Rather than the 'arguments for strong atheism' thread, where essentially every god concept has to be dismissed, this breaks it down into bite-size chunks. One god-concept at a time, as it were. Given the similarity between the various incarnations (not really the right word in a literal sense, but you know what I mean) of the God of Abraham, let's lump 'em all together here. Once we've dealt with this alleged 'god', we could move onto others, but I suspect many of the arguments would be of a kind.

So here it is, let's state our case for not believing in this specific deity, and even going so far as to deny even the remote possibility of it existing.

Hands up who wants to go first? No, no takers? OK, I'll start ...

The Bible. I rest my case. Complete fucking nonsense. The only 'evidence' seems to be that which asserts this god's existence, and it's a) full of obviously made up shit, b) full of accounts that indicate this god to be a thoroughly evil bastard, whilst simultaneously proclaiming it to be love itself (complete paradox), and c) is full of lies & untruths, inaccuracies and idiocy, yet is apparently the word of this god, so suggesting that the supreme being is an ignorant liar. Er, shome mishtake, shurely.

OK, your go.

This god is supposedly immaterial, yet can intervene in the material universe. Without actually being material. This makes NO SENSE whatsoever.

That's one. That's my big one. You lot can do the rest.

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For me there is no logic at all. Why believe in something supernatural without any evidence of its existance. Just pure madeness. Believing in fairy tales now that is totally bonkers.

I feel sorry for these people that need this crutch for life. It is very very sad.

Eternal life after death. How does that work?

You only have to think about it for a while to come up with all sorts of reasons why it can't, and in fact far from being desirable it sounds like eternal torment, whether in paradise or hell.

Doesn't this presuppose biblical inerrancy? You can separate the Christian Bible from the Christian triune god, and say that the Bible is the flawed attempts of people bounded by culture and knowledge to comprehend being-itself. You can be strongly atheist of the biblical Adonai and the biblical Christ, as both come part & parcel with debunked ancient cosmology, but, as that canny mid-20th Century theologian Rudolf Bultmann noted, rejecting the form needn't wipe out the source.

Byron wrote:Doesn't this presuppose biblical inerrancy? You can separate the Christian Bible from the Christian triune god, and say that the Bible is the flawed attempts of people bounded by culture and knowledge to comprehend being-itself. You can be strongly atheist of the biblical Adonai and the biblical Christ, as both come part & parcel with debunked ancient cosmology, but, as that canny mid-20th Century theologian Rudolf Bultmann noted, rejecting the form needn't wipe out the source.

Indeed, but then what are we left with? Once the bible goes, where does the god of Christianity arise from? The source of the Christ myth is the bible. Take that away, discredit that myth, and whither Jesus? You then start defining a different god, with only the most tangential connections with the biblical account.

chairman bill wrote:Indeed, but then what are we left with? Once the bible goes, where does the god of Christianity arise from? The source of the Christ myth is the bible. Take that away, discredit that myth, and whither Jesus? You then start defining a different god, with only the most tangential connections with the biblical account.

But the Christ myth long preceded the canon! The experience of the Christ-event is what inspired the writings of Paul of Tarsus, the gospels, and, later, the pseudepigraphical (or forged, as I prefer) apostolic letters.

The Bible has a myriad of competing themes within it: the ultra-abstract I AM of Exodus; the anthropomorphic Elohim of Eden; the anointed Christ of Mark; the begotten Christ of Matthew and Luke; and the Logos incarnate of John. And that's not even getting started on Paul of Tarsus' ever-shifting christology.

What we think of as Christian orthodoxy was gradually defined over the first 500 or so years of the Christian era. It was radically re-defined in the European reformations, and a more modest redefinition has been ongoing. When there's such diversity within Christian theology, I see no reason why another radical redefinition would sever ties from earlier tradition.

Where does the god of Christianity arise from? If you believe in God, somewhere external to its chroniclers. If you don't believe in God, from our imagination. Regardless, the perceptions undoubtedly exist. Bultmann thought there was some authentic Kerygma (message) separable from the myth, that could survive a de-mythologization process. I'm not sure that there is, but his underlying point about separating content and form is a good one.

Or to put it another way, the source of the Christ myth is the experience of believers, and new experiences can be had and shared. This is the point of contention between authoritarian believers (whether that authority's invested in scripture or the Magisterium) and those who emphasize the "work of the Spirit," or, to de-mythologize the phrase, being receptive to new insights.

But without the bible to inspire such interpretations of experiences, or even engender the experiences themselves, there would be no Jesus today.

Edit to add: And anyway, that simply takes us outside of biblical Christianity, so offers no support to bible-based belief or its god.

chairman bill wrote:But without the bible to inspire such interpretations of experiences, or even engender the experiences themselves, there would be no Jesus today.

If you don't believe in any external reality behind the experiences, it's true that people wouldn't frame them in that way without the point of reference (though I'd prefer "tradition" to the Bible, as lots of Christian orthodoxy, like the Trinity, or the veneration of Saints, is extra-biblical). The experiences themselves would remain -- or at least, versions of them -- and be understood in a different way. The form/content split again.

Edit to add: And anyway, that simply takes us outside of biblical Christianity, so offers no support to bible-based belief or its god.

But a "bible-based" faith is itself a protestant idea, and many Christians don't limit themselves to such a narrow source. In any case, I'd argue that there's no such thing as a bible-based belief, as all beliefs rely on interpretation and ideas external to the Christian scriptures.

My answer was outside of the bible, no?

Byron wrote:

chairman bill wrote:But without the bible to inspire such interpretations of experiences, or even engender the experiences themselves, there would be no Jesus today.

If you don't believe in any external reality behind the experiences, it's true that people wouldn't frame them in that way without the point of reference (though I'd prefer "tradition" to the Bible, as lots of Christian orthodoxy, like the Trinity, or the veneration of Saints, is extra-biblical). The experiences themselves would remain -- or at least, versions of them -- and be understood in a different way. The form/content split again.

Edit to add: And anyway, that simply takes us outside of biblical Christianity, so offers no support to bible-based belief or its god.

But a "bible-based" faith is itself a protestant idea, and many Christians don't limit themselves to such a narrow source. In any case, I'd argue that there's no such thing as a bible-based belief, as all beliefs rely on interpretation and ideas external to the Christian scriptures.

But where do the ideas begin? Tradition? Alleged personal experience? Authority of the Church? The Bible? All of the above?

I would say that the primary factor for me is that every miraculous claim, every claim that would in any way verify the existence of this deity, when it falls into the realm of physical evidence where it is capable of being falsified, it is always falsified.

Paul G wrote:My answer was outside of the bible, no?

Yep.

Regarding the timey-wimey paradox of an immaterial/material god, I'll do what I normally do when it goes abstract on me, and reach for Tillich's ground of our being. God isn't an entity, material or immaterial, but the condition of existing, or being-itself. God is a solution to the problem of not-being.

I suspect this may be clever wordplay, signifying nothing, but I'm fascinated by the notion there may be something to it. Regardless, this clearly isn't the God of Abraham or Paul, whatever Tillich liked to think.

Moonwatcher wrote:But where do the ideas begin? Tradition? Alleged personal experience? Authority of the Church? The Bible? All of the above?

These days, usually all of the above, to varying degrees. I say usually. Mystics go in for pure experience, then try to transcend even that in the quest for an encounter with pure being, which makes 'em hard to control, and makes religious authorities wary of them, at best.

I would say that the primary factor for me is that every miraculous claim, every claim that would in any way verify the existence of this deity, when it falls into the realm of physical evidence where it is capable of being falsified, it is always falsified.

Of course, since the miraculous claims rest on a false proposition, namely, a multi-tiered universe, shot through with Platonist assumptions about archetypes and perfect forms that exist on another plane of existence, and can periodically break through the walls between realities.

It may be that god can be reformulated in a way that fits the increase of our understanding. "God" is after all a word-symbol for our ultimate concern. Even traditional religious POV's stress god's unknowability.

The problem comes when people take the Karen Armstrong route of pretending that this is what religious folks have believed all along. It isn't, it really, really isn't. I've seen it described as the leap from Newtonian physics to Relativity, but I think it's more radical than even that, since Relativity didn't junk its foundations and invent a new frame of reference. That's what religion must do if its to avoid opposing pitfalls of reality-denial and subjective fiction.

And to stop the thread veering off-topic, I'll just add that I've drawn these alternatives to illustrate the point that "god" can be defined in non-theistic terms. A theistic god has the traditional qualities of hyper-naturalism and intervention from some separate spiritual realm. Sky-god tricks. This idea of god was formed from the assumptions of a previous worldview, and the tensions between religion and atheism come from the artificial preservation of an outdated worldview via dogma. A non-theistic god isn't personal in the way that Elohim or Allah or the Trinity are personal. It's other from all our expectations and experiences, and doesn't undo millennia of empirical observation.

You can broaden "one god at a time" to "one type of god at a time," as exclusionary principles are transferable. If a particular god is ruled out for, say, a total lack of evidence for supernatural intervention, it makes sense to strike any other god for whom the same claim is made.

The non-existent god is a right bastard to disprove. (No seriously, Tillich actually argued this for being-itself!)

Byron wrote:

Paul G wrote:My answer was outside of the bible, no?

Yep.

Regarding the timey-wimey paradox of an immaterial/material god, I'll do what I normally do when it goes abstract on me, and reach for Tillich's ground of our being. God isn't an entity, material or immaterial, but the condition of existing, or being-itself. God is a solution to the problem of not-being.

I suspect this may be clever wordplay, signifying nothing, but I'm fascinated by the notion there may be something to it. Regardless, this clearly isn't the God of Abraham or Paul, whatever Tillich liked to think.

I've heard this, and it's essentially the most rational argument for "god" I can think of. It's not vastly different from pantheism from what I can tell, however.