Atheists: If God existed…

[Rational Agnostic]

An atheist on my forum said: “if God existed, then proof of his existence would be possible. The proof isn't there, and the best explanation for that lack of proof would be that neither is the god there.”

If God existed, would God provide proof of His existence? If you answer yes, please explain why you think that God would provide proof of His existence.

Is it possible that God exists and has chosen not to provide proof of His existence? If you think it possible that God exists and has chosen not to provide proof of His existence, why do you think God would choose not to provide proof of His existence?

I am not talking about evidence, I am talking about absolute proof, in which case God would be established as a fact, like a scientific fact everyone would agree upon.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

The atheist you allude to is incorrect. Why would the existence of something imply that its existence could be proven? What if God purposely hides himself from everyone? If he's omnipotent, then he could make his own existence unprovable.

 

[FooYang]

I'm generally referring to a sentient, volitional agent capable of creating universes, but the word can also be used to refer to less, as with the Greek and Viking pantheons..

So as an anti-theist, your gripe is just with polytheism then (since you are really describing archetypal entities, not God). Ok. What you describe is definitely not Monotheism.

I know very little about it.

I'm really not surprised to be honest.

 

[Trailblazer]

Okay - and what is this evidence?

Everything that surrounds the Revelation of Baha’u’llah, namely His life, His character, His Mission on earth, the history of His Cause, the prophecies that were fulfilled by His coming and prophecies that are being fulfilled right now, the predictions He made that came to pass, and the religion that was established in His name.

Did it occur to you that perhaps you simply adopted a different bias and that nothing you believe about this messenger is actually true?

Just asking if that's something you've considered as a possibility.

No, I could have no confirmation bias because I had no religion before I became a Baha’i. In my mind, it is impossible that what I believe about Baha’u’llah is not true, because there is too much evidence that shows that He was who He claimed to be. But if someone can refute that, fine. Being a Baha’i is anything but easy.

 

[Trailblazer]

You’re still defining an impenetrable barrier of an unknowable God so whatever you believe about what people say and write, by definition you can’t know it came from the “Mind of God”. .

No, I cannot prove it came from the Mind of God but that does not mean I cannot know. Proof is not the only way of knowing.

You can’t ignore anything other than your own chosen faith though. There are countless other individuals and writings, including those even more recent that your own, all of which claim to be the word of God (or a direct alternative to God). Nothing makes yours any more (or less) legitimate than any others. .

The former religious dispensations have been unconditionally abrogated by the Revelation of Baha’u’llah so there is no need for me to look at the older religions.

I can ignore the older religions if I want to, because they are outdated. The other major religions were legitimate for the ages in which they were revealed but they are not what is needed in this new age, so why would I bother with them? What makes the Baha’i Faith more legitimate is that it was revealed for this age in in history so it is pertinent to the times we live in.

Baha’u’llah wrote that there can be no more Prophets for 1000 years (from when He declared His Revelation in 1852) so any prophets or writings that claim to have the word of God I consider false.

I believe what I believe. Anything that contradicts it cannot be true if what I believe is true.

That is an irrational belief though. Note that I wouldn’t have stated as much if you hadn’t made this a thread about evidence and proof but that is the angle you chose.

What is irrational about it? Why aren’t scriptures one way to know that the religion was from God?

Please note what this thread was started for, the questions I was asking in the OP. Hardly anyone answered those questions. Instead they veered off and started talking about evidence and proof of God.

Evidence of what exactly though? It can’t be evidence for the existence of God as you define him because you define him as unknowable. We have to all too common issue of believers asserting that they have evidence without first offering a concrete and internally consistent hypothesis. Any difficult questions, gaps or apparent inconsistencies are dismissed with the “unknowable” aspect. I don’t think you can have it both ways. You either have evidence or you have faith. The latter is entirely personal though, only the former can be legitimately presented to others.

What is unknowable is the Essence (intrinsic nature) of God. What is knowable are some Attributes of God and the Will of God for any given age, because those were revealed by Baha’u’llah in His writings. Baha’u’llah also reflected God’s Attributes.

Yes, faith is personal because it cannot be demonstrated to anyone else. Faith is something we each have to acquire, which is why Baha’u’llah wrote that the faith of no man can be conditioned by anyone except himself.

 

[Trailblazer]

Unless one believes that a person is not human, being some special being, perhaps a 'messenger', then we all are prone to deceptions arising from how our minds have evolved and operate - as much in the past or more so than today. So one has to essentially see such 'messengers' as being special, which then causes another set of difficulties, just as much as postulating some divine source in the first place. It's more down to acceptance (or gullibility perhaps) in my view. Accepting some things that go against what we know about reality.

The Messengers are special beings, ethereal beings who are both divine and human. Were they not, there would be no reason to place them above any ordinary human. I do not think that the material reality is the only reality and in fact it is only a mirror image of the spiritual world that we cannot yet see or experience. The material world is just an image reflected on water.

And no one anticipated the trouble these beliefs might cause - and still do cause? If this was so, then as some have said before, any divine source must be rather cruel - knowing the horrors that have been committed in the name of religion. A bit like passing the buck to me. No other way of passing some message on? Or is God not all-knowing omni- etc.?

God did know what humans would do because God is All-Knowing, but free will is sacrosanct in God’s Eyes, so God does not intervene in human affairs. If people would recognize Baha'u'llah, all the troubles these various religious beliefs cause would end and we could all live together in peace and harmony, but because most everyone clings to their older religions, the disharmony and dissension will have to continue for a time. However, we have been assured that in the future there will be only one religion and then the conflict will end.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer... didn't you say "The Mind of God is unknowable because that is part of God’s intrinsic nature, but the Will of God (what God wants for humanity) is what comes from God’s Mind to a Manifestation of God (Messenger) so that can be made known to humans via scriptures."?

You do realize that if what you call "the Will of God" comes from the Mind of God and you just defined the Mind of God as unknowable you can't possibly know anything about the "Will of God" right?

I meant that we cannot know (a) how the Mind of God operates or (b)what is in the Mind of God. We can know what God revealed from His Mind to the Mind of Baha’u’llah, but we cannot know how much of God’s knowledge Baha’u’llah actually possessed because Baha’u’llah did not reveal everything He knew in His Tablets, and here is the reason why:

“Oh, would that the world could believe Me! Were all the things that lie enshrined within the heart of Bahá, and which the Lord, His God, the Lord of all names, hath taught Him, to be unveiled to mankind, every man on earth would be dumbfounded.

How great the multitude of truths which the garment of words can never contain! How vast the number of such verities as no expression can adequately describe, whose significance can never be unfolded, and to which not even the remotest allusions can be made! How manifold are the truths which must remain unuttered until the appointed time is come! Even as it hath been said:

Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it.

Of these truths some can be disclosed only to the extent of the capacity of the repositories of the light of Our knowledge, and the recipients of Our hidden grace.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 176

Also, by the express order of Baha’u’llah, hundreds of thousands of verses, mostly written by His own hand, were obliterated and cast into the Tigris river by His secretary because He said nobody was worthy of them.

 

[Trailblazer]

Faith is belief without evidence or even contrary to the evidence.

No, faith can be based upon evidence.
Faith can also be contrary to the evidence if better evidence supersedes the evidence one has.

 

[Trailblazer]

Isn't it amazing how this Bahá’u’lláh seems to know that God can well dispense with all creatures even if according to you the Mind of God is unknowable?

The Mind of God is unknowable, but the Will of God is not unknowable. The Will of God is identical to the Will of the Manifestation of God, who was Baha’u’llah for this age.

“The essence of belief in Divine unity consisteth in regarding Him Who is the Manifestation of God and Him Who is the invisible, the inaccessible, the unknowable Essence as one and the same. By this is meant that whatever pertaineth to the former, all His acts and doings, whatever He ordaineth or forbiddeth, should be considered, in all their aspects, and under all circumstances, and without any reservation, as identical with the Will of God Himself. This is the loftiest station to which a true believer in the unity of God can ever hope to attain. Blessed is the man that reacheth this station, and is of them that are steadfast in their belief.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 167

 

[Milton Platt]

An atheist on my forum said: “if God existed, then proof of his existence would be possible. The proof isn't there, and the best explanation for that lack of proof would be that neither is the god there.”

If God existed, would God provide proof of His existence? If you answer yes, please explain why you think that God would provide proof of His existence.

Is it possible that God exists and has chosen not to provide proof of His existence? If you think it possible that God exists and has chosen not to provide proof of His existence, why do you think God would choose not to provide proof of His existence?

I am not talking about evidence, I am talking about absolute proof, in which case God would be established as a fact, like a scientific fact everyone would agree upon.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

Lack of evidence is not evidence that a god does not exist. but that is missing the point. the time to believe in the existence of something is when the evidence supports it. While it is possible to show that a god as defined by the various religions does not exist, that does not preclude the possibility that some god exists.
Insisting that you should believe in everything until it can be confirmed that it does not exist leaves you open to believing all kinds of absurd things.

 

[Trailblazer]

This is a contradiction.

No, there is no contradiction. God wants you to convince yourself because you have innate intelligence to search for evidence of God and free will to decide whether to believe in the evidence or not.

If this were true, this would just be one method of God convincing me. Apparently, God doesn't want me to believe in him badly enough to actually provide decent evidence... possibly because non-existent gods don't want things (or provide evidence).

BTW: don't you always criticize people when they claim to know the mind of God? Why are you doing it?

God does not need anyone’s belief. God wants people to believe in Him only for their own benefit. That’s why God leaves it up to everyone to search and decide for themselves.

I do not know the mind of God, I only know the Will of God for this age because it was revealed to Baha’u’llah. See what I said to ArtieE above about the Will of God. It is very important to understanding how I know what I know.

 

[SomeRandom]

Sorry. I've had so many notifications lately.

I am technically a Baha'i but I do not attend any of their activities, not even for free food.
I am just barely treading water so I hate parties and happy people talking about their children and their normal lives.

Are you okay? You sound like you may need someone to talk to.

Their reasons are always valid, to them.
Then I just get another non-paying tenant, and the beat goes on.
The one tenant that paid in full has now moved out and he is trying to sue me...
Wanna buy some houses?

I meant valid as in objectionably valid.
I have my own house, thank you. But good luck.

Don't I know it. But I don't have any other honest answers...

Neither do I.
Guess the debate will rage on for eons to come.

Yeah, God is pretty darned aloof.

Well at least you're honest. I suppose to us hairless apes that doesn't bring much comfort.

Not yet, but don't say I did not warn you.

Lol consider me sufficiently warned.

 

[Trailblazer]

You are of course are fully entitled to believe whatever you want about whoever you want. But to make extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Baha’u’llah made the claim, not me, and he provided the extraordinary evidence.

 

[Trailblazer]

If God's mind is unknowable as you say how can you possibly pretend to know what goes on in his mind?

God’s Mind is unknowable but God’s Will is knowable, for reasons I explained in my previous post.

 

[Trailblazer]

A God that is subject to proof is not really a God worth believing in except to a young or otherwise immature mind.

That’s what we have in the atheist cited, a young or otherwise immature mind.
But he is pushing 80.

 

[Trailblazer]

Not to me. The words love and worship have distinct meanings. One I do gladly, the other not.

I can relate to that. I do not do worship, even if I should. Moreover, I do not understand why an omni-everything God would want us to worship Him, it makes no sense. Love I can understand.

That path is off limits for me. I've already explained why I reject faith as a path to truth. Any method that lets one believe a wrong idea as easily as a correct one is not a good method for deciding what is true about the world. If faith is the only path to theism, then I will never be a theist. I am a died in the wool rational skeptic. I need a substantial reason to believe anything.

Well, I meant you have to have faith that there could be a God, I did not mean you have to believe in God on faith. Maybe hope is a better word.

I don't consider any words written by men to be evidence for a god. It is evidence of a god belief, not a god.

Don’t I know that, so what would be evidence for you?

I need more than such assurances. People are happy to make promises that cannot be verified and need not be kept. I've already gone down that true seeker path, and was disappointed.

I am sorry to hear that. Admittedly, I did not have to do any seeking because the Baha’i Faith was literally dropped in my lap. I was not seeking God or a religion. Of course I had to check it out, but it was pretty obviously true from the get-go. That is probably because I had no preconceived ideas about religion since I was not raised in any religion. Over the years, my beliefs became further confirmed as I learned more about the Faith.

The evidence is consistent with a godless universe. I believe that I've given you the restricted choice argument before. It argues that in a universe ruled by an omnipotent, omnisicient god, there might be a holy book so impressive that no man could have written it, or not, but in a godless universe, only the latter is possible. There are dozens of these, and in every case, what we see is what we would see in a godless universe.

That is what I see, a holy book so impressive that no man could have written it. Other than that I do not see God doing anything in the world, but that does not mean God is not doing anything in the world.

The argument is similar to concluding that a coin is loaded if it flips to tails every time. With a fair coin, the result could have been heads or tails, but with the loaded coin, only tails comes up. After awhile, it is safe to assume that the coin is loaded even if there is a minute possibility that the coin is a fair coin. That's about where I am with the god issue. My world is best understood without needlessly injecting gods into it.

I would not have been looking to inject God into my world in order to understand it had I not stumbled upon the Baha’i Faith, but it just found me and it made sense to me.

 

[Trailblazer]

The atheist you allude to is incorrect. Why would the existence of something imply that its existence could be proven? What if God purposely hides himself from everyone? If he's omnipotent, then he could make his own existence unprovable.

You are correct. There is no reason to think that God could be proven to exist, but that does not mean God does not exist. It just means God does not want us to be able to prove He exists.

There is evidence that God exists, but there is no proof. If we believe in the evidence strongly enough, then that becomes proof to us.

Hypothetically speaking, an omnipotent God could prove He exists to us if He wanted to, and since He doesn’t we can conclude that God does not want to provide proof of His existence.

 

[Trailblazer]

Lack of evidence is not evidence that a god does not exist. but that is missing the point. the time to believe in the existence of something is when the evidence supports it. While it is possible to show that a god as defined by the various religions does not exist, that does not preclude the possibility that some god exists.

How is it possible to prove that the God of various religions does not exist?

Insisting that you should believe in everything until it can be confirmed that it does not exist leaves you open to believing all kinds of absurd things.

Obviously.

 

[Trailblazer]

Sorry. I've had so many notifications lately.

Me too, ever since I started this thread.

Are you okay? You sound like you may need someone to talk to.

I am probably as okay as I will ever be.
Barely treading water and hating parties and happy people talking about their children and their normal lives is my normal mode of behavior.
I always need someone to talk to but I have too many people to post to.
It is not just this forum, I also have my own forum with posts to answer.

I have my own house, thank you. But good luck.

I should have stopped at one. One is too many.

Well at least you're honest. I suppose to us hairless apes that doesn't bring much comfort.

Honest I am...
I prefer to keep God at arm's length. What seems odd to me is that people would want to see God or hear God speak to them directly. No thanks, I prefer to have the Messenger as a Mediator in between me and God.

 

[Milton Platt]

How is it possible to prove that the God of various religions does not exist?

Obviously.

Step 1: Ask for a clear detailed (as much as possible) description of attributes of the god.
Step 2: Point out any internal inconsistencies or logical impossibilities the description creates.
Can this be applied successfully to virtually all the gods ever created? I have no idea. but it seems to work for all that I have been presented with so far.

 

[We Never Know]

An atheist on my forum said: “if God existed, then proof of his existence would be possible. The proof isn't there, and the best explanation for that lack of proof would be that neither is the god there.”

If God existed, would God provide proof of His existence? If you answer yes, please explain why you think that God would provide proof of His existence.

Is it possible that God exists and has chosen not to provide proof of His existence? If you think it possible that God exists and has chosen not to provide proof of His existence, why do you think God would choose not to provide proof of His existence?

I am not talking about evidence, I am talking about absolute proof, in which case God would be established as a fact, like a scientific fact everyone would agree upon.

Evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid: https://www.google.com/search

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

I was raised in a religious family. To my understanding god doesn't prove himself to you, it's you that has to prove yourself to him. He doesn't seek you, he wants you to seek him. And lastly, he doesn't make you seek him, you have a choice to seek him or not(that pesky freewill thing).

It's basically like chasing a ghost. There is nothing physical there. Either you believe on faith or you don't.