Problems with Common Atheist Arguments (page 2)

freemindfade

lol _Morpheus its like slow pitch softball, everyone gets to feel like a real baseball player with these slow big lobs...

LoveUniHateExams

How ya doing'? - can't complain, and you?

I fully accept your point that religious extremists are just about the world's most dangerous people whereas tetchy atheists merely call god a twat, and are certainly not dangerous to anyone.

However, what happened to the phrase 'softly softly, catch a monkey'?

Is it not useful anymore?!

freemindfade

We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep and conformists.

Bill Maher

OUTLAW

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I don`t like Organized Religion......But..

I don`t have a Problem with People of Faith..

That being said..

You didn`t do yourself any favours with that cut and paste OP..

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...................... Image result for No proof

FusionTheism - Many atheist arguments boil down to this (once you remove all the fancy words and hyperbole):

1:) I don't like the idea of God.
2:) I don't like the Bible.
3:) I hate the morals found in the Bible.
4:) I believe you should only accept science, even though I accept other things in my life.

Fixed...

Many atheist arguments boil down to this (once you remove all the fancy words and hyperbole):

1:) I have not been provided good evidence that there is a God (or any other deity).

The rest are not particular with atheism, but may be responses to theist arguments to their propositions...
2:) I have not been provided good evidence that the Bible (or any other holy book) is the unerring word of God (or any other deity).
3:) I find many of the morals of the Bible to be questionable if not immoral ((e.g. slavery, subjugation of women, treatment of gays, etc.) by modern standards

4:) The scientific method is the best process we currently have for understanding our universe. But I need not apply the scientific method in every facet in my life (e.g. My girlfriend loves me and I need not squeeze her into an FMRI machine to validate that)

OneEyedJoe

Screw it. I’ll play. I’m in a weird mood today and this just irritated me more…

Since you seem to like disclaimers, I’ll give one of my own, when I refer to atheists below, lets all assume I’m talking about atheists that actually know what they’re talking about and aren’t just reciting talking points they’ve heard from a friend that watched a youtube video of Richard dawkins once.

"You must only accept scientific evidence as truth"

You’ve misframed the “argument” (I won’t nit-pick like you probably would if I were to make a similar mistake by calling an assertion an argument. Oops, I guess I kinda did.) made by atheists. The point is not that things are only true if they’ve been proven scientifically, the idea here is that by definition something that makes no testable claims cannot be shown to be true or untrue. Therefore religion is a terrible way to “truth” because it makes no testable claims (or if it does make a testable claim, they often fail). If something makes a testable claim, it can be tested using the scientific method and therefore shown to be true or untrue. If something does not make a testable claim, it by definition cannot be tested in any way (via the scientific method or otherwise) and therefore is impossible to demonstrate as true. Claiming something is “truth” when it cannot be shown to be such is disingenuous at best and an outright lie at worst – yet this is what most religions do.

In short, your rebuttal was a straw-man.

"The Multiverse Explains the Fine-Tuning (and perhaps the origin) of our Universe"

This isn’t so much an “atheist argument” as it is an idea in cosmology (one, I might add, of many) to explain much of the universe, and it’s explanation of what theists love to describe as “fine-tuning” is more of a side-effect. Your criticism of the origin of the theory is meaningless – how an idea came about does not influence it’s accuracy. Plus you’d need a citation to convince me that the origin of the idea was in an attempt to explain the apparent fine-tuned nature of our universe. So I’ll just ignore that bit. The idea of multiple universes with different physical constants that are balanced differently, some of which contain life and some of which do not, is just one of many explanations for the apparently fine-tuned nature of the universe. Another might be that since life is relatively complex, it requires some fine-tuning and we just got lucky. Or, perhaps there are an infinite variety of life forms that could possibly exist, and which one arises (and subsequently marvels at how perfectly suitable the universe seems to be for life) depends on the physical constants that happen to be in play and therefore always appears to be in an environment that is perfectly suited to it.

The point is that there’s a very valid alternate explanation for why the chemistry of life works in our universe aside from “god did it.” We don’t necessarily know that there are multiple universes out there, or what, but the point is that god is not necessary to explain any of it.

Furthermore people who promote the idea of the multiverse are considerably less likely than a theist to criticize someone for pointing out that there’s insufficient evidence to prove it. It’s also not so much a philosophical idea as it is something that the math says is possible and therefore a good area to explore scientifically. You are correct that the theory doesn’t explain the origin of the multiverse, but it doesn’t attempt to either so you can’t really hold that against it.

"The Moral Values of Modern Atheists are Much Superior to the Moral Values of Yahweh"

There are objective definitions of morality – one I think frames things in a particularly useful way is Sam Harris’ idea that the moral course should be, if nothing else, to avoid the scenario of the absolute greatest amount of human suffering. I think that YHWH could’ve done a much better job to that end.

Even without an objective definition of morality, you can easily be more moral that the god of the bible even by his own rules. Don’t murder is one of his rules, yet he constantly did it – therefore I (having never murdered) am immediately morally superior in that regard. In fact the only way to explain the bible in a way that makes it seem like any significant portion of YHWH’s actions are moral is to add in some later reward that no one actually knows to exist while simultaneously assuming that “god knows best.” If you want to define morality as being whatever actions are taken by YHWH, then he is by definition the most moral entity. However, I would like to assume that most people see murder, forcing a woman to marry her rapist, and many of the other atrocities committed by YHWH as immoral actions. If we can agree on that, then we should immediately agree that most atheists (and theists alike) are morally superior to the god of the bible.

"Logic, Mathematics, and Morals are the Things We Should Base our Lives On"

Logic and mathematics (leaving morals out since it doesn’t really fit here, and I’m not sure why you included it) are a good way to determine what is true, and have been shown to be effective in this regard countless times. Sure you have to make some assumptions to make them useful, but the assumption that 1+1=2 is a little less of a leap than the assumption that because I thought about something I wanted and it happened there must be some invisible man in the sky reading my mind and giving me stuff.

"Logic tells us that the only things which exist are those which can be naturally explained by physical processes"

This is the first time I’ve heard anyone make this statement. The closest I’ve come is that so far so many of the things that were previously explained by the actions of one deity or another have been demonstrably proven to be caused by natural processes that require not divine intervention. If you observe the trend, it seems reasonable to expect that everything will eventually be similarly explained. The god of the gaps is constantly finding himself with smaller and smaller gaps in which to reside. Sure, that’s not proof that such a god is not controlling or influencing some phenomena that we don’t understand, but it’s a good reason not to expect that to be the case.

"The time-space-matter universe began to exist with no cause"

Firstly, I don’t think this is the claim, I think the claim is that we don’t know if there was a cause or what it was.

Secondly, it’s a much more reasonable claim to make that a completely unordered sea of particles and forces that have a net energy of zero sprang into being with no cause than it is to claim that an all-powerful, omnibenevolent, sentient being sprang into existence with no cause.

Thirdly, it can be demonstrated that particles spring into existence and annihilate one another constantly all around us without any order to it. If the universe sprang into being with no cause, the natural cause would likely be a similar mechanism.

"Moral values evolved and developed separately from religious beliefs in early humans, therefore, that is why we are free to reject religion while clinging to moral values"

There’s a fair amount of evidence to support the idea that a conscience and sense of morality developed prior to religious belief – animals from primates to dogs to mice demonstrate many similar tendencies. They are necessary for a social animal to maintain a society and a society is beneficial to a species survival (in some cases, at least) thus we evolved to have a certain level of moral compass because it benefitted our species’ chances of survival. Morals are demonstrably necessary on some level to maintain a society and while society is not absolutely necessary for the survival of humans, it’s rather important. Religion is not necessary for society, and this is demonstrated by many people living just fine without it.

"Atheism is not a belief system and it makes no claims, therefore you cannot lump atheists together as making the same claims." (But then sometimes the same atheists make this statement:"You are making a 'straw man' argument against atheists. NO atheist ever makes that claim!")

Yup, the statement that “No atheist ever makes that claim” is hyperbole. What’s your point?

"Religion is evil"

I think this is usually more of a personal assessment based on observed facts. It’s not necessarily a reason not to believe in god, but the conclusion one comes to if when one loses said belief. Personally I believe that religion was probably somewhat necessary in the early development of human civilization, it’s just had some rather regrettable and long-term side effects that I’d really like to be rid of.

"No evidence for any god exists anywhere"

Having fun taking hyperbole and disproving it? It’s pretty easy, huh? The point is that there’s roughly equal amounts of evidence that god exists as there is that there’s a unicorn the size of a hydrogen atom dancing around on my desk. Yet many people believe one of those while I don’t expect I’d find many who would believe the other.

"A good God would never allow unnecessary suffering"

You’re falling back on the crutch of using god as a definition of what is good and/or necessary. The only explanation you can come up with is that if god allowed some suffering to happen, then it’s necessary for some reason we’re not privy to. I think the burden of proof lies on you that river blindness, childhood leukemia, tsunamis, HIV, etc are necessary since that is the claim you’re making. It seems quite unnecessary to me.

"Atheism is the superior mindset to hold, because that is the mindset we were born with"

This is a pretty stupid statement, and one I’ve never heard made by any atheist that thinks about things prior to saying them. Now, if the argument is that god should have made us to naturally know everything about him so that we’d all end up believing in the same god (vs having countless religions, sects, and denominations, many of which claim to be the exclusive path to god) then I think this is a pretty good point – why wouldn’t god give us a fighting chance to start on the right track?

Anyway, the rest of your post was just stupid nonsense so I’m not going to bother. Actually, by that standard I’m not sure why I bothered with the first bit. Oh well.