's next?

You get your head checked.

On a more serious note, I don't expect any self-proclaimed atheists to find it compelling. Atheism is fundamentally an emotional position, not a rational position. You might have no rational criticism of any of the arguments, or even understand them.

But you just don't FEEL good about believing in the existence of God. 

So I'm not surprised. If you really want to figure out what's next, it would be to lay your feelings aside, think like a rational person, and figure out if there are problems with the argument.

And it would also help to get over your irrational feelings. But that's a long shot.

I wonder, are you trying to make a point about how some atheists behave towards religious people? I have to say it looks so

[downbeatplumb]

What's a "god"? What is it made from and how do I test for its existence?

[Reforged]

I bet Episode 2 is the same thing with a different title.

[Esquilax]

There's a lot to say about the evidence, and how it's supposed to sit with Christian theism.

But here's a taste: https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosop...uments.pdf

Okay, I'll bite, but I'll do it in installments, since I don't like the idea of being chained to a text window for twelve consecutive points at a time. It'll also allow me to go into better detail.

But before I do, I do need to point out that "I've seen no evidence for god," is not supposed to be, in itself, a thorough refutation of every theistic argument. You do know that, right? It's just a statement of fact: if you were to ask, I think you'd find we have actual explanations for why each and every piece of evidence you'd bring to bear fails, it's just that we don't see fit to repeat them all every time we're called upon to state our reason for not believing. Would you post a lengthy, tangentially related series of arguments to a simple question every time it's asked?

Also, if all you're going to do is insinuate incompetence rather than allowing us to speak our piece, that's really no different from "you're only an atheist because you're dumb!" It's childish, and frankly, it says a lot about your character that it and thoughts like it are essentially all you post here. The fact that you then berate us for not giving you intellectual content back is just the icing on the hypocritical cake.

Now then, on to the argument from intentionality... and really, do you seriously think this is any form of evidence for god? I mean, is that actually a thing you buy, or do you just say so because it aligns with what you already believe? Because there is not a shred of evidence anywhere to be seen in it, just a series of fiat assertions made without any justification, looping around to a conclusion that simply does not follow, even if we were to take the assertions as true for the sake of argument. Not a single shred of thought is given to why the author thinks that objects are dependent on minds thinking about them to exist, just that he finds the idea "tempting," but this means little to me. Why should I care that he just likes this fundamentally solipsistic concept?

I really don't even know how to respond to this in any further depth, because the concept itself is so nonsensical and poorly written- and doesn't seem to match up with other forms of the argument from intentionality I find online- that it's essentially akin to trying to refute the insane ramblings of a homeless man on a street corner. And this is what you link to to show that atheist rejection of your beliefs is based in incompetence?

Oh, and before you simply dismiss me out of hand, if you think I've misunderstood something, how about you actually explain it in your own words, rather than just braying about how dumb I am before fleeing? For someone so all about intellectual rigor and discussion, all you seem to do is lean on the words of others to do your arguing for you, and then prematurely claim victory.

[Esquilax]

And incidentally, Delicate? If you're going to go off on a tear about evidence for god, perhaps linking to a source that begins its first sentence asserting that you don't need evidence for god because everybody knows god exists isn't the most consistent thing to do? Doesn't that completely go against your assertion that atheists only don't know god exists because they're stupid meanie-pants?