Philosophy - the standard arguments
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."
Quick summary
- God is an unnecessary and redundant postulate - it explains nothing that could not be explained without its invention.
- Those who propose a god must prove it. We do not have to disprove it - just as we do not have to disprove Santa Claus or fairies at the bottom of the garden.
- Creation is a myth. Nothing is ever created or destroyed - it simply changes form. When you bake a cake you convert ingredients and energy from one form into another. When you have a bonfire you convert matter from one form into another - energy, ash and other products of combustion.
All human experience ("common sense") shows that something is never created out of nothing - it simply changes form. So, the Universe, in one form or another, has always existed - there is no need to propose that it was created out of nothing and therefore no need to propose a creator. Even "The Big Bang" is simply a change of form.
- The argument of design is a fraud. Put a cylinder of blotting paper into a jam jar, Put a bean seed between the blotting paper and the glass, add water and keep the blotting paper damp. In a very sort time the seed will germinate, you will see the roots form and the bean plant will start to grow. Did you design it? No - it just grew that way because it is a bean.
All human experience ("common sense") shows that most things are not "designed" by anyone or anything - they just are what they are. Like everything else in the Universe, they may change form over time - they evolve. Click here to see how some things evolve very quickly indeed.
If you are still keen on "design" ask yourself why your benevolent god "designed" a small worm that burrows through the skin of children, crawls its way up through their bodies until it gets to their heads and then eats their eyes out from the inside leaving them permanently blind. How many excuses does religion have to invent for this sort of thing before you recognise that this is not "design" - this is just what the worm needs to do to survive? Instead of pondering the "design" of the worm, why not help those who are finding ways to combat it and free children from blindness? Prayer won't solve the problem - science may.
- Ask yourself: if there is a god why did she show herself in so many forms (there are over 800 gods in the world today) and why does she have so many religions (there are over 100 religions and sects in the world today.)
- "Truth!" Don't get me started on "truth!" People should be arrested for word-abuse on this one! The truth is that "truth" is subjective - one man's truth is another woman's down-right silliness. "It must be true because it says so in my holy book." Duhh! Even Homer does not fall for that one! When you hear the word 'truth' it's time to reach for the handcuffs or the straitjacket!
- Those who interpret their holy books in one way must tell us why they are "right" and why those who interpret them in other ways are "wrong." "Liberals" and "moderates" are forced to turn to a morality outside their religion when making such a judgement - a humanist morality. (This makes a mockery of their argument that "religion is necessary for morality.")
Why do some people "need" a god?
Ah, now this is a much more interesting question than "does god exist?" Freud described religion as "an infantile disorder" where some people never grow out of their imaginary childhood friend - they need someone to talk to and someone to turn to in times of stress.
Some people are happy with the unknown, with not having all the answers and with the continuing quest to find out more, to answer more questions, to raise more questions and to repeat the cycle ad infinitum. They see this as one of the joys of life: questioning, theorising, experimenting, testing - the whole joy of learning something new every day. Such people are the atheists, the agnostics and those who "don't really care about the god stuff."
Other people like black and white answers, they are unsure or even afraid of the unknown, they need the comfort of a certainty, a creator, something to help them through life and something which can overcome death by offering an afterlife. Proof is not a requirement for such people - it is the comfort they need, something to sustain them through their lives. Such people are the religious.
Please click here for more on the psychology of religion.
Warning about sterile religious debates
Arguing with adult religious people about religion, or writing articles to score points off them, is a waste of time for two reasons:
- as atheists, we see no necessity to postulate the existence of a god - the onus is on those who do to prove it. We have nothing to prove or disprove;
- in most cases, faith is blind and the profoundly religious are not open to argument - particularly the more extremist, fundamentalist, born-again, ever-smiling, Road-to-Damascus types.
Even more frustrating are the "doubters" - they make up a large section of the liberal wing of the C of E. "I envy you your certainty, I have always doubted, especially as I get older" - often heard from those with dog collars - the ones who have studied theology and are all too aware of the weaknesses of their arguments.
We should never argue about the existence of god - we are arguing for the removal of god and religion from all aspects of public life.
Discussion with young people is a different matter. They are more open-minded and they tend to question everything - before the rot sets in.
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This is the reason why the religious will fight tooth and nail to retain their right to indoctrinate pupils via compulsory RE. They may hid it behind the gloss of a supposedly "liberal curriculum" but their intention is glaringly obvious - "if you get to the child, you keep the adult." Please click here for more details.
Arguing
Some people don't like the word "argument" (too aggressive), they prefer "discussion" or "debate". This is a silly euphemism since an argument involves a proposition and counter-proposition - and that is what we are about. Debates are for sixth-formers to show how "clever" they are. We don't need to be "clever" - we know better.
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Avoid quotations from holy books and never play the "I know the Bible/Qu'ran/Torah better than you do" game. This is silly and you will end up boring everyone as both sides toss Exodus this and Ephesians that at one another. You can use Luke 19,27 with Christians - it is quite good when talking about Jesus as "a good guy."
Argue from first principles - never quote Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, Neom Chomsky, Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Miller, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins or any other secularist - you will gain no Brownie points - stick to the fundamental issue - "god is an unnecessary postulate."
The moment you rely on a quotation you provide an opening for a knowledgeable opponent to start the tiresome counter quotation game: "Yes, but Chomsky in the his 1992 lecture at MIT said ......" This is just silly.
Of course you should read widely (see our Resources page) but you need to read critically and you need to adopt the ideas you agree with as your own so you can argue with them without recourse to quotation. Besides, remembering who said what in which book can be a pain - especially as you get older!
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The arguments
"If god wanted people to believe in him, why did he invent logic?"
"The best defence against logic is ignorance."
Finally, we cover the one thing that makes them squirm: the problem of bad things, of evil.
The ontological argument
"Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God. This saves a lot of wear and tear on the brain tissues."
The very fact that we can even think of a perfect entity is sufficient to prove that it must exist.
This is, of course, transparently ludicrous.
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This states that god is a logical necessity.
I can think of fairies at the bottom of the garden or dancing Pink Hippos but that does not make them exist.
"We who are atheists are also a-fairyists and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so."
Pooh
Mr Pooh, does, of course, really exist. He is a real bear-person and is omnipotent, omniscient, omni-present and omnivorous.
You may not be able to see him but that is only because you lack faith, you have failed to open your heart to him or you have not had a Road-to-Damascus experience.
He:
- is with you;
- walks alongside you through life;
- helps to keep your head held high;
- puts a permanent smile on your face;
- protects you and your loved ones from harm;
- provides jam and honey for tea.
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The cosmological argument part 1: causality
This argues that something, god, must have created the universe because "everything has a cause - something must have created everything".
The obvious next question is: "what caused/created god?" Could it be that man created god as a figment of his imagination to meet his need to understand those things which he could not, as yet, explain rationally? After all, something had to explain why the sun rose in the morning and why it sometimes rained and sometimes didn't.
The primary objection to this argument is simple. Can you think of anything that has been "created?"
Think of anything, a table, a computer, a tree, a rock, a human. Was it "created" or does it simply represent atoms arranged in a different way over time?
Everything changes form over time - even the rock is a result of erosion over time and the mountains that the rock came from were the result of tectonic, volcanic or sedimentary activity.
It goes against all human experience to think that anything was ever created out of nothing - everything changes form over time.
What about the Universe itself - how was that "created"?
Well, who is to say that it was every "created" in the first place? Could it not be that the Universe itself is merely the result of change over time? Could it be that the Universe never had a beginning and will never have an end? Could it be that this obsession with "beginning", "end" and "creation" is a human construct imposed on an everlasting Universe by our simple human minds?
Even the "Big Bang" Astronomers and Cosmologists have problems with this until they final disappear up their own Quarks, Bosons, singularities and parallel Universes! There is no doubt (Doppler shift etc.) that the Universe as we see it is expanding. Working backwards, Cosmologists argue that everything we can see will have come from one highly dense "singularity" which contained all the matter in the Universe prior to the Big Bang.
Such arguments do not take us back to a "beginning" - they take us back to a reordering of the matter in the Universe which may, or may not, have taken place in a Big Bang.
Why do some people feel the need to postulate a "creation" when the concept of creation is outside all our human experience and when the argument for an everlasting Universe is equally valid?
The cosmological argument part 2: contingency
This states that everything in the universe is dependent on (contingent on) something outside itself. Since every contingent existence requires an explanation outside itself there must be something that is not contingent but is a reason for its own existence, and that something is god.
This is similar to causality but much more convoluted.
It is obvious that this argument rapidly disappears up its own profundity
Who says that everything is contingent? Why must there be something which is not contingent? This argument begs more questions than it answers.
"If 50,000,000 people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
The teleological argument
"No one has the right to destroy another person's beliefs by demanding empirical evidence."
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This states that the universe is such a wonderful thing that it must have a designer.
"Look at the wonders of nature, look at a bee's wing, it is obvious that this complex and perfect universe was created by some great designer - god."
This is the flavour-of-the-month argument with the neo-con creationists who have relabelled it "intelligent design" for popular consumption.
All human beings look for explanations for everything - that's what science is all about.
However, we don't have answers for everything - life would be boring if we did!
We have an excellent and well tested theory in evolution that enables us to work back through the life of the earth to see how things have evolved over enormous periods of geological time.
As is normal with science, the more we understand, the more new questions we raise. This is the excitement of open-minded scientific research - there will never be an end to enquiry.
Simply because there are things which we cannot yet explain, does not mean that we need to invent a supernatural entity to explain them.
As atheists we accept the natural world around us, we are frequently amazed and awed by it, and we study it. However, we see no need to seek a supernatural cause for it.
The closed-minded bigots of ignorant fundamentalist creationism cannot stand the thought of unanswered questions. They want everything nice and simple in black and white: "god created the earth at 7:15pm on 22 October, 4004 BC." This, to their sad, impoverished little minds, is all that needs to be known.
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The utility argument
This argues that human beings would not lead useful and moral lives without an external supernatural entity to lay down and enforce those laws.
This is ludicrous - and profoundly insulting to non-believers.. Millions of people lead useful and moral lives without believing in a god.
"Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill thousands and you are a conqueror. Kill millions and you are God."
The religious experience argument
This is the road to Damascus argument: "I have seen god!".
It is often extended to the fact that since someone else claims to have seen god then god must indeed exist.
Someone claiming "I have seen fairies at the bottom of the garden" would not lead us all to believe in them! If they persisted in the argument it is more than likely that they would require psychiatric help.
George Bush now claims that god spoke to him and told him to wage war against religious terrorism in Afghanistan, to invade Iraq and to find a homeland for the Palestinians.
George Bush should be treated for his fantasies, or locked away for a very long time for the safety of us all.
He is fortunate to live in the 21st century because, like Joan of Arc, a few hundred years ago he would have been burnt at the stake (by the religious of course.)
There is nothing to be gained by arguing with those who claim direct contact with god.
For their own psychological reasons, their inner-self has created a god for them and they find it helps them get through life with a permanent smile on their faces.
They become dangerous when they use their inner voices to oppress or murder millions of people.
"He's your god. They're your rules. You go to hell."
The miracles argument
This states baldy that "miracles occur therefore there must be a god."
A "miracle" must be an event for which there is no explanation other than the existence of a supernatural entity.
Most so-called miracles lend themselves to simple explanation, to mass-hallucination, or, in the case of tears or blood flowing from marble statues, to downright fraud!
Many miracles rely on word of mouth: "I saw ....". They cannot be tested since they occurred in the past. They rely on the gullible willingness of the audience to accept the word of someone else that something miraculous occurred.
The religious want unexplainable miracles to happen to justify their own beliefs - therefore they grab at anything which, for a short period of time, has no obvious explanation.
An image of the face of Jesus in a baked potato becomes a miracle to bolster their confidence!
All miracles fade away under close scientific scrutiny.
The problem of bad things, of evil
The religious maintain that:
- god is good;
- god is great;.
- god is all-seeing and all-powerful.
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We judge by what is done, not what is said, so how come this god allows:
- thousands to be killed by floods and land-slides in Central America;
- thousands to be killed in an earthquake in Pakistan;
- New Orleans to be destroyed by flood;
- great wars to kill millions of people;
- natural disasters to kill millions of people;
- dictators to oppress their people;
- murderers to murder and rapists to rape;
- one group to oppress another;
- homosexuals to be hung in the streets of Iran;
- women to be stoned to death in Nigeria;
- George Bush to become president of the USA?
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Free will
The religious invented the concept of "free will" to partially overcome the problem of bad things happening.
Their god gives them the option of choosing between the right way and the wrong way, the good and the bad.
This becomes a charter for the dictator/murderer/criminal rather than for the victim.
The bad guy dictator exercises free will and chooses to slaughter thousands and to steal the wealth of nations. No doubt he will "burn in hell" but he will live it up on earth.
What about the victims of this free will? Whether faced with natural or man made disasters, what choices do they have?
- Those facing the tsunami in South Asia did not have a choice.
- Those entering the gas chambers did not have a choice.
- Those attending a wedding party and then being bombed from 35,000 feet by B52 bombers did not have a choice.
- The young girl in Vietnam running with her skin burning because of napalm did not have a choice.
- Your mother, father, brother, sister, friend, colleague dying an early or painful death did not have a choice.
Our only conclusion can be that if there is a god it is an evil and malevolent one who is happy to sacrifice the lives of millions of people on whim - and we want nothing to do with it.
The obscenity of the religious in relation to "free will"
The right-wing, born-again, Christians in the USA now claim that:
"New Orleans was punished by God for its sins. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, New Orleans was a den of iniquity and vice and has been struck down by the Lord."
Great guy this "Lord". What a noble and just person he must be to destroy a city, to kill the innocent along with the "guilty". Just the sort of chap we want in control of the world today.
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