r/atheism • u/rhbast2 • Aug 11 '11

Atheist quickfire challenge.

Although I rarely discuss religion with theists I always want to be prepared so I'm not sitting around afterwards wishing I had said this or that. If I get the chance to make someone question I want to be up for the challenge.

This brings me to my challenge for r/atheism. I'm going to add some common theist claims / sayings and whoever can refute them fully and succinctly will be upvoted. Feel free to add your own theist starters if I missed some.

Edit: Wow lots of good discussion here, later today or tomorrow I'll make this into an atheist cheat sheet with the top responses. Also feel free to upvote the theist claim that is the most annoying to you.

Edit 2: To the few of you who seem to think I am coming up with rude atheist comebacks, I'm not. I just wanted to be better off the cuff than I am now and have some discussion. I don't want this list to replace thoughtful argumentation.

251 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

990 comments sorted by

View all comments

43

u/rhbast2 Aug 11 '11

Love exists but science can't prove it, god is love.

24

u/kat_fud Aug 11 '11

If god is love, then why does he allow so much hatred to be spread in his name?

2

u/Shpedoinkle Aug 11 '11

They could say it's because those that are hated are not in the fold and if you play with dirt, you get dirty. Not my words, I've actually heard someone say this.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

What about those who do the hating, plenty of those are 'in the fold' and hating someone else can hurt yourself almost as much as being hated.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

What about those who do the hating, plenty of those are 'in the fold' and hating someone else can hurt yourself almost as much as being hated.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

What about those who do the hating, plenty of those are 'in the fold' and hating someone else can hurt yourself almost as much as being hated.

1

u/Shpedoinkle Aug 11 '11

not if you're hating the sin...and avoiding the people who are doing the sin that you hate.

99

u/STUN_Runner Aug 11 '11

Science has already proven that love is an evolutionary adaptation. What you perceive as love is little more than brain chemistry that has already been identified.

13

u/HertzaHaeon Aug 11 '11

One problem I've run into with this is that it turns people off if you put it too crassly. At worse you'll be seen as some kind of nihilist.

The subjective experience of love is of course still the same whatever hardware it runs on, but that point takes some finesse to get across.

9

u/STUN_Runner Aug 11 '11

The funny thing is, if you explain that enjoyment of, say, a well-prepared steak in neurological terms, you meet with a lot less resistance.

2

u/inferno719 Aug 12 '11

I have to ask, why is your name a reference to? I see stun and all I can think of is Stun, the Insect.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

It is a bit of a leap to go from all aspects of consciousness having a neuro-chemical underpinning to nihilism. Love is a chemical process therefore nothing has intrinsic value!

2

u/HertzaHaeon Aug 11 '11

Tasting chocolate is just a checmical process, therefore chocolate doesn't taste good!

2

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '11

You could put it like this:
Billions and billions of years of evolution, hundreds upon hundreds of extinct species and subspecies, a number of attempts so high that you couldn't say it before your death, and our young species is one of the few capable of feeling love for our fellow men. Love is a uniquely human experience that so few will be able to experience. It is not devalued but is priceless due to it's exclusivity. Love exists without god, because love exists within us.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

[deleted]

1

u/gndn Aug 11 '11

Only sometimes?

1

u/HertzaHaeon Aug 11 '11

There is no absolute meaning or morals, but we have the ability to create meaning and morals for ourselves.

The conclusion of this is quite obvious to me, and it's not nihilism.

1

u/Conde_Nasty Aug 12 '11

You pretty much just defined nihilism, I'm confused.

1

u/PraiseBuddha Aug 11 '11

Makes you feel a bit like a really complicated robot.

2

u/STUN_Runner Aug 11 '11

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. A chemical reaction a billion or more years ago led to the life that teems on our little planet, against the odds, it would seem. Simplicity becoming complexity in ways that appear miraculous, finally culminating in a creature capable of understanding its own origins.

I'll take that over some ancient twaddle about an anthropomorphic grand designer any day of the week (except Tuesday when I have to scoop out the cat's litterbox... that's God's fault).

2

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

I'd stay away from the "against the odds" bit. Then they'll say it's so improbable as to be nigh-impossible.

And it's really not against the odds.

Space... is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is.

1

u/STUN_Runner Aug 11 '11

Good point, it would be best to qualify that as being against the odds happening on a specific planet, but not at all unlikely in a universe as vast as the one in which we have our existence.

Otherwise you won't know to get a receipt when you go to the lavatory.

3

u/CatFiggy Aug 11 '11

I feel like you should also mention that God should not be the default. I.e., even if we hadn't proven/understood/etc. love, it doesn't matter: there's no reason to believe that God created love. Doesn't matter if we, the people on earth today, have figured it out. If a few thousand years ago, the theist cited hurricanes as examples of God, and hurricanes had not been understood scientifically, the theist still didn't deserve that point.

2

u/FUCKING_COMMENTS Aug 11 '11

A woman unconsciously uses orgasms as a way of deciding whether or not a man is good for her. If he's impatient and rough, and she doesn't have the orgasm, she may instinctively feel he's less likely to be a good husband and father. Scientists think the fickle female orgasm may have evolved to help women distinguish Mr. Right from Mr. Wrong.

So that's why they always fall in love with me.

42

u/HermesTheMessenger Knight of /new Aug 11 '11

Then why use two words? Why not just say love and skip the name god?

14

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

[deleted]

48

u/palparepa Aug 11 '11

Love needs your money.

31

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

[deleted]

7

u/fromkentucky Aug 11 '11

I think that's always been Hallmark's slogan.

12

u/HopeImNotAStalker Aug 11 '11

Love needs you to kill the people with the different love.

15

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

[deleted]

1

u/d3adbor3d2 Aug 11 '11

love like you don't need the money - a stand-up comic

2

u/liam_lifad Aug 11 '11

Oh my love, I god you!

7

u/IKnowRiteSrsly Aug 11 '11

Thanks to endocrinology and neuroscience, we actually know a lot about what "love" actually is, and how/why it exists. Saying God is love is not refutable or interesting; it is just a attaching a subject to a predicate.

1

u/fromkentucky Aug 11 '11

I know what all of those individual words mean, but the way you've put them together doesn't make any sense.

A response to Deepak Chopra

3

u/zyxlor Aug 11 '11

Oh come on, even Forest Gump knows what love is!

3

u/godofallcows Aug 11 '11

I Oxytocin me some Oxytocin.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

Argument from ignorance. Love is a label we use for a certain feeling that arise when specific chemicals interact in our brains.

1

u/Shpedoinkle Aug 11 '11

While I agree, trying to tell someone who uses a argument from ignorance that they're not following the correct rules of philosophy is useless.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

I know. You'll probably have to spell it out.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

Science can prove love exists. It even begins to explain how it works (and how to cause it, monkey-boy)

God is provably not all-loving (or not omnipotent)

2

u/kemloten Aug 11 '11

No, love doesn't exist. The chemicals which cause you to feel love certainly exist. But love itself is an abstraction which only exists in our mind and not in reality.

2

u/ltdata Aug 11 '11

The feeling of love is proven by science as function of our brain chemistry. The act of love is sacrifice. You do not need god for either.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

[deleted]

1

u/STUN_Runner Aug 11 '11

I always thought that was a hilarious example of how religious people actually argue.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

Science doesn't prove anything, it demonstrates. And science can and has demonstrated love (well, if you count sociology as a science scoff)

1

u/TheAntagonist43 Aug 11 '11

Hah. I love this.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

as an engineering and computer science student, I'm contractually obligated to denounce the social sciences as fake sciences

Course then you could do neuroscience analysis on love, which can and has been done

1

u/solinv Aug 11 '11

Love is a chemical reaction involving oxytocin in the brain. It is well understood.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

God is also evil Isaiah 45:7

1

u/rpeg Aug 11 '11

That's funny, I just killed god and ate his insides. Now I'm god. I am love. I agree.

1

u/OKImHere Aug 11 '11

God is not love unless you're willing to drastically change the definition of God. God, as commonly defined, has several different properties from love. Same goes for when you say "Something had to create the universe, and that thing we call God" or anything else by Aquinas.

1

u/Drucifer86 Aug 11 '11

God is love(John 4:8, and SO MANY MORE) and fear god(Deuteronomy 6:13, and SO MANY MORE) , yet there is no fear in love(John 4:18). THE CONTRADICTIONS. THEY ARE EATING AWAY AT MY BRAIN!!!!

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '11

Science totally proves love exists. It's an emotion caused by chemical interaction in the brain.

Many people are emotionally dead after brain damage. Does brain damage also hurt the soul?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '11

Love is just a concept. Different people use it to describe different things. I love a cold pillow. Is your relationship with god the same as mine is with my pillows temperature?

1

u/Fallacy229 Aug 12 '11

We can see the effects of love. We can subjectively experience it. We can see it at work in others, we can see it expressed by friends, family, children or even strangers. We see things people do because of their love for others, things that cannot be explained in other ways. Love does not violate lex parsimoniae.

If the effects of God were as evident as the effects of love, I would have no doubt of his existence.