# Generic failures in arguments for the nonexistence God **URL:** \ **Category:** Philosophy of Religion\ **Tags:** god\ **Created:** [August 25, 2026, 12:31am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715 "2026-08-25T00:31:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 5:08am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/104 "2026-09-01T05:08:57Z")
? An evil God or a good God, and the problem of evil. I’d say an evil God is a good fit. If not, the absence of God could be because he’s deceased or he doesn’t care. ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 5:11am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/105 "2026-09-01T05:11:21Z")
You say it but why do you say it? ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 6:35am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/106 "2026-09-01T06:35:47Z")
My post was a response to yours in which you claim I was mistaken. Simulation hypothesis is a good argument, ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 8:20am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/107 "2026-09-01T08:20:32Z")
> [@180Proof](#): > > 1. God is imaginary (i.e. an empty name). If not God then what? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin1](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/mijin1/32/1180_2.png) [@Mijin1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Mijin1)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 9:07am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/108 "2026-09-01T09:07:36Z")
> [@Scorpion](#): > > Yes, the choices one makes is what’s at stake. They’re free or they’re not free. Preferences matter to choices. I don’t see any incoherence here. > [@Frank](#): > > All libertarian free will requires is that one was free to choose. In both definitions it depends what we mean by “free” of course. In terms of hijacking, there’s a thread right now specifically on this topic so I would urge you to comment there. ---
**Author:** ![Sam26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sam26](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Sam26)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/109 "2026-09-01T12:23:09Z")
I see a problem with all nine arguments, and it’s the same problem. All nine arguments treat the proposition “God exists” as a guess about reality, i.e., something to be tested, something that evidence can decide for or against. So, suffering counts against it, bad design counts against it, basically any of the traditional counter-arguments count against the hypothesis that “God exist.” No one is asking whether these are the right questions. Think about what you must believe to test any proposition. That the world existed before you were born, that your memory can generally be trusted, and that other people have minds and aren’t NPCs. You never proved any of that. You couldn’t. For e.g., you’d have to use your memory to check your memory. These aren’t the kind of things you work out. They’re what you do your working out with. This is where some believers sit, it’s not something they figured out epistemically where it’s justified or not. It’s the thing that makes praying and confessing intelligible in the first place. So, all nine arguments are swinging at the wrong thing. Same goes for “show me the evidence.” Ask what the evidence is that a claim needs evidence and there’s nothing to give. In other words, you’d have to already be using the rule to prove the rule. It’s the same kind of thing, viz., something you hold because it’s how you go about figuring things out. This is fine, but it’s what’s being denied to the other side. Where I think this comes apart is the following: everyone believes the world existed prior to their birth, but only some people believe in God, so I’d argue they really aren’t the same, but still the argument has some force. This is the argument that’s worth having. It’s how I’d argue if I was coming from a religious point of view. ---
**Author:** ![Jay](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jay/32/206_2.png) [@Jay](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jay)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 12:45pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/110 "2026-09-01T12:45:53Z")
> [@Sam26](#): > > This is the argument that’s worth having. It’s how I’d argue if I was coming from a religious point of view. Good post. Can you show why “God exists” is the same sort of claim as “We need evidence for truth” or “My memory can generally be trusted”? I agree that those kinds of claims have a different – that is, hinge-like – status than ordinary empirical claims, but I don’t yet see why “God exists” would be similar . . . as you seem to acknowledge in your final paragraph. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin1](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/mijin1/32/1180_2.png) [@Mijin1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Mijin1)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 1:32pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/111 "2026-09-01T13:32:21Z")
> [@Sam26](#): > > Think about what you must believe to test any proposition. That the world existed before you were born, that your memory can generally be trusted, and that other people have minds and aren’t NPCs. You never proved any of that. You couldn’t. For e.g., you’d have to use your memory to check your memory. These aren’t the kind of things you work out. Hmm that’s probably one of the better apologetics. I would say that while there are a fundamental set of propositions and logic that we pretty much have to “just accept”, we should be reluctant to add things to that set. Otherwise you can justify any hypothesis about literally anything. Secondly I put “just accept” in scare quotes, because, for example, it’s not that you can’t challenge the existence of an objective, shared reality. You absolutely can and we do. It’s just that as a practical matter I may as well behave as if the universe is real because I feel pain, hunger, cold etc and various interactions in this reality seem to cure these things. So, if we’re being consistent, we _would_ challenge the hypothesis of a god existing. ---
**Author:** ![Sam26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sam26](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Sam26)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 2:04pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/112 "2026-09-01T14:04:52Z")
“_Good post. Can you show why “God exists” is the same sort of claim as “We need evidence for truth” or “My memory can generally be trusted”? I agree that those kinds of claims have a different – that is, hinge-like – status than ordinary empirical claims, but I don’t yet see why “God exists” would be similar . . . as you seem to acknowledge in your final paragraph._” That’s a fair question and there’s no clean answer. I think the test has to be functional. In other words, how does the belief work in the life of someone holding it? Can anything count as evidence for it from the inside, or is it what makes evidence count as evidence in the first place? Is doubting that “God exists” a move within the practice, or does doubting (Keeping in mind the difference between doubt as an episode and doubt as a settled verdict, because no one is claiming that believers have no doubts.) end the practice. So, if we consider the claim “God exists” for someone living the practice it comes out the way memory does. It isn’t an epistemic conclusion needing support because it’s how other moves get their sense, which is a claim about how the belief functions, not an epistemological claim. But hinges aren’t all at the same level, and that’s what I left out. There are deferent levels. At the bottom, whatever makes reasoning possible, e.g., non-contradiction, which you can’t deny without using. Above that, the ones like external world, other minds, memory, a past, etc, deniable without contradiction, but nobody lives as though they’re false. Above those, methodological commitments, that nature is uniform, that testimony counts for something. Those are already local and already contested. And above those, hinges specific to a framework, which is where religious belief sits. They behave differently by level. The bottom ones can’t be revised at all. The upper ones can be, and historically are. Geocentrism was a hinge once, then a hypothesis, then false. So the demand for some kind of accounting gets more reasonable the higher you go, which is why your question is fair rather than a confusion. I’ll grant the obvious objection before anyone makes it, i.e., the uniformity of nature seems more load-bearing for many than God does. Drop uniformity and you can’t cross a road. Drop God and plenty of people inquire perfectly well. So, I’m not claiming the two sets of hinges are identical, and I’d rather concede that than pretend. But separate uniformity from what usually rides along. “The physical is all there is” isn’t indispensable to anything. You can do every piece of successful science without it, and many working scientists do. That one is a metaphysical commitment doing hinge duty, and it’s on the same shelf as theism, held for reasons that aren’t evidence, absent in much of the world, not required by the practice it claims to underwrite. That’s the narrow parity I’d defend. Not that all hinges are equal, but that when a naturalist moves from “physical explanation is what we look for” to “the physical exhausts what exists,” they’ve stepped onto the same ground they’re refusing the believer. ---
**Author:** ![Sam26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sam26](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Sam26)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 2:20pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/113 "2026-09-01T14:20:36Z")
If we’re being good philosophers almost everything is open to challenge, not just “God exists.” ---
**Author:** ![180Proof](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/180proof/32/1100_2.png) [@180Proof](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/180Proof)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 7:14pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/114 "2026-09-01T19:14:21Z")
> [@Scorpion](#): > > If not God then **what?** Metaphysical parsimony: _no transcendence, no supernatural, no afterlife:_ **natura naturans** 💀 🌺 ---
**Author:** ![Jay](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jay/32/206_2.png) [@Jay](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jay)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 8:13pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/115 "2026-09-01T20:13:37Z")
> [@Sam26](#): > > I think the test has to be functional. In other words, how does the belief work in the life of someone holding it? Can anything count as evidence for it from the inside, or is it what makes evidence count as evidence in the first place? . . . So, if we consider the claim “God exists” for someone living the practice it comes out the way memory does. It isn’t an epistemic conclusion needing support because it’s how other moves get their sense, which is a claim about how the belief functions, not an epistemological claim. Yes, this is a key move that a theist might make as to why the existence of God not only needs no justification but _could_ not be justified _in their own practice_. But then you raise the question of the different levels, and what “you can’t deny.” As you say, “the demand for some kind of accounting gets more reasonable the higher you go,” or as we might also put it: The further away from Hinge Bottom you go, the more _practically deniable_ the belief becomes. You don’t have to use, or assume, the belief in order to (seem to) deny it. Leaving aside God for a moment, how “high,” or far, are you willing to take this? How far from the bottom must a belief be before it’s just special pleading to call it a hinge belief? To use the geocentrism example, there are those for whom geocentrism might still be a hinge, but this oddity of their practice seems to shed very little light on how we ought to regard geocentrism. If it is indeed true that they “can’t do without it” – though I find that a little murky – does it really place geocentric statements in a different class philosophically? Very well, this is their framework, but what should we conclude from that? I suppose we could say, as you do, that statements about God, or about “the physical is all there is,” are “metaphysical statements doing hinge duty”, a nice phrase. And the parity does reveal that the naturalist is perhaps being inconsistent in claiming ground, structurally, that they deny the believer. But the larger question which I’d like to understand better is: What is the relation between the practice of an individual, or a community, around hinge-beliefs, versus some rationally determined set of hinge-beliefs that _all of us_ actually can’t do without? And of course you may well dismiss the question as illegitimate since my use of “all of us” smuggles in what purports to be an “extra-framework” or even universal level of judgment, based on a concept of what it is rational to believe (on pain of performative contradiction, in the case of hinges). But isn’t that what you mean when you describe the bottom two levels as involving non-contradiction and the external world? These two levels are meant to be not merely local commitments – and surely that is what a theist wants as well. ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 12:19am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/116 "2026-09-02T00:19:55Z")
> [@180Proof](#): > > Metaphysical parsimony: _no transcendence, no supernatural, no afterlife:_ **natura naturans** 💀 🌺 Natura naturans means autopoeisis or eternal universe. Cosmology contradicts the latter and autopoeisis is an empty name. ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 12:32am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/117 "2026-09-02T00:32:06Z")
> [@Mijin1](#): > > In both definitions it depends what we mean by “free” of course. > In terms of hijacking, there’s a thread right now specifically on this topic so I would urge you to comment there. Free means not forced. The choice is ours, not imposed by something outside of us. Eating an ice cream is free if the choice is not some particle from the outside that strikes your brain, making you desire ice cream. ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 12:46am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/118 "2026-09-02T00:46:55Z")
Global skepticism is untenable. All that you said is pointless under it. The system is simple: Argument \to Refutation. I’ve refuted (tried to) all disproofs of God satisfactorily. ---
**Author:** ![180Proof](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/180proof/32/1100_2.png) [@180Proof](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/180Proof)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 1:33am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/119 "2026-09-02T01:33:57Z")
Near-synonym of _naturans_ is the more ancient concept of _dao_, so that “if not god, then” … ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 1:42am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/120 "2026-09-02T01:42:08Z")
The Dao is never cited in cosmogony. ---
**Author:** ![180Proof](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/180proof/32/1100_2.png) [@180Proof](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/180Proof)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 1:51am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/121 "2026-09-02T01:51:24Z")
Why does “cosmogony” matter with respect to your pseudo-question “if not god, then what”? ---
**Author:** ![Scorpion](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/scorpion/32/875_2.png) [@Scorpion](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Scorpion)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 1:54am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/122 "2026-09-02T01:54:07Z")
God is cosmogony-apt. God’s the creator (of the universe). If we deny the creator what takes the creator’s place? The universe couldn’t have just popped into existence. ---
**Author:** ![180Proof](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/180proof/32/1100_2.png) [@180Proof](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/180Proof)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 2:41am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715/123 "2026-09-02T02:41:30Z")
> [@Scorpion](#): > > The universe **couldn’t have** just popped into existence. Why not? On what grounds do you assume that? [Previous page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715.md?page=5) [Next page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/generic-failures-in-arguments-for-the-nonexistence-god/2715.md?page=7)