Best argument against god

I've got no good argument against "God".

The best arguments against "Religion" revolve around "Hell".

Hades Hel Sheol whatthefuckever this hodgepodge of origins basically amounts to:

Avoid eternal burning in a lake of fire:

Get baptized.
Stay "good".
Die without suicide.

Now then, the surefire way to get to heaven (and I am keeping with the largest belief from Christianity here), is to die before the age of "innocence" is over.

If I truly believed this stuff I would slay all my children before age 10. What more noble thing could you do, than to guarantee yourself hell so that your children could be guaranteed heaven?
 
Socratic Spelunker said:
What is the best argument against God you've ever heard?

If you are an atheist, and don't mind sharing, what is the single biggest reason you don't believe in the Christian god.
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There is absolutely no evidence that there is a god.

As far a the christian god, there is only a book that is from oral traditions 1000s of years old that states all this amazing stuff happened. Christians beleive that this book is true, but the other ancient books that talk about this amazing stuff happening they don't believe are true.

Besides there is not even one christian god anyway. There is the fundementalist god at one end who sends tsunamis and hurricanes to kill the wicked and of course all the other collateral deaths (god is sort of a serial killer to them). At the other end are some of the more liberal presbyterian types who think god is this guy sort of like George Burns who not very judgemntal and just wants to be your pal.

It all seems rather silly.
 
Signal said:
Any reasonable god would not be angry with your choices to begin with, so 2 and 3 do not apply.
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Not very educated in religions, ain't you? Both the Christian and the Muslim gods (2 biggest religions)get pissy, when you sign up for the wrong god.
Now you could say they are not reasonable and I might agree with you, but they are gods and we are humans, so who are we to judge them??
 
Syzygys said:
Why do you think medicine is a good analogy to deity? It is not.
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Why do you think it isn't? It is.

But I still want my prize people!!!!
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dunce-cap-2.gif


;)
 
origin said:
There is absolutely no evidence that there is a god.
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That would be true if thousands of years of religions and worship of gods wasn't part of history.

But it is, so there's a problem: you have to discount those thousands of years of history, writings, and other evidence that a lot of people believed in the existence of a god/gods and a lot of people still do.
It all seems rather silly.
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What does? Trying to dismiss a fundamental element of our anthropology/culture? I'd agree with that, and I'd say you have a lot of work to do.

You could of course, simply dismiss all that history as some kind of aberration; a glitch in our cultural development. Pretty big glitch though.

It's an unarguable fact that humans have a belief in mythology; hell, we need myths.
The one you need in order to support the argument that there is no evidence, is that human history is based on "a load of silly nonsense".
Good luck with that.
 
arfa brane said:
That would be true if thousands of years of religions and worship of gods wasn't part of history.

But it is, so there's a problem: you have to discount those thousands of years of history, writings, and other evidence that a lot of people believed in the existence of a god/gods and a lot of people still do.
What does? Trying to dismiss a fundamental element of our anthropology/culture? I'd agree with that, and I'd say you have a lot of work to do.

You could of course, simply dismiss all that history as some kind of aberration; a glitch in our cultural development. Pretty big glitch though.

It's an unarguable fact that humans have a belief in mythology; hell, we need myths.
The one you need in order to support the argument that there is no evidence, is that human history is based on "a load of silly nonsense".
Good luck with that.
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Arf you are awake and present . All be damned some one is !
 
Omnipotent means available at all times, and this omnipotent one spends more time accounting and addressing in it's after-world, rather than being a presence in it's created world here.

Rather lame to leave an impression of, "I'm a weak creator, and can only hang around in the after-world, so my creation is on it's own, because I have no extra energy left to be with them all".
Impotency is not an expected omnipotent trait.

Alternately, it would be lame too, to be cryptic enough an egotist, to allow it's creation to think it is being tested with the omnipot's absence.
Ego is a human trait, and not fitting of an omnipotent being.
 
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Syzygys said:
Not very educated in religions, ain't you? Both the Christian and the Muslim gods (2 biggest religions)get pissy, when you sign up for the wrong god.
Now you could say they are not reasonable and I might agree with you, but they are gods and we are humans, so who are we to judge them??
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I'm afraid this is a guilt trip you will have to take all by yourself, or at least without me.
 
arfa brane said:
That would be true if thousands of years of religions and worship of gods wasn't part of history.
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There's a good chance that I would be religious myself if I was born thousands of years ago (or maybe even hundreds of years ago). In fact I can pretty much guarantee you that someone as philosophical as myself would have invented a religion if such a thing didn't already exist. I mean seriously, how else are you going to explain wind, rain, thunder, lightning, the moon, the tides, the sun and the stars? Even today during a particularly violent thunderstorm it still seems to me like something much bigger and more powerful than me is really pissed off about something. It doesn't matter that I understand the natural chain of cause and effect, it still occurs to me. This is to say nothing of earthquakes, floods, plagues and other natural disasters. So it's not hard at all to imagine religious ideas springing up absolutely everywhere as a result of people trying to make sense of a world they couldn't possibly hope to understand in any other way.

Over time such ideas would naturally be developed, subjected to some kind of peer review (I have no doubt that some impressive intellects were brought to bear on the matter) and eventually formalized. We can see evidence of the evolution of religion and the progressive development of more sophisticated metaphysical ideas especially in the east. Of course adherents would no doubt argue that the progression was the result of divine revelation/inspiration, but what I think actually happens is that every now and then a particularly insightful and/or charismatic individual comes along, mulls over all the existing information, and reformulates all of it into a new and exciting package. It's an evolution of the formulation of information about and the creation of explanations for everything we see.

The bottom line is that if I really put myself in the shoes of someone who lived in ancient times, religion makes sense, but it doesn't necessarily have any bearing whatsoever on the actual existence of a deity. It may be evidence for some, but it really doesn't seem all that significant to me.
 
Rav said:
The bottom line is that if I really put myself in the shoes of someone who lived in ancient times, religion makes sense
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I am just the opposite in that I cannot imagine what life must have been like then.
I have no idea what it must be like to live in a world where 50 years is old age, where infant mortality is 60% or more, where there is no health system, no social welfare system, no job security, and only primitive locks on doors, among many other things.

I imagine people back then had a lot more character than nowadayas; I imagine they must have had a kind of self-sufficiency and self-assurance that nowadays perhaps only those who have made it out of the slums and into the middle class have.

I don't see how religion, as we tend to know it, could possibly fit into this.
 
Signal said:
By "categorical difference" I mean that choosing a religion may be something completely different than choosing a medical treatment.
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sure
one is choosing to solve a medical problem and the other is choosing to solve a spiritual problem.

Both of them involve choosing amongst a myriad of often conflicting options.
That is my point.
 
lightgigantic said:
sure
one is choosing to solve a medical problem and the other is choosing to solve a spiritual problem.

Both of them involve choosing amongst a myriad of often conflicting options.
That is my point.
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It's not the same. One does not involve eternal ramifications, and the other one (potentially) does.

We cannot decide about spiritual matters in the same manner we do about material ones.
 
Signal said:
It's not the same. One does not involve eternal ramifications, and the other one (potentially) does.

We cannot decide about spiritual matters in the same manner we do about material ones.
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still unclear how eternal ramifications somehow render the process of choice unassailable
 
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