Proud to be God-Free

The Weakest Theist Argument

There’s a new argument floating around that is not only weak, but also the contortion of contortions. Basically put, some Christians are saying: “since I can’t prove to you that god exists, I’ll try to prove that you don’t exist and since you don’t exist, you cannot trust your senses and hence science is unreliable.” This argument is ridiculous for three reasons: 1) If anyone successfully proves that we don’t exist, will that lead to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian god exists or any god for that matter? 2) The assumption “I exist” is better than the assumption “I don’t exist” 3) The argument implies that their god created a nonexistent creation. The latter is quite the red flag.

If you can’t be sure of your existence, why are you refraining from the type of behavior that supposedly displeases your god? Why not sin if your actions are nonexistent? Why do you brush your teeth or take a shower? Why do you work, sleep, eat, drink, digest, urinate, wear clothes, make friends, go to school, go to church, etc? If we don’t exist, your bad breath doesn’t either. Neither does your need for sleep, food, water, clothing, and shelter. Neither does your need to urinate and digest. In other words, if we don’t exist, why does one behave as though one exists? Intuitively, even the Theist making this argument notices how ridiculous it is. Nonetheless, this argument doesn’t bolster the possibility of god’s existence. The argument leaves this possibility in the same place; since it is usually Christians who make this claim, the possibility of their god’s existence is still zero.

Moreover, this argument doesn’t hurt the effectiveness of science. I exist; I can trust my senses though they are faulty and thus, science is effective and reliable. Science accounts for human error. That is the purpose of the scientific method; no bias is welcome. All error is eventually corrected. All measurements are repeated. For instance, scientists didn’t simply conclude that neutrinos are faster than the speed of light; they repeated the experiment a few times to see if the measurements were accurate. Turns out that faulty equipment was to blame for the initial measurement. In the mid-1920s, scientists didn’t simply accept Piltdown man as a hominin fossil. They didn’t make the set of bones an immediate staple in the fossil record. They eventually concluded that it was a fraud and struck it from the records.

I trust in my existence and in my faulty senses. I would much rather make these assumptions because these assumptions are verifiable and evident. I am in no way ignoring the sophistication of this question: do we exist? The question is valid. However, if nothing exists, it means exactly that and unfortunately, this nonexistence would include every god ever thought of including the god they’re still trying to prove.

Source: deconversionmovement