100% lack of evidence to God

[InvestigateTruth]

Do you think that just because 5 million people believe a thing, that there is necessarily a sound logical chain of demonstrable propositions between reality and conclusion?

No, I didn't say that.
We cannot make that conclusion that just because 5 million believe something they are correct.
But perhaps we can conclude, "some evidences" are still relative things.

It is not like, if most people don't see something as evidence, then that is not an evidence. Maybe it is an evidence but others do not see it, and vice versa.

 

[InvestigateTruth]

The number of people is irrelevant.

• Why do they accept it as evidence?
• Is their reasoning rational?
• Do they apply their standard consistently?

Correct. So, in the same way that, we cannot conclude that if 10 million people do not believe there is any evidence for God, then they are right.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Correct. So, in the same way that, we cannot conclude that if 10 million people do not believe there is any evidence for God, then they are right.

Your second sentence suggests that you didn't get my point.

 

[InvestigateTruth]

Your second sentence suggests that you didn't get my point.

I think I got your point.
Of course evidence is supposed to be rational. But again, something is rational to 5 million and is not rational to 5 other millions. What are you going to do?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I think I got your point.
Of course evidence is supposed to be rational. But again, something is rational to 5 million and is not rational to 5 other millions. What are you going to do?

In that situation, one of those groups of 5 million is wrong.

Edit: so then we apply the questions I gave before:

• Why do they accept it as evidence?
• Is their reasoning rational?
• Do they apply their standard consistently?

 

[ppp]

No, I didn't say that.

But you did strongly imply it.

We cannot make that conclusion that just because 5 million believe something they are correct.

Correct. We cannot.

But perhaps we can conclude, "some evidences" are still relative things.

The thing is that evidence lies in the realm of rational examinations of reality and drawing conclusions through logical argumentation of deduction and induction.

I have yet to see any sound logical argumentation come from anyone in support of a god or gods. I have seen almost no logical argumentation from the Baha'i on this forum. Sound or otherwise. Lots of testimony. Lots of quoting. But those are not evidence of anything except the existence of belief. Which I don't contest.

It is not like, if most people don't see something as evidence, then that is not an evidence. Maybe it is an evidence but others do not see it, and vice versa.

 

[InvestigateTruth]

In that situation, one of those groups of 5 million is wrong.

Edit: so then we apply the questions I gave before:

• Why do they accept it as evidence?
• Is their reasoning rational?
• Do they apply their standard consistently?

Valid questions.

 

[Clizby Wampuscat]

Reasonable post I think. See, you could say that you don't believe God exists whatsoever. Its still valid for an atheist.

Interestingly, your 99% certainty is exactly as relevant as the theist's 99% certainty. And neither is relevant, at all, to the other.

I agree.

The point being that degrees of surety ("I believe ...") have no bearing whatever on the actual question at hand: the nature and existence of the mystery we refer to as "God".

I agree that what we think is true may not be what is true. This is why good epistemology is so important. We should only believe something to be true or false when there is good evidence to believe it is true or false. If there is not good evidence either way then the proper position is I don't know. But the I don't know position can have different confidence levels based on the evidence. The idea of God I think can be determined to be true but I see no way to determine if the claim is false.

 

[Polymath257]

Do you believe that the universe originated with the Big Bang, and proceeded from a singularity roughly 13.8 billion years ago?

The current expansion phase, at least, started about that time.

Whether there was a time prior to that is not known. Some versions of quantum gravity have time, space, matter, and energy prior to that. In those scenarios, all of these are 'eternal' in the sense that time is infinite into the past and all the others existed whenever time did.

And that rather than occurring in an already existing time and space, the universe itself initiated time and space, apparently from nothing?

I wouldn't say that the universe 'initiated time and space'. That implies a causality that I don't believe is the case.

In the scenario where the Big Bang is the actual start, all that exists is *after* that singularity. At no time was there 'nothing', so the universe was not 'initiated out of nothing'. It is merely the case that time does not go back infinitely far.

 

[InvestigateTruth]

But you did strongly imply it.

Correct. We cannot.


The thing is that evidence lies in the realm of rational examinations of reality and drawing conclusions through logical argumentation of deduction and induction.

I have yet to see any sound logical argumentation come from anyone in support of a god or gods. I have seen almost no logical argumentation from the Baha'i on this forum. Sound or otherwise. Lots of testimony. Lots of quoting. But those are not evidence of anything except the existence of belief. Which I don't contest.

The quotes and things we put, are part of rational arguments. They may not be rational in your view though. Thats understandable.

 

[firedragon]

I agree.

I agree that what we think is true may not be what is true. This is why good epistemology is so important. We should only believe something to be true or false when there is good evidence to believe it is true or false. If there is not good evidence either way then the proper position is I don't know. But the I don't know position can have different confidence levels based on the evidence. The idea of God I think can be determined to be true but I see no way to determine if the claim is false.

In philosophy, I have never come across someone saying this is good epistemology, unless someone has a hard stance. Good epistemology depends on you.

This thread is about a positive claim. A hard claim. A philosophical claim. Hope you understand.

 

[muhammad_isa]

It is merely the case that time does not go back infinitely far.

That doesn't make sense to me.
You are using the word 'time' as in measured time.
When we talk about the concept of existence and the non-physical [that is not part of the universe], it is nothing to do with physical motion that involves space.

 

[Clizby Wampuscat]

In philosophy, I have never come across someone saying this is good epistemology, unless someone has a hard stance. Good epistemology depends on you.

Not sure what you are saying. Do you agree that if someone has a claim, then they need to provide the evidence to support that claim. Then anyone that wants to can evaluate the evidence and see if it is convincing to them. Standards of evidence differ from person to person so some may believe the claim and some may not believe the claim based o the same evidence.

 

[ppp]

The quotes and things we put, are part of rational arguments. They may not be rational in your view though. Thats understandable.

You do not present arguments at all. Rational, or otherwise. You make testimony, and you quote. If you disagree, then hit me with a relevant bare bones logical argument.

 

[Ella S.]

I have noted a few atheists make the claim that God does not exist because there is a 100% lack of evidence. Its a very famous atheistic apologetic shared by many.

I understand that lack of evidence can prove the non-existence of something. Like a PCR test for COVID 19. Its just an example.

Now for a COVID 19 test, there is a test called PCR. It is an very well defined test that is based on elimination. You eliminate the probability of having the virus infection. So that's a lack of evidence it exists in you. But this has been developed because people know the virus, it has been identified and tested by scientists, and they have developed a specific test that would eliminate it.

So I would like to ask the atheists who use this argument about theism and God. What is the test you have developed to do this elimination?

I'm an atheist. I actually do think that there is some evidence for various conceptualizations of what a deity is.

The problem is that all of the evidence that I am aware of is of poor quality, poor quanitity, makes more assumptions, or has less explanatory power than explanations for the data that do not conclude the existence of or require a belief in any god.

For example, spontaneous generation and apparent design once provided compelling evidence for a Creator God who manually designed every organism from nothing. Today, though, we have better evidence showing that spontaneous generation is unlikely to be real and apparent design is better explained through the natural process of evolution.

I am open to the possibility that there is some evidence for the existence of a god that I have overlooked.

I can say, with absolute certainty, that I know that some gods do not exist. The Holy Trinity as described by Christian Trinitarianism, for instance, violates the Law of Identity. It is impossible. Under epistemic logic, we know that impossible things only exist in impossible worlds and we exist in one of the possible worlds. As such, we know that the Trinity does not exist.

Outside of this, most modern conceptions of gods are unfalsifiable, which means that there cannot be any evidence for them by definition. Here I could sympathize with the idea that there is a 100% lack of evidence for unfalsifiable models of gods since that's essentially true by definition.

However, not every conception of a god is impossible or unfalsifiable so I would never claim that there is 100% lack of evidence for theism in general, although the fact that every claim for the existence of a god I know is poorly evidenced, falsified, impossible, or impossible to demonstrate does seem to make the existence of gods in general rather unlikely.

 

[RestlessSoul]

The current expansion phase, at least, started about that time.

Whether there was a time prior to that is not known. Some versions of quantum gravity have time, space, matter, and energy prior to that. In those scenarios, all of these are 'eternal' in the sense that time is infinite into the past and all the others existed whenever time did.



I wouldn't say that the universe 'initiated time and space'. That implies a causality that I don't believe is the case.

In the scenario where the Big Bang is the actual start, all that exists is *after* that singularity. At no time was there 'nothing', so the universe was not 'initiated out of nothing'. It is merely the case that time does not go back infinitely far.

Okay, so we can't know if time is infinite into the past. It's my (admittedly limited) understanding that physicists are uncomfortable with infinities anyway, so let's leave both infinity and eternity out of the equation. In any case, the consensus seems to be that the universe had a beginning, and that at some point very early on in it's life - ie, within the first fraction of a second - it underwent a period of exponentially rapid cosmic inflation, at which point the laws that govern it's nature, including those governing time and space, began to take effect.

We are now in a period of far gentler expansion, wherein the balance between the forces driving the expansion, the gravity pulling clouds of matter together, and the critical density and fluctuations in uniformity of that matter, are all perfectly balanced in such a way as to enable galaxies to form, without the entire universe collapsing in on itself in a single supermassive black hole.

It further appears to be the case, that the development of galaxies, and life within them, is dependent on several very precise values - for example the ratio of masses of electrons to protons, the energy state of carbon nuclei, the density parameter (Omega) & cosmological constant (Lambda), and several other variables - the slightest deviation from which, would render our existence impossible. The likelihood of our existence having randomly transpired, appears to be an utterly insignificant probability.

"The amount by which the cosmic density differed from (Omega =) 1 in the beginning was 0.000,000,000,001. These are the odds against us being here, if the initial density was chosen at random"
- John Gribbin, In Search of the Multiverse

"The remarkable fact is that the values of [many fundamental] numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."
- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

I see in all this, evidence for both an act of creation, and a guiding hand.

 

[blü 2]

I have noted a few atheists make the claim that God does not exist because there is a 100% lack of evidence. Its a very famous atheistic apologetic shared by many.

Yes, I used to point that out, until I realized I have no idea what a real God is.

What do you intend to denote when you use the word "god" here? A real thing, with objective existence (and if so, what, exactly), or something that only exists as a concept / thing imagined?

 

[Polymath257]

Sure, I don't object to that. Of course if we are talking about purported transcendental realities, we might encounter contextual problems. The standards that we use to address simple questions about physical existence might not be entirely applicable.

My point in the previous post was merely that the atheist apologetic that 'There is no evidence!' is demonstrably false.

And, of course, the claim that there is no evidence of leprechauns, fairies, and elves is also false. There is evidence for all of these.

But that evidence is roundly rejected by most people. Why? Because it is poor evidence.

What I would like is evidence for a God that is better than the evidence for leprechauns. And *that* I have not seen.

The very different proposition 'I'm unaware of any evidence that I find convincing' doesn't seem to require justiication. If somebody said it to me, I'd just assume they are telling the truth about what they think.

But most atheists are preachers, evangelists deep down. Even if they back away from a flat 'There is no evidence!', they usually seem to adopt this one; 'There is no evidence that you or anyone should find convincing.' (Which is a long ways from RF's always-popular 'I simply lack belief, hence I have no burden of proof'.)

Well, *should* people find the evidence for leprechauns convincing? Or of unicorns?

I don't think so.

And, given that the evidence for deities is no better, I also think that people should regard it as unconvincing.

Definitely. Or at least how convincing we find the evidence to be. I'm not totally convinced that an objective standard exists for what is and isn't "valid evidence". It's doubly problematic when we are talking about purported transcendental realities.

I'm reasonably confident that I can determine whether or not there are scissors in my drawer. If I open the drawer and see my scissors, I feel justified in saying that's where my scissors are. If I don't see the scissors, I conclude that they aren't in my drawer.

But how would those kind of common-sense methods work with a hypothetical Source of reality itself? Many religious people seem to think that reality itself is convincing evidence for whatever the Source of reality might hypothetically be. I'm not entirely convinced that they are wrong.

I'm not even sure what the phrase 'Source of reality' could even mean. It implies a causality that is nowhere justified and seems incredibly unreasonable to me.

 

[Polymath257]

Okay, so we can't know if time is infinite into the past. It's my (admittedly limited) understanding that physicists are uncomfortable with infinities anyway, so let's leave both infinity and eternity out of the equation. In any case, the consensus seems to be that the universe had a beginning, and that at some point very early on in it's life - ie, within the first fraction of a second - it underwent a period of exponentially rapid cosmic inflation, at which point the laws that govern it's nature, including those governing time and space, began to take effect.

We are now in a period of far gentler expansion, wherein the balance between the forces driving the expansion, the gravity pulling clouds of matter together, and the critical density and fluctuations in uniformity of that matter, are all perfectly balanced in such a way as to enable galaxies to form, without the entire universe collapsing in on itself in a single supermassive black hole.

It further appears to be the case, that the development of galaxies, and life within them, is dependent on several very precise values - for example the ratio of masses of electrons to protons, the energy state of carbon nuclei, the density parameter (Omega) & cosmological constant (Lambda), and several other variables - the slightest deviation from which, would render our existence impossible. The likelihood of our existence having randomly transpired, appears to be an utterly insignificant probability.

"The amount by which the cosmic density differed from (Omega =) 1 in the beginning was 0.000,000,000,001. These are the odds against us being here, if the initial density was chosen at random"
- John Gribbin, In Search of the Multiverse

"The remarkable fact is that the values of [many fundamental] numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."
- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

I see in all this, evidence for both an act of creation, and a guiding hand.

And how does that follow? Do you have any evidence that the values *could* have been different? Do you have any evidence for how they can change? Do you have any evidence for mechanisms for setting them? Do you have any evidence that life was the goal (as opposed to a fortunate side-effect)? In what way is a 'guiding hand' in these things even possible? How do you conclude it to be likely? Isn't this an assumption of a much more complex reality that contains those constants? And what is the physics of that larger reality?

From what I can see, it is a *massive* jump to go from 'the constants need to be close to the values they are for us to exist' to 'therefore they must have been set by an intelligence'.

 

[Polymath257]

That doesn't make sense to me.
You are using the word 'time' as in measured time.
When we talk about the concept of existence and the non-physical [that is not part of the universe], it is nothing to do with physical motion that involves space.

Then what *does* it have to do with? If there is causality, there is time. Do you have *any* evidence that there is anything other than the universe?