Many of the atheists on this forum say things like "I don't know if God exists, but I know that the biblical God does not exist" or "Well, I wouldn't compare belief in a deistic God to belief in Santa, but I would compare belief in a specific God (like the biblical God) to belief in Santa".

Now you all know who you are. You are the people that I expect to post in this thread.

Now if the belief in the biblical God (which I do hold a belief in) is so ridiculous and there is so much evidence against said God, this should be a slam dunk for you.

And if your evidence includes a supposed contradiction in the bible you must also convince me that your interpretation is more plausible then mine as well as that this contradiction is such that in light of it belief in the biblical God must collapse by logical necessity.

Ok, so make me a deist, gogogogogogogo!

Everyone has the same objective value, so every opinion must have the same objective value.

Objectively, there's no direct difference between a muslim and a christian. Both believers believe as hard. There is no difference to be measured.

Everything is relative.
Everything can be true depending on where from you see it.

So, that means that faith is subjective. If faith is subjective then it is not consistent and ever changing. Then it's only to your own benefit.

So, believe in what benefits you the most. If you're insecure and feel the need of someone watching over you, you can go ahead and believe in God/Allah/Scientology/ghosts or whatever thata fullfills your need.

There can never be evidence that God doesn't exist, because God is never defined. It's impossible disproving something that never can be defined. But as such, then there can never be evidence that God does exist either. And if you choose to believe in something that never can be proven or disproven and never makes an impact on your life that other things couldn't have fullfilled anyways, then what's the point of your belief?

you will probably have to make your conception of god very concrete in order for that to be possible. your stance on omni3 properties, hell, biblical literalism/metaphor etc...

When jib is rejoicing in the Christian heaven, listening to the angelic choir or whatever they do up there, he'll have his evidence.

It could as well be the bananaking setting him up.

Can't be done ( make you a deist ) on the terms you've set up.
Belief in a deist god " the thing that created the universe" is a placeholder type belief, yawn.
Belief in a being that wants to be worshiped, that rewards and punishes specific individuals of 1 lifeform of millions on a planet of billions in a galaxy of billions based on their views of him, that communicates with certain individuals of that species, that displays awesome powers to certain individuals of that species, all the things we "know" about this god and his wants ... of that being we have no evidence worth mentioning.

What is in the bible is irrelevant, just as what is in Sherlock Holmes or Moby Dick is irrelevant even though all three may be placed in actual cities on actual oceans and refer to actual mayors. Rather like the Iliad and Odyssey.
Contradictions .. who cares? easily explained away by any artful believer. Even if they may be of interest from a logical perspective but "who says god follows our logic" takes care of any that are particularly tough.

it would help narrow things down if you specified how you personally make the leap from philosophical arguments for deism to christianity. otherwise wouldn't know where to start.

That looked like a really inane statement on first reading, but actually you have a point. An illusory heaven could be indistinguishable from the real thing.

There is no reason for you to believe that the miraculous stories in the Bible are true.

Converted yet?

Probably not. Tell me exactly why you take the Bible as truth and I can tell you why I think you're crazy. Is it based on prophecies? Personal revelation? You're convinced a creator would for sure contact us and you think the Bible is the most likely source? You find hope in the teachings of Jesus? If it is any of the above, or something very different, why do those reasons transfer to the Bible as a whole? Is Matthew necessarily true just because you think Luke is?

That's a start. I'll be happy to continue this conversation as long as you want. But I will warn you in advance that my argument is pretty much always going to boil down to the first sentence in this post.

There are really way to many reasons to list in why i believe the biblical God is false. But basically it comes down to i dont believe people who say they have talked to God or say they are God so the people who say these things im suspicious of.

Okay. This is not an argument for a deist god, but one against the existence of the specifically Christian God. Let's say you accept the philosophical arguments for the existence of God. So you believe that a God exists. However, you are not clear on the nature of God. So you might believe that there is a First Cause, maybe some kind of teleological principle based on rational argumentation, but you haven't established much else. Now this is a far cry from the rich description of God we find in Christianity. So how do we get from the God of the philosophers to the God of Christianity?

Now all philosophers acknowledge that in order to go the rest of the way we have to include revelation. More exactly, we can use natural revelation to show the existence of God, but we need special revelation to show the nature, purpose, and actions of God. So what is needed is a justification of special revelation.

First, there are two kinds of special revelation: that in the Bible and personal revelation or experiences of God. In my experience the second is much more powerful, but let's first focus on the first. What justification can we have for accepting the Bible as a revelation from God? The typical claim is that we have good reasons to trust that the writers of the Bible were telling the truth. The reason typically given is that they performed miraculous signs as evidence of a blessing from God and that they were highly moral people and so unlikely to deceive their readers.

There are many responses I can give to these claims. Here are a few. First, although Christian tradition has claimed the original disciples or their close followers as the writers of the NT, except for some of the Pauline epistles there is very little historical evidence that this is true. Obviously this lack of evidence weakens the evidentiary force of this documents and so should make us less willing to credulously trust the accounts of events, sayings, and theology given in the NT.

Miracles are by definition unusual events, and so we should be extremely wary of accepting claims of their real occurrence. Since it is nearly impossible to gather independent evidence that the miracles claimed by the writers of the NT actually happened, this doesn't add to the credibility of the writers--it actually decreases it. If we already were going to believe them, then we would accept the miracles, but that is the very question we are asking, whether we should believe them. This shows that the argument from miracles is actually a form of circular reasoning: we assert that the reality of the miracles proves that the writers are trustworthy and the fact that the writers are trustworthy proves that the miracles are real.

Finally, the moral character of the writers actually tell us very little about whether we should believe them. Great truthtellers are sometimes not good people, and good people can be very credulous.

Thus, special revelation from the Bible is unable to provide a reason to accept the God of Christianity.

The second form of special revelation is the revelation of God's nature given to Christian when they pray or otherwise commune with God. My argument here is a bit simpler and more ordinary. Essentially, this is an argument that we can know the nature of God based on our experience of God. However, Christianity is hardly unique in offering its members experiences of God. That is, Muslims experience the God of Islam, Jews the God of Judaism, Hindus, the various gods they might be communing with, Buddhists, the experience of God, or lack of God, and so on and so forth. Based on this fact about the world, what is the basis for claiming that the religious experience of the Christian has given her true beliefs about the nature of God whereas the religious experiences of those in other religions have not given them true beliefs? As for as I can tell, there is no basis for this claim.

Thus, this form of special revelation also fails to give us an evidentiary basis for moving from the God of the philosophers to the Christian God.

What's next? Well, you might stop there, you might accept the claim that God has manifested in many ways, you might make any number of claims. However, I don't see any justification for claiming that the nature, purposes, and actions of God are those described in the NT.

Wow, now the mods themselves are trolling.

Well...err...this is it.

Santa Claus has some traces of historical veracity, and then through a jungle of societal influences, cultural liberalization, historical misconceptions, adopted traditions, stolen superstitions, wrongful translations, myths and legends it has become a powerful symbol in its own right....just like the Christian god(s).

I find beliefs in both to be perfectly comparable.

It's not that there's evidence against, it's just there's no evidence for it.

Do you not see how bizarre it is to claim an intelligent creator has a bunch of attributes, and to give him a history of interactions with the world, a la Teh Bible? It wouldn't be bad if the claims were backed up, but sadly they're not.

How about you do some cursory research into the Koran, looking for contradictions. Then debate shahrad about it. You'll realize he's doing the same handwaving that you rely on to defend the Bible and abandon your god.

It's not so much that there is evidence against Christianity (although there is). It's that there is no evidence for it. What's more believable? A flying turtle? Or a flying turtle wearing sunglasses and pink shirt, smoking a cigar? And that's just for starters. I could go on and on until this turtle is performing magic tricks and playing Beethoven standing on its head.

Well Jib, since you have been around for awhile, I would assume you have already discounted everything listed at

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/

If you have, then I don't think much can be said to change your mind.

Human wishful thinking has been shown to be almost always wrong through the past, and there is nothing humans can wish for more than a benevolent God. Plus, the universe is a nasty place, ergo no benevolent God.

884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.

Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.

Only 62% of the world’s population has access to improved sanitation – defined as a sanitation facility that ensures hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact.

The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.

Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection.

Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.

Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.

Earth is actually water-poor when compared to some other planets/moons in our solar system.

So, the christian god cares about everyone and has the power to give everyone clean water, but just doesn't? A deist god makes far more sense to explain things like this. No god makes even more sense.

That's supposedly Pletho's site, fwiw.

So jib, you're a deist now?

He's busy posting photographs of lambo'z and b1tchez right now, he'll be back momentarily to provide a 1 line reply to the easiest target he can find in the thread and then run away.

we have no evidence. we merely notice the lack of evidence. there is little more to it than that.

really? I think there's a ton of evidence against the Christian god specifically (any god that knows everything, loves everyone, has the power to do anything). We don't really need any, but we certainly have some IMO.

For example my post about water above is pretty strong evidence IMO that if a god exists he can't be both all loving and all powerful. There are of course many other things that I can use to support myself here.

A god that knows everything, loves everyone, and can do anything doesn't design humans to need massive amounts of water throughout their life and then not provide enough of it. He also doesn't provide water that's undrinkable, or contaminated...which of course we know there is undrinkable and severely contaminated water that has killed many people. This god also would not stand back and allow his faltering design to continue to kill innocent people for hundreds of years on end. I think we can say that pretty confidently.