The entirety of the arguments for theism use the god of the gaps argument and/or circular logic and then claim it as "perfect evidence" or just ignore evidence in the entirety. You cannot have a reasonable belief system without evidence. A claim simply cannot be made without evidence backing it (See: Russel's Teapot). You theists can say all you like about your clearly contradictory holy books that you never read for yourself with unscientific things such as:

Denying evolution (See: Endogenous Retroviruses and many, many more)

Saying the earth is 6,000 years old (See: countless dating methods that aren't carbon dating which people like to refute)

There is life after death (Human consciousness does not work like that, everything you are is stored in the brain, souls are imaginary things that once again, have no evidence.)

(Edit: yes, I get that not all theists have some of these beliefs, but theism taken literally most major religions make these claims. You don't need to keep pointing it out in the comments.)

If you want to make outrageous claims about an imaginary thing you were most likely forcibly indoctrinated into, please provide peer-reviewed scientific proof that most of the scientific community agrees on.

You may find it to be impossible. That's because it is.

I have seen many people in this group demand “proof” for theism without examining this standard. Assuming that religious belief does require rational support, of what sort and to what extent? I argue that theism requires epistemic justification but not formal proof (i.e. scientific falsifiability). Theism is a warranted belief, by which I mean that a reasonable person can judge cumulative evidence, apply personal judgment, and hold the belief. Clarifications:

1. This argument involves the methods of theistic argument and epistemic terms involved, not specific arguments for or against theism.

2. This argument assumes and allows for the fact that many reasonable people (e.g. atheists) will judge the evidence for theism to be insufficient and reject the claim.

3. Justification and warrant are used interchangeably in this argument. Both terms are used to characterize beliefs founded on judgment applied to evidence.

4. EDIT: I am not arguing that theists have the right to “believe whatever they want.” My argument implies that evidentiary standards for theistic belief are necessary, and it asserts that theism is epistemically and objectively warranted (not proven) without scientifically falsifiable data.

EDIT: My definition of “formal proof” was left unclear. I meant to imply scientific falsifiability, not “proof” in a mathematical sense. Apologies for the lack of clarity.

Does anyone have any books that they recommend? I think it would be great if we could amass a collection of important works on someones journey through Atheism and Theism.

I’m confident that there is no God, and I can’t imagine how someone could ever change my mind. A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video that was made to convince people that God was real and such. That video held one argument that makes no sense to me. The person basically compared the universe to a building. They said that all buildings have architects, and the people in the building know that someone designed it, but they don’t know who designed it. Hey said that, as such, the same is true for the universe, and God is surely the universe’s architect. This baffled me, because the universe is nothing like a building, and wasn’t constructed with the hands of workers. Yet the comments on the video were positive, and it seemed like a lot of people agreed with the ideas within it. Theist arguments seem so stupid and pointless to me. You can’t prove the existence of God. That’s it.

Hello, I was watching a video by Steven Nemes, a philosophy professor at Grand Canyon University, talking about the problem of evil.

As a summary, he roughly says the following in the first two minutes:

“Maximally perfect being who is omnipotent omniscient and perfectly good. If so, God would prevent evil, thus no evil and contradictory to God. Does this address classical theism? God is an ultimate and absolute reality upon which everything else depends on its existent in every moment in time. God is not a thing with various properties let alone collection of all great making properties, he’s an absolutely simple and purely actual reality responsible casually for the existence of everything else in every moment in time.”

Is this accepted in general? I was under the impression that classical theist deity would still have the problem of evil apply against it?

Video: https://youtu.be/c1b6Y0ANdWc

Please answer truthfully based on your own experience and be respectful in the comments.

View Poll

Good morn,

I am seeking input from the community on their interpretations on what constitutes being Pagan, and if my spiritual journey dovetails with that heading.

I've always been drawn to Pagan practices, at least the ones I knew about, e.g., some of the sabbats around the Wheel of the Year. I have always felt a reverence for nature and firmly believe humanity is a part and not separate from it. I am agnostic, but there are moments when I am away from cities and towns in nature and I feel like I am gazing at the divine. The thought, "This must be what it feels like to believe in God" has crossed my mind. For context, I was baptized Roman Catholic but had since separated myself from the church. On occasion I feel this when gazing at human works, but not nearly as often.

I am currently doing a lot of reading on paganism, including published books, blogs from those in various traditions, and even reading some of this Reddit. What I currently understand is that Paganism is a huge umbrella and does not subscribe to dogma. And that simply liking nature does equate to paganism. However, this is where I wonder where I align. I am agnostic, but I personally believe that deities are meaningful representations and metaphors. I believe everything in the cosmos is connected in one way or another. And I personally feel a connection to some practices (often through something that directly interacts with nature).

I fully respect everyone's beliefs in various traditions as well as theism, however that manifests. My agnosticism does not deny that. However, is my agnosticism inherently incompatible? Are my views of the divine maligned or appropriative? Ultimately I believe however I gain spiritual guidance and fulfillment is up to me regardless of labels, provided I do not misrepresent and harm. I would love to hear your thoughts. For now, I am continuing to read and engage here until I can find a more local community (not sure when meeting will be safe enough again).

Thank you.

P.S. side question - I always adored and felt honest with the term "blessed be", but is this best reserved for those in the Wiccan tradition? Is using it otherwise inappropriate?

Here I intend to show that the fine tuning argument for the existence of God is incompatible with the skeptical theism response to the problem of evil. First, I’d like to go over what the two positions entail.

The fine tuning argument is specifically about the fine tuning of the universe for life. Whatever the constants of the universe happen to be, they are unique. If the selection were random, the chances of any particular alternative to ours obtaining is equal to the chance of ours obtaining.

The argument thus relies on the notion that a value for the constants that permits life to occur is greater under theism than it would be if they were selected purely randomly because it seems plausible that God would have a greater reason for creating a universe with life than one without it. Since the constants of our universe do permit life, this is evidence that theism is true. A corollary of this is that if the universe didn’t contain life, it would be evidence against theism.

Atheists have made an argument of a similar nature against theism: the problem of evil. God would have greater reason to create a universe without evil/suffering than with it. On the other hand, a life permitting universe with random, natural selection would more likely have evil than not. Thus, the existence of evil is evidence against the existence of God.

One common theistic counter to the problem of evil is that of “skeptical theism.” Skeptical theists claim that we can’t know whether God is likely to create a universe without evil, and thus the existence of evil doesn’t count as evidence against God’s existence.

Skeptical theists give several reasons for maintaining such skepticism which basically amounts to the claim that humans have limited cognitive faculties in judging what is good or evil at a cosmic scale. It is difficult to see what consequences removing evil from the world would have and whether individual acts of apparent evil support the greater good in the long run.

I contend that these defenses can work equally well against the fine tuning argument. If we must remain agnostic about what makes a universe good at a cosmic level, then we cannot conclude that God is more likely to create a universe with life permitting constants than one of the myriad possible universes without. It could be that life is something that is fundamentally not good and creating it would be immoral. We just don’t have the cognitive faculties to see it.

Furthermore, classical theism

Has anyone else here been encountering Street Epistemology on podcasts or elsewhere in relationship to theism ?

https://streetepistemology.com/

Arguing with an atheist is like arguing with a naked person about clothing. They have a lot of criticisms, but no solutions.

It seems like the author (Anthony Magnabosco?) doesn't realize how much of a begging-the-question fallacy he is committing with the God question. JudeoChristianity provides an existential answer to our past, present, future, purpose and meaning. The atheist/skeptic position is at best naive nihilism, or whistling past the graveyard.

I've seen Anthony Magnabosco use the method a few times, and he seems to commit a single-cause fallacy by trying to isolate people's justifications. For myself and most true believers I know, we came to know God through multiple lines and levels of reason, logic and experience. Converts tend to state their main reason for believing, but that is usually just the thing we remember as a catalyst on top of a mountain of other reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause

The method is pretty good though, following the Socratic method, so I suspect that Anthony Magnabosco will convert eventually if he keeps following the highest truth.

there is a leap between philosophical theism and faith in a particular revelation. But personally I find religious Theism to be more coherent and complete. If God is a perfect being, morally perfect and therefore worthy of worship, would he have left humanity indifferent? If there is a very good God then probably he is not indifferent and therefore there must be some truth in the revelations. Moreover, in view of the Problem of Evil, an indifferent God will show that this God is not moral at all and not at all worthy of being worshiped or even interested in him. The Revelations create a bond between us and God that is distant and promises reparation for the evil present on Earth. So in my eyes, religious theism is more likely than simple philosophical theism.

Thesis:

After considering shortcomings of typical modal collapse arguments, I will offer a new argument which tries to avoid those issues.

I can already tell what the classical theists reading this are thinking. "This is an issue that has been debated several times. People just refuse to understand classical theism." Don't worry, in fact, I'm going to try and give critiques of normal modal collapse arguments, but I'm also going to give a newer formulation of the argument.

This post will draw lots of inspiration from this paper written by Schmid. https://philpapers.org/archive/SCHTFD-5.pdf

Before I continue, I have to define a few terms and positions.

Traditional theism: A concept of God which states that God is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect and all-good, pure perfection, omnipresent, necessary, and so on.

Classical theism: Classical theism is a model of the traditional monotheistic God. Ryan Mullins notes that there are four extra considerations which makes classical theism unique among other models. That is divine simplicity, immutability, impassibility, and timelessness. Divine simplicity in a nutshell is that whatever is in God, is god. To elaborate, any property intrinsic to God is identical to God. An example would be that God is his nature, his existence, his essence, etc. Immutability is the view that God cannot undergo any intrinsic change. Some classical theists may argue that God can still undergo cambridge or extrinsic change, but this isn't the only view. Impassibility if I understand correctly is the view that God cannot be causally effected by anything outside of him. Timelessness seems pretty obvious, but in case you're confused, it's the view that God doesn't stand in temporal relations. God is not within time, and God thus cannot undergo succession.

There's other views which one could take like a no real relations doctrine and so on, but I won't get into that.

Basic Modal Collapse Argument

1. Necessarily, God exists.
2. God is identical to his act of creation.
3. Necessarily, God's act of creation exists.

The justifications are pretty basic for this argument. The first premise just follows from the assumption of traditional theism, classical theism being one such form. The second premise would naturally follow from the assumption of DDS(Doctrine of Divine Simplicity). Premise three should then follow. As Ryan Mullins puts it:

>Does divine simplicity enta

I decided for who knows what reason to scroll through r/Christianity again and once again I am reminded how horrible this stuff can be. I mean sure you've got people who genuinely find comfort in having someone watching them every second of every day constantly judging by arbitrary standards that they came up with and if you fail to meet these standards you will be punished in freezing black flames for eternity. I'm not one to kink shame so sure find comfort in what you want but in 5 minutes of scrolling I'm finding posts by teen boys being scared of being sent to hell for having a crush. There's someone beating them up over the fact they have OCD and as a result sometimes have blasphemous thoughts. These people are second guessing every move they make and it just infuriates me how this can be considered the norm. This is simply emotionally abusive. But anyway ima stop here cus otherwise this would be a million words long.

As many of you know, the PhilPaper Survey for 2020 came out. It is our first update in over a decade. I offer some analysis of that survey. I also contrast it with the 2007 survey. I argue for the following claims:

1. Theism is becoming less popular in academic philosophy.
2. Theistic arguments are not convincing, and the lack of consensus coupled with the unpopularity of theism supports this.
3. Both Philosophers of Religion and theists hold weird views that go against popular and otherwise convincing positions. These weird views may not be held in good faith.

There Are Less Religious Philosophers Now Than a Decade Ago

In the 2009 Philpaper Survey, here is how people answered the God question:

• Accept or Lean Toward Atheism: 72.8%
• Accept or Lean Toward Theism: 14.6%
• Other: 12.6%

In the 2020 Philpaper Survey, here is how people answered the God question:

• Accept or Lean Towards Atheism: 66.72%
• Accept or Lean Towards Theism: 18.64%
• Other: 14.63%

This looks like a big win for theism! We have a large decrease in atheists and a substantial bump in theism. However, this conclusion is too fast. When we examine the data in a more fine grained manner we see that theism is becoming less popular over time.

The 2020 Philpaper Survey offers a longintudal analysis. You can sort by survey answers from the same people, same departments or similar departments.

When we the same people, we see a swing of ≈ 1% towards thesim. The bulk of that 1% is taken from the atheism column. However, this is from a sample group just over 300 people so this swing is tiny.

When we do the same departments, there is a 2 point swing away from theism as well as 1.6 swing towards atheism. The sample size is also larger.

And for comparable departments, we see a similar 2 point swing away from theism as well as a 1.4 swing in favour of atheism.

I was going to target comparable departments and Philosophers of Religion but the sample size was tiny. When we compare all Philosophers of Religion polled last time (2009, 2020), and those polled now, we see the following changes:

• *Accept or Lean Towards Athei

> 84% of the global population are religious (ie. some variation of "creationists") That's your "common sense" for you. I suggest you stop appealing to it, because according to "common sense" you should not even be a Darwinist, but a theist. Which you basically are anyway, just worshipping the process of abiogenesis and natural selection, with no more reason to do so, than a believer has to worship their non-existent God.

A small snippet of an argument i saw thought it would be interesting if some of you saw it as well

So did they ever explain if Jashin was a real god in Naruto? Watching the Hidan/Kakuzu arc, Hidan seems to do a ritual after every battle. Is he just insane and believes he's doing it for a religious cause or is Jashin actually supplying him with Chakra and immortality? Moreover, the Susanoo forms are clearly based on Japanese gods and myths (Tengu, etc) but there is never any mention of an actual God aside from Jashin. So what is the verdict, did Hidan just create a kinjutsu like Orochimaru and it's all in his head?

I was speaking with a friend who has what I find to be an unusual and fascinating take on her belief in God. She fully concedes that she has no rational or evidentiary basis for her belief. She goes even further to say that God probably doesn't exist by any objective measure. Nevertheless, she fully believes in God based on the emotional comfort she derives from that belief. She describes it as emotionally willing herself into her belief.

I've never heard anyone describe their brand of theism quite this way. And it would seem to lend credence to what many think is the flaw in Pascal's Wager - the idea that one can choose to believe something they don't otherwise believe. So, I'm wondering if this is a subject that has been addressed by philosophers, and perhaps I could read more about?

Hello. New to sub, MAJOR FAN of House MD.

The character House I relate to a lot. He says a lot that I feel. No, I am not depressed, am in a loving relationship, and I am very content with my life. But he SAYS things I wish I could say to people. Especially when it comes to religion and odd beliefs.

He sees things from an outside perspective and displays how rediculous religious beliefs comes across. I feel the exact same way, though I would never say anything, especially as brash as how House would. But this character has made me feel that I am not as alone being an athiest within a very theist upbringing and surroundings. He says things that have gone through my head many times.

I love the writing of the show. Gone through the series now for the 5th time. (just finishing up S8) GREAT WRITING, great depth of characters... for the most part. Side note... I'm a huge fan of Charlyne Yi, I wish they could have continued with her. Too bad she started so late in the series to really give people a chance. I loved how they played on her typical awkwardness that is her signature. Side-side note... Odette Annable "Adams" had no depth. The writers really dropped the ball on that one.

ANYWAYS... I digress. I was able to relate to House's inability to understand the NEED of people to possess beliefs of a supernatural source. It baffles me also.

So... this show gave me solice, in a very weird sort of way. I don't really have a feeling of superiority nor smugness, but in my mind I find myself getting close to that.

ANYWAYS... this is just my sharing. Not to start any heated debate. But I do encourage intelligent conversation with respect. This is where I differ from House, I actually have major empathy for other's feelings and needs. That's why I don't say anything to offend them. If they want to believe in something and it gives them solice, who am I to tell them otherwise???

I really love the show. I just wanted to share what spoke to me. Beers for all of you!

This question was really stuck on my mind, so I wanted to ask this question.

But please, before answering this question, I'll leave the definition of the words down below:

A theist is someone who believes in a higher being. Most of them are religious, and I'll include deists because they believe in a higher being

An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a higher being. However is atheism not believing in a higher being or believing no higher being exists?

An agnostic is someone who believes it's impossible to prove a higher being exists or don't.

Thanks for those who answer my question

I’ve been digging into Spinoza’s Ethics and began pondering upon these ideas. Scholars go back and forth on whether Spinoza was a pantheist or an atheist…

Spinoza aside, I find pantheism captivating because it takes away the necessity for a physical god, yet still ✨enchants✨ the world with some mystical essence.

yet i’m aware that i may have leanings toward this just because of my former Christian beliefs.

Nonetheless, it’s incredibly beautiful to be in this period of personal growth and evolution. Now over a year since my deconversion, and I’m still enthralled with the experience of merely being a human.

I know attaching labels to my beliefs is limiting. But as of now I’d say I’m an existential nihilist who is open to pantheism with a dash of absurdist philosophy in the mix.

Now being freed from religious dogma, it’s also quite refereshing to have the ability to pick from multiple viewpoints in order to synthesize my perspectives on the world.

from the theist camp, i disagree that "people wont get justice" (admittedly very rare, but sometimes seen. well people won't get justice, simple as, because that is the truth of the matter. it has 0 ties to proving any god's existence, and is an emotional appeal.

I am wondering if we can reconcile these approaches by utilizing the Palamite doctrine of God's energies. Classical theism describes God's essence, while process theology describes God's energies.

For classical theists, God creates ex nihilo. For Whitehead, creativity was the brute absolute only definable by its accidents. Can we think of this as the father's self-empting? Creativity's first accident is God's primordial nature, and God's consequent nature is the redeeming/relationality to creation.

In other words, there are these three metaphysical ultimates--the kenotic Creativity, the logos/primordial nature which lures toward the future, and the consequent nature which redeems the past. Might these be the energies of the trinity, as experienced by creatures?

Now, in process thought, contingent being is necessary and evil is a permanent possibility. Rather than preserving contrasts, doesn't necessity and contingency come into their own when given full dignity and distinction? Every possible world includes God, but that there are possible worlds is itself dependent on God.

Additionally, you might think that creation truly is becoming--and hence evil is a provisional possibility. Might it be the case, through the incarnation and atonement, that all finite actual occasions become capable of full prehension? The coming of the Kingdom of God, in other words, is the perfect reflection of the consequent nature of God "on earth"?

Whitehead knew that philosophy is limited because of our ability to imagine possibilities and contrasts. It seems plausible to me that imitating the teleology of other occasions, rather than following the lure towards the greatest depth of experience, lead to the predominance of the physical pole, and eventually evolutionary incentives towards partial prehension. The secular cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman makes an interestingly similar case about our perception.

In Jesus, a man fully incarnated God by having a self perfectly receptive to the divine lure. Might it be that his resurrection represented a "earthly" life fully participating in the divine life of the consequent nature/holy spirit?

TL;DR

Classical theism can be thought of as describing God as Godself is intrinsically. Process thought can be thought of as describing God in relation to God's ongoing act of creation. This is similar to the Palamite essence-energy distinction. The doctrine of analogy might allow us to soften that distinction.

I don't understand people who identify as "strong" or "gnostic" atheists. Admittedly, "god" is an incredibly poorly defined concept, and there are no obvious mechanisms by which he could violate the laws of physics to intervene in the world. So I feel very comfortable rejecting every religion's claims to their god's existence, but I am not comfortable ruling out the possibility that any kind of deity could exist, because there's no way to test that hypothesis one way or the other.

No one knows what caused the big bang, nor what kind of reality could precede it (especially if the big bang was the beginning of spacetime). You could postulate a God kicked off the process, or that the universe is self-sustaining.

I think the only rational position to take is either agnostic atheism or agnostic theism/deism. People who call themselves "gnostic" atheists or theists come across as overconfident and unserious.

EDIT: Y'all are serial downvoters, but this has been fun. Imma bow out. Most of this has been a debate around semantics, but there are genuinely people who claim to be 100% confident in their position either for or against god's existence: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/penoxr/strong_or_gnostic_atheism_is_just_as_unjustified/hayykfp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Much has been said on this subreddit (including by me!) on the subject of how atheism should be understood. The endless debate is, of course, whether atheism should be understood as only a lack of belief. I mention this only to be totally clear that this post is not about what atheism means, and to hopefully avoid the common pitfalls of that conversation, I will try to refrain from using the "a" word at all from this point on.

Instead, I'm going to focus on the notion of lacking belief itself. I've noticed a lot of people say that they only lack the belief in God -- that is, they neither affirm God exists nor that God does not exist -- and also that theism is basically and inescapably irrational (or there's no evidence at all to support the existence of God, which implies the same thing). I'm going to attempt to show that these are incompatible positions: if you think theism is always irrational then you must rationally hold that God does not exist. Another way of putting it (I summarize this a little later on): if you rationally lack belief, you may not take the position that theism is always irrational.

Here's the argument in summary:

1. A rational belief is whatever the total evidence best suggests.
2. If theism is always irrational, then the total evidence best suggests there is no God.
3. Therefore, if theism is always irrational, then the rational belief is that there's no God.

And here's an explanation of each premise in turn.

Premise 1: A rational belief is whatever the total evidence best suggests.

This shouldn't be a terribly controversial. A different way of putting it: we should believe what we have the best reasons to believe.

Maybe somewhat less obvious, but hopefully a straightforward ramification: lacking belief can be irrational. If the evidence best suggests that some proposition is true, it's irrational to not believe it's true (because we should believe what the evidence best suggests). Or if the evidence best suggests that some proposition is false, it's irrational to not believe it's false (same deal). The only time it's rational to lack belief is when the evidence suggests neither.

Premise 2: If theism is always irrational, then the total evidence best suggests there is no God.

This is the premise that will strike some people as strange. I'd anticipate a reply like: "if theism is irrational, this only means there's no good reasons to believe in God, not that there's good reasons to believe there's no God. T

Please provide the strongest arguments and the specific authors of those arguments.

If it is a cumulative case, can you place your top 3 arguments of the cumulative case please?

Thesis:

After considering shortcomings of typical modal collapse arguments, I will offer a new argument which tries to avoid those issues.

I can already tell what the classical theists reading this are thinking. "This is an issue that has been debated several times. People just refuse to understand classical theism." Don't worry, in fact, I'm going to try and give critiques of normal modal collapse arguments, but I'm also going to give a newer formulation of the argument.

This post will draw lots of inspiration from this paper written by Schmid. https://philpapers.org/archive/SCHTFD-5.pdf

Before I continue, I have to define a few terms and positions.

Traditional theism: A concept of God which states that God is omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect and all-good, pure perfection, omnipresent, necessary, and so on.

Classical theism: Classical theism is a model of the traditional monotheistic God. Ryan Mullins notes that there are four extra considerations which makes classical theism unique among other models. That is divine simplicity, immutability, impassibility, and timelessness. Divine simplicity in a nutshell is that whatever is in God, is god. To elaborate, any property intrinsic to God is identical to God. An example would be that God is his nature, his existence, his essence, etc. Immutability is the view that God cannot undergo any intrinsic change. Some classical theists may argue that God can still undergo cambridge or extrinsic change, but this isn't the only view. Impassibility if I understand correctly is the view that God cannot be causally effected by anything outside of him. Timelessness seems pretty obvious, but in case you're confused, it's the view that God doesn't stand in temporal relations. God is not within time, and God thus cannot undergo succession.

There's other views which one could take like a no real relations doctrine and so on, but I won't get into that.

Basic Modal Collapse Argument

1. Necessarily, God exists.
2. God is identical to his act of creation.
3. Necessarily, God's act of creation exists.

The justifications are pretty basic for this argument. The first premise just follows from the assumption of traditional theism, classical theism being one such form. The second premise would naturally follow from the assumption of DDS(Doctrine of Divine Simplicity). Premise three should then follow. As Ryan Mullins puts it:

> Does divine simplicity ent

I just want to know why Agnostic Theism is appealing to Agnostic Theists instead of Agnostic Atheism.....