What's your favourite argument denying the existence of God?

Question

What's your favourite and next favourite..etc.? Do you have your own argument that you'd like to share?

1. Occam's Razor (God is much harder to explain than any
scientific theories, therefore the theories are most likely the correct explanations)
2. no evidence (well there isn't any)
3. evolution (God didn't create each species all at once, there was one common ancestor some 4 billion years ago which evolved)
4. contradictions and fallacies in Holy Books (there's a lot!)
5. the number of diverse religions in the world (not every religion can be right according to them)
6. poor morality and violence shown in Holy Books (isn't God supposed to be perfect?)

All I can think of right now.

Answer 1

No evidence. There isn't any need for anything else.

The fact that the Bible gets the origin story wrong doesn't do much to disprove the existence of gods - it simply shows that the Bible is false. Same with the contradictions in the Bible, and the problems with the God portrayed in various holy books. I'm not very interested in those things. The "no evidence" part covers it all.

Answer 2

1. Occam's Razor.
You have the Razor wrong:
Occam's razor is a logical principle attributed to the mediaeval philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham). The principle states that one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed. This principle is often called the principle of parsimony. It underlies all scientific modelling and theory building. It admonishes us to choose from a set of otherwise equivalent models of a given phenomenon the simplest one. In any given model, Occam's razor helps us to "shave off" those concepts, variables or constructs that are not really needed to explain the phenomenon. By doing that, developing the model will become much easier, and there is less chance of introducing inconsistencies, ambiguities and redundancies. BTW Occam was a Christian philosopher!

God is the simplest explanation for creation, not evolution which is exceedingly complex.

2. Evidence: well, have you ever lifted your face to the stars and marvelled?

3. Evolution: Sorry, but Darwinian Evolution is being renounced more and more by non-Christian academia; it simply does NOT work.

4. Contraditicions and fallacies in Holy Books.
Do you really expect teh Koran and the Bible to say the same things? The Koran and the Vida? Goodness, I hope not!
Are there errors in the Bible? Sure, but when you research them, they are human errors made in copying the texts. None of the "errors" touches on a key doctrine of the Bible, and the "errors" are all clearly understood in other parts of the Bible!

5. Diversity of religions. Do you really want to make that arguement? The multiplicity of religions only proves that man is a religious being, knowing that there is some one, some thing that is greater than self.

6. Poor morality and violence in the Bible.
This is actually a proof of the Bible. If you wrote your life story, you would leave out all the bad stuff and highlight the good things; so would I. The fact that the Bible records embarrassing things about God's people shows that it was not written just by man, but has God as it's author. Oh, yeah; with out the Bible how do you propose to assess "morality?" You appeal to a higher standard that we are all supposed to understand and know, so what is your higher authority? Surely not yourself!

Rom 3:10 as it is written, "THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
Rom 3:11 THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
Rom 3:12 ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE."
Rom 3:13 "THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE, WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING," "THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS";
Rom 3:14 "WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND BITTERNESS";
Rom 3:15 "THEIR FEET ARE SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD,
Rom 3:16 DESTRUCTION AND MISERY ARE IN THEIR PATHS,
Rom 3:17 AND THE PATH OF PEACE THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN."
Rom 3:18 "THERE IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES."

1Cr 15:1 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand,
1Cr 15:2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
1Cr 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
1Cr 15:4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
1Cr 15:5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Answer 3

Two come to mind...
1) Believing in Christ is like believing in the Easter Bunny - problem is I've never heard anyone say the EB changed their life
2) Not really an argument denying the existance of God, but I don't understand how anyone can look at the complexity around us and say that there's no intelligent designer and that this all happened by chance in the proper order and with the proper timing - utter lunacy if you just think about it logically, and I'm sure not even statistically possible.

Answer 4

I recently saw a YouTube presentation which I thought was quite rational, and very effective. It is a little syrupy, telling the audience they are intelligent, educated, etc. But then it has ten questions which are generally answered in a very awkward way by most Christians. The example I recall right now is why bad things happen to good people. But as I say, there were ten. And the narrator gives a fair representation of the usual "party line" Christian answers. But he keeps pointing out that these answers are awkward, a bit far-fetched, etc. And they are. Now, he says, try this. Assume God is imaginary. Suddenly all ten questions have very simple answers. This is a classic case of Occam's Razor.

And it's true. Most of the questions we battle about here can be answered quite simply by "because God is imaginary."

Answer 5

Occam did it for me. Every time we run into a scientific mystery, going as far as we can, there's this same guy standing there, saying "I did it." But then we find a way to get a little farther, and we find he's retreated. It turns out God's the explanation for everything we haven't figured out yet, or put another way, no explanation at all. Some day, God's turf will be so small, we'll have trouble finding him at all.

Answer 6

Two major problems:
1.) it's unnatural, single males do not create life-I can see, hear, experience nature, not so the Christian version of God
2.) Yeah, lots of contradictions. The first I noticed was 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' vs 'turn the other cheek'...if nothing else, it shows that ONE of anything can not exist. There has to be an opposite that is equal.

Answer 7

1: Science gives us a way to distinguish between good ideas and bad ideas - i.e. to show which explanation is the most consistent with observable reality. Science shows us that great complexity does not just arise spontaneously. It is inconceivable that even the simplest bacterium could exist without something being responsible for the complexity of its structure, its biochemistry and so on. It would take the lifetimes of a billion universes for it to appear spontaneously, by pure chance - in fact it is probably safe to say that it simply could never happen. This goes all the more for human beings. It's surely no coincidence that the only thing that we regard as truly intelligent - the human brain - is also the most complex thing in the known universe. Intelligence requires enormous complexity, far beyond anything that could conceivably exist without something being responsible for its existence. By the same reasoning, it's infinitely more unlikely still that an intelligent entity capable of designing and creating an entire universe and everything in it could just exist from nowhere, from nothing, without anything being responsible for its existence. Complexity, and especially the massive complexity required for intelligence, can therefore only arise from an antecedent, non-intelligent process - In the case of life on Earth, this means biological evolution, a fact which is attested to by a vast amount of real objective evidence and valid argument. So, to the extent that science allows us to reliably distinguish between plausible ideas and implausible ideas, it effectively rules out the possibility of an intelligent entity as the uncaused cause of everything that exists.

2: We've known for thousands of years that the 'tri-omni' gods of classical monotheistic religions cannot exist. If an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity existed, then human evil could not exist. Since human evil unarguably does exist, the classical monotheistic deity cannot exist (objections about 'free will' notwithstanding).

3: Quantum Mechanics strongly suggests that nothingness is a state that cannot exist in reality, since that would be 100% deterministic, and QM says that existence is probabilistic rather than deterministic. Experimental evidence supports QM. If true, then this also precludes the existence of a creator, since it would be impossible to have a state of 'nothingness' from which a 'something' could be created.

4: David Hume proved that moral values are subjective - i.e. they describe a person's response to events, rather than objective properties of events themselves. Since morals are personal and subjective, there cannot be an external, objective source of moral values - Indeed, the idea is simply incomprehensible. Therefore, any god which is claimed to be the objective source of moral values cannot possibly exist. This includes the gods of most monotheistic religions, by their usual definitions.

5: Argument from design: If everything was designed by an intelligent creator then we would have no basis for identifying things that clearly *are* designed (things made by human beings) since we would have no non-designed (i.e. natural) things to compare them with. Therefore the natural world (everything that has not been designed by humans) must be non-designed, and therefore there can't be a designer god.

6: Anything that holds information or knowledge must be made of discrete parts, such as a brain (neurons and their connections) or a computer (memory locations). Anything that is made of parts cannot be self-existent - it must be made of something pre-existing. Therefore an intelligent entity cannot be self-existent and cannot be the source of everything that exists.

7: If a 'tri-omni' god existed, then it would be his desire that all human beings have an unshakeable belief in his existence and a perfect knowledge of what behaviour he wants from us, and it would be within his capacity to achieve this. Since many people neither believe in a god nor agree on what is the right way to behave, such a god does not exist.

8: All attempts at arguing *for* the existence of any gods through logic and reason can be and have been comprehensively debunked.

Answer 8

Here is my theory. God holds so little sway over the world and its events, that it really doesn't matter if He or She exists. Since I believe we have free will, it seems impossible for a god to act because that would contradict free will, so what we are left with is to be the best people that we can be.

Answer 9

My beef is that the " Christian population " is a pack of liars,
as they deny that they were Evolved from the depths of the oceans of this world,not " Created " by something that has no scientific proof what so ever,and that their so-called
Bible is a pack of crock to make them look good in the eyes of others.

Answer 10

I do not deny the existence of God to people who believe in Him. If they want to believe that is fine. Personally, I knew as a young child that the Bible was allegorical and was bothered that the perfect entity whom I was to worship was portrayed as so violent in the Bible. Even if He did exist, I could never worship someone so vengeful and bent on destruction. My favorite argument is Pascal's Wager though, because it seems to be the best some can come up with and takes me less than 15 seconds to totally refute it.
Besides, seeing how some Christians on here slam everyone else (including other Christians) makes me wonder how much peace they have with their beliefs. I am secure enough in my beliefs that I do not need to slam the beliefs of others, nor do I have a compulsion to force everyone to believe as I do.