Strong Atheistic Arguments

• My Assessment of the Various Arguments—My little analysis on the usefulness of the various arguments on this page.
• The Consistency of Strong Atheistic Arguments—Answering the perceived contradiction between noncognitivism and other strong atheistic arguments, which appear to be based on attributing a meaning to the word “god”.
• Some Ideas for Debating
• Strong and weak, positive and negative – my change of position

Semantic Apologetics:
Arguments based on the meaninglessness of religious language.

• Introduction to Semantic Apologetics—A short introduction to the problem of meaning of religious language in contrast to daily experience.
• The Argument From Noncognitivism—Discussion of the most fundamental strong-atheistic argument, and core argument of semantic apologetics, noncognitivism. Noncognitivism is the argument that the word “god” is meaningless, and thus strong-atheism is justified by default. (article revised)
  • Conifer’s Refutation of Noncognitivism Examined—Examining Steven J. Conifer’s refutation of noncognitivism, which is little more than arguing from the imagination.
• Process-Based Noncognitivism—Complement to the article “The Argument From Non-Cognitivism”, examining the other line of proof for noncognitivism, and why there cannot be any god-hypothesis. (article revised)
• Argument from the Necessity of Naturalism—A short argument for strong-atheism proceeding from the impossibility of supernatural explanations.
• The Noncognitive Nature of Infinity—The meaninglessness of actual infinities provides an argument against an infinite god.

Materialist Apologetics:
Arguments based on divine causation making all facts of the universe contingent.

• Introduction to Materialist Apologetics—A short introduction to the self-refuting nature of the theistic universe.
• The Cartoon Universe of Theism—The alternative to a materialist universe is the belief in a cartoon-like world where everything goes.
• Materialist Apologetics—Defining the materialist strategy, which consists of using divine causation to prove that the theist has no grounds for absolutes or principles. Since many absolutes and principles, such as logic, are necessary, the idea that a god exists is self-refuting.
  • The Divine Non-Contradiction Principle and Why it Fails—The deconstruction of an objection to Materialist Apologetics, and its destructive consequences for the theistic conception of omniscience and god.
• Argument from Correct Choice—Presentation of a new argument, starting from the existence of a conscious choice to adopt the theological worldview, showing that such choice is self-contradictory. (article revised)
• Why Christians cannot account for morality—Using moral autonomy, basic moral assumptions and moral development to show that Christianity cannot account for morality, and thus does not even get off the ground.
• The Impossibility of Theistic and Christian Moral Principles—Proving that theism and Christianity are imcompatible with moral principles, using two materialist arguments and four other arguments.
• Argument From the Fact of Existence—An Objectivist argument that uses the primacy of existence, and the subjectivity of reality to God’s will, to disprove the possiblity of such a will.
• Apathetic/Amoral God Paradox—The extreme power and lack of limits inherent in a god’s existence makes it, paradoxically, completely amoral and apathetic. This relationship with metaphysical power and apathy is what I call the Apathetic God Paradox. It can also be used as an argument against Creation.
• The Euthyphro Dilemma—An ancient and famous dilemma: is Good decided by God’s will, or is Good a property that God conforms to? (article revised)

Incoherency Apologetics (External):
Arguments based on a contradiction between a divine attribute and a fact of reality.

• Special section on the Problem of Evil
• Atheistic Teleological Arguments—Taken from chapter 13 of Michael Martin’s “Atheism: A Philosophical Justification”, the five teleological arguments discussed in this article provide a powerful inductive case against the notion of a god Creator.
• Ontological Argument for the Non-Existence of God—A powerful modal argument formulated by John L. Pollock, using a premise from the theistic ontological argument to prove strong atheism logically.
• Argument from Scale—The Argument from Scale uses facts about the universe’s scale to show that materialism is the most reasonable position. Formalized using the words of its author Nicholas Everitt.
• The Incoherency of ‘Divine Creation’—An extensive discussion of the atheistic Cosmological Argument, which states that divine creation is impossible due to the necessary absence of time.
• Argument from Moral Autonomy—An argument by James Rachels, proceeding from a god’s property of being object of worship, proving that such an object cannot exist due to the nature of moral autonomy.

Incoherency Apologetics (Internal):
Arguments based on contradictions between divine attributes.

• ‘Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey’—A list of Theodore Drange’s ten incompatibility arguments, from an article in Philo.
• ‘The Self-Contradiction of Jesus’—Dawson Bethrick argues that the belief in both an immaterial God and a material Jesus entails a fatal contradiction.

Incoherency Apologetics (Scientific):
Arguments based on a contradiction between a divine attribute and a scientific law or laws, trapping the theist between noncognitivism and disproof by scientific fact.

• The Argument From Mind-Brain Dependence—An argument from neuroscience and evolution, showing that the dependence of minds on material substrates contradicts the notion of a personal Creator being.
• Argument from Evolution—An argument by Kyle J. Gerkin, which argues that evolution was not possible before the universe existed, and that no other mechanism could explain a god’s intelligence.
• Argument From the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—Edward Greve proposes a contradiction between the laws of thermodynamics and God’s entropy as deduced from his property of Creator.
• Argument from Quantum Physics—An argument that demonstrates why the laws of quantum mechanics are incompatible with an omniscient God.
• Big Bang Cosmological Argument—Quentin Smith’s argument from the fundamental unpredictability of the Big Bang singularity.
• Argument from the Hartle-Hawking Model

Evidential and Others:
Arguments based on the immorality of theism and the efficacy of science, and others.

• Occam’s Razor—The accumulation of scientific explanations as a strong-atheistic argument. Also see God: The Failed Hypothesis : How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
• Epistemic Arguments—Facts about the results of rational processes, and a comparison with theism and religion, gives us an inductive argument against theism and for strong atheism.
• Is Theistic Religion a Consolation?—A brief discussion of various evidential arguments against thestic belief and for a strong-atheistic view of the universe.

Other Arguments To Be Covered:

• Logical Problem of Evil (The Impossibility of God p118)
• Evidential Problem of Evil
• Inductive Argument from Evil
• Soteriological Problem of Evil
• Argument from Non-Belief/Divine Hiddenness, Problem of Ignorance (“God?” p101 and 129)
• Argument from Miracles (The Impossibility of God p150)
• Conflicts Between the Divine Attributes (Martin, The Impossibility of God p242)
• Existentialist Argument (from The Impossibility of God)
• Ignorance Argument (Drange p208)
• Argument from Personhood
• Argument from Insufficient Knowledge of the Bible for the Nonexistence of the God of Christianity
• Dimensional Argument
• Other Incoherency arguments, and pragmatic or methodological arguments
• Modal Argument Against the Necessity of the Biblical God

NOTE: We do not yet list single internal incoherency arguments, only groups of them, at this time. An individual list would be tedious and repetitive.

Problem of Evil

• The Moral Argument from Evil—This argument uses the premise that God justifies all instances of evil events, and the fact that believers attempt to stop evil events all the time, to show that the existence of God is self-contradictory.
• Notes on the Various Problems of Evil—Francois Tremblay presents his own take on the PoE and how to argue it, and lists variants for easy consultation.
• The Immorality of Theodicies—Volker Dittman provides an argument to show that, even if believers could give us a theodicy that made sense, it would still be wholly unacceptable because it would nullify all possibility of morality and moral judgment.
• Moral Argument for Atheism—A short overview of an argument by Raymond Bradley, showing that the Bible contradicts accepted moral principles, and thus makes the existence of a good god impossible.

Weak Atheistic Arguments:

Memetic Apologetics:
Arguments based on memetics (especially the adoption and propagation of ideas).

• Process-Based Epistemic Arguments—Inductive arguments show us that theism does not fulfill conditions that we should expect in rational disciplines and true claims.
• Reverse Pascal’s Wager—A short mathematical analysis of Pascal’s Wager, revealing it to be an atheistic argument.

Evidential Apologetics:
Arguments based on the immorality of theism and the efficacy of science.

• Christianity, Suicide, and the Meaning of Life—Horia Plugaru argues that Christians, if they were morally consistent, should commit suicide, and also addresses a great number of objection.

Anti-Christian Apologetics:

• The Jesus Myth—There is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of the Biblical character of Jesus, thus making Christianity impotent.

Biblical Analysis Department:

• The Biblical Assertion of Divine Attributes—A list of verses proving that omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence is explicitly attributed to God by the Bible.
• Some Points for Bible Debates
• Rameus on the Testimonium Flavianum