Perhaps an arbitrary point, but what if one rightly chooses to remain undecided? That being in the sense that one sees any and all religion equally good and bad for their qualities, moral slights, and philosophies? I wouldn't say I'm of any one of the religions, but neither am I atheist, or agnostic. It's... A bit difficult to accurately define exactly my view on it other than a baseless zen-like observation of the different strains of faith and philosophy.

undecided>decided

atheist>Christian: As an ex atheist I have found God on the deep end of the pool where my legs cant touch the bottom. Just as I thought I could have ruled the world with my mind, cracks appeared in the shell of ideas I've once been so relieved to hear.. Relieved to hear that there is no God? I was relieved once but now i see that without what is "God" man is nothing and my struggle has reversed.

Agnostic>Athiest

I think that it would be impossible to understand a God if there was one, and that its useless to try. Read up and study as many religions, faiths and beleifs as you can find, is what I think. Most of the religious books are the same (You should really read Worlds in Collission, by Immanuel Velikovsky) in most respects, no matter where they came from; The native Americans, Aztecs, Nordics, hundreds of African tribes and European groups all actually tend to agree in mythology, with the raining of "mana" or "prana", with the flood, with basic rules (not killing, etc.), the Epic of Gilgamesh is just another example of the earliest culture agreeing with almost all classic held ideas and religions today.
Personally, I dont believe the Bible, or any other religious texts, should be taken 100% seriously. But what happens when you have a totally athiest society? There will always be religion, and insisting that a world without it would be peaceful is a lie: A world with no religion would need something to fill the voids left by tearing down the beleifs. Especially in communist countries, they replaced their "god" with an all-powerful leader who seems almost superhuman.
What will replace religion with once its destroyed?

Christian>atheist: The fact remains that there is no verifiable physical evidence of God's existence, beyond the testimony of highly suspect religious works and unverified claims by people who claim to have witnessed miracles. Often theists must fall back on the old "But there is something rather than nothing!" argument that falls flat for exactly this reason:

The problem ultimately lies in the fact that theists seem to assume that the Universe must have a beginning and, likewise, that the laws that govern the universe must also have a beginning and someone to write them. This forms a double-standard: how can we say that God does not require a beginning and a creator Himself, yet the Laws of Physics and Mathematics must? Why can't the universe, or at least the systems that govern it, have existed indefinitely? Sure, it's hard for us to imagine, but at the same time the universe defies all human understanding fairly frequently in other ways. We cannot comprehend just how large the universe is, for example, nor can we imagine just what it is the universe is filling.

Does that mean those things are not real? No. It just shows that there is a limit to our understanding. A limit we shouldn't use as an excuse to fall back onto a being that raises more questions regarding its existence than it settles.

I'd prefer not to resort to the multiverse theory myself, simply because it strikes me as cosmological laziness and, like God, is also unfalsifiable and therefore unsuited to scientific debate. Rather, I would argue that the universe has been proven time and time again to not need supervision in its running; everything God was supposed to have done regarding Earth and its biosystem can be arrtributed to observable, perfectly natural laws. Why can't the universe's creation, likewise, be attributed to some cosmological constant? This isn't a lottery; it simply works because nothing else would.

I think that this is a rather futile exercise and I'm not sure what the intended goal is here. As a Christian, I have no problem thinking of arguments atheists use against the existence of God or religion in general. But there is not one of them that I find convincing, otherwise I would probably not be a Christian.

Moreover, in the case of defending atheism, one is defending a negative position and you can't prove a negative. Atheism mostly survives by attempting to tear down arguments for theism.

The two best chances an atheist has against the existence of God is either demonstrating that the concept of God is inherently contradictory or illogical, like the idea of a round square, OR that the world we live in could not exist if God existed. The problem of evil is the most common argument dealing with the latter route. Demonstrating either of these with the absolute certainty of logic is extremely difficult and no atheist that I know of has been successful in doing so.

With all due respect, atheism is not proving a negative. Atheism is the response to the claims made by theists. It's not that we think no gods exist at all, we think theists haven't met their burden of proof in demonstrating that their god(s) exist and did the things they claim their god(s) to have done.

We have been demonstrating that your god is contradictory and illogical for years, you guys either haven't been listening and understanding our arguments, or you have been deliberately ignoring us so you can hold on to your views.

Here are some of the premises/descriptions of your god that have cropped up over the years.

"God is, by definition, beyond logic." - What's beyond logic? The illogical.
"God is omnipotent, and immune to logic." - Nothing that exists in this universe is immune to logic. If it was, it would be illogical, and therefore impossible to exist. Also, omnipotence is not a logically coherent concept (particularly if it contains those things which are illogical).
"God is outside of reality, and so logic does not apply to him" - If there is a thing/concept that is outside reality, then it isn't real.
"God created logic, and is not subject to his creation." - Logic is method of determining what is true from what is false. It wasn't 'invented' or 'created' by anyone, because it's existence was possible before human beings came to be. And since god is an idea/concept/'being,' he is still subject to logic.
"Logic is a human invention, it doesn't apply to God." - Again, logic is a method discovered by humans, just like mathematics, (one plus one was still two in concept before we had words for those concepts) and it only applies to things that are logical (real things). If it doesn't apply to a god, then that god is illogical and therefore not real in the first place.

And even if you were to come up with a definition of God that wasn't illogical, you still have all your work ahead of you to find empirical evidence that he/she/it exists in the real world. Because if a god were to exist in our universe, they would have to leave behind some form of evidence of their existence whenever they intervened on our behalf. And coming up with a logical definition of a god only shows a sound concept of one; you still needs observable, testable, repeatable evidence to demonstrate that such a concept actually exists.

And before you say (assuming you would have) that everything in existence is evidence of a god because it was all created and designed by him, can you give me an example of something that was not designed? Because all definitions of the word design depend on an intelligence with a clear goal. The reason most of us are able to recognize something has been designed is because we know said thing could not have come to be by nature without human hands. It's like saying, 'Humans designed a nail, but god designed the metal in the nail.' That makes absolutely no sense, just like saying 'The star this iron came out of designed that iron.' No, this is demonstrably false. The iron in all of us came to be by the star's natural processes, just like everything else that came from it.

As for the argument that the world we live in could not exist if God did: If we were to go strictly by the Bible and follow all its rules, commandments, and passages, we can see that this world would not exist as we know it today. God would do a lot more smiting on people like myself, so I would not be here. There wouldn't be any other religions in the world, because your God is jealous god and really doesn't like it when people worship someone/something other than him. There wouldn't be any technology as we know it because the Lord calls upon you to trust in him and not your own intelligence. And there would be a lot more births and deaths in the world because your god tells you to procreate and increase our number, but since we wouldn't have any technology, we wouldn't have any medicine either so the death rate would be much, much higher than it is right now. Women would have no rights at all, and neither would blacks, orientals, and homosexuals.

With all due respect, atheism is not proving a negative. Atheism is the response to the claims made by theists.

Apparently you did not read my statement where I said that atheism survives by tearing down arguments in favor of theism. That is another way of saying that the main approach of atheism is to attack claims made by theists. However, I believe that you are wrong in that atheism isn't about proving a negative. Atheism is the affirmative claim that god does not exist. Therefore, the person who claims that there is no God, has some degree of the burden of proof. If you want to make the claim that there is not sufficient evidence to believe in God, then you would be an agnostic and should hold the more conservative position that you don't believe in God but are not confident enough to say that God doesn't exist. Atheism is the assertion that God doesn't exist which is a truth claim that warrants an explanation and defense.


We have been demonstrating that your god is contradictory and illogical for years, you guys either haven't been listening and understanding our arguments, or you have been deliberately ignoring us so you can hold on to your views.

Here are some of the premises/descriptions of your god that have cropped up over the years.

Interesting. I am not familiar with most of those descriptions. No intelligent Christian has ever used such descriptions of God and certainly no Christian philosophers or theologians that have had the most influence in Christian philosophy have ever used such descriptions. All the examples you gave sound like the responses of ordinary lay Christians, not sophisticated Christian thinkers over the ages. No current Christian philosopher such as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swindburne, or William Lane Craig would use such descriptors of God. Your examples amount to either a straw man argument or an ignorance of Christian philosophy. The only exception would be the idea that God is omnipotent, which is a standard characteristic of God. But you did nothing to show how omnipotence is illogical. You gave no argument, just another assertion.

And even if you were to come up with a definition of God that wasn't illogical, you still have all your work ahead of you to find empirical evidence that he/she/it exists in the real world.

This is based on an unfounded a prior assumption that empirical evidence is the only valid kind of evidence which is claim that is unsupportable. You cannot use science and empiricism to prove science and empiricism for that is arguing in a circle. Experience is also a valid form of evidence, for it is the only evidence we have for physical reality. You can't use empirical data to prove that the physical world is not an illusion or that we are not bodies lying in the Matrix or brains being stimulated in jars. We assume that the physical world is real because of our sensory experience and because of a lack of any overriding defeater that suggests our experience is delusional. Your belief that empiricism is the only valid form of evidence is a mere assertion without any warrant.

Moreover, I would argue that there is empirical data that points to the existence of God, particularly in what science has discovered in the fields of cosmology and astrophysics regarding our universe. It's very unlikely you're going to convince me that there is no evidence of design in the universe when it is immediately evident to me just by what I see and what the data shows. Nevertheless, I really have no desire to get into the teleological argument or arguments about design right now. Suffice it to say that the only argument you naturalists have against design is biological evolution which does nothing to thwart the idea that God created the universe. There is no inherent contradiction between the idea of organisms changing over time and God's involvement in physical creation.

As for the statements in your last paragraph, I find them to be completely absurd and you do nothing but demonstrate your own ignorance about the Bible, history, and natural theology. It would take a very large book to adequately address and untangle all the misconceptions you piled into that one paragraph. If you really want to debate with me, it would be much appreciated if you kept your arguments more focused instead of launching a whole slew of sound-bytish statements about Christianity in general. I never said anything about the Bible or about Christian history or how Christianity manifests itself in contemporary culture. I provided two lines of argument that might offer the strongest case against the theistic concept of God and as expected, you failed miserably in providing any such case.

Apparently you did not read my statement where I said that atheism survives by tearing down arguments in favor of theism. That is another way of saying that the main approach of atheism is to attack claims made by theists. However, I believe that you are wrong in that atheism isn't about proving a negative. Atheism is the affirmative claim that god does not exist. Therefore, the person who claims that there is no God, has some degree of the burden of proof. If you want to make the claim that there is not sufficient evidence to believe in God, then you would be an agnostic and should hold the more conservative position that you don't believe in God but are not confident enough to say that God doesn't exist. Atheism is the assertion that God doesn't exist which is a truth claim that warrants an explanation and defense.

I did read that statement, which is why I said nothing about it because it's true. If there was no such thing as theist, atheism would not exist; I fully admit and embrace that statement.

You deliberately ignored, however, the definition of atheism by someone who is an atheist. Atheism is NOT a claim that no gods exist. 'I do not believe that gods exist' is not the same as 'I do believe that no gods exist.' It is in grammatical and logical error. The first statement is the rejection of a claim, while the second statement is a claim by itself. It's like a jury that has been charged with the duty of determining a defendant's verdict. A 'Guilty' verdict would be comparable to saying, 'The claims that a god exists are supported.' A 'Not Guilty' verdict would be comparable to saying, 'The claims that a god exists are not supported.' We're not saying the defendant is 'innocent' or 'A god does not exist' because that would be like trying to prove a negative, which is indeed impossible. Anyone who defines atheism as a claim that no gods exist is both an extremist and WRONG. What's more, that's not the definition of agnosticism either. Agnosticism is the position that the fact of gods existing or not is unknowable. The only thing I am unsure about in this topic is whether a god of logical consistency and bearer of empirical evidence exists, but since I have not seen any evidence to support such a notion, that uncertainty is extremely low.

Interesting. I am not familiar with most of those descriptions. No intelligent Christian has ever used such descriptions of God and certainly no Christian philosophers or theologians that have had the most influence in Christian philosophy have ever used such descriptions. All the examples you gave sound like the responses of ordinary lay Christians, not sophisticated Christian thinkers over the ages. No current Christian philosopher such as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swindburne, or William Lane Craig would use such descriptors of God. Your examples amount to either a straw man argument or an ignorance of Christian philosophy. The only exception would be the idea that God is omnipotent, which is a standard characteristic of God. But you did nothing to show how omnipotence is illogical. You gave no argument, just another assertion.

I did not use assertions, I used logic and the definitions of God that I have been given by other theists. The only assertions I listed are the definitions themselves given to me because the people who gave them have no way of knowing what a god would be like other than their feelings and a book written by several authors over the course of centuries that is full of contradictions and logical fallacies. And while I can't talk about Alvin or Richard, Bill Craig does not know what he's talking about and he does not know how to debate. His arguments are flimsy at best, and he uses ad hominem attacks and other dishonest methods to defend his position. He also has said that while God is omnipotent, it is the omnipotence of the possible. In other words, God can't do anything that is impossible. That is not the same kind of omnipotence that I have been presented with again and again by theists, which is defined as: The ability to do anything; unlimited power. I have not come across an official definition in any cited dictionary that says otherwise. To say that omnipotence is the ability to do anything logical is to say humanity is omnipotent. Because we have the ability to do anything that is possible. We may not have the technology to do so at this very moment, but we do have the ability. To say omnipotence is limited is to not use the word omnipotence at all. At that point, your might use 'supreme being' or 'most powerful being.' But it wouldn't be omnipotence.

This is based on an unfounded a prior assumption that empirical evidence is the only valid kind of evidence which is claim that is unsupportable. You cannot use science and empiricism to prove science and empiricism for that is arguing in a circle. Experience is also a valid form of evidence, for it is the only evidence we have for physical reality. You can't use empirical data to prove that the physical world is not an illusion or that we are not bodies lying in the Matrix or brains being stimulated in jars. We assume that the physical world is real because of our sensory experience and because of a lack of any overriding defeater that suggests our experience is delusional. Your belief that empiricism is the only valid form of evidence is a mere assertion without any warrant.

The study of empirical evidence IS science; we don't use one to prove the other, that's absurd. Science is the study of the natural world around us using the natural world for evidence. It's the 'laws' and 'theories' that we use empirical evidence to prove the validity of.

And to say experience is a valid form of evidence is also absurd. A new born baby has no experience of the real world, but it still exists. To use that line of thought is to say the universe didn't exist before any of us was born; it's demonstrably false because we have evidence of things that we can prove existed before we did.

What you said in those last sentences is a form of solipsism. That the world as we know it may not be as it seems. It's also a pointless statement, because if everything wasn't as it seemed to be, how would we know it? We can't make any judgments about our world without our senses because they are the only tools we have to define our world. We could be in a Matrix-type environment where the world is a computer simulation or it could all be a dream inside my head while I sleep away in La-La Land, but until we can demonstrate that it is, there's no point in postulating such a notion.

Moreover, I would argue that there is empirical data that points to the existence of God, particularly in what science has discovered in the fields of cosmology and astrophysics regarding our universe. It's very unlikely you're going to convince me that there is no evidence of design in the universe when it is immediately evident to me just by what I see and what the data shows. Nevertheless, I really have no desire to get into the teleological argument or arguments about design right now. Suffice it to say that the only argument you naturalists have against design is biological evolution which does nothing to thwart the idea that God created the universe. There is no inherent contradiction between the idea of organisms changing over time and God's involvement in physical creation.

Again, would you please show me something that wasn't designed by God? Because if you could, then you'd have an argument because then we'd have something to compare. But to say that everything was designed by God means nothing because we'd have no idea of what something would be were it not designed by an all-powerful creator. You're making the assertion that whatever the data is, it shows that there is a god and that he designed the entire universe with us in mind.

And what's more, evolution has nothing to do with if God created the universe or not. Evolution is a biological process where life forms adapt to the environment based on specific changes made to their genetic structure generated by copulation. You want to discuss whether God created the universe or not, you need to get into physics, astronomy, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics, all of which by the way, including evolution, have been proven to work WITHOUT the need for a supreme being. There hasn't been any evidence found to support or suggest the existence of a god since the science was first practiced.

As for the statements in your last paragraph, I find them to be completely absurd and you do nothing but demonstrate your own ignorance about the Bible, history, and natural theology. It would take a very large book to adequately address and untangle all the misconceptions you piled into that one paragraph. If you really want to debate with me, it would be much appreciated if you kept your arguments more focused instead of launching a whole slew of sound-bytish statements about Christianity in general. I never said anything about the Bible or about Christian history or how Christianity manifests itself in contemporary culture. I provided two lines of argument that might offer the strongest case against the theistic concept of God and as expected, you failed miserably in providing any such case.

You provided two premises for someone to demonstrate the truthfulness of, and I did that to the best of my ability using the information I have been presented. I showed how the current definitions that I have been given by theists logically show that your god is contradictory and illogical, and I postulated what the world would be like if your god existed using your holy book and historical information from societies founded on your religion. Everything I said can be found either in your bible or in reliable historical records. The inequality towards women, those of non-white ethnicity and homosexuals is demonstrated in the Salem Witch Trials, slavery under Christian rule in the early centuries, and the events of today where a great portion of the people in this country believe that homosexuals are unholy and monstrous as said in there holy books. The possible status of technology and medicine and the birth and death rates all came from passages in your bible. And I was postulating that if God was real, he would have found a way to drive every other religion in the world into their theological deaths a long time ago.

How else would I postulate what the world would be like if God existed if I couldn't use your Bible?

What if God or gods are extra terrestrial beings? I think it is entirely possible, there are indeed some very strange occurrences in the history of humanity to mention that would be explained by an event involving advanced beings from other worlds possibly creating us to use for some sort of experiment or even as slaves to a certain degree. We do have supposedly verified and overlapping information from all parts of the world on how this could have occurred. There's even links to Illuminati going back to this ancient aliens theory, not sure how true those are. :3

Well, first of all, then they wouldn't be gods. If they ended up being actual life forms, they're already limited by their physical forms, so at the very least omnipotence is out of the question. Omniscience is also highly unlikely for a physical form, given the fact that you need physical matter to store information. As for omnibenevolence, it's the most possible of the three, but with physical form come 'flaws' if you will. So I suspect they wouldn't be that either.

In addition, the fastest man-made object ever built were the Helio vehicles launched in the seventies to study the Sun. With one of the vehicles being extremely close to the Sun, a speed of over 150,000 mph must be maintained to keep it's orbit around the Sun intact. Now, the closest star to our solar-system is a little over 4 light years away. At the fastest speed our race has achieved, it would still take them about 4,563 years to get here. They would have to travel near the speed of light to get here in around 4 years, which is thought to be impossible at the moment.

Also, given the fact that we're still having problems on this world like slavery and murder, I would hypothesize that in order for a civilization to make any significant journey into space, (like exiting their solar system with more than a couple of people on board) they have to put an end to all that. (I'm speculating at this point; I'm not saying this is what has to happen for everyone, I'm saying those are problems that we would have to overcome to embark on such a journey.) So I would think that if an advanced civilization did make contact with us, I highly doubt (but I won't say it's impossible) that the first thing they would do is make slaves out of us.

As for the overlapping information in parts of the world where civilizations supposedly had shared information even though there's no record of contact between them? I don't know anything about it; I haven't done any research on it.

So while it's possible that extraterrestrials could and have visited us, I find highly unlikely.

Your definition of 'atheist' is not in line with either the common understanding of the word, or the dictionary definition of the word. You are right that agnosticism properly refers to the idea that the existence of God is unknowable, but it can also apply to those who are unsure of God's existence. You didn't define atheism in the way I was expecting you to. I thought you were going to say that atheism is "lacking a belief in God" which is similar but not exactly the same as what you actually did say. If you want to define atheism as merely the denial of a claim, then atheism can't even be considered a meaningful position that is subject to evidence and argument. You still are in a position where you have no positive evidence against the existence of God and can only argue against the claims made for God's existence. In any case, it's really not all that important what precisely defines an atheist in semantic terms. What I was basically arguing that if you affirm with any confidence that God does not exist, you bear a burden of proof. Arguing about who shoulders a burden of proof tends to be very unproductive so I wont dwell on it any more than I have.

I did not use assertions, I used logic and the definitions of God that I have been given by other theists.

Most of the definitions of God you provided I consider to be irrelevant and incorrect and even if they were, your logical analysis of them was flawed in some cases. I'm going to address one of the original definitions you provided, the only one that I partially agree with.

"God created logic, and is not subject to his creation." - Logic is method of determining what is true from what is false. It wasn't 'invented' or 'created' by anyone, because it's existence was possible before human beings came to be. And since god is an idea/concept/'being,' he is still subject to logic.

Logic is the method of determining what is true or false, but truth itself could not exist outside the context of a rational reality. If nothing existed, then cognitive truth could not exist in any meaningful sense. If you take the Christian premise that God is the author of all reality outside of Himself, then the existence of God is necessary for truth to exist. Logic and reason cannot exist meaningfully outside the realization and apprehension of a rational mind and thus without any rational cognitive basis for it, reason becomes a meaningless concept. To say that reason and logic exist outside the apprehension of any rational mind is a nonsensical and unintelligible statement. If existence itself has a beginning and a source, then truth has a beginning and a source, from which it follows further that logic and reason must also have a source. From the Christian perspective, God is truth itself and the source of truth. The Gospel of John calls Christ the logos. God is the ontological basis for rationality and truth itself. The fact that logic applies to God in no way refutes the concept that logic originates from God. God obeys His own rules, including the rules of truth that govern a rational reality. It's really not as difficult a concept as it sounds.

Reason could only have existed prior to humans if there were other rational beings or a being that existed before man. Obviously, I believe God existed long before humans did and thus there never was a time when reason existed outside the apprehension of a rational mind. I don't believe such a thing is even possible. A rational universe could not exist without a rational creator.

One of my most fundamental reasons for rejecting atheism is the absurdity in the idea that a universe governed by rational principles, mathematics, and laws was not created by a supremely rational intelligence. Why would I deny a common sense interpretation of the facts in favor of an absurd proposition that an ordered reality can spontaneously pop into existence out of nothing? And please don't cite quantum mechanics because then you're distorting the term 'nothing' which means non-being into meaning 'empty space.' which is not the same thing.

And while I can't talk about Alvin or Richard, Bill Craig does not know what he's talking about and he does not know how to debate. His arguments are flimsy at best, and he uses ad hominem attacks and other dishonest methods to defend his position.

Well, that is your opinion and I don't share it. Unless you give a highly specified account of how Dr. Craig's arguments fail, your generic criticism is empty. In any event, I'm not interested in debating the merits of individual philosophers. I only mentioned them because they don't define God in the ways you presented.

He also has said that while God is omnipotent, it is the omnipotence of the possible. In other words, God can't do anything that is impossible. That is not the same kind of omnipotence that I have been presented with again and again by theists, which is defined as: The ability to do anything; unlimited power.

I hate to burst your bubble, but Craig is not the first person to define omnipotence in this way. In fact, the definition of omnipotence has been "God can do all things that are logically possible" since at least Thomas Aquinas in the middle ages. Despite the fact that these alleged theists you refer to define omnipotence as God's ability to literally everything, even the logically absurd, that has not been the philosophical definition of omnipotence. The idea that the supreme rational mind can't do the rationally impossible is somehow suppose to be a compelling argument against the existence of God is laughable. The fact that God is 'constrained' by logic in what He can do is not really a meaningful and significant restriction on His power since the concept of God doing what is not logically possible is just as unintelligible and meaningless as your idea that reason and logic can exist outside the apprehension of a rational entity or being.

The study of empirical evidence IS science; we don't use one to prove the other, that's absurd. Science is the study of the natural world around us using the natural world for evidence.

And you just reinforced my argument about experience. How do you know the natural world is real? How do you perceive all that empirical data? Through the EXPERIENCE of your senses! It is impossible for you to comprehend empirical data without that data passing through your physical senses to be processed by your physical brain. You cannot get outside of your sensory experience to determine what is true or not true. Every aspect of reality is processed through your senses and your brain. Therefore, in order for empirical data to have any sort of veracity, your sensory experience must accurately reflect what is actually happening in physical reality. The ironic things is, you can't use empiricism to prove that your senses are accurately perceiving reality. That's what I meant when I said you can't use empiricism to justify empiricism.

What do you think observation is? Observation is a crucial step in the inductive scientific method and observation comes through sensory experience! In order for empiricism to be justified, you must hold a faith-based belief that reality actually exists and that your sensory experience accurately reflects it. Experience is a valid form of knowledge and no other form of knowledge can be obtained without it since it is the most fundamental component of any theory of epistemology.

A new born baby has no experience of the real world, but it still exists.

What? How can a new born baby not have experience of the real world? New born babies do have active, working senses which means they have a sensory experience of reality. This is completely absurd statement and not scientific either.

What you said in those last sentences is a form of solipsism. That the world as we know it may not be as it seems.

No. Solipsism is the concept that a single individual believes that his or her ego is the only ego that exists and all other egos are illusory. It's related to what I said but it's not the same thing.

We can't make any judgments about our world without our senses because they are the only tools we have to define our world. We could be in a Matrix-type environment where the world is a computer simulation or it could all be a dream inside my head while I sleep away in La-La Land, but until we can demonstrate that it is, there's no point in postulating such a notion.

This was precisely my point about experience. Here you have contradicted yourself. Earlier you said that experience was not a valid form of knowledge and now you are affirming that (sensory) experience is the only tool we have to define our world. Which one is it?

Again, would you please show me something that wasn't designed by God?

I don't know what you mean by this question. I assume you are referring to natural and organic things and not things that were obviously made by humans. If you are referring strictly to natural things, then the question itself is absurd. If God is the author of physical reality, then everything in nature is designed or generated through God's creative intelligence at some point. It would thus be impossible to find something in nature that did not have its ultimate creative origin in God. If the question was based on a possible premise, it would defeat itself. Your challenge is untenable, which is the point obviously.

You're making the assertion that whatever the data is, it shows that there is a god and that he designed the entire universe with us in mind.

No, a more accurate word would be "interpretation." I am looking at the data that we have and using the most logical interpretation I know, based on my experience, to conclude that our universe was designed. I have not heard of any theory proposed that better explains the universe as I see it than God. Whenever I see complexity combined with independently given patterns, my experience has always confirmed that it was the result of design. Whether it be the fine-tuning of the universal constants of physical laws or the DNA molecule which contains encoded information, there is no other example of these kinds of things that are not designed. There is no such thing as a mathematical or linguistic code that was not created by an intelligence. There is no example of anything that contains organized information that is not the product of intelligence. If nature was truly produced by completely unintelligent, random processes, then it would be completely contrary and counter-intuitive to everything else we've ever experienced in reality.

Evolution is a biological process where life forms adapt to the environment based on specific changes made to their genetic structure generated by copulation.

Thanks for the biology lecture but I was already well aware of this. Luckily I know more about evolution than you know about Christian theology. Interesting how you failed to mentioned the origin of life which evolution cannot explain or the origin of consciousness.

You want to discuss whether God created the universe or not, you need to get into physics, astronomy, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics, all of which by the way, including evolution, have been proven to work WITHOUT the need for a supreme being. There hasn't been any evidence found to support or suggest the existence of a god since the science was first practiced.

This is not an argument but an assertion. I don't find this statement convincing because 1) I do believe there is evidence for design, which implicitly suggests a designer and 2) God, according to Christian theology, sustains the very universe itself which means that the very physical laws, that we can detect, depend on the existence of God, which we cannot detect scientifically. I realize that means we cannot scientifically show that God's existence and power are necessary to sustain the universe but that would be the case whether God existed or not. However, big bang cosmology suggests that the universe had a beginning which means that space and time had a beginning. If space and time had a beginning, then physical laws had a beginning. What else could mathematical laws have had their origin in but a supremely rational mind?

Ultimately, it is extremely difficult to prove or disprove God based on science alone. That is why I mentioned the two best arguments against the existence of God that would demonstrate by -logic-, not by scientific evidence, that God cannot exist. The first one you tried to use and failed to do so successfully. The second one you ignored and went on to the design argument which I never even brought up and wanted to avoid. The obsession you atheists have with scientific proof for God's existence while ignoring and discounting any other possible form of knowledge is beyond me. Aesthetics, morality, and meaning are all very important elements in human life and all of them transcend the explanatory bounds and authority of science.

Everything I said can be found either in your bible or in reliable historical records. The inequality towards women, those of non-white ethnicity and homosexuals is demonstrated in the Salem Witch Trials, slavery under Christian rule in the early centuries, and the events of today where a great portion of the people in this country believe that homosexuals are unholy and monstrous as said in there holy books.

All you have demonstrated from these statements is your extremely biased, distorted, and selective view of history as well as your complete disqualification as any sort of authority on the Bible. You are the one who brought up the Bible in this discussion, and most certainly not to your credit. Trying to argue the Bible with most atheists is a futile endeavor because if I say anything that contradicts your cherry-picked, ignorant exegesis and agenda-driven hermeneutics, you'll write it off as my own subjective interpretation.

Your definition of 'atheist' is not in line with either the common understanding of the word, or the dictionary definition of the word. You are right that agnosticism properly refers to the idea that the existence of God is unknowable, but it can also apply to those who are unsure of God's existence. You didn't define atheism in the way I was expecting you to. I thought you were going to say that atheism is "lacking a belief in God" which is similar but not exactly the same as what you actually did say. If you want to define atheism as merely the denial of a claim, then atheism can't even be considered a meaningful position that is subject to evidence and argument. You still are in a position where you have no positive evidence against the existence of God and can only argue against the claims made for God's existence. In any case, it's really not all that important what precisely defines an atheist in semantic terms. What I was basically arguing that if you affirm with any confidence that God does not exist, you bear a burden of proof. Arguing about who shoulders a burden of proof tends to be very unproductive so I wont dwell on it any more than I have.

Again, if you had paid attention, that's exactly what I said. Allow me to be as clear as possible: An atheist is a person who acknowledges that theists have not met their burden of proof with the claims they make, and therefore lacks a belief in any gods/goddesses. Since this is a rejection of a claim and not a claim by itself, we have no burden of proof.

As for the meaningful position and subject to evidence, that is demonstrably wrong as well. If evidence were to be presented that could be observed by everyone, tested by anyone and is demonstrably repeatable that could in no uncertain terms demonstrate that any deity exists, I'd would change my mind. But at that point I wouldn't 'believe' in a deity, I would just know that one exists. Atheists are generally more open minded and would in all likelihood acknowledge any evidence that would suggest or prove the exist of a deity to a reasonably certain level of confidence.

I will continue to argue for semantics because as annoying as they can be, they are important. Without semantics, language would be meaningless because the individual words would have no meaning either. It would all be gibberish if anyone could assign any definition to any word.

I'm not affirming with any confidence that your god or any other gods don't exist. I'm reasonably certain that you have not successfully demonstrated that any gods/goddesses exist and therefore I lack belief in any of them. I hope that clears any misconceptions up.

Logic is the method of determining what is true or false, but truth itself could not exist outside the context of a rational reality. If nothing existed, then cognitive truth could not exist in any meaningful sense. If you take the Christian premise that God is the author of all reality outside of Himself, then the existence of God is necessary for truth to exist. Logic and reason cannot exist meaningfully outside the realization and apprehension of a rational mind and thus without any rational cognitive basis for it, reason becomes a meaningless concept. To say that reason and logic exist outside the apprehension of any rational mind is a nonsensical and unintelligible statement. If existence itself has a beginning and a source, then truth has a beginning and a source, from which it follows further that logic and reason must also have a source. From the Christian perspective, God is truth itself and the source of truth. The Gospel of John calls Christ the logos. God is the ontological basis for rationality and truth itself. The fact that logic applies to God in no way refutes the concept that logic originates from God. God obeys His own rules, including the rules of truth that govern a rational reality. It's really not as difficult a concept as it sounds.

Reason could only have existed prior to humans if there were other rational beings or a being that existed before man. Obviously, I believe God existed long before humans did and thus there never was a time when reason existed outside the apprehension of a rational mind. I don't believe such a thing is even possible. A rational universe could not exist without a rational creator.

One of my most fundamental reasons for rejecting atheism is the absurdity in the idea that a universe governed by rational principles, mathematics, and laws was not created by a supremely rational intelligence. Why would I deny a common sense interpretation of the facts in favor of an absurd proposition that an ordered reality can spontaneously pop into existence out of nothing? And please don't cite quantum mechanics because then you're distorting the term 'nothing' which means non-being into meaning 'empty space.' which is not the same thing.


Your Christian premise is not a premise, but an assertion. You assume that your god exists in the first place, and that he is the 'author of all reality outside of Himself.' So far, you have not made an argument for anything that could not exist without a god.

What's more, I said the existence of logic and reason was possible before we existed. At no point did I say that the two concepts existed in any meaningful sense before we or any other sentient being came along.

We don't know if the universe had a beginning or not. Therefore, it is a useless statement to say that if it did have a beginning, then truth, logic, and reason had a beginning as well. And again, you're making assertions when you state that your god is the source of all truth.

Again, I never said that the fact that your god is subject to logic refutes the idea that logic came from your god, your fellow believers did.

And yet again, I said it was possible for logic and reason to exist before humans. I never said it actually did. And a rational universe can exist without a creator (rational or not) because that's what the science has told us.

It's absurd in your mind because you're apparently incapable of considering the possibility that there are no gods. It's absurd for you because that's how your mind works, whether you were brought up in a religious environment or you discovered it on your own. That doesn't change the fact that science has told us exactly that ever since the practice was first used. And since you didn't want me to cite quantum mechanics and the term 'nothing,' does that mean you don't understand it or you don't want to hear it for whatever reason you have? Either way, I won't mention it because I don't fully understand it myself. But you are in error sir to state that the universe popped into existence from nothing because we don't know how or even if it started. By saying so, you're either deliberately misunderstanding the current theories and what scientists have to say about them, or you're making assertions again.

Well, that is your opinion and I don't share it. Unless you give a highly specified account of how Dr. Craig's arguments fail, your generic criticism is empty. In any event, I'm not interested in debating the merits of individual philosophers. I only mentioned them because they don't define God in the ways you presented. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFmWfiq9L6k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emZlovxLZUM Just a few examples should you decide to watch. Granted, they get silly at times, but the point is still there.

I hate to burst your bubble, but Craig is not the first person to define omnipotence in this way. In fact, the definition of omnipotence has been "God can do all things that are logically possible" since at least Thomas Aquinas in the middle ages. Despite the fact that these alleged theists you refer to define omnipotence as God's ability to literally everything, even the logically absurd, that has not been the philosophical definition of omnipotence. The idea that the supreme rational mind can't do the rationally impossible is somehow suppose to be a compelling argument against the existence of God is laughable. The fact that God is 'constrained' by logic in what He can do is not really a meaningful and significant restriction on His power since the concept of God doing what is not logically possible is just as unintelligible and meaningless as your idea that reason and logic can exist outside the apprehension of a rational entity or being.

Quite frankly, I don't care who the first person was to define omnipotence in that way, because it doesn't change anything in my argument. And the fact that you have to put philosophical in front of definition says that it's not the common use of the word, which explains why theists commonly define omnipotence as the ability to do anything including the irrational and impossible.

The idea that a god (rational or not) that has been defined as omnipotent (in the absolute sense by theists, as has been the case for me up to this point in time) cannot do anything that is impossible is supposed to demonstrate how illogical the definition given is. I accept that a supreme being can do anything that is logical within the realm of reality, because it is a logically sound argument. That doesn't prove, however, that a god exists. It only demonstrates how one could exist. You still need empirical evidence to successfully show that your god exists.

And you just reinforced my argument about experience. How do you know the natural world is real? How do you perceive all that empirical data? Through the EXPERIENCE of your senses! It is impossible for you to comprehend empirical data without that data passing through your physical senses to be processed by your physical brain. You cannot get outside of your sensory experience to determine what is true or not true. Every aspect of reality is processed through your senses and your brain. Therefore, in order for empirical data to have any sort of veracity, your sensory experience must accurately reflect what is actually happening in physical reality. The ironic things is, you can't use empiricism to prove that your senses are accurately perceiving reality. That's what I meant when I said you can't use empiricism to justify empiricism.

What do you think observation is? Observation is a crucial step in the inductive scientific method and observation comes through sensory experience! In order for empiricism to be justified, you must hold a faith-based belief that reality actually exists and that your sensory experience accurately reflects it. Experience is a valid form of knowledge and no other form of knowledge can be obtained without it since it is the most fundamental component of any theory of epistemology.

What about the clinically insane? What about all the stuff they hear in their heads? They're experiencing that, does that mean that the voices in their head are real and not a figment of their imagination? What about the hallucinations that people experience on drugs? Are the things they experience real, too? This is what I mean when I say experience is not a valid form of evidence because it can be engineered and therefore unreliable. Our senses can be wrong sometimes and we can be wrong about what we think the evidence is telling us, but the evidence itself cannot be 'wrong.' It simply exists. How we verify empirical data and evidence is through repetition and testing on multiple levels by multitudes of people.

It's not faith; you're misusing the word. It's trust that we have in our senses. They are the only thing we have to rely on to gather information about the world. That trust has been rewarded with the fruits of experimentation that verifies what we observe.

What? How can a new born baby not have experience of the real world? New born babies do have active, working senses which means they have a sensory experience of reality. This is completely absurd statement and not scientific either.

A baby has no knowledge of the real world because it doesn't know what it is yet. It's brain isn't able to process the images it's eyes are sending and is therefore incapable of understanding what they're seeing. All they see are images of colors and shapes; they don't know how that shapes indicate dimensions and space, and that colors indicate different substances. They're experience is meaningless because they don't know what it means, yet. That's what I meant.

This was precisely my point about experience. Here you have contradicted yourself. Earlier you said that experience was not a valid form of knowledge and now you are affirming that (sensory) experience is the only tool we have to define our world. Which one is it?

It's both, with a slight correction. Experience is not a valid form of evidence and our senses are the only tools we have to define our world. (Experience is knowledge, but the knowledge might not be true or valid. For example, I can know I saw someone in the back alley, but I can be wrong if there wasn't actually anyone there.)

It has to do with statistics and probability. Technically, many, many things are possible, but a good chunk of those things are so unlikely and improbable to happen or exist (due to evidence or lack of, or statistics, etc.) that they may as well be impossible. It's possible that I could become President one day, but given my social awkwardness, my fear of audiences, and my low self-confidence, it's highly unlikely.

The same is true for reality. It's possible that everything is not as it seems, that we are being deceived somehow by an external force that is showing us a false reality, (like the Matrix) but since our senses have not detected anything to suggest such a notion and we have not found any observable, testable, repeatable evidence that support the idea, it's not likely. The point I'm making here is that while there is a slight chance that this reality is somehow false, everything we have encountered in scientific inquiry has supported this reality and has not suggested any other circumstances for our existence.

I don't know what you mean by this question. I assume you are referring to natural and organic things and not things that were obviously made by humans. If you are referring strictly to natural things, then the question itself is absurd. If God is the author of physical reality, then everything in nature is designed or generated through God's creative intelligence at some point. It would thus be impossible to find something in nature that did not have its ultimate creative origin in God. If the question was based on a possible premise, it would defeat itself. Your challenge is untenable, which is the point obviously.

That was my point, actually. I was trying to ask how could we tell if everything was designed by your god. Generally, we know something is designed because it wasn't made naturally and that it needed the help of some sentient being to form. But if everything was designed by a supreme deity, how would we know other than the being revealing itself and making such a claim. To the best of my knowledge, nothing like that has ever happened in recent memory, (if at all) so how can you make that claim?

No, a more accurate word would be "interpretation." I am looking at the data that we have and using the most logical interpretation I know, based on my experience, to conclude that our universe was designed. I have not heard of any theory proposed that better explains the universe as I see it than God. Whenever I see complexity combined with independently given patterns, my experience has always confirmed that it was the result of design. Whether it be the fine-tuning of the universal constants of physical laws or the DNA molecule which contains encoded information, there is no other example of these kinds of things that are not designed. There is no such thing as a mathematical or linguistic code that was not created by an intelligence. There is no example of anything that contains organized information that is not the product of intelligence. If nature was truly produced by completely unintelligent, random processes, then it would be completely contrary and counter-intuitive to everything else we've ever experienced in reality.

Uh no, it's still an assertion because as I've said before, you're incapable of considering the possibility that a god doesn't exist. Because of this, you look for evidence to support that one does, rather than looking at the evidence with a neutral, unbiased mind. You don't like any of the scientific theories for the universe and the history of it because they offer a degree of uncertainty, where your religion offers absolute certainty even when the evidence disproves it's supernatural claims. You assume that since there is a god, he makes complex things with patterns that our minds can recognize. You assume that the universal constants are fine-tuned and that they couldn't be any other values when it's possible for the same constraints to be different in another universe and still work and support life. You assume that DNA contains 'encoded information' like a computer drive when it's simple a set of chemicals that will react in predictable ways given the laws of chemistry and physics.

I would agree with the last two statements that codes and that anything that contains organized information can only come from intelligent beings. I would postulate that you mean their are examples in nature that fall into either of those categories, which is where you are wrong. Nothing biological 'contains' information. (Except for perhaps the brain, but that's extraordinarily more complex than anything I imagine you're talking about.) Everything is based on predictable, chemical reactions that, again, follow the laws of chemistry and physics. DNA reproduces itself because that's how it behaves and there are other chemical compounds that allow this action to happen.

And while there is no intelligence shown to have produced this reality, that does not mean that it's processes are random. They follow the basic laws of the universe; no god required.

Thanks for the biology lecture but I was already well aware of this. Luckily I know more about evolution than you know about Christian theology. Interesting how you failed to mentioned the origin of life which evolution cannot explain or the origin of consciousness.

Seems you don't know as much about evolution as you thought if you think it's supposed to explain biogenesis and the origin of consciousness. Biogenesis is a result of chemistry and physics. (Which mentioned in my last response, by the way.) Evolution just explains how those original life forms changed over time. And I imagine the origin of consciousness came from the first brain that ever evolved.

This is not an argument but an assertion. I don't find this statement convincing because 1) I do believe there is evidence for design, which implicitly suggests a designer and 2) God, according to Christian theology, sustains the very universe itself which means that the very physical laws, that we can detect, depend on the existence of God, which we cannot detect scientifically. I realize that means we cannot scientifically show that God's existence and power are necessary to sustain the universe but that would be the case whether God existed or not. However, big bang cosmology suggests that the universe had a beginning which means that space and time had a beginning. If space and time had a beginning, then physical laws had a beginning. What else could mathematical laws have had their origin in but a supremely rational mind?

Ultimately, it is extremely difficult to prove or disprove God based on science alone. That is why I mentioned the two best arguments against the existence of God that would demonstrate by -logic-, not by scientific evidence, that God cannot exist. The first one you tried to use and failed to do so successfully. The second one you ignored and went on to the design argument which I never even brought up and wanted to avoid. The obsession you atheists have with scientific proof for God's existence while ignoring and discounting any other possible form of knowledge is beyond me. Aesthetics, morality, and meaning are all very important elements in human life and all of them transcend the explanatory bounds and authority of science.

Yeah, you believe. You're taking something on faith without actually listening to what the evidence has to say, and the only reason you believe what you believe is because you were taught by people about your religion who have the exact same views as you. You've been taught to either ignore the facts that disprove or discredit your claims or misinterpret them so that they fit within your beliefs.

And just because the we haven't been able to prove the existence of any god with scientific means does not automatically mean that your god is beyond science and observation. It only says that we haven't been able to prove the existence of one. The other possibilities include either your god chooses to hide himself from scientific inquiry, or he doesn't exist in the first place.

You don't seem to understand the Big Bang Theory either. By extrapolating from the data that shows the universe is expanding, we can postulate that at some point, the universe was very small. And so far as we know, the simplest solution to an expanding universe is that it exploded in size, possibly very rapidly. We've also guessed that it was also very hot, to the point where all matter was energy and hadn't taken form yet. But as you go further back in history, the math leads to a singularity, which is something we haven't gotten around yet and therefore can't say with any certainty what happened before that point. The Big Bang Theory postulates what happened after that singularity, not before. What's more, math is a concept we use to understand the universe. It's existence was possible before we came into existence, 1+1 still equaled 2, even though we weren't there to recognize it.

Well, the only way to prove the existence of anything is to use scientific facts and evidence. Logic can't prove that anything exists, but it can disprove the existence of certain things. I can come up with the concept of an anthropomorphic dragon, down to it's DNA, bone structure, etc. and making sure it's biologically sound. But proving that it's logical does not prove it's existence. And I have demonstrated how illogical your god is based on several assertions and premises that I have been presented with by various theists. You only brought up one of the premises that I mentioned and you failed to counter it by showing how my logic was flawed with more assertions and beliefs. The others still stand until you decide to refute if you so choose. And I didn't ignore your second argument. In case you didn't notice, I wrote a whole paragraph in both of my previous responses about how the world as we know it wouldn't exist if your god did.

It's an obsession in the same sense that humans are obsessed with eating to stay alive. It's the reason we have technology, medicine, and modern civilizations. And there's no obstacle that prevents the same method, reason, from being successfully applied to concepts like morality as well. In fact, the most secular, atheistic nations in the world like Sweden or Japan have the lowest crime rates and the strongest economies. There is no coloration between faith and how countries fare in behavior to suggest that faith strengthens society.

I'd be willing to give you a go on the morality, aesthetics and meaning approach :)

Holy damn wall o text.

Antitheist>Muslim

Atheism is a worldview that explicitly states "absolutely no god exists" and the universe was an accident. This worldview is incorrect because it's grounded in the false presupposition that God doesn't exist. There is no valid argument an atheist could possibly put forth; because the only valid arguments possible are the ones that first assume God's existence. The complexity of the universe is evidence of design and design implies a designer and when paired with the historical truth of the Koran, the only reasonable conclusion we can arrive at is that there is no other God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet. I would therefore urge all of you to read your Koran and live your life under full submission to Allah so that you may live in a way that is both moral and fulfilling.

Does this satisfy your mind? Could you, had you grown up as Muslim, rationalize this as truth, or is there something more that is needed? Which argument could you offer that would convince you? What life could you have lived in which you would believe wholeheartedly in a god or specifically Allah. How, in such a "life" would you justify a disbelief in the scientific process to acquire knowledge?

I am kind of surprised that neither of the managers of Atheist Furs have contributed to this debate in the manner in which it was intended. It would be enlightening to see their contributions.

The philosofurs admin set up the 'debate' like this to try and get people to see the other side of the argument, the side that their arguing against, and to maybe get us to compromise and/or change our minds, no matter what stance we take. And that might have worked had we been discussing a subject other than religion. The problem with this approach is that people generally have their reasons for arguing for the position they have. If they have reasons that support a different view, they'll generally change their minds.

By participating in this kind of debate, you have to understand the position you're going to be arguing for, (assuming you actually care about debating and not being troll) and do some research. Many atheists out there have already done this kind of research, because there's so many religions out there claiming a lot of things. So a lot of them already know what the other side is going to say, and how to counter it. Which leads to a question: Why would anyone argue for the other side when they understand it already, often better than the people who are trying to defend it in the first place?

I didn't respond with my own contribution because I had nothing new to say. I have already seen what 'the other side' says and I still didn't agree with them. I'm not looking to compromise or change my position because nothing has come from religion that would make me seriously consider changing my mind And given what I already know about religion, I predict that nothing ever will. And like you see above, it's already turned into a cock-fight, something I really wasn't looking to start.

Does not contributing make me close-minded? In some ways perhaps, I suppose. But the bottom line is I understand both arguments, and I've already made up my mind. As I said, I don't think religion will ever be able to convince to join, but if I am ever given a good enough reason to embrace a religion, if I ever receive sufficient cause to change my mind, I will. And I haven't met a single theist who has said those words.

I'm a bit disheartened by the lack of replies to this, I thought this was a brilliant idea. It's very telling however, of just how many people are intransigent enough to be unwilling to argue a point contrary to their own.

Same here, but its not unexpected. Its simply part of human nature that most people are unwilling/unable to give a "fair hearing" to anything that does not support their beliefs or point of view.

Let me give this a go, since I've crossed a number of lines in my time (Christian to Atheist to Agnostic to Pagan in the space of about 5 turbulent years). I think I'm most confident arguing the agnostic line simply because I understand it more clearly.

Pagan> Agnostic
To say there is a god is to assume you know what "god" is. But what one finds is that a god, by its definition, hides in the shadows. A god of the shadows must forever be a mystery, and must be forever unknown, and so to presume that there is a god by absence of evidence to the contrary represents an absurd proposition; you presume the existence of an unknown, and therefore can never know its nature.

What religion claims to do is to lend, by some metaphysical understanding, an understanding of the nature of God. However, that understanding and its inherent subjectivity are reflected in the sheer number of beliefs, texts, interpretations, and arguments in favor of a deity. The names, numbers, and natures of these gods are so disparate and so varied that no solid interpretation can be reached, and thus any debate on the existence of god cannot be started because one cannot debate something one knows nothing about.

I think it's rather ironic that Pascal- author of the famous wager of the believer and nonbeliever- also invented the roulette wheel, because in truth Pascal's wager is not a simple "believe/disbelieve" dichotomy at all. When one chooses to believe, he puts his money on one slot of many on the ideological roulette wheel, and has to trust in faith alone that his choice was the correct one. But when perhaps a thousand religions say that they are the one true faith, and each offers their own "proofs" of being the true way, what are your chances of being right, really? Unless one religion offers the independently tested proof that god exists, one can only rely on the second-hand subjective experiences of so many self-proclaimed sages and prophets, and each of them is so entirely convinced that they are right that none will concede the other's ideas are in any way superior.

Why, then, should one be bound to follow the supposed commands of a being whose true nature can never be known, let alone discussed in any rational context? To make this commitment to yourself alone represents an absurdity because one can never be certain which slot on the cosmic roulette wheel is the right one; to force others to live by the commandments of such an unproven being is criminal.

Some would say we need gods to create and shape life, but rely on the argumentum ad mysterium; the origin of life is an unknown and thus one can only say a god was involved with the same amount of certainty that one can say a meteorite stirred the primordial soup just right one fine day about five billion years ago; this argument to the existence of god is of no consequence because it is just as useless in proving the nonexistence of god.

Some would say that morality is a gift of one particular god, and yet for all the variances across cultures certain ideas of morality persist. Namely three prohibitions come up in the majority of cases: the taking of a human life without just cause; the theft of some item which a person has or needs to survive; the deliberate use of deception for personal gain; and sexual relations with blood relatives. These are as much present in the Bible as they are in any religious text or oral tradition from nearly anywhere in the world and while the severity, specific definitions, and enforcement vary wildly, some form of these taboos exists in the better part of humanity.

What is singular about all of these prohibitions is that they can represent a logical conclusion of a thought process. Murder destroys human resources and good will between neighbors and family; theft creates a disruption in material resources and can hinder survival, and creates suspicion and distrust between people; deception too foments distrust; and incest creates a higher instance of birth defects and, in many cases, confusion about birthrights. Morality is not about what some god has set aside for us, but about what a human being must abide by to survive as a social animal. It is the essence of a social contract, unrelated to and unbound by any god.

But the strongest argument for morality being survival-driven rather than god-given is that in many cases, survival takes precedence over morality. Where prohibitions or taboos are not present, one almost often finds a good reason the society in question functions more readily without these limits. For example, a culture with no prohibition on theft is likely a culture with many free and readily-available resources, where egalitarian group dynamics define social interaction more than the activities of hunting, gathering, and growing food. Preserving the wellbeing and harmonious interaction of its members becomes its priority, and because property is in surplus, the morals that control how one treats property are not as relevant.

Many theists cannot see past morality as anything but god-given, and cannot comprehend that such ideas would originate in the wellspring of the human mind rather than that of a god. They cannot understand these things because if he truly understood them, he would have no use for gods because they have all the tools he would ever need to survive in the space between their ears.

Thus religion is a burden because it demands unconditional loyalty to a set of standards created by a person or being who may or may not be working in one's own best interest, an unconditional belief that one's best interests are being represented, and a stunted understanding of human potential, even when these lines of thinking go against the interest of survival. Because death is a possible consequence of this unconditional loyalty, religion by its very nature thus demands the willingness to martyrdom of all its followers.

(I'm horribly rusty at this, I'm sure someone will come along and demolish this argument very handily).

nothing>nothing
why do we question the truths of our mind?
why do the truths of our mind contradict others individual views?
who are we?