Arguments Against God
Hello,
This thread is about lists of arguments made against God. I will list as many as I know. You guys are welcome to do the same.
Heavy Rock:
1. Can God create a rock so heavy, he himself cannot lift it?
Immortal
2. Can God kill an immortal being?
Numbers
3. Can God make a number equal to another number?
Geometry
4. Can God make a geometric shape equal to another geometric shape?
Larger than space
5. Can God make an eleven feet cube fit in a circle of a three feet diameter?
Endless
6. Can God eat all the infinite supply of apples in a machine that dispenses it one at a time?
Evil
7. If God exists, why then is there evil in the world?
This thread is about lists of arguments made against God. I will list as many as I know. You guys are welcome to do the same.
Heavy Rock:
1. Can God create a rock so heavy, he himself cannot lift it?
Immortal
2. Can God kill an immortal being?
Numbers
3. Can God make a number equal to another number?
Geometry
4. Can God make a geometric shape equal to another geometric shape?
Larger than space
5. Can God make an eleven feet cube fit in a circle of a three feet diameter?
Endless
6. Can God eat all the infinite supply of apples in a machine that dispenses it one at a time?
Evil
7. If God exists, why then is there evil in the world?
Comments (56)
My first question at religious education class when I was 8 - If God is good and ever forgiving why is there a hell?
Yes, but they have been used to argue against the existence of God. Which is what this thread is about.
Tom, I agree that most of them are very hard to comprehend. Because they eventually lead to a question where you are saying can God do and not do something simultaneously, which can be hard to comprehend.
The one that is easy to comprehend is the last one, about God letting evil happen.
How can a good god condemn people to infinite suffering in hell for finite offence/s. Infinite punishment will always exceed just punishment for finite offence/s.
Out of all the arguments I have come across, this one makes the most sense.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting elucid
This is not an argument that God doesn't exist. This is an argument that God is not good.
You're right, I was only talking about the God of Abrahamic religions, where goodness is a trait of God.
If you're saying if God is not good then God does not exist, that doesn't make sense to me.
It's like the following scenario. Suppose someone says that you shouldn't worry about your car getting in an accident, because there is a person who always protects people from it. If you get in an accident, then it's logical to assume that there isn't a person who will always protect you from it.
I wasn't proposing it was an argument against God's existence, just a paradox/contradiction.
Really? I have never heard people use these logical conundrums as arguments against God's existence. That seems silly. What they use them for is disrupting people's idea of omnibenevolence or omnipotence. But I already addressed this in my response. How do you address this?
Quoting The Necessity of Atheism (1811)
, I'd suggest digging around out there for various commentaries on the things you list.
Most of them are just silly questions that admit of easy answers. I believe in God, so I'll answer them.
Quoting elucid
Yes. God is all powerful and so can do anything, including making a rock so heavy he cannot lift it. He can lift it too.
Quoting elucid
Yes, see above answer. God can do anything. Anything. Thus he can kill an immortal being.
Perhaps you think that's a contradiction - that 'immortal' means 'incapable of being destroyed'.
But in that case the question presupposes God does not exist, rather than showing it. For God can do anything and thus if God exists no being is immortal.
Note too that even if it did involve a contradiction, that would not prevent God from doing it. For God can make contradictions true. (Banno thinks that means he does - but Banno not very brighto).
Quoting elucid
Yes. He can do anything. (Bit of a theme developing here).
Maybe you think no one can make a number equal to another number. But in that case you believe there does not exist a person who can do anything, right? So, you haven't shown God not to exist, you've just assumed it.
If God exists, then by hypothesis there exists a person who can do anything. So, if God exists there exists one person who can make a number equal to another number: God.
Quoting elucid
Yes, see above answer.
Quoting elucid
Yes, see above answer.
Quoting elucid
Yes, see above answer
Quoting elucid
Because a good person allows other people room to exercise their own free will, and some of them use it to do evil and they get punished by being sent here.
Was that it? Was that the case against God?
It's something of a pet peeve with me. Anti-religion activists like Dawkins and Hitchens use it to cast doubt on the existence of God. They claim their arguments provide a rational case against God's existence, but, as I noted, it says nothing about it.
I can understand why the existence of evil or hell could lead someone to reject religious beliefs. Since this is a philosophy forum, I just wanted to be clear what it does or does not demonstrate.
I don't understand. If he does lift it, he obviously hasn't fulfilled the first condition.
First off, all-powerful is a divine trait. It literally means the answer to all questions that go "Can God...?" is, luckily/not, "yes"!
The most common way of arguing for the nonexistence of God is to show that God entails a contradiction (e.g. the stone paradox or omniscience-free will paradox, even the so-called problem of evil and others). However being all-powerful has its perks - God enjoys immunity from the laws of logic.
That means God is a being (concept?) that's, literally, beyond the scope of logic. The preceding sentence (in italics) and this very statement, for the reason that I'm being logical, is too N/A (not applicable) to God defined as, among other things, omnipotent. The Zen concept of Mu seems to capture the state of my mind in re God as something not bound by logic. Mind you, I'm not claiming God is illogical; all I can say is that there's a very thin line between madness -illogical - and genius - (hyper) logical.
Just a few days ago, I discovered an interesting statement that produces the same effect (Mu) as God's omnipotence and it's a statement about logic. Coincidence? I don't know, you decide. This statement is: There are no good justifications = J. J is, in layman's terms, basically asserting logic is no good. We instinctively demand for justification for J but look at what J's saying - there are no good justifications - which, just like how omnipotence took God out of the domain of logic, does the exact same thing to J. In being ex-logical (outside of logic), J = God. Noteworthy is that just like an omnipotent God, J too entails a contradiction the instant we apply logic to it.
Where were we? There are no good justifications = God in the sense both are ex-logical and in that both imply contradictions are true. I wonder if God can exist in a paraconsistent logic or a dialetheism setting?, but that's another story. Viewing this equality in the simplest way possible, God is nothing more than a call to faith. Forget evidence, justification, logic, proof, they're all pissing into the wind (pointless). It's fides, fides and more fides.
Let's examine the other side to this story - there are good justifications = T. Again we're driven by habit/nature to justify T. Yet, to justify T is to presuppose T and we end up going round in a circle - not good, not good at all. Makes me we wonder why people find merry-go-rounds so enjoyable, so much so that they're willing to part with their hard-earned money just to do nothing (circling back to where they started). I digress, back to the main issue - T can't be justified for to do so is to commit the circulus in probando fallacy. Thus, logic which T is about has to be taken on faith.
A coherent picture now emerges. J = God = faith. Faith in what? Well, going by how enamored we are of logic, and given logic is unjustified, it seems we have faith in reason - a paradox in its own right. It's like the joke about a father who tells his son, "don't trust anyone." Should the son trust the father/not? The father means well for his son and that's precisely the moral of the story. You can trust a person who tells you not to trust anyone! :chin:
How does all what I said hang togther? Is it coherent? Does it make sense?
Let's go over what I said. God = there are no good justifications = faith (ultimately). Who's worthy of our faith? Reason for the "reason" that you can trust a person who tells you not to trust anyone. Reason reveals its own fatal flaw. "What a noble creature reason is", is one response; another would be, "how stupid reason is to let everyone know its weakness" The first is the heart talking, the second is what the brain would say. A lot more can be said but just make a note of the fact that, sometimes, not all the time, to be noble is to be foolish, goodness is just another name for idiocy. Adam, Eve, the garden of Eden, the apple, the snake, you see where this is going, don't you?
In essence, God is faith looking for something worthy of it. Reason by publicly declaring nothing is worthy of faith including itself then, paradoxically, becomes deserving of faith. A match made in "heaven" if you ask me.
You can't argue against God because if there's no faith (God), reason (arguments) has no leg to stand on. In other words, trying to justify the nonexistence of God (faith) is to blow the lid off reason's Achilles' heel.
Faith in the Faithless. God in the Godless.
Then there is the whole: in some way perhaps incomprehensible to us there is a reason there must be evil and suffering. A lot of arguments against God or against God's goodness seem to presume that we can use deduction to KNOW that God is messing up morally or practically. I don't think this shuts down problem of evil arguments, especially since many theist apologists will act like they CAN in fact see the good that is hard for other humans to see in the presence of evil and suffering and if relevant the existence of Hell. But there is an assumption that we would know. Children can often logically conclude things that adults should or should not do and even use quite solid logic from their limited (in comparison to adults) perspective. Perhaps we are children in relation to the deity.
In practical terms I don't buy that argument. IOW I don't accept that it is all good really and I should accept that. But I think putting forward the argument that one can KNOW given X, God can't be good, is problematic if presented as a certainty (deduction).
And then of course the thread is extremely Abrahamic. Hinduism can't get hit in this way so easily by the problem of evil type stuff.
Further even within Abrahamism there are many believers who are not focused on all the omni- categories. Some medieval or later theologians started to come up with these perfect infinite qualities, but the kinds of language in the Bible say, can simply mean that God is, for example, unimaginably powerful. But there is no reason to assume this means God can bust logic.
Of course even logic depend on knowledge. We might have once ruled out category mixes that have been found in QM, at least many think they have. (this is not an argument that qm supports deities. It is an argument saying that what seems like a contradiction and thus deduction can demonstrate a certain conclusion around, may in fact not be a contradiction but it seems like one to our limited perspective.)
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting T Clark
Which as @elucid alludes to, is a case against the most popular, including Christianity.
As an agnostic I'm not convinced of any arguments against a deist god.
I agree with @Bartricks. The statements listed are not arguments and they certainly do not prove that God does not exist, assuming this to be the intention of the thread.
And the other thing is that similar statements can be made about scientific claims without this "disproving" science.
An example to illustrate - can a bachelor marry? That question is ambiguous in the same way.
It could mean 'does the person who qualifies as a bachelor have the ability to marry?' To which the answer would be yes. It's not as if being a bachelor somehow prevents one marrying. A bachelor who met the woman of his dreams would be manifesting confusion if he said to her upon her proposing marriage 'I'd love to marry you, but I am a bachelor and so can't'
Likewise, 'can an omnipotent being create a stone too heavy for her to lift?' can be interpreted as 'does the person who qualifies as omnipotent have the ability to divest themselves of their omnipotence by creating a rock too heavy for them to lift - in other words, do they have the ability to go from being able to do anything to not being able to do something?' The answer to that is 'yes', for it is confused to think that being omnipotent prevents you from doing things. 'I'd love to create a rock too heavy for me to lift, but I can't because I'm omnipotent' is confused.
Then there's a different question that the same words can be used to express. And that is, can a bachelor, 'as a bachelor' - so qua bachelor - get married? With one exception, the answer to that question is 'no'. For a married bachelor is a contradiction in terms.
So, two very different questions expressed by the same words. And the answer to one is 'yes'and the answer to the other is 'no'.
Applied to 'can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift?' The second interpretation is 'can God, 'as God' create a stone too heavy for him to lift? In other words, can God be God at the same time as there exists a stone too heavy for her to lift?'
Now one might think that the answer to this version of the question is 'no'. For the state of affairs described involves a contradiction, no less than that of a married bachelor.
And many theists - stupid ones - would indeed say that the answer is no. But the answer is 'yes', for God can do anything and thus can create contradictory states of affairs. Many think not, because they think - correctly - that the law of non contradiction forbids this, and think - incorrectly - that the law constrains God. But God is the one exception - he is, by definition, all powerful and thus is bound by nothing.
It is, ironically, those who think God cannot create contradictory states of affairs who think something that violates the law of non contradiction. For they think a being who can do anything is at the same time unable to do some things. That's a contradiction. An actual one, not a potential one.
I think the law of non contradiction is true, and thus I think that God can violate it. And thus I think God can create a stone too heavy for him to lift, and lift it.
So, can a bachelor stop being a bachelor? Yes.
Can God divest himself of his power? Yes.
Can there be a married bachelor? With the exception of God, no.
Can God be both able and unable to do something at the same time? Yes. For God is by definition able to do anything, and thus it would be an actual contradiction to deny that God can violate the law of non contradiction.
What one has to understand is that the law of non contradiction is actually true, but potentially false. Or to put it another way, it is contingently true, not necessarily true. For if God exists there are no necessary truths, and it would violate the law of non contradiction to think otherwise.
This is a really good post. You took my complaints about theism arguments and opened them up, broadened them in a way that's really helpful. You also put into words things about these types of arguments I have thought a lot about but haven't been able to articulate.
Have you seen the "Can God Make Mistakes?" thread?
Nor could even a particle be fundamental, as it is an excitation quantum of a field.
No 'God'.
(Some from Victor Stenger)
THE NATURAL Where shall we find, or not, the Supernatural—God? We would find it doing super things that are beyond the natural. If we look everywhere and only find the natural, then the disproof of God lives.
BELIEFS IN THE UNKNOWN ARE UNGROUNDED BELIEFS UPHELD. A belief is that construct that states we consider something as true. But considering and knowing are two different words. One implies holding something up as true, while the other stands on the ground as being true. Indeed, that is the ‘hold up’, for a belief hangs in the air, because it is upheld by the owner of the belief.
THE ETERNAL UNCAUSED MOVER It could not be a Mind, for it would be an already defined and very complex composite system. In any system, the parts must precede. Thus, no God.
MASS AND MATTER ARE CREATED FROM ENERGY! The universe appeared from a state of zero energy, this being, of course, within the unavoidable and tiny quantum uncertainty. So, no miracle occurred.
THERE IS NO TIME-ZERO IMPRINT OF THE VERY HAND OF GOD! An expanding universe could have started in total chaos and still formed some localized order consistent with the 2nd law. At the Planck time, the disorder was complete; it was maximal. Thus the universe began with no structure. None. In fact it was chaos! There was no initial design built in to the universe at its beginning! There was no imprint left by a Creator.
BIBLICAL REVELATION IS UNREVEALING. Biblical prophecy is either vague, wrong, coincidence, a matter of ordinary prediction, or it can be more-simply explained as written after the fact. Humankind’s holy books are what one would expect if they were products of human culture.
IN THE ‘BEGINNING’… THERE WAS NO CAUSE! Physical events at the atomic and subatomic level are observed to have no evident cause. That realm is causeless.
QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS. Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity.
ENLIGHTENMENT DEISM. In 1982 a definitive series of ‘EPR experiments’ with this configuration was carried out by Alain Aspect. The results agreed perfectly with conventional quantum mechanics and thus ruled out any subquantum theory with local hidden variables.
THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE ARE NATURAL A principle of point-of-view invariance is equivalent to the principle of covariance when applied to space-time. These laws automatically appear in any model that does not single out a special moment in time, position in space, and direction in space. Back at the Planck time of the big bang, the universe had no distinguishable place, direction, or time: it had no structure; thus, the conservation laws apply.
OUR VALUES/LAWS/MORALS DO NOT COME FROM GOD AND/OR RELIGION. There are common ideals that arose during the gradual evolution of human societies, as they become more civilized, developed rational thinking processes, and discovered how to live together in greater harmony. Human and societal behaviors look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.
THERE WAS NO FINE-TUNING OF THE UNIVERSE. For fine-tuning, only ‘dimensionless’ numbers that do not depend on the system of units are meaningful. The Fine Structure ‘Constant, ‘a’, is not even a constant. There can still be long-lived stars if we vary the parameters and certainly the universe is not fine-tuned for this characteristic. The 7.65 million electron-volts needed for Carbon to form actually hinges on the radioactive state of a carbon nucleus formed out of three helium nuclei, which has over a 20% range to work with without being too high. The vacuum energy of the universe is not fine-tuned, for the large value of N1 is simply an artifact of the use of small masses in making the comparison. The Expansion Rate of the Universe in not fine-tuned since the universe appeared from an earlier state of zero energy; thus, energy conservation would require the exact expansion rate that is observed. Same for the Mass Density of the Universe. Looks the same as if there were no God.
THE VILE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL becomes that we rely on our own human instincts, these taking precedence over confusing divine commands, for these commands offend both our common sense and our reason. Observations of human and animal suffering look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.
Many disproofs of the supernatural;
Can you expand on this? The expression (from the Gospel of Matthew) 'Ye shall know them by their fruits' springs to mind.
Yes, he can. To wit: Jesus, the eternal bachelor, to whom so many Catholic nuns are married.
Two parallels intersect in infinity ....
The example of the stone may not be good because we cannot watch.
Imagine someone in the desert praying for it to rain. It will then rain or not rain (before he dies of thirst). He will know. How can it rain and not rain at the same time?
The problem occurs when God contacts us. We cannot perceive contradictions.
Thus, it is irrelevant whether God can create contradictions, we would not perceive them.
Sure. Here's my take.
Atheism isn't so much a logical argument as it is a social position. If I don't believe in god, there's an end of it. But atheists are notorious for furiously proselytizing (hugely ironic as that is). SO you have to wonder, if everyone who believed in god also happened to believe that god decreed that you should devote yourself to learning everything you can about the universe (i.e. endorsed scientific knowledge), would the atheists still have a problem with theists? Atheism, from what I have seen, is highly correlated with a rather aggressive belief in the value of science, often to the point of scientism.
If you look at it as a purely logical or epistemological problem, the question of god is really one of definition. If you define god as "the most advanced form of sentient being" then there is a god. In which case, god isn't a specific being so much as a role, like "CEO of the universe." It's only when you start to heap a whole bunch of arbitrary qualities onto the concept of god that everything becomes problematic. Omniscient. Omnipresent. Sempiternal. Ex hypothesi, "god" is beyond the limits of our intellect. Can an amoeba conceptualize what it is like to be a man? Truly scientific reasoning suggests that we should be a little more...humble, about dismissing what we know to be beyond our current ken.
Ah, that's very good. As is the rest. I'll happily admit that my recent apparent proselytisation of atheism was as much about irking christian fundamentals as easing lock-down boredom.
Btw, fuck if I can tell what your last two posts have to do with my post before my last one. :brow:
I'm not aware of any criterion of 'proximal truth' that would invalidate what I'm saying.
I think I made it quite clear that and how all beliefs are subject to revision based on the advancement of knowledge in general. It seems to me that much criticism of theism is a criticism of theists as people who are holding on to an outmoded conception of the thing that they are actually trying to conceptualize. Clearly, deism is a superior and encompassing category.
Personally, I think that it has some validity, but that it applies to the entire system to which we belong (i.e. along the lines of the Gaia hypothesis).
Technically they are arguments against people telling you what god is or thinks. You would have to talk to God to argue.
Indeed. No matter how much one might try, one couldn't perceive a square circle, even if there was one.
But the real question is, Are you getting payed for your antitheism? Does it rake in money for you?
That's like saying "Americans are notorious for relentlessly shooting people in the street." The statement exposes your ignorant prejudice. There are billions of atheists in the world; entire countries that are largely atheist. Do you really imagine that all these masses of people are "furiously proselytizing" all the time?
An Estimate for no ‘God’
1a. All that we observe proceeds from the simplest realm of tiny events/things/processes to the larger composite to the more and complex, where we exist, which cascade may continue into the future, where/when we can expect beings higher than ourselves to become.
1b. The unlikely polar opposite of (1a) is an ultra complex system of mind of a ‘God’ being First as Fundamental; however systems have parts, this totally going against the fundamental arts.
2. (1) gets worse, for ‘God’ being, given that there can be no input for any specific direction going into the necessary Fundamental Eternal Capability—the basis of all, this bedrock having to be causeless, with random effects, due to no information being able to come in to what has no beginning. It thus appears that it could be everything possible, although not anything in particular, which is also the way it shows, in its constant transmutation at every instant, this all according to what we call the laws of nature.
3. So, (2) indicates that there is no ultimate meaning, not that a built-in meaning would be great, for it would be quite restrictive, but at least, as ‘liberating’, there’s anything and everything possible that could have become from the basic eternal state of not anything in particular—our present Earthly life path being one that is being lived now by us after 13.57 billion years, much of which progression can be accounted for by science.
4. On top of the preceding unlikelihoods, and given that obviously that no Designer made everything instantly, but is curiously constrained to doing exactly what nature could do on its own (and why so slowly!), it is unlikely that all eventualities could have been foreseen by a Deity in starting a universe suitable for life. It seems more like we were fine-tuned to the Earth.
5a. It’s still that the religious might then suppose a ‘God’ Deity who is like a scientist who throws a bunch of stuff together that is balanced and energetically reactive enough, but not too much so that it races along too fast, etc., to make for something livable coming out of it, but, again, really, what is a fully formed person-like being doing sitting around beforehand, this also being all the more of a quandary that ever enlarges the question by ‘begging’ rather than answering it.
5b. But, if it is supposed that life has to come from a Larger Life, then a regress ensues, making this not to be a good template, for it cannot be used on ‘God’ and so has to be thrown out of the stain-glass window. As for a Deity trying to put workable stuff together, this is much like the idea of a multiverse. We continue to estimate no ‘God’.
6. Existence/capability has no alternative, given that nonexistence has no being as a source and that there is indeed something, and as such the existence of something/capability is mandatory, there not being any choice to it. It’s a given; no magic required. Still, it could operate almost as what is called ‘God’, except that it’s not a Mind.
7a. We see that the One continually transitions/transmutes, never being able to remain as anything particular, which matches its nature supposed due to no information coming into it in the first place that never was, for the One Fundamental Eterne has to be ungenerated and deathless if it is so. But how can there be a finite absolute One with an impossible None outside it?
7b. Or all could be relative if there are no absolutes, for Totality can’t have anything outside it. So then Totality must be relative to itself.
7c. Of course, either way, the capability remains, as necessity, with no alternative, without needing any cause for it to be. It is the Ground of Determination — G.O.D. It has no opposite and so it is not remarkable.
8. Aside from the trivial definition of free will being that without coercion the will is free to operate, and the useless definition of the harmful random will equaling ‘freedom’, the deeper notion of ‘free’ as being original and free of the brain will is of a currency never being able to be stated and cashed in on, leaving ‘determined’ to continue to be the opposite of ‘undetermined’. This stands against a ‘God’.
While eternalism can’t yet be told apart from presentism, the message from both is of a transient ‘now’, whether pre-determined or determined as it goes along. All hope then, is crushed, both for us and the Great Wheel itself having any potency. This is the great humility; all hubris is gone.
It is enough, then, that we have the benefit of experiencing and living life well, sometimes, much more so given this modern age, although still with sweat, tears, and aversive substrates of emotions that those of the future might consider to be barbaric. The early days of humankind were horrendous.
10. It doesn’t seem like a God’s world, and so fundamentalist literalist Biblical ‘reasons’ cannot apply here, about a ‘fall’, for those already went away. The pride of being special and deserving of reward and avoiding punishment is still a nice wish, though, for us electro-chemical-bio organisms who appear be be as organic as anything else that grows in nature. Hope grants comfort.
11. God’s operations, curiously restricted to be the same as nature’s has us not being able to tell them apart from nature’s, but which is more likely, the natural or the supernatural? Earth is just where it ought to be, in the Goldilocks zone, and not impossibly flourishing out near Neptune.
12. And why must there be a truly distinct transcendent, immaterial, intangible, super realm when it would still have to give and take energy in the physical material language, talking its talk and walking its walk? Dubious, plus the speculation of an invisible realm goes nowhere toward it being so, it tending toward making excuses for what really ought to be seen everywhere.
13. So, we can sit on a fence and go to church half the time or estimate the probability either way, but note that there can be no blame for not knowing what can’t be shown for sure. It’s all in what it does for you.
Let us have wine, lovers, song, and laughter—
Water, chastity, prayer the day after.
Such we’ll alternate the rest of our days—
Thus, on the average, we’ll make Hereafter!
So what you were trying to say was that all and only those atheists who are notorious for furiously proselytizing are notorious for furiously proselytizing. Very insightful, that.
Quoting Pantagruel
And why can't it be both? People with positions on all manner of things like to share them with other people, and even try to convince others to come to their side. So why is it not socially acceptable to be outspoken about atheism, of all things? Is it too shameful, too outrageous? It's especially funny to see someone complain about atheism being discussed on a philosophy board, where people come to discuss and argue about anything and everything, no matter how abstract or irrelevant. Methinks you are clutching your pearls too hard.
He got banned/
your arguments all ask the same question: is god bound by logic?
Oh lol