Evidence there is no god

Oh, then there's the example of Mother Theresa. Her testimony could be interpreted as powerful evidence at least her god did not exist. One would naturally think someone as pious as her would feel ever so strongly the presence of her god. Yet, she didn't. You'd think her gauge would be ever so well tuned, yet it read zero as well.

Her words:

“I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul,” she wrote at one point. “I want God with all the power of my soul — and yet between us there is terrible separation.” On another occasion she wrote: “I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”
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Leumas said:
I can imagine a three headed flying horse with hooves of gold and wings like those of bees.
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I had like half a dozen of those in my yard the other day. They ate all my wife's roses and crapped all over the lawn.
 
Mr. Scott said:
It's Bible thumpers who also say we have to take god's existence on faith, yet there are miracles throughout it that didn't have to be taken on faith. Something of a contradiction. It's just a good example. The gods not of the Bible are awfully squirrely to never leave any evidence of their existence.
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I'm not so sure about the miracles, actually. Miracles are a funny thing: you can fake them.
 
David Swidler said:
I'm not so sure about the miracles, actually. Miracles are a funny thing: you can fake them.
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I think you're missing the point. We are expected to accept the existence of God on faith and on the testimony of the Gospels, yet the Apostles (and other of Jesus' conteporaries) were given the benefit of being shown miracles first hand. The fact that they may have been little more than stage magic doesn't even enter into it. It is internally inconsistent (like much of religious dogma)
 
David Swidler said:
I guess you DO mean the God of the Bible. We can work with that, but it won't satisfy the global question to everyone's satisfaction.

The short answer is that the relationship has evolved. Back in Biblical times human civilization was young, and like a child, was better off with a pronounced "parental" presence. But that gradually changed even through Biblical times (Moses's prophecy was "face-to-face," but fast forward to Esther, and God is conspicuously absent in the explicit narrative). A parent tries to get the child to mature, to show independence. We view with suspicion a parent who forces his or herself into the life a grown-up child. The child has to want it, as well.
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So what you are saying is that the evolution through the Tanakh went from a very terrestrial YHWH in the Torah to actually no YHWH even mentioned in the book of Esther.

So what happened in Daniel and Ezra? Did they DEVOLVE?

But I like your thoughts about the evolution of god belief.

You are absolutely correct...... The evolution process is
  • Primitive Animism
  • Pagan Gods
  • Monotheistic primitive terrestrial and anthropomorphic sadistic god
  • One god less terrestrial still quite sadistic
  • One god a lot more esoteric and aloof
  • More ETHEREAL and never manifests itself

So what is the LOGICAL and INTELLIGENT FINAL point to reach in our EVOLVING concept of god..........yes.... I agree with you ...... NO GOD.

I am glad that you said that....we finally agree.

If we GROW UP and don't need the FAIRY TALES any longer then we should accept that SANTA does not exist...... I agree with you.... we should grow up in exactly the same way in regards to the fairy tale of the bible and YHWH.
 
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slingblade said:
The difference being, we know our parents exist, and yet that doesn't stop people from rejecting their parents, disowning them, entirely.

So again, wherefore hell, and why bother hiding from us? If god is real, he should show himself. We can decide if he's worth following or not, just as we can decide if our parents are abusive gits who don't deserve the time of day from us.
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The mere existence of something outside the all-encompassing God is impossible unless God creates a "space" for it to exist as an independent entity. Doing so requires "emptying" that space of his manifest presence. Finite, physical reality cannot exist otherwise, and that's the world we know. "Showing himself" means negating the "space" and everything in it as separate entities or consciousnesses. There would be no decision.

Were you actually asking how hell fits into this? I'm not sure I understand why it's a necessary thing to explore in this context.
 
joesixpack said:
I think you're missing the point. We are expected to accept the existence of God on faith and on the testimony of the Gospels, yet the Apostles (and other of Jesus' conteporaries) were given the benefit of being shown miracles first hand. The fact that they may have been little more than stage magic doesn't even enter into it. It is internally inconsistent (like much of religious dogma)
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Actually, Deuteronomy specifically warns against taking miracles as evidence of divine sanction.
 
Leumas said:
So what you are saying is that the evolution through the Tanakh went from a very terrestrial YHWH in the Torah to actually no YHWH even mentioned in the book of Esther.

So what happened in Daniel and Ezra? Did they DEVOLVE?
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Are we expecting evolution to happen neatly and according to some preset schedule now? They're from the same couple of centuries as Esther, and from the same period of exile-cum-Second Commonwealth.

But I like your thoughts about the evolution of god belief.

You are absolutely correct...... The evolution process is
  • Primitive Animism
  • Pagan Gods
  • Monotheistic primitive terrestrial and anthropomorphic sadistic god
  • One god less terrestrial still quite sadistic
  • One god a lot more esoteric and aloof
  • More ETHEREAL and never manifests

So what is the LOGICAL and INTELLIGENT FINAL point to reach in our EVOLVING concept of god..........yes.... I agree with you ...... NO GOD.

I am glad that you said that....we finally agree.

If we GROW UP and don't need the FAIRY TALES any longer then we should accept that SANTA does not exist...... I agree with you.... we should grow up in exactly the same way in regards to the fairy tale of the bible and YHWH.
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The next time you want to put words in my mouth, please ask me first.
 
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Mr. Scott said:
It does help. A god so feeble he is utterly undetectable is hardly a god.
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I think that is a fair way to look at it.

After all, if we can accurately measure the charge on an electron, the Gravitation Constant of the Universe, and the mass of Sharon (the moon orbiting Pluto), then we should at least be able to detect the presence of a God. Be cannot do so, therefore it is quite unlikely that God exists.

Especially, if one belives that this same God created life, the universe, and everything (thanks to Doug Adams for those last few words!).
 
David Swidler said:
The mere existence of something outside the all-encompassing God is impossible unless God creates a "space" for it to exist as an independent entity. Doing so requires "emptying" that space of his manifest presence. Finite, physical reality cannot exist otherwise, and that's the world we know. "Showing himself" means negating the "space" and everything in it as separate entities or consciousnesses. There would be no decision.
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Looks like gibberish to me. I suppose making it up as you go along and supporting it with concepts that exist only in your imagination works for belief in invisible magical beings. Not so much when describing or explaining reality.
 
Leumas said:
We can do a little better..... we can say that the default hypothesis is that something does not exist unless you can prove that it exists.

Just because our minds can imagine something does not in any way make it more likely to exist.

I can imagine a three headed flying horse with hooves of gold and wings like those of bees.

Does that mean that there is a possibility for such a creature to exist even though no one can prove it does not and no one can prove it does?

Of course not..... the same should apply to god.
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But that also allows stupidity on the other extreme. We've never seen alien life but certainly in our vast universe there could most definitely be something as small as bacteria.

The default hypothesis is that my belief in alien life is on equal grounds as the three headed flying horse.

But who would you believe more? The guy who believes in the 3 headed horse or me?

There also has to be good reason to claim the thing that has never been observed actually exists.

I have all the scientific backing and math in the world to show my non-existing thing is definitely possible even without evidence. The other guy has nothing.

Now what about someone who said there is a 3 headed horse alien? That alien is too specific to be taken seriously and not as good as my vague claim that there exists life elsewhere in this universe.

And although aliens are more rooted in physical reality, I would say the same about vague notions in god. The more specific you get with your god, the more sillier and unlikely it appears. If god is so vague as a deist creator of the universe, it's seems to be more plausible.
 
Leumas said:
So what you are saying is that the evolution through the Tanakh went from a very terrestrial YHWH in the Torah to actually no YHWH even mentioned in the book of Esther.

So what happened in Daniel and Ezra? Did they DEVOLVE?

But I like your thoughts about the evolution of god belief.

You are absolutely correct...... The evolution process is
  • Primitive Animism
  • Pagan Gods
  • Monotheistic primitive terrestrial and anthropomorphic sadistic god
  • One god less terrestrial still quite sadistic
  • One god a lot more esoteric and aloof
  • More ETHEREAL and never manifests itself

So what is the LOGICAL and INTELLIGENT FINAL point to reach in our EVOLVING concept of god..........yes.... I agree with you ...... NO GOD.

I am glad that you said that....we finally agree.

If we GROW UP and don't need the FAIRY TALES any longer then we should accept that SANTA does not exist...... I agree with you.... we should grow up in exactly the same way in regards to the fairy tale of the bible and YHWH.
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Isn't the devolution of god, asymptotically approaching zero even in believers, evidence of his absence?

Dan Dennett mentioned how god devolved in his awesome lecture "Good Reasons for 'Believing' in God" (50:50)

"God is so great that his greatness precludes his existence" -- Raimundo Panikkakar, The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha (1989)

 
David Swidler said:
Actually, Deuteronomy specifically warns against taking miracles as evidence of divine sanction.
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What do you think all those MAGIC fetes in Egypt were? And the red sea trick and the killing of all the first borns even of the already dead cattle and beasts and even the first borns of the slaves who are not Jews? oh wait.... that was Exodus.


So why did Gideon expect one...and got it?
Judges 6:36: And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, 37 Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; [and] if the dew be on the fleece only, and [it be] dry upon all the earth [beside,] then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said.
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Or Samson?

What about the poor 40 children who were mauled to death by she bears sent by YHWH because they laughed at the bald head of Elisha

What about Jonah and the whale?

What about Elisha healing the blindness of the king of Syria?

What about the challenge to the Baal priests by Elijah and the massacre of 400 of them?

What of Elijah resurrecting from the dead the son of the Widow of Zarephath?

and lots lots more?
 
Kahalachan said:
But that also allows stupidity on the other extreme. We've never seen alien life but certainly in our vast universe there could most definitely be something as small as bacteria.

The default hypothesis is that my belief in alien life is on equal grounds as the three headed flying horse.

But who would you believe more? The guy who believes in the 3 headed horse or me?

There also has to be good reason to claim the thing that has never been observed actually exists.

I have all the scientific backing and math in the world to show my non-existing thing is definitely possible even without evidence. The other guy has nothing.

Now what about someone who said there is a 3 headed horse alien? That alien is too specific to be taken seriously and not as good as my vague claim that there exists life elsewhere in this universe.

And although aliens are more rooted in physical reality, I would say the same about vague notions in god. The more specific you get with your god, the more sillier and unlikely it appears. If god is so vague as a deist creator of the universe, it's seems to be more plausible.
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidences.

Claiming a being who exists outside time and space is not the same as claiming beings that are just like us but on another planet.
 
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