Roundearth

I'm happy to listen to an opposing viewpoint. The reason you need to address those arguments is that if you don't address my arguments against God, God is not a viable explanation for any experiences you've had. If you don't address those arguments, then to me, saying you experienced God would be like saying you met a being with a square circle for a head.

The main problem here is your definitions of "faith" and "religion." Faith is belief without evidence. But atheists do have evidence that there is not a God - the arguments that I gave in the OP. Even if you reject my definition of faith, you seem to admit that atheism is only a faith system when we stretch the term significantly. But why stretch the term like that?You do not have enough authoritative support for your definition of religion. The fact that "atheism" is offered as an option under religious preference is not evidence that atheism is a religion. You would need a definition of religion supported by philosophic or dictionary authority to establish that point, and the dictionaries tend to show that atheism is not a religion. Well, wait a minute, your own post contains an argument from definition: "at some point the atheist--especially the strong one, takes the preponderance of evidence and concludes that God does not exist. Note the definition... strong atheists BELIEVE God does not exist." So I don't think you really believe that arguments from definition don't work. I think you just refuse to look at arguments from definition when they pertain to the existence of God. To me, that seems inconsistent. There isn't any reason to think that an argument from definition for or against the existence of God would not work. The success of mathematics and physics in describing the world show that our conceptual faculties are very powerful and can arrive at correct conclusions about things far from experience.You say that you do not find logical arguments "compelling." I'm not sure what that means. Do you mean that you accept logical argumentation in general, but that most logical arguments fail? I agree with you there, but that's not a reason to reject any particular logical argument without giving it a good look. Or do you mean that you reject logical arguments in general? But that's obviously unreasonable, since logic is self evident. Maybe the ontological argument shook your confidence in logical argumentation in general. But there are rebuttals to the ontological argument, my favorite being that it leaves the term "greatness" hopelessly fuzzy. Or do you mean that logical arguments leave you subjectively unconvinced? That's not a good enough reason to reject an argument. It makes your beliefs invulnerable to criticism, since you will never feel like changing your beliefs. I recommend trying to become more objective. Reason really does work, even when you use it rigorously. I don't mean to be condescending here - it took me a long time studying philosophy to realize that reason really does work. So, let's have another look at my arguments from definition, shall we?

Hi LM, Sure, but you will need to address my arguments against the concept of God. Thank you.

This board is supposed to be open to discussion of all topics, so I'll post this here. I am a strong atheist. That is, I think that there is no God. (A weak atheist simply fails to affirm God's existence.) In this thread, I will defend that position with some brief arguments, and then solicit arguments against my arguments and against strong atheism. I hope to hone my critical thinking skills and to learn from you guys. I have found that there are certain misconceptions I have to deal with before I can make any progress in dialogues with most theists. If you were already aware of any of the following points, I apologise: * Strong atheism is JUST the belief that there is no God. * Strong atheism is not a moral position, and does not necessarily entail any particular moral belief. * A strong atheist can have a moral foundation. * Strong atheism does not necessarily entail a belief in determinism, evolution, abortion, materialism, or naturalism. * Strong atheists do not hate God. We do not believe in God. * Strong atheists do not worship Satan. We do not usually believe in Satan. * Strong atheists are rarely nihilists. * Strong atheism is not a religion. * Strong atheists do, in fact, exist. * Strong atheists are not repressing knowledge that God exists. * Strong atheism is not impossible to defend in principle. In principle, it could be defended by finding that the concept of God contradicts itself, the laws of logic, or empirical evidence. You will be able to make up your mind about whether my case for strong atheism is successful after reading this post. If any of that came across as condescending to you, I apologise. Every clarification on that list is necessary for some theists. If you already knew everything in that list, it is a testament to your sophistication. The first reason to be an atheist follows from the burden of proof principle. Humans are limited beings, without the capacity of omniscience and infallibility. We wake up on earth without any concepts, idea, or beliefs, and we gradually expand our knowledge from the day we are born until the day we die. We have to perform a specific process to arrive at correct beliefs from that initial state of nonbelief. That means, we must have evidence and logical backing for our beliefs. Otherwise, we'll likely believe wrongly, and act incorrectly. The idea that all positive claims should be validated (that is, self evident or supported by reasoning) before we accept them is the burden of proof principle. I submit that theism does not meet the burden of proof principle. So far as I know, all of the arguments for God fail, which makes theism an arbitrary belief. On the burden of proof principle, this justifies a lack of belief in God. If someone was to accept this line of reasoning, then this has them becoming a weak atheist - that is, an atheist who fails to affirm the existence of God. To get to strong atheism, however, we need the arguments that follow below. Let's define "God," for starters. "God" is a very difficult word to define. Some theists have taken it to mean a powerful warrior with a white, billowing beard, while others have taken it to mean a relatively mundane "ground of being." Let's just say for the purposes of the thread that God is a supernatural, infinite being. My case for strong atheism rests on the law of identity. A is A. A thing is itself. The law of identity is a self-evident proposition, and serves as the base of all knowledge. To deny it, therefore, is to contradict oneself. It is to assert that one is right to deny the law of identity - not right and wrong at the same time. The law of identity has two corollaries: First, that everything acts in accordance with its nature. Second, that to exist is to be defined. Let's talk about supernatural beings first. A supernatural being is a being above nature, that is, a being above the regularities of natural law. Now, a natural being is one that acts in accordance with nature, that is, one that obeys various regularities. My computer is a natural being because its inputs and outputs are flowing through it according to certain regularities. Now, by definition, a supernatural being would have no regularities like this. It could not act in any regular way, for then we would say that it was a natural being. So it would have to be an undefined, amorphous, shifting thing with no identity - which is to say, it could not exist. Now, to infinite beings. An infinite being would necessarily be a being that exceeded all limits, which means that it could not be defined. This means that it would have no firm identity, and therefore that it could not exist. But I've been doing all the talking. Your turn. What reasons do you have for supposing that God exists?