Disproving God

[Wertbag]

I disagree with the statement often heard “you can’t disprove god” or “you can’t prove a negative” or even “the burden of proof is on the religious”.  I’m of the opinion that we have already disproved religion (I’m thinking specifically of Christianity but the ideas apply to most religions).  I’ve often heard in debates atheists who set themselves what seems a weak base to start with.  Using terms like “you can never be completely sure”, “I’m 99.9% sure” or “it is always possible”, when the religious use much more definite terms like “I’m absolutely sure” or “there is no doubt in my mind”.  By using such strong positional terms, to the layperson, they appear much more convinced and sure of themselves.  I understand the scientific position that nothing can ever be truly known, but the same terms used by the religious do fit either side.  If you are 99.999 (reoccurring) percent sure, then I see no problem with rounding up.  Being absolutely convinced doesn’t mean you aren’t wrong or that you can’t change your mind.

 

So how do you disprove God?  If the god was a non-intervening god then you couldn’t disprove Him, but if He is not taking an active part in the world and shows no care, then He is irrelevant and not worth our consideration.  The Christian God is a being for which many interactions and many characteristics are claimed.  What we can test is those claimed interactions and characteristics.  The Bible is claimed to be the word of god, can we prove it is not?  It is claimed He wants to have a relationship with us, can we see evidence of this happening?  Can we test the claimed miracles?  Can we show any benefits to the religious vs those who aren’t?

 

So we look at the facts and what do we find?  Christians suffer as much illness, as many accidents, have the same life expectancy, suffer the same amount of crime, suffer from natural disasters the same and generally are as likely to have the good and bad events in their life as any other human.  We look at the Bible (one of the 150 different versions) and find a strangely split book.  An old testament describing an angry, vengeful, murderous god, then a new testament that spouts peace, love, turn the other cheek, do unto others, he without sin cast the first stone etc.  We find claims about the world that just don’t fit such as a global flood, 6 day creation or, as some believe, a young earth, all of which we can clearly show as ridiculous.

 

We look at the characteristics applied to god.  All powerful, all knowing, all loving etc.  The famous argument that if god is both all loving and all powerful then suffering and evil should not exist.  He either allows it, in which case he is not all loving, or He is unable to stop it in which case He is not all powerful.  Or the claim that He wants us to know Him and have a personal relationship with Him, and yet will not appear, will not talk and makes no effort to communicate with us.  If He were there then there would be no atheists as we would all know Him if He wished.  He either can’t or won’t, either way contradicts the claims made about Him.

 

We can look at the terrible teachings of the bible supporting slavery, crushing women’s rights and glorifying murdering people of other religions.  We look at the failure of prayer to affect the world.  We look at the lack of unity within Christianity, the failure to agree on almost any issue (gay rights, woman’s rights, what to wear, what to eat, age of earth, evolution vs creation, talking in tongues, tithing, etc).  We look at the inability for Christians to perform miracles as the bible said people did in the past (such as Elijah calling fire from the sky for the purpose of proving god).

 

I used to debate Christians on websites, less frequently in person, but the one thing that made me stop was the lack of change to the arguments.  You would have a new person spouting the same mis-conceptions of evolution (“if we descended from monkeys why are there still monkeys?”), the same poorly thought through statements (“if there is no god why not kill yourself?”) and the same wall of ignorance that the facts would fail to penetrate (“The fossil record proves evolution”, “No, it was just made that way by the devil!”).  I didn’t enjoy copy ‘n paste answers.  Science keeps moving forward, finding new facts and adding to our understanding.  Religion has had no new arguments for decades and the majority that you see have been so often torn to shreds as to be hardly worth your time to debate yet again.  I enjoyed the debates when I hadn’t heard the arguments, so each new statement gave me something to research.  Now it just feels like the information is available for the religious to answer these questions.  If they genuinely want to know the atheist viewpoint it is widely available in many forms.  If they don’t want to research then they are choosing ignorance and it is unlikely anything said to them will ever make a difference.

[florduh]

I agree. A God with specific claims like the Christian God is easily proven false. Could there be some other God out there who has no claims or records to dispute? Well, I can't prove that assertion false any more than I can prove there are no invisible fairies frolicking in the glen. Anything is technically possible, I suppose, but not everything is probable.

 

But that's where they get you. If you leave the door open a crack and entertain even a slight possibility of some sort of Deist god, then it's only a small step for them to claim that god is actually their God as revealed in Scripture. I mean, you agreed that there might be a god, why not theirs? Again, chess with pigeons.

[L.B.]

The funny/scary thing, though, is that all that loosey-goosey logic-light stuff is what opens the door for weirdos to "prove" that their god wants the Grand Exalted Leader to fuck everyone's wives and daughters in some "spiritual" way.

 

See, if the argument goes:

 

If:

A) I accept the possibility of the existence of ANY god

then

B) I must accept the possibility that said god COULD BE the Christian god

and then

C) I must therefore concede that the Christian god is the "true god", apart from conclusive evidence to the contrary.

 

Then the argument could also go on to posit that

 

D) The Christian god has enlightened Grand Exalted Leader XYZ, and led him to institute a program of spiritual fucking.

 

There, as they say, is the "rub" (no pun intended). If accepting the possibility of a god's existence means I cannot necessarily discount the idea that this god's modus operandi is Christianity, well, then - I also cannot discount the teachings of ANYONE who says they represent the "god of the Bible", because we're accepting this god in reverse, so to speak. We're not accepting him on the basis of individuated, specific claims about him that have been totally verified; we're accepting him based on the idea that A god could be THAT god.

 

As such, THAT god could have inspired ANY, ALL or NONE of the goons out there who say they are doing his divine will.

 

Christians are stuck, basically. They can't argue past the most general of possibilities regarding the existence of their god, because there's no way to definitely show that their god is any more than a possibility, if that.

 

I hope I'm making sense... I'm fighting a head-cold and have a nasty headache that's keeping me up later than I should be. I need rest but can't sleep in this condition, so I'm probably sounding loopy right now.

 

No more, though, than the primitives who invented/borrowed stories about talking snakes and magic boats and giants.