No, no, no, the worst argument comes curtesy of S.T. Joshi, the H.P. Lovecraft Boswell and pseudo-intellectual horror fiction pundit* It doesn't even reach the level of formal argument as does Dawkins; just a belligerently projected assumption: given how vast and ancient and terrifyingly vast and terrifyingly ancient the cosmos is et cetera et cetera [insert cosmic vastness rhetoric here] how could God be anything more than a human story, a Semitic myth to give meaning to the vast vastness of it all?

*I have no idea what the hereafter folds for these people but I hope it involves being forced to hear David Lewis lecture on Modal Concretism for a suitably vast length of time

I think the worst argument against God was by Jean-Paul Satre. Satre's argument was that people watching us somehow 'steals' our sense of personal identity...therefore an all-seeing God could only be monstrous as715 such a being would steal the identity of all human beings. This argument really is more of an insight into Satre's psychology - he really didn't like being watched and stared at. This is probably a combination of Satre's experiences under Nazi rule in Germany (he was a member of the French resistance) and his own aversion to his 'superstar' status as the most influential philosopher of his generation. But the argument itself is clearly more of an emotional argument thart a serious philosophical argument, even though it is persented by Satre and his followers as a serious philosophical argument. It has even had som influence in pop culture in Pascal Mercier's novel 'Night Train to Lisbon' and the film adaptation of it starring Jeremy Irons. (Not a bad film, actually.)

AKG wrote:

All terrible arguments, but for me I still Dawkins takes the cake as not only do I hear his brain dead followers repeat his argument as if it were somehow devastating and a serious argument(Check the FFRF definition of a "freethinker". This is their argument against God). He offers no metaphysical reasons for why God should be complex as opposed to simple. Unlike Plotinus, Aquinas, Avicenna, Maimonides, and others who spent hundreds of pages explaining why God should be simple, and based their reasoning on well developed metaphysical principles, Dawkins offers no real reason to think so, and just asserts it. He does not even tackle the idea of Divine Simplicty, and explains why it fails as opposed to his own complexity crap.(Though this might be a good thing, considering that he tried to go against Aquinas and messed up his arguments so bad that Aquinas rolled in his grave). What's worse is that people have called him out on it for years now and he refuses to listen. Like the little kid who says 2+2=22 and is told otherwise, but ignores criticism because he feels it is right, Dawkins does the exact same.

Dawkins' "Ultimate 747 Boeing Gambit" (ugh) is indeed obviously awful, and it only maintains any attention because it, unfortunately, flatters scientific and wannabe scientific readers' prejudice against religion and philosophical preconceptions about how *all* (rather than merely material) explanation is to go.

AKG wrote:

Oh, I've got another bad one. Russels Teapot. For a good thinker like him who rejected logical positivism and empiricism, this argument is just sad. But like Dawkins crap, brain dead gnus keep thinking it is gold. It attacks a straw man(assumes that God is a physical being in the universe) and it also unknowingly commits itself to logical positvism as it assumes all evidence has to be empirical, but did'nt Russel reject both it and empiricism? How did he even come up with this as he bases it off two ideas he rejected?

I've previously remarked that Russell will accept the reality of universals, even non-traditional universals like relations (no logical positivist or empiricist, he), yet thinks that the philosophical god is untenable.

Here's his direct version of it:

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. It is customary to suppose that, if a belief is widespread, there must be something reasonable about it. I do not think this view can be held by anyone who has studied history. Practically all the beliefs of savages are absurd. In early civilizations there may be as much as one percent for which there is something to be said. In our own day…. But at this point I must be careful. We all know that there are absurd beliefs in Soviet Russia. If we are Protestants, we know that there are absurd beliefs among Catholics. If we are Catholics, we know that there are absurd beliefs among Protestants. If we are Conservatives, we are amazed by the superstitions to be found in the Labour Party. If we are Socialists, we are aghast at the credulity of Conservatives. I do not know, dear reader, what your beliefs may be, but whatever they may be, you must concede that nine-tenths of the beliefs of nine-tenths of mankind are totally irrational. The beliefs in question are, of course, those which you do not hold. I cannot, therefore, think it presumptuous to doubt something which has long been held to be true, especially when this opinion has only prevailed in certain geographical regions, as is the case with all theological opinions.

It should be kept in mind that at the point in the essay in which it's presented (see: http://russell.mcmaster.ca/cpbr11p69.pdf ) the argument is merely dispatching a presumption of the need for disproof on the part of the religious skeptic: a religious position that Russell has already taken to be throughly disproved. The argument does not really serve as a true disproof of God, but really as an argument against the *mere* presumption of burden of proof on the basis of inscrutability and socio-historical prestige. His essay is generally bad and under argued, but it was a popular essay, and I take it that Russell simply viewed his role as a public intellectual to "inform" the public of what philosopher's (that he likes) think.

Last edited by iwpoe (9/03/2015 9:42 am)

AKG wrote:

If that's true than I'm dissapointed by Russel, because he is doing sophistry. Does he have any good reasons to disbelieve or are they just straw manned arguments that appeal to emotion?

In that article? No, not really. In general? I'm not really sure, to be honest. I might go so far as to think that mainly he thinks the classical arguments can't be stated in modern predicate logic and are thus incoherent. Has anyone read his Leibniz book? He's a wonderful interpreter of Leibniz and I would think knowing how he addresses Leibniz on God will probably get you the closest to a serious argument against God.