Does anyone have a strong argument against God?

[OldTrees]

Why is a generic definition necessary?
Short answer: Because I am asking about sufficient conditions of godhood not sufficient conditions of Allahood.

Then your inquiry lies in a domain such as comparative religion or sociology of religion or anthropology. The concepts of god vary a great deal. It's a very fuzzy definition. As someone mentioned above, the Eastern conceptions of god are radically different from the anthropomorphic Old Man with a Beard Who Shoots Lightning.

I am also repeatably surprised at your willingness to hypothetically believe a religion based on its repeated correlation with a hypothetical unexplained phenomenon despite the large risk of a false/misattributed positive.

Large risk? Like what? I will have to look back at your posts, but I believe that the only possibility you mentioned was some science fantasy being with advanced technology. That's hardly unique to the issue of testing gods. Maybe some alien is shooting a pink laser beam into your brain, and your whole life as you know it is a dream. Our ability to investigate the world is only as good as our tools, which are and always will be imperfect. Nevertheless, we do the best we can.

True people using improper criteria is hardly secluded to the issue of testing gods. However that does not make it any less invalid.
Having something exhibit a necessary condition of a category does not demonstrate that it is part of that category. A quadrilateral could have 4 equal sides (necessary condition of a square) but does not mean that it is a square. The valid assumption would be that the quadrilateral is a rhombus because 4 equal sides is a sufficient condition of a rhombus.
Science and Philosophy both have safeguards against such invalid leaps of faith.

If the definition of god you are using is anything that repeatable contradicts the current scientific theory then I retract my critique. However there are many things that if they existed would contradict current scientific theory that I would not classify as gods.
In conclusion, use necessary conditions to test for the lack and sufficient conditions to test for the presence of the thing in question.

[Neopergoss]

Since you will not give your definition of the category titled gods then I will use Wikipedia's and hope it is sufficient.
"A deity is a recognised preternatural or supernatural immortal being." (yes a generic definition of the category is needed. The definition of Allah would be useless.)
Based on this definition what would be a sufficient condition of being a deity that could be demonstrated if such a deity existed (provided the deity decided to participate)?

If you want us to play along, that definition is falsifiable. You can't prove something is supernatural, but you can certainly prove that it isn't by killing it. If we were presented with a supernatural being (demonstrated easily enough by repeatedly turning things into cheese) that we couldn't kill no matter how hard we tried, and we continued trying to kill it for decades, repeatedly and without success, a pretty good scientific theory would be that it was a deity. Satisfied?

[OldTrees]

Since you will not give your definition of the category titled gods then I will use Wikipedia's and hope it is sufficient.
"A deity is a recognised preternatural or supernatural immortal being." (yes a generic definition of the category is needed. The definition of Allah would be useless.)
Based on this definition what would be a sufficient condition of being a deity that could be demonstrated if such a deity existed (provided the deity decided to participate)?

If you want us to play along, that definition is falsifiable. You can't prove something is supernatural, but you can certainly prove that it isn't by killing it. If we were presented with a supernatural being (demonstrated easily enough by repeatedly turning things into cheese) that we couldn't kill no matter how hard we tried, and we continued trying to kill it for decades, repeatedly and without success, a pretty good scientific theory would be that it was a deity. Satisfied?

Thanks. I am satisfied.

[BluePriest]

If God is omnipotent you will run in several paradoxes
Same about perfection and similar questions.

So God is omnipotent by definition.If you try to deny this, others will build huge wall of text

It all depends on what you mean by the string of characters "o-m-n-i-p-o-t-e-n-t".
Ex:

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power. If you choose to say 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words 'God can.'... It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of his creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because his power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.

– Lewis, 18

This is the type of omnipotence typically attributed to deities by believers.
Alternatively there is the type of omnipotence that permits logical contradictions for a deity. This definition is typically used by non believers.

I was very interested in what Lewis had to say about omnipotence in The Problem of Pain when I read it years ago. To my surprise, I could not find a flaw in his argument. I admit that it's possible that this is the best possible world -- that evil exists only because a world with less evil would somehow contradict itself or be worse in other ways. It certainly seems obvious that you could improve this world quite dramatically with infinite power, but of course, the subtle contradictions could be escaping us. Yes, it's true: everything, even the most horribly bad thing, could all be a part of God's great plan, which is of course beyond human comprehension.

But I wouldn't bet on it. Just because something's possible doesn't mean it's likely

I think the same thing when I think about evolution.  I believe this pretty much summed up "The Problem of Evil" that we talked about. I shoulda referred to this topic earlier so I could catch this while it was a new post.

If God is omnipotent, and he wants me to believe in him, then he will simply use his omnipotence to make me believe in him. I don't believe in him right now, so there are two possibilities. One, he wants me to believe in him, but he is not omnipotent so he cannot make me believe in him. Two, he is omnipotent, but he does not make me believe in him because he does not want me to. So why should I believe in God if he is not omnipotent or if he doesn't want me to?

Don't tell me that God is simply trying to make me believe in him through his followers. If you try to convert me, I guarantee that you have less than one percent chance of success. If God really wants to convert me, and is omnipotent, he would have surely used a more reliable method.

*sigh* I'm sorta tired of people making lists, and leaving out the obvious answer. One of the reasons why I gave this thread a vacation.

The choices you gave are
1)He wants to but cant make you
2)He can but he doesnt want to.
When you left out
3)He wants to but he won't.

Why wouldn't he, you may ask.
Take this story for example. Pretend it is true.

There was a large fire in a forest that had many houses in it. One of the men who lived there was a Christian. He sensent a fax to his house that said "God, please protect my house." All the houses were destroyed except for his. The man then used this as evidence for God existing.

Now the ways I see an atheist responding to it are:
1)It was pure coincidence.
2)Why didnt God protect all the other houses?

Now, do you have a response for a reason God wouldn't protect them? (paraphrased this story from whywontgodhealamputees.com)

[Neopergoss]

But I wouldn't bet on it. Just because something's possible doesn't mean it's likely

I think the same thing when I think about evolution.  I believe this pretty much summed up "The Problem of Evil" that we talked about. I shoulda referred to this topic earlier so I could catch this while it was a new post.

lol...yeah, they're totally the same. One is a scientific theory with mountains of evidence, another is a belief supported by faith. 

Take this story for example. Pretend it is true.

There was a large fire in a forest that had many houses in it. One of the men who lived there was a Christian. He sensent a fax to his house that said "God, please protect my house." All the houses were destroyed except for his. The man then used this as evidence for God existing.

Now the ways I see an atheist responding to it are:
1)It was pure coincidence.
2)Why didnt God protect all the other houses?

Now, do you have a response for a reason God wouldn't protect them? (paraphrased this story from whywontgodhealamputees.com)

Wow...unless I'm totally misunderstanding you, that comes across as really odious. You're saying that God does bad things to us because we are bad.  But who created us? Worse, that even sounds like you're saying that merely being a Christian entitles someone to be saved from tragedy.

And importantly, your argument fails to explain why sometimes, the Christian's house is the only one that burns. But I'm sure you have a good explanation for that, too