That made you sit up and take notice didn’t it? The statement is as silly as the statements made on religious websites and on YouTube videos that they have ‘absolute proof that God exists’ Invariably of course, the arguments put forward by the writers simply aren’t arguments at all in the usual sense of the word or use some combination of circular logic to achieve the aims of the authors.
I doubt that there is an atheist that would make a similar statement in reverse, ie: ‘god does not exist‘ but they are usually more likely to make a statement like ‘I see no evidence whatsoever for the existence of a god or gods’. This is just common sense – just as making a statement like ‘gravity always works’ is also a little ridiculous – just because we have always experienced gravity working doesn’t necessarily mean it will always be so. We may be 99.999 (plus a few thousand 9′s) sure but we don’t say always.
But… for the religious believers out there who must always think in terms of absolute truths or absolute falsehoods (not that there are such things except possibly the ridiculousness of some of their ‘arguments’) – here’s a perfectly logical and iron-clad (to use the writer’s term) argument that ‘proves’ a god cannot exist:
Assumption (1): God exists.
Assumption (1a): God is all-knowing.
Assumption (1b): God is all-powerful.
Assumption (1c): God is perfectly loving.
Assumption (1d): Any being that did not possess all three of the above properties would not be God.
Premise (2): Evil exists.
Premise (3): An all-knowing being would be aware of the existence of evil.
Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.
Premise (5): A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate evil.
Conclusion (6): Evil does not exist. (from (1),(3),(4),(5))
Contradiction: But evil does exist. (from (2))
Conclusion (7): There is no being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving. (from (2),(3),(4),(5))
Conclusion (8): God does not exist. (from (7),(1d))
Now, there are certainly many theodicies (an assertion that God has a reason for causing or allowing evil that is compatible with his perfectly loving nature) available for the believers to try to use to refute the argument, but the only one that I can see that comes even close is this one:
“God has a purpose for allowing suffering, but we do not know what that purpose is.”
I cannot do better to answer this than to quote the author of the essay that I have taken my inspiration for this post from: “Though many who use this defense may not realize it, the unknown purpose theodicy effectively amounts to abandoning the claim of God’s goodness. After all, if God allows evil for reasons unknown to us, then what grounds do theists have for judging him to be morally good? Making that determination requires at least some understanding of motive and intent. If we have no idea at all why God does what he does, if the reasons for his actions are incomprehensible to us, then to be consistent we would have to say that we do not know whether he is good or evil. Certainly there is no obvious reason why disasters happen as they do, so how could any theist know that the true reason, whatever it is, is for the better and not for the worse?”
The reality, for me, is that we live precariously on a planet that is continually rocked by completely natural and man-made events that impact upon our lives. Evil people do evil things to others for various reasons including mental problems but often just because they are bad people. Earthquakes, tsunamis and floods occur for perfectly natural reasons. No one is ‘out to get us’ or ‘punish us for our sins’ – they just happen. Because of scientific research over the centuries we know how they occur, but humans just have to have a ‘why’ to go along with the ‘hows’. We refuse to just accept that shit happens sometimes and make the best of it – find methods to reduce the impact of the events when they occur – and then get on with living your lives!
There will never be proof of the god concept either way – the evidence against the existence of any god far outweighs any evidence that there may be one (or more) – but as rational human beings who have evolved into the fantastic (and fantastically flawed) creatures that we are, there are far more important questions to be answered than this one. Free thinkers will eventually outnumber the supernatural believers one day.
Maybe not in our lifetime or that of our children, but one day…
Source: Ideas and quotes taken from Ebon Musings. From an essay entitled : All Possible Worlds – The problem of Evil.
Tags: bible, christianity, churches & cults, faith, god, religion
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If only the billions of minds that spend countless hours on pointless religious studies and practices were spent on science, then maybe we would have many of the answers we seek today. I know the world would be a better place as religion is merely another way for greedy and powerful people to manipulate society. I hope to see more publicity for atheism during my lifetime as I do believe that eventually everyone will become atheist.
As a side note, I am curious as to what political beliefs most atheists have.
I totally agree J, thanks for the comments.
Publicity for atheism (or free thinking as I am beginning to feel might be the better term to use for myself anyway) has been growing noticeably in the last few years. Unfortunately, due to the extreme bias from some media outlets, like Fox in the States it is often very negative and dismissive, but independent unbiased news reporting services are more often just presenting the facts and reporting on atheist conventions etc without making judgements which is great.
Here in Australia the national broadcaster, the ABC, often airs religious v atheist debates and documentaries from Dawkins and the like which encourages discussion about the topic.
As far as political beliefs go – free thinkers usually only focus on the actual policies of a political party. In comparison, christians will often blindly support say, Republicans because their ministers or pastors tell them to do so. It would be as silly to state ‘all atheists are democrats’ as it would be to say ‘all carpenters are religious’.
We currently have a female prime minister who doesn’t keep it a secret that she is an atheist (and has only recently married her partner of many years – imagine how THAT would go down in the States…) and apart from the grumblings from the religious right nut-jobs yep, we have em here too) the vast majority of Aussies couldn’t give a rat’s arse (to use a colloquial expression from this country!) what the politicians believe or don’t believe. They are more concerned with how their policies will affect them.
@ J. All be that as it may, it was a Christian nation that put a Christian man on the moon 42 years ago, something that has not been matched by Atheist regimes (USSR, PRC etc.).
divad’s back!
Funny you should use that example though, the technology that put the SECOND man into space (Russia was first if you recall) and ultimately on the moon actually came from Germany and NASA couldn’t have done it without Werner Von Braun and his team of engineers after the war. Now, Germany was then a mainly Lutheran or Roman Catholic country…as was HERR HITLER who the christians often like to claim was an atheist. He wasn’t.
The USSR & China (and North Korea) are not atheist regimes by definition – any more than Australia is an atheist country because it is a largely secular nation. They were and are military regimes run by tyrants, despots and crackpots in the case of North Korea. As a humorous aside, did you hear that it is officially stated there that Kim Jong Il shot 11 holes-in-one the first time he played golf? No wonder he is hailed as a god…http://www.anyonefortee.com/Shots/Kim.html
@divad
This country was never found on Christian beliefs. All of the framers were deists and border-line atheists, often criticizing Christianity, and all the cruelties against humanity it is responsible for.
@divad
The Treaty of Tripoli http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli CLEARLY states “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”. Please stop perpetuating this myth.