People responding to this thread are floundering. Philosophy gets maligned as a useless subject -- but, the level of discourse indicates that sound argument, knowledge of major philosophical theories and ways of life would help a great deal. Absent a decent understanding of philosophy, the fundies with their crude arguments and moral absolutism will continue to dictate the terms of confrontation with non-theists.

The so-called problem of evil sticks in the throat of xianity (judaism and islam) like a fish bone. Religions which claim that there is only one god -- one all powerful, all knowing, and wholly good -- choke on Epicurus’ argument:

Is god willing to help but unable? Then he is not all powerful.
Is he able to help but unwilling? Then he is not good.
Is he able and willing? Then why is there evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him ‘god’?

Note that Epicurus (341-270 BCE) devised his argument 300 years before xian myth even exists.

Xians have spent 2,000 years trying to find a workaround — they’ve failed. Ditto for Judaism and Islam. Supreme power and supreme goodness, nonsensical in themselves, taken together establish that the so-called one ‘god’ of the big-3 near eastern monotheisms cannot logically exist. (Which shows that you can indeed prove that “God” does not exist — as long as your theist wants “him” omni-sized.)

Once this gas bag God collapses into a heap of shiny mylar -- the moral law giver has also disappeared with a hiss. Ditto metaphysical Good and Evil (capital E,G). But, of course, there is still evil (lower case e), shrunk to human-all-too-human dimensions.

Nietzsche devoted an entire book to understanding what happens when a worldview (xianity ) ceases, but almost no one notices. That volume is Beyond Good and Evil. It explicates what “God is dead” means.

N went on to amplify and sharpen his insights in The Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist.

bipolar2
© 2008

Dealing with those mystically inclined, the *I-feel-god-in-my-heart* crowd, and in general all irrationalist believers requires a different approach from dealing with rationalists.

Their usual spiel: I know that my god exists -- but he/she/it cannot be described, or is beyond human understanding.

The philosopher Wittgenstein, in one seemingly cryptic utterance announced, "A nothing would be as good as a something about which nothing could be said."

Spelled out: you claim that something exists, but no property (like, being blue) could ever be ascribed to it. This is the famous Western "via negativa" - negative path to god - also the "neti, neti" not-this, not-this of Hindu mystics. God is not blue, is not evil, is not good . . . .

Logically, however, a claim that something exists does not ascribe a property to it -- or, as you ought to have learned in logic class -- existence is not a predicate. (Non-existence is not a predicate either.) Nobody can talk about Nothing. True.

Nobody can talk about Nothing? Who's doing the talking here? (Nobody?) And what's being talked about? (Nothing?) And what did Nobody say about Nothing? Zen Buddhism figured all this out long ago -- hence, koans if you're lucky or a hard slap in the face when you're persistently obtuse.

‘A god exists’ seems to be saying something, but the sentence is meaningless. You might as well be saying bar-bar or saying nothing at all. The Viennese novelist, Robert Musil wrote "The Man without Qualities." The man who can't be there. A nobody. Nothing.

If a god "is a something about which nothing can be said," then this putative something is equivalent to "a nothing."

So-called mystics in India, China, Japan, and even Europe apprehended that any *god* without qualities was nothing.

And, they said so. And, they were right.

bipolar2
© 2008

Theists have very little evidence. You will have to search hard for atheists who say that the reason god can't exist is because they just "feel it to be so."

Brian,

I encounter what I call "when you're dead, you're dead" atheists regularly. They're a very different sort from the typical atheist that frequents this site.

The only one who can really embrace atheism is you, and that's the beauty of it! Atheists don't have a god with vague definitions and requests—we have evidence, reason and logic. By forcing our way of thinking on someone we are being just as bad as the theists; thus, it's mindless to convince you to do anything but look at the holes and gaps in your thinking and point to the evidence.

Theists have very little evidence. You will have to search hard for atheists who say that the reason god can't exist is because they just "feel it to be so."

He's saying that for the rest of us we're going to have to look closer and have faith in those things that are not so simply seen or explained.

How is this different from "I feel it in my heart?" Isn't "having faith" the same thing?

Same as when a five year old asks you why the sky is blue you say "It just is." Rather than going into the way particles reflect light.

What a shame. You should tell the child why the sky is blue (scattering, not reflection BTW) instead of just saying "It just is." It's a chance to educate the child instead of indoctrinating her into the idea of simply accepting authority, (i.e. the "It just is" of religious thinking).

The interpretations of what is "truth" by officials of the Catholic Church has not been consistent through the ages, is not consistent now and is unlikely to be consistent in the future. If you add in the huge variety of contradictory "truths" perceived by the laity then your arguments are revealed for what they are: specious nonsense.

Actions should speak louder than words. Consider the "truth" that Catholic clergy have been involved in raping children or covering it up for a long time. How does that square with the words of St. Thomas Aquinos? In fact, how does the reported behaviour of St. Thomas Aquinos square with his words? He was not a nice person, by today's civilized standards.

"Based on your points, I question what you consider to be objectively verifiable. Your argument still sounds like an attempt to justify relativism again."

First off, I'm a Nihilist - not a relativist (at least not as traditionally defined).

Secondly, to be objectively varifiable is merely the condition under which something can be found valid by outside parties and/or repeatedly tested for results. For example, I can place an exposed eletrified wired in direct contact with a metal surface to cause that surface to become electrified as well - if I touch the surface without protection I become electricuted, as would anyone else who touches the metal surface without protection. This is repeatable by anyone, anywhere and will yield these results evey time it is attempted - thus it is fact.

This observation is a verified fact, but what is the "truth?" For all I know, the eletrified wire - as well as the metal surface - may be just illusions conjured by my mind: essentially, only the concepts of the wire and the surface may exist but I percieve them as real. And my sensation of electricution - and the sight of others being electricuted - may also be mere concepts as well.

However, the difference between illusion and reality is moot to the one who experiences them: so I operate under the assumption that what I perceive to be reality - I'm not 100% certain that this reality is indeed THE reality, but I have no reason to believe that it's not and thus accept that it is indeed reality.

Based on your points, I question what you consider to be objectively verifiable. Your argument still sounds like an attempt to justify relativism again.

"When I am speaking about statements of objective truth, I am speaking about something different. People do have differences in perception (like your example of taste... or what size city someone considers to be a large city... or what degree of weather someone considers to be warm) But statements of objective truth are not statements about a preference or a consideration. They are statements like "Sam is in this room." "Aristotle lived." "2+2=4" "Stars are light-years away". No matter what one believes or perceives about these statements, there is an objective truth about them that we cannot personally create."

One again, you confuse fact with "truth" - a fact can be objectively varified (Aristotle existed, stars are many light years away, etc...), but can it be said that these things are true?

Are you familiar with the works of Descartes (himself a Catholic - like you)? He proposed the possibility that all that we think of as being fact may be simply an illusion - that those things which can be objectively varified are only such because the illusion leads one to believe that what he sees is indeed reality. The most frightening part of this is that there's no way to know for sure if the illusion he speaks of is real or just an idea.

Of course, for the sake of functioning in our known reality, we assume that which is objectively varifiable is indeed real - but Truth(TM) continues to elude us as we can never be 100% certain that fact=Truth(TM). Thus we must settle for "truth" - our own intepretations of fact in our known reality.