Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

Jesus (who is God) impregnated another man's wife with himself, so it's not like he can talk.

In fact, the entire Christian moral framework is about 80% impossible-to-achieve bullshit that God himself (often defined as the absolute standard of morality) utterly fails to live up to.

@Best Of: Ah that's true, I forgot about the coveting. I guess that it's a logical extension then.

@Elfive: I always thought it was pretty callous after seeing the 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, bringing up the natural skepticism people would have to a claim of being impregnated by God, along with the fact that adultery was punishable by death (which Mary would be suspected of). The Bible does not deal with the fact that this would be the likely suspicion of anyone hearing Mary's story, but if it truly happened she'd be in very real danger-from laws the same text says were decreed by God, ironically.

"Be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."-(Matthew 5:48) When I read that, it blew my mind (not in a good way) both from being an absurd, impossible demand, and because the God of the Bible is anything but.

edited 19th Jul '14 8:20:19 PM by Fireblood

It works fine if you read it as "be as perfect as your heavenly father is".

I guess I need to get working on that whole global genocide business.

And become sexist, homophobic, racist, really jealous, sadistic, authoritarian, vindictive, irrational and petty. It's actually really hard, if not impossible, to find a human who is as bad as God.

Christians like to tar atheism with the crimes of Mao, Stalin, and so on. However, they believe in a being that, if it existed, would make those guys look like ants.

I think the point has been made by now. Maybe we could talk about something else now.

Okay, how about this: If I wanted to study philosophical arguments about whether God exists (or at least some kind of deity), where would I start?

Maybe you could try watching debates between atheists and religious people, especially about the question of God's existence. William Lane Craig is a very prominent advocate of various purely philosophical arguments for God's existence. You should know that he's also a known and unapologetic liar who will do anything to win a debate, even if it means abandoning intellectual honesty, as well as any more general concept of honesty; but even then, his actual arguments follow the general format of many of the more popular arguments for God's existence.

To be honest, I think you could actually try Dawkins' The God Delusion or Hitchens' God is Not Great, as well; both books list many very common arguments for God, including references as to who would have used those arguments and when (including exact quotes from prominent theologians.) Granted, both Dawkins and Hitchens go on to refute said arguments; but that doesn't mean that the arguments aren't presented fairly.

From personal experience, I think merely mentioning that you don't believe in God when the topic comes up automatically exposes you to a variety of arguments for God's existence. You don't even have to rub it in anyone's face. For instance, someone recently asked me about the religious remographics of Finland, and when I mentioned that most Finns are Lutheran but according to gallups not all that many of us believe in God, I was instantly confronted with "but surely you believe!" and "you definitely should believe in God, he is real!" So you don't have to make a point of mentioning that you're atheist - just say so if you're asked, and over time you should get to hear many arguments for God's existence.

Again from personal experience, the argument almost invariably is some variation of "I want God to exist so there can be an afterlife/eternal justice/universal love" or "the universe must have had a beginning; therefore, God." Smarter people can often come up with real arguments instead of mere variations of those two, but quite often you'll find that even people with a fairly good reputation come up with something along the lines of the two things I just mentioned as examples of religious non-arguments.

Yeah, one of the reasons I'd started to transition away from religion to... is it agnosticism now or atheism? I'm not sure. Anyway, one of the reasons I'd started to transition was that I'd started to reflect on why I believed in God, and the answer was mostly because I grew up being taught that he exists. But I couldn't think of a reason that held up to scrutiny.

But of course, if I'm going to start believing that God does not exist, I can't let myself fall into the same trap of having flimsy irrational arguments for it. I suppose it's one of the benefits of having a science-focused education, it taught me to think logically.

I'd heard of The God Delusion before, though I can't remember where. I think I might check that one out.

This is called hard atheism - it's a very rare position, mostly because it seems impossible to defend philosophically. Someone can always define God in a way that can't be disproven even if it also doesn't suggest any way to prove God - this, basically, is what most religions end up doing these days, at least in a more academic discussion.

You can't prove that Dracula doesn't exist, so even if I can't prove that he does exist you can't absolutely state that he doesn't exist; but you can reasonably come to the conclusion that you shouldn't assume that he exists until further evidence is provided.

With God, this is called soft atheism: "I can't prove that God doesn't exist, but until you prove that he does I will refrain from assuming that he does." In practice this means that you don't believe that God does exist, but you don't claim that he absolutely doesn't. Instead, you say that in the absence of evidence you'll go with the default, which is to say you'll refrain from assuming the given entity.

Those who refuse to accept Dracula or God in the absence of evidence are thus free to go on with their lives, while anyone who wants to claim the existence of Dracula or God has the burden of proof (meaning that they must prove the positive argument or evidence, rather than expecting others to provide the negative.)

Most atheists fall in this group, which techincally also makes them agnostics, in the same way that they're a-Dracula-ists. (Note that I'm paraphrasing Dawkins and various others here; it's a fairly simple point that has been eloquently made by many prominent atheists.) Some would say that atheism and agnosticism are not overlapping groups, in which case only hard atheists would qualify as atheists; but this sort of binary definition loses most of the nuance of the range of (dis)belief and is counterproductive. Instead, we should view people who don't actively believe in God as atheists, as that's how they'll live their lives (by which I mean that in their daily lives they won't make the assumption that God is there).

I'd go further into this but I've already done it a couple of times in this thread so maybe I'll restrain myself and hope that I've said enough to clarify where people tend to draw the lines between agnosticism and atheism.

I think that for some definitions of God, logic alone can show them to be false as they constitute a contradiction. Specifically the "omnimax" form: all-good, all-powerful, all-wise, etc.

Iunno, I don't like being an atheist because it immediately makes people think I'm a strong (=hard) one and I have to waste time explaining stuff as a result. I prefer to be called an agnostic, or, if you're really nitpicky, weak agnostic atheist.

It's easier to be a strong atheist about specific gods however. Most people will belief that Zeus does not exist. Likewise for the biblical god. An unspecified deity or "higher power" can't be disproven but a lot of claims made by religions can.

because the christian god is more abstract and have a proof-shield, in fact christianity find silly the workship of zeus,odin and all other gods because they are material...or something like that

instead christianity make the spiritual a focus point: you pretty much need it so god let you see him, and when you can you are right, the rest can chosie not hear you but they can refute you because they cant see it....

So in short:christianity is build in part cultural postnig and part cassandra true, they know the true and their are right, is not the fault that YOU cant see it.....

Yeah, you can see the problem with this

@desdendelle: Just call yourself agnostic atheist then (of course, you may have to explain that too, lol).

@Antiteilchen: Most people have no problem dismissing the gods like Zeus which few if any believe in now. It's the popular ones that have more baggage, along with those vague enough to escape an easy disproof.

@unknowing: People love to make their claims unfalsifiable so you can't disprove them. Aside-where are you from? I'm curious, sorry.

What does everything think of the argument that the problem of evil applies to atheist as well? I don't see how it could personally, since if you don't posit an all-good God there is no "problem." It doesn't even apply to most gods in history, actually, since most were not considered "all-good" in any way.

My mom sometimes says that people she's know have seen shit that convinced them that 'evil is a very real force'. I don't buy it. I don't deny that people are capable of horrible things, but you can't say that the circumstances and incredibly complex systems that resulted in them are the result of some poorly defined abstract idea. What does 'believing in evil' mean anyway? Believing that crazy ass shit happens in the world ? You have to define what your talking about

edited 21st Jul '14 7:33:13 PM by Xopher001

I don't see how the problem of evil could possibly apply, since half the premise is the existence of a higher power. Unless you mean something else?

Well, when I'm talking to my mom about beliefs, she often mentions that there must be some force behind all the nasty shit happening in the world, or as she calls it, that 'evil must be a real thing'. I don't think it's exactly the same problem of evil that atheists pose to Christians

@Xopher: Yes, it really depends on what people mean of course. A lot of religions believe in a sort of capital-E Evil which is a force itself, embodied in beings such as the Devil.

@Kyler Thatch: It makes no sense to me either. As usual this seems like a half-assed attempt to turn a critique back onto atheists. Here's the article I read which sparked my comment: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/the.problem.of.evil.is.a.bigger.problem.for.atheists.than.christians/38926.htm

I've seen people claim that Evil is merely the absence of some nebulously defined "good", often using an analogy of darkness and light.

The problem is that there's no real basis for assigning light to good and dark to evil in that analogy. It works just as well the other way round. Better even, because in most cases "doing good" is defined as "not doing evil" or "reversing the effects of evil". Every legal system is predominately a series of don'ts. Even the ten commandments were all "thou shalt not".

I mean, I'm not saying "good is the absence of evil" makes a ton of sense, but it makes as much as the converse does.

I'm curious, what do you guys think of monism or pantheism? It seems a lot more intuitive than theism

Pantheism seems tautological — as far as I can tell, it basically amounts to saying "I redefine 'God' to mean 'the Universe'." What actual implications does it have beyond mere semantics?

Monism... I'm not very familiar with that. What exactly do you mean by "monism"?

Basically the same thing, but that there's no distinction between man and the universe. Fair point tho

Monism is the view in philosophy that the universe is made of only one substance. In most cases this is matter (materialism) or mind (idealism). It can be linked with pantheism (Hobbes believed in a universe god that was made of matter) but doesn't have to be. Dualism holds that human beings are made up of both mind and matter-why couldn't any god be too, even one that encompasses the universe? That would make sense if we're supposed to be "made in its image" anyway. Of course this is all just theoretical for an atheist materialist like me.

Pantheism gets some traction if instead of redefining god you redefine the universe.

Like what if the universe, or even the entire capital-U Universe, is a single sapient organism? And living beings are basically its neurons? Such a vast being would most likely be scarcely capable of interacting with us at all, but what if it could? There's room for speculation there.