Now, let's talk evidence for God.

[Nick227]

Keep kicking that rock, guys. The more you kick it, the realer it becomes

But there are these days issues with using the old "brain in a vat"-type argument, Malerin. No one seems to be able to locate enough of the right processing apparatus in the brain to create a stream of consciousness. It seems more likely that the brain makes transitory visual representations and constantly bolsters them up by looking again and again. Short-term memory creates the sensation of there being this continuous flowing stream of consciousness, but it's not really like this. The brain needs to actively seek stimuli. It is not being fed. "The Matrix" is just a fantasy.

Nick

 

[Freethinker]

I think my number xvii is pretty compelling, though many would claim that was a very strong argument against a benevolent God. You might have to be British to understand it - if you don't don't Youtube it. Theists have perpetrated enough atrocities on nonbelievers without me adding to the list!

cj x

xvii) the problem of Good (and especially altruism)

Altruism has or had evolutionary advantages, at least within your community. In earlier times, those people you came in contact with most likely shared your DNA, even if it wasn't passed on from you. That's the ultimate prize in evolution: Passing on DNA. As far as a god existing, it neither supports nor refutes the assertation.

 

[Dancing David]

That is a blatant appeal to sense-data as evidence for the existence of external things and people. You want to back-track with some loopy definition that reality is "stuff that follows rules", that's your lookout.

I liked this version of you better. The argument was no good, but at least you weren't equivocating all over the place.

And again you assert the same mistake, over and over.

Why should it matter?

The sense data is all that there is, there is nothing else.

Ontology is irrelevant, it does not matter if it is butterfly dreams/godthough/quanta.

the end result is the same, you can not violate the law of gravity, whatever the ontology of the sensations.

Again:

The challenge is this, what difference would it make?

You keep asserting that it matters and I challenge you on it.

What difference does this point you keep making matter, even to a brain in a vat?

If you are game I will start a thread.

 

[drkitten]

Keep kicking that rock, guys. The more you kick it, the realer it becomes

Why not? After all, the more you post, the wronger you become.....

 

[Dancing David]

Keep kicking that rock, guys. The more you kick it, the realer it becomes

And you refuse to face the facts, you are engaged in pointless quibbling!

What difference does any of it make, there is no difference between materialism and idealism, they are the same, exactly!
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130092

Care to demonstrate that you have anything to support your assertion that there is a difference.

You can not show that the ideal rock is any different from the material rock. It is moot and Berkley is obsolete.

 

[yrreg]

Thanks, RandFan, for your time and effort to contribute to this thread unlike rote tergiversators here.

• the supernatural being conceived as the perfect and omnipotent and omniscient originator and ruler of the universe; the object of worship in ...
• deity: any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force
• a man of such superior qualities that he seems like a deity to other people; "he was a god among men"
• idol: a material effigy that is worshipped; "thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"; "money was his god"

Which one? There are many gods.

Isis, Nut, Ra, Osiris, Zeus, Apollo, Gaia, Poseidon, Cupid, Janus, Terra, Bacchus, Hercules, Luna, Nemesis, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Thor, Odin, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh, Kali, Krishna, Baal, Satan, Yahweh, Allah, God.

Hey, I have an idea, why don't you tell us what god you believe in and we can discuss that? How is it I'm supposed to define what I don't believe exists?

Don't go too far and wide.

We must always use very simple ideas and words in the most plain language.

What about describing God thus:

God is the maker of the moon.​

Before you dash off to tergiversate instead of continuing on the same vein of sobriety as with your message above, please keep in mind the distinction between words spoken in sensu aienti and words spoken in sensu neganti.


By the way, always keep in mind that man is the measure of everything that man concerns himself with, and he can only be concerned in and by and on and with and through his only way, the human way.

Do some thinking about how man can come to any information at all about anything.


To the rest, if you want to engage productively, instead of tergiversating, please do as RandFan is doing.




Yrreg

 

[I Ratant]

Your Babblefish translator is broke!

 

[six7s]

...unlike rote tergiversators here.

Don't go too far and wide.

We must always use very simple ideas and words in the most plain language.

Hahaha... you're funny... especially when you're out of your depth

What about describing God thus:

God is the maker of the moon.​

Why not, as per the OP, "talk evidence for God"?

Is it is simply because, like every other person on the planet, y'ain't got any?

 

[truethat]

I actually have a theory on this one, if you'd like to read my paper its about 10 pages but here goes the gist of it


I believe that "God' is a conditioned controlled loop in the memes of man brought on by the psychological trauma of learning to speak and thus developing awareness. Once we can live without the trauma we will stop believing.

Hey yyerg I posted this in seriousness and you just ignored it. Sniff.

 

[paximperium]

T
What about describing God thus:

God is the maker of the moon.
​

Alright, lets play. As per the OP, do you have any evidence that the moon was made by this god?

 

[yrreg]

I will not trouble with tergiversators here.

And you know what and who you are, unless you are not in the habit of rational and intelligent and sincere self-introspection.

In which case it's a catastrophe of the most calamitous scale to the most abysmal bathys* of the oceans depth where no light can reach.

[ Haha, gotcha! ]

Such a massive loss to an entity gifted with reason and intelligence -- and your mothers took the care and risk and financing to give you birth and to raise you up to be now capable of writing messages in web forums.


Anyway, returning to a concise but not exclusive description of God:

Thanks, RandFan, for your time and effort to contribute to this thread unlike rote tergiversators here.

Posted by RandFan
the supernatural being conceived as the perfect and omnipotent and omniscient originator and ruler of the universe; the object of worship in ...
deity: any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force
a man of such superior qualities that he seems like a deity to other people; "he was a god among men"
idol: a material effigy that is worshipped; "thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"; "money was his god"
Which one? There are many gods.

Isis, Nut, Ra, Osiris, Zeus, Apollo, Gaia, Poseidon, Cupid, Janus, Terra, Bacchus, Hercules, Luna, Nemesis, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Thor, Odin, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh, Kali, Krishna, Baal, Satan, Yahweh, Allah, God.

Hey, I have an idea, why don't you tell us what god you believe in and we can discuss that? How is it I'm supposed to define what I don't believe exists?​

Don't go too far and wide.

We must always use very simple ideas and words in the most plain language.

What about describing God thus:

God is the maker of the moon.​

Before you dash off to tergiversate instead of continuing on the same vein of sobriety as with your message above, please keep in mind the distinction between words spoken in sensu aienti and words spoken in sensu neganti.


By the way, always keep in mind that man is the measure of everything that man concerns himself with, and he can only be concerned in and by and on and with and through his only way, the human way.

Do some thinking about how man can come to any information at all about anything.


To the rest, if you want to engage productively, instead of tergiversating, please do as RandFan is doing.




Yrreg

For a starter, then and I repeat:

God is the maker of the moon.​

What sayeth ye?



Yrreg

*Even though we are engaged in dire exchange of thoughts, the best way to get to the depths [pun intended] is to keep a humorous mood in the process.

So, don't get annoyed with my hyper-falutin style.

 

[paximperium]

Does anyone know what the hell Yrreg is talking about? He sounds like something out of a Monty Python skit.

 

[I Ratant]

No, Monty Python knew what they were satirizing.

 

[Freethinker]

So, don't get annoyed with my hyper-falutin style.

Your style would be more tolerable if your words had any substance. You simply string together words with no point. The OP suggested discussion of evidence of god. You have posted none. When asked simple questions, you respond with inane redirects and non-sequiters. You seem to be laboring under the notion that peculiarity and vagueness enhance your position.

 

[truethat]

Does anyone know what the hell Yrreg is talking about? He sounds like something out of a Monty Python skit.

You know I really hate when someone tries to pass off someone else's nervous break down as their own. You know? How rude.


I think he's paraphrasing this:


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"


He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.


And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!


One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.


"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

[cj.23]

Altruism has or had evolutionary advantages, at least within your community. In earlier times, those people you came in contact with most likely shared your DNA, even if it wasn't passed on from you. That's the ultimate prize in evolution: Passing on DNA. As far as a god existing, it neither supports nor refutes the assertation.

Oh yes I know Hamilton's rule. It does not however explain altruism outside of extended kin groups -- and this is a feature of much animal behaviour as I understand. In humans we may not be so surprised - the capacity for visualizing oneself in another's position would make it a reasonable choice. Altruism is however a curious thing, still not fully explainable. There must be a reason of course...

I must point out again that the list was of purported evidences -- I will as requested attempt to explain all the arguments they support, but I will do this by tying them initially to calimed attributes of a deity, and then, argue the other way round, from the "evidence" to the attributes.

cj x

 

[MattusMaximus]

More saddended than offended. This doesn't sound like the same person I used to talk to in the Presidential Election forum. We always had civil discussions, and I respected you for that. I don't think I said anything to you that warranted such a mean-spirited reply. They were just questions illustrating my point that we all have beliefs about reality we can't ultimately prove, atheists AND theists.

Whuzzat? Did the Malerin-leprechaun say something? Nah, nothing of consequence since that being is just a figment of my imagination anyway...

(It's called sarcasm, Malerin. Look it up, realize the point I'm attempting to make, and get over your imaginary hurt feelings )

 

[MattusMaximus]

What is God?​

It's "dog" spelled backwards.

 

[articulett]

Don't you think that if there was evidence for god, we'd have gotten wind of it by now and be refining it and honing it the way we are with DNA, relativity, atoms, mental illness, magnetism, etc.?

And why would there need to be all these weird mind games and taking offense if god was real. When something is true, it's true rather people believe it or not. If someone doesn't believe that airplanes can fly or strongly believes that the moon landing was a hoax-- it doesn't offend me. I just feel flummoxed by what I see as willful ignorance. But if they tried.

Sometimes it seems like believers "need" others to believe or defer to belief. They feel proud of whatever it is they believe and they think we should respect it too. But to me, all woo type beliefs are Scientology to me. Really. I just think they're weird. Not necessarily bad-- but not based in any truth. And I feel manipulated by believers' seeming need to make others respect their belief. If it's so good and true and fabulous, why can't they just keep it to themselves? Why do I need to know that they believe in invisible entities? It makes me feel like I have to walk on eggshells, but I can't see a valid reason why.

 

[cj.23]

I don't think it's that weird, or at least counter anything we know. You might argue for redundancy, but as soon as you start to look at the problem it gets very complex -- so I'll carry on a bit, as this is fun, and because it's 5am and i am up.

B. Supernatural (Transcendent)

The claim God/s (assume I'm talking generic deities of either gender here throughout) are supernatural is common to many theism but not all. As material gods which could have evolved are acceptable in theory even to Richard Dawkins, and such deities who reside in our universe, possess bodies and arose from naturalistic evolutionary processes are not normally considered to meet the usual conception of God, I shall here propose that "supernatural" is a required attribute of God.

I shall now engage in a top down examination - (the grounded theory approach can come later in the thread) and firstly discuss - a) what do I mean by "supernatural" and "natural" and "transcendent" & b) is the idea logically coherent and supportable by evidences suggested above?

Part One: Defining the Supernatural.

Many of you will already know how I define "supernatural", and "natural" and i am afraid i shall simply repeat myself here. Because I use the term in a manner that is very precisely defined, instead of it's popular usage (where it can mean almost anything) I have in the past used the term supra-natural, but people have resisted this. So supernatural it is...

Anyway, as I have said before --

"I define Natural as the universe and everything therein, and Supernatural as that existing "outside" or "above" the Universe - the literal meaning of the term."

My first contention is that any Supernatural action within the Universe is by definition therefore Natural, and will manifest in terms of Natural Law. That manifestation may be highly unusual, or extremely rare, but it would not be as in Hume's famous definition of a miracle a violation of Natural Law, as by definition anything that occurs in Nature is Natural.

Therefore, I contend that supernatural causation would be effectively invisible to our naturalistic Science, which by definition is bounded by the natural (and uses methodological naturalism, quite correctly to my mind, as an a priori prerequisite). While logic and reason (and perhaps mathematics) might be used to explore what lies "beyond" the Universe, experimental and procedural science can not. As a "supernatural event" becomes natural by definition as soon as it occurs in the universe, Science will indeed find no "miracles" - which is not to say that supernatural interventions do not occur. One could only hope to establish if this was the case by logic or reason; by rational, or semi-empirical deduction, not by empiricism alone?

Let me give a playful example. Let us assume that the Norse Trickster God Loki built the universe. His handiwork is the Laws of Nature, and any examination thereof will reveal nothing but Natural forces acting in accordance with Natural Law. Any arbitrary exception he introduced, such as the Duckbill platypus (I know it's quite explicable really, but you get my point!)would be quite Natural, and entirely explicable by Science. Then imagine a Scientist who looks at the world and says "There is no Loki". Yet equally rational is the Loki-ist theologians, who looks at the same Science and says "we can not see Loki, but we can learn the nature of Loki from his handiwork!" The Loki-ist might remark after JBS Haldane that Loki appears to have "an inordinate fondness for beetles!"

There is nothing in my definitions as far as I can see which is particularly controversial. When I use the term supernatural, I simply mean that which exists outside of our universe & space/time. So quantum vacuum fluctuations from which the universe quite possibly arose are supernatural, as are arguably the laws of mathematics, and in most forms of multiverse theory the other universes. Once one applies a logical and sensible, direct meaning to what the word says, supernatural stops being a ridiculous concept, and one can progress in critiquing the claims made. ( have similar issues with the word "paranormal", but that can wait till another time...)

So what does transcendent mean? In the case of a deity "Being above and independent of the material universe."
Let's play with some Venn diagrams.

Theism --

This one shows one classic theistic understanding. U is the universe, G is God. God is actually a bigger set than the Universe, but is not equal to the universe. God exists outside the universe, but can interact with it, and does. However, God's immanence (being in the universe) is not equal to God equating the universe -- it is possible to be in the universe, but not equal thereto, by perceiving. So divine omnipresence is a function of divine omniscience - we should not look for God in a tape worm, and can meaningfully speak of the absence of God, but not the absence of God's knowledge. This limit is a self limit in classical theology, not an absolute limit: but of God is as I will argue undifferentiated mind, then that limit is effectively absolute. Anyway, the Universe si an emergent property of God: God creates it, but is not equal to it.

While admitting my artistic masterpieces we may as well briefly address the other options -- This is Pantheism, the belief that God and the universe are identical -- I'm sure Professor Dawkins would have few issues with this, but it says little to me...

Pantheism

a world where all is God; and God is just a word"

Panentheism

This might be unfamiliar to some, so I will link the Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism
There are Christian panentheist theologies: in some classical theism described fist all potentialities exist in the mind of God, and some (those which will lead to ultimately the greatest good) are realized - which sounds like panentheism, but it's beyond the scope of this discussion.

So by transcendent we mean simply a deity that is not equivalent to the universe, nature, is not bounded by or contained within . In short, theism or panentheism, but not the pantheistic conception of God. God interacts with the material universe, originates the material universe, and is not dependent upon the material universe.

So how can this be supported by our alleged evidences? I think the strongest point you cna make is that the attributes of a Creator in the classical theistic conception is capable of xxii) the logical agreements between classic theism and modern science. Since we now understand the unity of space/time, we can see that theologians since Augustine who have postulated that "what was God doing before creation?" - "there was no time before Creation" as Augustine sagely replied, were completely correct.

Do does my hypothetical Creator make sense? What can we know about them?

Not much. We know nothing about what came before the big Bang, to the best of my knowledge. What we do know is what came afterwards...

Firstly, in our universe Space and Time are a continuum - Space/Time. So to talk about Time without Space is simply meaningless - there is none. So the Creator is therefore eternal, timeless, and the same today as yesterday.

If they are outside of Space/Time...

So let us imagine the Creator as a scientist looking at a box. The Box is the universe, in which we all live, where natural law always exists. The Creator is outside of it, yet they can see and examine every part of it - so in a sense they are in it.

Now the supernatural God hypothesis says that when I decide to pray and ask God for something, "he" effectively reaches in to the box, suspending natural law. A miracle occurs.

Yet this is simply unnecessary. The Scientist outside is outside of time, remember? So they know from the first instance of the box how it ill turn out. Natural laws can therefore be designed in such a way as to allow my request for intervention in the box to happen, because of naturalistic forces working from the very beginning of the Box. It can simply be accounted for in the design.

No supernatural action is required or predicated. God's action in nature is by definition natural, and utilizes 'his' laws of nature. It does not necessarily falsify intervention.

Before the idea of the universe as a contingent entity, none of this would have made any sense. Now it can be logically argued - which is NOT to say it is correct.

cj x