Now, let's talk evidence for God.

[Safe-Keeper]

Who's going to tell yrreg we have several theories as to how natural processes could have made the Moon he so proudly claims for his God of the Gaps?

If everyone were like fundies, we'd have settled long ago with "God makes things fall, I believe it, the Bible says it, that settles it", and we'd never have things like the Law of Gravity, Atomic Theory, etc.

Let's wait for men to produce a moon like the one that has existed long long ago before men's appearance and will continue to exist after men's departure

Create a Moon? You mean shuttle enormous amounts of rock out space and then sit back and drink coffee while gravitational forces bind it all together into a sphere?

Yeah, that sounds incredibly more complicated than making a satellite.

And again (I know I've posted this before), I'm amused by the fundies' inability to comprehend how childish it is to ascribe things you don't understand to God. When we see people doing it for things we can understand (see, for example, the tribe in The gods must be crazy, who can't imagine how the coke bottle was made and thus concluded it must be a divine gift)... we laugh at them. We shake our heads at how the Aztecs thought the Spaniards were gods. Yet they see absolutely nothing amiss when they themselves make fools of themselves by following the exactly same line of reasoning - "this book is so perfect, this moon is so fantastic - it must have come from God!".

 

[cj.23]

The more I have studied militant anOdinist message board trolls, the more I realize that they don't have any rational basis for their disbelief in Odin. I can only conclude that they hate and fear Odin because they are too cowardly to honor him with their deaths in battle.

Was Odin actually in to death in battle among his worshippers? From the little i can see there was never much of a cult of Odin, he does not seem to have received much worship, being a deity favoured by magicians and madmen?

cj x

 

[RoboTimbo]

Thanks, Mark6, for your contribution.



The title of this thread is:

Now, let's talk evidence for God.​

You've yet to provide any.

Atheists here are having difficulties in coming up with any ideas about the God they deny, I fear they will also have difficulties with kinds of evidence that are relevant for God.

I fear that you have difficulties coming up with that evidence.

Yet they keep harping about their demand for theists to come up with evidence for God.

And you still can't.

I fear they are pursuing the cult of unreason and dis-intelligence.

Nope, nobody is pursuing you. Why do you refer to yourself as a cult?

But not you, Mark6, because you have if you be an atheist at least pursued reason and intelligence by attending to what is the most crucially critical component of the concept of God in 2008 c.e., namely (the words in bold):

To me "God" means some intelligent, goal-oriented entity that created the Universe.​

Only because you wanted to hear it. If that's what you wanted, why didn't you just say it?

I said God is the maker of the moon, of course not excluding other things about God, but you have gone all the way to admit that the idea of God today in 2008 c.e. is that He created the universe.

You've said a lot of silly things.

The more I examined the oppositions of atheists to God, the more I have arrived at the certainty that they don't really have any reason to deny God's existence.

You had the certainty before you examined anything. Everything since has just been confirmation bias.

What they have are so many complaints and difficulties with God who created the universe.

The difficulties are with trolls who never quite get around to providing evidence for their god.

What atheists should do is to put themselves in the shoes of God and see how well they can and should answer their own complaints and difficulties with God.

What theists should do is keep an open mind to the possibility that their god is a man-made construct.

Yrreg

Still lacking any evidence as per the OP.

 

[RandFan]

And again (I know I've posted this before), I'm amused by the fundies' inability to comprehend how childish it is to ascribe things you don't understand to God. When we see people doing it for things we can understand (see, for example, the tribe in The gods must be crazy, who can't imagine how the coke bottle was made and thus concluded it must be a divine gift)... we laugh at them.

Damn good post.

This is a point I make with my extended family a lot. God of the gaps. The gaps are shrinking rapidly yet people keep holding on to places for god to hide in.

When I was a true believer I would say, "man's wisdom is foolishness to god (1Corinth 3:19)." How the hell does anyone know how smart god is, never mind that no one has even established if god exists. We just declare in our ignorance that he does and he's real smart and oh, BTW, my daddy can beat up your daddy.

Yes Virginia safe-keeper, many believer's view of the universe is childish.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I heard this put best when someone I know stated:

"Saying that atheism is a belief is like stating that not collecting stamps is a hobby."

'Nuff said.

Well, I used to collect stamps.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Well meme is a pretty meaningless term, based on my reading of Dawkins and Blackmore on the concept (I note Dawkins has revised his usage of it substantially thoiugh to a more sensible position in his later books.) -- but we will let that pass.

However the Statement "even atheists have beliefs" is not really a canard. It is a truism. Atheist have all kinds of beliefs, millions of them - some evidentially supported, some not. So do all humans!

cj x

This is the old trick of confabulation of the meaning of the word "belief". Of course everyone believes things but these are things for which there is evidence and for which we could find substantiation if we took the effort. You may believe¹ that 1 + 1 = 2. I have seen, worked through and understood the proof.

Atheists don't believe² in something for which there is no proof. Yrreg wants us to call one of these nonexistent things "God".

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Proof of the existence of God:

Everything that exists has to have been created.
The the Universe exists.
Therefor it must have been created.
This creator is God.
​

Oh wait!

Everything that exists has to have been created.
God exists.
Therefor he must have been created.
This creator is Her Glorious Majesty The Invisible Pink Unicorn.
(Remember she is Invisible by Definition and Pink by Faith.)
​

All Hail the IPU.

Oh wait.

Repeat ad nauseum.

 

[Hokulele]

For the present let's not say that God is all knowing and all powerful, just that He is much more knowing and much more powerful than any men...

Wouldn't that be She, then?

 

[I Ratant]

Yes'um, that would explain the evident irrationalities of the creation.

 

[RandFan]

Wouldn't that be She, then?

Sounds good to me.

 

[Mark6]

.What atheists should do is to put themselves in the shoes of God and see how well they can and should answer their own complaints and difficulties with God..

OK, I'll try to "put myself in God's shoes":

1. I created the Universe. I am all-powerful.

2. Some fleeting insignificant creatures living on one of 10²² tiny dirtballs I created do not believe I exist.

3. Why should I care?

4. Some other fleeting insignificant creatures living on the same tiny dirtball sing praises to me.

5. Why should I care?

 

[GeeMack]

Proof of the existence of God:

Everything that exists has to have been created.
The the Universe exists.
Therefor it must have been created.
This creator is God.
​

Oh wait!

Everything that exists has to have been created.
God exists.
Therefor he must have been created.
This creator is Her Glorious Majesty The Invisible Pink Unicorn.
(Remember she is Invisible by Definition and Pink by Faith.)
​

All Hail the IPU.

Oh wait.

Repeat ad nauseum.

Cancelled!

If I were to allow that to continue... he would blow every circuit in his body.

 

[Mark6]

It seems to me that there are only two premises and three logical steps. It leads to a tautology, but that’s not gibberish or a reasoning defect. What is the problem with any of the logical steps (that’s the reasoning).

The premises are:
1: God is being. (G = B)
2: We exist. (W is not the empty set)

Followed by the logical steps that
1: We exist therefore we have being. (W is a subset of B)
2: Therefore being exists. (B is not an empty set)
3: Therefore God exists. (G is not an empty set)

All you demonstrated is that existence ("being") exists. In no way does it follow that "being" has any awareness, thoughts, goals, or needs to be worshiped.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Cancelled!

If I were to allow that to continue... he would blow every circuit in his body.

God no! He still owes me sixty gallons of whiskey!

 

[Safe-Keeper]

OK, I'll try to "put myself in God's shoes":

1. I created the Universe. I am all-powerful.

2. Some fleeting insignificant creatures living on one of 1022 tiny dirtballs I created do not believe I exist.

3. Why should I care?

4. Some other fleeting insignificant creatures living on the same tiny dirtball sing praises to me.

5. Why should I care?

[insert Pale Blue Dot photo here]

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

God no! He still owes me sixty gallons of whiskey!

So that's why poor ol' Robbie always staggered around like a drunken, err, robot. I love this froup.

 

[cj.23]

This is the old trick of confabulation of the meaning of the word "belief". Of course everyone believes things but these are things for which there is evidence and for which we could find substantiation if we took the effort. You may believe¹ that 1 + 1 = 2. I have seen, worked through and understood the proof.

Atheists don't believe² in something for which there is no proof. Yrreg wants us to call one of these nonexistent things "God".

It's not really a trick. Belief is simply a category of a type of idea, and i assure you believe many things you can not possibly know for certain. You may have evidence for them, but theists would say they had evidence for their beliefs. And many beliefs we all possess have no evidential support at all. No human being is completely rational, of that I can confidently assure you, and given the millions of beliefs every human holds, a sizeable number are completely unevidenced.

cj x

 

[Hokulele]

It's not really a trick. Belief is simply a category of a type of idea, and i assure you believe many things you can not possibly know for certain. You may have evidence for them, but theists would say they had evidence for their beliefs. And many beliefs we all possess have no evidential support at all. No human being is completely rational, of that I can confidently assure you, and given the millions of beliefs every human holds, a sizeable number are completely unevidenced.

cj x

The trouble with this argument is that it then supposes that all evidence is equal, or even that all beliefs are equal, which is clearly not the case. In addition, what you might consider evidence for a belief, may be evidence of something completely different.

Unless you can show that a certain piece of evidence supports a theist's belief and nothing else...

 

[paximperium]

It's not really a trick. Belief is simply a category of a type of idea, and i assure you believe many things you can not possibly know for certain. You may have evidence for them, but theists would say they had evidence for their beliefs. And many beliefs we all possess have no evidential support at all. No human being is completely rational, of that I can confidently assure you, and given the millions of beliefs every human holds, a sizeable number are completely unevidenced.

cj x

That's nothing more than equivocation and special pleading.

Theistic "evidence" is not even half way of decent quality or objectivity of scientific evidence. The evidence for a quark or for evolution is not even at the same level as the "evidence" for a god.

May people have unevidenced beliefs, but that is not a justification for believing in things without evidence.

 

[RandFan]

Belief is simply a category of a type of idea...

Poor definition that doesn't lend to clarity. There are different types of beliefs. Some people simply choose to believe things that flatter them or things that appeal to them. Some people believe what they are told. Here's the problem that confronted the ancient Greek philosophers, given that many beliefs are contradictory how can we find out what is true? They actually figured out how to keep the good and throw out the bad.

Your tack is to undue 2,000+ years of progress. No thanks.

...and i assure you believe many things you can not possibly know for certain.

It's this kind of nonsense that I find dishonest. I'm not sure if you are trying to be dishonest or just being intellectually lazy.

Yes, it's true that we must rely on our intuition and make many assumptions and have beliefs based on rational analysis. But that's light years away from believing in leprechauns or the magic of 4 leaf clover just because it's appealing.

Can you see the difference? Humans couldn't function very well without being able to trust our intuitions. They serve us well so long as we have a healthy amount of skepticism. Con artists know how to play on our beliefs and intuitions. That's why skepticism is so important. BTW, magicians also know how to exploit our intuitions for entertainment purposes. It's why magicians make such good skeptics. They understand the foibles of human psychology. Just because we might want to believe that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is no reason for us to go chasing rainbows.

You may have evidence for them, but theists would say they had evidence for their beliefs.

But for some reason they never offer it up.

And many beliefs we all possess have no evidential support at all. No human being is completely rational, of that I can confidently assure you, and given the millions of beliefs every human holds, a sizable number are completely unevidenced.

Hardly a reason to act irrationally.

But hey, if you want to buy into a pyramid scheme then by all means. As long as you "believe" you will make money, right?

What gets me is that more than 2,000 years ago someone figured out how to avoid getting taken and wasting ones time on nonsense and people ignore it. It's a free country. If you want to send money to Benny Hinn then by all means. Have at it.