Jeff's Lunchbreak: Weak Arguments for a God

Well, I've been too busy this week to come up with much on my own for a blog entry. But, I've been following an interesting comment thread over at Larry Moran's Sandwalk, A Challenge to Theists and their Accommodationist Supporters. Here's the meat of Moran's post:

I challenge all theists and all their accommodationist friends to post their very best 21st century, sophisticated (or not), arguments for the existence of God. They can put them in the comments section of this posting, or on any of the other atheist blogs, or on their own blogs and websites. Just send me the link. ...
Let's stop the whining about how "know-nothing" atheists are ignoring the very best arguments for the existence of God. Come on, all you theists and accommodationists, put your money where your mouth is. Give us something of substance instead of hiding behind The Courtier's Reply. Let's see the angels.

What follows is, at this point, nearly 450 comments worth of debate, and likely to keep on increasing. If you're already familiar with debating religion, the comments are about what you'd expect - one guy quoting scripture, a couple creationists, and a lot of sophistry. Actually, one comment does a good job of summarizing the majority of the arguments presented.

Martin said...
Um, why ask people on the internet for something like this? Turn to real peer-reviewed theology if you're genuinely interested in hearing the best theistic arguments.

A few off the top of my head:

1. Kalam cosmological argument
2. Argument from contingency
3. Plantinga's modal ontological argument
4. Maydole's modal perfection ontological argument
5. Fine-tuning arguments
6. Argument from reason
7. Evolutionary argument against naturalism
8. Moral arguments
9. prosblogion.ektopos.com is loaded with arguments

Not all theists are idiotic creationists from Nebraska.

Of course, the other commenters dealt with those arguments, since they're old arguments or variants of old arguments that we've heard time and again. Really, the thread hasn't presented anything new.

There was one comment that I found particularly amusing for its cluelessness:

"Let's make this easy. Define 'evidence' any way you want to. Any way at all. Give one piece of evidence that the Christian God exists. I'm not asking for proof, just for one piece of evidence. Pick the piece of evidence that you think is the *most* compelling."
Uh-uh. I know how this goes. First, I don't find the evidence compelling, but it would take masses of epistemology that you don't have the patience for to get you to understand why that doesn't impact, to me, belief. Second, I could list the standard things that we do consider at least weak evidence for things -- ancient stories like the Bible, personal experiences -- and you'd just retreat to "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and ignore it.

So, in a comment thread that specifically asked for the best arguments for a god, one of the commenters is flat out refusing to provide evidence.

Anyway, if you're one of the people who knows me personally, and you read this blog because you're interested in what I usually write about, consider the above link a portal into the raucous world of Internet religious discussions. A browse through the comments is very interesting.

To everyone else, I'll try to post something better next week.

Let me just add that I don't think all the arguments from the atheist side are necessarily sound, either. While a lot of them are pretty good, some are less than stellar. In particular, I think many people are missing the point when they say quantum mechanics predicts something coming from nothing. Quantum mechanics still operates within our universe. Still, even if there were an external first cause to our universe, there's no reason to jump from that to assuming that the first cause had consciousness, intent, or any of the other properties typically associated with gods.