Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?

[Simon Moon]

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Methodological naturalism makes no truth claim. It is a method, a strategy, used in science for pragmatic reasons.

But it does when used in the social sciences! It assigns evolutionary theories by fiat (certainly not with any kind of proof) to questions like "how did religion evolve?", "how did morality evolve", etc. when a theistic worldview has very different answers to those questions.

Except that the scientific answers to those questions are not truth claims. They are the best models of reality given all available evidence. They are NOT advanced by fiat (scientists would laugh at that claim), they are ALWAYS advanced provisionally, not dogmatically.

Problem with the answers given by the theistic worldview, they can't be tested.

As Brian37 says, if a scientist in any country, culture and/or religion does an experiment to find the speed of light, they will all get the same answer.

Ask them to answer those other questions you mention, and you will get different answers, depending on whether they are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, etc, etc.

And here us atheists are, with no way to test to see who is right, if anyone.

[GUBU]

I don't disbelieve categorically that miracles do not occur.  What I do however do is discount that a bunch of stories written during a time of superstition, credulity, and legend making constitutes sufficient evidence that a miracle has occurred.  That's just being plain gullible, and as noteed is a different standard than you hold other religions to account for.

I most certainly dismiss the word "miracle". That is simply another gap filling word. It is used because of the person having selection bias and sample rate error. It is being selective about what one wants as an answer instead of looking at a larger sample of similar events that do not have the same consistent outcome.

If a passenger jet crashes and only 1 person dies out of 300 they use the word "miracle". If 299 people die and only 1 survives they still use the word "miracle". When does the word not get used? When 150 survive and 150 dont? 

If a plane crashes and someone lives or dies it is a result of the countless conditions from pilot skill, weather, mechanical and angle of impact and seat on the plane. Neither surviving or dying are good luck or bad luck, but CONDITIONS.

The word "miracle" is pointless to me considering 50 to 60 million humans die worldwide per year on average, from everything you can imagine. We die in the uterus, stillborn, from childhood disease, famine. Adults die from disease, accident, crime, natural disaster and war and everyone dies from old age eventually. You can only try to delay death, but you cannot avoid it regardless. The word "miracle" is a bullshit superstitious gap filling word and is as hollow as the word "god".

It is pointless to gap full with a lucky horseshoe or rabbits' foot as much as it would to chalk your survival up to Apollo, so the word "miracle" is a junk word. There is only life then death, no "miracle" required to explain either life or death, it is simply nature. It is a gap word really that humans use to express a sense of relief but falsely attach it to woo/luck/magic or a god. There is no way to water down that word to use it in any real context of a scientific explanation.

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quote...00529.html

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1. No, unlike Zeus, we have evidence that people actually saw him in person, recording his words, performing miracles. The additional evidence of significant numbers of followers spread throughout the empire within the lifetime of eyewitnesses strengthens the documentary evidence. It is a cumulative case.

No we don't. As I proved to you previously the first mention of Yeshua bar Yosef was in a book written at least 75 years after his birth and forty after his death, as a third hand account.

2. I don't believe I have inferred anything from Tacitus except my point that there were substantial numbers of Christians in Rome only 35 years following the Crucifixion.

And in that inferral you are also wrong. All we can reliably infer from Tacitus is that 1) the reference to Yeshua was an 11th century forgery and 2) by the time Tacitus wrote his histories there was a christian community of indeterminate (but probably tiny given other available evidence) size in the city.

3. The Thallus reference was about the darkness. The Talmud later talks of Jesus being an evil sorcerer. You forget that the vast majority of writers were interested in political history (politics, kings, emperors, military, territory). In the first century, they were not interested in what they saw as an offshoot of a minority religion in a region that would soon be crushed and dispersed.


The Thallus reference brings up a good point. How many histories were lost to time? Most could not read or write, materials had a short shelf life, the environments were harsh, and wars and politics moved things around over generations.

Yeah, and? We all know that christianity was essentially a minor jewish heresy until Constantine adopted and refounded it as Rome's religion in 325CE. And for histories being lost to time, well you can thank christianity for the loss of many major Roman and Greek historical works, they hunted down and burnt anything that disagreed with their invented story about their religion.

4. Are you denying that Josephus ever mentioned Jesus (which was my point)? If so, you are in the very small minority.

Yes. The Yeshua insertion into his Antiquities was obviously an insertion by Eusebius whose whole career was made from "finding" contemporary writings mentioning Yeshua. When Photios I, Patriarch of Constantinople (and the 10th century's leading scholar on christian writings) calls out a passage as an obvious fake, you can bet your arse it is.

5. Are you denying that Christianity had spread all across the Roman Empire? Seriously? How would you explain everything we have dated from the end of the first century through the second and third? There is a consistent thread that can be followed all the way from Paul and the Gospels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ea...an_writers

Yes, at the point of a sword. Christianity was a minor jewish heresy until adopted by the Roman Empire as it's official religion mid way through the 4th century. All other religions were wiped out in a bloodbath (which christian apologists later appropriated in order to create martyrs to bolster their credentials).

6. With Jersalem being leveled in 70AD. How much writing (which was scarce enough) would have been lost in such a time?

You're talking about the period in Principate history where the most abundant written documentation remains, and an area for which we have extensive records extant from that period. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we have a sufficiency to conclude that if Yeshua wasn't a complete invention, then he was a total non-entity until well after he died.

7. I think you overstate your case, but nevermind. This is only proof that people did not think an offshoot of a minor religion in the corner of the empire important during the first generation of its adherents.

Actually the proof that christianity was unimportant lies in the fact that it's adherence was tiny right up until it was appropriated by the Roman Empire for its own ends.

8. Are you throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? There are tons of articles that examine every point you think you make by bring these things up. Pick one with some links if you want to discuss them separately.

You're the one with nothing, you're the one flinging excrement at windmills. We have a sufficiency of evidence for our opinions. You have not one shred of evidence for your beliefs.

[GUBU]

Methodological naturalism isn't a presupposition, and that's the kind of naturalism you'll find around here. Just give us one unnatural thing, just one, that stands up to scrutiny; and we'll change our minds.

We did. You didn't.

What is it then, Wooters? You tend to wax lyrical on how often you give us supernatural things, but when push comes to shove, you never actually produce the goods.

I'd call you a bullshitter par excellence, except you're so easily found out.

[SuperSentient]

Sounds Great!
The reverse version of my previous thread.

The response given by theists is unsurprisingly similar to what atheists would normally say, that there just isn't any truly compelling arguments for atheism, but might give an argument they find to be more convincing than the rest.

In the end, most people are not very open to the other side, so it becomes hard to reason with the other side. Especially with religion, which is even admitted to be considered independent of critical thinking.

[Whateverist]

Is there an argument for atheism?

There shouldn't be, imho. If atheism is simply "I don't know 100% if God/s exists, but there is not enough proof to convince me personally that He does, so I will continue to live and think as though He doesn't unless more evidence is presented", I don't know how that can be any sort of argument for the non existence of anything.

There you go being all reasonable and everything.

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Is there an argument for atheism?

There shouldn't be, imho. If atheism is simply "I don't know 100% if God/s exists, but there is not enough proof to convince me personally that He does, so I will continue to live and think as though He doesn't unless more evidence is presented", I don't know how that can be any sort of argument for the non existence of anything.

No, you like the idea. You see others buying into that same idea. Someone introduced you to the idea. So what? Most humans get raised in the religion their parents sell them. Again, you are in the same boat as any Mormon, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu ect ect ect.....

Our species gap fills because that is easier to find comfort in than to face the reality that we are not important to the planet or universe and we are finite. You assume your god exists just like people of other religions assume they got it right. 

Do you have to argue for the non existence of invisible pink unicorns? Do you automatically assume before hand that I am dating Angelina Jolie? The burden of proof is on you, not us. Otherwise send me 500 bucks to a Nigerian e mail because lucky you, you won the Canadian lottery, but I need 500 bucks for processing fees and legal fees to send you the 75,000.

Funny how everyone of every religion claims they got it right on top of liking it too. How convenient your god coincides with what you like believing.

There you go being all tone deaf and everything.

[masterofpuppets]

Sounds Great!
The reverse version of my previous thread.

The response given by theists is unsurprisingly similar to what atheists would normally say, that there just isn't any truly compelling arguments for atheism, but might give an argument they find to be more convincing than the rest.

In the end, most people are not very open to the other side, so it becomes hard to reason with the other side. Especially with religion, which is even admitted to be considered independent of critical thinking.

Except that "compelling arguments for atheism" is a nonsensical phrase, because atheism is the rejection of theistic claims that have not met their burden of proof.

In that sense, there is only one argument that needs to be made for atheism: theism sucks.

[SuperSentient]

Sounds Great!
The reverse version of my previous thread.

The response given by theists is unsurprisingly similar to what atheists would normally say, that there just isn't any truly compelling arguments for atheism, but might give an argument they find to be more convincing than the rest.

In the end, most people are not very open to the other side, so it becomes hard to reason with the other side. Especially with religion, which is even admitted to be considered independent of critical thinking.

Except that "compelling arguments for atheism" is a nonsensical phrase, because atheism is the rejection of theistic claims that have not met their burden of proof.

In that sense, there is only one argument that needs to be made for atheism: theism sucks.

Atheism can also be positive, belief that there is no God, so saying there are atheist arguments is not necessarily nonsensical. Also, you can argue for why it is more rational to have an absence of a belief in any deity, constituting an argument for atheism.

[masterofpuppets]

Except that "compelling arguments for atheism" is a nonsensical phrase, because atheism is the rejection of theistic claims that have not met their burden of proof.

In that sense, there is only one argument that needs to be made for atheism: theism sucks.

Atheism can also be positive, belief that there is no God, so saying there are atheist arguments is not necessarily nonsensical. Also, you can argue for why it is more rational to have an absence of a belief in any deity, constituting an argument for atheism.

Right, but at the most basic level, atheism simply means no belief in the claim "a god exists". An atheist could believe the claim "no gods exists", but that is a different claim. Atheism and theism address belief/non-belief in one claim only (of course, no one can believe in both claims, as they are contradictory).

My point is that there are claims, and there are beliefs about claims. One either believes or doesn't believe a claim (the latter being a direct logical negation). Theism is the former and atheism is the latter where the claim is "god exists". So in that sense, you can't really make arguments for atheism, because atheism makes no claims. You just need to show that theistic arguments fail.

[Fake Messiah]

No, unlike Zeus, we have evidence that people actually saw him in person, recording his words, performing miracles.

But who saw Jesus? Who? Can you answer this? Because we do not know who really wrote any of the Gospels. There is also no physical evidence of any kind in the case of Jesus. Not a single historian mentions the resurrection until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only Christian historians.
Of the anonymous Gospel authors, only "Luke" even claims to be writing history, but neither Luke nor any of the others ever cite any other sources or show signs of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims.

The Thallus reference was about the darkness.

And I told you nobody knows who he was, what he wrote and when he lived. Julian Africanus is said to have disagreed with Thallus because the pagan writer claimed that the darkness mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel was simply an eclipse. Now, it isn't even clear what exactly Thallus actually wrote, what time frame he was referring to, or whether he even mentioned Jesus at all. Neither any of his or Africanus' works survive to check.
Also nobody besides the author of Matthew seems to have noticed this impossible phenomenon - not the Greeks, the Jews, the Persians, the Chinese - not even the other Gospel writers!

You forget that the vast majority of writers were interested in political history (politics, kings, emperors, military, territory).

Really, you don't think that Herod's slaughter of the innocents is not political or in any way worth mentioning? And also they wrote about all sorts of things. I mean do you not know that or are you just lying? There were plenty of writers, both Roman and Jewish, who had great interest in and much to say about the region and its happenings during Jesus' time. We still have many of their writings today: volumes and volumes from scores of writers detailing humdrum events and lesser exploits of much more mundane figures in Roman Palestine, including several failed Jewish messiahs.
Take Seneca the Younger (that lived at the exact time), he was regarded as the greatest Roman writer on ethics he has nothing to say about arguably the biggest ethical shakeup of his time. in his book on nature "Quaestiones Naturales", he records eclipses and other unusual natural phenomena, but makes no mention of the miraculous Star of Bethlehem, the multiple earthquakes in Jerusalem after Jesus' death, or the worldwide darkness at Christ's crucifixion that he himself should have witnessed. In another book "On Superstition", Seneca lambastes every known religion, including Judaism. But strangely, he makes no mention whatsoever of Christianity, which was supposedly spreading like wildfire across the empire.

Not to mention that Seneca's older brother, Junius Annaeus Gallio, actually appears in the Bible. It's curious that Gallio never seems to have told his brother about this amazing Jesus character that everyone was so excited about, since Seneca was very interested in just this sort of thing.

In the first century, they were not interested in what they saw as an offshoot of a minority religion in a region that would soon be crushed and dispersed.

Only if you take that the Gospels are a lie because they all insist that Jesus was renowned not just throughout all Jerusalem but the entire region of Palestine, the Decapolis and Syria. If you add the book of Acts, then Jesus' fame supposedly quickly spreads to Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Rome and still further, throughout the Mediterranean world. Add wide-reaching political events and spectacular, unprecedented miracles allegedly witnessed by multitudes on top of that, and the lack of corroboration for the Gospels and Acts is a serious problem.

Are you denying that Josephus ever mentioned Jesus (which was my point)? If so, you are in the very small minority.

I am in minority? So can you name me few historians that take this seriously?

The Talmud later talks of Jesus being an evil sorcerer.

The account of various figures called Jesus in the Jewish scriptures is a convoluted mess. The name of Jesus of Nazareth never appears until the last layers of Jewish Rabbinic literature in the 6th or 7th century. Or is it your Jesus? He is confused with earlier figures of Jesus Pandira (mid 1st century B.C.E.) and Jesus ben Stada (2nd century C.E.), has connections with the government and is criticized for strange behavior like burning his food in public.

Are you throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? There are tons of articles that examine every point you think you make by bring these things up. Pick one with some links if you want to discuss them separately.

So you don't think it's suspicious that nobody ever chronicled Herod’s slaughter of the innocents?

You have obviously never been out in a boat on a large lake in a storm.

That's just it, it is a small, river-fed lake at the foot of the mountain in Galilee near the city Tiberias, a lake easily traversed in small canoes in no more than two hours and insufficiently capacious for waves or storms. Not to mention Mark's remark of nine-hour journey to find his disciples sailing on the pond.
But that is if the Sea of Galilee was that lake because Mark has Jesus, on one of his nautical adventures, disembarking on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in what he describes as "the country of the Gerasenes," but Gerasa was more than 30 miles from the shore. - and that doesn't bother you?

What is your theory?

That Jesus never existed, like for instance king Arthur or Hercules.

[SteveII]

No, unlike Zeus, we have evidence that people actually saw him in person, recording his words, performing miracles.

But who saw Jesus? Who? Can you answer this? Because we do not know who really wrote any of the Gospels. There is also no physical evidence of any kind in the case of Jesus. Not a single historian mentions the resurrection until the 3rd and 4th centuries, and then only Christian historians.
Of the anonymous Gospel authors, only "Luke" even claims to be writing history, but neither Luke nor any of the others ever cite any other sources or show signs of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims.

Possibly unknown gospel editor =/= No Jesus. One does not follow from the other. I think it is highly probably that the original editors of the gospels were known to the original recipients (they probably were not mailed anonymously). It is reasonable to see that the person who put his pen to paper was not important--since the documents themselves were prized and referred to in many surviving works from the late first century all the way through until the Council of Nicea. 

Paul was pretty up on the whole resurrection theme and writing about it by 50AD. For the rest, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ea...an_writers. How many on that list do you suppose discuss the resurrection? 

The Thallus reference was about the darkness.

And I told you nobody knows who he was, what he wrote and when he lived. Julian Africanus is said to have disagreed with Thallus because the pagan writer claimed that the darkness mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel was simply an eclipse. Now, it isn't even clear what exactly Thallus actually wrote, what time frame he was referring to, or whether he even mentioned Jesus at all. Neither any of his or Africanus' works survive to check.
Also nobody besides the author of Matthew seems to have noticed this impossible phenomenon - not the Greeks, the Jews, the Persians, the Chinese - not even the other Gospel writers!

Excellent example of how many documents must have been lost to history. Thousands? Tens of Thousands? How many historians' works have survived that were actually alive in the 30s AD? 

You forget that the vast majority of writers were interested in political history (politics, kings, emperors, military, territory).

Really, you don't think that Herod's slaughter of the innocents is not political or in any way worth mentioning? And also they wrote about all sorts of things. I mean do you not know that or are you just lying? There were plenty of writers, both Roman and Jewish, who had great interest in and much to say about the region and its happenings during Jesus' time. We still have many of their writings today: volumes and volumes from scores of writers detailing humdrum events and lesser exploits of much more mundane figures in Roman Palestine, including several failed Jewish messiahs.
Take Seneca the Younger (that lived at the exact time), he was regarded as the greatest Roman writer on ethics he has nothing to say about arguably the biggest ethical shakeup of his time. in his book on nature "Quaestiones Naturales", he records eclipses and other unusual natural phenomena, but makes no mention of the miraculous Star of Bethlehem, the multiple earthquakes in Jerusalem after Jesus' death, or the worldwide darkness at Christ's crucifixion that he himself should have witnessed. In another book "On Superstition", Seneca lambastes every known religion, including Judaism. But strangely, he makes no mention whatsoever of Christianity, which was supposedly spreading like wildfire across the empire.

Not to mention that Seneca's older brother, Junius Annaeus Gallio, actually appears in the Bible. It's curious that Gallio never seems to have told his brother about this amazing Jesus character that everyone was so excited about, since Seneca was very interested in just this sort of thing.

How many babies would have been killed? How do you imagine it worked: the parents brought their babies to the market square in the middle of the day and received a receipt? Do you think the order was filed in the drawer called "atrocities we might not want people to know about". Regardless, it was certainly not an international story and what Jewish period writing from that time has survived? Josephus didn't write until 75 years after the alleged event--with a war in between. 

In the first century, they were not interested in what they saw as an offshoot of a minority religion in a region that would soon be crushed and dispersed.

Only if you take that the Gospels are a lie because they all insist that Jesus was renowned not just throughout all Jerusalem but the entire region of Palestine, the Decapolis and Syria. If you add the book of Acts, then Jesus' fame supposedly quickly spreads to Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Rome and still further, throughout the Mediterranean world. Add wide-reaching political events and spectacular, unprecedented miracles allegedly witnessed by multitudes on top of that, and the lack of corroboration for the Gospels and Acts is a serious problem.

No, not a problem at all. How many documents authored during the time in question have survived? Additionally, Christianity was considered a Jewish offshoot, so anyone not interested in the actual details, would have dismissed it as nothing new or of little interest. 

Are you denying that Josephus ever mentioned Jesus (which was my point)? If so, you are in the very small minority.

I am in minority? So can you name me few historians that take this seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_o...es_passage

The Talmud later talks of Jesus being an evil sorcerer.

The account of various figures called Jesus in the Jewish scriptures is a convoluted mess. The name of Jesus of Nazareth never appears until the last layers of Jewish Rabbinic literature in the 6th or 7th century. Or is it your Jesus? He is confused with earlier figures of Jesus Pandira (mid 1st century B.C.E.) and Jesus ben Stada (2nd century C.E.), has connections with the government and is criticized for strange behavior like burning his food in public.

You say "convoluted mess" because it makes your argument seem stronger. No, it is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_t...references

Are you throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? There are tons of articles that examine every point you think you make by bring these things up. Pick one with some links if you want to discuss them separately.

So you don't think it's suspicious that nobody ever chronicled Herod’s slaughter of the innocents?

You can't possibly know that. All you can say is that our of the miniscule fraction of period-written documents that survived, there is not one that corroborates the story. 

You have obviously never been out in a boat on a large lake in a storm.

That's just it, it is a small, river-fed lake at the foot of the mountain in Galilee near the city Tiberias, a lake easily traversed in small canoes in no more than two hours and insufficiently capacious for waves or storms. Not to mention Mark's remark of nine-hour journey to find his disciples sailing on the pond.
But that is if the Sea of Galilee was that lake because Mark has Jesus, on one of his nautical adventures, disembarking on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in what he describes as "the country of the Gerasenes," but Gerasa was more than 30 miles from the shore. - and that doesn't bother you?

I have been to Galilee. It is way bigger than the bay I sail on and that bay can easily generate 4 foot waves. It is all about the magnitude, and timing of the waves--all you need for that is a couple miles of fetch. 13 miles x 8 miles is plenty to create dangerous conditions. This is a stupid line of 

What is your theory?

That Jesus never existed, like for instance king Arthur or Hercules.

So, how did all the evidence of the NT and the churches come about?

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But it does when used in the social sciences! It assigns evolutionary theories by fiat (certainly not with any kind of proof) to questions like "how did religion evolve?", "how did morality evolve", etc. when a theistic worldview has very different answers to those questions.

Except that the scientific answers to those questions are not truth claims.They are the best models of reality given all available evidence. They are NOT advanced by fiat (scientists would laugh at that claim), they are ALWAYS advanced provisionally, not dogmatically.  [1] 

Problem with the answers given by the theistic worldview, they can't be tested. [2] 

As Brian37 says, if a scientist in any country, culture and/or religion does an experiment to find the speed of light, they will all get the same answer.

Ask them to answer those other questions you mention, and you will get different answers, depending on whether they are Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, etc, etc.

And here us atheists are, with no way to test to see who is right, if anyone.

1. I would say that questions like "how did religion evolve" and "how did morality evolve" cannot have scientific answers -- because nothing that resembles the scientific method can be applied to them. So, theories are advanced that, at best, are plausible. That is a very low standard. 
2. No, they really can't -- just like the naturalistic theories.