This is a position paper for a meeting The Public Debate Club
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According to those who do not believe in God, the very need to prove the non-existence of God is a combination of Two known logical fallacies - 'Proof from ignorance' and 'transferring the burden of proof'. In their view, it is incumbent on those who believe in the existence of God to provide unequivocal proof of his existence, and their inability to do so (ignoring the achievements of Rabbi Pini Gershon and Rebbe Michael Jordan) constitutes proof in itself that there is no God.

At the same time, the atheists also present positive arguments to disprove the existence of God, and the main ones are the moral argument that requires God to be righteous as proof of his existence, the divine originality argument that points to the identical arguments used by believers of all religions to disqualify each other, the philosophical argument known as 'Ockham's razor' According to which God has no place in the world, and finally the argument of the paradoxes related to the infinity of God's abilities.

The moral argument - where was God in the Holocaust?

Logically this is not the strongest reasoning, but emotionally it is very effective. According to the argument, God made a deal with the people of Israel according to which mitzvot will be rewarded with reward, and sin will be rewarded with punishment. According to this argument, the relationship between reward and punishment is not only a proof of God's existence but a real transaction, therefore God's inability to fulfill his part of the agreement is proof of his non-existence.

This argument is very old and appears in various versions as early as in the Sages in the story of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuya who converted to Christianity after watching a Hasid being killed during a mitzvah (Since then referred to as 'Other' in the Mishnah, so don't google it). Judaism tried to deal with this argument already in the book of Job which raises the question in the most poignant way who still believes in God. However, the atheists pointed out that the divine answer is very unconvincing (for example Job suffers because God intervened with the devil that Job would remain faithful even if everything he had was taken from him). Following this, the Mishnah developed the doctrine of 'we have no ability to understand God's calculations' which the atheists claim constitutes logical fallacy A kind of circular argument that says 'if you are punished, this is sufficient proof that you deserved it'.

However, the strongest version of this argument refers to the Holocaust. According to this version, there is no sin in Judaism or in general that could justify the brutal murder of 6.5 million Jews, of which over a million were children. Moreover, even if we buy the claim, horrifying in itself, of the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists that Zionism and Reform Judaism in the USA are the cause of the Holocaust (and Judaism certainly sees them as a sin, although not inexcusable) the Holocaust still occurred precisely on the ultra-Orthodox Judaism of the East Europe and not on the Land of Israel or the United States. Therefore God fails so badly in such an important test that there is no escaping the conclusion that he does not exist.

Ockham's razor argument - God is unnecessary

This argument says that the existence or non-existence of God does not change anything in the world, and that anything that cannot be measured or felt does not exist. This argument was first presented by the philosopher (and priest) William of Ockham, and in its basic version says that when we are presented with two explanations for a phenomenon that explain it equally well, we should choose the simpler one. Advanced developments of this concept say that in order for something to exist it has to affect reality in some discernible way (even if not precisely measurable).

The atheistic use of this concept means that God, like astrology, does not affect the world except for the effect that exists because people believe in him and therefore does not exist. As an extension of this, it can be seen that every divine explanation for the way the world works turned out to be wrong as soon as science developed the ability to test things, and therefore after three thousand years in which every attempt to trust the divine explanation (from the age of the universe through the origin of life to the question of whether a rabbit ruminates) failed, it came Time to stop trying. Moreover, the reliance on science and logic over God has given proven and beneficial results in the form of technology. The adoption of the theory of evolution helped to develop medicines and improve agriculture, the abandonment of the flat earth theory led to the discovery of America and later to space flights and satellites.

what god

This theory, the best proof of the non-existence of God is the never-ending debates between the believers of the different religions, when each of them proves with signs and examples the absurdity of the other religions. In this way it can be seen that in fact we have no reason to believe in our specific God because the reasons for him are no more convincing than the reasons for Zeus, Allah, Ashtoreth, the Tooth Fairy and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and they are mostly logical fallacies simple

Sages also used an early version of this argument with a legend about Avraham Abino whose father Nahor owned a shop for idol statues. According to the story Abraham the child was asked to guard the store but broke all the statues with a stick and gave the stick in the hands of one of the gods. When his father returned, he explained to him that the idol had broken his friends, and when his father told him that it was impossible, Abraham said to him, 'Let your ears hear what your mouth is saying.' Of course the Sages missed the irony in that Abraham had to break the idols himself, because his God did not do it for him...

The paradox of the existence of an almighty God

This is a general name for several paradoxes arising from the description of God as all-powerful and all-knowing. The most basic and famous of them asks 'Is God Almighty able to create a stone so heavy that even God Almighty will not be able to lift it'.

Seemingly this is a nice cleverness (but still the religious sages have not been able to answer it except with the evasions of 'it is beyond human reach to understand the answer') but it goes to the core of the problem of attributing infinite abilities to God. For example, since God is perfect it is not clear how our world is so flawed. Another example deals with the conflict between God being omniscient and his claim to provide man with free will, a choice between good and evil, and reward and punishment for fulfilling instructions (i.e. commandments). After all, if God is omniscient, he knows that next Yom Kippur I will ride a bicycle like on this Yom Kippur, and since he knows this in advance, there is nothing I can do to change it.

It should be noted that this argument against God is only valid against the God of Judaism (and Islam and Christianity) and it actually does not work on more modest deities such as those of the ancient Greeks or the Japanese Shinto idols who do not claim to be omnipotent or omniscient.