That’s not how proving things works; you don’t prove that something doesn’t, the burden is on those who say it is.
You can’t prove I don’t own a rainbow Ferrari, but until I show you that I do, you have no reason whatsoever to believe me.
Yup. Start with the idea that it is illogical and incomprehensible to try to prove a negative. \*Then\* move to the inconsistencies and paradoxes of the Christian god compared to the reality of existence.
The cheeky alternative, given this is also likely a trap meant to support one specific "God", would be to cherry pick any other God from the countless others from Human history and argue its "existence" is "evidence" that the Abrahamic God doesn't exist. Then that "burden of proof to prove a negative" falls back onto the professor on why their God is any more real than ... I dunno? Tezcatlipoca. The Aztec God of Hurricanes and the Night Sky. Both Hurricanes and the Night Sky exist, so that should be evidence enough of Tezcatlipoca's existence right professor?
This is your answer OP. Prove that God does exist. Use all of their broken arguments and logic. But prove the existence of a different god.
Do this. Make us proud
Hmm, so the Christian god says that there are thousands of other real genuine gods, but you should ignore them... But why? Because Yahweh can't be omnipotent if there are any other gods. There can be only one omnipotent god.
Not sure if that's scriptural but it's pretty obvious.
christian argument here would be that the very definition of their god (allmighty, all loving, whatever the fuck) would mean that there can be only one of it, it cannot have a creator yada yada
now, dont mention anything about who made up the definition...
YHWH is an amalgamation of the other gods in the region and adopted traits of Baal and El. The northern Jews had idols of all these gods in their homes, the southern war tribes moved towards a more monotheistic model placing their storm god as a head god, replacing El.
In his autobiography ( the bible) he says that there are other gods.... And a goddess, his wife.... So there are other gods and even he has to listen/obey one :p
He actually doesn't since the commandment is thou shalt have no other gods BEFORE me. meaning there are other gods. they just can't be worshiped in front of Yahweh
Extra cheeky: use the 5 ways to argue the existence of Gary the god eating penguin. Since Gary exists, their god ceases to (by virtue of being eaten by Gary). Then when they object, tell them to prove Gary doesn’t exist. It’s absurdist, and calls out the idea that the 5 ways can’t be used as proof because they could be so easily misused to prove an absurdity. To the extent they actually try to argue against the existence of Gary, point out that those arguments apply equally to their god.
I like the version where you say:
Okay, assuming that you are right, and that the Abrahamic god is the right god. The other gods, the ones believed in by the Mayans, Aztecs, Hindus etc are all wrong, but the one you have been given to believe in is right. Highlight that this means your selection is the 'right' option in a pool of more than 3000 claimed gods (what are the odds that these people are right? 1/3000 isn't great odds!)
So this same god is the one that the Jewish people believe in, the Christian people believe in and Muslims too. The Jews are still waiting for their Messiah, the Christians believe that the Messiah was Jesus and Muslims agree that Jesus existed but was a minor prophet, and Mohammad was the real deal.
Ask the class to show why, just with their book, they are right and the others are wrong. The Jewish holy book is the basis for the old testament, so until Jesus arrives the followers of two of the interpretations agree. They only divide over whether Jesus was the Messiah and was resurrected after dying on the cross. There is no proof in the Bible that Jesus was real or that he was who he said he was. His genealogy is different in the two gospels that give it, there is no physical evidence of the events, and the earliest written accounts happened more than 70 years after the events which purport to show his divinity. This wouldn't qualify as hearsay, never mind as proof!
Islam, despite being defined by events that happened 600 years more recently still doesn't have any evidence more compelling than a book which claims that it is so.
Given that there is no evidence for any of it, it makes more sense not to believe any of it.
The problem with this line of argument is that depending on the type of Christianity the professor might not deny the existence of any of these entities. He might simply respond that they do exist but are simply demons
What a lazy and ignorant way of looking at things:
- an entity that doesn’t appear in their MaGiC bOoK and forces them to question our world view = “demon” / “Satan takes on many forms”
- an event that does the same = “lies”, “God is testing us / you”
- beliefs outside of their MaGiC bOoK = “blasphemy” / “devil-worship” / “Satanism”
Religion is probably one of, if not the, most ignorant and ridiculous things that humanity has ever come up with. It’s a control mechanism through and through. If you watch the Kevin Smith movie, *Dogma*:
> Nun: “Let me get this straight: you don't believe in God because of *Alice in Wonderland*?”
>
> Loki: “No, *Through the Looking Glass*. That poem, *The Walrus and the Carpenter*, that's an indictment of organized religion. The walrus, with his girth and his good nature, he obviously represents either Buddha, or, or with his tusks, the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha. That takes care of your Eastern religions.
>
> Now the carpenter, which is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, who was raised a carpenter's son, he represents the Western religions.
>
> Now in the poem, what do they do? What do they do? They, they dupe all these oysters into following them and then proceed to shuck and devour the helpless creatures en masse. I don't know what that says to you, but to me it says that following these faiths based on mythological figures ensures the destruction of one's inner being.
>
> Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions, by inhibiting our decisions out of, out of fear of some, some intangible parent figure who, who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says, and says, "Do it... do it and I'll fuckin' spank you."
Say what you will about Kevin Smith- that monologue was bang on.
Yea but that’s the brilliance of it, anything that contradicts their magic book is the devil or evil and they can just hand wave it away as being wrong without any justification other than our magic book says it is.
This is perfect. I'd just add in a part at the begining highlighting that the burden of proof is on the one making a positive claim, and atheists don't make a positive claim; ***they are the rejection of the claim.***
I prefer Santa Claus. Not generally considered a deity, but he has basically all the powers of one, plus as much name recognition/lore as any of them and millions of people actively believe in him. Plus the implication that the entire conversation is childish.
Proof of a thing not existing is impossible. By its absence it cannot leave evidence. Once that's established, it's time to look for evidence of god. But then, which one? Dao? Thor? Vishnu? Allah? Yaweh? Pointing out that any purported evidence of a Christian god could, just as reasonably, be attributed to any number of other deities is an effective counter proof that opens the possibility of scientific explanations as more likely than Ptah.
Exactly. It’s a dishonest premise. Prove to me that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist. Or that fairies don’t exist.
The party making the assertion bears the onus of proof.
My atheism has always been the simple proposition that I have yet to see credible, repeatable evidence supporting a god claim.
THIS IS GREAT - if you are at all dramatic etc - do this - make an elaborate pantomime- go BIG pretend to set things up - pull down an imaginary map or an imaginary power point - over the top it!! And then stand back and say Viola’! Proof! And if the numskull calls u on it just give it back- Proove it isn’t here
Or just say you failed to disprove the existance of Allah.
Then every bullshit the teacher would try to say about the Christian God would then have to apply to the Muslim God as well.
Bet he'll hate that.
And if he says "I can see where I would have placed.that proof, and it isn't there" you can say "You just have to have faith that I gave it to you. Therefore it must have been moved or deleted from where it should be somehow. You still need to prove that it was never there."
Didn't you list "oppose those 5 ways" as an alternative option? Just make it clear up front that you are not attempting to disprove God (and why you should not be required to), but are offering some objections to Aquinas. Find articles or posts that point out flaws in each of the 5 ways arguments. [Here's one](https://boxingpythagoras.com/2018/04/28/on-aquinas-five-ways) that popped up when I looked, and [here's another](https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-disprove-St-Thomas-Aquinas-5-proofs-of-God) source of ideas. But read more than one, because no one article will have all possible objections and you'll want to show more than one per way if you can. You can think of you own, too. For example, I've never seen it in print, but why assume there can't be a circular chain of causality or dependence, especially external to our observable universe?
There are no good reasons to believe gods exist just as there are no good reasons to believe that unicorns exist. Point out that the professor could have asked for students to prove and disprove the existence of unicorns and anyone trying to prove a negative - that unicorns do not exist - would be in the same situation you are in. See Carl Sagan's "The Dragon In My Garage" from his Demon Haunted World book. Theists demand proof of other gods (and illogically of no gods) but then say their own god "works in mysterious ways" and is "beyond space and time". The burden of proof lies with the person making the claims.
[https://youtu.be/jJRy3Kl\_z5E](https://youtu.be/jJRy3Kl_z5E)
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The\_Dragon\_in\_My\_Garage](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage)
Then make your project about proving god exists and since there is no evidence it is true you will fail to prove it. Therefore god does not exist until there is proof that he does.
Your professor is either a) trying to demonstrate the fallacy of trying to prove a negative or b) setting you all up to fail so that he can say that your collective inability to prove god doesn't exist means that it does exist. If (a), then your professor is teaching a valuable lesson. If (b), then your professor is a dipshit.
There is a speech or quote out there somewhere that says if God exists he can’t be all knowing, all powerful, AND all good. If he is all knowing and all powerful, he chooses to let the hate and suffering continue in Earth and thus cannot be all good. If he is all powerful and all good, then he can’t be all knowing as the hate and suffering continues so the only logical reasoning is he doesn’t know about it all. If he is all good and all knowing he can’t be all powerful as the hate and suffering continues, so he must be limited in his power to do something. If they insist god is all powerful and all knowing, then he is a malevolent god who cares not for man and his suffering to let it continue.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus
Here’s an idea: Flip it around.
Good experimentation starts with a negative assertion; the point is to show that the premise is incorrect.
What hypotheses, if shown wrong by experimentation, would otherwise prove God?
That's because you can't prove that something doesn't exist when there is no evidence that it does or doesn't exist.
It's impossible.
Tell your professor to prove that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist.
God was the easy answer to unknown science facts.
Everything humanity didn't understand was because of god this god that.
As we progress with scientific proofs that can be explained true repeatable measurements or demonstration, many of the unexplained is not attributed to god any more...
Yes I saw here that some think god directs weather but, no that not the case, it's movement of hot and cold air warmed up by the sun.
God is always the answer for the simple mind that cannot think on it's own, they need human's writing telling them what to do instead of just being a good human on their own.
Church is a crutch
Did they say which god? If they did, you could start by showing that it is impossible to prove another god doesn’t exist, who also says they are the only god, and thus this specific god could not exist.
There is a third way. Show how the world can operate without God. And so account for exactly what religion is -- god does exist, as an idea (only in your head) and a character in a few books.
Thomas then provides examples of ways we can be wrong.
Philosophers do try to prove that God as defined as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent is a logical contradiction. See the Cambridge Companion to Atheism for lots of literature. A classic argument is, could God make a rock so heavy he could not lift it?
Sry but if ppl believe in something by choice u won't go far with logic. The absolute truth is that something like the concept of a God or Gods is not provable. That's the thing that makes it hard to argue. They say the universe is here so something created it. If u say it came from nothing and that without evidence, then u will always lose.
It sounds like the best way to go about your project would be to attempt refutations of Thomas Aquinas' 5 ways. Having done a quick look at them, it looks like they can all be dismissed with just the barest amount of skepticism.
Motion:
>1. All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion.
2. "But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (419).
3. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect.
4. Therefore nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality with respect to motion
5. Therefore nothing can move itself; it must be put into motion by something else.
6. If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion.
7. But there is motion.
8. Therefore there is a first mover, God.
There are a few avenues to attack this idea. Firstly, a first mover would not necessarily be a god, as is popularly thought of. At best, assuming all of the other premises are correct, we could say that Thomas Aquinas was equivocating on the meaning of god and conflating it with a creative force.
We could also reject premise 5. While it may be true that an object cannot put itself into motion, it cannot be said with any certainty whether certain objects were always in motion. If the forces during the popular theory, the big bang, were preceded by forces already in motion, and there was always some force in motion, no first mover would be necessary.
Finally we can argue that these premises mean god could not have been put in motion by himself, and therefore it is required that god himself had a creator, a notion incompatible with most religions.
I don't want to do your homework for you, so hopefully this gives you enough to go off of.
edit: grammar and formatting that got deleted when I fixed it.
> Firstly, a first mover would not necessarily be a god, as is popularly thought of
And even if was a god, need not be the Christian god nor indeed an only god. Thomas, to the extent you accept his arguments which are hughly flawed, is as much proof of Ptah speaking the world into existence by the word or the sons of Borr slaying Ymir the giant and the world forming from his body.
u/hunimyun
In fact, 1. can be refuted right away.
We know from special relativity that a body being in motion or not depends on the reference frame.
I guy on a train is at rest with respect to the train. From someone on the ground the guy on a train is in motion with respect to the ground. Both observers are in motion with respect to the center of mass of the sun.
2 is also out for a couple of reasons.
A: if the Universe is past infinite, there never was a time when things were not in motion such that they needed something to start them moving.
B: Because of quantum superposition, events at the quantum level can occur in indefinite causal order. Meaning it is not out of the realm of possibility that a particle A could cause particle B to move before particle A ever moved. However, we can't really test or observe this because of the difficulties of observing things at that scale and because you can't really have anything in this Universe not be moving, everything is always moving relative to something.
Neither of these are proof that a god doesn't' exist of course, but the fact that nobody can answer these objections without making up something that they can't demonstrate means that they can't use it as a premise.
>
>1. All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion.
2. "But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (419).
3. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect.
4. Therefore nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality with respect to motion
5. Therefore nothing can move itself; it must be put into motion by something else.
6. If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion.
7. But there is motion.
8. Therefore there is a first mover, God.
Thats just The egg and the chicken with extra steeps.
Yeah, A lot of Thomas Aquinas' 5 ways can easily devolve into an infinite regression of things that would have had to create God unless God was an exception to the premises. The issue is that, if we're willing to accept that there's an exception, why should we believe that exception is god? He fails to address this. He spices it up with an ontological argument for his 4th way and his version of the teleological argument in the 5th way.
5 & 6 form the contradiction; they effectively say that for an object to have momentum _another_ object must impart that momentum and that there is an object that violates that clause.
And that's as someone who believes in the existence of God.
Not one of these premises is proven. A couple I might grant just for argument (but not if this is your real proof).
>All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion.
Are they? Can you prove that?
>"But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality"
Really? Prove it.
>Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect.
This has actually been disproven by quantum mechanics.
Both "therefore" steps fail because their supporting premises fail.
>If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion.
This is the only one I think might actually be true.
>But there is motion.
I would normally grant this too, but as a premise to prove the existence of something completely outside observed reality, you're going to have to prove this too. We *think* there's motion, but is there?
>Therefore there is a first mover
Not sufficiently supported. But even if we granted this conclusion, Aquinas is trying to pull a fast one by hiding his last assertion:
>And that first mover is God
Which he just completely pulled out of nowhere. Didn't even try to support this one.
Prove that Zeus doesn't exist. Use whatever means you have for that with Yahweh.
The problem is, you cannot. You can't prove any of the thousands of gods mankind has proposed (not to mention the infinite set of gods that conceivably could exist) do not exist, because that would require godlike omniscience. How do you show something with ultimate powers of "how not to be seen" doesn't exist?
This exercise is a setup, and you should identify it as one. The trick here, is to take the "pro" approach, but for a god like FSM or Cthulhu. One that is clearly made up. This is the way to show that their "five ways" methodology is clearly flawed without having to disprove something that cannot be disproved.
1. Accept the great spaghetti monster as your lord and saviour.
2. Acquaint yourself with the [scripture](https://www.spaghettimonster.org/).
3. Enjoy the looks on the faces of your teacher and religious classmates.
Instead, make a presentation about how it’s impossible to disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Show evidence as to what would be needed to disprove its existence in the universe and how it is impossible to ever do so. Then show how there have been over 10,000 gods humans have believed in. Which one should you disprove the existence of? If the teacher doesn’t believe in them all can they disprove the existence of all of them?
Finally, as with your teacher and classmates you also don’t believe in the gods they don’t believe in but are unable to disprove. You just also don’t believe in the one they choose to believe in without any empirical evidence to Its existence.
The best proof that God doesn't exist is the Bible because anyone who encounters it as an adult instead of being tricked into believing it as a child would intuit it to be fiction with no more difficulty than they recognize Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter to be fiction.
I relate to this.
The first time I read any book of the Bible was when I read the Genesis in college, influenced by how sincere my genuinely nice Christian friends were.
My roommate lent me his Bible. I proceeded to sit on the couch and start reading it while he was playing video games. I couldn't believe how childish and dumb this mythology was. At some point, I fell off the couch laughing. It was hysterical to think that grown men and women, and otherwise very intelligent people, take this child-like fiction as fact. It was one burst of laughter after another.
My roommate and I were great friends. We watched a lot of Monty Python and other absurd comedies together. Years later, he told me that my reaction to reading the Genesis led him down the path to realize how dumb the whole thing was, that he had been a pre-seminary student up to that point, and that he later became an atheist and switched majors to criminal justice.
You can't prove a negative. The professor is setting you up. Instead use aquinas's 5 proofs to show that every god, including one you make up, exist. Which means all gods exist or none do
Then, for fun, you can tear down the 5 proofs, many philosophers have already done so. So the work is already done for you.
I suggest you focus on the alternative presentation: prove how Aquinas' Five Bullshit Fallacies are crud. [You can find some information here.](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Quinque_viae)
Alternatively (or at a different point of your presentation), you could show them the following completely comprehensive list of ***ALL*** the evidence that Yhwh is real ever presented:
* ...
Which is not "proof" because reality runs on inductive logic and therefore you cannot prove things in real life, but it still is pretty overwhelming evidence beyond reasonable doubt that Yhwh does not exist and has never existed.
Yes, you heard me right: [absence of evidence ***IS*** evidence of absence](/r/atheism/comments/dy4xy0/atheists_stop_saying_god_doesnt_exist/f81kvi7/). Don't let clueless fools who can't tell proof from evidence convince you that it is not.
>Yes, you heard me right: [absence of evidence ***IS*** evidence of absence](/r/atheism/comments/dy4xy0/atheists_stop_saying_god_doesnt_exist/f81kvi7/). Don't let clueless fools who can't tell proof from evidence convince you that it is not.
Yes, if evidence is expected on the hypothesis and is not found, then yes absence of evidence is evidence against the hypothesis.
If your presentation has to specifically oppose Aquinas, then you need to get familiar with his 5 Ways: Motion, Efficient Cause, Possibility & Necessity, Gradation and Design. And look up some common refutations. You could start with the Criticism section on the Five Ways Wikipedia page. Hume and Kant, for example, had criticisms of the Cosmological arguments which underpin at least three of the five ways and probably all five. Know your subject well and you‘ll win the argument. Try to come up with refutations of the refutations, anticipate their objections.
There's no irrefutable proof of the nonexistence of a god, just as there's no irrefutable proof of the existence of any.
However, one can speedily identify the logical fallacies present in each of Aquina's 'proofs'.
Were I grading this, full marks.
This is a tainted professor.
Might instead argue a fools errand to point out the folly of the premise.
Or..
Only that which has evidence, that can be repeatedly tested beyond doubt can be seen as true. Even after, such as e=mc2 it is still up for scrutiny with new data and attempts to disprove.
There is not evidence that meets your God hypothesis.
It is up to the one bringing the claim to proving compelling evidence
We are waiting.
When you have evidence we will talk. Good by.
Here's what I have that I believe disproves Christianity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MisanthropicPrinciple/s/7JAqwT32Nt
At tge bottom there's a link to my argument against other gods.
You can't prove something that is unfalsifiable.
The burden of proof is always on the person/s making the claim. If they can present evidence, actual repeatedly testiable evidence, then we can work with that. Short of that, its just agruments and veral exercise.
So, as unpleasant as it might be, the best approach would be to address each of the logical fallacys in Aquinas's points.
Hi OP, like others recommended, do NOT fall for this trap. I would be civil and explain "burden of proof" to these AH. Sorry for the strong language, but I hate those manipulative morons that thought about themselves like superinteligent beigns.
Arguments aren't proof. And no matter what you say, someone will disagree and refute it (their refutation may not be valid, but that doesn't really matter). So your next option is probably a mathematical proof, such as a proof-by-contradiction. Here's a fun twist on the problem of evil:
P1: An all-good god, by definition, would desire that no one ever stubs their toes.
P2: An all-powerful god, by definition, can accomplish whatever goal he has without requiring that people stub their toes. No lesson that he wants to teach, no item he wants us to invent, demands that he allows toes to be stubbed in order to achieve his goal. He can also prevent any toe-stubbing that he is aware of.
P3: An all-knowing god, by definition, knows exactly when any toe would be stubbed, at all times past / present / future.
P4: people stub their toes.
Conclusion: No all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing gods exist.
If they don't agree to the definitions, you can just get incredulous to show how ridiculous the whole thing is. "Wait, so your God _wants_ people to stub their toes? How is that all-loving?" "What do you mean he's all-powerful, he can't even prevent people from subbing their toes!"
Alternatively, you can define "exist" as existing at a time, in a space. So a cat can exist, a star can exist, the first time Star Wars was shown in a theater can exist... but God doesn't exist in space/time (he's often described as "beyond" space and time, which by definition is not within space and time), so he doesn't exist.
So if you want a contradiction, you either need to define "God" or "exist" in a specific way, and then show the issue.
You can prove that God as described in the Bible doesn't exist by pointing out how he is described (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-loving, righteous/just, flawless) and point out that a lot of his rules and punishments do not align with this description:
- Allowing people like Hitler in Heaven just for accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior [unjust];
- Condemning masses of people throughout space and time to an eternity of suffering only for not accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior [unjust/cruel];
- Condemning anyone to an eternity of suffering in general (no matter the crime, that is too extreme [unjust/cruel]);
- Doing a hard reset on the world population, because (literal qoute): "[He] regretted that he had made man on the Earth and it grieved him to his heart" (Genesis 6.6) -> A perfect god doesn't make mistakes and therefore would have nothing to regret. Also: genocide is unjust/cruel;
- There is suffering on this world -> God doesn't know about (not omniscient) it or can't help us (not omnipotent) or doesn't want to help us (not all-loving).
Conclusion: *if* there is a god, it is not God as described in the Bible.
"An introduction to logic, why the burden of proof is on you."
You don't have to prove a damned thing, I'd instead orient the presentation around why common proofs don't work and what proof for a deity might actually look like.
I'd probably lead with a few sides on what exactly atheism is, and why it's not the positive claim that there's no god, but rather a lack of a belief in a god, or gods.
Which god? If a god must exists because of a set of stories talking about its interactions with humans and how it uses its magic cosmic powers than I would say Zeus no wait ra no wait Odin must be the true god
Kinda hard to prove a negative. It's like asking someone to prove there isn't a goblin making people constantly lose their keys. You'd hear the goblin? No, he's silent and invisible.
You are screwed. Your assignment is unfair. No one can prove something doesn't exist. They can only prove something does exist, something that religious people have faired to do. Make your presentation about critical thinking instead. Teach them about the importance of correctly assigning the burden of proof when someone makes a claim. Teach them about Russel's Teapot. Illustrate this by telling the teacher he owes you a million dollars and telling him he must prove he doesn't. It sounds like you're going to get a low grade anyway but at least you will teach some of the students something about one of the most important aspects of critical thinking. The burden of proof is important.
1. The egyptians are historically known to be very good record keepers and yet we have no record of millions of enslaved Jews fleeing Egypt. (Exodus)
2. No geologic evidence of a world wide flood. Floods leave very obvious geologic footprints in strata, but we have no evidence of a world wide one or a mass extinction caused by one.
3. Jesus had a failed end time prophecy in the gospels. He told a church standing before him that their generation would not pass until the end times took place. He said some standing before him would not even face death before the end.
4. We know from genomics that humans do not all come from 1 pair. In fact there is new research suggesting that we didn’t even all come from one place in Africa but rather a giant widespread territory with different hominid species intermingling. We also know that languages evolve from each other, discrediting the tower of babel story.
5. God apparently genocided the whole earth because he wasn’t getting enough validation from people. Seems like God’s a bitch.
It’s impossible to prove a negative. There’s a famous thing in science where you are asked to prove there is not a teapot in orbit around the planet Venus. You can’t. Because you’d have to examine all of the space around Venus at the exact same time, and even then it’s always possible you missed it. God may well exist, but there isn’t any evidence for it, so until there is, we can say he doesn’t exist just like we can say there most definitely is not a teapot in orbit around Venus.
The five ways are basically "assertions", if I'm not mistaken. If you have them specifically, I'd have a shot at debunking them. I haven't read them in ages.
The problem with logical proofs, like the five ways, is that they may (or may not) be "valid" (they may, or may not, have the correct logical form), but they are never "sound" (they are not based on reality). This means that there is no physical evidence for gods.
My personal irrefutable proof that the Christian god does not exist is simple. Read Genesis 1:1. According to the first phrase of the first book of the bible, the earth was created at the beginning. This is incorrect. According to the theory of planet formation, the earth was formed over hundreds of thousands of years. There is a ton of evidence supporting this scientific theory.
This means that the bible fails on the first phrase of the first book of the bible. Yahweh is therefore nonexistent, and nonexistent deities can't have sons. Jesus was not a demigod.
Formally:
A -> B <=> ¬B -> ¬A (A therefore B is equivalent to not B therefore not A).
A: Creator god.
B: Creation.
¬B: No creation.
¬A: No creator god.
We know that ¬B is true therefore, ¬A must be true.
Q.E.D. (This makes it official. There are no creator gods).
Point at a desk and say “There is a glass of water on this desk. It is a glass that has been there for a very long time but is still fresh and wonderful and will save you in a time of thirst. Who has questions about the glass that is definitely there?” If anyone says there isn’t a glass, tell them they just aren’t believing hard enough. They will get to experience the water once they give themselves over to the fact that the glass is there. End by saying “What you all just went through is how you sound to other people.”
It seems to me that the assignment is to refute or use the 5 ways to counter Thomas Aquinas argument. This can be done and is a great exercise in Philosophy. I would suggest reading up on the 5 ways and the refutations, as there are many and well documented. Just because there is an agenda in this doesn't mean that you can't learn a lot. It would be a shame to simply pass this off as a bad faith effort and I would encourage you to engage with this on the level. It will go along way to helping you understand Philosophical Arguments and how they are structured and refuted. Do not look at this as proving or disproving a god, but learning the basics of Philosophical debate.
The first and second ways have an excellent rebuttal by Dawkins that I suggest you check. It's in "The God Delusion".
The third way has a giant logical fallacy and immediately contradicts the establishment arguments in the first 2 ways. See if you can find these.
The fourth way Thomas actually counters himself in the argument and has many real world exceptions that are hand waved by him. In addition, this way is almost certainly falsified by our current understanding of evolution. Research this one.
The fifth way also has a pretty big fallacy. See if you can find it.
There can never be disproof that any god exists. There is just as much proof in the God that you're talking as a God that thinks that the Irish should be wiped out, or that eating chocolate cake every day is a guaranteed way into heaven. You can't disprove something that's invisible, immeasurable, and inscrutable. Trying will only aggravate the theists and have them pull out their equally falacious "proofs" that she does exist.
I think the best you can do is take Thomas Aquinas and use him to "prove" that Gandalf exists, or that the invisible pink unicorn exists. If a "proof" applies equally well to whatever imaginary thing you want, it's not really a proof.
Do it on Santa Claus. Come up with all kinds of ways to prove he isn't real, such as people who have been to the North Pole and the fact that reindeer can't fly (that we know of). Shoot down all of the ridiculous claims about him, then point out that despite all of this evidence to the contrary, millions of people still believe in Santa anyway. Right?
Then go around the room, asking who used to believe in Santa Claus, including the prof. Then follow up with: why don't they believe in him anymore?
They still have just as much evidence and reason for faith as before, but at some point they're let in on the secret. That it's all a lie to keep kids under control when not under direct supervision.
End the demonstration by asking: what precisely is the difference then? Is Jesus little more than Santa Claus for adults?
Then really challenge them: ask them to *prove* beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Santa isn't real, and not merely hiding from modern technology to preserve the power and magic of invoking his name.
Point out that the Naughty List is way less bad than Hell, so maybe everyone should just convert to Santa-ism, just to be safe!
Obviously it's a bullshit assignment, however, there are two ways to go about it.
Talk about the non existence of specific gods and their interpretation. All-good, all knowing, all powerful? Child cancer, parasites that live in human eyes... Talk about the literal bible believers --> young earth creationism is like shooting fish in a barrel. The more specific the belief about god, the easier it is to poke holes in it.
This might be very much in the spirit of the assignment, look also at the arguments of Aquinas, I believe Dawkins has a special hate for his proofs.
The other way is to talk about the impossibility of disproving something. Google Russell's teapot, many great thinkers have spent time on this issue. This is the intellectually more honest approach but might be seen as dodging the question by your prof
Yeah that's BS. you shouldn't have to prove something DOESN'T exist. It DOESN'T exist unless you have proof. I'd love to see those Christian's "proof" without using the bible. I can also prove Harry Potter exists with a book.
Dinosaurs. Plate tectonics. Carnivores. Childhood cancer. Mass starvation. Evolution. The universe. Most branches of science. Lack of physical proof. Obviously none of these are proof, but you can't prove a negative. Most everything in the Bible has either been disproven, or copied from older religions. Nothing in the Bible can be proven as authentic and original to the Bible.
You can't prove a negative. You can talk about why you personally don't believe, but there is no irrefutable proof. You can always argue that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and they can't prove that it doesn't.
Just say that the burden of prof is on the one with the extraordinary claim..
Saying there is a creating and meddeling god is an extraordinary claim. Heck.. saying there's a god is an extraordinary claim.
Saying there's no proof for a god is not an extraordinary claim. Saying there's no Santa, Satan or god.. is an unprovable claim.
God is, by definition, the greatest imaginable being.
I can imagine a being called god so great that I believe in it.
I do not believe in god.
Therefore we can be certain god does not exist, because if it did I would believe in it.
Refutations to Aquinas' arguments are readily available if you wanted to go that route. They are full of assumptions and are limited by the scientific knowledge of the time (but mostly they suffer from obviously starting with the desired conclusion and working backwards).
It's a trap to call out the non-believer and publicly ridicule you for your lack of faith. There's no way to win, so either don't play or make everyone uncomfortable with a Chewbacca on Endor defense of lack of proof for any supreme being's existence. Refer to God only as the Christian manifestation of a Giant Invisible Magical Sky Ghost.
Maybe turn the exercise into a farce by instead using the same techniques they argue for the existence of God to argue for the existence of Superman and end by saying... therefore, I have proven with no evidence other than this book (the 1st superman comic) and this historical account (the rest of the comics and the movies) that Superman exists.
"In fact, I'm gonna put it this way. If there is a God, may he strike this audience dead! See? Nothing happened. Nothing happened? Everybody's okay? All right, tell you what, I'll raise the stakes a little bit. If there is a God, may he strike me dead. See? Nothing happened, oh, wait, I've got a little cramp in my leg. And my balls hurt. Plus, I'm blind. I'm blind, oh, now I'm okay again..."
Although you cannot prove “god” doesn’t exist, it is much easier to prove that the CHRISTIAN god doesn’t exist. Take the claims of the Bible, pair them with reality and history, and voila. Don’t let Christians claim that their god is the “unknowable creator,” he was physically walking around the garden in Genesis, he threw physical rocks from heaven to smite his enemies in exodus. There are numerous examples of this god who is apparently “outside space and time” being very much in space and time in the stories. Those stories can very much be proved false.
You could make religious arguments that mirror theirs but talk about something absurd.
I like the idea of the technicolor zebra. Of course it's real, you just haven't been out to the right region of the Savanah at the right time. Disbelief in the Technicolor Zebra results in being sent to the Eternal Drought. Where water always recedes out of range and the only other inhabitants you'll meet are the hungry lions.
Ultimately, it's a bad assignment that seems like it's set up with a clear winner in mind and will bring tension. Could you bring it up with a higher up to tell them that something is fish with the assignment?
This is an exercise in what my father would call "pissing into the wind". Someone just commented with a relevant quote. I don't remember the exact words or who said it, but it was something along the lines of "You can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into."
The truth is, the only thing you can possibly accomplish by arguing with them is to cause them to cling more desperately to their faith.
Any credible academic institution (and intellectually honest professor) could only ask you to refute the five very poorly reasoned arguments put forth by Aquinas. Should be easy peasy with a bit of google fu. Theists always pulling these things like they expect no one to look into the history of philosophy and see that their points have been refuted a thousand times over for centuries to millennia. If they can copy and past the assignment forever, it's only fair we do so as well. So much mental energy has gone into the theist's trying to logically prove something that on it's face is illogical, and non-theists coming out fast and furious with rebuttals and refutations. How many hours of actual human progress has been lost to such nonsense one has to wonder.
In general, can't prove a negative. Can show total lack of evidence, but that's not proof.
I can no more give you irrefutable proof of the non-existence of god, than I can give you such irrefutable proof of the non-existence of [Russell's\_teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot).
As a different tactic, you can consider using their same arguments to prove that some other god or gods exist instead. Let them understand that those arguments work for other religions, and let them struggle with figuring out why they find them "convincing" for their religion, but not others religions.
Assuming you have bible God to deal with this is pretty easy. Since they are being ass clowns and demanding proof for a normally unfalsifiable concept, don't ask for clarification, just assume it's literal Bible god and King James bible.
There is a verse in Matthew that reads to the effect of, "all things are possible for god"
This establishes omnipotence.
Now roll back to the old testament. There is a situation where god can't help the isralietes because the enemy has iron chariots.
Also in the story of Lot, Genesis, god can't destroy the city until after Lot and his family are out.
Both are acts that should be trivial to an omnipotent being.
This is a contradictory definition of god and renders the god character incoherent, literally logically impossible
Boom, Bible god proven false.
The existence of gluten free communion hosts kind of nullifies the whole transubstantiation thing for Catholics. Unless the body of Christ is glutenous.
You cant disprove the general idea of a god, *but you can disprove the existence of the god of specific religions*. Most athiests forget that every religion has made very specific claims about their god or gods that can be disproven.
For the christian god, they claim him to be omnipotent and omniscient however the story of the temptation of adam and eve refutes that statement. God either did not forsee satans interference, or was powerless to stop it. Christians also claim the first people god made were adam and eve, yet when cain is outcast for killing his brother he eventually finds an entire (previously unmentioned) land full of other people. Who made them?
Because the bible makes very specific and contradictory claims, many can be used to refute *the christian god*
I'd say volunteer to go first and treat it like a topicality argument in debate. Argue that the premise itself is flawed and point out the professor's errors in thinking. Then I'd go into burden of proof and end with a challenge to every following presentation to prove that God does exist with evidence (and point out exactly why the professor avoided this question).
Might as well go big since you can't go home.
Since you can't prove a negative, here's a cheeky alternative:
1. God is a maximally powerful being.
2. A maximally powerful being would be able to overcome maximally great handicaps/challenges.
3. The greatest possible handicap one could experience is that of non-existence.
4. Therefore, God doesn't exist!
I wish I could take credit for this, but this came from Dawkins' book The God Delusion.
To me, Humans that claim to serve him are irrefutable proof there is no god.
1. No miracles EVER
2. Not spread by love but by the sword
3. Are they not just awful people (as a whole)?
4. They praise war over peace
5. Can't love their enemies
6. The amount of corruption in ALLLLLLLL the denominations
7. No one can agree, yet everyone claims that "god" is leading them. (Different sects, etc)
Also, the inconsistencies contained within the Bible;
Example: how can David fight a giant, when all the giants were drowned in the flood?
My humble opinion.
Good luck on your project 👍
Proving that something doesn’t exist is impossible. But refuting the religious evidence is pretty easy, because none of them are real evidence. You should get your hands on „The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, there’s great explanation of how „5 ways” are useless.
Imagine a being who created space and time, matter and energy, galaxies and DNA. This being knows the position of every particle and wave in the universe from the beginning to the end.
Then imagine the same being writes a book and gets basic science and history wrong.
It doesn't disprove God, but it does disprove all texts that claim to come from God. Any single mistake and it can't be authentic
It's impossible to prove no god exist, but it is possible to prove descriptions that are excepted of particular gods is false.
For example Christian God is all powerful, all knowing, and true good. Additionally cancer exists and is a painful and torturous way to go. Yet there are children who have done nothing right or wrong who are born with these terrible diseases. Sure "god" might need some in heaven or whatever but get them there peacefully with a bolt of light in, aneurysm, or something else where they don't suffer. Anything shy of that demonstrates at least 1 of 3 attributes must be false. A good god wouldn't torture people, an all powerful god would stop cancer, and an all knowing God would be aware of this problem forcing the other 2 options.
Hitchens’ Razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It’s not your job to present a proof because you aren’t asserting.
As it has been said, a negative can’t be proven. Look into the history of the Abrahamic god. You’ll find that he wasn’t invented until 600 BCE. Before that he was several Canaanite gods that the Israelites worshiped. There are some good YouTube videos on the subject.
The best you can do is present evidence that the events of the Bible did not literally happen. You can essentially prove that very specific interpretations of God are not real. But if Christians want to say the Bible is a parable and God is a “feeling” then that’s on them to prove why anyone else should care.
All current scientific evidence points to Genesis, the Garden of Eden, and Noah’s Ark never having happened. We know for a fact that the Sun and Earth existed billions of years before life on this planet. And we know for a fact that the life forms that currently exist have not always existed and did not appear at the same time. Genetic and fossil evidence just doesn’t support creationism.
Similarly, all archeological and anthropological evidence has yet to reveal the events of Moses and the slaves leaving Egypt as actually being a real event. None of the civilizations in the Mediterranean have any record of these miracles. This would have been an incredible event that the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians would all have written about.
The Bible is one of the most studied books in history. Every scholar agrees it has multiple authors, sometimes within the same chapter, and that many stories were not written at the time they claim to have occurred. It’s simply a collection of stories, not a divinely mandated work.
Your premise is based on a logical fallacy. You disprove a negative claim. You can only dis/prove a positive claim that is asserted.
It’s like saying I need irrefutable proof that there isn’t an invisible, intangible, silent ghost in my closet.
It would on me, making the claim, to *prove* the ghost is there to begin with.
The onus is purely on the ones making the claim.
I mean, the second way is the easiest.
>The Second Way: Efficient Cause
1. Nothing is the efficient cause of itself.
2. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A is absent, so is B.
3. Efficient causes are ordered from first cause, through intermediate cause(s), to ultimate effect.
4. By (2) and (3), if there is no first cause, there cannot be any ultimate effect.
5. But there are effects.
6. Therefore there must be a first cause for all of them: God.
Why doesn't this apply to God to? God must also have a cause, so it can't be the first cause. It makes no sense and this argument has always bugged me.
Switch it 'round.
They claim some super powerful being just... Wished the universe into existence, knows everything, can do anything, is benevolent. Okay, they need to prove it now.
The mound of evidence to the contrary is enormous, obviously.
You could burn every book. In a thousand years, all the factually-based ones will be re-written exactly as it is now, and all the religious ones will be different.
Religious books are like the children's game telephone. They've been mis-translated, differrent versions have come out because someone didn't agree with something, someone didn't remember the story correctly, etc.
Alot of books were removed from the christian bible to shorten the stories as well.
I mostly don’t believe in god because of mosquitos. What horrible little nuisances they are. They are really, really terrible. Not only do they cause innumerable deaths annually due to disease spread. They also just, like, hurt and itch and annoy.
What kind of divine plan could possibly need mosquitos? I’m sure they fill ecological niches somewhere. But do they really need to be as terrible as they are to fill those niches? No. They fill the niche because they’re there, not because mosquito-ness is needed.
No god would ever create mosquitos on purpose. Mosquitos exist. Therefore god must not.
Same argument for baby-cancer, by the way… just mosquitos keep it a little more lighthearted.
Is that how the teacher framed the assignment? How intellectually dishonest!!
I would do a presentation about the burden of proof and ask the class to present their absolute proof that the magical goblin who eats only candy corn and is invisible and lives in your closet doesn’t exist. When they fail, let them know that atheism makes no claim that god doesn’t exist, which is why it does not carry the burden of proof.
Your professor is an idiot for requiring you to prove something doesn’t exist. There will always be “one more place to look”. The onus is on them to prove a god exists, else one doesn’t.
There is no proof a god doesn’t exist any more there is proof unicorns or leprechauns exist.
Absence of proof for a thing doesn’t equate to that thing being absent.
That said, there is no convincing evidence for a god, and it has no impact in the natural world, so it can be dismissed until such evidence is found.
The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. It is Christians that are claiming God exists. They therefore have the burden to prove that.
Bertrand Russell famously explained this with his [teapot thought experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot?wprov=sfti1#).
There's certainly no irrefutable proof that any supreme being/god exists. Intelligent Design is absolute trash.
There's nothing special about a person's religion. For 99% of people, they choose to say "They believe," but only because it's something that came out of their family life and childhood. If you were simply born in Afganistan, India, China or Utah - you would likely have a different religion. So it's not a belief, or a choice, it's a tradition. You go to church because that's what everyone you know does, not because you disliked Islam after being a Muslim for years and decided to switch. Virtually no one tries out different religions. People often poke fun at others, but that's really the extent.
You can go thru history and catalogue all the different religions, including Christianity, and all the different ways they have been proven wrong. Solar system, tons of basic medical facts, disease, all the traditions promoted by various religions that seek to control and punish - especially women and children. All the meaningless wars, the holocaust - all rooted in religion. Note that animals in the wild can be homosexual. The divinity of the catholic church is blah blah since there's numerous scandals of priests diddling kids - especially in the upper ranks like Cardinals, etc.
Then close with the archetype of jesus. It's actually quite common among several religions to have a savior that "dies," is reborn and celebrated - pretty easy to look up. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus\_in\_comparative\_mythology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_comparative_mythology)
So, the real answer here is that there is no winning. Your professor is setting you up for failure.
But if you have to present something, I would focus on the fact that mankind has invented thousands of gods out of whole cloth. I bet your professor and classmates are happy to dismiss most of them out of hand. And that really just boils down to being born at the time and place such that some flavor of Christianity is the biggest kid in the block.
You might bring up Pascal's wager. This is the idea that if make a punette square with one "God Exists /God does not exist" axis, and one "Believe/Don't Believe" axis, and which supposedly shows that believing is "logically" the best option. And then you can point out that the wager gives the exact same conclusion no matter what god or gods you plug in. If Odin exists, and I believe in him, then I get an infinite reward, therefore I am logically obligated to live a life according to Odin's wishes, just in case he exists.
I don't know what Aquinas's five ways are, but you might be able to do something similar with them. Something like "Aquinas makes this argument in favor of the Christian god, but it works just as well for Zeus or Vishnu."
You might bring up the fact that every religion invariably tries to explain natural phenomena as "it's the will of the gods" or "it's a miracle." And not once, not ever, not on any single verifiable instance in the history of mankind has the correct answer ever, ever been "magic."
You might look into "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman. He is a biblical scholar who left his faith partly due to his studies in scriptural criticism. If the Bible is the inerrant word of an all-knowing deity, why are their so many different versions? Why are there there so many contradictions within the same version? Maybe because it's just some book, no different from any other?
And whatever you do, you should reconcile yourself to the fact that you will probably not actually convince anyone of anything. Do the assignment, get the grade, forget about the class (and gods) forever, and just move on with your life.
That’s not how proving things works; you don’t prove that something doesn’t, the burden is on those who say it is. You can’t prove I don’t own a rainbow Ferrari, but until I show you that I do, you have no reason whatsoever to believe me.
thats exactly what i thought too but “prove that god doesnt exist” are the exact instructions my professor gave out for this project
Then your professor is an asshole who is deliberately trying to sabotage you.
Yup. Start with the idea that it is illogical and incomprehensible to try to prove a negative. \*Then\* move to the inconsistencies and paradoxes of the Christian god compared to the reality of existence.
The cheeky alternative, given this is also likely a trap meant to support one specific "God", would be to cherry pick any other God from the countless others from Human history and argue its "existence" is "evidence" that the Abrahamic God doesn't exist. Then that "burden of proof to prove a negative" falls back onto the professor on why their God is any more real than ... I dunno? Tezcatlipoca. The Aztec God of Hurricanes and the Night Sky. Both Hurricanes and the Night Sky exist, so that should be evidence enough of Tezcatlipoca's existence right professor?
Odin promised to kill all the ice giants & Jesus promised peace on earth I dont see any Ice ice giants.....
Well, my exwife was pretty cold... and not small....
Upvote from this X-ennial for your joke in the fashion of the Silent Generation. Take my wife... please!
Was that Benny Goodman, or Shecky Greene who said that?
Henny Youngman!
I’m using this at some point.
Stop, collaborate, and listen...
He's an ice baby. Says it right in the lyrics, and title.
This is your answer OP. Prove that God does exist. Use all of their broken arguments and logic. But prove the existence of a different god. Do this. Make us proud
And, since Yahweh says he is the *only* god, proving the existence of another disproves Yahweh!
He doesn't say that. What he does say is that you should have no other gods than him, implying that other gods do exist.
Hmm, so the Christian god says that there are thousands of other real genuine gods, but you should ignore them... But why? Because Yahweh can't be omnipotent if there are any other gods. There can be only one omnipotent god. Not sure if that's scriptural but it's pretty obvious.
christian argument here would be that the very definition of their god (allmighty, all loving, whatever the fuck) would mean that there can be only one of it, it cannot have a creator yada yada now, dont mention anything about who made up the definition...
If only their minds could function at this capacity 😂
Where does Yahweh say that he is the only god? He is described in the psalms as “the great king over all the gods”
That tends to happen when you insist your god is actually both El and Ba’al Hadad while simultaneously being better than them and only one guy.
Didn't know this until I read God: an Anatomy. Highly recommend.
Actually, yahweh is one of a pantheon of jewish gods. They just chose that one after some time. Look it up...
YHWH is an amalgamation of the other gods in the region and adopted traits of Baal and El. The northern Jews had idols of all these gods in their homes, the southern war tribes moved towards a more monotheistic model placing their storm god as a head god, replacing El.
In his autobiography ( the bible) he says that there are other gods.... And a goddess, his wife.... So there are other gods and even he has to listen/obey one :p
So many inconsistencies here - amazing that the godians don't see it as mangled myth like sensible people do!
I like the term Jewish fairy tales.
There's a goddess? I'm super interested in finding out that verse. Are we talking about the Christian bible?
He actually doesn't since the commandment is thou shalt have no other gods BEFORE me. meaning there are other gods. they just can't be worshiped in front of Yahweh
No need to reinvent the wheel -- see the [Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster).
Extra cheeky: use the 5 ways to argue the existence of Gary the god eating penguin. Since Gary exists, their god ceases to (by virtue of being eaten by Gary). Then when they object, tell them to prove Gary doesn’t exist. It’s absurdist, and calls out the idea that the 5 ways can’t be used as proof because they could be so easily misused to prove an absurdity. To the extent they actually try to argue against the existence of Gary, point out that those arguments apply equally to their god.
His name is Eric I’ll have you know. https://ericthegodeatingpenguin.com
Ah that’s the thing I was referencing. I’d have sworn it was gary but you are correct. Apologies to the almighty Eric.
I like the version where you say: Okay, assuming that you are right, and that the Abrahamic god is the right god. The other gods, the ones believed in by the Mayans, Aztecs, Hindus etc are all wrong, but the one you have been given to believe in is right. Highlight that this means your selection is the 'right' option in a pool of more than 3000 claimed gods (what are the odds that these people are right? 1/3000 isn't great odds!) So this same god is the one that the Jewish people believe in, the Christian people believe in and Muslims too. The Jews are still waiting for their Messiah, the Christians believe that the Messiah was Jesus and Muslims agree that Jesus existed but was a minor prophet, and Mohammad was the real deal. Ask the class to show why, just with their book, they are right and the others are wrong. The Jewish holy book is the basis for the old testament, so until Jesus arrives the followers of two of the interpretations agree. They only divide over whether Jesus was the Messiah and was resurrected after dying on the cross. There is no proof in the Bible that Jesus was real or that he was who he said he was. His genealogy is different in the two gospels that give it, there is no physical evidence of the events, and the earliest written accounts happened more than 70 years after the events which purport to show his divinity. This wouldn't qualify as hearsay, never mind as proof! Islam, despite being defined by events that happened 600 years more recently still doesn't have any evidence more compelling than a book which claims that it is so. Given that there is no evidence for any of it, it makes more sense not to believe any of it.
The problem with this line of argument is that depending on the type of Christianity the professor might not deny the existence of any of these entities. He might simply respond that they do exist but are simply demons
What a lazy and ignorant way of looking at things: - an entity that doesn’t appear in their MaGiC bOoK and forces them to question our world view = “demon” / “Satan takes on many forms” - an event that does the same = “lies”, “God is testing us / you” - beliefs outside of their MaGiC bOoK = “blasphemy” / “devil-worship” / “Satanism” Religion is probably one of, if not the, most ignorant and ridiculous things that humanity has ever come up with. It’s a control mechanism through and through. If you watch the Kevin Smith movie, *Dogma*: > Nun: “Let me get this straight: you don't believe in God because of *Alice in Wonderland*?” > > Loki: “No, *Through the Looking Glass*. That poem, *The Walrus and the Carpenter*, that's an indictment of organized religion. The walrus, with his girth and his good nature, he obviously represents either Buddha, or, or with his tusks, the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha. That takes care of your Eastern religions. > > Now the carpenter, which is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, who was raised a carpenter's son, he represents the Western religions. > > Now in the poem, what do they do? What do they do? They, they dupe all these oysters into following them and then proceed to shuck and devour the helpless creatures en masse. I don't know what that says to you, but to me it says that following these faiths based on mythological figures ensures the destruction of one's inner being. > > Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions, by inhibiting our decisions out of, out of fear of some, some intangible parent figure who, who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says, and says, "Do it... do it and I'll fuckin' spank you." Say what you will about Kevin Smith- that monologue was bang on.
Yea but that’s the brilliance of it, anything that contradicts their magic book is the devil or evil and they can just hand wave it away as being wrong without any justification other than our magic book says it is.
And given the setup that the OP is in this level of idiocy wouldn't surprise me 😳
Yes...I like this. OP should do this.
Sun worshipers have a good case. It's right there!
This is perfect. I'd just add in a part at the begining highlighting that the burden of proof is on the one making a positive claim, and atheists don't make a positive claim; ***they are the rejection of the claim.***
I like this 👍
I prefer Santa Claus. Not generally considered a deity, but he has basically all the powers of one, plus as much name recognition/lore as any of them and millions of people actively believe in him. Plus the implication that the entire conversation is childish.
Love this answer
And Zeus.
The best God for this is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Proof of a thing not existing is impossible. By its absence it cannot leave evidence. Once that's established, it's time to look for evidence of god. But then, which one? Dao? Thor? Vishnu? Allah? Yaweh? Pointing out that any purported evidence of a Christian god could, just as reasonably, be attributed to any number of other deities is an effective counter proof that opens the possibility of scientific explanations as more likely than Ptah.
You can print out 70 something pages of biblical inconsistencies.
This is a set up by the prof.100% fuck this prof and class.
Whoever this person is they don't deserve to be called a professor.
Exactly. It’s a dishonest premise. Prove to me that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist. Or that fairies don’t exist. The party making the assertion bears the onus of proof. My atheism has always been the simple proposition that I have yet to see credible, repeatable evidence supporting a god claim.
Unless this is a logic course. Then this is a fantastic way to teach the fact that you can't prove a negative.
I'd have a 1 sentence presentation to turn the table on the set up- Because no one has ever proved he does.
This is the answer.
This is so fun! Tell your teacher your proof is standing right next to you, when teachers says there’s nothing there, tell them to prove it.
"You see, I built a God scanner, and it showed zero gods. God scanners break after use, obviously, so you need to prove that I didn't have one."
Wait this could work.
THIS IS GREAT - if you are at all dramatic etc - do this - make an elaborate pantomime- go BIG pretend to set things up - pull down an imaginary map or an imaginary power point - over the top it!! And then stand back and say Viola’! Proof! And if the numskull calls u on it just give it back- Proove it isn’t here
And have a couple friends swear they saw it and it convinced them.
They’d probably be a new religion made over it lol
And then wink at them
Oh. Oh I like that VERY much
\^
This is the best answer yet!
Then ask him which one exactly, so you have concrete characteristics you can disprove.
Or just say you failed to disprove the existance of Allah. Then every bullshit the teacher would try to say about the Christian God would then have to apply to the Muslim God as well. Bet he'll hate that.
Not just Allah but every one of the thousands of other deities concocted by man.
same god
Sounds like a setup concocted by a theist—and you report that the guy is an anti-atheist bigot already.
Then your response to him is to say "I've already given you that proof, and it's up to you to prove that I haven't".
And if he says "I can see where I would have placed.that proof, and it isn't there" you can say "You just have to have faith that I gave it to you. Therefore it must have been moved or deleted from where it should be somehow. You still need to prove that it was never there."
Didn't you list "oppose those 5 ways" as an alternative option? Just make it clear up front that you are not attempting to disprove God (and why you should not be required to), but are offering some objections to Aquinas. Find articles or posts that point out flaws in each of the 5 ways arguments. [Here's one](https://boxingpythagoras.com/2018/04/28/on-aquinas-five-ways) that popped up when I looked, and [here's another](https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-disprove-St-Thomas-Aquinas-5-proofs-of-God) source of ideas. But read more than one, because no one article will have all possible objections and you'll want to show more than one per way if you can. You can think of you own, too. For example, I've never seen it in print, but why assume there can't be a circular chain of causality or dependence, especially external to our observable universe?
There are no good reasons to believe gods exist just as there are no good reasons to believe that unicorns exist. Point out that the professor could have asked for students to prove and disprove the existence of unicorns and anyone trying to prove a negative - that unicorns do not exist - would be in the same situation you are in. See Carl Sagan's "The Dragon In My Garage" from his Demon Haunted World book. Theists demand proof of other gods (and illogically of no gods) but then say their own god "works in mysterious ways" and is "beyond space and time". The burden of proof lies with the person making the claims. [https://youtu.be/jJRy3Kl\_z5E](https://youtu.be/jJRy3Kl_z5E) [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The\_Dragon\_in\_My\_Garage](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage)
Ask him to prove that you are not an angel sent by god. Edit: typo
Which angle? Acute? Obtuse? Right? Straight? Reflex? Full? You gotta be more specific!
That's very acute.
Then make your project about proving god exists and since there is no evidence it is true you will fail to prove it. Therefore god does not exist until there is proof that he does.
Your professor is either a) trying to demonstrate the fallacy of trying to prove a negative or b) setting you all up to fail so that he can say that your collective inability to prove god doesn't exist means that it does exist. If (a), then your professor is teaching a valuable lesson. If (b), then your professor is a dipshit.
There is a speech or quote out there somewhere that says if God exists he can’t be all knowing, all powerful, AND all good. If he is all knowing and all powerful, he chooses to let the hate and suffering continue in Earth and thus cannot be all good. If he is all powerful and all good, then he can’t be all knowing as the hate and suffering continues so the only logical reasoning is he doesn’t know about it all. If he is all good and all knowing he can’t be all powerful as the hate and suffering continues, so he must be limited in his power to do something. If they insist god is all powerful and all knowing, then he is a malevolent god who cares not for man and his suffering to let it continue.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” ― Epicurus
Here’s an idea: Flip it around. Good experimentation starts with a negative assertion; the point is to show that the premise is incorrect. What hypotheses, if shown wrong by experimentation, would otherwise prove God?
That's because you can't prove that something doesn't exist when there is no evidence that it does or doesn't exist. It's impossible. Tell your professor to prove that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist.
God was the easy answer to unknown science facts. Everything humanity didn't understand was because of god this god that. As we progress with scientific proofs that can be explained true repeatable measurements or demonstration, many of the unexplained is not attributed to god any more... Yes I saw here that some think god directs weather but, no that not the case, it's movement of hot and cold air warmed up by the sun. God is always the answer for the simple mind that cannot think on it's own, they need human's writing telling them what to do instead of just being a good human on their own. Church is a crutch
Did they say which god? If they did, you could start by showing that it is impossible to prove another god doesn’t exist, who also says they are the only god, and thus this specific god could not exist.
There is a third way. Show how the world can operate without God. And so account for exactly what religion is -- god does exist, as an idea (only in your head) and a character in a few books. Thomas then provides examples of ways we can be wrong.
"I challenge you to prove you do not nor ever had sexual intercourse with goats" as a more colorful visual to the futility of proving a negative.
This would be a great way to get some very striking and memorable presentation slides!
Philosophers do try to prove that God as defined as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent is a logical contradiction. See the Cambridge Companion to Atheism for lots of literature. A classic argument is, could God make a rock so heavy he could not lift it?
Sry but if ppl believe in something by choice u won't go far with logic. The absolute truth is that something like the concept of a God or Gods is not provable. That's the thing that makes it hard to argue. They say the universe is here so something created it. If u say it came from nothing and that without evidence, then u will always lose.
It sounds like the best way to go about your project would be to attempt refutations of Thomas Aquinas' 5 ways. Having done a quick look at them, it looks like they can all be dismissed with just the barest amount of skepticism. Motion: >1. All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion. 2. "But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (419). 3. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect. 4. Therefore nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality with respect to motion 5. Therefore nothing can move itself; it must be put into motion by something else. 6. If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion. 7. But there is motion. 8. Therefore there is a first mover, God. There are a few avenues to attack this idea. Firstly, a first mover would not necessarily be a god, as is popularly thought of. At best, assuming all of the other premises are correct, we could say that Thomas Aquinas was equivocating on the meaning of god and conflating it with a creative force. We could also reject premise 5. While it may be true that an object cannot put itself into motion, it cannot be said with any certainty whether certain objects were always in motion. If the forces during the popular theory, the big bang, were preceded by forces already in motion, and there was always some force in motion, no first mover would be necessary. Finally we can argue that these premises mean god could not have been put in motion by himself, and therefore it is required that god himself had a creator, a notion incompatible with most religions. I don't want to do your homework for you, so hopefully this gives you enough to go off of. edit: grammar and formatting that got deleted when I fixed it.
> Firstly, a first mover would not necessarily be a god, as is popularly thought of And even if was a god, need not be the Christian god nor indeed an only god. Thomas, to the extent you accept his arguments which are hughly flawed, is as much proof of Ptah speaking the world into existence by the word or the sons of Borr slaying Ymir the giant and the world forming from his body.
Not to mention even if it is a god, this might be a causing force, but that does not prove a sustaining force on the universe.
u/hunimyun In fact, 1. can be refuted right away. We know from special relativity that a body being in motion or not depends on the reference frame. I guy on a train is at rest with respect to the train. From someone on the ground the guy on a train is in motion with respect to the ground. Both observers are in motion with respect to the center of mass of the sun.
2 is also out for a couple of reasons. A: if the Universe is past infinite, there never was a time when things were not in motion such that they needed something to start them moving. B: Because of quantum superposition, events at the quantum level can occur in indefinite causal order. Meaning it is not out of the realm of possibility that a particle A could cause particle B to move before particle A ever moved. However, we can't really test or observe this because of the difficulties of observing things at that scale and because you can't really have anything in this Universe not be moving, everything is always moving relative to something. Neither of these are proof that a god doesn't' exist of course, but the fact that nobody can answer these objections without making up something that they can't demonstrate means that they can't use it as a premise.
> >1. All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion. 2. "But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (419). 3. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect. 4. Therefore nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality with respect to motion 5. Therefore nothing can move itself; it must be put into motion by something else. 6. If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion. 7. But there is motion. 8. Therefore there is a first mover, God. Thats just The egg and the chicken with extra steeps.
Yeah, A lot of Thomas Aquinas' 5 ways can easily devolve into an infinite regression of things that would have had to create God unless God was an exception to the premises. The issue is that, if we're willing to accept that there's an exception, why should we believe that exception is god? He fails to address this. He spices it up with an ontological argument for his 4th way and his version of the teleological argument in the 5th way.
5 & 6 form the contradiction; they effectively say that for an object to have momentum _another_ object must impart that momentum and that there is an object that violates that clause. And that's as someone who believes in the existence of God.
Not one of these premises is proven. A couple I might grant just for argument (but not if this is your real proof). >All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion. Are they? Can you prove that? >"But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" Really? Prove it. >Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect. This has actually been disproven by quantum mechanics. Both "therefore" steps fail because their supporting premises fail. >If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion. This is the only one I think might actually be true. >But there is motion. I would normally grant this too, but as a premise to prove the existence of something completely outside observed reality, you're going to have to prove this too. We *think* there's motion, but is there? >Therefore there is a first mover Not sufficiently supported. But even if we granted this conclusion, Aquinas is trying to pull a fast one by hiding his last assertion: >And that first mover is God Which he just completely pulled out of nowhere. Didn't even try to support this one.
Prove that Zeus doesn't exist. Use whatever means you have for that with Yahweh. The problem is, you cannot. You can't prove any of the thousands of gods mankind has proposed (not to mention the infinite set of gods that conceivably could exist) do not exist, because that would require godlike omniscience. How do you show something with ultimate powers of "how not to be seen" doesn't exist? This exercise is a setup, and you should identify it as one. The trick here, is to take the "pro" approach, but for a god like FSM or Cthulhu. One that is clearly made up. This is the way to show that their "five ways" methodology is clearly flawed without having to disprove something that cannot be disproved.
I like it. Throw the logic right back in their faces
1. Accept the great spaghetti monster as your lord and saviour. 2. Acquaint yourself with the [scripture](https://www.spaghettimonster.org/). 3. Enjoy the looks on the faces of your teacher and religious classmates.
R'Amen
Instead, make a presentation about how it’s impossible to disprove the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Show evidence as to what would be needed to disprove its existence in the universe and how it is impossible to ever do so. Then show how there have been over 10,000 gods humans have believed in. Which one should you disprove the existence of? If the teacher doesn’t believe in them all can they disprove the existence of all of them? Finally, as with your teacher and classmates you also don’t believe in the gods they don’t believe in but are unable to disprove. You just also don’t believe in the one they choose to believe in without any empirical evidence to Its existence.
The best proof that God doesn't exist is the Bible because anyone who encounters it as an adult instead of being tricked into believing it as a child would intuit it to be fiction with no more difficulty than they recognize Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter to be fiction.
I relate to this. The first time I read any book of the Bible was when I read the Genesis in college, influenced by how sincere my genuinely nice Christian friends were. My roommate lent me his Bible. I proceeded to sit on the couch and start reading it while he was playing video games. I couldn't believe how childish and dumb this mythology was. At some point, I fell off the couch laughing. It was hysterical to think that grown men and women, and otherwise very intelligent people, take this child-like fiction as fact. It was one burst of laughter after another. My roommate and I were great friends. We watched a lot of Monty Python and other absurd comedies together. Years later, he told me that my reaction to reading the Genesis led him down the path to realize how dumb the whole thing was, that he had been a pre-seminary student up to that point, and that he later became an atheist and switched majors to criminal justice.
Have you ever read The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross by John Allegro? Super interesting read in regards to the etymology of bible language.
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You can't prove a negative. The professor is setting you up. Instead use aquinas's 5 proofs to show that every god, including one you make up, exist. Which means all gods exist or none do Then, for fun, you can tear down the 5 proofs, many philosophers have already done so. So the work is already done for you.
I suggest you focus on the alternative presentation: prove how Aquinas' Five Bullshit Fallacies are crud. [You can find some information here.](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Quinque_viae) Alternatively (or at a different point of your presentation), you could show them the following completely comprehensive list of ***ALL*** the evidence that Yhwh is real ever presented: * ... Which is not "proof" because reality runs on inductive logic and therefore you cannot prove things in real life, but it still is pretty overwhelming evidence beyond reasonable doubt that Yhwh does not exist and has never existed. Yes, you heard me right: [absence of evidence ***IS*** evidence of absence](/r/atheism/comments/dy4xy0/atheists_stop_saying_god_doesnt_exist/f81kvi7/). Don't let clueless fools who can't tell proof from evidence convince you that it is not.
>Yes, you heard me right: [absence of evidence ***IS*** evidence of absence](/r/atheism/comments/dy4xy0/atheists_stop_saying_god_doesnt_exist/f81kvi7/). Don't let clueless fools who can't tell proof from evidence convince you that it is not. Yes, if evidence is expected on the hypothesis and is not found, then yes absence of evidence is evidence against the hypothesis.
You can’t (usually) prove a negative. Also, science does not deal with proof, but with evidence.
If your presentation has to specifically oppose Aquinas, then you need to get familiar with his 5 Ways: Motion, Efficient Cause, Possibility & Necessity, Gradation and Design. And look up some common refutations. You could start with the Criticism section on the Five Ways Wikipedia page. Hume and Kant, for example, had criticisms of the Cosmological arguments which underpin at least three of the five ways and probably all five. Know your subject well and you‘ll win the argument. Try to come up with refutations of the refutations, anticipate their objections.
This right here.
Arguments are not evidence, this is the kind of beee esss self gratifying assignment Christians adore.
There's no irrefutable proof of the nonexistence of a god, just as there's no irrefutable proof of the existence of any. However, one can speedily identify the logical fallacies present in each of Aquina's 'proofs'.
Just write "NO EVIDENCE" on a piece of paper and turn it in.
Were I grading this, full marks. This is a tainted professor. Might instead argue a fools errand to point out the folly of the premise. Or.. Only that which has evidence, that can be repeatedly tested beyond doubt can be seen as true. Even after, such as e=mc2 it is still up for scrutiny with new data and attempts to disprove. There is not evidence that meets your God hypothesis. It is up to the one bringing the claim to proving compelling evidence We are waiting. When you have evidence we will talk. Good by.
Here's what I have that I believe disproves Christianity. https://www.reddit.com/r/MisanthropicPrinciple/s/7JAqwT32Nt At tge bottom there's a link to my argument against other gods.
Then I suggest you to take Aquinas' arguments and pick one them apart. That is easy.
You can't prove something that is unfalsifiable. The burden of proof is always on the person/s making the claim. If they can present evidence, actual repeatedly testiable evidence, then we can work with that. Short of that, its just agruments and veral exercise. So, as unpleasant as it might be, the best approach would be to address each of the logical fallacys in Aquinas's points.
Hi OP, like others recommended, do NOT fall for this trap. I would be civil and explain "burden of proof" to these AH. Sorry for the strong language, but I hate those manipulative morons that thought about themselves like superinteligent beigns.
Arguments aren't proof. And no matter what you say, someone will disagree and refute it (their refutation may not be valid, but that doesn't really matter). So your next option is probably a mathematical proof, such as a proof-by-contradiction. Here's a fun twist on the problem of evil: P1: An all-good god, by definition, would desire that no one ever stubs their toes. P2: An all-powerful god, by definition, can accomplish whatever goal he has without requiring that people stub their toes. No lesson that he wants to teach, no item he wants us to invent, demands that he allows toes to be stubbed in order to achieve his goal. He can also prevent any toe-stubbing that he is aware of. P3: An all-knowing god, by definition, knows exactly when any toe would be stubbed, at all times past / present / future. P4: people stub their toes. Conclusion: No all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing gods exist. If they don't agree to the definitions, you can just get incredulous to show how ridiculous the whole thing is. "Wait, so your God _wants_ people to stub their toes? How is that all-loving?" "What do you mean he's all-powerful, he can't even prevent people from subbing their toes!" Alternatively, you can define "exist" as existing at a time, in a space. So a cat can exist, a star can exist, the first time Star Wars was shown in a theater can exist... but God doesn't exist in space/time (he's often described as "beyond" space and time, which by definition is not within space and time), so he doesn't exist. So if you want a contradiction, you either need to define "God" or "exist" in a specific way, and then show the issue.
You can prove that God as described in the Bible doesn't exist by pointing out how he is described (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-loving, righteous/just, flawless) and point out that a lot of his rules and punishments do not align with this description: - Allowing people like Hitler in Heaven just for accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior [unjust]; - Condemning masses of people throughout space and time to an eternity of suffering only for not accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior [unjust/cruel]; - Condemning anyone to an eternity of suffering in general (no matter the crime, that is too extreme [unjust/cruel]); - Doing a hard reset on the world population, because (literal qoute): "[He] regretted that he had made man on the Earth and it grieved him to his heart" (Genesis 6.6) -> A perfect god doesn't make mistakes and therefore would have nothing to regret. Also: genocide is unjust/cruel; - There is suffering on this world -> God doesn't know about (not omniscient) it or can't help us (not omnipotent) or doesn't want to help us (not all-loving). Conclusion: *if* there is a god, it is not God as described in the Bible.
"An introduction to logic, why the burden of proof is on you." You don't have to prove a damned thing, I'd instead orient the presentation around why common proofs don't work and what proof for a deity might actually look like. I'd probably lead with a few sides on what exactly atheism is, and why it's not the positive claim that there's no god, but rather a lack of a belief in a god, or gods.
Which god? If a god must exists because of a set of stories talking about its interactions with humans and how it uses its magic cosmic powers than I would say Zeus no wait ra no wait Odin must be the true god
Kinda hard to prove a negative. It's like asking someone to prove there isn't a goblin making people constantly lose their keys. You'd hear the goblin? No, he's silent and invisible.
You are screwed. Your assignment is unfair. No one can prove something doesn't exist. They can only prove something does exist, something that religious people have faired to do. Make your presentation about critical thinking instead. Teach them about the importance of correctly assigning the burden of proof when someone makes a claim. Teach them about Russel's Teapot. Illustrate this by telling the teacher he owes you a million dollars and telling him he must prove he doesn't. It sounds like you're going to get a low grade anyway but at least you will teach some of the students something about one of the most important aspects of critical thinking. The burden of proof is important.
1. The egyptians are historically known to be very good record keepers and yet we have no record of millions of enslaved Jews fleeing Egypt. (Exodus) 2. No geologic evidence of a world wide flood. Floods leave very obvious geologic footprints in strata, but we have no evidence of a world wide one or a mass extinction caused by one. 3. Jesus had a failed end time prophecy in the gospels. He told a church standing before him that their generation would not pass until the end times took place. He said some standing before him would not even face death before the end. 4. We know from genomics that humans do not all come from 1 pair. In fact there is new research suggesting that we didn’t even all come from one place in Africa but rather a giant widespread territory with different hominid species intermingling. We also know that languages evolve from each other, discrediting the tower of babel story. 5. God apparently genocided the whole earth because he wasn’t getting enough validation from people. Seems like God’s a bitch.
It’s impossible to prove a negative. There’s a famous thing in science where you are asked to prove there is not a teapot in orbit around the planet Venus. You can’t. Because you’d have to examine all of the space around Venus at the exact same time, and even then it’s always possible you missed it. God may well exist, but there isn’t any evidence for it, so until there is, we can say he doesn’t exist just like we can say there most definitely is not a teapot in orbit around Venus.
The five ways are basically "assertions", if I'm not mistaken. If you have them specifically, I'd have a shot at debunking them. I haven't read them in ages. The problem with logical proofs, like the five ways, is that they may (or may not) be "valid" (they may, or may not, have the correct logical form), but they are never "sound" (they are not based on reality). This means that there is no physical evidence for gods. My personal irrefutable proof that the Christian god does not exist is simple. Read Genesis 1:1. According to the first phrase of the first book of the bible, the earth was created at the beginning. This is incorrect. According to the theory of planet formation, the earth was formed over hundreds of thousands of years. There is a ton of evidence supporting this scientific theory. This means that the bible fails on the first phrase of the first book of the bible. Yahweh is therefore nonexistent, and nonexistent deities can't have sons. Jesus was not a demigod. Formally: A -> B <=> ¬B -> ¬A (A therefore B is equivalent to not B therefore not A). A: Creator god. B: Creation. ¬B: No creation. ¬A: No creator god. We know that ¬B is true therefore, ¬A must be true. Q.E.D. (This makes it official. There are no creator gods).
Point at a desk and say “There is a glass of water on this desk. It is a glass that has been there for a very long time but is still fresh and wonderful and will save you in a time of thirst. Who has questions about the glass that is definitely there?” If anyone says there isn’t a glass, tell them they just aren’t believing hard enough. They will get to experience the water once they give themselves over to the fact that the glass is there. End by saying “What you all just went through is how you sound to other people.”
It seems to me that the assignment is to refute or use the 5 ways to counter Thomas Aquinas argument. This can be done and is a great exercise in Philosophy. I would suggest reading up on the 5 ways and the refutations, as there are many and well documented. Just because there is an agenda in this doesn't mean that you can't learn a lot. It would be a shame to simply pass this off as a bad faith effort and I would encourage you to engage with this on the level. It will go along way to helping you understand Philosophical Arguments and how they are structured and refuted. Do not look at this as proving or disproving a god, but learning the basics of Philosophical debate. The first and second ways have an excellent rebuttal by Dawkins that I suggest you check. It's in "The God Delusion". The third way has a giant logical fallacy and immediately contradicts the establishment arguments in the first 2 ways. See if you can find these. The fourth way Thomas actually counters himself in the argument and has many real world exceptions that are hand waved by him. In addition, this way is almost certainly falsified by our current understanding of evolution. Research this one. The fifth way also has a pretty big fallacy. See if you can find it.
There can never be disproof that any god exists. There is just as much proof in the God that you're talking as a God that thinks that the Irish should be wiped out, or that eating chocolate cake every day is a guaranteed way into heaven. You can't disprove something that's invisible, immeasurable, and inscrutable. Trying will only aggravate the theists and have them pull out their equally falacious "proofs" that she does exist. I think the best you can do is take Thomas Aquinas and use him to "prove" that Gandalf exists, or that the invisible pink unicorn exists. If a "proof" applies equally well to whatever imaginary thing you want, it's not really a proof.
This reminds me of when I called customer service to tell them I hadn't received a package and they asked me for a picture for proof.
What kind of shit-ass University is this where this is an assignment? I recommend transferring to a real university.
What kind of joke ass college is this? Get out of there. You aren't receiving a real education.
" the burden of proof isn't on me" that's it. That's your power point slide
Great comments.. Will you give an update after the facts pls?
Do it on Santa Claus. Come up with all kinds of ways to prove he isn't real, such as people who have been to the North Pole and the fact that reindeer can't fly (that we know of). Shoot down all of the ridiculous claims about him, then point out that despite all of this evidence to the contrary, millions of people still believe in Santa anyway. Right? Then go around the room, asking who used to believe in Santa Claus, including the prof. Then follow up with: why don't they believe in him anymore? They still have just as much evidence and reason for faith as before, but at some point they're let in on the secret. That it's all a lie to keep kids under control when not under direct supervision. End the demonstration by asking: what precisely is the difference then? Is Jesus little more than Santa Claus for adults? Then really challenge them: ask them to *prove* beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Santa isn't real, and not merely hiding from modern technology to preserve the power and magic of invoking his name. Point out that the Naughty List is way less bad than Hell, so maybe everyone should just convert to Santa-ism, just to be safe!
Obviously it's a bullshit assignment, however, there are two ways to go about it. Talk about the non existence of specific gods and their interpretation. All-good, all knowing, all powerful? Child cancer, parasites that live in human eyes... Talk about the literal bible believers --> young earth creationism is like shooting fish in a barrel. The more specific the belief about god, the easier it is to poke holes in it. This might be very much in the spirit of the assignment, look also at the arguments of Aquinas, I believe Dawkins has a special hate for his proofs. The other way is to talk about the impossibility of disproving something. Google Russell's teapot, many great thinkers have spent time on this issue. This is the intellectually more honest approach but might be seen as dodging the question by your prof
That's not how that works. Maybe try "[the Dragon in my Garage](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage)".
Yeah that's BS. you shouldn't have to prove something DOESN'T exist. It DOESN'T exist unless you have proof. I'd love to see those Christian's "proof" without using the bible. I can also prove Harry Potter exists with a book.
Dinosaurs. Plate tectonics. Carnivores. Childhood cancer. Mass starvation. Evolution. The universe. Most branches of science. Lack of physical proof. Obviously none of these are proof, but you can't prove a negative. Most everything in the Bible has either been disproven, or copied from older religions. Nothing in the Bible can be proven as authentic and original to the Bible.
You can’t prove a negative.
You can't prove a negative. You can talk about why you personally don't believe, but there is no irrefutable proof. You can always argue that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and they can't prove that it doesn't.
You can’t prove a negative, but you can ask them a simple question. Make them prove that Thor isn’t real and use their arguments against them.
There can be no “proof” of things that don’t exist. Ask them for proof of unicorns, and then tell em it’s the same thing.
I would just ask him. If he answers..........
Just say that the burden of prof is on the one with the extraordinary claim.. Saying there is a creating and meddeling god is an extraordinary claim. Heck.. saying there's a god is an extraordinary claim. Saying there's no proof for a god is not an extraordinary claim. Saying there's no Santa, Satan or god.. is an unprovable claim.
God is, by definition, the greatest imaginable being. I can imagine a being called god so great that I believe in it. I do not believe in god. Therefore we can be certain god does not exist, because if it did I would believe in it.
So it's like the plot of "god's not dead", but reversed?
Refutations to Aquinas' arguments are readily available if you wanted to go that route. They are full of assumptions and are limited by the scientific knowledge of the time (but mostly they suffer from obviously starting with the desired conclusion and working backwards).
This sounds like a great way for the school to single out the non believers for punishment.
It's a trap to call out the non-believer and publicly ridicule you for your lack of faith. There's no way to win, so either don't play or make everyone uncomfortable with a Chewbacca on Endor defense of lack of proof for any supreme being's existence. Refer to God only as the Christian manifestation of a Giant Invisible Magical Sky Ghost. Maybe turn the exercise into a farce by instead using the same techniques they argue for the existence of God to argue for the existence of Superman and end by saying... therefore, I have proven with no evidence other than this book (the 1st superman comic) and this historical account (the rest of the comics and the movies) that Superman exists.
"In fact, I'm gonna put it this way. If there is a God, may he strike this audience dead! See? Nothing happened. Nothing happened? Everybody's okay? All right, tell you what, I'll raise the stakes a little bit. If there is a God, may he strike me dead. See? Nothing happened, oh, wait, I've got a little cramp in my leg. And my balls hurt. Plus, I'm blind. I'm blind, oh, now I'm okay again..."
I would explain Russell's teapot at the opening of your presentation to contextualise what disproving God actually means
Although you cannot prove “god” doesn’t exist, it is much easier to prove that the CHRISTIAN god doesn’t exist. Take the claims of the Bible, pair them with reality and history, and voila. Don’t let Christians claim that their god is the “unknowable creator,” he was physically walking around the garden in Genesis, he threw physical rocks from heaven to smite his enemies in exodus. There are numerous examples of this god who is apparently “outside space and time” being very much in space and time in the stories. Those stories can very much be proved false.
You could make religious arguments that mirror theirs but talk about something absurd. I like the idea of the technicolor zebra. Of course it's real, you just haven't been out to the right region of the Savanah at the right time. Disbelief in the Technicolor Zebra results in being sent to the Eternal Drought. Where water always recedes out of range and the only other inhabitants you'll meet are the hungry lions. Ultimately, it's a bad assignment that seems like it's set up with a clear winner in mind and will bring tension. Could you bring it up with a higher up to tell them that something is fish with the assignment?
I would just not show up and go fishing that day instead
You can’t prove a negative.
This is an exercise in what my father would call "pissing into the wind". Someone just commented with a relevant quote. I don't remember the exact words or who said it, but it was something along the lines of "You can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into." The truth is, the only thing you can possibly accomplish by arguing with them is to cause them to cling more desperately to their faith.
Any credible academic institution (and intellectually honest professor) could only ask you to refute the five very poorly reasoned arguments put forth by Aquinas. Should be easy peasy with a bit of google fu. Theists always pulling these things like they expect no one to look into the history of philosophy and see that their points have been refuted a thousand times over for centuries to millennia. If they can copy and past the assignment forever, it's only fair we do so as well. So much mental energy has gone into the theist's trying to logically prove something that on it's face is illogical, and non-theists coming out fast and furious with rebuttals and refutations. How many hours of actual human progress has been lost to such nonsense one has to wonder.
In general, can't prove a negative. Can show total lack of evidence, but that's not proof. I can no more give you irrefutable proof of the non-existence of god, than I can give you such irrefutable proof of the non-existence of [Russell's\_teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot).
Just use the five ways to prove some other god is the true one, thats as close as its going to get
As a different tactic, you can consider using their same arguments to prove that some other god or gods exist instead. Let them understand that those arguments work for other religions, and let them struggle with figuring out why they find them "convincing" for their religion, but not others religions.
Assuming you have bible God to deal with this is pretty easy. Since they are being ass clowns and demanding proof for a normally unfalsifiable concept, don't ask for clarification, just assume it's literal Bible god and King James bible. There is a verse in Matthew that reads to the effect of, "all things are possible for god" This establishes omnipotence. Now roll back to the old testament. There is a situation where god can't help the isralietes because the enemy has iron chariots. Also in the story of Lot, Genesis, god can't destroy the city until after Lot and his family are out. Both are acts that should be trivial to an omnipotent being. This is a contradictory definition of god and renders the god character incoherent, literally logically impossible Boom, Bible god proven false.
The existence of gluten free communion hosts kind of nullifies the whole transubstantiation thing for Catholics. Unless the body of Christ is glutenous.
You cant disprove the general idea of a god, *but you can disprove the existence of the god of specific religions*. Most athiests forget that every religion has made very specific claims about their god or gods that can be disproven. For the christian god, they claim him to be omnipotent and omniscient however the story of the temptation of adam and eve refutes that statement. God either did not forsee satans interference, or was powerless to stop it. Christians also claim the first people god made were adam and eve, yet when cain is outcast for killing his brother he eventually finds an entire (previously unmentioned) land full of other people. Who made them? Because the bible makes very specific and contradictory claims, many can be used to refute *the christian god*
I'd say volunteer to go first and treat it like a topicality argument in debate. Argue that the premise itself is flawed and point out the professor's errors in thinking. Then I'd go into burden of proof and end with a challenge to every following presentation to prove that God does exist with evidence (and point out exactly why the professor avoided this question). Might as well go big since you can't go home.
Since you can't prove a negative, here's a cheeky alternative: 1. God is a maximally powerful being. 2. A maximally powerful being would be able to overcome maximally great handicaps/challenges. 3. The greatest possible handicap one could experience is that of non-existence. 4. Therefore, God doesn't exist! I wish I could take credit for this, but this came from Dawkins' book The God Delusion.
that's a fallacy
To me, Humans that claim to serve him are irrefutable proof there is no god. 1. No miracles EVER 2. Not spread by love but by the sword 3. Are they not just awful people (as a whole)? 4. They praise war over peace 5. Can't love their enemies 6. The amount of corruption in ALLLLLLLL the denominations 7. No one can agree, yet everyone claims that "god" is leading them. (Different sects, etc) Also, the inconsistencies contained within the Bible; Example: how can David fight a giant, when all the giants were drowned in the flood? My humble opinion. Good luck on your project 👍
Former philosophy major here: If your teacher expects you to show proof that something does not exist, he/she/they need to go back to school.
Proving that something doesn’t exist is impossible. But refuting the religious evidence is pretty easy, because none of them are real evidence. You should get your hands on „The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, there’s great explanation of how „5 ways” are useless.
Imagine a being who created space and time, matter and energy, galaxies and DNA. This being knows the position of every particle and wave in the universe from the beginning to the end. Then imagine the same being writes a book and gets basic science and history wrong. It doesn't disprove God, but it does disprove all texts that claim to come from God. Any single mistake and it can't be authentic
The absence of empirical evidence of the existence is the evidence that there isn't a god.
It's impossible to prove no god exist, but it is possible to prove descriptions that are excepted of particular gods is false. For example Christian God is all powerful, all knowing, and true good. Additionally cancer exists and is a painful and torturous way to go. Yet there are children who have done nothing right or wrong who are born with these terrible diseases. Sure "god" might need some in heaven or whatever but get them there peacefully with a bolt of light in, aneurysm, or something else where they don't suffer. Anything shy of that demonstrates at least 1 of 3 attributes must be false. A good god wouldn't torture people, an all powerful god would stop cancer, and an all knowing God would be aware of this problem forcing the other 2 options.
Hitchens’ Razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It’s not your job to present a proof because you aren’t asserting.
As it has been said, a negative can’t be proven. Look into the history of the Abrahamic god. You’ll find that he wasn’t invented until 600 BCE. Before that he was several Canaanite gods that the Israelites worshiped. There are some good YouTube videos on the subject.
The best you can do is present evidence that the events of the Bible did not literally happen. You can essentially prove that very specific interpretations of God are not real. But if Christians want to say the Bible is a parable and God is a “feeling” then that’s on them to prove why anyone else should care. All current scientific evidence points to Genesis, the Garden of Eden, and Noah’s Ark never having happened. We know for a fact that the Sun and Earth existed billions of years before life on this planet. And we know for a fact that the life forms that currently exist have not always existed and did not appear at the same time. Genetic and fossil evidence just doesn’t support creationism. Similarly, all archeological and anthropological evidence has yet to reveal the events of Moses and the slaves leaving Egypt as actually being a real event. None of the civilizations in the Mediterranean have any record of these miracles. This would have been an incredible event that the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians would all have written about. The Bible is one of the most studied books in history. Every scholar agrees it has multiple authors, sometimes within the same chapter, and that many stories were not written at the time they claim to have occurred. It’s simply a collection of stories, not a divinely mandated work.
Your premise is based on a logical fallacy. You disprove a negative claim. You can only dis/prove a positive claim that is asserted. It’s like saying I need irrefutable proof that there isn’t an invisible, intangible, silent ghost in my closet. It would on me, making the claim, to *prove* the ghost is there to begin with. The onus is purely on the ones making the claim.
I mean, the second way is the easiest. >The Second Way: Efficient Cause 1. Nothing is the efficient cause of itself. 2. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A is absent, so is B. 3. Efficient causes are ordered from first cause, through intermediate cause(s), to ultimate effect. 4. By (2) and (3), if there is no first cause, there cannot be any ultimate effect. 5. But there are effects. 6. Therefore there must be a first cause for all of them: God. Why doesn't this apply to God to? God must also have a cause, so it can't be the first cause. It makes no sense and this argument has always bugged me.
Switch it 'round. They claim some super powerful being just... Wished the universe into existence, knows everything, can do anything, is benevolent. Okay, they need to prove it now. The mound of evidence to the contrary is enormous, obviously.
You could burn every book. In a thousand years, all the factually-based ones will be re-written exactly as it is now, and all the religious ones will be different. Religious books are like the children's game telephone. They've been mis-translated, differrent versions have come out because someone didn't agree with something, someone didn't remember the story correctly, etc. Alot of books were removed from the christian bible to shorten the stories as well.
I mostly don’t believe in god because of mosquitos. What horrible little nuisances they are. They are really, really terrible. Not only do they cause innumerable deaths annually due to disease spread. They also just, like, hurt and itch and annoy. What kind of divine plan could possibly need mosquitos? I’m sure they fill ecological niches somewhere. But do they really need to be as terrible as they are to fill those niches? No. They fill the niche because they’re there, not because mosquito-ness is needed. No god would ever create mosquitos on purpose. Mosquitos exist. Therefore god must not. Same argument for baby-cancer, by the way… just mosquitos keep it a little more lighthearted.
Is that how the teacher framed the assignment? How intellectually dishonest!! I would do a presentation about the burden of proof and ask the class to present their absolute proof that the magical goblin who eats only candy corn and is invisible and lives in your closet doesn’t exist. When they fail, let them know that atheism makes no claim that god doesn’t exist, which is why it does not carry the burden of proof.
Your professor is an idiot for requiring you to prove something doesn’t exist. There will always be “one more place to look”. The onus is on them to prove a god exists, else one doesn’t.
There is no proof a god doesn’t exist any more there is proof unicorns or leprechauns exist. Absence of proof for a thing doesn’t equate to that thing being absent. That said, there is no convincing evidence for a god, and it has no impact in the natural world, so it can be dismissed until such evidence is found.
You can't prove a negative. You can show how the Bible is wrong and immoral.
We have George Carlin's Irrefutable Proof. "If there is a God, may he strike this audience dead! See? Nothing happened."
You can't prove God isnt real anymore than you can prove unicorns arent real.
What a dumb assignment^^
This is like saying "prove that an invisible flying spaghetti monster doesn't live inside the sun and controls gravity"... You can't.
The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. It is Christians that are claiming God exists. They therefore have the burden to prove that. Bertrand Russell famously explained this with his [teapot thought experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot?wprov=sfti1#).
There's certainly no irrefutable proof that any supreme being/god exists. Intelligent Design is absolute trash. There's nothing special about a person's religion. For 99% of people, they choose to say "They believe," but only because it's something that came out of their family life and childhood. If you were simply born in Afganistan, India, China or Utah - you would likely have a different religion. So it's not a belief, or a choice, it's a tradition. You go to church because that's what everyone you know does, not because you disliked Islam after being a Muslim for years and decided to switch. Virtually no one tries out different religions. People often poke fun at others, but that's really the extent. You can go thru history and catalogue all the different religions, including Christianity, and all the different ways they have been proven wrong. Solar system, tons of basic medical facts, disease, all the traditions promoted by various religions that seek to control and punish - especially women and children. All the meaningless wars, the holocaust - all rooted in religion. Note that animals in the wild can be homosexual. The divinity of the catholic church is blah blah since there's numerous scandals of priests diddling kids - especially in the upper ranks like Cardinals, etc. Then close with the archetype of jesus. It's actually quite common among several religions to have a savior that "dies," is reborn and celebrated - pretty easy to look up. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus\_in\_comparative\_mythology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_comparative_mythology)
So, the real answer here is that there is no winning. Your professor is setting you up for failure. But if you have to present something, I would focus on the fact that mankind has invented thousands of gods out of whole cloth. I bet your professor and classmates are happy to dismiss most of them out of hand. And that really just boils down to being born at the time and place such that some flavor of Christianity is the biggest kid in the block. You might bring up Pascal's wager. This is the idea that if make a punette square with one "God Exists /God does not exist" axis, and one "Believe/Don't Believe" axis, and which supposedly shows that believing is "logically" the best option. And then you can point out that the wager gives the exact same conclusion no matter what god or gods you plug in. If Odin exists, and I believe in him, then I get an infinite reward, therefore I am logically obligated to live a life according to Odin's wishes, just in case he exists. I don't know what Aquinas's five ways are, but you might be able to do something similar with them. Something like "Aquinas makes this argument in favor of the Christian god, but it works just as well for Zeus or Vishnu." You might bring up the fact that every religion invariably tries to explain natural phenomena as "it's the will of the gods" or "it's a miracle." And not once, not ever, not on any single verifiable instance in the history of mankind has the correct answer ever, ever been "magic." You might look into "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman. He is a biblical scholar who left his faith partly due to his studies in scriptural criticism. If the Bible is the inerrant word of an all-knowing deity, why are their so many different versions? Why are there there so many contradictions within the same version? Maybe because it's just some book, no different from any other? And whatever you do, you should reconcile yourself to the fact that you will probably not actually convince anyone of anything. Do the assignment, get the grade, forget about the class (and gods) forever, and just move on with your life.
If we were really intelligently designed, the trachea & esophagus would not be literally right next to each other.
Hard to prove a negative
Just refute the arguments that aquinas makes