I've been reading the religion section of the forum and I see allot of atheist sharing their experiences of how they came to not believe in God because they see no evidence for him and such. Howerver, just because you don't see God, it does not mean he's there. It is a logical fallacy (faulty appeal to ignorance) to say that just because we don't know that something exists, it means that it does not. So, I would be interested to hear a clear and concise (summarize it in a syllogism if you can) argument why God does not exist. Also, as you've probably guessed, I am a theist and I've included a poll just to get a feel for whether the majority of the active community is atheist or theist.
Does anyone have a strong argument against God?
Is that a challenge? 8) Well I suppose I do then. It's not like it hasn't been used in this thread before, but it should really carry more weight here than people have let it show. While I agree with Daytripper's assessment that we can't disprove a deity in general, you said "God" - which refers to a specific entity. True, you haven't told us much about "God", but then again that's not even necessary.
Let's begin by assuming that there IS a supernatural entity, a divine force of some sort, that created the known Universe. Now let me ask you: What are the odds that this entity is a green cosmic leprechaun? Well since we can't disprove the green cosmic leprechaun they aren't zero. But you may call them
negligible. Then what are the odds that it's a
yellow cosmic leprechaun? Negligible. And you can probably see where I'm going with this: what are the odds that it's a green unicorn? Half man, half bull? A cosmic volcano? Negligible, negligible, negligible. We can think up a zillion distinct, mutually exclusive entities in this way. Since there's a zillion of them there's no way we can call the odds of each individual entity being "the correct one" anything other than negligible.
Why is it you people believe in deities again? I believe a part of it had to do with going to heaven... Now let's see here: The green leprechaun lets everyone go to heaven. The yellow leprechaun will send you to hell if you didn't live a virtuous life (and considers cannibalism a virtue), whereas the tooth fairy will condemn you to hell if you don't brush your teeth every day and go to bed before midnight. What are the odds of you knowing which set of "rules" you actually need to follow, assuming that there is a heaven (and who is to even say there isn't, say, reincarnation instead?). Yes, negligible.
Of course all of this is assuming that all deities are
equally likely. You may argue that they are not. But the first point to take home here is that the only way your "God" entity is to be considered any more likely than any of the others is if there is some sort of 'evidence' for it that doesn't apply to the rest. And this is the
why behind why a religion is the one that needs to provide evidence for their deity.
I've by now made my point in regards to the OP's request. But there's more to be said on the topic of why one would consider a deity 'more likely' than the rest, so here's just a few more paragraphs on that:
What would a person consider evidence for a specific supernatural entity? Well, for people who want scientific evidence there are no deities. For those who choose a religion I would argue that their choice has little to do with what they themselves think it does, since most don't actually examine all the existing 'evidence' for even two religions.
A few types of 'evidence' supporting a specific kind of deity/group of deities and what I think of them:
-We could try to infer things about the deity by looking at the Universe they supposedly created. For instance there is a lot of suffering going on on the world, so judging from that one could assume the deity likes to watch people (and animals) suffer... (or doesn't know it is happening, or is powerless to act, or didn't plan for 'life' to emerge in a corner of its Universe in the first place). Yes, it's really impossible to say anything definite. And two people won't necessarily both see the same glass as half full in the first place.
-We could believe thousands of years old written accounts. Perhaps the Iliad was right? There's certainly no one who can disprove it (especially if we can call any part we choose 'metaphorical' ...though obviously not the parts about gods personally taking part in the war). For the most part books like that look like they were written by superstitious people and/or for superstitious people. You can tell that all those rules in the old testament of the bible aren't just there for show: they were put there to be followed. And I bet those in top of the religious hierarchy at that time profited from people following those rules. The book's since been updated as times have changed, but essentially serves the same purpose; the Church isn't exactly poor these days. So I say those books aren't going to tell us much either, especially since there's absolutely no way to tell
which one of several to believe when any. (Note that they DO differ in important details like who is and who isn't going to hell.)
-Remember the time when you felt that something significant was going on in the world, or maybe the time when you felt like the whole world loves you, then someone told you (or you remembered someone
had told you) what it all means? This category also includes personal accounts. Furthermore, this category also explains the religions that believe people were created by aliens... no offense to anyone, but
next...
...Actually that's all I could think of right now. If you can think of other categories, feel free to contribute.
