Atheism

This post is about scratching the surface of cosmological arguments for the existence of God. As this is a very complex area and there are many disagreements and debates even between brilliant thinkers and professional philosophers, I cannot stress enough that this post is mostly about my personal journey of trying to begin to understand these issues and arguments.

If you have visited this site before or are maybe following Is it OK to Think? on Facebook, you might be surprised that being an Atheist is only the third thing I identify myself with – after acknowledging that I am a straight, white and possibly privileged male and a feminist, “atheist” label comes third. Well, these posts are not ranked in the order of importance, they are simply a chronology of my thoughts about myself or a chronology of thinking about myself in terms of labels and definitions. It's not what I prefer to do, but I do like to know where I stand.

Over the existence of this website and various social channels it possesses, I have been asked certain questions about atheism, so I thought I compile all of them into memes and post them on the site in the series of posts. This is post number one in this series. This post will be a bit different than the previously published "What atheism is all about in a few memes" because here the focus is more on the answering visitors' questions, instead of making a presentation about atheism.

So, let's get into it.

This blog post series "What I know so far" will be focusing on the state of awareness about religious arguments and the objections to them at the time of writing the post. I fully acknowledge there is much, much more to learn and to think about when it comes to these concepts, so this post is kind of a snapshot of the things I have read so far about this argument. The plan is to do this for all arguments and even revisit them from time to time. So, let's get into it.

One of the arguments put forward for the existence of God is Anselm's Ontological Argument. This is an argument that tries to "prove" to us the existence of God by showing us that it is basically impossible to deny that a greatest possible being – God exists.

It is really an interesting argument because it tries to get to God using only rules of logic to show us that it's contradictory to think that God doesn't exist. As such, even as an Atheist, I have to say this is one ... dare I say it ... impressive argument precisely because it doesn't need anything empirical. All other arguments start from something – the fact that species exist, or that the universe exists, or that the morality exists and build from there. This argument is different. It starts with mere concepts.

Be careful when using this argument.

Atheists make weak arguments too. This is one of them. While it may seem bullet-proof at the first glance, let's see why it's not. So, if you use it, you will most likely lose to any non-trivial opponent. Let's get into it.

Sorry for not posting for more than 20 days, it was vacation time. Anyway, we are back now and to kick off another season, let’s say a few words about this page and it’s goals, simply to try and clear up any misunderstandings that might have happened.

Most people that like the page are probably non-religious so you might feel annoyed by some of the arguments and thoughts being published here and consider it "preaching to the choir". You do not need to be told this. You already know it.