Let’s Stop Calling New Atheism, “Atheism,” and Start Calling it What it is: Anti-Theism

[wickerwoman]

142. As I said in my last post,

a. you can't prove a negative, so no, it's not possible to prove that God does not exist.

b. I am reasonably certain that the God(s) of all the major Western religions does not exist because of the internal logical inconsistencies which I pointed out in my last post.

It is a logical absurdity to reconcile an omnipotent, omniscient and good deity with the Holocaust, 9/11, famine in Africa, tsumanis that kill hundreds of thousands of people, crib deaths, etc. Either "God" is unable to stop these events, in which case it is not omnipotent and therefore not "God", or it is unable to anticipate these events, in which case it is not omniscient and not "God", or it doesn't care if people suffer excruciating pain and die for no reason in which case it is not good and not worth worshiping because it cannot be swayed into alleviating suffering.

There's a species of parasitic wasp that injects venom directly into its victims' brains turning them into zombies and controlling their every movement. It then lays eggs in its victim, which it keep alive long enough for the eggs to hatch and then eat the victim from the inside out for eight days while it is still conscious and in observable agony. It eats the victims organs in an order that ensures it stays alive for as long as possible. Tell me that this species was "created" by a benevolent deity to serve a "purpose" in some kind of divinely ordered universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_cockroach_wasp#Reproductive_behavior_and_life_cycle

There are also dozens of examples, including the flatfish, of species which would never have been "designed" the way they are because there are obviously simpler ways to achieve the same effect. Why do flatfish have jaws that show their heads have gradually turned to one side rather than just being designed with a flat straight jaw in the first place? Why do men have nipples? Why do blind mole rats still have eyes covered with skin if they were "created" blind? Why do flightless birds still have wings and hollow bones? Why are platypuses born with teeth that they almost immediately lose? Why do many snakes still have vestigial pelvises or even limbs? There are literally thousands of examples, including every major species on earth, of suboptimal design features from a divine engineering perspective.

So why would a benevolent or even interested God deliberately design something to be imperfect? Why would God create babies with foreskins and then demand that they almost immediately be cut off? Why would God create literally billions of human beings only to consign them to hell because they didn't follow the correct religion? Why does life on earth create literally billions of billions of unused seeds which simply rot or are strangled out in their infancy if there is any kind of divine being directing anything at all?

And this isn't even beginning to delve into all the bullshit that has been peddled and then conveniently "corrected" by all of the major religions over the past 4000 years. The earth is demonstrably not 6000 years old as the Bible say it is. The sun does not orbit the earth. Volcanos don't erupt because God hates gay people. Pimping out your daughter to stop your neighbours from raping your guest makes you an asshole as does trying to murder your child because voices in your head told you to.

I think knowledge is a continuum not a binary of know/believe. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being absolute certainty, no I cannot say with a 10 that there is no God. I can't say anything with a 10. But I am reasonably certain that there is not a God based on the above arguments and inconsistencies and the fact that prayer is not demonstrably effective. So I would say at about a 9 level that I am as certain as any person can be about anything that capital G God is a primitive human construct and not an actual phenomenon.

As I said before, there is conceivably some creative force that could be called small g god but it almost certainly exists, if at all, at a level of abstraction that would make it indistinguishable from a term like "nature" or "the universe".

42% of Americans believe in a personal God that takes an interest in what they eat and who wins football games. None of the major religions describe a primarily abstract and disinterested force as "God" and it can be inferred that the adherents of those religions (i.e. the majority of "theists&quot are not talking about a small g god when discussing their beliefs. They pray to an interventionist God who they believe is interested in their lives, capable of hearing them, able to help and willing to assist the "good". And that type of God cannot be logically reconciled with the kind of suffering, cruelty and indifference easily observable in nature.