ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM

1. ATHEISM ANDAGNOSTICISM Material taken from several sources including Handbook of Today’s Religion.

2. Atheism • Comes from Greek prefix a (no or non) and the noun theos (god or God). • One who believes that there exists positive evidence that there is not God. • All of existence (to Atheists) can be explained naturally rather than supernaturally.

3. Atheism • Convinced that all religious belief, evidence, and faith are false. • The evidence favors the supposition of nonexistence (Ideas of the Great Philosophers). • Some contributors include Marx, Nietzsche, and Hume

4. Agnosticism • Comes from Greek prefix meaning no or non and the noun gnosis meaning knowledge (usually by experience). • One who believes there is insufficient evidence to prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of God or gods. • Agnostics criticize the theist and the atheists for their dogmatism of such knowledge.

5. Agnosticism • Refers to the neutralist view on the question of the existence of God; it is the view of the person who elects to remain in a state of suspended judgment (Sahakin and Sahakin, Ideas, 100). • Two kinds of Agnostics

6. Agnosticism • One says there is insufficient evidence at this time. • Other says they are convinced that it is objectively impossible for anyone to know or not know with certainty the existence or non existence of God.

7. Arguments Against Existence of God- Language • Language- Example: Talking about God is meaningless. • Argument does not actually deny that God exists but says talk about him his futile. • Refuting language argument: the argument itself is self-refuting. To say that one can’t talk meaningfully about God is to talk meaningfully about God (Religions, 426).

8. Arguments Against Existence of God- Language • Complete agnosticism is self-defeating; it reduces to the self-destructing assertion that ‘one knows enough about reality in order to affirm that nothing can be known about reality’. This statement provides within itself all that is necessary to falsify itself. For if one knows something about reality, then he surely can’t affirm in the same breath that all of reality is unknowable (Geisler, Apologetics 20).

9. Arguments Against Existence of God- Knowledge • Example: We can’t know the real. • Argument says, “We can know about things in the real world through the use of our senses and our mind. However, since our senses are imperfect and selective, and our mind is affected by all it has experienced previously, our perception of a thing is thereby affected (Religions, 422).

10. Arguments Against Existence of God- Knowledge • This argument does not specifically argue against God’s existence but can be used to deny that one can know objectively about God. • Refuting Knowledge argument: One who adheres completely to the idea that we cannot know the real is another example of one who refutes himself.

11. Arguments Against Existence of God- Knowledge • Reasonably we could say that we do not know everything about the real, but it is self-defeating to say one knows nothing about the real. IF one really knows nothing about the real, then his statement (I know nothing about the real) is false: he really knows the truth of the statement. His statement can’t be true unless, contradictorily, it is also false (Religion, 426).

12. Arguments Against Existence of God-Moral Concepts • Example: The Christian God could not allow evil. • If he were an all powerful God, then he could destroy all evil. If he were all good, the he would want to destroy all evil. If your all powerful, all good God existed, the He would have had to destroy all evil. Evil exists. Therefore, your all powerful, all God must not exist. Or if he exists, he is not able to do away with evil (Religion, 424).

13. Arguments Against Existence of God-Moral Concepts • Does not argue against the existence of all gods , but only against the all powerful, all knowing God. • This is probably the most frequent used argument. • Refuting the Moral Concept- Christians and theologians don’t disagree with the first premise:

14. Arguments Against Existence of God-Moral Concepts • Which is “if there is an all powerful God, he could destroy evil”. Where the problem comes is the second premise: • “If He were all good, He would want to destroy all evil”. • First an all powerful God may have beneficent reasons for uses for evil.

15. Arguments Against Existence of God-Moral Concepts • Secondly, the arguer has not taken into consideration the element of time. What is God wanted to use evil for a time and then ultimately destroy it. This would allow for a good God. • Thirdly, who are we to assume that God would want to destroy evil; God’s ways are not our ways.

16. Arguments Against Existence of God-Scientific Method • Example: God is man’s wish. • Man feel inadequate within himself. He desires for God to exist. Therefore God has no objective reality, he does not exist. • Refuting the scientific method: To say that man’s wish for God to exist proves that God does not exist is completely illogical.

17. Arguments Against Existence of God-Scientific Methods • Our wishing does not make things exist nor does it prelude things from existing. • Does the fact that atheists wish for God not to exist prove that he does exist? • One must look at the evidence (we will next week).

18. Arguments Against Existence of God-Logical Arguments • Example 1: God’s all powerfulness is contradictory. • There can’t be an omnipotent (all powerful) God. Such a God would be stuck with the following contradictory questions: • Can God create a rock to heavy for Him to lift?

19. Arguments Against Existence of God-Logical Arguments • Can God make 2+2 = 6? • Can God make Himself go out of existence and then pop back into existence? • Can God make a square circle? • If God is all powerful he should be able to do these things, but in doing them he is thwarting his own omnipotence, so God must not exist.

20. Arguments Against Existence of God-Logical Arguments • Example 2: God attributes contradict each other. • How can one both possess love and wrath? How can God be absolutely good and yet absolutely free? • Because God’s attributes contradict each other logically, He must not exist.

21. Arguments Against Existence of God-Logical Arguments • Refuting the Logical argument: God is all powerful but can’t and won’t do the logically or intrinsically impossible. • In other words God can’t and won’t contradict himself. • Best explained by Thomas Warren:

22. Arguments Against Existence of God-Logical Arguments • Rather than saying that God can’t do certain things, it would be more in harmony with the truth to say simply that such things cannot be done at all! God is infinite in power, but power meaningfully relates only to that which can be done, to what is possible of accomplishment- not to what is impossible.

23. Arguments Against Existence of God-Logical Arguments • (Continued) It is absurd to speak of any power being able to do what simply cannot be done. God can do whatever is possible to be done, but he will do only what is in harmony with his nature. Rather than saying that God cannot make a four sided triangle one would more accurately say that the making of a four sided triangle simply cannot be done.

24. YOU CHOOSE • Joshua said unto all the people [of Israel], . . . choose you this day whom ye will serve; . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Josh. 24:2, 15).