Tristan Scott

A strong argument against gods, IMO, would be knowledge. It appears that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the knowledge humanity aquires and humanity's adherence to, or reliance on the god concept.

I think if we accept the notion that humans invent gods to compensate for what they do not understand in the first place, the logic of this relationship becomes very clear. Ancient people didn't understand how the weather worked, or what the Sun and Moon were, so they made them gods. As they began to understand that these were natural phenomena, the gods disappeared, to be replaced eventually with gods that, instead of dealing with natural phenomena, dealt with more philosophical questions, like "who are we?, what made us?, what happens when we die?" etc.

Anyhow, I think a good argument against gods is that they seem to disappear with enlightenment.

Radcliffe Emerson

The biggest problem I now have with the concept is the simple fact the Christian religion was originally started to convert Jews, and the basic messianic/eternal hell/resurrection beliefs are NOT Jewish.
That's the main reason even today the Jews don't believe in Jesus. A rabbi said the NT concept of the Messiah is not and never has been part of the Jewish religion. Their messianic belief is their messiah will be a normal human being, but very wise and will unite the world, not a god-man that will be put to death and rise from the dead. He said there is no evidence anywhere in the Torah to support the OT-prophecy beliefs about Jesus in the NT.
He said the passages from the OT linking to the NT are simply erroneous interpretations, and that's the general Jewish concensus. Some of it too is what's already stated here: when their messiah returns, he'll united the world and end wars and famines, etc.
That did not happen after Jesus came.
I attended a meeting last summer where a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a rabbi debated heaven.
The rabbi said the Jews do not believe and never have believed in eternal hell. Gehenna in the Torah is the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, and the only afterlife belief they have is if there is punishment, it is definitely NOT eternal.

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]</p>

Pomp

Kalestia,

What does everyone think is the main problem with (lack of) evidence of the Christian God?

You just answered your own question, I think. The main problem with belief in the Xian god is the complete lack of reliable evidence for that entity's existence.

Samhain

Along with this I'd have to say logical incompatibility of:

1. Omniscience
2. Omnipotence
3. Free-will
4. Benevolence

Now, all are claimed by the majority of xians to be held by the JC 'God', and yet all (with the exception of benevolence + free-will) blatantly contradict one another in regards to logic. No two of these things could exist together logically (besides the set mentioned before), and yet all are claimed to be held throughout the universe and within 'God' by the norm of xians.

Darwin's Finch

Kalestia: Others have already touched on my objections, so I'll spare you the repetition. ReasonableDoubt posed a good question. I'd like to see your answer. After you've answered the question, please inform me how you think Yahweh somehow escapes the same net.

Novowels

Two words: Jerry Falwell.

RogerLeeCooke

It's not one thing. Like all good scientific evidence, it's a glove that has to fit all the fingers. There are many lines of converging evidence, to wit:

1. All appearances are that a human personality is the effect of brain activity. The personalities we know in other people are pretty much correlated with the state of their brains. As the brain matures, the personality matures. When the brain is damaged, the personality is damaged. And, by natural extension, when the brain disintegrates, so does the personality.

2. Even a superficial study of sociology, anthropology, or psychology shows that people behave very much according to societal expectations. The religious beliefs a person will have are determined about the same way as the language they speak; this rule holds in well over 99% of the people. On that basis, the idea that one religion is the "true" one makes no more sense than the belief of the patriot that his particular country is more virtuous than all the others.

Well, I could go on, but these two points will have to do for now. Perhaps I'll resume later when I have more time.

atheist_in_foxhole

One of the strongest arguments against the Christian god is the fact that there are over 30,000 denominations within Christianity, most of which claim to have the exclusive truth (<a href="http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Religion_and_Spirituality/Faiths_and_Practices/Christianity/Denominations_and_Sects/" target="_blank">Here's a partial list of denominations</a>).

If the Christian god was real, why would "he" allow for so much confusion? How the heck is anyone supposed to sort through the thousands and thousands of denominations and find the one "true" faith? It makes looking for a needle in a haystack look easy by comparison.

[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: atheist_in_foxhole ]</p>

DMB

While subscribing to most of the reasons given already, I must add a few more that matter to me.

First of all, I must say that with regard to the idea of a deist creator god I am agnostic. I think it would be very hard to prove or disprove such an entity, although personally I see no particular reason why it should exist.

No, my problem is with the identification of the supposed creator of the universe with the xian god. This god, as pictured in the bible, shows all the signs of being manufactured by humans, just like other gods, such as Zeus. This god appears to have essentially human qualities, and not on the whole very nice ones. It is true that there is within the bible a certain development of the idea of god (see Karen Armstrong’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345384563/qid=1027602364/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-7164141-4982201" target="_blank">A History of God,</a> but this merely reflects social and intellectual human development. There is no evidence that any sort of external reality is being reflected.

The doctrine of the trinity (described by muslims as blasphemous) also presents many intellectual difficulties. I get the impression that many xian apologists have difficulties with it.

The doctrine of the atonement disgusts me. It is so primitive. Let’s have a human sacrifice to wipe out our sins! It also comes burdened by many difficulties of interpretation as to why a god, infinite in space and time, should choose one particular time and place to carry out this act of atonement: what about all the generations before Jesus? What about those who never got to hear about it? Why not have more efficient means of transmitting the word? Why should so much hinge on belief, when those who are born into xian families are given an enormous advantage in this respect over those born into, for example, muslim families?

These are not my only objections to xianity, but they are the ones that do most to render belief on my part in xianity impossible.

Perchance

I suppose I should add one more reason, since lately I've been seeing examples of it all over the place...

The inability of Christians to defend their religion, other than with vague terms like "pure" and "good."

I've heard many descriptions of the Muslim religion as "primitive" lately. When I asked what was less primitive about worshipping a dead guy on a stick, the last person who described Muslims that way to me insisted that that was not the "mental picture" she had of Jesus. When I tried to get her to describe her mental picture, though, she said she didn't want to influence me.

Get beneath the first level of words, like "God is good" and "Read the Bible," and it seems to turn into smoke and mirrors.

-Perchance.