I'm not an atheist, but articles like these do irritate me somewhat... they never seem to stand up to any real scrutiny. I'm not gonna write an essay explaining why, but I'll mention a couple of things about these three articles.
"Atheists have proven God doesn't exist, right?"
Obviously I believe that the answer is no - as does the article - and I'm also going to have to disagree with
Nevalti here: many atheists do cite the problem of evil (PoE)(i.e. the theodice problem) as showing the Abrahamic God to be a logical impossibility. Thus, I think refutations of the problem are important.
However, the refutation given here is not ideal. It offers one - or maybe two - refutations of the PoE, and misses out other important possibilities. The answers it provides are 1) that evil is necessary for some form of greater good (the example given is free will) and 2) that evil is not as simple as people might think.
The free-will refutation is generally considered redundant by atheists who believe that the PoE disproves God, as these tend to be the same atheists that consider omniscience and free-will to be mutually exclusive. The article does not touch on this issue, and so does not convince these atheists at all.
The article also argues that evil does not come from God, but is committed by free-will beings. Now, let us think for a minute. God created everything, and therefore anything that exists necessarily comes (either directly or indirectly) from God. The fact that it is the free-will of beings that causes evil does not really help us here, for we are also aware of the fact that God "created" (for want of a better word) their free will!
When writing an article on theodice, other potential refutations of the PoE that I would include are as follows:
-God may not be omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient - the Biblical evidence for such claims is not absolute.
-the problem is an appeal to ignorance: simply because we cannot see how evil and God could coexist does not mean that they cannot. Indeed, we must remember that God is necessarily transcendent.
-God is omnipotent without the bounds of logic: it may be logically impossible for Him to coexist with evil, but that is no problem for His omnipotence.
-"free will" (which is refutable) may not the only greater good possible: evil may serve a purpose which we just do not understand.
-evil is necessary for goodness; evil and good are just two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other.
-evil does not really exist.
Are your beliefs consistent with your worldview?
I don't believe that anyone's worldview is entirely consistent with all of their beliefs, but that is no real criticism. It would be an unimaginably huge task to try to reconcile every single thing that we have ever believed and will ever believe with our worldview. It is an inconvenience to say the least, but something with which we must deal... unless we are hermits and philosophers with far too much spare time.
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The first and foremost principle [that should govern skeptics' worldviews] is that all beliefs should be based upon observational evidence. Unlike theists, who base some of their beliefs on religious writings, skeptics must rely completely upon physical evidence."
Well... this is just wrong. The first and foremost principle of a skeptic's worldview is that all beliefs should be based upon logic. If this requires or involves observational evidence, then fair enough - but this is not necessarily true. Second, it seems to totally neglect the fact that
religious writings are pieces of observational evidence. Theists don't have an "extra dimension" or anything with which they can justify their beliefs. Everyone has exactly the same evidence (physical or otherwise); atheists just reject scripture as valid/reliable/accurate evidence.
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Atheists are left with a dilemma, since their worldview requires that all things that begin to exist must have a cause."
This is also false. Reading a little into quantum theory helps one to realise that the principle of cause and effect is not really a principle. Indeed, the premise that "all things require a cause" would require further justification even had we not discovered quantum physics.
The article also seems to present a dire misunderstanding of observational evidence.
We do not have to directly observe something for it to be considered observational evidence. Were that true, we would have no observational evidence for well... most modern physics. Instead of literally observing the things that are happening at, say, the "quantum scale" (because that is impossible) we observe what happens at a macroscopic scale and then use other techniques to deduce logically what happened at the quantum/microscopic scale. In a similar fashion, we can make observations today in extremely high-energy conditions and use logic and our current knowledge of reality to deduce what might have happened right after Creation (allegedly 13.7b years ago).
The fact that we cannot directly observe something does not mean that we cannot acquire observational evidence of said thing.
Assuming, however, that scientific methods and reasoning could not help us understanding Creation... so what? This doesn't give anyone (including us) reason to simply say "ok then God did it!"
The second half of this writing is not worth much. It is almost entirely devoted to the anthropic principle... but firstly I'd just like to point out the dire lack of references in this article, which is comprised almost entirely of scientific material. That is worrying.
Okay so, the argument of this page basically goes "The chances of the Universe existing the way it does is tiny (but
not infinitesimal/almost zero). If the Universe existed in a different way, life would be impossible. Therefore the Universe was designed." To be honest, this is quite misleading. When questioning probabilities like this, it is (obviously) important to establish whether or not we are looking at the correct probabilitity. Here, we are not: we should be looking at the possibility of any kind of intelligent life occurring anywhere, in any solar system, in any galaxy, in any Universe. Instead, we are looking at the probability of human life occurring in one solar system, in one galaxy, in one Universe. It's like bumping into someone you know on the street around your home, and expressing surprise at seeing them: after all, what are the chances of you seeing that friend at that time in that place? In reality, you would have been equally surprised to see any friend at any time in any place around town, and the probability of this happening is much much larger.
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Since the smallest unit of time is Planck time (10-45 sec),5 the lowest probability event that can ever happen in the history of the universe is: [FONT="]1/10[/FONT][FONT="]⁸⁰[/FONT][FONT="] x 1/10¹[/FONT][FONT="]⁸[/FONT][FONT="] x 1/10[/FONT][FONT="]⁴⁵[/FONT][FONT="] =1/10 ¹[/FONT][FONT="]⁴³[/FONT]"
This, again, is just wrong. Notice that there are no citations and no explanations of the calculation? What has been calculated here is the probability of an event occurring once, when said event could take place at any "real" moment in time (i.e. could happen once every Planck time) and has a probablity of occurring of 1/10⁸⁰, happening since Creation. How, in any way, is this calculation relevant?
EDIT: My mistake, his calculation does not even show that... as far as I can tell, he's just plucked a couple of largely irrelevant numbers from somewhere and then multiplied slightly different numbers together. The number he comes up with means nothing, and is most certainly not "the lowest probability event that can ever happen in the history of the universe".
Is Christianity a Made-up Myth Written by the Disciples?
This one is better (: There is not much to fault here, except it is probably necessary to point out that more educated atheists don't necessarily believe that Christianity was made up by the disciples. More often, they believe that the writers themselves were simply wrong and/or misguided, and that the collection of books that we call the Bible is entirely arbitrary.
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Okay I'm sorry.. I said I wasn't going to write an essay and yet, here I have wrriten an essay. Thanks to anyone who bothered to read it all haha! God bless.