Are people who claim to know God liars?

[Nakosis]

you know the Artist by His creation

I know of most artists by their signature.

IMO man is the artist of God.

 

[Willamena]

The OP didn't claim any knowledge of God. It stated my opinion that there was no such knowledge and asks of those claim such knowledge what this knowledge is based on.

So when someone assumes they have the authority to tell other folks that they have the true knowledge of God and anyone who claims knowledge of God which disagrees with the truth they've claimed is a liar, it's just their opinion. No need to get bothered about it.

 

[Christ's Prophet]

My criticism of Religion is the claim to know anything about God, at all.

My position is man knows nothing about God. I assume this is the default position of atheists. Am I wrong?

People who say God is whatever... loving, all powerful, Just, merciful, has a plan for all of us etc.
From whence does this knowledge about God come from?

I know nothing about God and neither do you. You can have faith that God possesses whatever properties you feel God should possess, but based on what? Imagining if a God did exist, this is what God ought to be like?

You have the Bible, Quran etc... So why do you feel these folks were in any better position than you to have knowledge about God.

Not that I'm going to go about calling believers liars. I just think they feel a certainty that they don't actually possess.

It all depends on what you mean by knowing God? If you mean that man can know God in His entirety, then he cannot do that. That is because man is finite and God is infinite. God made mankind to have fellowship with Himself and to enjoy Him forever. The whole of the Bible is about God dealing with the sin question and restoring a people for Himself in perfection. All the way from Genesis to Revelation Chapter 21 is about restoring that relationship with His creation. Therefore God has given man all that he needs to have a relationship with Him. The disciple Phillip also asked our Lord Jesus Christ that he wanted to see God the Father:-
John 14:8-9 (KJV)
8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.
9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?
The disciples were looking at God all the time and were only just beginning to realize who Christ was.
In fact the whole of the Bible is about God revealing Himself to His creations. It is about God interacting with His creations and we are to take heed that we learn about Him from that. The evidence of God’s creation is everywhere to be seen. It is seen in His miraculous design. If there is a design in everything, then there is a Master Designer behind it all. Certainty for eternity

 

[Vancouversailor]

There is an expression in the English language which pretty much covers what I think about anyone who claims knowledge of God, heaven, hell or whatever.
It is Wishful Thinking!
Just that you wish for something does not mean that it is.

 

[Raj V]

My criticism of Religion is the claim to know anything about God, at all.

My position is man knows nothing about God. I assume this is the default position of atheists. Am I wrong?

People who say God is whatever... loving, all powerful, Just, merciful, has a plan for all of us etc.
From whence does this knowledge about God come from?

I know nothing about God and neither do you. You can have faith that God possesses whatever properties you feel God should possess, but based on what? Imagining if a God did exist, this is what God ought to be like?

You have the Bible, Quran etc... So why do you feel these folks were in any better position than you to have knowledge about God.

Not that I'm going to go about calling believers liars. I just think they feel a certainty that they don't actually possess.

If you understand Jesus (His words), You have a justification for your faith. Yes, God does not exist in the Truth domain as you put but Faith. Again It is the attributes about the God that we know. By definition God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and all loving. However there are logical challenges to this definition. So we need to apply constraints and tone these down but we still define Him as one with best possible attributes for that is what we are taught (that He is perfect) and if he were really bad we have a different term (d)evil.

 

[Nakosis]

If you understand Jesus (His words), You have a justification for your faith. Yes, God does not exist in the Truth domain as you put but Faith. Again It is the attributes about the God that we know. By definition God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and all loving. However there are logical challenges to this definition. So we need to apply constraints and tone these down but we still define Him as one with best possible attributes for that is what we are taught (that He is perfect) and if he were really bad we have a different term (d)evil.

Ok, so we're defining God. While you feel you're definition is best, other folks may choose to define God differently.

 

[Nakosis]

So when someone assumes they have the authority to tell other folks that they have the true knowledge of God and anyone who claims knowledge of God which disagrees with the truth they've claimed is a liar, it's just their opinion. No need to get bothered about it.

The attributes of God are a matter of opinion.

Ok, but what I'm wonder really is what that opinion is based on.

What someone else told them, personal experience or validated fact.

Fact seems underrepresented in arguments about God which leaves what someone else claimed and based on personal experience.

These later two are unreliable. However some folks still put a lot of stock in them.

So what God is based on personal experience and claims of personal experience.

So people having had different personal experiences or relying on the claims made by different people having had personal experiences with God have about the same reliability. Which is not a whole lot since validated fact is not usually part of a religious argument.

This being the case, I'm just hoping more people come to the same conclusion you have.

The reality is, each individual has total authority over their definition of God. And they are free to accept or disregard any claim they choose to.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Why do we have a "certainty" we don't possess if God is as self-evident to believers as our own existence is self-evident to people?

The skeptic understands that theists are projecting their own internal psychological experiences onto reality and calling it a god out there. How do we judge that? No two of you can agree about what it is that you are seeing. If you had been encouraged to interpret your dreams as messages from a deity, you would also be misinterpreting those endogenous experienced for something real that originated outside of your mind.

Here's a good question: How do we decide which is correct when one group of people tells us that they had a sensory experience of some type, and another group of people in similar circumstance say that they have not?

How about if I found myself in a world in which people told me that they could see red and green, but I couldn't. How could I decide whether it was me that could not see something that existed, or if they were seeing things or perpetrating a hoax?

Easily. I test them. I ask somebody to put a red sock in my left hand and a green one in my right hand, socks that look identical to me and are thus indistinguishable. Then I interview a number of people not in communication with one another who claim to be able to discern red from green, and ask them to tell me which sock appears red and which appears green to them.

When I get the same answer from them all, I know that they can see something I can't. When they're unable to come to a consensus and more or less half tell me that the sock in my left hand is red and the other half tell me it's green, or that both are red or green, I know that they are not seeing any more than I do.

Those are the kinds of answers I get from people that tell me that tell me about God. Just look at the assortment of opinions about God expressed in just this thread.

On that basis, I don't believe anybody making such claims, however certain and sincere they may be.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If I'm wrong, as a Christian, I haven't lost out on anything in life worth having. If I'm right, then I get to experience an eternity in paradise.

Certainly you've heard of Pascal's Wager. Your claim can easily be shown to be fallacious. There are many conceivable ways that you can lose by being wrong:

• What if God exists and is offended by those who only believe because they are hedging their bet?
• What if the Muslims are right and you meet Allah on judgment day?
• What reincarnation occurs, and you come back as a maggot for that attitude?
• What if there is a god that rewards people of reason and punishes faith based thought?
• What if the universe is run by a demon that punishes those that believe in gods?
• What if there is no god and you went to church every Sunday and gave tithes for nothing?
• What if there is no god and you failed to mature authentically believing that you were being watched 24/7 and thinking that faith was a virtue while disesteeming reason and a liberal education?

For those who don't believe in the salvation spoken of in the Bible - what if you're wrong?

For those putting all of their eggs in the Christian basket, what if they're wrong? They're betting on the reality of a particular god that they can know nothing about except what it reveals to them if it in fact exists. The revelation you have, allegedly authored by a deity describing itself to us, describes a deity in mutually exclusive terms rendering it as logically impossible as the oft-mentioned married bachelor. Assuming that we mean the usual meanings of married and bachelor, we know that no such person exists without even getting up to look.

Likewise with the god of the Christian Bible. I can rule that deity out..

Here's a list of some of those logical contradictions:

Spoiler: logical contradictions

[1] An omniscient being that grants free will to others

[2] An omniscient being with free will itself - one that both knows what he will do, yet is able to make decisions ad hoc and change the future at will

[3] A perfect being needing to be worshiped

[4] A perfect being that changes its mind

[5] A perfect being that makes mistakes or contradicts itself

[6] A perfect being that creates or alters - things either weren't perfect then or aren't now.

[7] A non-spacial being being omnipresent

[8] An onmibenevolent being that permits evil and allows suffering

[9] A perfectly just being that punishes innocents such as descendants and bystanders.

[10] A merciful being that damns without hope of forgiveness from hell.

[11] Anything existing, persisting, thinking or acting outside of time. Those verbs, like all verbs, imply an interval of time with a before, a now, and an after

[12] An omnipresent being from whom we can be separated.

[13] An omniscient being that tests people

[14] An omnipotent being that wants anything

[15] An omnibenevolent being that exhibits wrath and tortures souls

[16] An omnibenevolent being that unleashes a master demon on earth

[17] An omniscient, omnipotent being that wants to be universally known (and loved) but whose existence is still in dispute by most of the world.

[18] An omniscient and omnipotent being that can both know everything that will happen and still change its mind and make things otherwise.

[19] An omnipotent being incapable of being in the presence of sin or doing evil.

[20] An omniscient, omnipotent god that loves and protects us, yet there is so much unnecessary suffering

[21] An omniscient and omnipotent god. If it knows what is coming next, it is powerless to change that.

So what are the odds of you being right rather than that you have believed relatively many unsophisticated men inventing stories over centuries that contradict one another? It's a given that people do this judging by the number of conflicting religions and proposed gods over the millennia..

 

[MrMrdevincamus]

My criticism of Religion is the claim to know anything about God, at all.

My position is man knows nothing about God. I assume this is the default position of atheists. Am I wrong?

People who say God is whatever... loving, all powerful, Just, merciful, has a plan for all of us etc.
From whence does this knowledge about God come from?

I know nothing about God and neither do you. You can have faith that God possesses whatever properties you feel God should possess, but based on what? Imagining if a God did exist, this is what God ought to be like?

You have the Bible, Quran etc... So why do you feel these folks were in any better position than you to have knowledge about God.

Not that I'm going to go about calling believers liars. I just think they feel a certainty that they don't actually possess.

I was an hardcore atheist until late teenhood, lol. I was raised in the bible belt Fla and TN until I was 17 when I joined the army with my parents blessing. So I was familiar with the Christian religion as well as the basics of Buddhism, my cousin was Buddhist, and I learned a form of spiritual Buddhism from her. Yeah she was from CA, but moved close to us so I learned how to mediate and learned a form of it called TM, which I still practice. No offense to atheists but atheism became more and more less believable, and totally depressing for some reason. I tried to become a Buddhist but lost interest in a couple of years when I met my first wife, a Christian struggling to earn her masters in theology.
So I also became a christian because by that time some good christian apologists were emerging. So it was the Christian religion bible and later science studied separately that brought me into a personal relationship with Jesus/God. Much later I had an NDE and some other things that only added to my convictions that the universe must of had an ID to create it and we (and other sentient beings if any) are the alpha reason the universe exists.

; {>

 

[MrMrdevincamus]

What if I told you I've found that it was unnecessary to be a Christian or believe in Jesus, specifically, to have these same kind of experiences?

What if belief didn't didn't matter? You could experience the same benefits regardless of which God you believed in, which religious ideology you accepted as true.

The only thing necessary was faith, devotion, conviction. In which God, what religion, doesn't really matter. Back in the 70's I hung with a whole community of Hare Krishna who were positive that Krishna had save them.

They relied on the Bhagavad Gita as you rely on the Bible. They were loving, caring, 100% certain of their enlightenment through Krishna.

And?

; {>

 

[MrMrdevincamus]

>>>>>>EXCERPT FROM TONE MONKEYS REPLY

To put it a different way, why does it bother you when people say they know God? If it's not possible, then all you really should feel is pity for them, but you seem to be offended somehow.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<EXCERPT FROM TONE MONKEYS REPLY

Indeed! I have noticed in the last oh, ten to fifteen years if one mentions they are christian or know God the reactions to that statement went to a kind acceptance to a progressively more hostile reaction. I am referencing on line conversation and forums, not everyday talk at work etc. I have a theory why this is happening other than it was prophesied two thousand years ago.

; {>

 

[Nakosis]

And?

; {>

 

[MrMrdevincamus]

Thanks, now I'm hungry!

 

[Nakosis]

I was an hardcore atheist until late teenhood, lol. I was raised in the bible belt Fla and TN until I was 17 when I joined the army with my parents blessing. So I was familiar with the Christian religion as well as the basics of Buddhism, my cousin was Buddhist, and I learned a form of spiritual Buddhism from her. Yeah she was from CA, but moved close to us so I learned how to mediate and learned a form of it called TM, which I still practice. No offense to atheists but atheism became more and more less believable, and totally depressing for some reason. I tried to become a Buddhist but lost interest in a couple of years when I met my first wife, a Christian struggling to earn her masters in theology.
So I also became a christian because by that time some good christian apologists were emerging. So it was the Christian religion bible and later science studied separately that brought me into a personal relationship with Jesus/God. Much later I had an NDE and some other things that only added to my convictions that the universe must of had an ID to create it and we (and other sentient beings if any) are the alpha reason the universe exists.

; {>

Yes, no personal relationships with God for atheists.

While it's pretty easy to create a God to have a personal relationship with, if you go it on your own you don't get that sense of being a part of a community.

There are a lot of social aspects to having a religious belief. Some people need it, others don't.

When I was a Christian, I also had a personal relationship with Jesus. While a Druid lots of experiences with natural spirits. Followed a Guru from India who taught me to see and hear God.

For years I had a great deal of certainty about God. So I'm not really criticizing your certainty. Just saying other folks of other religions and views of God possess the same certainty that you feel. Many have had experiences such as yours that reinforce their beliefs as well.

So does certainty alone give a person authority to make claims about God. If the certainty is equal or all these claims equally true?

If they are then great, each individual can experience the existence of any God they choose. Or in the case of an atheist choose not to experience the existence of a God.

If this is not the case, then how do you know which claims are valid and which are not.

If it doesn't matter, to each their own in your opinion, then I don't really have an argument with that.

However if you came across a theistic Satanist who based the certainty their beliefs on their own personal experiences. Would you argue that their view of God was wrong? If so, based on what?

 

[Nakosis]

Thanks, now I'm hungry!

I've no idea what he is eating LOL.

 

[Thief]

I know of most artists by their signature.

IMO man is the artist of God.

[

that we use our skills to ponder something Greater.....
doesn't mean we create that item in the art work

and God can shame our best effort on our best day

with the least of His own .....

on any day

 

[Nakosis]

that we use our skills to ponder something Greater.....
doesn't mean we create that item in the art work

and God can shame our best effort on our best day

with the least of His own .....

on any day

Without a signature, we can only assume he artist.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

IMO the reality of spiritual experiences is that it's all a crapshoot. Unless you can find a means to validate your claims objectively to someone else.

I used to have folks believing I could tell the future. I used Tarot cards. As a card reader you get pretty good at creating a narrative. It creates an interesting validation system. I make a claim about a person's life. They provide feedback which affirms my claim. Everyone's belief in my ability to foretell the future increases.

Something about my character, my narrative was very convincing to folks. It's like people have a need to believe in something. It gives them a sense of security.

Did I have any real knowledge of the future? If so, I'd be rich by now. Predicting lotto numbers, sport scores etc. No I just let my subconscious take over creating a narrative. The subconscious is a lot quicker, is a lot more aware, can pick out details about the person and current situations a thousand times better than what I can consciously do. But it's not God.

From our conscious POV it may seem very godlike. All of this occurs without conscious awareness.

The problem is, is how do we validate what we consciously feel to be true? Our conscious awareness sucks. It's slow, prone to errors, lacks the computing power of the subconscious mind.

Have I tested it? Lottery numbers, not so good. It does well however in what I'd call vague generalities. Stuff the subconscious mind has knowledge of but really poor results if I'm expecting access to some kind of supernatural powers.

James Randi would approve -- as do I, but with less importance.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Truth is basically an objective existence. However the problem is that humans don't usually have the capability to confirm a truth besides a scientific truth. A scientific truth can be confirmed by humans simply because it repeats itself indefinitely for humans to observe, to theorize, to conclude and to predict to confirm its truth.

Other than science, humans have to put faith in information provided by direct 'eye-witnesses' who are believed to have the first handed information. For example, this is the way how human history is written down. That's actually the way how you acquire your knowledge about what happened in this world on a daily basis. You rely on putting faith in the news broadcast, and with reporters as the eye-witnesses, to get to such a truth.

That is actually not quite accurate. As the old adage goes, "Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority," wrote Francis Bacon long ago.

Among the many problems with ideas like "truth" being provided by "eye-witnesses" is that -- who knew? -- eye-witnesses can lie if it suits their purpose. Prophets, Popes, priests and sooth-sayers can all make whatever claims they care to -- and swear to Heaven and Beyond that they had it direct from God -- and how would you really know?

In my own view, however, God would (if he existed) know exactly that, and would therefore never, ever choose "revelation" as a method of getting his word out. He would see the insurmountable pitfalls, even though so many of us cannot.

But the actions of people all leave traces -- traces that can be read and analyzed an used to try to find some sense of what is most likely to be true. The example I like to use is this: let's suppose that the obituary of some 16th century society Duchess says that "Her Grace died a virgin;" then let's also say that there's an entry in the household accounts, made by her faithful steward, that says "for lace for the making of a christening robe for Her Grace's daughter, born at Lamas, 2 shillings." Is there anybody else in the household who could be called "Her Grace?" No, that is an style which can only be used by a Duchess. And then, maybe a year later, there's the claim made by a local nurse that, "Her Grace had a daughter, but being unwed, gave it me to rear lest there be talk..."

What's the "likely truth" adding up to here?

Nowadays, of course, we could simply whip out our DNA test and make a call whether the brat was Her Grace's daughter. But good historians use the "DNA" of such humble things as the household accounts, the letters between family members and friends, the records (such as may exist) of what people said, or said that other people said (and good historians are very careful to label that hear-say, but at least worth considering as part of the effort to understand what the truth might actually be.