Well no, one could not vote, or vote for a third party, and that would be fine too. All of it would be shameful, all of it would be complicit, because it's all designed to. But yes, you don't escape it.

I'm just saying: voting for a monster like Biden in particular implicates you, and you had better work to srcub the filth off yourself in whatever practical way you can after the fact. Perhaps you recognize this. I'm not convinced many do.

I'm not arguing for vote abstinence, nor am I arguing that one should somehow have less responsibility in some magical 3rd reality. I'm simply laying out the implications of this one. Responsibility is a good thing - what I am arguing for is it's recognition.

I have no idea what it means to be complicit in a less worse circumstance. — Saphsin

*shrug* If you want to act like voting takes you off the hook then so be it. Enjoy the continued decline of the world which you would be responsible for while pretending you're not.

If you feel shameful for voting, you’re putting waaaay too much emotional and symbolic significance into that one act. Practically contradictory with simultaneously saying voting has no impact. Anyways, real politics is about making actions that make a difference on human lives who feel the impact between different policies (that includes me and my unemployment benefits by the way so fuck anyone can’t read the news and thinks it doesn’t, and it’s incomparably worse for many others), it’s not about your personal pride, so using the word shame shouldn’t even arise. — Saphsin

You misunderstand. It's not about emotion. It's about being responsible, and being complicit, and about the necessity of recognizing that voting entangles you in a system which you owe both yourself and others to extricate yourself from. Voting for a shitbag like Biden puts you in political debt, and marks you as responsible, whether you like it or not, for the millions whose lives will continue to degrade - albeit at a slower pace - under his adminstration were he to win it. I don't think this is a bad thing. Call it the first step of voting anonymous - "I'm X, and I'm a sucker for doing this".

Of course Americans have always been complicit in making the world a worse place to live in, but now's perhaps a chance to actually recognize it.

Gould is a creationist — Kenosha Kid

Ohh you're a loon. OK as you were.

the US is fucked and the rest of the planet too. — Olivier5

Bold presumption that this is not already the case.

Her entire essay is centred around this gross straw man that, no matter how often we're told that genes are not synecdoche for people, that they're not really conscious beings with wills of their own, we must in fact believe that that's precisely what genetic theory tells us (for her gripe is with genetics generally, not just Dawkins, as her corpus attests) so as to dismiss genetics as social Darwinism. — Kenosha Kid

Then it seems to me that you are not a good reader, who mistakes a framing device - one explicitly authorized and in fact tributary to the very source it critiques - for substance. Gripe with genetics?

"The reason why he [Dawkins] cannot get off this subject is not that he knows no genetics, but that all the genetics which he or anyone else knows is solidly opposed to his notion of genes as independent units, only contingently connected, and locked in constant internecine competition, a war of all against all."

Hmm.

But I would like to understand your vision of the ideal President. What would he do? — Relativist

I don't know; I don't think it should matter. As soon as politics revolves around personalities and individuals, it's over. Any system that could lead to a Trump being installed there, and a Biden being the alternative, is rotten to the core. The cult of personality that follows presidents - any president - is toxic in and of itself. A basic rule of thumb for treating anyone with any sort of power is with suspicion and contempt, unless they prove, consistently, otherwise. Practically every US president in living memory has been a sack of shit. I have every expectation that every other one will be as well.

As for Trump, it simply ought to be axiomatic that everything he touches is or will be a shitshow. That's baseline; a fact of nature, like the sun being hot. Nobody needs that reaffirmed, nobody needs to be shown yet another news story about how Trump, personally, is a Bad Person. That's just another episode in the personalization of politics that is it's trivialization.

And Biden? Sure, vote for him. It would be a deeply shameful act, but no less shameful than than being forced to do something terrible while being hostage. There's no begrudging anyone who does it. You can't hate people clawing pathetically for their survival. One hopes that one would spend every other waking moment making up for it though.

Not to Midgley's criticism as I see it. — Kenosha Kid

She cuts to the quick after her small discussion of metaphor to note that it's all just a bunch of window dressing to get across the point that "Shorn of its [the metaphor's] beams, it turns out to be a point about the ultimate 'unit of selection'". And then further down: "When the mountains of metaphor are removed, in fact, what we find is not so much a mouse as a mare's nest, namely the project of finding a unit which will serve for every kind of calculation involved in understanding evolution; a 'fundamental unit' at a deep level which will displace, and not just supplement, all serious reference to individuals, groups, kin and species, and which (for some unexplained reason) will also be the unit of selfishness or self-interest". Again, all this is exactly right.

Getting hung-up on 'whether it's a metaphor or not' is all rather irrelevant, or a sideshow at best - although there is something to say of Dawkins' slip-and-sliding in and out of metaphor when and as he pleases to cover-up the inadequacy of his presentation.

I don't have the book in front of me right now, but I'll rattle off some examples when I do.

In any case the question of 'metaphor' is a sideshow. Dawkins uses it as snakeoil to slide in and out of when and as he needs; the question is if the underlying notion which it is used to communicate - the gene as the sole unit of natural selection - is valid or not. It isn't, and the book is a waste of the trees that were destroyed in its printing for it.

Yeah, that's the apology she ought not have given.

Personally I see the value of the metaphor, it has good explanatory power as all good metaphors should. — Kenosha Kid

It really doesn't: everytime he's pushed to lay out the implications of it, he's forced to dilute it to the point of triviality. Hence why the book is filled with these 'paradoxes' which he then 'solves' which makes lay readers think he's some kind of genius, when in truth, they are puzzles of his own making forced on him by an inadequate conceptual apparatus. It's a rubbish metaphor and Midgley was right in her 'intemperance', and should not have apologized for it.

Didn't read any of that, don't plan to.

I didn't say that "there's no substantive political difference between Biden and Trump" so one has to wonder who exactly you're replying to.

Not my problem that Dawkins is a shit comminutor and and even shitter science populariser.

until we evolve in to something that we wouldn't recognize as human — Hippyhead

Yep, sounds good.

The whole conceptual framework is muddy and unhelpful. — Olivier5

One of the absolutely bonkers things about reading The Selfish Gene is just how much he has to consistently qualify just how useless and misleading it is to talk about genes in the way he does. Like, every third paragraph is devoted to saying something like 'don't forget, I don't really think genes are selfish, I just want to treat them as if they are'. Literally a third of the book is him self-correcting and qualifying how terrible a metaphor it is, while milking what little use he can of it in the rest of the book. It is incredibly muddled, and it obfuscates far more than it illuminates.

How did Dawkins set evolutionary theory back by decades? — fdrake

Quite simply because this:

"This is that the basic unit of natural selection is best regarded not as the species, nor as the population, nor even as the individual, but as some small unit of genetic material which it is convenient to label the gene" (The Selfish Gene, p. 50).

is unscientific trash. The rest of the book, including the idea of the selfish gene - built, ironically, upon this elementary 'unit' of unempirical rubbish - is just so much detritus that follows from this. Also, I should say that I said Dawkins set literacy back by an order of decades - in the sense of the pop understanding of evosci. The theory - and the science - has been chugging along quite nicely without - one might say despite - his rubbish. It's a pseudo-biological Platonism that is as every bit pernicious and idealist as philosophical Platonism is.

Yeah, it doesn't give one, but I think it takes the self-reports of people who say they believe in God as counting for the religious.

Don't worry too much about labels dude. Just give a shit about people and recognize when some strategies play right into the opposite of that.

Like, it's been four years. If people continue to be surprised that Trump is a total wanker, who, really, is the idiot?

People act like - if only one can accumulate enough evidence that Trump is an idiot, people are bound to change their minds any second. Everytime Trump says or tweets or looks or does something stupid, liberals mobilize en masse to say: 'look, we finally got him! Don't you see it?'. And when no one gives a flying fuck because no one except liberals are playing that insular, suffocating game, they bunker down and wait for the next act of outrage before crawling out of their holes again to add yet one more piece of evidence to their list that no one but them gives a shit about.

And then, to top it off, they get incredulous like - why can't the hoi polloi see what we see? They must be dumb. We must be too smart for them! Didn't you see his Tweet??!?!? Wasn't it TeRrIbLE?? Like holy shit these people are the dumbest peices of shit on the planet and they think the situation is exactly the opposite.

I literally do not give a shit about Trump retweeting whatever trash he happens upon while internetting. You couldn't pay me to give less fucks. If you continue to be surprised and outraged by such behaviour, you deserve a shithead like Trump.

The scorn heaped upon Trump's personal (rather than political) behaviour had always had a humongous element of classism built into it. Trump does not act like how we want our rich people to act. He acts - shockingly - like a 'tasteless', that is to say poor man, with all the table manners of a prole. Liberals - who don't give a rats ass about politics so long as everyone is polite - cannot stand this. His base love that fact. His unique appeal is a function of class dynamics, and he trades on it like few others can.

Trump is in every way an establishment politician who was worked to better the conditions of the same corporate overlords who rule over American politics. That he does it while being a clown makes him no less establishment. In fact his buffonary has been an boon to them, allowing him to get away with far more than others who would be in his position.

What we should learn from that is that religion doesn't arise from particular cultural circumstances. — Hippyhead

While this amateur armchair speculation is very cute, I will refer you to the article in the OP - on which this thread is about - which demonstrably shows otherwise. Religion dies when people live (well). The correlation is inverse, and healthy.

Biden is a cunt whose 40 year long career in politics has contributed to immeserating millions in both the US and outside of it, I think everyone can agree rather uncontroversially.

He's probably a rather affable, pleasant man (with a penchant for young girls), but were he to drop dead tomorrow the net manevolance in the universe would correspondingly drop by a number of degrees.

I hope to hell he doesn't 'leave the country' because that means some other poor miserable sod country is going to have to deal with that fuck. Americans can keep their trash.

Actually, I admire Dawkins. — Banno

Nah, Dawkins is trash, set scientific literacy back by an order of decades. Fuck that guy. An atheist made for an American audience whose contact with theology has only ever been through the insanity of American evangelism.

Thus: the way to kill God is not though petty arguments but through a rugged materialism - good lives for all, security of body and community, to each according to their need, from each according to their ability.

Dawkins, however, simply has a weakness for the old game of Brocken-spectre moralizing—the one where the player strikes attitudes on a peak at sunrise, gazes awe-struck at his gigantic shadow on the clouds, and reports his observations as cosmic truths. He is an uncritical philosophic egoist in the first place, and merely feeds the egoist assumption into his a priori biological speculations, only rarely glancing at the relevant facts of animal behaviour and genetics, and ignoring their failure to support him. There is nothing empirical about Dawkins.

Wow I didn't know I love Mary Midgley.

Euthyphro Dilemma and God’s Omnipotence, via @JakeTheUbermensch:

In this post, I will argue that choosing the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma--God loves that which is right because it is right--causes a problem for omnipotence.

I will now briefly summarize the Euthyphro dilemma for those who don’t already know it. The Euthyphro dilemma, as introduced by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro, is a problem for theists for which they only have two, equally bad, ways out of. Socrates asks: Is an action pious because the gods love it, or do they love it because it is pious? A different, more contemporary, way to put it is this: Is an action good because it is commanded by God, or does God command the good because it is good? If the theist chooses the first horn of the dilemma and thereby subscribing to divine command theory, then morality is arbitrary and God can just change what’s right and wrong whenever he wants. And if the theist chooses the second horn, then they do get to affirm the existence of moral facts, but those facts are somehow separate and independent from God and, as I will explain in the rest of this post, this poses a problem for omnipotence that the theist will have to contend with in order to preserve it.

The second horn of this dilemma is the one I have usually seen theists choose and it is the one I was taught to prefer when I was in religious school. If the second horn is true, then morality is independent of God. This is a problem because if there is no connection between God and morality, then we’re left with another question: what is morality? We have to ask this because if the second horn is true, then there exists some other thing in our world that is at least on par with God.

If God and morality are separate and God does and loves what is moral, then it seems that God, because he is supposed to be omnibenevolent, has to follow the laws of morality. And this is much different than the other laws of our universe, like physics, for which it can be said that they apply to God but he isn’t subject to them--like a law that you don’t meet the criteria for (e.g. my state doesn’t alow ex-felons to vote, but I’m not an ex-felon). It is different because God is actually subjected to these laws because he is omnibenevolent.

If this is true and God is constrained by these higher laws called morality then he can not be said to be omnipotent.

One way I can see people trying to get out of this is to assert that God created morality however this gets us a paradox similar to the omnipotent paradox. If God created morality, then he must have created something above himself. But he is supposed to be the greatest being that exists so how could there be something greater? Also at the same time he is all powerful so it might be possible. I’d like to here some of your thoughts.

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Replies to be directed to @JakeTheUbermensch.

Does God fear his creation but is too fond of it to destroy it?, via @Vivian:

Steve Buscemi’s character in Spy Kids is an overly-ambitious scientist that creates miniature zoo animals. When confronted by the Spy Kids, he explains how it started as a good idea but it quickly goes out of control. Sound familiar?

Has God’s creation of humans become too much to handle? You might argue no, He is all-powerful. There is nothing He can’t handle. Yes, He is all-powerful. And He showed his power when He flooded the earth to cleanse it of its sin. He wiped out all of earth but the chosen few on Noah’s Ark. Many, many years later, He showed his power when He smote Sodom and Gomorrah. He destroyed the cities when he became outraged by their sinfulness. So, yes, God’s creation was not too much for him to handle.
The flooding and the smiting are proof that God has the ability to wipe out his creation. But was he reigning in his anger? Because there is more that God could have done but he still spared the few.

First, he flooded the earth, then he only destroyed two cities? Was holding back as time went on as he saw more of what humankind was like? Maybe God does not fear His creation, but was disappointed. He had higher expectations when He created Adam but then Adam sinned. And so, God cast him out.
Throughout the Bible, God forgives and forgives again. He sends his own Son to be sacrificed for man’s sin, but still, humankind continues to sin. All the sin grew and grew upon itself until we got wars and World Wars, but yet God still did not intervene. Is it like a child being told not to touch the fire but will not learn until he has touched it? Is God waiting for humankind to figure out what’s bad and fix their own mistakes? Is it some lesson, or has God given up?

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Replies to be directed to @Vivian.

Attempting to Address the Problem of Evil, via @Mackensie:

The “Evidential” Problem of Evil
1. In many sad events, we can’t see what good features would outweigh bad features.
2. Therefore, it is likely that there are unjustified sad events: the good features don’t outweigh the bad. (1)
3. Therefore, it is likely that If God exists, then He allows unjustified sad events. (2)
4. God would never allow unjustified sad events.
5. Therefore, it’s likely that God does not exist. (3,4 MT)

Again, I take issue with premise two
1. If seemingly irrational and evil actions and events can be explained by evolution and nature, then there are no unjustified sad events.
2. We live in a finely tuned universe where nature and evolution were intentionally planned.
3. There are no unjustified sad events (1,2 MP)

If theism is true, then we live in a finely-tuned and most optimal universe. God meticulously planned every detail of the universe to allow for life. After the meticulous planning to allow for life, God needed to allow for free will and the best possible outcome of that free will. Picture the universe like a tree diagram of all the actions and decisions everyone will ever make. God, with His omniscience, chose the universe with the outcome of the least amount of bad decisions and actions. So, in a broader sense, the seemingly unjustifiable sad events are justified in the fact that they prevent worse, sadder events. Also, circling back to the concept of a finely-tuned universe, many of our transgressions against other humans others are a biproduct of our biology. God equipped us with the skills, such as competition, to survive and adapt, then develop into the innovative society we have today.

For example, the same competition that fueled the Space Race is the same competition that drove our ancestors to survive primitive times. Other examples include bullying at school. Bullying occurs because of the survival instinct of pack mentality. Our residual survival instincts are explain why sad events happen, and with perspective they seem justified. Man by nature is not evil, but rather competitive and equipped to survive. The fruits of our survival are the innovations we have today. We live in a world where there is cancer, but we also live in a world where, when pushed, we can have a COVID-19 vaccine in the final testing stages after mere months. We live in a world where there is racism, but instant communication technologies and social media allow us to discuss on a global scale the mistakes of the past and how to do better. While there may be sad events in the world, they exist because this is the best possible world and we are equipped with the tools to overcome out own follies.

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All replies to be directed to @Mackensie.

On the Misinterpretation of Religious Texts, via @JakeTheUbermensch:

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In this post, I will argue that the prevalence of gross ‘misinterpretations’ of passages in religious texts creates a dilemma for followers of those religions.

For this argument, I will be using Christianity, however, this problem can be extended to most religions as long as they have some religious text (or group of texts) that they view as sacred and having some authority, and the followers of said religion have a history of interpreting these kinds of texts in such ways that would later be seen as obvious misinterpretations by the majority of subsequent followers--especially when the misinterpretations lead to and are used to justify immoral acts.

Here are just just a few examples of ‘misinterpretations’ of the Bible in Christianity:
Slavery-- The bible has multiple pro-slavery passages that were used to justify slavery in general. (Ephesians 6:5 and more)
Racism-- Along with slavery in general, passages were used to justify the enslavement of black people specifically, later segregation, and the general thought that black people were inferior. (See the story of Ham)
Genocide-- There are multiple in the Bible when God’s people commit genocides and other times when he Commands them to do so. This has been used as justification for genocide on multiple occasions throughout history. (1 Samuel 15:2-3 and more)

Now finally to the argument.
Broadly speaking, in Christianity, it is believed that the human authors of the bible were led or influenced by God in order to make their writings the word of God. Whether this means that they were completely possessed or that they were lightly coaxed into writing certain things is not of importance now. What matters is that God asserted control over the writing of the scripture.

Now let’s assume that God has these characteristics among others:

Omnipotent
Omnibenevolent
Omniscient

Since God is omnipotent, he has the power to cause the authors to write specific things, while preserving free will--maybe by helping them remember certain things or just directly telling them something.

And since God is omniscient, he knew each word that would be written in the bible and the consequences of them before he caused them to be written (i.e. the future misunderstandings). For example, if God was writing scripture through me right now, then before he causes me to write a sentence about an idea he would know exactly what that sentence would say and how those words would be perceived in x years.

Given that he can both cause the authors to write specific things and he knows exactly what those specific things will say and mean, we should be able to say that God effectively has complete control of what is written in scripture. This is simply because it would be impossible for there to be something in scripture that he didn’t want to be there because he would’ve known beforehand that this would be the result of one of his decisions and just decided to do otherwise. Therefore, God has complete control of scripture.

If God is omnibenevolent, and we are assuming he is, then he wouldn’t want bad things to happen. Furthermore wouldn’t want to cause them or have his words be used to convince people into doing bad (or justify their wrongdoing). So, we should be able to say that if God found out that something that he was going to write (or cause to be written) would lead to bad things (e.g. slavery, racism, and genocide) or at the very least, be used to justify those things, then he would not do it. However, this is not what happens and we get a contradiction out of it. God allows his word to say the stuff that leads to bad things.

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Replies to be directed to @JakeTheUbermensch

Moral Skepticism and Theism, via @JakeTheUbermensch:

In this post, I will argue that one solution that the theist could take to get out of moral skepticism is inadequate because of the problem of evil.
In chapter 5 of Alex Rosenberg’s The Athiest Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, he produces an evolutionary argument for moral nihilism. His argument goes something like this:

If our universally shared morality were both the one adaptation produced and the right one, then it couldn’t be a coincidence.
So either our core morality is right because it is adaptive, or it is adaptive because it is right, or it’s not actually right.
It’s possible for core morality to be adaptive yet false.
It’s possible for true moral beliefs to be maladaptive.
Therefore, our morality is not right but only feels right to us. (2, 3, 4 disjunctive syllogism)

The theist would likely get out of this problem that Rosenberg sketches by claiming that there’s another option besides blank. This fourth option for the theist would be to claim that we have some God-given but fallible faculty that lets us access the real morality. The problem with this option is that this moral faculty doesn’t seem to work like any of our other faculties.

If we have a faculty that leads us to moral facts, then how can we violate it so easily, so frequently, and so grossly? How can this faculty misfire for large groups of us, at the same time, on the same issue? Think of Nazi Germany--other genocides that required large groups of people to be complicit--how could this moral faculty that we all have just shut off for them, a large group of people, at the same time, regarding the same issue? Imagine if another faculty misfired in this same fashion; take memory, for example, an analogous situation would be if a large group of people, let’s say 1 million people (there were way more nazis), were to go to a movie theater and see a single image on the screen for 30 minutes, all of their eyes are pried open and they are being forced to pay attention, and directly after the movie none of them can describe a single feature about the image.

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Replies to be directed to @JakeTheUbermensch.

A Prepackaged Good and Evil, via @Vivian:

It can be argued that good and evil comes prepackaged with free will since birth. When God created man with free will, good and evil came with it. Free will is the ability of an individual to act at one’s own discretion. So, it follows that those choices may be either good or bad. There is no neutral decision. To counter a counterargument of newborn babies, it’s not likely that babies are exercising their free will yet when they’re so young. As they grow older, they start making decisions both good and bad. There are good and bad traits that kids are naturally born with. Babies instinctively know how to suck because it helps them eat and survive, which is a good thing. Babies also instinctively know how to tell lies, which is a bad thing that no one ever teaches them. Everyone is created with the ability to make good and bad decisions. It’s a condition of free will.

Even robots can learn to be bad. As movies like the Terminator and War Games show us, smart computers can “naturally” go good or evil. Like the UK tv show, Humans, a few robot synths gain consciousness and free will. They all receive the same program, but interpret them in different ways. Their consciousness allows them to make their own choices and some make bad choices. Machines with Artificial Intelligence (AI) learn from their experiences and adjust to the inputs. They learn to drive our cars for us and turn on our lights for us. They begin to develop a version of free will as they progress and develop. And with this evolution of “free will” will come good and evil together. Because of the way God created Earth, there is no way to have free with without the labels of good and evil choices. Like the other side of a coin, but sides must exist. Good cannot exist without the bad. Their coexistence is natural and necessary.

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Replies to be directed to @Vivian.

Balance of Good and Evil, via @Vivian:

The battle between good and evil is a common theme in many books and movies. Harry Potter battles Voldemort, Aslan defeats the White Witch. When a bad guy rises to power, it is foretold that someone will defeat them, accordingly a balance. As Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Similarly, for every instance of good, there is an equal bad. It’s possible that there is a balance of the world that must be maintained in order for the world to exist. Voldemort and the White Witch both reigned for many years until they were finally defeated. The world burned as Voldemort killed, Narnia froze as the White Witch ruled.

Maybe the other planets in our solar system became uninhabitable because the balance was disrupted. When good outweighed the bad, the planet froze over and when the bad outweighed the good, the planet burned up, or vice versa. Good and evil must be in equilibrium, or disastrous things may happen. So, evil must exist.

Or, when God created the Earth, he created this balance of good and evil on purpose. It was his system to check the world order, making sure they were counterbalanced. God, as the master mechanic, created the universe and then stepped aside for the world to run on its own. He does not intervene in the battle of good and evil because he knows all the evils will eventually be balanced out by all the good.

In answer to why so many bad things happen to one person, it may be because the good/evil balance is not on an individual level but a global level. Horrible things happen to one person and amazing things happen to another and they balance each other out. I’m not saying this doomed life is justified, but that the good and the bad will eventually balance. So, God just lets things play out because the Earth will eventually right itself and the greater power checked.

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Replies to be directed to @Vivian.

The Issue With Religious Diversity, via @Matthew724:

If God exists, why are there so many religions? In other words, if God is all-powerful and all-good, then is it not surprising that we have so much confusion when it comes to religion? This problem is ‘up there’ with the problem of evil and problem of divine hiddenness. The problem of religious diversity arises when we notice that religious diversity/confusion is not surprising on the hypothesis of metaphysical naturalism. That’s because nature is indifferent, and there is no God to care about us getting to God. Furthermore, one can easily explain religious diversity/confusion in terms of naturalistic causes like cultural pressures, etc. Thus, we have no need to invoke God or evil spirits to explain what’s happening.

While one might concede that naturalism doesn’t predict religious beliefs, one can still argue that if there are religious beliefs that are diverse, then this would be predicted by naturalism. But, that’s exactly what we see. We don’t see just simple religious belief like one religion; rather, we see many different religions.

To be sure, there are only several major religions, however, there are many more minor religions. Even among the major religions, we have much disagreement; this disagreement includes disputes over fundamental doctrines. Even among classical monotheism, there are more than a few options. We would obviously expect an all-good God to be concerned about us having the correct beliefs with regard to religion. That’s because beliefs have an impact on behavior, especially beliefs about ultimate reality. Similarly, we would expect God to be concerned with humans and their place in the world.
The Argument:

1. It is a known fact that there are many religions and religious confusion
2. The fact that there are many religions and religious confusion is much more likely on the hypothesis of naturalism than on the hypothesis of classical theism
3. The hypothesis of naturalism has an intrinsic probability equal to that of classical theism
4. Therefore, other evidence held equal, it is very probable that classical theism is false

I’m not arguing here that one’s religious belief is made irrational because of multiple religions. In addition, the argument nowhere stated that one’s religious belief is false because they were born in a certain place. If the argument I presented is interpreted charitably, one can naturally see why religious diversity is a problem. If God exists (an all-powerful and all-good Being), it’s pretty surprising that so many religions exist. If God doesn’t exist, there is nothing at all surprising about there being so many religions. That’s exactly what we’d expect. Hence, the existence of so many religions counts as, at least, some evidence against God.

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Replies to be directed to @Matthew724.

Existential Argument Against Existence of God, via @Matthew724.

Nobody denies that there are some people who don’t find life to be meaningful and/or purposeful. But if God exists, why is this the case? Wouldn’t God be concerned with us wanting to find purpose and meaning? Wouldn’t God want us to think that there really is purpose and meaning? On classical theism, meaning and purpose start with God. Apart from the question of ‘objective’ meaning and purpose, we’d still expect the perfect love of God to help people find purpose and meaning. Just like a parent, God would want what is best for God’s creatures. But, what we find in the world is people who feel like they don’t belong or don’t see any objective or subjective purpose/meaning to life.

However, the problem is not just limited to human animals. The problem also extends to non-human animals. There are many animals that find life not worth continuing, and (one way) we know this is because animals, like humans, can commit suicide. The issue, on theism, is not whether animals will have a richer life in a possible afterlife. Rather, the issue is why God would have animals in this situation at all.

Observations:

Many humans find life to be meaningless and purposeless
Many humans find life not worth living and continuing
Many animals find life not worth continuing
1. It is a known fact that many people find their life and journey to be meaningless, purposeless, and many humans/animals find life not worth living/continuing
2. (1) is very surprising on the hypothesis of classical theism, but not surprising on the hypothesis of indifference
3. The intrinsic probability of indifference is much greater than that of classical theism
4. Therefore, other evidence held equal, classical theism is very probably false

It is important to notice that premise one isn’t so much concerned with objective values. In other words, perhaps every life really does have intrinsic value and purpose. Nevertheless, some people don’t see this. It might be tempting for some to try and reduce this argument to being just an instance of the argument from evil. But however tempting this may be, one should resist this temptation. That’s because there are (quite obviously) possible worlds where people don’t experience suffering but don’t find life meaningful or purposeful, etc. In addition, there are worlds where some people suffer a lot but still find life meaningful and purposeful.

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Replies to be directed to @Matthew724.

If God doesn’t exist, is life meaningless?, via @Matthew724:

If God doesn’t exist, then is life meaningless? What do we mean by “life”? Does that just mean my individual life? Does that mean humanity as a whole? The universe? All of the above? The simple truth is that it doesn’t seem logically impossible that meaning can exist without God existing. In fact, it seems implausible to suggest that it would be impossible for meaning to exist without God. However, for theists like Thomists, they would say that meaning is related indirectly to God because the cosmos is dependent on God, but this is quite a different point than saying it’s logically impossible that meaning exists without God. Thomists would be in agreement with my thesis that there is no contradiction in asserting the existence of meaning without God.

Still, a theist could try and argue that God is a better explanation for why life seems meaningful. On the other hand, many skeptics will question whether there is any meaning at an objective level. Even if there is objective meaning, once again, it’s far from obvious why this would be impossible without God. Whether objective meaning is cashed out in an Aristotelian or Platonic sense, both of these (and other accounts) are consistent with non-theism. So far, one isn’t making an argument for theism, instead, it’s more like an appeal to consequences. But, if one adds the premise that (objective) meaning does exist, then one has a valid argument; it is still up for debate whether it is a valid and sound argument. And, to reiterate, what “objective meaning” means isn’t very clear because that could be talking about an individual, humanity, the universe, multiverse, etc.

On the other side, some atheists in the literature have argued that what we find in the world, regarding meaning and humans is very surprising if God exists. For example, many people have no sense of direction in their life, and they want direction; they have no clue where they are going, and they feel like their life is largely pointless. If God doesn’t exist, there is nothing at all surprising about this.

Finally, even if one grants that life is meaningless without God, they might question whether God makes a difference. Why wouldn’t life still be meaningless? A certain theist might reply that God is a necessary condition for life to be meaningful. There is also another necessary condition in order for there to be meaning: immortality. But, I’ve never understood the immortality condition. Is a movie meaningless because it will end? Not quite. And, even though the universe will eventually explode, how does that matter for here and now? Maybe what I do won’t matter in 5 billion years, but how would it follow from that fact that what I do right now wouldn’t matter at all? And why would God and immortality be the only two conditions necessary for life to be meaningful? Even if they are necessary, that doesn’t make them a sufficient condition for a meaningful life.

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Replies to be directed to @Matthew724.