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This is a support and conversation community for people who don't believe in gods.
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Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world

Looking for a counterexample to an argument for God (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by arensb@lemmy.world to c/atheism@lemmy.world

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

At some point, I ran across an argument along the lines of: "We hunger, and food exists. We thirst, and water exists. We feel horny, and sex is real. We yearn for God, and so I conclude that God exists."

Now, I can easily pick this apart a bunch of different ways, the easiest one being that just because you want some to exist doesn't mean that it really exists. But what I'm really hoping for is a couple of counterexamples: something like "Yes, well, we all want a unicorn, too, but unicorns don't exist."

This particular one doesn't work because wanting a unicorn isn't a universal desire the way food or sex are (even counting asexual people, we can still say that the vast majority of people want sex). But maybe some of you can think of something.

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[–] TigrisMorte@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All those "We, thus" are exactly backwards. We fuel our bodies with food since food exists. We desire sex because sexual reproduction exists...

Plus you are asking the wrong question. Does it matter if God exists if for those People who are comforted by their faith, their burden is lessened? The rest of it is irrelevant. And to follow up, how would those People's lives improve were their faith taken from them?

[–] arensb@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Plus you are asking the wrong question. Does it matter if God exists if for those People who are comforted by their faith, their burden is lessened? The rest of it is irrelevant.

That's a separate category of apologetic (or a separate category of error): a lot of arguments for the existence of God are actually arguments for the utility of faith. Something like "Jesus gives me comfort" isn't a good reason to think that Jesus exists, but it is an argument for why it's useful to believe in him, whether he exists or not.

Personally, I think that I'm better able to reach my goals (including finding comfort) if I base my beliefs on what's actually true, not on whether they directly provide me comfort. But that's me.

[–] TigrisMorte@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Again, doesn't matter. Where as you can't prove a negative, you are on the same footing whether you claim God exists or does not. Thus any such debate is pointless and therefor the question again returns to the same point.
Also thusly, no, you are not basing anything upon truth, but simply your belief as well.
Much like Bigfoot, you can't prove it does not exist. It is simply your faith based upon nothing else.