Best Atheist arguments you probably haven't heard before

[thenexttodie]

I understand what you mean. You would still need to at least make claim to what objective morals exist and ideally define the source of thier "outside" standard of morality, even if you are only pretending. Without doing so, you would only obfuscate yourself into a nonsensical position.

I'm not sure what you mean... if you have a compass that you say points north, and i shake it and it point in a different random direction everytime i shake it, then the compass cant be used as a guide. It makes no difference is north exists or not, i can still demonstrate the compass is broken. This is what i am doing with the moral argument.

I think that it would be hard for you to win a debate with your claim that objective moral values could be grounded in pastarianism without at least identifying what those morals are exactly.

But what do I know? I'm just some stupid Christian.

 

[Rumraket]

I've always wondered what it really means to say that something is "grounded in" something else.

If we say that morality is grounded in X, what are we really saying? Would it be correct to say that those who advance a theory of moral grounding in God, are in effect saying that what is morally good is that which God does?

I need this relationship between morality and God explained using another term than "grounded in" as It isn't obvious to me what this means.

Only when we understand what it means to say that X "is grounded in" Y, can we analyze whether it is possible for X to "be grounded" in something other than Y (like Z).

 

[TJump]

I think that it would be hard for you to win a debate with your claim that objective moral values could be grounded in pastarianism without at least identifying what those morals are exactly.

But what do I know? I'm just some stupid Christian.

Anyone can make up a system of morality and call it objective.... if you want so can i.

The point of the argument is that any made up system of morality can be called objective so any asserted morality is subjective including theism untill you have a solution to some of the biggest philosophical problems (which no one does).

 

[thenexttodie]

To me, it stands to reason that God is able to know what kind of person you are, without having to constantly do miracles for everyone. And He would know if you would rather live forever with Hillary Clinton and perverts and people like those who goto pro-choice and pro LGBTQ rallies instead of living forever with me and him.

LOL

Ahh yes, I remember this as a typical ad-hoc rationalization many Christians invoke to explain away why it is that atheists don't seem to be getting messages, seeing miracles, or receiving revelations from God all over the place, like Christians report they do. This is essentially the parable of Carl Sagan's invisible dragon in his garage all over again. But with God instead of the dragon.

When a reasonable, at-face-value interpretation of the evidence seems to indicate that there is no evidence for the thing in question (the invisible dragon, or God), the believer will offer some excuse, completely ad-hoc, for why we shouldn't count on that particular evidence to exist.

The person says they have a dragon in their garage and you go to confirm it. But you don't see a dragon there. And that's when the excuse-making starts.
You expect to see a dragon, oh but it's invisible. (Same with God of course).
You expect to hear the dragon, oh but it's inaudible.
Maybe it should leave footprints? Oh but God (and the dragon) is incorporeal, no physical body.
It should breathe fire so maybe we can use a thermal camera or thermometer? Oh but the fire is immaterial too.

... and so on and so forth as we go through the list of ways in which a thing that could reasonably be said to exist, should manifest some sort of detectable effect.

And so we come to the second-to-last exercise in excuse-making faith rationalizations: Oh but you see you can know that the Dragon (God) exists if you just believe it in your heart already and are willing to sycophanticly worship the dragon no matter what, then the Dragon will make it's existence known to you through personal revelation.

Then you inform the believer that you are not getting any revelation at all, and here is the final kicker: Oh but you see the dragon knows what's in your heart, so it's just hiding from you on purpose because the dragon wants a sycophant to worship it uncritically and submissively, and here you are demanding rational justification through evidence (or you don't wish to be a submissive sycophant that worships uncritically), demonstrating how perverted you are. And the dragon never reveals itself to people who "willingly rejects it".

It's just ad-hoc excuse making all the way down. It's not even supposed to be apologetic arguments designed to persuade the unbeliever to believe. No when we get to this level of the argument the believers are trying to convince themselves. This is for their own benefit, an argument to save their own faith from falsification and give them peace of mind in face of evidence they must somewhere recognize constitutes evidence against their belief.

With this final hand wave believers have made it impossible for themselves to ever discover if they are wrong about the character of God, and God's views on unbelievers, because in so far as God never seems to contact the unbeliever, the Christian will always be able to fall back on this completely ad-hoc and unfalsifiable excuse, that God is deliberately hiding and staying away because of some perceived failing by the unbeliever.

Whether God actually is like that they have no idea, or even if God exists, they are just making excuses to try to save their blind religious faith from real-world falsification. Of course, they'll just point to some old book where some passages are written that can be interpreted as detailing this same sort of excuse (essentially just demonstrating that ancient people's had this same argument, and religioust believers were making and writing down ad-hoc excuses back then too). So they'll just blindly believe what it says in the book without having any clue if it's true.

I am at a loss for words. While I have always thought the "Unicorn in the Basement" argument to be somewhat unfounded and silly, you really caught me off-guard with your amazing "Dragon in Garage" hypothetical. You even used Carl Sagan's name in a link text. Wow!

 

[Sparhafoc]

Excuse me while I bite my tongue.

 

[thenexttodie]

Are you claiming to know that you will be with God forever in an afterlife?

Yes.

Did he tell you this, audibly?

No.

I have been led to believe by people such as yourself that expressing such an opinion is rather arrogant, and that (at least according to what some scriptural interpretations say) even someone like you will be judged and that you don't really know your destiny until you die and go before God.

The Bible is a pretty straighforward book. Which part or parts of the Bible do you think I have a wrong understanding of?

 

[thenexttodie]

I think that it would be hard for you to win a debate with your claim that objective moral values could be grounded in pastarianism without at least identifying what those morals are exactly.

But what do I know? I'm just some stupid Christian.

Anyone can make up a system of morality and call it objective.... if you want so can i.

The point of the argument is that any made up system of morality can be called objective so any asserted morality is subjective including theism untill you have a solution to some of the biggest philosophical problems (which no one does).

Ok, well I still don't think this a very good argument. I guess we just have to agree to disagree. Try it somewhere and see.

 

[Rumraket]

The Bible is a pretty straighforward book. Which part or parts of the Bible do you think I have a wrong understanding of?

That's not for me to argue over. Rather a very significant problem is that people can read all sorts of stuff into it by giving passages all sorts of metaphorical or allegorical interpretations. And nobody seems to be able to prove any one else's interpretation wrong, as that would just be based on yet another interpretation.

But more significantly still, why believe any of it? How do we know it's true (whatever interpretation you decide on)?

 

[Rumraket]

I am at a loss for words. While I have always thought the "Unicorn in the Basement" argument to be somewhat unfounded and silly

That just puts you completely outside the realm of rational discourse here.

Even if you do not believe it applies to yourself as I would of course argue it does, try having arguments with various forms of conspiracy theorists, like anti-vaxxers, flat-Earthers, 9/11 truthers, or whatever other crackpot group out there and you will see it applied in practice.

As evidence that should cause people to change their minds is brought up again and again, rationalizations will instead be concocted for why the evidence is invalid. Show a photo to a flat Earther and the rationalization will be it's a hoax (photoshop, or a model or what have you), that seems to be their first go-to. As you go down the list the rationalizations become increasingly elaborate. Both private companies and government institutions that study photographic evidence are all bought and paid for (of course in so far as they say the photo is real and shows no evidence of being altered/docted in some way), NASA is behind the scene controlling institutions all over the world, even in countries that are opposed to or at war with the US, or "The Jews" are ganging together blah blah blah.

you really caught me off-guard with your amazing "Dragon in Garage" hypothetical.

Yes I believe I did. Thank you.

You even used Carl Sagan's name in a link text. Wow!

Properly attributing the source of the concept where I first learned about it seemed entirely fair to me as I don't claim to have invented so apposite a parable for explaining how supernaturalist and conspiracy-theorist faithheads shield their blind faith positions from falsification.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Are you claiming to know that you will be with God forever in an afterlife?

Yes.

And simultaneously claim to know who God will send to a special place He designed to torture forever and ever.

The question really is why you need the middle-man at all.

I have been led to believe by people such as yourself that expressing such an opinion is rather arrogant, and that (at least according to what some scriptural interpretations say) even someone like you will be judged and that you don't really know your destiny until you die and go before God.

The Bible is a pretty straighforward book. Which part or parts of the Bible do you think I have a wrong understanding of?

I would hazard a guess the bits between "In the beginning" and "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."

 

[thenexttodie]

The Bible is a pretty straighforward book. Which part or parts of the Bible do you think I have a wrong understanding of?

That's not for me to argue over.

Oh. Ok. Well let me know if you can think of anything. I would appreciate it.

 

[thenexttodie]

And simultaneously claim to know who God will send to a special place He designed to torture forever and ever.

At least you wont be murdering unborn babies while you are there.

The choice is yours, Sparhafoc.

 

[Bango Skank]

And simultaneously claim to know who God will send to a special place He designed to torture forever and ever.

At least you wont be murdering unborn babies while you are there.

The choice is yours, Sparhafoc.

Bible doesnt consider unborn baby as an individual. For example if you hit pregnant woman and she has a miscarriage, you only pay fine if the woman is hurt (no punishment for murder). But if she only had miscarriage, no big deal. Bible also has instructions to perform abortion (Numbers 5:11-31). Actually at least in ancient judaism, child became individual only when it was born and drew it's first breath (thats when soul enters it). Before that it was considered body part of woman, not an individual.

Anti abortion movement in christianity is actually quite recent occurrence.

 

[Rumraket]

The Bible is a pretty straighforward book. Which part or parts of the Bible do you think I have a wrong understanding of?

That's not for me to argue over.

Oh. Ok. Well let me know if you can think of anything. I would appreciate it.

How about you answer the question you skipped? How do you know that what the bible claims about God's views on unbelievers is correct?

This whole rationalization (aka after-the-fact excuse to shield faith from falsification) about God hiding from unbelievers because they don't sycophantly worpship him, what passages do you get it from and how do you know it is correctly describing God's views?

Is it one of those additional rationalizations that you also can't prove or even explain, like a "personal revelation" that is "like explaining color to a blind man"-thing?

Is there no end to things you believe with absolute conviction yet are completely incapable of rationally supporting with evidence?

 

[Gnug215]

The Bible is a pretty straighforward book. Which part or parts of the Bible do you think I have a wrong understanding of?

That's not for me to argue over.

Oh. Ok. Well let me know if you can think of anything. I would appreciate it.

No one here can think of anything.

And since everyone agrees that the Bible is pretty straightforward, and thus also agrees on the interpretation of it, as evidenced in the single, solitary Christian denomination in the world, you clearly win this round.

On to the next point, I guess.

 

[Sparhafoc]

And simultaneously claim to know who God will send to a special place He designed to torture forever and ever.

At least you wont be murdering unborn babies while you are there.

The choice is yours, Sparhafoc.

As I mentioned to you already; loaded assumptions first have to be dismantled before any dialogue can be achieved. But first an aside...

The fact that your loaded assumptions are repeatedly couched in such an evocative moralizing tone is truly perplexing.

Are you trying to convince me that I am a murderer? Are you trying to convince others that I am a murderer? Are you trying to convince yourself that I am a murderer? Are you virtue-signalling to God via the medium of the internet?

Who knows really? It's fucking silly though.


Regardless, as I've already taught you, the term "baby" specifies the age range: post-natal.

If you want to argue that we should consider pre-natal foetuses also to be "babies" then you need to explain why, not attempt to bully me into accepting it as that's obviously (surely?) not going to work.

I have nothing against discussing that particular idea, but you can't declare "murder" based on some special semantic distortion you've manufactured - that's not only preposterous, it's also delusional.

No one is obliged to accept your contrived oxymoron. Babies are a class best defined by the category 'early post-natal'.


Another quite vicious loaded assumption is that I am 'murdering' said babies.

You've become a parody, thenextttodie, the meme of the frothing fundie declaring the heathen a baby-murderer! How silly of you.

Even if you had a good argument, which you don't, that rhetorical contrivance would have utterly ruined your chance to have a decent conversation about your good argument because it's so fucking egregious and self-damaging.

But I can give you the opportunity to be in for a penny in for a pound if you like?

In what way am I "murdering babies" thenexttodie?

Explain what form that alleged murder took.

Explain how you know this.

Even in the most liberal and forgiving interpretation of your vicious loaded assumption, I still am not a baby-murderer as I've never had an abortion myself, nor been the genetic father of an aborted foetus, so you best get your creative cap on retrofitting your argument in the knowledge of that to ensure you can still evade substance by vacuous moralizing.


The choice is actually yours, thenexttodie: you can be informed, or you can moralize, but you can't be both without being a hypocrite.


Now that's all done - all the faulty assumptions knocked down - let's reintroduce some substance.

Tell me if I am wrong, but you don't agree with abortion.

For clarity: I don't agree with all forms of abortion. I am not absolute. There is an overlap in our positions.

As such, you can characterize me as being a polar opposite, but I remain not a polar opposite.

There is plenty of grey area in this genuinely challenging ethical consideration of humans and their pre-adult, pre-child, pre-natal stages in which I very strongly assert that religionists of the Christian persuasion have no vaunted superiority or legitimacy, thanks to a very long, and very fucking clear picture of historical Christians wielding the power over a supine populace.

That ship has sailed chap. You want to get people to agree with your interpretations of dogma, then you're going to need to convince people on ethical grounds they can agree with, not attempt to cow them into accepting your religion wholesale too.

My position is that, at the earliest embryonic stage, there is nothing essentially human there. There is a conglomeration of cells that are busy doing cellular things. There's no heart-beat. There's no brain activity. There's not even a heart or a brain yet; just cells.

I think it's fair to say that most rational people, even of the Christian persuasion, don't consider this to be a human being. I think there is nothing recognizably human here. If humanity actually means something, but by something you mean that, then I don't understand you're meaning - perhaps not even the spectrum of your meaning.

In the same respect, if I look at a late-stage foetus then I cannot make any value-laden distinction between that stage and a post-natal stage. Coincidentally, this happens to be the norm in all nations' legislation where abortion is legal - it's not like they let people abort their foetuses the day before birth, right? You do get this, right?

As such, there's a grey area, a rational and emotional grey area. Ethics has a long history of being debated.

The instinct to engage in ethical consideration is human, it's not Christian, so you do not get a free pass here. Your borrowed belief system has no automatic legitimacy here. Offer reasons for your position, explain where your line is, talk sense and stop acting like a prick.

Not sure that this really is all that hard for you "thenexttodie" - but it's the last time I bother. Your choice.

 

[Sparhafoc]

No one here can think of anything.

And since everyone agrees that the Bible is pretty straightforward, and thus also agrees on the interpretation of it, as evidenced in the single, solitary Christian denomination in the world, you clearly win this round.

On to the next point, I guess.

thenexttodie may well have forgotten the number of times he's mentioned that he has what is essentially his very own version of belief in the Christian doctrine, and that there are many churches he wouldn't be welcomed in.

It would be one thing to wrangle with the entire weight of monolithic Christianity in its 2000 year tradition... but it's really quite another to have some dude on the internet expect the world to fall in behind his own artfully contrived make-believe.

 

[thenexttodie]

As I mentioned to you already; loaded assumptions first have to be dismantled before any dialogue can be achieved. But first an aside...

The fact that your loaded assumptions are repeatedly couched in such an evocative moralizing tone is truly perplexing.

Are you trying to convince me that I am a murderer?

You hope to make popular the idea that society needs people who kill unborn babies. So what does that make you? Adolf Hitler might have never personally killed anyone. But because of his ideas, the world rightly holds him responsible for the murder of millions.

Regardless, as I've already taught you, the term "baby" specifies the age range: post-natal.

If you want to argue that we should consider pre-natal foetuses also to be "babies" then you need to explain why, not attempt to bully me into accepting it as that's obviously (surely?) not going to work.
I have nothing against discussing that particular idea, but you can't declare "murder" based on some special semantic distortion you've manufactured - that's not only preposterous, it's also delusional.

No one is obliged to accept your contrived oxymoron. Babies are a class best defined by the category 'early post-natal'.

Everyone already knows why you dont like it when we call unborn babies "unborn babies". I'm not even exactly sure what you mean by pre-natalfoetuses. Most people probably would not either.

Another quite vicious loaded assumption is that I am 'murdering' said babies.

You've become a parody, thenextttodie, the meme of the frothing fundie declaring the heathen a baby-murderer! How silly of you.

Even if you had a good argument, which you don't, that rhetorical contrivance would have utterly ruined your chance to have a decent conversation about your good argument because it's so fucking egregious and self-damaging.

But I can give you the opportunity to be in for a penny in for a pound if you like?

In what way am I "murdering babies" thenexttodie?

Explain what form that alleged murder took.

Ideas have consequences, Sparhofoc. So when you argue for the idea that murdering unborn babies is needed for us to have liberty, then you should be held to blame when people start acting on your idea.

For clarity: I don't agree with all forms of abortion. I am not absolute. There is an overlap in our positions.

Sparhafoc, your position is not a mystery to me. You are like the Bible says you will be. There is no overlap between you and I in this case.

As such, you can characterize me as being a polar opposite, but I remain not a polar opposite.

Ok, I'll bite. In which cases do you believe that killing an unborn baby should be illegal?

There is plenty of grey area in this genuinely challenging ethical consideration of humans and their pre-adult, pre-child, pre-natal stages in which I very strongly assert that religionists of the Christian persuasion have no vaunted superiority or legitimacy, thanks to a very long, and very fucking clear picture of historical Christians wielding the power over a supine populace.

I dont consider it "ethically challenging" to know to treat adults differently from childeren. Even men who are not christian know that it is a good thing for them to protect a woman or a child. Even to the point of risking their own lives to do so. Men do not normally hurt babies. They protect them.

My position is that, at the earliest embryonic stage, there is nothing essentially human there. There is a conglomeration of cells that are busy doing cellular things. There's no heart-beat. There's no brain activity. There's not even a heart or a brain yet; just cells.

Sparhafoc. There are little things about you that no one knows about. Things you have seen or wondered about. Beautiful things that only you know. How shamefull it is of you then, to say it is better to kill life before it has a chance of the same experiences.

 

[leroy]

1. Response to the Moral argument

Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

P1 fails because there are numerous alternatives that can act as a grounds for objective moral values and duties by theist own definition, which is something grounded in a metaphysical theory of everything. For example, instead of being grounded in theism objective morality may be grounded in deism, pantheism, naturalistic pantheism (i.e. atheism), pandeism, acosmism, panpsychism, transtheism, henotheism, polytheism, pastafarianism, or an evil god, just to name a few.

Atheists/scientists can assert an objective basis for morality grounded in Naturalistic Pantheism as a super law of nature or product of a super law, simply one we have not yet discovered. Therefore, like theism, science is also capable of asserting explanations for any apparent objective phenomena such as an objective basis for: morality, purpose, meaning, value, consciousness, freewill, intelligibility, rationality, math, logic, origin of the universe, etc…

No one is saying that there are no alternatives, sure there are some “atheist” alternatives for objective morality, these alternatives are widely discussed and addressed by apologetics in their publish work.

The main point is that if “atheism” where true, what we call morality would most likely be a bi product of evolution, natural selection and/or cultural rules.

Besides even if we grant that morality came in to be naturally at the big bang (or at some other point) it wouldn’t imply that we have to follow those rules, why would “ unguided nature” create moral values that would later have to obeyed by humans?

2. Response to the Historicity of the bible

If I told you I saw a real living breathing dog, then you should believe me.
However, if I told you I saw a real living breathing unicorn, you should not believe me.

The difference between these two claims is that dogs have an implicit empirical basis, whereas unicorns do not. Meaning for dog there exists many things about them that we can verify in the present such as their taxonomy, bones, genetic makeup, chemical composition, what they are allergic to, etc..; that I simply haven’t mentioned in the argument, i.e. implicit.

Because I have made an empirical claim about the world, it requires empirical evidence that we can verify in the present. The conceptual evidence of my testimony is insufficient to justify the claim unicorns exist because we cannot verify conceptual evidence in the present and you would have to accept something in my memory/imagination is an accurate representation of reality. Examples of conceptual evidence are testimony modern or historical, personal experience, intuition, anecdote, etc.

Therefore, to justify the empirical claim unicorns exist would require empirical evidence of unicorns, where the conceptual evidence of my testimony is only sufficient to justify belief is was a delusion, misinterpretation, imagination, fabrication, hallucination, etc… all conceptual conclusions about my mind.

Historical claims work the same way, if the claims already have an implicit empirical basis then they are, prima facie, reasonable to accept. If they do not have an implicit empirical basis than an explicit basis must be provided before they are reasonable to accept.

Therefore, miracles, magic, mythical creatures, the supernatural, paranormal, aliens, etc… would all need an explicit empirical basis before they were reasonable to accept based on historical testimony/conceptual evidence. However, it is reasonable to believe such claims to be delusions, misconceptions, invention, confabulation, or imagination as those are conceptual conclusions and therefore only require conceptual evidence such as historical testimony.

This principle can be summarized as:
Conceptual claims require conceptual evidence; empirical claims require empirical evidence.

These are my original arguments, which I hope to use to find opportunities to do public debates with theists; check out my YouTube channel for more:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHXrvsK33VUEcpa4Ar0c0Sg

I agree with your point, the theist has to provide good reasons to say that the existence of God is at least possible, while the atheist has to show that the existence of God is impossible (in my opinion both share the burden proof). But in my experience apologetics typically provide independent evidence for God.


The logic would follow this line:
The existence of God is possible…..therefore miracles are possible…..therefore historical documents reporting miracles may (or may not) be reliable. ***(Depending o the characteristics of the document.)

But granted, one first has to establish that the existence of God is possible, ........the good news is that no one in this forum that I am aware of, has ever claimed (let alone showed) that the existence of a god is impossible.

 

[leroy]

I am pretty sure that everybody in this forum agrees that killing an innocent human is wrong. The controversial question is ¿“are unborn babies innocent humans”?
If a baby is born 2 months early (2 months before the 9 months) everybody would agree that the baby has rights and however tries to kill him would be doing something wrong. Why wouldn’t a 7 months old embryo have the same rights? Why would one baby have more rights that the other?