I think I've heard every theist argument.

KingMerv00

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I try my best to see all sides of an argument. I've listened to those who believe in God for years now and I have begun to get frustrated. I find it very difficult to listen to theists because the same dozen or so arguments for God repeat themselves regularly and each one is crushed by simple logic. Have I really reached the end of my religious self-examination at the age of 26? Has anyone seen any new approaches to the God question I might not have heard? I'm desparate for an challenge.

Here is a list of aguments that pop into my head:

Fideism
God-of-the-Gaps
Holy Books as evidence
Argument for morality
Pascal's Wager
Fine-Tuner
Various "word game" proofs of God
Personal revelation
First Cause

Help! My brain needs philosophical excercise!
 
Could you give a representative example of each argument?
 
grayman said:
Could you give a representative example of each argument?
Click to expand...

God-of-the-Gaps: Jeans are comfortable, therefore god exists.

Holy Books as evidence: The Foundation series is uncontestable proof that Isaac Asimov is/was god.

Argument for morality: Good people believe in god, therefore god exists.

Pascal's Wager: God helped Pascal win a bet, therefore god exists.

Fine-Tuner: When my car broke down, the local mechanic fixed it in short order and at a great price. If he isn't god, he surely must be Isaac Asimov's son.

etc

I apologize for the horrible nature of the preceeding jokes.
 
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You forgot arguements that unknowingly circumvent logic totally which reduce to 'I like my god, therefore everything I like about the universe must have come from him.' Arguements like the universe is so complex, harmonious, beautiful, and morality is so good, and so on, that there must be a god. But that's more of a drive-by type of arguement a few stones away from "have fun in hell, blasphemer," passive aggressive praying or worse yet near-sarcastic religious sentiment such as after a hostile rant in an arguement "Oh and by the way...Jesus loves you. Have a nice day."
 
latent aaaack said:
You forgot arguments that unknowingly circumvent logic totally which reduce to 'I like my god, therefore everything I like about the universe must have come from him.'..."
Click to expand...

Reminds me of this quote: "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." - Emo Phillips
 
Serious Examples:

Fideism: The idea that in a battle of Reason VS. Faith, faith always wins.

God-of-the-Gaps: There is some 'gap' in scientific knowledge. This gap can only be explained by god (for the lazy, any way. Luckily, real scientists do not give up so easily).

Holy Books as evidence: The Bible proves the existence of god.

Pascal's Wager: There are two possible outcomes: There either is a god, or there isn't. If you believe in god and it turns out that there isn't, you've lost nothing more than the atheist. If you're an atheist and there really is a god, you have lost considerably. Therefore it is a 'safer bet' to simply believe in god.

Personal revelation: God spoke to me thus proving his existence.

First Cause: I assume this is the argument chain that begins "What created the earth?" and then keeps going until you have to say "I don't know." at which point they leap and conclude that it must be god.
 
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Examples

Fideism: Faith is a valid means to obtain objective truth. Therefore I believe in God.

God-of-the-Gaps: Science does not know the origin of the universe. Therefore God must be the cause.

Holy Books as evidence: Bible sites prophecy X. X happened. Therefore a God inspired the Bible.

Argument for morality: Morals could only come from a divine being. That divine being is God.

Pascal's Wager: Pascal's Wager is a specific example already.

Fine-Tuner: If the physical constants were only slightly different, life would not have arisen. Therefore, God adjusted these constants with the purpose of creating a stable, living sustaining universe.

Various "word game" proofs of God: See Thomas Aquinas.

Personal revelation: The Virgin Mary appeared to me in a dream. Only a divine being could have caused that vision. Therefore, God exists.

First Cause: Everything is caused by something else. In order to terminate this infinite regression we need an omnipotent being outside of time. I name this being "God".

Why did you ask for examples Grayman?
 
Azure said:
What about the part where you can't prove/disprove God....
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That's an extreme version of god-of-the-gaps, I think. In any case, it's an argument from ignorance.

Here are some examples, followed by quick refutations.

Fideism: You don't need a reason to believe in god, just have faith.
Refutation: That's meaningless gibberish.

God-of-the-gaps: We only know what was happening 1/4 of a second after the big bang, so god was before that. Wait a minute, now we know what happened 1 Planck time after the big bang? Then god was before that.
Refutation: Non sequitur plus moving goalpost.

Argument for morality: Without god, how can you justify being a moral person?
Refutation: Morality is independent of god's words (Dawkins does a wonderful demonstration of this).

Fine-tuner: If the charge of the electron were 0.00000001% more or less than it actually is, we would never have come into existence, therefore god must have chosen that exact value so that we could exist.
Refutation: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Unfortunately, I can't think of an example of a "word game" proof of god.
 
If you're done learning all the fallacies that people in religious debates use then I suggest doing the same for political debates. It could actually go a long way towards improving discourse if there was a wiki listing at least 90% of the fallacious types of statement and attacks used in political discussion that crop up again and again. With religion and worse, politics, there's too much of an attitude that 'my opinion' equals 'my personal property' meaning it's then fundamentally wrong for someone to change, disprove, or subject it to rational enquiry.
 
Yiab said:
Unfortunately, I can't think of an example of a "word game" proof of god.
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God can be defined as "that being, no greater than which anything exists." A being which exists is greater than a being which doesn't exist, therefore God must exist in order to satisfy the definition.

This is definitely a word game. Here is one refutation. If there is no form of life higher than human beings, then the "greatest" (defined in some unspecified manner) human being alive is, by definition, God. Upon the death of that person, presumably, the next-greatest person becomes God. Since there is no evidence for any form of life (or being) higher than humans, a human is God.

Another refutation would simply be to say that a being which could be greater than anything which exists, without existing itself, would be even greater. Therefore God doesn't exist.
 
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