Here are some reasons for belief in god that I got from a two hourish discussion in the wee hours of the morning. I'm quite tired and annoyed at the moment, so I'm making an impromptu post with less structure that others. I've dealt with these various "arguments" in other posts before as you can see below.
1) God feels true to me because I've had personal experiences and there's no other way that I could explain this.
^^ Personal experiences are unreliable and not good evidence for a claim about the existence of a supernatural being.
Fallacy of special pleading...why don't you accept these arguments from other people who make similar claims?
Compartmentalizing....Why do you only apply these standards to belief in god but not anything else in life?
Millions of people make similar claims around the world and they aren't accepted just because they "feel true" or because multiple people believe the same thing (bandwagon argument)
More here...
and internal justification (It's true for me) simply doesn't work.
2) What do you believe in then / You can't prove that God doesn't exist
Fallacy of shifting the burden of proof and a red herring...Believers are making the positive claim; people who don't accept a claim don't have to demonstrate why this claim is false.
Example:
Me: I can fly
You: Prove it.
Me: You can't disprove my flight!
More here...
3) Is it is possibility that God exists? Might God exist?
Sure, God might exist...anything might exist. The idea that something might exist doesn't give credence to a claim being either true or false.
4) You can't explain it and that's the point!
Great, the idea that something can't be explained doesn't make it true. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and exemplary explanations.
>>Argument from ignorance /special pleading / God of the Gaps
Let's apply "you can't explain it" to lightning. Humans at one point could not explain lightning, but we eventually found and explanation. Lack of explanation doesn't demonstrate or give weight to the idea that a god exists.
"I can't explain it" = I don't know, not "God exists."
I can't explain witchcraft and alchemy...so are these ideas suddenly plausible?
5) "That's why it's called faith"
Why is faith a reliable mechanism for knowledge? To believe something its to stand in some position to reality with knowledge that something is true. "Faith" shouldn't be acceptable when very specific claims are made that aren't backed up with specific facts, reasons, and arguments.
6) My faith in God is like the faith that you have in your parents protecting you.
This is the fallacy of equivocation...this is a different kind of faith being used in two different contexts with two different meanings.
More here...
6) "There's facts out there that Jesus existed and was the son of God! It's in history books!" (but yet the person provides none of this evidence)
Appeal to authority... the idea that something is in a book doesn't make it true. We need information as to how this information was gained, who gained it, and why it is reliable.
Also, how can we have information about SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS in history books? History books aren't religious books. So what if Jesus did exist? Does this suddenly make him divine? Of course not...
More on this here...
7) "You can't know for sure!"
Red herring, shifting the burden, strawman, and special pleading.
I don't claim to know anything "for sure," but I have reliable means for gaining information...and not all claims are created equal. A claim such as "I was abducted by aliens last night" and "My mother is going to drive me to the DMV" carry much different weight.
I don't care about absolute certainty...and during the discussion the people kept saying "I don't know for sure" and told them to stop saying "for sure" because I'm not claiming this and I don't claim absolute certainty.
8) You don't believe in God because no dramatic event happened in your life that made you believe in him. Many dramatic events happened in my life and that's why I don't believe. Until something dramatic happens in your life, you won't believe.
I don't base knowledge and beliefs about extraordinary claims on personal experience of dramatic events and dramatic events certainly don't give weight to the idea that a god exists...so what? What god exists? Is my friend right for believing in Odin because dramatic experiences happened in his life?
Do we honestly base beliefs about extraordinary claims on personal experience? Wouldn't we have to accept every claim that every person said? The believer is special pleading here.
9) What happens if you're wrong? What if God exists and you go to hell?
This video says it all. You should watch it.
10) This belief gives my life meaning and God set a path for me to live. I've been through hard times and faith in God led me through the hard times.
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At the end of the day it's not me failing to believe in something because I haven't encountered dramatic experiences...almost everyone has, anyway. I don't believe in any gods because the claims from the believers have failed to produce good reason for belief. Arguments, evidence, and reason determine beliefs about extraordinary propositions, not personal experiences.
People of all different religions (and even people of the same religion) make totally different claims about the nature of the universe and we can't accept them all just because someone "feels it is true." Guess what? My neighbor Earl "feels that" he encountered the Loch Ness Monster and there's no way to explain the encounter and it's just faith. This is the same thing that believers have provided me tonight. Nonsense.
Apologetic speakers are actually formulating reasons for their beliefs and developing reasons for why they believe what they believe. We can examine these claims instead of listening to "it feels good to me" and "I had personal experiences that I can't explain."
It pains me to hear that people have analyzed the arguments when they clearly haven't while presenting nonsense like Pascal's Wager and saying that I don't believe YET because I haven't encountered God.