Arguments against the existence of God

Since theistic religions first began, there have been many arguments made by non-theists against the existence of God. When people refer to arguments for or against the existence of God, these arguments almost always refer to (a) a classical Biblical view of God, in which God is anthropomorphic, or (b) any view of God in which God is portrayed as omniscient, omnipotent and omni-benevolent (all-good). Most Jewish and almost all Christian views of God fit these definitions.

• Incompatible-properties arguments or Incoherency arguments: arguments regarding incompatible or incoherent divine attributes
  • The argument against a transcendent god
  • The argument from nonbelief
  • The problem of evil and logical and evidential arguments from evil
  • The freewill argument
• Critiques of the Cosmological argument
• Critiques of the Teleological argument (or argument from design)
• Critiques of the Ontological argument
• Argument from evolution
• Argument from pain and pleasure
• Argument by Ockham's Razor
• Argument against any specific God
• Halting problem (God is not a machine)

It is also worth noting that some atheists deny that arguments against the existence of God are necessary to support or sustain atheism. They argue that the burden of proof is on the person who makes the positive claim. It is not up to atheists, then, to prove that God does not exist; it is up to theists to provide proof of their own. Without such proof, atheists argue, it is not rational to believe in the existence of God, any more than it is rational to believe in the existence of fairies, dragons, demons or unicorns.

However, this denial has problems of its own. In order to logically assert that God has never existed anywhere in the universe, a being would have to possess the characteristics of omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and extratemporal existence - the very characteristics of said God. In other words, it is arguable that atheism carries its own burden of proof, and an agnostic position is more logically defensible.

See also:

• Arguments for the existence of God
• atheism, the hypothesis that a God is ridiculously improbable or nonexistent.
• agnosticism, the tenet that existence of a God is undecidable or irrelevant.
• rationalism
• philosophy of religion