Kalestia

What does everyone think is the main problem with (lack of) evidence of the Christian God? I know there are plenty of reasons not to believe it(biblical inconsistancies, lack of proof, etc), but what do you say would be the strongest argument AGAINST the existance of such a being?

TooBad

- Gratuitous suffering is evident in the world.
- A God who knows everything must know that there is gratuitous suffering.
- A God who is all-powerful could alleviate gratuitous suffering.
- A God who is entirely good would want to alleviate gratuitous suffering.
- Therefore God, if he exists, is either not all-powerful or not all-knowing or not entirely good.
- The Christian God, if he existed, would be all of these things.
- Therefore the Christian God does not exist.

An old and familiar argument which has yet to be refuted.

Theli

Miracles.

There are no grand miracles anymore that can be proven to be the work of the christian god. (all of them exist in the bible).

Well... that's one.

Bible Humper

Hello there Kally.

The main problem that arises from the complete lack of evidence for Yahweh is that in all christian arguments for the existence of Yahweh, you can replace the word "Yahweh" with just about anything supernatural and the argument has not lost the least bit of "strength".

If you are interested to see this in action, I showed David Mathews how his arguments for God are actually stronger arguments for the possibility that we are brains in a laboratory living in a virtual reality <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000444" target="_blank">here</a>

I offered a challenge to David, asking for a single argument that at least makes the God scenario equally as probable as the brain-in-a-laboratory scenario, if not more, but he was unable to do so.

Since God is less probable than millions of speculative scenarios that all posit that "something" beyond reality interacts with reality in a totally imperceptible way that is indistinguishable from no intervention at all, this weakens all God arguments crucially.

This is, in my opinion, the main problem with complete lack of evidence that is not "God in the gaps".

Well, the christians have yet to even find a single phenomenon that is evidence of supernature.

If they could do that, they would still need to establish that supernature is the provence of a god.

If they could do that, they would still need to establish that Yahweh is that god.

The christians go backwards instead, presupposing Yahweh, and then looking for phenomena that are not fully understood yet, such as the origin of the universe, abiogenesis and consciousness, and simply asserting that they are supernatural despite a complete lack of evidence that suggests that when the mysteries of these phenomena are unraveled, they will prove to be supernatural("God in the gaps").

God in the gaps has the notorious distinction of being an argument that, in trillions of uses by billions of believers throughout history, of not being right even once when the mysteries of the phenomenon in question has been unraveled. A record of 100% complete and utter failure. Where knowledge goes, religion recoils.

The same "God in the gaps" argument that failed so miserably to explain rain, stars, insanity, disease, etc. is used today for the universe, abiogenesis and consciousness because it is all the believer has! They have already decided that Yahweh exists, because they were conditioned since childhood to believe this, so they conclude that some sort of proof "must" be out there beyond the known and/or the knowable, if only we could reach it!


Take a look at my link where I replace Yahweh with "brain-in-a-laboratory" using the christian methodology of David Mathews and you will see that B.I.A.Lism fits better!

The "Yahweh scenario" is not falsifiable, but neither is the B.I.A.L scenario, nor millions of other scenarios including Santa Claus. It is impossible to prove any of them are not true, because you can do some hand-waving and say that the truth of these is beyond the known and/or the knowable and escape falsifiability.

[ July 21, 2002: Message edited by: Splashing Colours Of Whimsy ]

[ July 21, 2002: Message edited by: Splashing Colours Of Whimsy ]</p>

Philosoft

The state of God's "existence" is not grounded in reality. It is simply asserted that there is a "being" that "exists" in such a way as to lack all known attributes of 'being existence' yet is still able to perform actions that have physical existence as a prerequisite. Further, it is stated that said being is the singular example of this state of existence. Since this 'divine' state of existence has much more in common with non-existence than existence, I must make the obvious conclusion.

Mad Kally

The same argument against the existence of Santa.
I'm embarrassed that you have my name.

Philosoft

No kidding. This is going to take some getting used to.

Kalestia

lol! Ack!! Sorry bout that, I didnt know there was another Kally here o.o;; Man, what're the chances of that? ^^;; Ok ok, I"ll register a new name =]

Grizzly

the existence of mosquitos.

[ July 21, 2002: Message edited by: Grizzly ]</p>

philechat

1. Christian miracles are no different from miracles claimed by many other religions.

2. Most cultures in the world never encountered the Christian God until the concept was forced down their throat by colonists and missionaries.

3. The Holocaust. It seems to echo strangely with events depicted by the OT authors. And the incompatibility of an omnibenevolent God with the evils in the world.

4. The free will argument. No matter how much we try to dodge it with multi-dimensional hypothesis we are smelling the stench of God's corpse more acutely than ever.

5. The strange concept of justice and love, with Hell as an enforcement for transgressors.

6. The dearth of aesthetic taste (except maybe the Song of Songs) for a supposedly divinely inspired book.

Need more?