I've read a fair few number of arguments from the atheists of OT, some excellent, others not so much. Here are a couple of common arguments for atheism which I don't think are so excellent.
Can God make a rock that he cannot lift?
This one crops up on the odd occasion in an attempt to poke holes in the supposed omnipotence of God. Basically it says that if God cannot make such a rock then he is not omnipotent (because his powers of creation must be limited) and if he can make such a rock then he is still not omnipotent (because his strength would be limited). It seems like an inescapable hole for the theist but really it's mistakenly based on the assumptions of a finite world.
God's power, both in terms of rock creating ability and strength, is infinite according to the theist. Say then that God makes the heaviest rock that he is able- such a rock would be infinitely heavy. The question then is can God lift it? Well we know that his strength is infinite so the answer seems to be quite obviously "yes". At this point the atheist might triumphantly say "hah, God could not make a rock heavier than he could lift therefore he is not omnipotent". This exclamation doesn't really make sense though. Essentially the atheist is saying that God ought to have been able to make a rock that was heavier than an infinitely heavy rock, but this is logically impossible. Something that is infinite is something that is without end and thus is something that cannot be exceeded. In this way when God makes the heaviest rock possible within his powers and then lifts said rock he can do so without contradicting his omnipotence.
Epicurus' quote
"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?"
This is basically just a very neat encapsulation of the argument from evil and an attempt to poke holes in the supposed omnipotence and omnibenevolence of God. The first line of defense is to go with the freewill argument which is illustrated nicely by another quote from Epicurus:
"If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another."
The basic idea is that evil is consistent with the choices that humans freely make and that God could not interfere with it (because if he did we would not have freewill). The problem with this is that we still must account for evil that is not caused by freewill. Bizzarely enough the answer is to say that there is no such thing as evil that is not caused by freewill.
The justification for that once again involves infinity and the concept of heaven. According to many religions life after death involves an eternity of happiness and an absence of evil. Say then that a person has experienced a finite amount of evil on earth followed by an infinite amount of non-evil in heaven, how much evil have they suffered in total? It seems strange but you can't really say that a person has suffered any evil at all if they have spent an eternity in heaven. An infinite amount of one experience seems to just make a finite amount of another experience practically non-existent.
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Those are the main two that do not convince me, I'm sure that people will disagree and that's okay. What are some other common atheistic arguments which fail to resonate with you?
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