Today I don’t want to bore you with stories about running. I know some of you, I will not mention names, get tired from just reading about running 1mile. SO telling them about running 10 miles would make them ten times tired which reminds me of one of Mark Twain’s tales. I think in the story he goes to the Alps to hike. He has a binoculars and a guide. So he sits at the base camp and tells the guide to go hike while he follows him with the binoculars and gets tired in the process. Maybe that’s how I should do my next hike or run. But enough of that.
You could be a theist, deist, atheist or anything in between or Nan or Barry. I hope that leaves no one out. I am interested in hearing from all of you what, if you have considered them, is the most fatal argument against the existence of god(s). And if you are a theist, what you consider as the most persuasive argument for the existence of god(s) and why?
I hope this should be fun. Give it a go. Surprise me. But you can talk about running if you wish to 🙂
Random thoughts 
(I’ve probably mentioned this before, but you asked.)
It’s the colossal mess that is state of human religion. Thousands of opinions, thousands of sects, all contradicting each other and killing each other. We have no reliable method for sorting out this awful mess; we apparently don’t have the brainpower to work out this problem; and most of us aren’t even aware that human brains aren’t up to the task.
Any “god” worthy of the name would know about this mess, and have the ability to set us straight if it wanted to. Either give us better brains, or give us a method for figuring out the right answer that we are capable of using. If a god won’t even do that much, it’s either evil, incompetent, or non-existent. I think non-existent is the most probable answer.
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Do you think the argument that is sort of a place to prepare men and women for heaven holds? A training ground of sorts?
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Imagine a new enlistee soldier at basic training. But instead of one drill sergeant barking a single set of orders, he has a hundred of them, each claiming to be the one and only real instructor, all screaming contradictory sets of instructions in his face, and threatening him with various punishments if he doesn’t comply. The soldier has no way to determine which of these people is actually the real drill sergeant and which are the impostors. And he can’t obey all the orders he is given, so he has to guess which is the right instructor.
In such a situation, could we fairly judge the enlistee on his performance in obeying the instructions of the real drill sergeant?
That’s the mess we find ourselves in regarding religion. And how could a “training ground” like this be a fair test, or worthy of a god that was worth worshiping? One that sets us up to fail unless we happen to guess right?
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Great example!
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I think another analogy might be a COMPANY of soldiers, each raised by demanding parents insistent that their cultural beliefs and religions are the correct ones, the only ones. Some, of course, have better guns (or better immunity to certain nasty viruses and bacteria). But they are all thrown into one platoon and have to share everything.
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For me, there isn’t any fatal argument against deities.
And before any atheist gets their knickers in a twist, it’s simply because whatever properties, be they flaws or strengths, we might assign to them/him/her/it, they all come from the same source – the creativeness of the human mind. Those properties can be changed at any time, and they frequently are. My answer to anyone who finds a flaw is what’s stopping you from changing it? It’s been going on for millenia, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse. The outcome is up to you.
Reading some of the comments above I find it distressing that so many think that somehow religion should be any different from other aspects of being human. It’s not. It can’t be. It’s evolved along with our evolution as social animals. It can display the best and the worst of what it is to be human.
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I don’t think Anslem will agree with you after making his ontological argument for god or Ken Ham that Genesis is factual and all of us are wrong.
I, on the other hand, find this position you hold agreeable and economical.
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I like this, Barry. Kudos. MY rather harsh comment takes the religiots at their word, that their understanding of the nature of “god” is correct and that such an entity exists. and this deity is by definition evil to my flawed, contingent human morality.
I, of course, do not really believe this. And my “fundamentalist” take is certainly not universal (although it is dominant in some places, like these Benighted States and, increasingly, Africa and South America)
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Most of the missionaries to Africa and South America were American evangelists so it’s not surprising that the zeal and bigotry associated with them came along for the ride.
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Plus, there is a strong element of “prosperity gospel” in many of these churches, which I imagine appeals to the striving working class and lower middle class in places like Recife, Brazil or Lagos, Nigeria.
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Peraps slightly more recent, but I keep forgetting how much the prosperity gospel has influenced the “Christian Right” and how attractive that might appear to the disadvantaged. What they don’t seem to realise is that it’s valid only for those who are already privileged such as the Former Guy.
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Prosperity gospel is alive and thriving industry in Kenya
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I think the problem is the recent influx of missionaries from America.
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There indeed are religionists who believe their god exists in time and space or is it in timeless and spaceless existence.
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https://jiggerj.com/2021/02/23/gods-thinking-it-through/
Even if gods were real we still have no logical idea of how they exist and in what form.
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And what they are or even what they do.
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My journey with faith is pretty much like running: on some days it’s exhilarating, on others, I wonder why I do it at all. But at the start of each day, all this is forgotten and I hit the pavement anyway.
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This is some way to put it.
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Thank you for allowing us all to express our opinions & feelings.
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