Does anyone have a strong argument against God?

[BluePriest]

"On an individual level" is a pretty general statement. The whole point is that generally people kill each other, which is the problem. It may be easy for me not to kill other people, but in the right situation I probably would. It's human nature. I'm not saying I hope I would, I'm just being honest about my own nature. I have violently fought against someone before. I'd say it was mainly in self-defense, but in the heat of the moment some of it was retributive for the pain that had been inflicted on me. It's hard to be rational and calm when someone is hurting you.

So in self defense if pushed far enough you would. Ok, thats understandable. So you dont randomly wake up and think about if you should kill someone today and have to constantly fight back the will to murder. It sounds to me like 99.9% of the time not murdering is pretty easy for you to follow.

[Bloodshadow]

Im sorry, not trying to be insensitive here, but you go to a religion thread, enter a debate with christians, and then get angry when you are told you are going to hell? You obviously already have knowledge of this. If it angers you then I assume there is something much deeper, considering I am sure there are plenty of religions where I am not going to that religions "heaven" and could be going to that religions "hell". However, it would not upset me because I already know where I am going. I know what is true and therefor what other people think will happen to me when I die is irrelevant. Perhaps you should examine what you believe, because if someone saying you are going to hell bothers you when you dont believe a thing we say, then there seems to be some internal conflict.

It's the sheer amount of arrogance and pride they have that annoys me. How dare they say that I'm going to hell? What gave them the right to claim that their way is the only way? It is one thing to have beliefs, it's another thing to force your beliefs onto others and condemn all that don't convert. For me, I may think my beliefs are absolute truth, but I obviously can't make you guys all believe in me. I didn't condemn you guys, now did I?

It doesn't "bother" me. I'm just irritated by it.

As for the whole good and evil debate, there is simply no such thing as absolute good/evil. All moral values are relative and contrived. But this means your God cannot be a benevolent deity, since benevolence itself is relative. Thus, the whole argument of "God is nice" is invalid in its very foundation. It's pointless to try to pick holes in that argument, because the argument itself is already so intrinsically flawed.

As a substitute for the more relative "good" and "evil", I use selfishness and altruism. So let me rephrase your debate: "Is God selfish or altruistic?" But this question is also flawed. If God is truly selfless and only wants the happiness of his creations, then he can simply suspend all of us in a perpetual state of eternal bliss. If that's the case, then God does not want humans to have free will. There are two possible answers to this question: 1) God is altruistic, and he is trying to find a balance between absolute happiness and free will for his subjects; but this means God is not as omnipotent as Christians claim. 2) God is selfish, and is simply doing all of this for teh lulz. In which case, I'm not sure I'll want to believe in such a God.

In the first answer to the question above, I said God is not omnipotent and is trying to find the optimal point. But if he is omnipotent and altruistic, that means the current state of the world is already the optimal balance point between happiness and free will that he looked for. In this case, God will have no reasons to help any of us, since he is already satisfied with his world.

To summarize, I deduced that God can't be altruistic and omnipotent at the same time. If he is, then he still would not help us. Thus, I think that me believing in Christianity will not benefit me in any way other than deluding myself. I'm not that desperate yet.

[UTAlan]

It's the sheer amount of arrogance and pride they have that annoys me. How dare they say that I'm going to hell? What gave them the right to claim that their way is the only way? It is one thing to have beliefs, it's another thing to force your beliefs onto others and condemn all that don't convert. For me, I may think my beliefs are absolute truth, but I obviously can't make you guys all believe in me. I didn't condemn you guys, now did I?

I believe that there is only one way to heaven, and that is through Jesus Christ. I have every right to claim that as my belief, just as you have every right to claim beliefs to the contrary. Christianity absolutely does not promote forcing beliefs onto others or condemning those that don't convert. People that do these things give Christianity a bad name and drive me just as crazy as they do you, I assure you. And for clarification, expressing my belief that anyone who does not accept salvation from Jesus Christ will spend an eternity apart from God is not the same as condemning you - it is just expressing my beliefs.

As for the whole good and evil debate, there is simply no such thing as absolute good/evil. All moral values are relative and contrived. But this means your God cannot be a benevolent deity, since benevolence itself is relative. Thus, the whole argument of "God is nice" is invalid in its very foundation. It's pointless to try to pick holes in that argument, because the argument itself is already so intrinsically flawed.

As a substitute for the more relative "good" and "evil", I use selfishness and altruism. So let me rephrase your debate: "Is God selfish or altruistic?" But this question is also flawed. If God is truly selfless and only wants the happiness of his creations, then he can simply suspend all of us in a perpetual state of eternal bliss. If that's the case, then God does not want humans to have free will. There are two possible answers to this question: 1) God is altruistic, and he is trying to find a balance between absolute happiness and free will for his subjects; but this means God is not as omnipotent as Christians claim. 2) God is selfish, and is simply doing all of this for teh lulz. In which case, I'm not sure I'll want to believe in such a God.

In the first answer to the question above, I said God is not omnipotent and is trying to find the optimal point. But if he is omnipotent and altruistic, that means the current state of the world is already the optimal balance point between happiness and free will that he looked for. In this case, God will have no reasons to help any of us, since he is already satisfied with his world.

To summarize, I deduced that God can't be altruistic and omnipotent at the same time. If he is, then he still would not help us. Thus, I think that me believing in Christianity will not benefit me in any way other than deluding myself. I'm not that desperate yet.

I cannot argue with your conclusions because I disagree with your premise (relative morality).

[Bloodshadow]

Christianity absolutely does not promote forcing beliefs onto others or condemning those that don't convert.

Eh. I'm pretty sure when those people tried to convert me, they said I'd suffer if I don't join their religion. Maybe they did it out of deluded pity for me, but it's still annoying.

What about devout Christian fundamentalists? Don't they think I'll burn in hell forever? I've heard somewhere that some Christian fundamentalist group forced Dungeons and Dragons to change the races "demon" and "devil" to "tanar'ri" and "baatezu" respectively, because they thought the original names were satanic. It seems pretty arrogant and prideful to me to even attempt to force these changes on a freaking tabletop game.

I cannot argue with your conclusions because I disagree with your premise (relative morality).

Oh? You believe that morality is absolute then? Do you have any supporting arguments for this, other than "because God made it so"?

[OldTrees]

I cannot argue with your conclusions because I disagree with your premise (relative morality).

Oh? You believe that morality is absolute then? Do you have any supporting arguments for this, other than "because God made it so"?

Considering there is no argument for moral relativism that does not have holes to a believer in objective morality*, he does not need an argument to disbelieve your premise of moral relativism. (nice how that mirrors another such case )

*This was discussed in depth in multiple of my philosophy courses. Cultural relativism does not entail moral relativism and any claims based on the lack of evidence for a source of objective morality lend themselves to the antirealist position** rather than the moral relativism position.

**Sentences about morality are statements with objective truth values and all those truth values are false.

[Spiraler]

Christianity absolutely does not promote forcing beliefs onto others or condemning those that don't convert.

Then what happened all those years ago with the Native Americans?

Many other things were also caused by religion. Take for example the Holocaust and the rest of WWII. Or many wars in the middle east. Even the dark ages. Not only do I see no reason in religion, I don't want to be any part of those. Ask yourself, what part of all this actually makes sense?

[Neopergoss]

"On an individual level" is a pretty general statement. The whole point is that generally people kill each other, which is the problem. It may be easy for me not to kill other people, but in the right situation I probably would. It's human nature. I'm not saying I hope I would, I'm just being honest about my own nature. I have violently fought against someone before. I'd say it was mainly in self-defense, but in the heat of the moment some of it was retributive for the pain that had been inflicted on me. It's hard to be rational and calm when someone is hurting you.

So in self defense if pushed far enough you would. Ok, thats understandable. So you dont randomly wake up and think about if you should kill someone today and have to constantly fight back the will to murder. It sounds to me like 99.9% of the time not murdering is pretty easy for you to follow.

That's not what I said. I said what might start out in self-defense could easily escalate to aggravated assault and even aggravated murder. No one randomly wakes up and thinks about if they should kill someone. That's ridiculous. Yes, 99.9% of the time it's easy not to murder, but that's besides the point. About every 3 seconds someone is murdered in the US. Murder is extremely common and just because I haven't killed anyone doesn't mean it's not part of human nature, or that I don't sin in other ways. As I've already said, people kill all the time. We are a violent animal. God could have chosen to make us peaceful.

That's just one way he could've made us less prone to sin. If he wanted us to be good, he shouldn't have made it so hard for us.

[BluePriest]

"On an individual level" is a pretty general statement. The whole point is that generally people kill each other, which is the problem. It may be easy for me not to kill other people, but in the right situation I probably would. It's human nature. I'm not saying I hope I would, I'm just being honest about my own nature. I have violently fought against someone before. I'd say it was mainly in self-defense, but in the heat of the moment some of it was retributive for the pain that had been inflicted on me. It's hard to be rational and calm when someone is hurting you.

So in self defense if pushed far enough you would. Ok, thats understandable. So you dont randomly wake up and think about if you should kill someone today and have to constantly fight back the will to murder. It sounds to me like 99.9% of the time not murdering is pretty easy for you to follow.

Yes, 99.9% of the time it's easy not to murder, but that's besides the point.

*snip*

That's just one way he could've made us less prone to sin. If he wanted us to be good, he shouldn't have made it so hard for us.

So 0.1% is too hard to sin? You see, that IS the point. You are one hand saying that it is easy to not murder, then on the other hand you say it is hard for humanity to not murder. I am talking individually. I am talking about YOU personally.
1,000,000,000,000 people is a lot of people. If even just 0.1% of those murder, then that means that 100,000,000 murder. It sounds like a lot, but that is ignoring the fact that 99,900,000,000 do NOT murder. Theres a lot of murder, but theres an exponentially larger amount of people who do NOT murder.

[Neopergoss]

"On an individual level" is a pretty general statement. The whole point is that generally people kill each other, which is the problem. It may be easy for me not to kill other people, but in the right situation I probably would. It's human nature. I'm not saying I hope I would, I'm just being honest about my own nature. I have violently fought against someone before. I'd say it was mainly in self-defense, but in the heat of the moment some of it was retributive for the pain that had been inflicted on me. It's hard to be rational and calm when someone is hurting you.

So in self defense if pushed far enough you would. Ok, thats understandable. So you dont randomly wake up and think about if you should kill someone today and have to constantly fight back the will to murder. It sounds to me like 99.9% of the time not murdering is pretty easy for you to follow.

Yes, 99.9% of the time it's easy not to murder, but that's besides the point.

*snip*

That's just one way he could've made us less prone to sin. If he wanted us to be good, he shouldn't have made it so hard for us.

So 0.1% is too hard to sin? You see, that IS the point. You are one hand saying that it is easy to not murder, then on the other hand you say it is hard for humanity to not murder. I am talking individually. I am talking about YOU personally.
1,000,000,000,000 people is a lot of people. If even just 0.1% of those murder, then that means that 100,000,000 murder. It sounds like a lot, but that is ignoring the fact that 99,900,000,000 do NOT murder. Theres a lot of murder, but theres an exponentially larger amount of people who do NOT murder.

Yes, it is too hard.

Murder is not the only sin, either. I'm sure you've been hurt by the darkness of people personally. Murder is just a dramatic example.

[BluePriest]

*snip*

Yes, it is too hard.

Murder is not the only sin, either. I'm sure you've been hurt by the darkness of people personally. Murder is just a dramatic example.

I have been looking to see if I can find the percentage of the population that murders. Unfortunately, that is a hard number to find. I have a feeling it is less than 0.1%. Id say its closer to 1 out of every 10,000 people murder, however, we have no facts (unless you can find some) to back up any number.

If .1% is too hard, then how easy do you want it to be? Will anything beyond 0% be enough for you? You keep trying to be general.

Lets take another one of the 10 commandments.
In no particular order
Do not....
have any gods before me
make any graven image
use the lords name in vain
lie
covet
murder
commit adultery
steal
DO...
honor the sabbath day
honor your father/motherDo not Lie I would say is the hardest one there. We went from murder, to lie. I would say just about 100% of the world lies, many on a weekly or at least monthly basis, would you agree?

[Neopergoss]

*snip*

Yes, it is too hard.

Murder is not the only sin, either. I'm sure you've been hurt by the darkness of people personally. Murder is just a dramatic example.

I have been looking to see if I can find the percentage of the population that murders. Unfortunately, that is a hard number to find. I have a feeling it is less than 0.1%. Id say its closer to 1 out of every 10,000 people murder, however, we have no facts (unless you can find some) to back up any number.

If .1% is too hard, then how easy do you want it to be? Will anything beyond 0% be enough for you? You keep trying to be general.

Lets take another one of the 10 commandments.
In no particular order
Do not....
have any gods before me
make any graven image
use the lords name in vain
lie
covet
murder
commit adultery
steal
DO...
honor the sabbath day
honor your father/motherDo not Lie I would say is the hardest one there. We went from murder, to lie. I would say just about 100% of the world lies, many on a weekly or at least monthly basis, would you agree?

Honestly this is getting tiring. If you think the world (including especially human nature) is perfect the way it is, more power to you. I think an omnipotent, kind God should be able to do better.

[IcedCakeLake]

Quantum theory: Nothing is real until observed. I have not observed God.

Just two words: Air? Gas?