I never said babies are stupid.

What does one expect or hope for from such arguments?

Can the existence or non-existence of God be determined by argument?

Or is it a matter of finding reasons for or against believing?

Or is it a matter of the possibility of God?

What hangs on the existence or non-existence of God?

What does one expect or hope for from such arguments? — Fooloso4

I expect to show that theism is an irrational belief system.

Can the existence or non-existence of God be determined by argument?

Theism can be shown not to be true or conceptually incoherent which entails that any theistic deity is fictional.

Or is it a matter of finding reasons for or against believing?

It's a matter of exposing – making explicit – the insufficient evidence or unsound arguments in reasoning "for and against believing".

Or is it a matter of the possibility of God?

For me, it's a matter of the truth-value of what believers say about what they call "God".

What hangs on the existence or non-existence of God?

Only a conception of reality.

Nietzsche's most famous points about god, "...who will wipe the blood from our hands..." etc. isn't so strictly 'negative about religion', rather it points to the deeper question of discovering a new morality in the obviously godless modern reality that we live in. Essentially, anybody who has their head screwed on in the modern era can recognize that there is no proof for the biblical god, that the bible is man-made, that the burden of proof lies on the believer, etc. That kind of atheism is practically a 'truth of thumb' in academic circles, right?

The issue isn't about whether god 'actually' exists. It's about the idea of god as being a source of ethics. The murder of god by logic and science has left a vacuum of fleeting Christian morals.

For example, the idea of value for the Samaritan, that is, finding value in people other than your own tribe, is a fairly radical notion and seems to be a religious idea, particularly when you consider that the reward for such arguably stupid selflessness is eternity in heaven. Without the promise of heaven to motivate us, why would we bother to go outside our tribe? Why would we bother with something like humility if there is nothing but ourselves? What can humble the average person? Please don't say science, which is largely ignored by the average person.

In a world of rapid globalism, I would argue that we need this Samaritan, universal ethic more than ever.

Even without god, as an atheist, I still rely on the societal remnants of Christian morality and ethics, which has dominated the west since it took over the west. I was also raised Christian. So try as I might, I am a product of these ethics. Not all of these ethics are good and not all are bad. I have tried to do away with the ethics that I don't like - but I can find no materialistic basis in certain, very useful ethics. Of course there is the issue of making sense of this hellish reality and meat sack that I'm stuck in - humanism has little say about meaning and purpose other than telling you what you already know - that you've got to figure it all out for yourself. Some help that is.

The question is what we do next as a secular society. Of course, we aren't truly a secular society, but perhaps this speaks to our fear about what to do next. I don't believe in god, literally, but I often wonder if a symbolic belief in ritual, community and spiritual ethics is required to make sense of the radical Samaritan ethic. Of course, this just depends on what kind of world you want to live in.

So to believe in god might mean to pursue faith in direct opposition to all the evidence for the purpose of living a meaningful life. To reject god is to reject that the Samaritan ethic requires justification, it is resigning oneself to a life of searching for reasons for Samaritan ethics, of searching for meaning and justification. Or of course, just a plain old embracing of quasi-darwinian ethics.

What is it that we're certain exists/doesn't exist? What are the criteria for existence/nonexistence?, i.e. if I claim x exists/doesn't exist, I must know why x exists/doesn't exist. Clearly, we all agree that the Eiffel tower exists in Paris, France. Also, equally clearly, elves don't exist.

Now, claims of existence/nonexistence vis-à-vis God have to be in accord with our intuition & reason as outlined in the previous paragraph. To spell it out if God exists, then it must be in the same sense as the Eiffel tower does and if God doesn't exist, it must be in the same sense elves don't.

Something worth pondering upon is that, within the domain of our senses, all we have are necessary conditions & not sufficient conditions for existence [re hallucinations (insanity) + illusions (hyperbolic skepticism)] i.e. it's impossible to prove God, anything else for that matter, exists).

It's about the idea of god as being a source of ethics. The murder of god by logic and science has left a vacuum of fleeting Christian morals. — 64bithuman

That's actually hard to justify if you consider it. Christians have no objective basis for morality. What they have is subjective or personal preferences regarding 1) who they think god is and 2) what they think their version of god wants. This explains why Christians (and other religious folk) have absolutely no agreement on core ethical questions and are all over the place. Take any issue, from gay marriage to abortion, capital punishment, stem cell treatment, the role of women - whatever - theists are all over the place, from fag hating to rainbow flags of diversity. In the end all anyone has is personal judgement about what is right. A Bible or the Koran are only an impressionistic springboard for selecting a personal preference via interpretation.

When I spoke of shallow atheism, I was referring to scientism and materialistic determinism.

I think that your post asks some important questions about the nature of human beings reflecting on understanding it all. In particular, 'What hangs on the existence or non-existence of God' It is not easy to answer and it may be more rhetorical rather than anything else. However; it was the sort of way which I was thinking when I wrote the thread outpost. It is more about what was signified in the emergence of the idea of God in human consciousness.

Even though it is slightly aside from most discussions about the existence of God, one book which I think is important in connection with the development of ideas about gods or God is Julian Jaynes' 'The Origins of the Bicameral Mind'. That is because Jaynes looks at the evolution of thought in human culture. He sees the development of picture representations and language through the form of song and poetry initially. He also sees the way in which human beings in ancient times had a less clear distinction between inner and outer reality. Thoughts were projected outside as coming from gods, and Jaynes sees Moses receiving the ten commandments in this way.

Human understanding is so different from ancient times and, generally, belief in God is used as a source for rational explanations. This goes back to Aristotle's idea of God as the initial form of causation. The idea of both cause as well as the way of understanding reality, including the development of differentiation of subjective and objective realms may be important in thinking about the initial basis for belief in higher beings or 'the divine' emerged in human understanding.

I wonder if the element of differentiating between 'objective and subjective' puts the cart before the horse when looking at earlier views of the divine.
The desire to win the favor of gods is closely linked to not wanting to piss them off either. Shamans, priests, and smarty pants of all stripes, point to advantages of accepting that certain agents are calling the shots. The traditions that give one a map of this kind are not propositions or credos so much as markers of feedback loops. The desire to know the environment we are operating in is prior to what we call natural or supernatural.