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.

[Pat Mustard]

[Pat Mustard]

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]