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Philosophy

November 20, 2007

Atheism is self-defeating

Several months ago I read about atheism being self-defeating, but I forgot exactly how the argument went. I finally heard it again the other day so I thought I’d share.
Atheism comes from the Greek “a” – the negative, and “theos” – god. It not only means not believing in a God, it affirms the non-existence of God, period, meaning it absolutely affirms a negative. While that’s almost impossible to pull off, it’s also self defeating in this case. To give you an example, assume I told you that there are no yellow and red striped trees anywhere in this universe. I would have to have infinite knowledge of this universe in order to prove it, because I would have to know each and every spot everywhere in the universe to make that claim. So the atheist needs/claims infinite knowledge to tell us that there is no one with infinite knowledge (aka God), which doesn’t make any sense.
If you’re an atheist, now may be a good time to change your position to, say, agnostic. Wait, that’s self-defeating, too. More about that later…

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  1. Agnosticism is self-defeating, too
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  3. Logic is on God’s side

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