Problem of Evil
The biggest philosophical arguement against god’s existance is perhaps the Problem of Evil. The original wording of this argument goes something like this:
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. … If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. … If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”
A great theologin and christian scholar was stated, “if the problem of evil doesn’t keep you up at night, you do not yet fully understand it.”
I first encountered this problem in formal sense in my college philosophy class, although I had been hearing about it for year in the form of the question, “why do bad things happen to good people?”
The standard response is “it’s all in god’s plan, just put your faith in him.” So I immediately rejected it is a serious problem when I first heard it.
But now, I really understand it. If you are going to use only logic to argue for the existance of god, this arguement in absolutely infallible. It proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the christian god does not exist.
What the problem of evil does not help is the existance of gods such as the ancient greek gods, or the norse gods, or other pagan gods. Gods who were not infinitely good, infinitely powerful, or infinitely loving.
But the Christian god is supposed to be all of those things. Infinitely powerful, good, merciful, smart, wise, etc. etc. Such a god cannot logically exist in our world.
For a good workup of this arguement discussing the different theological responses as well as the arguement against, check out:
Perhaps you have a better arguement. By my count, I now have the following:
No scientific basis for god.
No logical basis for god.
No epistimological basis for god.
No historical basis for god.
No psychological basis for god.
No moral basis for god.
Christians like to say that without god, life has no meaning. Meaning is a subjective thing, however. I’ve found that since I’ve become an atheist, my life has much much more meaning.
I suppose the argument could be made that god has merely ‘blinded my eyes’ in order to teach some sort of lesson. I suppose that this is possible. If this is so, there is nothing I can do about it anyway.
It will take nothing less than an act of god that I do not believe exists for me to return to faith. That’s some pickle.
