Home > Arguments against the existence of God

1 Arguments against specific conceptions of God

While some theists argue that God entirely transcends logic and that logical discourse about him is therefore meaningless, others would disagree with the assertion that God has incompatible or incoherent properties. Each of the following arguments aims at proving that some particular conception of God either is inherently contradictory or contradicts known scientific and historical facts, and that therefore a God thus described cannot exist.

• The argument from inconsistent revelations contests the existence of God as described in holy scriptures, such as the Jewish Tanakh, the Christian Bible, or the Muslim Qur'anThe Qur'an ( Arabic al-qurn also transliterated as Quran Koran and less commonly Alcoran is the holy book of Islam. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the literal word of God and culmination of God's revelation to mankind, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, by identifying contradictions between different scriptures, contradictions within a single scripture, or contradictions between scripture and known facts.

• The problem of evilIn the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God (the so-called Epicurean paradox). In Essais de Theodicee (or theodicyTheodicy is a branch of theology that studies how the existence of a good or benevolent God is reconciled with the existence of evil. An attempt to reconcile the co-existence of evil and God is sometimes called "a theodicy". See the article on the problem) in general, and the logical and evidential arguments from evilLogical arguments from evil seek to show that God's existence is logically incompatible with the existence of (certain) evil. That is, it is argued to be logically impossible that God exist alongside such evil. The arguments then derive God's nonexistence in particular contest the existence of a God who is both omnipotentOmnipotence (literally, "all power") is the power to do absolutely anything. This trait is usually attributed only to God. Theists hold that examples of God's omnipotence include Creation and miracles. In most monotheistic religions, God is described as o and omnibenevolentOmnibenevolence is the property of being perfectly good, attributed by some religions to God. The word omnibenevolence may be interpreted to mean perfectly just, all-loving, fully merciful, and so on, depending on precisely what is taken to be good. by arguing that such a God would not permit the existence of evile·vil ''adj. Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful: the evil effects of a poor diet. Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous: evil omens. Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous: an evil repu, which can easily be shown to exist.

• The argument from nonbeliefDefining the problem The argument from nonbelief (also, the argument from divine hiddenness is a recently-developed argument against the existence of God that is garnering interest in the philosophical community (J. Schellenberg, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and contests the existence of an omnipotent God who wants humans to believe in him by arguing that such a God would do a better job of gathering believers.

• The argument from free will contests the existence of an omniscient God who has free will by arguing that the two properties are contradictory.

• The argument from poor design contests the existence of an intelligent Creator God by arguing that much of nature is poorly designed.

• The Transcendental Argument for the Non-existence of God contests the existence of an intelligent Creator God by demonstrating that such a being would make logic and morality contingent, which is incompatible with the presuppositionalist assertion that they are necessary, and contradicts the efficacy of science. A more general line of argument based on TANG, materialist apologetics, seeks to generalize this argument to all necessary features of the universe and all conceptions of "God".

• Theological noncognitivism, as used in the literature, usually seeks to disprove the Christian God by showing that its concept is meaningless in some way.