I don't think this really works. First, lots of theists do believe in these other gods, they just think they are demons or perverted or incomplete conceptions of the true God. Second, Christians are generally very clear why they don't believe in these other gods. They don't believe that Shiva or Allah is the true god because they believe that the Christian God is the true God. Not really sure that this advances your case much.

Hence why I didn't throw out the analogy? If that was your point, you sure picked a weird way to make it.

I mean, we can make a few claims like this: the god that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent is more likely to exist than a god that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and has blue eyes. But this is just an example of avoiding the conjunction fallacy. It doesn't tell us much about the inherent probabilities of a god existing.

Edit: I see bunny already made this point more competently than I.

I can see why one would think that a "creator of the universe" is nonsensical. But a situation without time and space seems pretty nonsensical too. I don't want to open up a whole debate about the cosmological argument as honestly I'm not prepared to have it and I'm sure it has been done countless times in this forum. But afaik no one can actually understand the concept of no time and space. It just seems to be taken as fact by many scientists that "nothing" existed pre-big bang which to me seems more faith than science and equally nonsensical as a "creator". Both have the same issue of course "what happened before x" and neither has what would be considered a reasonable answer by the other party.

Mostly the first. As I've said, lots of people seem to have this Cartesian assumption that in order to know that p you must be absolutely certain that p. I think this assumption is wrong.

As for the second, it seems to me a number of the atheists that wander through this forum, even when they identify as weak atheists and as not knowing that god doesn't exist, display a higher degree of subjective certainty than I have about the subject. That being said, my own study of the subject has been more thorough than most here and so my epistemic certainty is higher.

Sorry I didn't mean to make it seem like that was an analogy you used. I've probably been reading too much of /atheism on reddit and that analogy got on my nerves so just wanted to bring it up in this thread.


I agree that an omnipotent, omiscient, omnibenevolent God needs to be taken on faith. There isn't any science that backs it up (afaik). But a "creator" I think can be argued equally well based on logic as a lack of time and space.

Of course. Any religion has to contend with the thorny question of how, if it's the truth, are there so many other religions with such wildly contradictory beliefs?

For some, the simple solution is to say, 'Ah, all those other gods are just expressions of my god'. Everybody had the specifics wrong until our religion came along. A nice, simple, comforting and impossible to disprove catch-all.

Yes, this type of believer think they have the truth and no one else does and can't understand why a non-believer doesn't see it that way.

So, to ask them why they don't think Shiva is actually the truth, to cause them to experience disbelief as they think about that, hopefully causes them to understand how you can see their god as not being the truth. It's certainly more effective than mentioning the Spaghetti monster which just causes a defensive reaction.

I don't think "pre-big bang" means anything either, fwiw, so I'm not making that error. I agree it's somewhat off the beaten path though.

I've read the wiki article and I have to say that his argument looks very weak to me. A couple of quick obvious points:

Plantinga argues that free will implies the possibility of wrong/evil choices. God has free will. Does this not also mean that he is capable of wrong/evil choices? God is also infinite, he wills infinitely many things, he makes infinitely many choices. Will he not necessarily make infinitely many evil choices? If god can't even prevent finite free willed entities from doing evil, does this not imply that god can't prevent his own actions to lead to evil? Therefore, if god has free will and is infinite, is he not also infinitely evil?

If we say that god has free will and is incapable of evil because he is omnibenevolent then the quality of omnibenevolence prevents him from doing evil even though he has free will. This means that he has free will even though his nature is such that he necessarily is prevented from making evil choices. If this applies to god's free will then why doesn't it apply to the free will of finite entities that god creates? God has free will and yet his free will is determined (omnibenevolence), and so Plantinga is in contradiction when he rejects compabitilism.

Another major problem is that Plantinga assumes the existence of selves, even though they don't in fact exist (appearance of selves exists, but not actual selves). Without selves you have no free will (choices yes, free will no), without selves and free will his argument is void.

I think I don't understand what you are saying here.

Here's a possible area of disagreement: I find the versions of a "creator" postulated in the Simulation Argument more plausible than the supernatural god versions of a creator. But yet I don't view the "creator" of the Simulation Argument to be a god.

There were five gnostic atheists in your thread Belief and Knowledge, and you can now make it six, so TY for making that thread.

Not only do I enjoy having what I perceive to be more accurate epistemologics views as a result of that thread, I automatically get the added benefit of being able to say I know there is no God to the religious, which is always nice.

Most people prefer simple solutions, so pointing out that this is a simple solution isn't going to be viewed as a flaw.

But it doesn't, as I pointed out. The lack of belief of the atheist is different from the lack of belief of the Christian here. The atheist has a basically skeptical view here--she lacks belief in all gods because of insufficient evidence or incoherence or unfalsifiability, etc. The Christian's lack of belief in other gods is not motivated by skepticism, but by an incompatibility of those other gods existing with her own views. In other words, what you want to spark is the skeptical impulse, but skepticism is not what causes the Christians to not believe in other gods.

I think I'm going off on tangents and probably not doing myself any favors.

I checked out the link, but couldn't gather much from the abstracts. Is there any evidence that makes the simulation argument more likely than a supernatural god?

It also doesn't mean that it's correct.

Since you said yourself, 'most people prefer simple solutions' it could even be argued that it's simply a human proclivity toward creating simple solutions that makes it so convincing to the believers who otherwise are left with the question of 'why do we have all those other belief systems if mine is the right one?;'

Accepting to myself that all those other gods don't exist, that their followers just had it all wrong, should mean to me that I could also be wrong and my own god doesn't exist, therefore, and as is my nature, I will just believe that ALL those gods are actually my god too. Convenient.


No, what can I say, I just don't agree with you that a Christian has a different feeling of disbelief to my own and we're not talking about just skepticism here. The moment of dawning disbelief is universal to all humans regardless of their starting point or differences of opinion so before you try to explain it again I do get what you're saying. Disbelief is disbelief.

Do you believe the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arklesneizure? Think about it seriously. Try to imagine it being true. The feeling you get, whatever you want to call that feeling, is what I feel about all the gods and I just made you feel it too. That may help my position.

Why else would people bring up the Spaghetti monster?

We know computer simulations exist; we do not know if the supernatural exists. (Doesn't mean that the simulation argument is likely, just more likely).

So then in your opinion it is more likely that Britney Spears created the universe than any supernatural reason since she exists?

And if 2.5 billion people believed that she did, it would be more likely to be true?

No, but that's due to a simple logical inference: I am incapable of creating a universe. I assume all people to be similarly incapable. Therefore Britney Spears didn't create the universe.

EDIT: This answer will change in the future if humans somehow become capable of creating universes.

You don't actually know that you can't create a universe. Therefore you might be able to. Therefore Britney might be able to, and if 2.5 billion people believed that she could, you'd have a religion the equal of Christianity.

I don't really care about this point, so I'll just let it drop.

I think your phenomenology here is wrong. A lack of belief in a god is an absence, not something we experience. For instance, most people today lack a believe in the god Ahura Mazda. However, since they also lack an awareness that such a god has even been conceived there is no phenomenal content associated with this lack of belief . Asking these people to think about what it feels like to lack a belief in Ahura Mazda is silly--since they've never thought about Ahura Mazda their lack of belief feels like nothing at all.

Of course, sometimes people do know about the gods they lack a belief in. What kind of feeling is associated with this kind of lack of belief? I think the feeling is specific to the actual causes or reasons for the lack of belief (and of course many other things). But, as I argued above, since the reasons for the lack of belief in e.g. Allah is so different for the Christian than for the atheist, I have no expectation that their phenomenological experience of that lack of belief will be very similar. I would expect that for Christians it is a way of them affirming their belief in the Christian God rather than the Zoroasterian god. For the atheist it will be another example of a general skeptical attitude taken towards the supernatural or towards gods.

It seems to me that mostly this is just you marveling at and congratulating yourself for your own disbelief in God. I don't find disbelief in God particularly exciting myself so this doesn't really connect emotionally for me.

You're mistaken. I know I can't create a universe.

So why does the Spaghetti monster come up so often?


Suit yourself. I have no idea what would be marvelous about it or deserve congratulation, perhaps you're projecting a little there.

If at first you don't succeed...

Because some atheists like the frisson provided by mild public blasphemy and have a hard time thinking from the point of view of a Christian.

Also, that stuff bunny said about the importance of falsifiability.

I think it is a good example in regards to explaining how the burden of proof works. But to compare FSM to YHWH is generally inflammatory and not a good comparison IMO.

And we come full circle. I don't agree that's the only reason.

Does anyone know the term for when you try to come up with an example of something that will make the person you're debating with experience a feeling similar to what you're feeling about the debate subject?

The usual one is the Nazis, everyone is horrified by that so it's an easy way to make someone feel horrified. I'm amazed by how often the Nazis fail to get mentioned in these debates on this forum, you guys are the exception to Godwin's law.