I've seen a few debates between theists
and atheists and I would like to add my replies to the main
theistic arguments for the existence of a god, multiple gods or
whatever. The arguments are always the same and I will present some
of them.
1. The cosmological argument.
This argument
states that the Universe must have a cause and that cause is a god.
I've seen a nice way of dismissing this argument with Occam's razor:
“God created the Universe, God
just exists.”. Yes, it's that easy, the simplest explanation is
better, that the Universe just exists.
Even if the
Universe has a cause, why would that cause be intelligent? Even if
the Universe has an intelligent cause, why would it be interested in
us, humans? These questions can go on forever.
I talk more about
the beginning of the Universe in this post.
2. The argument from design.
The argument from
design states that the Universe or what it contains is too complex to
exist by chance, therefore, a god designed everything. Before the
theory of evolution, this argument was about biological beings and
some people still use it. Nowadays it's mostly about the fine-tuning
of our Universe, so as to sustain life and most importantly human
life.
My first reaction
to the fine-tuning argument was that it's an awful waste of space,
matter and energy to create an entire Universe with billions of
billions of stars and planets, all just for us. Another obvious
problem with this argument is that life is rare in the Universe, so
if it is fine-tuned to sustain life, it's incompetently done. Life
occupies a tiny portion of even the Earth, only the surface area and
humans are not well adapted to live in the oceans, which cover most
of the Earth. There is no need to mention other planets. So, it
really is a sloppy job if it is the work of a creator.
Another problem
with this argument is that a god needs to be a very complex being, it
cannot be as simple as a boulder. This god needs to be far more
complex than the Universe, so, basically, they want to explain the
complexity of something by postulating something even more complex,
without evidence. I talk more about this in this post.
3. The argument from morality
This argument
states that there is objective morality and the source of that
morality is a god. I disagree with this, I don't believe there is
objective morality. Morality has changed a lot over time. In ancient
times it was moral to kill a sinner with stones, slavery was moral
and even religious war was moral.
We can't take our
morality from the bible and thankfully, we don't. We don't kill
people because they work on Sunday, we don't kill homosexuals as the
bible tells us to do, we don't kill witches and so on.
In ancient Rome
people used to go and watch gladiators fight till the death. In the Dark Ages, people used to gather and watch the burning of witches. We
don't do this anymore and some of us are even revolted by animal cruelty. What changed? Did religion change? Has the bible been
modified since then? No, religion is not the cause of our morality
improvements. The cause is civilization, we are becoming more civilized.
4. The argument from miracles.
This argument
states that miracles occur (or have occurred) and that they are
created by a god. I have never seen something I would call a miracle
and even if I did see something like that, it might be just trickery,
I've seen a magic show once, and some people would call those tricks miracles if
they did not know it was just a magic show. There are a lot of cases
of charlatans, so I won't go into that.
Medical miracles
always fall within what is possible. There has never been a case where
someone who lost a limb grew it back, no matter how much he/she
prayed. That would be no problem for an all-powerful god, but it
never happens.
The miracles
presented in the bible should not be believed more than you believe
in Harry Potter. They are just books and believing that those stories
are real makes you naive. A lot of people cannot discern reality from
fantasy. You should read this post.
You might say that
people don't believe in Harry Potter, well, that story is not meant
to be a religion, it's not meant to be believed. The Iliad is a
better example, because people did believe in the gods of mount
Olympus. You can take any religious book. All religious books are
fairy tales, and I don't need to read all of them to know this.
By the way,
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” - Carl
Sagan.
5. The argument from religious
experience
This argument
states that some people have had religious experiences and that
proves that at least one god exists. The problem I see here is that
people from different religions, even contradictory religions have
had religious experiences, so who is right? Which religion is
correct? I believe that all religions are wrong.
I do believe that
some people have religious experiences and I don't believe they are
necessarily crazy. Lots of things can cause religious experiences,
but I believe they are just hallucinations.
I was laughing one
day, when I read this: “religion is a result of malnutrition”. I
can't remember who said this, but it's probably true. In the bible,
some jews went into the desert for long periods of time, they had
little to eat, some got close to starvation. Hallucinations are known
to be caused by malnutrition and isolation, so it was the perfect
recipe, religious people going into the desert to find god and
finding hallucinations because of malnutrition and isolation. Even
Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, where satan appears to him
and tempts him in various ways, another hallucination, I believe.
6. Pascal's wager
It goes like this:
“If you believe
in God and God does not exist, you lose nothing.
If you believe in
God and God exists, you gain everything.
If you do not
believe in God and God does not exist, you gain nothing.
If you do not
believe in God and God exists, you lose everything.”
This
wager has never impressed me because it's based on fear and fear is
the mind killer. But, imagine that this wager was available for every
god, like Zeus, Thor, Bumba, Chinigchinix, Allah, Brahma or
any other. This should be the case, as no god has more proof than any
other. But you can't believe in all the gods for fear of the
consequences of disbelief. Furthermore, christianity and islam don't
accept belief in other gods, so if you believe in Jesus and Vishnu
you will still go to hell, according to christianity.
So, there is no way to get out of it,
there are no valid arguments for the existence of any god. Usually,
people try to squeeze their gods in the gaps of our knowledge, like
the beginning of the Universe, the laws of nature and any other place
where we are still ignorant. This is why I call it “the god of
ignorance”, whatever we can't explain, we attribute to him.