Do atheists have an achilles heel when it comes to religious arguments?

I find it ironic that if Atheists had their way there would be no Christmas, no Lent, no Easter, no Paddy's Day, no Christenings/Communions/Confirmations/Weddings/Funerals or any other excuse for a piss-up. No excuse to get out of the house on a Sunday and meet the neighbours if nothing else. Who are the buzzkills now!

^^^
shockin', all I can say!

I think that the atheist's Achilles' Heel is that most of them try to prove that religions are false. It leads nowhere. I do not aim to prove my views to be universally true (though I think many of them are); only to clarify and justify why I think and live the way I do.


Atheists also often tend to use teleological arguments, i.e. arguments that invoke progress. In the Godless, meaningless universe, there is no purpose to anything.

I would take a similar yet opposite position of Húrin's position

The atheists Achille's heal is that they spend far far too much time trying to answer the theist when they say "Prove to me God doesn't exist", rather than trying to explain that that question is nonsense and why the theist's position is untestable, unfalsifiable, and as such pretty worthless.

If you look at why theists believe in the supernatural things they believe there is really nothing there expect personal interpretation. Wolfsbane goes as far as to say he "Just know" that God confirmed everything is truth. Theists interpret various things (they would call them "evidence" for God) they see or experience or feel and funnel all that down as confirmation to them that God (or what ever supernatural being) exists. It just so happens that this conclusion provides them with a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a sense of love, and promise of an after life. But that is just a coincidence

Atheists spend an awful lot of time trying to show them that they are wrong, but really that is some what impossible because what you end up arguing against is personal interpretation. For the person to change their mind they need to change their interpretation and nothing can cause that to happen. They either will or they won't, you can't demonstrate that the conclusion they reach from thinking about something is wrong unless they provide some external test that can be measured or tested. Which theists never do.

Which is why the assertion "Prove to me God doesn't exist" is so loaded and silly. That isn't possible to do, because the only reason they believe God exists in the first place is because of a conclusion they have made in their own head. There is nothing to their conclusion that is independent of their opinion. There is no test. It is not falsifiable. It is just their opinion. It is like asking someone to prove to me that I don't like chocolate ice-cream. The only way to do that is to convince me I don't like it, and if I don't want to accept that then there is nothing you can do. No matter what you say or do (you could show me getting sick after eating some) that will never change my mind unless I want it to change. There is no test independent of my personal opinion to demonstrate the truth of the statement to me. Which is fine when you are talking about a personal opinion of mine, but when you are talking about something that is supposed to exist external to me then it becomes nonsense. A person's personal feelings on whether God exists or not should be irrelevant, but to the theist they become the be all and end all of "proof" that God exists.

I think this is possibly why atheists such as Dawkins seem to get so annoyed when debating theists.

Personal opinion that something is true wouldn't in the door of a science lab, let alone be taken seriously in a debate about the existence of some molecule or phenomena. If someone said they "just know" that the Higgs field exists and wanted that accepted until it could be proven it doesn't, they would be laughed out of the room.Scientists like Dawkins aren't used to dealing with people who hold strong conviction that their personal opinion on something means a whole lot or is some how a good reason to hold something is true. It is almost like they are caught off guard, that they simply don't accept that someone would actually hold such a flawed position.

So when faced with the challange of "Prove to me God doesn't exist or I will continue to accept my personal assessment that he does" they some what take the bait and actually try and do that, without realising that it is a nonsense way to debate.

It ends up with the atheist putting forward a load of points and the theist responding with something along the lines of "All very interesting, but that hasn't convinced me that my personal assessment that he exists is wrong" To which the atheist should be saying "Of course it hasn't! It is a just a personal opinion of yours!" and ending the debate, which thankfully I think a lot have realised, including Dawkins. Others continue to keep banging the head against the wall. Some what of a waste of time.

What they should be doing is trying to explain why personal opinion doesn't matter, it doesn't demonstrate anything. Science realises this hundreds of years ago, and now anything in science must be demonstratable independently of personal opinion or assessment. What individual scientists believe about something is rather irrelevant. What matters is what they can demonstrate to others who don't have to share the opinion to accept it.

Trying to get theists to realise the validity of this way of approaching an issue, any issue, such as does God exist, is far more worth while pursuit than trying to "prove" to them God doesn't exist.

I'm not saying it is easy, plenty of theists simply don't get why that scientific approach is better than something like personal assessment. How often has someone said "Science is limited" and then rushed to embrace something that has none of the safe guards science does. And plenty are blinded by simply not wanting to introduce doubt to their faith.

But trying to answer why God doesn't exist is ultimately fruitless because the reasons God exists are only in the heads of the believers and it is very difficult to argue against that.