Exposing Atheistic Myths

[Cheerful Charlie]

It is an ancient Christian claim that God is so beyond anything we can imagine or understand, we can know nothing about God by our own efforts. all we can know about God is what god himself tells us by revelation. A good example here would be William of Okham's position on the incomprehensibility of God.

From here theologians have claimed god is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good. This soon creates impossible paradoxes. The problem of good and evil, omniscience vs free will, God's predestination of all and why God arbitrarily saves some and not others if God is indeed as the bible claims, merciful, just, fair and compassionate. Which the mythology, the supposed true revelations of the Bible demonstrate God is none of those things.

The God of Bible and Quran cannot then exist as claimed. As far as this all goes, that comprehensible, perfect, simple God of the Bible and Quran self destructs. and all theological claims hanging off this debunked God are automatically falsified also.

Again, if God creates all and is truly omniscient, knowing the future in all details, that God must then choose a staring state of existence for any world God creates. All is determined strictly by God's choice of a start of any world he creates and so free will is impossible. Which makes to problem of evil and heaven and hell et al a problem for a god claimed to be fair, just, compassionate and merciful.

Strong atheism is quite capable of demonstrating this incomprehensible God of the Bible cannot exist as claimed. There is no good reason to believe in this god and many good reasons to not believe in such a incoherent set of claims this God entails.

 

[skepticalbip]

Well there's actually 3 options.
1. God(s) probably/definitely yes.
2. God(s) probably/definitely no.
3. God(s) can't decide between 1 or 2

I think the neutral, open-minded option #3 is a better position than presuming the atheist view #2 simply because you don't find #1 sufficiently credible.

...And the history of religion has lots of those other gods that joe christian is required to be atheistic about.

That's not true.
I am not required to think that the God worshipped by Jewish people or Muslims does not exist.
Neither am I prevented from thinking that other religions are partly right...
(Where's that elephant blind men picture)

Your elephant/blind men picture is a poor example of this argument. It assumes the conclusion that there is a god (the elephant) physically present then claims that people are just having difficulty describing this god that they physically have their hands on. A better illustration would be seven blind men sitting around the walls of an empty room trying to explain their belief of what the creature (god) in the middle of the room looks like.

 

[Lion IRC]

Lion, you fail to consider option 2.5: There is not convincing evidence of any gods. Therefore, there’s no reason to suppose one. You don’t HAVE to make something up to fill an unknown. It may be entirely possible that the room is just empty.

There obviously IS convincing evidence because there exist people who ARE convinced by that convincing evidence.

There is no convincing evidence for a god. None. Not even a little bit convincing. It just doesn’t exist.
So why would anyone waste time being “unsure” about something that has no reason to suspect it?

You can claim that it's not evidence of God but you have to admit that it's evidence of something.

Nothing sparks a hint of reason to believe.
It’s not that #1 is “not sufficiently credible,” it’s that it is not even remotely credible. It’s not worth the firing of a single neuron, it’s so not credible.

...to you. It's not convincing to you. And let's not forget that you haven't established the basis for your supposedly superior authority - and impartiality- to make such a sweeping claim about what someone else presents as evidence.

Aren't we entitled to question the bias of your presuppositional atheism?
How do we know that you won't gainsay ANY/EVERY instance of eye witness testimony as...a lie, a delusion, a mistake?

If someone comes running up to you and claims they have a mansion made of gold and it is in the trunk of their car, do you really spend your time going over there so they can show you?

No. Why should I?
I don't need (or want) to disprove their claim.
I couldn't care less if they really do have such a thing.
And if I was a dogmatic presuppositional atheist whose automatic response is that there is and never has been any evidence for God (such as would persuade me,) the last thing I would waste my time on an Internet forum ruminating about what theists believe. As Richard Dawkins says, life is short, stop worrying.

Seriously? It is so far from credible that you don’t waste your time. It’s not that you “can’t decide” if it’s true. It is that it’s so dumb you don’t even need a second glance. “Yeah buddy, sure you do,” as you walk away.

That's ignosticism. That's how I feel when atheists talk about invisible pink unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ignosticism

 

[Learner]

I
From here theologians have claimed god is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good. This soon creates impossible paradoxes. The problem of good and evil, omniscience vs free will, God's predestination of all and why God arbitrarily saves some and not others if God is indeed as the bible claims, merciful, just, fair and compassionate. Which the mythology, the supposed true revelations of the Bible demonstrate God is none of those things.

If you're going to describe the lack of ... that conflicts with an omniscient omnipotent entity, you must also factor-in that an All-knowing God would have the ability to SEE ALL possible out-comes, just as one would have different scores and results, playing several times the same video-game (best analogy I could come up with at the moment).

Putting into consideration, that this would be the discription and characteristic of an Omniscient entitiy to be able to SEE everyone walking on ALL the roads leading to ALL the various destinations.

Like the video game, free-will seems to be synonymous here with the forks-in-the-road and having potentials to one of various outcomes. There is no contradiction even when God regrets creating man - regretting to allow man to choose his own destiny from one of many forks-in-the-road (for lack of better wording).

This coincides with every name ALREADY written in the book of life, from birth (or before birth in the womb when God knew you). No names written in the book after their life on earth as it sometimes thought. And as it is written - names in that book can also fade away or be rubbed out!

 

[Lion IRC]

Cheerful Charlie claims that there's some impossible paradox of omnipotence and free will and omniscience and theodicy and omnibenevolence and omnipresence etc etc.

But he hasn't demonstrated this is necessarily the case.

And that's important because I would be an atheist without hesitation if I couldn't reconcile God's nature with what we see in the world.

 

[Learner]

The nights still young, we'll have to see if there is a demonstration, we may still become atheists.

 

[bilby]

These types of responses are stupid!

If what I said is hardly heavy, then surely you should've had no problem refuting it.

Since you didn't, your comment was fluff.

So, Halfie, are you willing to stand by this claim?

If we post a comment on your claims, and you don't refute it, we can dismiss your posts as 'fluff?'

Like, if we point out five or six problems with your premise and you only respond to one niggling little detail, that's ignorable 'fluff' because you didn't respond to the actual problems? We can say your post is stupid?

I've refuted everything, Keith. The problem is there's so many word salad ways to write, "Nuh-uh!" at me and make yourself think you are smart.

For example, atheists have agreed that it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove God doesn't exist. So, since it's impossible to prove God does not exist, atheism is based on faith, not facts, not logic, not reason, just pure and simple faith.

It's not at all impossible. It's been done.

Gods, prayers, life after death, telekinesis, telepathy, ghosts, haunting, souls, and anything else that requires an interaction between the physical reality of humans and their environment, and an undetected "supernatural", are incompatible with quantum field theory. And so we must choose - either Gods are proven by QFT not to exist; Or QFT is deeply, massively, and obviously wrong.

There's absolutely no way that the incredibly accurate predictions of QFT match reality, by pure coincidence, despite the theory being wrong. It's less likely that QFT is wrong enough for gods to be possible, than it is for gravity to be wrong enough that loads of stuff falls upwards all the time, but we just never noticed.

Scientists hate to make absolute statements. They always hedge. And that's the appropriate thing to do. But in lay terms, QFT is a perfect description of everything on a human scale. It's not perfect, but all of its imperfections apply only to objects larger than solar systems, or more energetic than the large hadron collider. For gods to interact with humans using an unknown force or particle, they would either need humans of galactic proportions; or to apply so much energy that the human in question would be vapourised, along with half his home city.

Gods are impossible. That is to say, Gods provably do not exist. Unless all of physics is wrong, and all our technology works despite our understanding of HOW it works being totally wrong.

That's as close to God being disproven as you can get. Proof is for whiskey and mathematics. But there's no doubt whatsoever that gods exist only as fictional characters.

 

[abaddon]

That's ignosticism. That's how I feel when atheists talk about invisible pink unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ignosticism

Cool, there is overlap between how you view some non-christian deities and how an atheist like myself views Jehovah.

I'm agnostic, atheist and ignostic.

You at least share the ignostic stance about a couple god-like beings.

But, if you find the IPU so uncompelling that it's a non-question then aren't you atheist about it too? Do you believe or not believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn?

If you don't believe it, can you prove it doesn't exist?

 

[DBT]

Cheerful Charlie claims that there's some impossible paradox of omnipotence and free will and omniscience and theodicy and omnibenevolence and omnipresence etc etc.

But he hasn't demonstrated this is necessarily the case.

What is free will?

 

[Learner]

Cheerful Charlie claims that there's some impossible paradox of omnipotence and free will and omniscience and theodicy and omnibenevolence and omnipresence etc etc.

But he hasn't demonstrated this is necessarily the case.

What is free will?

He doesn't have to answer that, if he's not willing to.

 

[DBT]

Cheerful Charlie claims that there's some impossible paradox of omnipotence and free will and omniscience and theodicy and omnibenevolence and omnipresence etc etc.

But he hasn't demonstrated this is necessarily the case.

What is free will?

Does he have to answer that?

Whether he does or does not depends on a number of factors. He may feel to urge to respond, or the urge to avoid the question, not enough time, too much trouble, etc. Decision making.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Cheerful Charlie claims that there's some impossible paradox of omnipotence and free will and omniscience and theodicy and omnibenevolence and omnipresence etc etc.

But he hasn't demonstrated this is necessarily the case.

And that's important because I would be an atheist without hesitation if I couldn't reconcile God's nature with what we see in the world.

It is simple, really. If God creates all, God must choose an initial state for his creation. IFF God is essentially omniscient, knowing the future in all details, then God will know what his creation will result in at any point of the future. All then is predestined, and free will is impossible. This makes the idea of moral evil or moral good dependent totally on God's will. That makes the idea of heaven and hell
rather problematic.

If God creates a world where he knows John will do evil, because of God's choice of what possible world he will actualize, and condemns John to eternal torment because of God's choice, that makes God a moral monster.

The idea that God predestines all and that there is no free will predates Christianity. Dead Sea scrolls demonstrate that the Essenes held that view. This then supports divine providence, the ancient view that everything happens directly from the will of God. This is supported from the doctrine of the simplicity of God, the claim there is no existence outside and beyond God that can affect God in any manner. That includes such abstractions like logic and all metaphysical necessities. A God out of time, held by many theologians since Augustine, creates all at once, including every fact and state of existence that does in fact exist, at once. There is no A causes B causes C et al. The only cause of any thing is God. Including all sentient beings and the acts in the smallest detail. And on and on in this manner. Anselm's perfect being theology. Perfect being theology exemplifies claims about God. God is maximally powerful, maximally good, nothing greater than God can be imagined. Then God's omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence are explicitly claimed and these incoherent problems are now unavoidable.

All attempts so far to avoid such claims have failed. You end up with things like Process Theology that in the end, have a lot of problems that call Process Theology into question. Spinoza's Pantheism abandons most of any claims made by Christian or Jewish philosophers and theologians made about God. There isn't much room left for God with that.

Basically in the end, a God that is omniscient and creates all cannot be good. Compatibilism is the claim man has free will and God simply knows what future choices any given man or woman will make. But a God that creates all and is essentially omniscient destroys compatibilism totally.

It might be tempting to abandon the claim God is omniscient, that is knows the future, but that has a lot of problems. That means there is a whole realm of things, time and all physics involving time that is not something God creates or controls, and contradicts many time honored, ancient dogmas, and followed to it's logical conclusion eliminates the grand Gods of grand theologies. We are let with naturalism and a God that at best is a mere shadow of any possible definition of God, about as meaningful as say, fairies or leprechauns.
And that God is no longer a God worth bothering with, trying to define such a lowly God to avoid the problems of God.

It is hard to do justice to all of this in a short forum post without a Lumpenprotilariat style Wall of Text. But the very idea of a God so great we cannot imagine anything greater simply in the final analysis, collapses under it's own weight.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

There is an excellent program called "Closer To Truth" that explores among other things, theology and arguments for and against God. Narrated by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, this program has leading experts answer questions and lay out their arguments in nice, concise bite sized segments.

Of interest here is the doctrine of Divine Providence. That is, God's plan, God creates everything according to his will, and ancient dogma that is part and parcel of Christianity.

https://www.closertotruth.com/series/what-divine-providence

In this series, R.L. Kuhn asks 6 Christian theologians and philosophers how to reconcile divine providence and moral evil. These are all Christian thinkers, well educated, who themselves are university teachers of theology and philosophy. This is a very interesting series as these 6 Christian experts display a deer in the head lights response to Kuhn's gentle but sharp question as to how to reconcile these issues.

I find it startling that these supposed sophisticated experts seem to have not thought this through and had no ready apologisms or answers. For those of us who want to understand these issues, this is rather enlightening. I know of no theologians who can really answer this, and i have over many years read a lot of theologians.

Both Martin Luther and John Calvin stumble over the issue and in the end, abandon reason and take refuge in "God is incomprehensible". John Calvin darkly tells us there are some things in theology we should not be allowed to think about. The problem of evil and God's Providence are impossible to reconcile. These six little episodes of "Closer To Truth" are a real eye opener, an I recommend these episodes highly to demonstrate the problem.

 

[Atheos]

The existence of a Christian god is unfalsifiable. That much is true. Much like the concept of Bantu, the Supreme Cosmic Toad from whose flatulence the universe came into existence, is unfalsifiable. However, specific claims made in the Bible can be falsified. And have been falsified by modern science. Like the age of the earth, the origin of life and humans, the Noachian flood, and so on. Since so much of what the Bible claims is demonstrably wrong, this leaves us no reason to believe the other claims in the Bible that cannot be falsified.



Atheists don't believe in gods because no convincing evidence of the existence of gods has been presented. So the atheists's lack of belief is based on sound and practical epistemological principles. Can you explain why atheists should believe in gods when no evidence can be presented?

Sure, science says the universe an earth are old. Does this mean they are right? Of course not. For example, when God made Adam and Eve, they looked about 25 years old but they were 0 seconds old. If a scientist came along to study Adam and Even, he would conclude that they have been around for 25 years, not 0 seconds.

I used to think this way. I used to preach it from the pulpit. If god can create an old Adam with a navel god could create an old universe. Problem solved.

That was before I read about  SN 1987A. This happened during my lifetime. The technology by which it was determined that this star was 168,000 light years away was unimpeachable. The fact that we were able to observe it both before and after it went supernova is irrefutable.

If the universe were only 10,000 years old the star never existed. God would have had to intentionally create 10,000 years worth of the illusion of this star for our perusal, the first 9900 of them being throwaway because we hadn't yet developed the technology to resolve that star. Then god would have had to create the illusion of the non-existent star blowing up so we could oooh and aaah about it and gather many pictures.

Either the universe is old or god is purposefully deceitful. Problem not solved.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Well there's actually 3 options.
1. God(s) probably/definitely yes.
2. God(s) probably/definitely no.
3. God(s) can't decide between 1 or 2

I think the neutral, open-minded option #3 is a better position than presuming the atheist view #2 simply because you don't find #1 sufficiently credible.

...And the history of religion has lots of those other gods that joe christian is required to be atheistic about.

That's not true.
I am not required to think that the God worshipped by Jewish people or Muslims does not exist.
Neither am I prevented from thinking that other religions are partly right...
(Where's that elephant blind men picture)

Your elephant/blind men picture is a poor example of this argument. It assumes the conclusion that there is a god (the elephant) physically present then claims that people are just having difficulty describing this god that they physically have their hands on. A better illustration would be seven blind men sitting around the walls of an empty room trying to explain their belief of what the creature (god) in the middle of the room looks like.

They would find a god, it would be themselves.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Like the video game, free-will seems to be synonymous here with the forks-in-the-road and having potentials to one of various outcomes. There is no contradiction even when God regrets creating man - regretting to allow man to choose his own destiny from one of many forks-in-the-road (for lack of better wording).

of course there's a contradiction. If He knew everything beforehand, He knew how Man would turn out, He knew He would disapprove, and would regret making Man WHILE HE WAS MAKING MAN.
And this isn't just Debbie Downer writing an eHarmony profile with 'this will probably end in tears, but let's meet,' this is God knowing exactly how many generations of wicked were going to pass before he finally decided to commit mass murder. AND knew that all the killing would lead to his after-flood realization that men are just inherently wicked. And went thru it anyway, with the knowledge He was making a mistake.

Which makes all the generations between the original fratricide and Caanan being cursed because Ham saw a sloppy naked drunk, all of tgat was one big, bloody, Rube Goldberg effort to get nowhere, to gain no new knowledge, and just spin wheels in mud, blood, and sweat.

He can't even, in this view, say that He HOPED it would turn out different, He already knew better.

 

[atrib]

Well Christians do if they want to continue claiming that there is only one god and that only Christians know the nature of this god. There is as much reason to believe in the existence of gods of other religions as the Christian god.

For atheist, the statement that there is no reason to believe that any of the claimed gods (which includes the one Christians claim) actually exist is sufficient.

Well in that case, the agnostic can sit back and observe both sides of the debate.

Ladies and gentlemen, in the right corner, THEISM.
- a gazzilion billion trillion claims of sensory experience of some form of Higher Power

and...

In the left corner, introducing ATHEISM
- the belief that there's no such thing as God(s) or evidence for God(s) and anyone who makes any claim about God(s) of Higher Power(s) is deluded, mistaken or lying.

There are thousands of people living today who apparently hold the sincere belief that they have been abducted by aliens from another planet. Many of them provide vivid and detailed narratives as to how these interactions with the aliens occurred. Does this mean we should believe that aliens have been visiting earth and abducting humans in large numbers over the past 60 to 70 years, which is roughly how long these stories have been told? Of course not.

Our senses are easily fooled, and our brains are wired to seek patterns and make up explanations for phenomena that aren't easily explained through our everyday understanding of the world. Are you really unable to come up with a naturalistic explanation as to why many religious people, who are convinced that their gods are real, and are desperate to communicate with said gods, might experience visions and other sensory hallucinations that they attribute to intervention by their preferred supernatural friend, or their friend's representatives?

 

[abaddon]

I'd bet most experiences of God aren't hallucinations. They can be as homely as what many would describe as "the warm fuzzies". An effusive feeling of love or wonder that makes one bubble over in a state of joy can be attributed to "the Holy Spirit moves me!" or "the love of Jesus fills my heart". There's no hallucination, just hyperbole. Then their misattribution of unusual states to God or Jesus becomes confirmation they're real.

Same with coincidences. Little "miracles" in life that would be best explained as fortunate coincidences turn into a proof of God's hand in things. A natural explanation feels (needlessly) like it takes the wonderfulness out of the coincidence. Since it's an experience that happened to a religious person, it becomes a "religious experience".

So, be aware of the likelihood of extreme hyperbole when they reference their religious experiences.

 

[Learner]

Like the video game, free-will seems to be synonymous here with the forks-in-the-road and having potentials to one of various outcomes. There is no contradiction even when God regrets creating man - regretting to allow man to choose his own destiny from one of many forks-in-the-road (for lack of better wording).

of course there's a contradiction. If He knew everything beforehand, He knew how Man would turn out, He knew He would disapprove, and would regret making Man WHILE HE WAS MAKING MAN.

The question theists would ask after scrutinizing the related verses ....

5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Would this be the stage, when GOD decides to switch-on His powers of fore-sight so to speak? What I'm saying here is that, originally, this creation seems to be spontaneous.

Let there be this something... And God saw that this something was good .. e.g. pleased with the result.

When God said "let us make man in our image" (a spontaneous thought) it seems to me that Gods relationships with His angels was ALL hunkydory. However as we can see in the texts - once man came onto the scene, this good relationship didn't last, and those certain angels developed quite a disliking for mankind. Why didn't God see this happening? Well everything was so hunkydory before, there may not have been a need to look into the future, especially after such a good relationship. No specific plans as the one shown much later in the NT, Just a nuturing and guidance for this new creation to eventually be as high as the angels.

Did God expect angels to be jealous and fall, since He gave them the life from Himself? Perhaps God thought they would be like Himself because He made them in His image. Further in the bible He establishes Himself after seeing the world corrupted...there is non more righteous than God ... no angels or men, .

And this isn't just Debbie Downer writing an eHarmony profile with 'this will probably end in tears, but let's meet,' this is God knowing exactly how many generations of wicked were going to pass before he finally decided to commit mass murder. AND knew that all the killing would lead to his after-flood realization that men are just inherently wicked. And went thru it anyway, with the knowledge He was making a mistake.

Which makes all the generations between the original fratricide and Caanan being cursed because Ham saw a sloppy naked drunk, all of tgat was one big, bloody, Rube Goldberg effort to get nowhere, to gain no new knowledge, and just spin wheels in mud, blood, and sweat.

He can't even, in this view, say that He HOPED it would turn out different, He already knew better.

Yes He would see into the future at this stage now, adapting the program for a time after Moses (for lack of better word) rather than switch the existence program off and starting brand new, God has to COMMIT to the agreements and covenants made, starting with Noah. A promise is a promise with His word and not forgetting ... because He loves his creation.

Seeing every road possible, in a broken world, the good and evil, He later adds to the program without conflicting with His laws that what ever road or path you're on ...the life-line is The Lord Jesus!

(I should do this in word to add more clarity and reduce errors, a little busy)

 

[Keith&Co.]

Would this be the stage, when GOD decides to switch-on His powers of fore-sight so to speak? What I'm saying here is that, originally, this creation seems to be spontaneous.

so, whence the idea that god's tri-omni nature is a voluntary muscle?
And, if you have a project manager who could know the end-result of yhe project, why the son of a fuck would he not use that tool during the project?
Also, if a project has problems, and the manager knew about the problem, we hold him responsible.
If the project has problems, and the managrr COULD have anticipated the problems, but just chose not to bother with those details, we still hold him responsible.

So, you still have a god typically described as triźomni, and turning the omniscience off doesn't refuce his blame for the result by a whit.

When God said "let us make man in our image" (a spontaneous thought) it seems to me that Gods relationships with His angels was ALL hunkydory. However as we can see in the texts - once man came onto the scene, this good relationship didn't last, and those certain angels developed quite a disliking for mankind. Why didn't God see this happening? Well everything was so hunkydory before, there may not have been a need to look into the future, especially after such a good relationship.

so, the guy you said knew me even in the womb made a huge change to the balance of power and grace in his universe without even peeking ahead to see how it was going to turn out?
This does not absolve his responsibility for the results, nor does it shift blame to the humans.
If he COULD have foreseen pronlems but chose not to even look, he's not all that smart, is he?

Why would a craftsman not use all his tools to make his creation exactly as he wants it?