Top responses to common Christian theistic arguments...

Hello, as another topic of interesting discussion what are your most convincing responses to common Christian theistic arguments such as...
The cosmological argument
The transcendental argument
The ontological argument
The moral argument
The design argument
The fine tuneing argument
Argument from arechological evidence
and...
The resurrection of Christ argument...
In the next post I'll give my top responses to these arguments. Anyway thank you all for your time and responses. Take care.

cosmological response: quantum mechanics or some other unknown undiscovered natural mechanism could easily refute the cosmological argument
ontological response: a god creating machine or a eternal group of gods may be a even greater idea or concept than a single creator God
transcendental response: Logical absolutes simply exist, they are axioms, they are conventions, they are uncaused, they are eternal, and there are different kinds of logic.
moral response: evidence from evolutionary psychology that may show that morals change over time and or products of a changing society (ies) and that there are no objective moral standards
design response: the design is merely an illusion,evidence for macro evolution, co option, and and it begs the question of who created God
fine tuneing response: other earth like planets that may house life, life on other planets like Mars, and evidence for abiogenesis (IE Stanley Miller experiment) show that life and the right conditions are not as fine tuned as one may think
archeological evidence response: Even though many people, places have been confirmed much still has not been confirmed, and no solid evidence for the supernatural events currently exists in archeology.
Resurrection of Christ response: popular alternative theories like the swoon theory, wrong tomb theory, conspiracy theory, and the myth theory.

Oh well, those are mine, what are yours?

[anthonyjfuchs]

I'll just shoot down a few:

The cosmological argument falls apart when it claims that everything requires a cause, but then claims that an infinite causal regress is impossible. If everything requires a cause, then an infinite causal regress is required. Of course, the argument really falls apart once we get back to the Big Bang, because time didn't begin until after that expansion, meaning that the pre-universe singularity was, by definition, eternal. And if the notion of an eternal god can be acceptable, then the notion of an eternal universe must be as well.

I'd never heard the transcendental argument before, but it falls apart as soon as it makes the claim that knowledge, logic, morals, and science are not possible without a god, because it does not support that claim. Why are knowledge, logic, morality, or science not possible with a deity?

The ontological argument almost always falls apart in its first claim because it never supports that claim. The claim that "God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived," for example, is both unsubstantiated, and not necessarily true (I can claim, for example, that I have conceived of a pooferdoodle, which is greater than God). Further, a being cannot be defined into existence, which becomes clear when one replaces the word "god" in the ontological argument with another word, such as pooferdoodle.

The design argument is particularly offensive. Let us imagine, say, a pothole in a road, and let us imagine that a storm hits and the pothole fills with rainwater. The drops of rainwater in the puddle fit into the crags and crevices of the pothole perfectly. Is it reasonable to claim, then, that the pothole was designed by a creator specifically to hold exactly those drops of water? Of course not: the rainwater molded to the contours of the pothole. By analogy, life is the rainwater, and the Earth is the pothole. Life evolved to exist in the environments that existed on the Earth, which is why we are so well-suited to our environments. If we weren't suited them, we simply would have survived.

The resurrection argument is absurd, of course, because it supposes that a myth is historically true. The story of the resurrection is no more historical than the trials of Hercules. There is no evidence that an actual resurrection actually happened.

[inkadu]

The moral argument is, depending on its phraseing, irrelevant. There's one variant that states, "We must believe in God else there would be social chaos." Well, there might be. But that doesn't mean that God exists (h/t Dawkins).

If you want to put this together in a FAQ, or see if someone else has done it, that would be nice, too. I already know all these arguments, actually, but it would be nice to have them all in one place to sharpen my skills. And you can always take a page from Christopher Hitchens and add a second part to all your responses: the Catholic church rapes children. It's good for everything.

[psychodiva]

is he still here? *yawn*

[psychodiva]

mind you- the pooferdoodle concept woke me up a bit - thanks

Hey I'm still here, I can't be around this thing 24/7 you know.

[calpurnpiso]

dean09 wrote

cosmological response: quantum mechanics or some other unknown undiscovered natural mechanism could easily refute the cosmological argument
ontological response: a god creating machine or a eternal group of gods may be a even greater idea or concept than a single creator God
transcendental response: Logical absolutes simply exist, they are axioms, they are conventions, they are uncaused, they are eternal, and there are different kinds of logic.
moral response: evidence from evolutionary psychology that may show that morals change over time and or products of a changing society (ies) and that there are no objective moral standards
design response: the design is merely an illusion,evidence for macro evolution, co option, and and it begs the question of who created God
fine tuneing response: other earth like planets that may house life, life on other planets like Mars, and evidence for abiogenesis (IE Stanley Miller experiment) show that life and the right conditions are not as fine tuned as one may think
archeological evidence response: Even though many people, places have been confirmed much still has not been confirmed, and no solid evidence for the supernatural events currently exists in archeology.
Resurrection of Christ response: popular alternative theories like the swoon theory, wrong tomb theory, conspiracy theory, and the myth theory.

Oh well, those are mine, what are yours?

...And all of it created by the BRAIN...ingest some Amanita mushrooms sautee to perfection gather your ideas & then post them. We'll see incredibly difference in perceptions of reality, theories & in conceptual connectivity. This will prove my point. God is an intellect stagnating delusion produced in a malfunctioning brains not unlike those under schizophrenia or TL epilepsy.

[Sternwallow]

dean09 wrote

Hey I'm still here, I can't be around this thing 24/7 you know.

I find your lack of diligence disturbing.

I thought diligence (like all morals) were relative.

[psychodiva]

and a little inbred in this case

In my experience arguing with religious people using "logic" and "rational thought" is mostly a waste of time. It may be useful talking to agnostics or those with genuine doubt.

At the end of the day, you can whip a religious person's prayer mat from under their feet and they'll still smile sublimely at you and wobble not a jot.

Most effective thing, in my opinion, is to do a reductio absurdum on their beliefs, or use an emotive argument such as talking about hate or fear or hell or (the argument from) evil.

[nkb]

Tread Softly wrote

In my experience arguing with religious people using "logic" and "rational thought" is mostly a waste of time. It may be useful talking to agnostics or those with genuine doubt.

At the end of the day, you can whip a religious person's prayer mat from under their feet and they'll still smile sublimely at you and wobble not a jot.

Most effective thing, in my opinion, is to do a reductio absurdum on their beliefs, or use an emotive argument such as talking about hate or fear or hell or (the argument from) evil.

Wise words from a wise man:

Sam Harris wrote

General comment on arguing (with anyone about anything) -- you almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don't like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.

[calpurnpiso]

Tread Softly wrote

In my experience arguing with religious people using "logic" and "rational thought" is mostly a waste of time. It may be useful talking to agnostics or those with genuine doubt.

At the end of the day, you can whip a religious person's prayer mat from under their feet and they'll still smile sublimely at you and wobble not a jot.

Most effective thing, in my opinion, is to do a reductio absurdum on their beliefs, or use an emotive argument such as talking about hate or fear or hell or (the argument from) evil.

Exactly the same happens when arguing with people infected with schizophrenia or temporal lobe epilepsy. They, as the religious, have thrown reason out the window.

[anthonyjfuchs]

calpurnpiso wrote

Exactly the same happens when arguing with people infected with schizophrenia or temporal lobe epilepsy. They, as the religious, have thrown reason out the window.

The sad thing is that for religious people, like this suffering from schizophrenia or temporal lobe epilepsy, it isn't their fault. The window was left open by their parents, and the winds of public opinion blew through the living room too strongly, whisking their reason away before they ever had a chance to set a paperweight on it.