Atheists: If God existed would God……

[Trailblazer]

The trouble is ... how do you know it is not a false prophet? There are plenty of idiots claiming to be a prophet.

Matthew 7:15-20 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Fruits: the pleasant or successful result of work or actions: fruit

 

[Sheldon]

We can know what a God would not do by working backwards.
Think about it.

Which deity, what objective evidence can you demonstrate to support it exists. All we have had a bare assertions. Unevidenced speculation is not knowledge, when you keep using the word know, you are obliged at some point to demonstrate some knowledge to support claims to know something.

I don't know that a deity is even possible, so unevidenced speculation on what "a deity" might do, is meaningless.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It is not about education .. it is about money.

IMO, there's a direct link between the decline of ostracism and capital punishment for not being in the dominant religion and the decline of those religions.

 

[Trailblazer]

No, you only have to get out of the way of what you want and start thinking logically.

That's advice you should take. Because it's YOU who can't give me one rational reason why god shouldn't communicate directly with everyone, except for the fact that you don't want your god to want to do that... because the only way your god has any chance of actually existing is if this god doesn't care if everyone gets its message.

I don't want my God to do that? How could I control an Omnipotent God and tell Him what He should do? And you call me illogical.

No, obviously it is God who chooses not communicate to humans directly, because an Omnipotent God could do that if He chose to do that.

Why would God care if everyone knows that He exists? Think about why an Omnipotent God would need humans to believe in Him.

I just explained to Polymath the reason why God does not communicate directly to anyone except Messengers:
#428 Trailblazer, Today at 2:32 PM

 

[Trailblazer]

Right, one mortal can understand God and put the message into words other mortals can understand, but God can't? That's fishy.

It is not fishy. I explained why to Polymath: #428 Trailblazer, Today at 2:32 PM

 

[Trailblazer]

I see that as being a perfectly reasonable expectation......for IF the message really IS all that important, then it should BEHOOVE such an all powerful God to at least MAKE THE EFFORT to get the "message" out to ALL human beings....and NOT just to ONE character and expect THAT one, to get the "message" out to the masses.

However, IF the message is NOT all that earth-shaking important, then I suppose that simply giving it to one "designated" individual to pass on to others, WOULD be acceptable.

I explained WHY God does NOT communicate directly to everyone in this post. It is a rational explanation but you can take it or leave it.

#428 Trailblazer, Today at 2:32 PM

 

[Trailblazer]

Now THAT is really amusing......God KNOWS the "future", but totally didn't see the Holocaust coming....either that, or simply didn't GIVE a damn!~

I do not do my boss's job, I only do my job.
God did not stop it because that is not His job.
That does not mean that God did not give a damn.

 

[Trailblazer]

Now THAT is a damned GOOD question....and one would THINK, that maybe, JUST maybe, the one saying that, should go back and re-evaluate their so-called evidence and be HONEST with themselves about whether it really DOES seem like "good" evidence, if the proverbial "shoe" was on the OTHER foot!

No, there is no reason for me to care how many people LIKE my evidence because I do not commit logical fallacies.

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so." Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

 

[Trailblazer]

I can only go by statistics, all religions are shrinking in number except islam and even the growth rate of islam is less than the world population increase which means the only expanding religion is actually shrinking in real terms.

Religion is dying in every country except Africa, a trend that has continued for more than 50 years and accelerates with the advent of the internet and as education becomes better.

Do you have any actual statistics that show that this is the case?

 

[Trailblazer]

No communicated because perhaps there is no go to communicate
And no proven because perhaps there is nothing to prove

These would answer both your question without hypotheticals

What you are saying is true, but it would not answer the questions since they are predicated on If God exists.

Oh and i have a point. Even if a god existed and proved that he/she/it existed then just like now with no proof there is belief, with proof there will like be disbileaf. Humans are like that

That is a good point. In fact, God might already provided that proof, yet there are still nonbelievers.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well, of course, the other question might be, "if it's not evidence, why are you posting it as if it were?"

Because I believe it is evidence.

How would you determine whether Joseph Smith's claims about the origin of the Book of Mormon provides evidence of Jesus in America? And how would you determine the truth of Smith's claim that the angel Moroni instructed him to translate the "reformed Egyptian" characters on golden plates into English, by using magic "seer stones" peering into a hat?

Please explain how you differentiate the claims made about the writing of Baha'i scripture and the Book of Mormon, in terms of the evidence available to make such differentiation.

I do not know about the origin of the Book of Mormon and I do not know what the Book of Mormon claims so I cannot address this.

 

[Trailblazer]

It seems to me that many religions based on false prophets are still going strong, IMO.

Can you name some of those religions?

That's the thing: I don't need to define that. If there's nothing to distinguish a religion from a false religion, that religion is one I don't feel the need to waste my time with.

I believe that there is something that can be used to distinguish a true religion from a false religion.
A true religion was revealed by a Messenger of God whereas a false religion was started by a false prophet.

 

[Trailblazer]

Which deity, what objective evidence can you demonstrate to support it exists. All we have had a bare assertions. Unevidenced speculation is not knowledge, when you keep using the word know, you are obliged at some point to demonstrate some knowledge to support claims to know something.

I don't know that a deity is even possible, so unevidenced speculation on what "a deity" might do, is meaningless.

If a deity exists we can know what it would not do by observing its effects in the world.
There is objective evidence of what a deity would not do, because if the deity had done x or y there would be objective evidence of x or y.

 

[Polymath257]

In your opinion there is no way that a good, all powerful God would do what we actually see but that does not mean that a good, all powerful God would do what we actually see.

In short, you just have a personal opinion, we all have those.
You cannot show that God is not real with a personal opinion nor can I show that God is real with a belief.

Correct. And you have a personal opinion that a God actually does exist, which you cannot prove. You having a personal opinion doesn't make that opinion correct either.

I also have logic based on the definitions of the concepts involved. For example, all powerful implies the ability to communicate effectively. Caring implies that desire to help out. An all powerful being that has a desire will be able to do what it wants. So if effective communication has not happened, then either no God exists, the God doesn't know, the God doesn't care, or the God is unable to communicate, or our belief doesn't lead to any benefit for us.

 

[Polymath257]

Can you name some of those religions?

I believe that there is something that can be used to distinguish a true religion from a false religion.
A true religion was revealed by a Messenger of God whereas a false religion was started by a false prophet.

That only works if you can distinguish between true and false prophets.

What evidence do you have that there have ever been true prophets?

 

[Polymath257]

If a deity exists we can know what it would not do by observing its effects in the world.
There is objective evidence of what a deity would not do, because if the deity had done x or y there would be objective evidence of x or y.

That's assuming the deity has the power to do those things. A creator deity may or may not have such power.

And, this depends on the *assumption* that such a deity exists.

 

[Polymath257]

Whether it exists or not is not contingent upon whether you believe that it exists.
If it exists it can do something you don't want it to do, like being stubborn.

But stubbornness is not goodness. So if a deity takes that tactic, we can conclude it is not a good deity, but a selfish amoral or immoral deity.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Because I believe it is evidence.

Exactly! You believe. But your belief does not make it true, anymore than a child's belief in the Tooth Fairy reifies that silly meme.

I do not know about the origin of the Book of Mormon and I do not know what the Book of Mormon claims so I cannot address this.

Easy enough to learn...and in fact I provided you with the most important bits. Why did you ignore that?

 

[Polymath257]

I know the only way anyone can know anything about God, from Scriptures.

How do you know that scripture *is* a way to know anything about God?

And how do you know it is the only way?

In fact, it seems to me to be a much more reliable way to know something about God, assuming such exists at all, is to look at its creation. Doing so shows that any creator God was either a rather nasty entity or simply isn't aware of what happens in Earth.

 

[Polymath257]

It is not about me but it is not about you either.
The God claim cannot be supported by facts since there are no facts about God.

And that is enough for me to consider the issue irrelevant. if there are no facts, there are only opinions. And those opinions are not based on facts. Which means they are based on desires, not truths.

And that is quite enough to say the existence of a God isn't worth believing in.

God is not a fact since God cannot ever be proven to exist. God is either believed based upon what comes through Messengers of God or not.

You have to also assume there *are* messengers. And if there is no fact about God, then there are also no facts about people being messengers of that God. And that is enough reason to dismiss their claims to be messengers.

No, it does not have to be a fact to be obvious. God exists is obvious to all religious people and we have no facts. There is no factual knowledge about God. Knowledge about God comes through Messengers of God.

That, to me, is a contradiction. Knowledge is justified true belief. But the word of a messenger cannot be justification.

I never made any factual claims about God. I cannot explain why it is obvious to me, other than what I have already explained, which you have rejected.

You have made claims that there are messengers from God, which is a claim about God: that it would send messengers.

That haughty attitude "It's about the consensus of thinkers and the high standard of reasoning" which implies that believers have a low standard of reasoning, does not get you anywhere except to smugness. Here I am, the only believer on a thread with all atheists. I'd like to see one atheist go onto a thread that is comprised of all believers and see how well they hold up.

Many do so and survive quite well. Have you ever heard of street epistemology?