What's your best argument for belief/nonbelief in God?

Question

I personally believe in God and would argue that, but I just want to see the different arguments, both FOR and NOT FOR God...I'll choose the person who makes the best argument as the best answer, and I am NOT just going to choose the best argument for the existence of God...If you have a great arugment against God, I'll pick you! So it can go either way! THANKS!

Come on...you guys know what I'm talking about! For example, you have Paschal's Wager...those kind of arguments, either for or against God.

Answer 1

this comes from notes I jotted down a while back

1. Pascal's wager- this is most infinitely known, however many don’t know who came up with it, this is to say, There is either a God or there is not, this meaning a 50/50 chance, The outcome being better if you worshiped a God and there was none, than if you chose not to worship and there was.

2. Science has become the new faith, which is both terrifying and saddening, it was theology who birthed science, and science has done everything to destroy it. Ask a grade student what an atom looks like, and he will draw away, drawing precisely what the science book told him. Ask him about God, and he will tell you that it’s a silly notion that’s made up, ask him how he knows this, and he will more than likely say, no one has ever seen God. However, No one has seen an atom, yet we are so brainwashed to instantly believe what we are told. Tell me how many mistakes have science made regarding anything. Yet faith, especially the catholic faith, is non-contradictory. No one has yet to prove against anything that is Catholic Law.

3. St Thomas Aquinas, causation argument.

1) There exists things that are caused (created) by other things.
2) Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can create itself.)
3) There can not be an endless string of objects causing other objects to exist.
4) Therefore, there must be an uncaused first cause called God.

Answer 2

Well, you'd have to say which god you want me to show evidence against. For example, if you want evidence against the existence of the Christian god, you just have to look at the Bible. Christian tenets hold that the Bible is inspired by God. However, a careful reading of the Bible shows it to be anything but inspired. If the Christian god is defined as an ultra intelligent, ultra powerful being who inspired the Bible, then the fact that the Bible is so poorly written and contains so many flaws is evidence that the Christian god doesn't exist.

Also, if the Christian god is defined as a being who has existed since the beginning of everything, then the history of Christianity shows evidence that the god doesn't exist. If the god lived forever, then Christianity wouldn't have had a beginning. People would have known about such a god long before, and there wouldn't be other major religions before it. Judaism is old, but there are other religions older.

There is also evidence in the Bible that its writers borrowed their stories from other sources, such as other myths of the day. Therefore, if the God of Christians is defined by the Bible, then the God of Christians is man-made. This is evidence that the Christian God is not divine.

And you can do that with any other god for which people claim characteristics. The characteristics become the definition of that god and you can find evidence to directly refute most of those claims.

Answer 3

I was raised in a strict Christian home. Do I need to go further?

However, despite my Godly teachings, I have never been quite able to believe there is a god at all. You could say I am athiest because just flocking after the first thing people tell me to believe in isn't doing it for me. I have never been the one to sway anywhere the wind goes. I ignore Christian's (or any other group's) threats of misery and damnation if I don't serve their god. Some Christians can be extremely two-faced, hypocritical and downright nasty. However, most are extremely kind and good-natured. Although I have to deal with the occassional "I fear for your soul" bit.
Humans have the need to be depended on a hiarchy. We don't know how we came to be. We don't know how this existence came about. So ancient peoples created moral teachings, gods and other dieties. These teachings blossomed into a religion, cult or whatever.

More over, it all depends on your definition of god. Whether it be Jesus or other gods. No matter what culture, it has been proven humans feel a need to worship something higher than they are. The Aztecs worshiped the bright thing in the sky (the sun), others worshiped the earth, storms and so on. All of these things were forces beyond their control. The sun provided warmth and growth... maybe that's why they thought so highly of it.

If you are referring to the Christian religion, it started in Rome thousands of years back. It was made the state releigion and the worship of Greek gods were gradually dropped. At first, the religion was simple... live life according to the word. The early Jesus was more like a kind teacher. (He didn't even have a beard in the earliest pictures.) The religion was mainly focused around fable-like stories that taught lessons. There was hardly any pressure to follow this religion and it was thought rather highly of.

Then... that's when the church got cocky.

They got more and more bigheaded. They percived themselves as the "true" religion" (and still do). They depicted all other religions as "hethans" and "hooligans". They became rediculosly powerful. They built their mass church empires, they became filthy rich and scared the frickin pants off of "non-believers" with threats of hell, demons and the like. (Maybe that's how they got people a-joinin.) And it works... even to this day. In fact, these are tactics the church came up with. Scare the people into the church. It leads me to believe if all their scare techniques are true or false.
Then that's when the Crusades came. Oh dear Lord in heaven... I'm not even gonna go there. This religion in my case... has hurt more people that it has claimed to help them. At one point, Christians actually killed others who did'nt accept their ways. The early Christians had the most twisted mindsets. Burning, brutally torturing "witches". Those torture chambers prove very "innocent" from the innocent Christian mind. That's TERRIBLE.

But then again, times have changed. The Dark Ages are over. The Christian empire has long since fallen... but they still want your money. They tend to get rather "happy" at ties and offering and comment on how full (or unfull) the collection plate is. Thats one thing about the church that will never change.

I'm a very liberal person. I am open to religion and although I've stated some things, there are other very positive things about the church. Just don't try and force your beliefs on me. I get ratted out just because I choose not to follow single file and follow a religion just because "They told me to." I study religion a lot and think it's quite interesting. We as humans need a higher power. I just tend not to follow that. If I did worship a god, it'll probably be a pagan one.
But you know what they say... THERE'S NO ATHIEST ON A CRASHIN' PLANE!! ;)

Answer 4

Humans ask these questions (but animals don’t) because humans have evolved and acquired the faculty of conceptualization or reason. Conceptualization is the faculty that makes us aware of problems and contradictions and gives us the power to imagine solutions. If what we imagine is within the realm of reality, if it is possible, humans will eventually succeed at solving the problem. If we imagine things that are out of reality, they remain unsolved because, well, they don’t exist! God is such a problem. Now, try instead to imagine a universe that does not have an outside guardian or superintendent, a universe that was always there, that has properties such as gravitational forces, atomic and kinesthetic forces, energy that compresses and expands in phenomenal explosions, etc, all things that prehistoric humans could not understand, but that we can observe and explain, and your questions vanishes. Of course, with our imagination, we can always ask absurd questions and be happy with absurd answers. For example, someone can ask, Why isn’t the moon made of cheese? One imagined answer could be: because the Creator of the universe was allergic to milk products! To supply an answer is easy, especially if it is just for fun.

Answer 5

Phew! This is quite long with the 2 additions but bare with me - these are my own words and not copied from Wikipedia!

If you're genuinely openminded we can hope one day you'll think for yourself and be free of religion.

Best reason for non-belief is that there is zero evidence. I mean come on, there really cant be any less evidence that God exists.

Having to refute every suggestion put across by religious people would take a while but its easily done - you cant prove something does not exist - however for the same reason you cant prove Unicorns dont exist but I dont expect you'd spend years of your life wandering around forests hoping to see one, would you? Think about the probability of God existing. If God exists I dont think he wants us to believe in him. If he exists he gave me my brains and my critical mind - though I do have a sense of wonder. You're not going to get a good argument here but if I were you I'd consider reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins.

As for Pacal's wager its just a whiny bit of special pleading that you better believe in God because if you dont you'll go to hell but if you dont you dont lose anything. This kind of implies that you can believe in what seems most profitable - if God was a decent person (I admit evidence says he's not) you'd think he'd respect honest atheists than fakers claiming belief just to avoid hellfire.

***Adam says nobody knows who came up with 'Pascal's wager' - but down on the planet Earth its accepted that the French Mathematician Blaise Pascal came up with it.***

ALSO regarding the 'first mover' argument of Acquinas - it makes the unwarranted presumption that God is immune from this infinite regress - if everything was created who created God? If you're going to say thats an unanswerable question why not save a step and say where the universe came from is an unanswerable question. The fact that this was given as a 'proof' that God exists just goes to show how spectacularly weak are the arguments for Gods existence. The fallacious argument that science is just a different faith instead of something that asks for ZERO faith and offers all of its statements for testing shows how different it is. The comment above that we haven't seen atoms and we haven't seen God therefore both may exist is amazingly foolish and I would add that we have now seen individual atoms under scanning tunneling electron microscopes. If God appears under a microscope and says 'Be good!' then I'll believe.

Answer 6

A belief in God is not something easily defined, since it's such an INTIMATE relationship. That's like asking someone to define their belief that their father exists. For one thing, I have a changed life. I now have a desire to do Godly things and to STOP doing things that I previously enjoyed that to the world seemed perfectly acceptable; but when I got saved, all the thrill went out of them and my pleasures now are in things of the Lord. Not that I'm perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. We are all a work in progress until the day we go "home". Like somebody said, "I may not be where I ought to be, but thank God I'm not where I USED to be".
There's also the abiding presence I have of the Holy Spirit. He's my Guide, my Comforter, my intercessor when I pray, and I have a PEACE that surpasses all understanding, even when I'm scared, because He reminds me I am never alone.
If you were to look at me, you couldn't see it, but when God looks at me He sees something set apart about me from an unbeliever...
......."for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus". Gal. 6:17.

Answer 7

First of all every human is born without religion. Second, look at the history of ignorance. God was the answer for everything that could not be understood by humans. Now we know so much and God is being used less and less to explain our world and the cosmos. I think in time, if man does not destroy itself in the name of a nonexistent god, belief in certain religions will die out.

I believe in physics, chemistry and math. The thing people don't understand about physics is that something can literally come out of nothingness. I believe there is a constant cycle of beginnings and ends to our universe. The universe created itself. Lastly, I do not believe in magic.
As for religions, they are manmade of course. And to an extremely HIGH DEGREE where you are born on earth determines your religion, or lack thereof, and also your thoughts on god. This is simply ludicrous! I see religion and belief in god as ultimately dangerous like a legalized mental illness.
Thank you for your question so I could express just a few of my reasons.

Answer 8

There are so many stories of his miracles. But we see none of them. All we have to go on is watching his followers, and judging their standards and morals and kindness and we watch this and see if they really do have something that we lack...

but instead they are just as messed up as we are... or even worse.

Where is the christian that is willing to do one of 2 things:

1. Live a life that makes us wonder
2. Put god to the test like in the stories. Build an altar and cover it in water, and call down fire from the skies to burn up the offering and prove that there is a god... if it doesn't work... then leave us all alone

Answer 9

God does not exist for at least two good reasons.
1. There is no evidence for the existence of a god. There is no more proof of his existence than there is for the loch ness monster or Santa Claus (sorry kids) or the tooth fairy. So why believe in any one of them, or indeed in any of the other hundreds of gods that have littered history.

2. All the things attributed to god can be explained by natural phenomena. The list of things that god did, like earthquakes, pregnancy, sunrise, rainbows, weather, creation etc. all have natural physical explanations.

So, since there is no evidence and no need for a god. Why believe in one?

Answer 10

Best argument for: First Cause, something had to set the Universe in motion, that thing had to exist outside of time...Something had to give life to a lifeless form...

Best argument against: Just because we don't know how these things happened, does not mean we have to say "God did it."
Is a First Cause necessary? Could everything have always been? Can life come from the bonding of chemicals, proteins? Some research says it definitely can

I appreciate the honesty of your question, I myself am not sure if God is real, I lean towards no...But if you want to bounce ideas off me, email me....

Answer 11

God definitely exists.... and so do serpents. Check out my question: Do you think the birth of the Red Heifers born in the 1990’s is proof that the Messiah will be coming soon? There is an important message for everyone.