Religion

• Inner spiritual experiences. Millions of people claim to know a deity. Religions differ radically. Believers in one particular god have no trouble dismissing the "personal experiences" of the believers of other gods. The human race posses an immense propensity to subjectively "know" things that are wrong. What makes them exempt from such error crafting?

Logic

• A god who is both infinitely merciful and just not only does not exist, he cannot exist.
  • Incompatible properties (ex. a married bachelor)
  • If God is infinitely merciful, I cannot go to Hell.
  • 1 Chronicles 16:34 His mercy endureth forever.
• The Christian god cannot be both omniscient and omnibenevolent. If God were omniscient, then he knew when he created Adam that Adam would sin. He knew human beings would suffer. Regardless of whether the existence of evil can be theologically explicated, an all-knowing creator deliberately placed humans in its path. This is at least criminal negligence, if not malice. Those who invoke "free will" forget that we all act according to human nature that was supposedly created by god himself. Adam did not create his own nature. At the moment of creation, an omniscient deity would have been picturing the suffering and damnation of most of his creation. This is mean-spirited. Perhaps a lesser (or malevolent) god exists, but the problem of evil gives the lie to the claim that a god can be both all-good and all-powerful. If God knows in advance that there will be evil as a direct or indirect result of his actions, then he is not all good. He is at least partly responsible for the harm. Since god has the power and desire to eliminate evil, why doesn't he? If God is truly all-knowing and all-powerful, then he is not omnibenevolent when he does not stop unnecessary harm. This is especially true when he is asked to do so by his children, who claim to love him (and he them) and who pray for his protection, believing he meant it when he said, "All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive." Since the success of such praying is no better than random chance, we have empirical evidence that god, if he exists, does not care.
• Theistic Argument: "How can you explain the complex order of the Universe? Design requires a designer."
  • The mind of the designer would be at least as complex and orderly as the nature it created and would be subject to the same question: "who made god?"
  • Richard Dawkins - Ultimate Boeing 747 - A windstorm blowing through a junkyard would not likely produce a complicated jet airplane. The designer of such a machine must be more complex than the machine itself.
    • If functional complexity requires a designer, then the mind of the designer, being more functionally complex than its creation, also requires a designer. If it doesn't, then the argument is dishonest. You can't require that everything except what you are arguing for needs a designer.
  • There is design in the universe, but not of the universe. The design we do see in nature is not intelligent.
    • Evolution explains how complexity can arise from simplicity. Creationism tries to explain complexity with more complexity, and so explains nothing.

Morality

• There is no "universal moral urge" and not all ethical systems agree. Polygamy, human sacrifice, infanticide, cannibalism, wife beating, self-mutilation, foot binding, preemptive war, torture of prisoners, circumcision, female genital mutilation, racism, sexism, punitive amputation, castration, and incest are perfectly "moral" in certain cultures.
• The first place the phrase "do right" is used in the bible is when Abraham questioned the morality of God. Abraham argued with God and succeeded in getting him to change his mind about slaughtering innocent victims in Sodom. (Gen. 18:25) "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" God did change his mind about the minimum number of good people required to prevent the slaughter, but he went ahead and murdered all the inhabitants of Sodom anyway, including all of the "unrighteous" children, babies and fetuses. It appears that Abraham was more moral than his god.
• What would the bible have to say in order to be immoral?
• Jesus
  • Luke 12:47-48
    • Jesus encourages the beatings of slaves
    • Jesus does not forgive or "wink" at ignorance
    • Jesus never spoke out against slavery
  • Jesus never spoke out against poverty or did anything to eliminate it. In fact, like Mother Teresa, he taught that the poor should accept their lot in life.
  • Jesus indicated that he and his followers were a special class, above the rest, free to take liberally from the property and work of others.
    • Mark 2:23 he and his disciples roamed through the cornfields, taking what they wanted, which was doubly unlawful since it was the sabbath.
    • Matt 21 Jesus instructed his disciples to take a horse without first asking the owner.
  • Jesus upheld the OT view of women. Not a single women was chosen to be among the 12 disciples or sit at the Last Supper.
• This is supposed to be an example we follow?

Cosmological Kalamity

• No evidence that any special "causeless" or "non-contingent" objects actually exist.
• Who is to say that personality could not have arisen from an impersonal cause? The impersonal might be more complex. If this is impossible, theists must explain why.
• There must have been a "first antecedent" in the mind of an actual god, which means that God began to exist.
  • What was God's first thought?

Letter to a Theologian (from God's perspective)

• If I am perfect, then how in god's name did I end up creating something that would not choose perfection? Someone once said that a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.
• If I am perfect, then there are certain things I cannot do. If I am not free to feel envy, lust or malice, for example, then I am not omnipotent. I cannot be more powerful than you if you can feel and do things I cannot.