Atheism people have a belief "God does not exist "

[Thermos aquaticus]

But it is not a mere human who speaks for a deity.

Can you also understand why people would not believe claims about someone being superhuman?

 

[Cassandra]

It was predicted prior to observation. It was known that dark matter only interacts with luminous matter through gravitation so it was predicted that there should be 4 areas of mass when two galaxies run into each other, the 2 areas of luminous mass and 2 areas of dark matter further out. This prediction was confirmed with the Bullet cluster.

You do not predict particles, you postulate them. You predict behavior on the assumption of their existence.

Using this criteria, we have not observed gravity since we have not observed the graviton which is the predicted particle responsible for the force.

Then you do not appreciate the difference between particles and behavior. When known matter shows unexpected behavior that does not necessarily prove new particles whose existence is to fill the gap between expected theoretical behavior and real observed behavior. It might as well be a limitation of the theoretical model. Gravity is really the weak spot of modern theory. As physicist postulate so many different particles and theories there is often something around to dust off that breath new life into. But to call that a prior prediction is wishful thinking. That again reminds me of religious people and their belief in prophecies coming through. In the Bible there is enough diversity to support any claim.

 

[Trailblazer]

Can you also understand why people would not believe claims about someone being superhuman?

Yes, I can understand that, but how different is that than somebody believing claims that there is a God?

We can never see God or verify His existence, but at least we have verifiable evidence that Baha’u’llah existed and we have books written by those who actually knew Him describing what He did during His Mission, much of which was superhuman. For example:

“So prolific was this period, that during the first two years after His return from His retirement, according to the testimony of Nabíl, who was at that time living in Baghdád, the unrecorded verses that streamed from His lips averaged, in a single day and night, the equivalent of the Qur’án! As to those verses which He either dictated or wrote Himself, their number was no less remarkable than either the wealth of material they contained, or the diversity of subjects to which they referred......” God Passes By, pp. 137-138

 

[Milton Platt]

The truthful revealed religion people have the belief "God exists" and
Atheism people have a belief "God does not exist ", nevertheless both have a belief. Right, please?

Regards

Most would simply say that there is sufficient evidence to deny that the gods thus far proposed exist. As to any other undeclared deities, belief is dependent upon verification, as it should be.

Saying you do not believe a god exists is not the same as declaring that you know that no gods exist.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

You do not predict particles, you postulate them. You predict behavior on the assumption of their existence.

I believe that is called a hypothesis, which is part of the scientific method. They predicted that if dark matter is real that they would see 4 areas of mass after a galactic collision. Two of those areas of mass would be the luminous matter and they would be closer to the point of impact. There would also be two areas of non-luminous mass further out because dark matter does not interact with luminious matter. Those predictions were seen in the case of the Bullet Cluster. When observations match the predictions that is scientific support for that hypothesis.

Then you do not appreciate the difference between particles and behavior. When known matter shows unexpected behavior that does not necessarily prove new particles whose existence is to fill the gap between expected theoretical behavior and real observed behavior. It might as well be a limitation of the theoretical model. Gravity is really the weak spot of modern theory. As physicist postulate so many different particles and theories there is often something around to dust off that breath new life into. But to call that a prior prediction is wishful thinking. That again reminds me of religious people and their belief in prophecies coming through. In the Bible there is enough diversity to support any claim.

The observations made with the Bullet Cluster were expected. That's the point.

 

[Trailblazer]

Most would simply say that there is sufficient evidence to deny that the gods thus far proposed exist. As to any other undeclared deities, belief is dependent upon verification, as it should be.

Saying you do not believe a god exists is not the same as declaring that you know that no gods exist.

How do you think an immaterial deity can be verified?

 

[Milton Platt]

The truthful revealed religion people have the belief "God exists" and
Atheism people have a belief "God does not exist ", nevertheless both have a belief. Right, please?

Regards

Well, you could say that it is a belief that people who claim the existence of all the various gods have not been able to support their assertions if you want to go the long way around the barn. But it is a lack of belief in a proposition.
Everyone is atheist with regard to all the gods except the one they happen to like.

 

[Milton Platt]

How do you think an immaterial deity can be verified?

I have no idea, and there lies the problem. The invisible looks just like the non-existent.
However, if it is a god that supposedly influences the natural world in some way, then those effects should be measurable.
For instance, intercessory prayer was tested and found to be no better than chance. So if someone proposes a god that answers prayer, that particular god as defined can be eliminated.
You can always say the god is "hiding", of course. But the burden of proof for that still falls back on the one making that claim.
It is difficult to get the same definition of a god from any two people.

 

[paarsurrey]

I have no idea, and there lies the problem. The invisible looks just like the non-existent.
However, if it is a god that supposedly influences the natural world in some way, then those effects should be measurable.
For instance, intercessory prayer was tested and found to be no better than chance. So if someone proposes a god that answers prayer, that particular god as defined can be eliminated.
You can always say the god is "hiding", of course. But the burden of proof for that still falls back on the one making that claim.
It is difficult to get the same definition of a god from any two people.

"It is difficult to get the same definition of a god from any two people."

The same-way it may be true to say:

It is difficult to get the same definition of Atheism from any two people belonging to it.
​

Right, please?
Regards

 

[Milton Platt]

"It is difficult to get the same definition of a god from any two people."

The same-way it may be true to say:

It is difficult to get the same definition of Atheism from any two people belonging to it.
​

Right, please?
Regards

Don't get your point.
All forms of atheism involve the rejection of a proposition.
Atheism is not asserting the existence of something. That is the difference.

 

[Trailblazer]

I have no idea, and there lies the problem. The invisible looks just like the non-existent.

Good point, so we would have to have some way of knowing without seeing the actual God Himself.

However, if it is a god that supposedly influences the natural world in some way, then those effects should be measurable.

How could we know that it was God having the effect, even if we could measure it? The thing is, God is unknowable, so we can never know what God is doing or not doing or how God does what God does.

For instance, intercessory prayer was tested and found to be no better than chance. So if someone proposes a god that answers prayer, that particular god as defined can be eliminated.

I have heard the opposite, that prayer is better than placebo, but God does not answer all prayers and people do not always get the answer they want if they ask.

You can always say the god is "hiding", of course. But the burden of proof for that still falls back on the one making that claim.

The Essence of God is hiding but God reveals His Attributes and His Will for any given age through the Messenger of God, what Baha'is call the Manifestation of God.

It is difficult to get the same definition of a god from any two people.

That's sure true. So I guess one would want to look at which definition makes the most sense to them.

 

[paarsurrey]

Don't get your point.
All forms of atheism involve the rejection of a proposition.
Atheism is not asserting the existence of something. That is the difference.

There are Atheists who hold debates "God does not exist", that means it is an assertion, please.
Regards

 

[Willamena]

Don't get your point.
All forms of atheism involve the rejection of a proposition.
Atheism is not asserting the existence of something. That is the difference.

Hello. *waves* Hard atheist, here. I assert something.

I assert the negation of "there is a god," which is an expression of existence.

 

[Milton Platt]

Hello. *waves* Hard atheist, here. I assert something.

I assert the negation of "there is a god," which is an expression of existence.

HI, Willamena.......
I'm good with that. I teeter on the edge of hard atheism. I know it is possible to disprove the gods so far proposed. I just don't want to get in to arguing about "absolutes" with theists, so I acknowledge there could be a god of some sort someplace and I would not know about it. But then theists would not know about that god, either, would they?
Anyway, I stick to "soft" atheism for that reason, and that reason only. My confidence that this "unknown god" exists is on a par with my confidence that Fairies exist someplace in the universe.

 

[Milton Platt]

There are Atheists who hold debates "God does not exist", that means it is an assertion, please.
Regards

Yes, there are "hard atheists" who assert that there is no god. However, the majority of atheists simply assert that the gods as proposed so far do not have enough evidence to warrant belief in them. Those atheists simply reject the god proposition. They keep an open mind and have been waiting for thousands of years for sufficient evidence, but so far, apologists have come up empty handed.
You can't lump all atheists together. It is not a monolithic block of people.

 

[paarsurrey]

Yes, there are "hard atheists" who assert that there is no god. However, the majority of atheists simply assert that the gods as proposed so far do not have enough evidence to warrant belief in them. Those atheists simply reject the god proposition. They keep an open mind and have been waiting for thousands of years for sufficient evidence, but so far, apologists have come up empty handed.
You can't lump all atheists together. It is not a monolithic block of people.

Atheism as they inform us is not an organized and unified position/no-position, so how could one say that a certain belief/no-belief is in majority?
Regards

 

[Trailblazer]

so I acknowledge there could be a god of some sort someplace and I would not know about it. But then theists would not know about that god, either, would they?

Some of us theists know about that God... We are called Baha'is.
That God is the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of the hidden...

 

[Milton Platt]

Some of us theists know about that God... We are called Baha'is.
That God is the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of the hidden...

Either you know of him, or he is hidden from you....which is it? If you do "know" this god, please define it thoroughly and provide the evidence to support the claim.

 

[Trailblazer]

Either you know of him, or he is hidden from you....which is it? If you do "know" this god, please define it thoroughly and provide the evidence to support the claim.

I said that some of us theists know about that God... We are called Baha'is. That means we know something about God, not that we know much.
God is above anything that can be defined but since people like to know what we believe, here is one description:

While the Bahá'í writings teach of a personal god who is a being with a personality (including the capacity to reason and to feel love), they clearly state that this does not imply a human or physical form.[2]
Shoghi Effendi writes:

What is meant by personal God is a God Who is conscious of His creation, Who has a Mind, a Will, a Purpose, and not, as many scientists and materialists believe, an unconscious and determined force operating in the universe. Such conception of the Divine Being, as the Supreme and ever present Reality in the world, is not anthropomorphic, for it transcends all human limitations and forms, and does by no means attempt to define the essence of Divinity which is obviously beyond any human comprehension. To say that God is a personal Reality does not mean that He has a physical form, or does in any way resemble a human being. To entertain such belief would be sheer blasphemy.[17][18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God in the Baha'i Faith

I said that God is the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of the hidden...
What we know is what is manifested by the Manifestation of God (the Messenger), the Attributes of God and the Will of God.
What we do not know is what is hidden, is the Essence of God, God's intrinsic nature.

 

[Milton Platt]

I said that some of us theists know about that God... We are called Baha'is. That means we know something about God, not that we know much.
God is above anything that can be defined but since people like to know what we believe, here is one description:

While the Bahá'í writings teach of a personal god who is a being with a personality (including the capacity to reason and to feel love), they clearly state that this does not imply a human or physical form.[2]
Shoghi Effendi writes:

What is meant by personal God is a God Who is conscious of His creation, Who has a Mind, a Will, a Purpose, and not, as many scientists and materialists believe, an unconscious and determined force operating in the universe. Such conception of the Divine Being, as the Supreme and ever present Reality in the world, is not anthropomorphic, for it transcends all human limitations and forms, and does by no means attempt to define the essence of Divinity which is obviously beyond any human comprehension. To say that God is a personal Reality does not mean that He has a physical form, or does in any way resemble a human being. To entertain such belief would be sheer blasphemy.[17][18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God in the Baha'i Faith

I said that God is the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of the hidden...
What we know is what is manifested by the Manifestation of God (the Messenger), the Attributes of God and the Will of God.
What we do not know is what is hidden, is the Essence of God, God's intrinsic nature.

Okay, so are you saying that god is only partially "hidden"? List and define what parts are not hidden and provide evidence that demonstrates that those "parts" are parts of a god.
Bear in mind that in order to assert anything is a part of a god, you must first demonstrate that said god exists in the first place.