All other arguments besides Flew’s presumption argument are obsolete in view of Nielsen’s prior moral criterion argument in his book Ethics Without God (either edition, 1973/1984), and by implication its abstract generalization in terms of a prior truth criterion.
1 To know that God is good requires a prior standard of goodness to make that identification. Hence goodness without God is already there as a prerequisite, even to drive the discussion of the issue itself in terms of what is a good argument about goodness, whether that goodness is said to be the goodness of God or anything else.
2 To know anything to be true requires a prior standard of truth that not only does not need God but necessarily precludes God as a belief-determining factor. All arguments are based on God-precluding logical/rational rules of thinking.
These two arguments are the future of atheism, even though atheists have almost to a person not even noticed the original argument about morality, first published almost 50 years ago in the first edition of Nielsen’s 100-page book.
The only other argument essential to atheism going forward is Flew’s presumption argument which accurately concludes that the burden of proof on any kind of claim that some non-obviously-apparent being exists is on the believer, on pain of raising an infinite number of Great Pumpkin claims to equal legitimacy, and other logically fatal errors.
1 To know that God is good requires a prior standard of goodness to make that identification. Hence goodness without God is already there as a prerequisite, even to drive the discussion of the issue itself in terms of what is a good argument about goodness, whether that goodness is said to be the goodness of God or anything else.
2 To know anything to be true requires a prior standard of truth that not only does not need God but necessarily precludes God as a belief-determining factor. All arguments are based on God-precluding logical/rational rules of thinking.
These two arguments are the future of atheism, even though atheists have almost to a person not even noticed the original argument about morality, first published almost 50 years ago in the first edition of Nielsen’s 100-page book.
The only other argument essential to atheism going forward is Flew’s presumption argument which accurately concludes that the burden of proof on any kind of claim that some non-obviously-apparent being exists is on the believer, on pain of raising an infinite number of Great Pumpkin claims to equal legitimacy, and other logically fatal errors.
