Question for athiests

What is the best argument you've heard for Theism?

Help us keep this site organized and clean. Thanks!
[ Report Post ]
Comments ( 26 )
  • Boojum

    The best argument for the existence of God is as powerful as the best argument for the existence of invisible pixies that dance in my backyard at dawn every morning.

    I have no time for philosophical wanking that attempts to prove that God just might exist in the cracks of the universe that we don't yet fully understand. While I have some sympathy for those who believe in God because that gives them comfort and their life meaning, I despise those who assert that their version of God is the only correct one, and therefore everyone should comply with the rules of behaviour that they deem correct.

    Comment Hidden ( show )
      -
    • How else do you explain morning dew, hmm????? It's the sweat of those pixies from dancing, obviously, duh

      Comment Hidden ( show )
        -
      • Boojum

        Wow! I never thought of that, and now I've seen the light.

        Do you think I should put some milk and cookies out for them every night? I wonder if pixies are gluten or lactose intolerant.

        Comment Hidden ( show )
          -
        • o.o ... Y-yes, sugar cookies and silk chocolate milk. Leave plenty out for the pixies, not me or anything 😏

          Comment Hidden ( show )
        • LloydAsher

          You would not belive how many northern european people still believe in elves. Around 50% of Icelandic people belive in elves.

          Comment Hidden ( show )
    • S0UNDS_WEIRD

      Our opinion of religion is all but identical. As a side note, I for one find your thought-out responses delightful and often read them even when the topic doesn't pertain to me. We agree on a lot.

      I think the comfort aspect is what keeps religion alive. While a great deal of it is fire and brimstone, it nonetheless offers an escape from death. The religious are somewhat mentally ill but for very understandable reasons.

      So as for evolution to function, it was vital that fear of death rank above all else. Humans are the result of that mechanism being honed for billions of years. As the planet's alpha species, there's even an argument that humans fear death more than any other species.

      The unfortunate reality is that humans are also the only species currently sufficiently intelligent to understand that death is inevitable, at least at our current technological level. There are other animals that understand the concept of death, that ailments or especially predators might end their life, but humans uniquely understand that no matter how careful they are they are going to die in the end.

      Humans suffer that curse uniquely. Humans suffer the anxiety of knowing the mission of their DNA, survive, fails no matter what. Nothing is more important as per our very biological programming yet there's a zero percent chance of success and we know that. That is mental illness-inducing if anything ever was.

      The intelligent more easily bypass this but even some of them occasionally fail to. Look at guys like Hugh Ross; he's clearly extremely intelligent, something I can rarely say about the religious (just being honest), yet he jumps through hoops to make sense of talking snakes all while practical when discussing viruses and astrophysics. He is mentally ill. He doesn't want to die. Like all of us, he'd do almost anything to see his parents again as well.

      Unlike many atheists, it's really hard for me to claim some alternative beauty in all of this; I think it pretty much sucks, but we've been dealt the hand we have so all we can do is make the most of it. I will never see my loved ones again and I will be dead as well soon enough. I just hope to do the best I can while I'm here. That's reality and me doing the best I can with it instead of losing my mind.

      When I was a teenager I played in a band and ended up in a debate with my drummer about all of this. Unable to counter my reason, he eventually said, "My father died when I was 10! Do you have any idea how comforting it is to know he'll get to see me as a grown man?"

      It was almost as if he knew, yet he didn't.

      As for "gods", the only possibility is an extraterrestrial race having either programmed this universe as a simulation, manipulated the manner in which this universe budded from a mother multiverse, or seeded the planet with the ingredients for life upon realizing it was habitable. None of that is what religious folks are talking about as opposed to someone else popping up first and it's all highly unlikely either way.

      Comment Hidden ( show )
        -
      • Chap

        [OP] Also, I do agree with your answer from what I got from it.

        Comment Hidden ( show )
      • Chap

        [OP] "As a side note, I for one find your thought-out responses delightful and often read them even when the topic doesn't pertain to me. We agree on a lot." are you talking about my responses?

        Comment Hidden ( show )
    • 1WeirdGuy

      Theism isnt really a belief in God. Its a belief in some type of intelligent force. It doesnt have to be in our image. Doesnt have to be the god in the bible. It could be the universe or a the earth itself. Maybe even that atoms have intelligence. Einstein and Tesla were both theists.

      Comment Hidden ( show )
        -
      • S0UNDS_WEIRD

        No he wasn't. There's even a letter from Einstein calling the religious childish. Einstein had a bad habit of saying things like "God doesn't play dice" but he meant the rules of the universe. Einstein was not only an atheist but the type of atheist who was severely annoyed by the religious and felt the need to mock them.

        Comment Hidden ( show )
          -
        • 1WeirdGuy

          "Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood. Albert Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve."

          Thats on wikipedia which is not the best source. But I have some Einstein quotes here as well. That description above sounds like theism to me.

          Comment Hidden ( show )
            -
          • S0UNDS_WEIRD

            Look, I've followed Einstein my entire life.

            Responding to a letter in which he was asked if he was Jewish religiously since he was ethnically he said this.

            "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. For me the unadulterated Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition."

            I think it's rather clear. The letter was verified and sold for 2.1 million US dollars posthumously.

            While alive he was a thorn in the side of other physicists who straight up told him that his constant use of the word "God" would someday be used in quotes despite his open atheism.

            He didn't seem to give a shit, insisting anyone capable of actually understanding his papers would easily understand that his use of "God" was shorthand for the four forces: Electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity.

            It's pretty understandable that the man who discovered special relativity itself thought humans would better manage misinformation in the future, especially as he was openly atheist. I would have thought the same and I'm not Einstein. He failed to imagine a future wherein people simply pull whatever they wish from context to support their views.

            Unlike "God doesn't play dice" which was an assertion that the universe is completely deterministic during his initial frustrations with the very quantum mechanics he helped discover, the letter didn't leave room for interpretation to even laymen.

            Comment Hidden ( show )
              -
            • 1WeirdGuy

              How familiar are you with the term theist? Theists do not believe in the bible. We dont believe in a physical god. We believe god is something we can not understand. An intelligent force thats description eludes us.

              Heres a quote of Einstein rejecting atheism and in my opinion seems to be giving theism a thought. Pantheism and theism is pretty much the same thing
              "Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a PanTHEIST. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds."

              "We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's PanTHEISM. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things."

              Comment Hidden ( show )
  • radar

    Mr. Rogers.

    Comment Hidden ( show )
      -
    • RoseIsabella

      I've always loved Mr. Rogers.

      Comment Hidden ( show )
  • BoraxSnorlax

    That as humans, we only think we’re smart because we don’t have another race to compare ourselves to. In the grand scheme of things, humans have not been around for very long. We’ve accomplished a lot but this is just the birth of our existence. Just 200 years ago, scientists believed that the earth was the center of the entire universe. Today, scientists feel like there cannot be a god because of what we currently know. Will this belief change in 200 years from now? How about 2,000,000 years from now? The point is, it’s just as ignorant to say there isn’t a god because you cannot prove the absence of one. There may not be a god in the traditional sense of a man sitting on a throne behind pearly gates. However, it’s extremely likely that there’s something bigger than all of us that is so far beyond our comprehension. Take the ancient civilizations for instance. If you traveled back in time and tried teaching neuroscience to the mayans, they wouldn’t possibly be able to comprehend it. The same principle could be likely for a “god”

    Comment Hidden ( show )
  • cayenne_clawz

    i ,, honestly don't know how to answer this, i'm pagan :P

    Comment Hidden ( show )
  • Diaperdean

    Kinda interesting that the atheist will dig deep in order to believe in anything but God including space aliens.

    If you see writing on a wall you naturally assume it was put there by an intelligent human being.

    DNA is clearly writing. Who wrote it? Space Aliens?

    Comment Hidden ( show )
      -
    • EnglishLad

      DNA isn't writing. It's a form of "coding" made up of building blocks called amino acids.

      Those diagrams of DNA you see in biology class in high school are highly simplified. Actual DNA doesn't contain tiny little letters.

      Comment Hidden ( show )
  • JellyBeanBandit

    The best argument I can come up with is if we're very loose with our definition of what we consider to be a god. Like if there was an alien from another universe that was so advanced that it would seem like a god to us. If it turned out that it created our universe (but using advanced science rather than magic), then deists could claim that that's proof that they were right in their beliefs. That this was the alien they had believed in all along. I don't think we should count aliens as gods though, no matter how godlike they seem. All their powers would be explainable, a god's powers wouldn't be.

    No doubt if this origin of our universe were to be proven, then all different religious figures would try to claim that this alien is the god of their religion, and that it sent its son to save us or that it communicated with Mohammad, etc. But that'd be ridiculous, this alien would have no interest in us. It might study us, but to believe that it would care about the desires of such basic creatures is laughable, we'd be like microbes to it.

    So this would still only be a good argument for deism, I can't think of any good arguments for any one religion though.

    Comment Hidden ( show )
  • The best argument I heard is how can you look at the universe and not see a creator

    But for my beliefs, I think it's much more likely that there's like a core energy to the totality of physicality, and the big bang basically spread the energy around as a by product of the explosion, like how a bomb will leave a residue of gun powder and stuff

    I also think there are built in fail safes, like how black holes absorb all matter, thus returning all matter back to the original source as energy, kinda like how in pool the game is over once all the balls are potted

    This outlook doesn't really have any presuppositions, it's based on a lot of verified scientific research, but the person who posited what I said the best argument is for theism basically looked at that like it's retarded, even though I granted him the benefit of the doubt in believing in a purposeful creation

    One of his other points is like life is so complex it just has to be by design, my response to that was well of course life had to develop complexly, biology *is* complex

    And the funny thing is we're both saying very similar things, you know like that mass collection of energy (which btw there's recent research into basically all particles and waves having a foundation of energy) that could be like a god, like the aggregate of all the energy in the universe that could very well be conscious like we are but most likely on a more advanced level, that would rather basically dissipate itself repeatedly as big bangs than spend ad infinitum by itself, which could definitely be the same god he's talking about just using different words, but I think the spiritual connotations made him toxically sceptical, but that's okay because I now see him as an opportunistic hypocrite so his opinions don't really mean that much to me anyway, it just sucks in his mind and those he has influence over will see me in a similar light because it's like, I started out with the golden rule and he's just whatever about different view points. Like it's great you think Jesus is more like an ideal than a non fictional man portrayed to the letter in the bible, but how about you act like you really believe that before you try to dismiss what I'm saying. Like part of me just thinks he wants to be the only cognitively advanced person around and I guess I just made him realize his shortcomings

    But my biggest problem with that outlook is just that it's very similar to assigning human emotions to an animal, except they're assigning them to something incomprehensible to humans, so same thing just going the other way, which therein lies the dogma of religion and believing in a straight up god that created existence solely for us or mutual benefits or whatever

    Really my beliefs are more about developing as a person, being a positive source of energy. Which is almost what religion tries to accomplish, but without trying to tell people there's a god and heaven and how we have all this information based solely on the words of a few, so it's like, my beliefs are very similar to other religions, but again without the dogma.

    Comment Hidden ( show )
  • CountessDouche

    I'm actually not an atheist, I'm an agnostic, but I hope you don't mind me answering.

    It's ultimately an argument against the notion of the existence of god requiring proof. So, ultimately one of the biggest grievances against religious theory is that you can't prove that a god exists. If god was real jesus could've jumped off the cross & then god could've floated down on a unicorn & shot lazer beams out his god face.

    The notion of god proving he/she is real, however, violates the tenant of free will, which is a major belief in all religions. If god was indisputably true & a provable notion, then human choices would have no consequence & the notion of faith wouldn't glorify your god. Basically free will wouldn't exist; people would be robots, so the entire notion of humans being made in god's image would be nullified.

    Anyways, I don't believe it, but it's an interesting idea.

    Comment Hidden ( show )
      -
    • Chap

      Agnostic counts too. I really just mean anyone who's not a Theist

      Comment Hidden ( show )
        -
      • CountessDouche

        Thanks lol. It's an interesting question. I only blelive in the postman.

        Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds

        Comment Hidden ( show )
      • LloydAsher

        I'm on the other side of the scale when it comes to agnosticism. I do belive there is an entity of massive significance. I just dont know which it is since logically I have higher chances of getting into the favorable afterlife if I belive in any religion rather than be an atheist. So I just hedge my bets with some universalism and hope by not being an asshole I can avoid hell or whatever area in the ethereal existence that sucks the most. Since most religions see worshiping different gods as blasphemy I dont pick a god I just pick values that would be favorable as a subject or member of said group.

        My future children will be baptized in the extremely unlikely event that the rapture does happen. Plus it's a traditon thing in the family so it's a two birds one stone issue that really doesnt matter to me on a ethical level.

        To sum up why I dont just join a religion like christianity where I share 98% of the values is because I lack the faith for it. I dont think an omnicent god cares for people who just show up in church without actually believing in said faith.

        Comment Hidden ( show )
  • Ummitsstillme

    soviets

    Comment Hidden ( show )