Below I've put together thirty of them that most Christians agree on and why they are all improbable:
1) There must be a God who is a simple being yet made up of three
inexplicable persons existing forever outside of time without a
beginning, who therefore never learned anything new, never took a risk,
never made a decision, never disagreed within the Godhead, and never had
a prior moment to freely choose his own nature.
2) There must be a personal non-embodied omnipresent God who created the
physical universe ex-nihilo in the first moment of time who will
subsequently forever experience a sequence of events in time.
The traditional argument from evil claimed that God
was incompatible with any amount of suffering, for God could, and would want
to, prevent every instance of it. Most philosophers nowadays regard that as too
strong. A certain amount of suffering might be allowed by God, provided there
is a morally sufficient reason for his allowing it—provided, in other words,
the suffering serves some greater purpose or is the unavoidable consequence of
something that justifies its existence. For instance, it may be that our having
free will is a great good which more than compensates for any evil actions
resulting from that freedom. Or it may be that certain types of suffering are
the only way to bring about something of immense value. As an example of the
latter, it is possible that in order to freely develop into the sort of beings
that God wants us to become, we must first overcome certain challenges—and
these may include disappointments, feelings of frustration, and other
experiences we would prefer not going through. (As some theists put it, God’s intention
was not to create a paradise in which to keep us perfectly happy, but to create
a place where we can grow and develop into persons worthy of spending eternity
with him.) It is also possible that an instance of suffering today is the least
terrible means of preventing a far greater amount of suffering at some future
date. Each of these, as well as several other possibilities that will be
discussed below, provides a conceivable explanation for at least some of the
bad things that happen in this world.
But
even if God is not incompatible with all suffering, he is incompatible with
suffering that cannot be justified by some outweighing benefit. Such suffering
would be senseless or gratuitous, and if we are to take seriously the claim
that God is perfectly good as well as all-powerful and all-knowing, we cannot suppose
that he would let someone suffer without reason. If one has the ability to
prevent such pointless suffering, yet fails to do so, one cannot be considered
morally perfect. It follows that there can either be a God, or there can be
senseless suffering, but not both. This leads to a very simple argument in
support of atheism:
This essay began as an
opening statement in a debate with Scott Tomlinson, who is on the board of Reasonable
Faith, an organization whose founder and owner is the premier apologist of
our era, William Lane Craig. The debate took place on March 13, 2023, at the
Reston Bible Church, in Dulles, Virginia. Let it be said I didn’t do all that
well. But I did good enough. Since Craig has refused to debate me as a
former student of his, I consider debating Scott a second best choice.
What follows is an extended and updated essay based on my
opening statement, which I’m publishing after some further thought. [You can
see the original PowerPoint (with a few errors) at https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2023/03/my-debate-power-point.html]
The thing I like most about debates is they force me
to put into words my strongest arguments on a given subject at a given time.
See what you think, especially since I wrote the 2016 book, Unapologetic:
Why Philosophy Must End, severely downplaying the role of philosophy of
religion as it’s practiced. This is better than fruitlessly debating the five
ways of Aquinas.
I have known the author of the piece below for many years. Both he and I are most interested in what you think of its strongest and weakest parts, so please comment. The content in this essay deserves the utmost serious consideration.
--John W. Loftus.
SOMETHING NEW AND DECISIVE ABOUT FREE
WILL
LETHAL
TO THE NEED FOR SAVIOR JESUS
WHY
ARE YOU WHO YOU ARE?
COMPARE
THE EFFECTS -- ONLY YOU KNOW – OF THE
FACTORS MAKING YOU
AND
IMPOSED NOT CHOSEN – CAN ANYONE HAVE
FREE WILL?
By
Stanley W. Ayre -- March 2023
I'm done writing and editing books, so I'm highlighting each one of them in thirteen separate posts.
This anthology was named after Sam Harris's book The End of Faith like some others of mine. The so-called New Atheists took aim at God. My books took aim at Christianity in specific, because I knew the most about that religious faith.
After my first anthology, The Christian Delusion, I started telling authors the due date for their submissions was one month earlier than the actual deadline, to avoid last minute submissions. If I was concerned how the chapter was going I would ask for an outline, or rough draft along the way.
This took place on William Lane Craig's Facebook wall.
John Loftus: There is meaning and value and purpose in life. There just isn't any ultimate meaning and value and purpose for all sentient beings who have existed, or currently exist, or will exist into the distant future.
Guest Essay Written by Cat_Lord:
1.
Introduction
Throughout the course of Christian
history, there have been many and various attempts to argue for the truth of
Christianity. In this post, I will
discuss one popular form of apologetic argumentation named presuppositionalism.
The main points I want to write about are what this apologetic is as it relates to Cornelius Van Til, its
relationship to what are called “transcendental
arguments” in the philosophical literature, give examples of how presuppositionalists
often proceed with their argumentation, and finally point out some problems
with this apologetic.
