When someone makes a claim that something exists, they have a responsibility to demonstrate its existence.
When theists claim that a god exists, they have the burden of proof. If they fail to meet that burden, then it
is reasonable to withhold belief in the existence of gods.
This page is a
collection of refutations of several arguments commonly used by theists that were not discussed
in the other essays. For more refutations of
faulty arguments for theism, see the Secular Web's
Arguments for the Existence of God.
For arguments for the nonexistence of gods, see Arguments for Atheism.
Index
Argument From Design
Theists often claim that the universe and all living things were designed. Since they were designed they
must have had a designer, and that designer is God.
There are two things wrong with this argument. First, it is not at all obvious that
the universe or living things were designed. Physics does a fine job of describing the universe with intelligent
design playing no role (see The Physics Web).
Evolution, including speciation or macro-evolution, is a directly observed empirical fact
and, again, intelligent design plays no role (see The Talk.Origins Archive).
The second thing wrong with this argument is that it implies that
God must have had a designer; a meta-god. This is because God must be much more complex than biological
organisms,
and if the complexity of biological organisms implies a designer, then the complexity of God implies a designer.
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Divine Revelation
Many theists claim that their god revealed himself to them and that this is reason to believe. But many
other theists believe that their version of god, which contradicts the other theists' version of god,
revealed himself to them.
Both groups of theists cannot be correct. Also, many psychotic people claim to hear voices and see magical things
and their claims are no less credible than the theists' claims. Since we know that psychology can explain some
of these
revelations, it is much more sensible to conclude that they are all psychological phenomena than to assume
that some revelations are genuinely magical.
Christians claim that the Bible is divinely reveled. This claim is so obviously nonsensical that it is almost not
worth mentioning. The Bible is self-contradictory and it states in no uncertain terms that the Earth is flat. Clearly
it is not divinely inspired (unless the Christian god is an idiot). Furthermore, the Bible god is an
abhorrent monster that ordered mass murder and approved of rape and slavery
(see Bible Atrocities).
In the extremely remote possibility
that a god actually exists, the Christians' claim that the Bible describes this god is extraordinarily blasphemous
(see A Message From God for what a god
might think of Biblical mythology).
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Ontological Argument
The ontological argument is really nothing more than a silly word game. It goes something like this:
"God is by definition a being such that no greater being can be conceived. If God does not exist, then a greater
being can be conceived, since an existing god is a greater being than a non-existing god. Therefore God
exists." It should be obvious to any reasonably intelligent person that something is wrong with this argument.
It is less obvious exactly what it is that's wrong with it. To see that it is wrong, replace God with Paradise Isle:
"Paradise Isle is by definition an island such that no greater island can be conceived. If Paradise Isle does not exist,
then a greater
island can be conceived, since an existing island is a greater island than a non-existing island. Therefore
Paradise Isle exists."
The problem with this argument is that it fails to distinguish the concept of something existing from existence in
reality.
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First Cause Argument
The first cause argument states "Everything has a cause and every cause is the result of a previous cause. There
must have been something to start off this chain of events, and that something is God."
This argument is self-contradictory. The premise is that everything has a cause; the conclusion is that
something exists, namely God, which does not have a cause. If we are going to allow something to exist which
is uncaused, it is much more sensible to say that the universe itself is uncaused than to postulate the existence
of God and say that God is uncaused. After all, we know that the universe exists.
It is quite possible that the universe has existed, in some form, forever.
Our current understanding of cosmology is based on
classical general relativity, which breaks down for times earlier than the Planck time of
10-43 seconds. Until
we have a fully worked out theory of quantum gravity, we can only speculate on what happened before the Planck
time. One possibility is a repeatedly expanding and then re-contracting universe that has existed for all past
times and
that will exist for all future times. Another possibility is that our universe is a quantum fluctuation in some
meta-universe which has existed for all time.
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Near-Death Experiences
Some people who have come very close to dying say that they had an out of body experience
and report seeing a bright light. Some theists claim that these experiences are indications
of an afterlife and that the bright light is God. The reality, however, is that these experiences are purely
natural. Recent advances in neuroscience show that near-death experiences are a result of the breakdown
of the brains normal processes that occur as the brain is dying. This breakdown in the brain's processes can
be reproduced using the drug ketamine to block certain receptors in the brain. Patients treated with
ketamine report exactly the same near-death experiences that the people genuinely near to death have
reported.
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Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?
The "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?" argument was put forward by C. S. Lewis to show that Jesus is "Lord".
Here is the argument: "Jesus said he was Lord. If he was not Lord,
he must have lied or else he was a lunatic that just thought he was Lord. Given the morals that
he displayed in the Bible, it is unlikely that he was a liar, and since he did not behave like a lunatic,
he must have been Lord." This argument is based on a false "trichotomy"; it artificially restricts us to just
three possibilities when in fact there are many more. For example, it is possible that Jesus never
claimed to be Lord at all and that Christians got it wrong 60 to 120 years later when the Gospels were
written.
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