God seems quite impotent

Not in that manner, you perv. "Impotent" as in "powerless to do anything."

It seems to be that the more powerful that the god of a specific religion is claimed to be, the more work the followers of that religion seem to have to do in order to impose that god's will and commands, as if their god couldn't do that himself but needed a little "help" from his followers. The most prominent examples of this are, of course, Christianity and Islam. They are probably the two major religions that most loudly and prominently proclaim their god's omnipotence and infinity, and yet go through the most amount of trouble to see their god's commands imposed on others, using very human and earthly methods.

In Christianity, and especially in certain countries (most prominently in the United States, although it's most certainly not the only one,) Christians are trying to pass very earthly and man-imposed laws to promote and protect their religion, to punish people who oppose or deride it, and to stop dissenting opinions from being taught. Many Islamic countries are basically totalitarian theocracies where extremely strict and inhumane laws are imposed, and overblown punishment is applied to non-existent "crimes" (such as the death penalty for denouncing and leaving the state's religion.) If someone insults their prophet or their god, violent protest and riots will ensue, with lots of property damage and even loss of life.

It's as if the god of these people were completely powerless to defend himself, and needed some help from his followers. After all, if someone eg. insults their holy prophet, their god does absolutely nothing about it, and thus it's the followers of that religion who need to punish the perpetrator on their god's behalf, and put a stop to the blasphemy. Because, you know, god seems incapable of doing that himself.

It feels almost like... I don't know... like that god actually doesn't exist. But perhaps that's just me.

Subjective or objective morals?

One argument with which many apologists really love to play with words is the question of whether there exist objective moral values, or whether all moral values are subjective.

One of the most typical fallacies they do here is to posit a completely false dichotomy: They say that either morals are subjective, and therefore any person can decide what is morally good or bad, or morals are objective, in which case it's the same for everybody.

This is a completely false dichotomy because there are, in fact, different degrees of subjectivity. A community of people can agree on certain ground rules of what's good and bad, and these moral codes will be much more objective than those of any one single person. A larger society, such as a country, can agree with a common code of conduct, and this will be much more objective than those of smaller communities. A group of countries can agree on a universal moral code (such as universal human rights,) and these will be much more objective than those of any one single person, or even one single country.

However, the apologists want to build a straw man: If you think that morals are subjective, then it means that you think that every single person can decide on what's good and bad.

That's not how it works. Morals being subjective, but still not up to each individual person, are not mutually exclusive propositions. As said, a society can impose a global moral code which, technically speaking, is subjective (because it's an agreement,) but much less so than the arbitrary thoughts of a single person.

The more people are involved in agreeing on a common moral code, the higher the standard of that code will be, because it will naturally affect positively a larger amount of people. And that's what morality is about: Creating a code of conduct that affects positively the largest amount of people possible.

This code of conduct will be by necessity, and technically speaking, subjective, but significantly less so. As said, there are degrees of subjectivity.

Is absolute nothingness possible?

A bit related to my previous blog post, one concept that many apologists and creationists take completely for granted is that absolute nothing, the absolute non-existence of anything at all, is possible. They casually throw expressions like "the universe came from nothing" and so on.

However, we can ask a quite relevant question: Is absolute nothingness actually possible? Is it possible for such a state to exist under some circumstances? Can we actually say that "the universe came from nothing"?

Perhaps a bit surprisingly, we cannot factually state that absolute nothingness, the complete non-existence of anything, is possible in our reality. That's because we have no examples of this. We can only observe this universe, and everything we can observe has something (space, time, possibly all kinds of quantum phenomena such as quantum foam or virtual particles...) We cannot point anywhere in the universe and say "there's absolutely nothing here," because there is no such place. If there exists some kind of "outside" of this universe, something where our universe resides in, we do not know what kind of properties it might have.

This is not just nitpicking, playing with terms, or highly abstract philosophical discussion. This is an actual question of physics: Is absolute nothingness even possible? Or is our reality such that something always exists in some manner by necessity? This is, in fact, an unanswered (and maybe even unanswerable) question. We cannot take it for granted.

Terms taken for granted

In theology, there are certain terms whose meanings are kind of taken for granted by the vast majority of people, without them ever being actually defined in the conversation. Yes, often even by skeptics/atheists.

It is, in fact, a good exercise to force the theist to define their terms before proceeding in the conversation. For example, whenever they use the term "soul" or "spiritual," try immediately stopping them and asking for a definition. "What do you mean by 'soul'?" "What do you mean by 'spiritual'?"

In surprisingly many cases they will actually be unable to come up with a concrete and coherent definition. In an online conversation I asked what they meant by "soul," and the only answer I got, even after asking several times, was "you know what I mean." No, I don't know what you mean, please explain it to me, I responded. I was not just playing dumb. I was honestly trying to get a coherent definition of "soul" so that we could proceed the conversation with a clear definition. The other person was unable to give any kind of definition.

Most theists take terms like "soul" for granted, as if it was completely clear and everyday knowledge what that term means, when in fact it's not clear at all, not even to them. "Spiritual" is another related term that's likewise taken for granted.

Of course even in the case where they can give some kind of coherent definition, you can then proceed to ask them how exactly do they know that such a thing even exists. (Although, according to my experience, from that point forward the conversation will typically start going in circles, jumping from one thing to the next, and coming back to the same thing again and again... This usually leads nowhere, and trying to break the circle can be really difficult. But such definitions can be a good starting point for an actual discussion nevertheless.)

Another problem with God's "perfection"

In philosophy it has been pointed out innumerable times the many problems that the notion of (the hypothetical) God being omnipotent, omniscient and whatever-fancy-adjective-you-like-the-sound-of brings to the whole premise. But here's another one:

Is God perfect? The typical answer is yes, of course.

Does that mean that everything that God does is perfect? Again, very few theists would disagree.

Since God (allegedly) created us, and creating is doing something, and everything that God does is perfect, doesn't that mean that we, God's creation, are likewise perfect?

Now the contradiction starts to slowly dawn. If God is perfect, and everything he does is perfect, and we are his creation, shouldn't we be likewise perfect? Because if we are not perfect, that means that there's something that God has (allegedly) done that's not perfect.

If we are perfect, then how come we are able to sin? How come we are flawed? How can a perfect creation be imperfect in this manner?

If we are not perfect, then that means that God deliberately created something imperfect, and therefore not everything that God does is perfect. Therefore God is not perfect in all possible aspects.

Science just denies miracle healings?

I recently had a small online conversation with someone about alleged miracle healings. Long story short, the one thing that came up was the very typical claim that doctors and scientists just deny the existence of miracle healings and just don't want to believe in them.

If you think about that, it just doesn't make any sense. Sure, there are probably many medical doctors and scientists who would indeed stubborningly deny the existence of any supernatural healing phenomena, but there certainly are likewise many that would be interested in studying those phenomena further, if they really existed and would really work.

When many of these cynical people think about medical practice, the only things they can think of are big pharmaceutical companies and doctors sitting in clean offices behind their desks listening to old ladies and writing prescriptions (both of which they think are mostly in the profession for the money and prestige.)

This is, in fact, extremely insulting cynicism, and I honestly feel offended on behalf of all the people who practice medicine because it's their vocation, and they really want to help people and save lives. People who have eg. studied and practiced surgery for decades, and who often go to incredible lengths to save the life of a dying patient by operating on them for endless hours, even overnight and with no rest. People who try to always find the best way to treat their patients because they honestly want them to be cured. People who research diseases and their causes, and search for cures, often well beyond what's required for them in order to earn their paychecks.

These people would most certainly be interested if there was a phenomenon that is proved to heal people by unknown means. They would certainly be interested in studying it further.

The Christians who claim that miracle healings are everyday occurrences and that doctors and scientists are just in a huge conspiracy to deny them, are nothing but assholes, pardon my french. They belittle and denigrate the thousands and thousands of people who dedicate their lives to help others, to save lives and to cure the sick. To tell the truth, and no pun intended, but these Christians make me feel sick.

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig is one of the leading and most prominent apologists of the western world. Many Christians regard him as a highly-educated scholar who has a strong grasp of philosophy and logic, and who has strong, irrefutable arguments that do not rely on emotion and unfounded claims.

Or that's how he sounds to the untrained hear, to someone who doesn't really understand what he's saying. Craig really is a master of making himself sound scholarly, academic and highly educated, someone who really knows what he's talking about, and who can mop the floor with any atheist and skeptic in a debate. He uses fancy terminology, and he is really good at speaking in a clear and academic manner. Yet to a more trained skeptic he's nothing but a showman and a hypocrite.

He constantly accuses his opponents of committing all kinds of deductive and logical fallacies, yet commits those very fallacies himself with almost every single argument he makes. For example, he's a great proponent of the so-called cosmological argument for the existence of God, yet seemingly can't understand the most basic problems with it (and this is just one of the many, many fallacies he constantly commits.) Moreover, when those problems are pointed out to him, he either chooses those objections that are the easiest to counter (not all objections are all that good, after all), distorts what the objection is actually saying, or just starts playing with words rather than understanding and answering the actual objection.

What's worse, he often proclaims how great and educated of a philosopher he is (and often belittles his opponents for not having an "education in philosophy" and thus not being at the same level as him) yet he miserably fails to understand some of the most basic properties of existence and function of reality (or, alternatively, deliberately interprets them in a manner more favorable to his apologetics.) For example, he has absolutely no understanding of things like emergent behavior, or the simple fact that a phenomenon may simply be a function of simple material elements interacting, instead claiming such phenomena to be "immaterial" and to exist "independent of physical matter." (One of the most common examples of this is that he considers the "mind" as being immaterial and existing completely independently of physical matter, without understanding that the human mind can be, and most probably is, just the interaction between brain cells and electricity. A very complex interaction yes, but still fully material and naturalistic. He cannot comprehend that the phenomenon we call "mind", for the lack of a better term, simply cannot exist without physical matter because it's a function of the interaction between physical elements. It's like saying that sound is "immaterial" and can exist without any space and matter, simply because sound is a phenomenon that's not, strictly speaking, matter itself. It's a phenomenon of matter interacting with itself. I'm sure even Craig wouldn't claim that sound can exist without matter.)

The most difficult thing about Craig is making his followers understand that he's just a charlatan, a showman. As said, he might sound really educated and scholarly to the untrained ear, but when one actually understands what he's saying, and all the theory behind those arguments, one quickly realizes that he is just full of it.