What are the good reasons to doubt God's existence?

Faith & Science Conversation
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I get the impression that people’s idea of God is influenced by their parents and their immediate community. And burning of the dissidents makes sense in light of Hell. I think those Middle Ages Christians feared going to Hell so much, that anyone who even implied that the Christian teachings can be doubted was a grave threat. After all, if a person becomes an Atheist after listening to the sceptic, then their eternal soul is forever doomed. I think in this context, one can understand European Anti-Semitism as well. I’m not condoning this, obviously, given my position, but this is how I understand the rationale behind most of Christianity.

I think the problem of evil is a real challenge for theists who believe in a good God. But I think the problem is a bit more nuanced. In that if God foreknew that this is the fate of the universe, and evil is going to be a large part of this, and still decided to create it, then he bears more of a responsibility for evil, since he knew this is what would happen and still chose to create and let the chips fall where they did (and he knew in advance they’d fall where they did).

I appreciate your story and compassion for the children. It seems to me that if you had the power and the means, you’d singlehandedly end the suffering and the world hunger. Supposedly, you are less perfect than a God, so a God would have even more of a desire to end suffering, and yet, he doesn’t. So, either he doesn’t exist or doesn’t want to end suffering, or cannot end it. None of the options are good choices for Theism/Christianity.

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Good points. And I don’t know the answers to all of them. I don’t think, for example, that we can boil them down to saying that He wanted us to have free choice.

You sound like you have compassion, too, and likely you have done more than I.

Thomas Jay Oord and other open theists are interesting to me and I plan on reading them more, but I don’t think we will understand entirely from that position, either.

Regarding the idea of Hell and exclusion–you might enjoy Justin Barrett and cognitive science of religion. it’s my impression that it’s not religion that directs us alone, but we that direct religion as well–as religion as a generic entity is itself quite adaptive. That doesn’t mean that religion is incorrect, but you can see how those who adapt to pain incorporate it into their worldview, even outside of faith (violence increased in the US after World War II, for example) and a tendency to reject those who do not adhere to their point of view is a human adaptation to increase solidarity. A cult built up on the personality of Stalin, who killed those who disagreed with him mercilessly; and the fact that the largest ever recorded killings of countries’ own peoples was facilitated by atheist rulers (not because of atheism, necessarily) implies that we are all built of the same mud (Stalin 20 million, Mao 10-50 million and Pol Pot 2 million).

Regarding the idea of Hell, I like Macdonald’s idea --we are not by any means getting off scot free. Hell is purification till we repent and purify–even Hitler may eventually come to repentance (recognizing I have some of his characteristics too)!

Have you read or viewed anyYoutubes of Barrett? I’d find your thoughts interesting.

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Pascal’s wager doesn’t stand up well to critical Christian thought (or at least not to my own thought, anyway). It presumes that we can be shrewd dealers with God when it comes to our own salvation. “I’ll just recite a little prayer as my fire insurance ticket; so that I have a receipt to submit just in case it’s needed; because you can’t trust the authorities in charge, you know, unless you’ve got some transactional proof you can produce to force them to do the right thing.” If that is the actual situation, then nearly all the Bible is bunk in what it teaches us about who God is.

[I began writing about that ‘bogeyman’, universalism here, but that is a bit much for the moment or this venue. Will save that; maybe it will be appropriate later.]

Suffice it to say, I recommend just finishing Macdonald’s sermon from his own words (not other people’s comments about it). And judge for yourself whether or not he, or others, have better understood what scriptures as a whole actually teach about God.

[I just realized, after your quoting me below there, Randy, that my typo made it look like I just freshly read the sermon myself. I meant that sentence to be an encouragement to Vlad to do that. I corrected it now.]

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“Suffice it to say I recommend just finishing Macdonald’s sermon from his own words (not other people’s comments about it). And judge for yourself whether or not he, or others, have better understood what scriptures as a whole actually teach about God.”

I agree.
@Mervin_Bitikofer, got it. Corrected my comment

@SuperBigV, I don’t know exactly how we come to erroneous ideas about God and vengeance; but I’m grateful for MacDonald and others who provide a better window into what I think God is like–like Psalm 103–a"s a father has compassion on his children, the Lord has compassion…for He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust."

Blessings in your thoughts, search and questioning. I do appreciate your thoughtful points and am learning from them too.

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Well, I think you’re doing what every other person who doesn’t understand the medieval period does – probably cherry picking the four things you know about medieval history, all of which happen to be catastrophes, and generalize the entire period as a barbaric mess. Of course, it wasn’t a period of barbarism, and what frustrates medieval historians the most is that they can’t get rid of this myth as some of the big historical ignoramuses of our time, like Steven Pinker, promote it. In fact, the first actual response by historians to Steven Pinker’s 2011 book, The Better Angels of our Nature, was a few months ago in the academic journal Historical Reflections. Spoiler, they think it’s garbage. If you go to the Wikipedia page on Pinker’s book down to critical responses, you’ll find a summary of their views in a long quotation – and the reason why it’s on Wikipedia is because I put it there. Anyways, the academic who responded to Pinker’s take on the medieval period was Sara Butler in a paper gloriously titled Getting Medieval on Steven Pinker. In her paper, Butler writes;

To make this startling, seemingly counterintuitive narrative a success, Pinker needs a barbaric Middle Ages. Indeed, without a violent point of departure, the book’s central argument is untenable. Thus, it is not surprising that Pinker discovers a barbaric Middle Ages when he goes looking. However, as I hope to demonstrate, this preposterous caricature of the medieval world depends entirely on Pinker’s ignorance of the sources that inform his statistics, coupled with a meager understanding of the medieval legal system.

In other words, your claim is dead wrong. You should read Butler’s paper. Here’s a few points of information I’ll give you – most of it is not in her paper, so I wont remove your curiosity from reading it fully. The average person, or the average Christian one could say, prized charity as a prime value. People in the medieval period took very seriously the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, which was ubiquitous in the artwork of the time, and the first mass peace movement in history came directly out of Christianity – the Peace of God (Pax Dei in the original Latin) originating in the 10th century (and from it evolved the Truce of God, the worlds second peace movement and also a pure product of Christianity). The most successful converter of non-Christians in the entire medieval period was Gregory the Great, who become a Pope in the 6th century, and accomplished his feats of conversion through the strict medium of non-violence.

In many places of medieval Europe, especially in the second half of the medieval age, Christians co-existed with Muslims and Jews in many areas, especially southern Italy (like Sicily) and Spain.

I’m not condoning this, obviously, given my position, but this is how I understand the rationale behind most of Christianity.

Interesting what happens to someones explanation for something once they learn it’s based on a 21st century Western myth (well, I think it developed in the early 20th century with Norbert Elias). Looks like you’ll need a new rationale behind “most of Christianity”!

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The questions regarding a greater purpose and a creator for the astonishing creation are natural to human intellect, and from this people draw conclusions that (1) there is a god, or (2) everything can be explained without god. This discussion imo should go past (1) and (2) and consider how and why people profess faith in Christ, and the theological understanding that faith in Christ is a gift from the Holy Spirit.

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Of course, things are not always black and white. I’m sure there were some nice folks, some kind Christians. However, as a whole, it probably was a barbaric mess.

I for one, would not want to live during that period. As I said, things are not all black and white. I’m sure one can find examples of kindness towards heretics and enemies, just as one can find example of the Nazi soldiers saving Jews during the WWII. However, as a whole, heretics did not fare well during the Mideval times among the Christians.

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Also, there is even a verse that teaches you to save others by fear!

Matt. 10:28 Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Now, this, in the context, is spoken to the disciples of Jesus. Those, who according to the modern Once Saved Always Saved, have nothing to fear after death!

Hebrews 10: 30 For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” 31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

And, lets not forget the unpardonable sin. Devout Christians sometimes fear committing this sin and facing the prospect of never getting forgiveness.

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Is it just me or are all the links on this side dead? I wanted to know about their “beliefs” and everything leads to the same “no results” side. But nontheless, I´m not a trained historian like Korvexius is, but I throw my two cents in.
A golden rule. If the vast majority, if not all trained historians in that area tell you, that it wasn´t an age of barbarism, then it probably wasn´t, no matter what internetpage about pop-history tells you otherwise. Also this link leads to a side very focused on the Inquisition. Manfred Lütz, Germanys leading psychologist and devout catholic, wrote a book which also takes on this task and false knowledge about the histry of Christianity “Der Skandal der Skandale”, sadly not translated in english as far as I know. His main point: The Inqusition accounts are greatly exaggerated, e.g. in the whole 160 years the number of people killed was 826. Of course that are 826 too much, but much less than some want you to believe.

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Hello Vlad,

For one thing, you conflate the question of God’s existence with the question of whether the God of the bible is real, which atheists tend to do, even in formal debates that you can see on Youtube. They attack false notions of Genesis to prove God doesn’t exist. Which leads to:

I don’t have faith that God exists, I’ve known that since age 2 or 3, before anyone told me. It’s a no-brainer - this existence screams that there is a god and that’s Paul’s view in Romans 1, where he says that there is no excuse not to believe in God. I have faith that god is Jesus, that he died for me and cares for me - that can be challenging at times.

Now let’s clear up an untruth that many atheists propogate, that they don’t have faith. Everyone has faith in something, including yourself. Your faith is in an accident, but what that really means is that you believe that ontological nothingness - meaning no space, time, matter or energy - burped out a singularity that became a 100 billion light-year sized entity that produced man and purpose, love, beauty, etc. That takes much more faith IMO than believing in a spiritual entity that produced a universe with those qualities. The leaders the New Atheists agree with me so have gone all-in the multiverse, and maybe your accident is the multiverse, but NA have no explanation of where it came from or why it’s necessarily fine-tuned to produce the kind of multiverse that would get us here.

No, IMO there are no reasons to doubt God’s existence. But are there reasons to doubt that God is the god of the bible, The Father, Son and Spirit? It takes faith to believe that, and there are always reasons for doubt in a fallen world. But there is no excuse IMO not to believe in God.

IMO, yes, because that God exists is an obvious reality. In discussion with atheists, I’ve found there are different reasons why they don’t believe in God - atheists are different from each other just like any other group of people. Some are turned off from certain things in the bible, the violence in the OT, for example, or that God has expectations for marital relationships. Some have emotional reactions from bad events, telling me, “my brother died and I don’t believe in God anymore.”

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Nice – you opened yourself up for a flatlined wipeout right there. This goes to really show, more than virtually anything else – when you have to choose between the opinion of Sarah Butler, one of the worlds top medieval historians I quoted in my last comment who clearly explains the idea of the middle ages as a barbaric mess is a modern caricature, or a random website called medievallifeandtimes.info, you really go with scholarship instead of trying to sacrifice it to score debate points. Nevertheless, you’ve sown yourself up.

In my previous comment, I provided rather overwhelming evidence that the middle ages were not a barbaric mess. Your response is “offf cooooourrrsee its not black and white … but it was a barbaric mess, because the inquisition.” And yet;

  • the Inquisiton is by and large a phenomenon of the Renaissance
  • In the eight centuries that were the Inquisition – from the early 12th century lasting all the way until the 19th century, about 10,000 people died. If you average that over the entire period, maybe 13 were executed annually (of course, the majority of the deaths were concentrated after the middle ages ended)
  • And to top it off, for all the dozen deaths a year the Inquisition caused (a dismally low number for trying to show an entire period was characterized by barbarism), it also resulted in tremendous legal progress
  • Daily factoid: Not one scientist was killed for science in the entire middle ages.

So much for showing the Middle Ages was a barbaric mess – all you tried was appealing to one of the most generic events of the period just to find out that it, just like the middle ages, has its barbarism blown flatly out of proportion. Next time, trust historians.

However, as a whole, heretics did not fare well during the Mideval times among the Christians.

Incredible how overall low level persecutions, mostly concentrating in the 12th/13th centuries, don’t prove the middle ages was a barbaric mess. Cherry picking events wont really help you out, eh?

Do you think the Greeks were a barbaric people?

Also, there is even a verse that teaches you to save others by fear!

Wow, let’s take a look.

Matt. 10:28 Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Ah, so the verse doesn’t tell us at all to save others by using fear to convert them – in fact, it looks like it’s saying to fear God. In fact, in Christianity we’re told exactly how to convert people to Christianity because we actually have examples in the Bible. Like Paul’s letters and Acts. Read Acts 17:16-34 and let me know when you find people invoking hell to convert others.

The rest of the arguments are equally dismissable. Hebrews 10:30 is just God saying He’s going to judge sinners, and the unpardonable sin is … an unpardonable sin and … nothing more. I really wonder what you’re trying to prove with this one.

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There is now logical way to prove or disprove “God” or “Always Was.” I can’t think of a 3rd possibility.

If God exists and if God wants to get your attention . . . He will.

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That’s a self-selected group. It does not represent scientists in general.

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The National Academy of Scientists includes our most accomplished scientists.

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I suppose the question itself is a bit like asking :“What are the good reasons for believing that two plus two equals ten?”

You listed a couple points that you feel are of prime importance. Point 1 and Point 2 are extremist views – that is, taking science or evolutionary theory further than it can go.

Point 3 is not substantive. What do you mean by “recordings”? Was God supposed to do MSNBC interviews? The text of the NT is well attested and very early…

Point 4 – neither much do quarks…or muons…or your kidneys…but you have been told they exist and you believe.

Point 5----define evil now that you have no deity to declare it

Point 6-- what???

Point 7 — This argument could be turned in the other direction quite as easily. The fact that human beings believe in eternal life could be because we have eternity written in our hearts.

All of these :unwritten principles, as you call them, are born of emotionalism and not of knowledge…

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From their web site: “new members are nominated and voted on by existing members”. Self-selecting by their philosophical biases. If 93% are atheists, it’s because NAS members don’t want non-atheists among them, and/or non-atheists don’t want to join. And I can understand the latter: why join up with a bunch of narrow-minded people?

Scientists in general typically poll over 40% devout and have for over 100 years.

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I guess sinners at the hands of angry God did not scare anyone either

There is absolutely no fear of Hell among the Christians. Thanks for setting the record straight

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Yep, that’s it. Atheism is the most important consideration for membership. Maybe even the only one. What a bunch of meanies!

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The words which come to my mind are “self-defeating” and “bunch of idiots.” Basically, by doing this, they have abandoned the fundamental faith of science that beliefs on such things are irrelevant and thus they turned their organization into something less to do with science and more to do with their own particular religion/ideology.

My first thought was the 7% suggested a difficulty in finding theistic scientists who satisfy other criterion. But I am having a hard time figuring out what other criterion could be so biased. The fact that they are scientists should already select according to the more reasonable criterion I can think of.

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Francis Collins is a member of the National Academy of Sciences

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