Atheists: If God existed would God……

[Aupmanyav]

Do you think that if I asked G-d for £1000 and told nobody else, and I found £1000 under my pillow in the morning, I would have good reason to believe?

Sure. Ask Allah to put that under my pillow and I am all yours.

 

[KWED]

In my early twenties, I discovered the Qur'an.
I've never looked back. It all fits neatly together and completes the theological jigsaw puzzle.

What, specifically, about the Quran convinced you it was true?

 

[muhammad_isa]

If what you say is true, then it is interesting that those who spend their lives researching and studying the actual mechanisms of how the world and the universe works usually reject that "principle".
Why do you think that could be?

Some might.
There are varying reasons why people reject faith.
..you wouldn't want to know.

 

[muhammad_isa]

What about the people that Allah deliberately misguides?

You would know all about them.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Wait. So you are saying that you were fortunate that god arranged it to have someone well versed in religious beliefs to instruct you in religious belief, otherwise you may not have developed your religious belief?
Interesting...

Don't you just hate it that some people were fortunate enough to be educated "properly", without all this silly political correctness.

 

[KWED]

No, I don't.

Ah, so you accept that their convictions are as justified as yours, that their beliefs rest on foundations equally as strong as yours?

Unlike you, I respect them for their faith.

Respect is earned, not demand or expected.
I neither respect nor have contempt for any individual until I am aware of their words and deeds.
I certainly don't respect someone simply for following the religion they were raised in. However, I do respect their right to do so. As Voltaire didn't actually say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

 

[muhammad_isa]

What, specifically, about the Quran convinced you it was true?

I already had knowledge of Christianity. I never really understood "through Jesus Christ our Lord", and "G-d in three persons, blessed trinity".
That got cleared up, for starters.

Generally speaking though, it echoed what I was already familiar with.
I also found Muslims in the Mosque that wee sitting on the floor, and took their religion seriously, echoing the commandments in the OT.
..it all began to "fit together".
It wasn't an easy change in my life. Many sacrifices to be made .. social change etc.

 

[KWED]

That's not true.

Maybe not to you, but it is true to Baha'is.

..not the jig-saw I refer to.

How do you know your jigsaw is the correct one? Remember that everyone else is equally as convinced as you are that they have the one true jigsaw.

Why should eating pig-meat suddenly become acceptable after G-d called it an abomination in the Qur'an, for example.

Well, some Muslims claim that slavery is now unacceptable even though Allah permitted it in the Quran.

That's mankind for you. They have likes and dislikes. They often incline towards something for the wrong reasons.

But not you though.

 

[KWED]

Some might.
There are varying reasons why people reject faith.
..you wouldn't want to know.

You specifically mentioned the innate principle that there is some supernatural presence responsible for the universe.
So, why do you think people who are leading experts in how the universe actually works and where it came from reject that principle?

I am starting to notice a pattern whereby you make some assertion and then refuse to back it up when questioned. Isn't your apparent inability to defend your positions starting to bother you? Just a little?

 

[KWED]

You would know all about them.

More deflection.

 

[KWED]

Don't you just hate it that some people were fortunate enough to be educated "properly",

What does this have to do with my point?
You claimed that you were fortunate to have been given an education with a heavy religious bias. And yet you claim that such things are not responsible for an individuals belief.

without all this silly political correctness.

What "silly political correctness" are you referring to?

 

[KWED]

I already had knowledge of Christianity. I never really understood "through Jesus Christ our Lord", and "G-d in three persons, blessed trinity".
That got cleared up, for starters.
Generally speaking though, it echoed what I was already familiar with.

So it merely modified your existing belief in god rather than forming it.

I also found Muslims in the Mosque that wee sitting on the floor,

I do hope that was a typo!

I also found Muslims in the Mosque that wee sitting on the floor, and took their religion seriously, echoing the commandments in the OT.

So if you had gone into a temple where people were sitting on the floor taking their religion seriously, you might have become a Hindu?

..it all began to "fit together".

You still haven't explained what it was in the Quran that convinced you it was true rather than the record of ancient Middle Eastern superstitions and customs.

It wasn't an easy change in my life. Many sacrifices to be made .. social change etc.

I had the same thing when I left home and went to uni. And also when I moved abroad for work. Not sure how that is relevant to being convinced the Quran is true.

So, what was it in the Quran that made you think "Aha! This version of god actually exists".

 

[PureX]

While let's switch this up. The claim is Baha'u'llah is a messenger/manifestation of God. Do you believe it? If so, what proof or evidence do you have to back that up? If not, why not? What proof and evidence would you need to convince you that Baha'u'llah is indeed a messenger from God? Either way, I would hope you had or expect some proof and evidence.

What any one person calls God, or thinks speaks to them on behalf of God, is of no relevance to me. "God" is an ideological paradigm through which people choose to understand existence as they are experiencing it. This is a choice they've made based on desire, on necessity, and on it's resultant functionality in their lives; not something that requires "evidence" or "proof" for me. And it's a choice that each person makes for themselves. So demanding "evidence" from others for the choices they've made in how they seek to understand their experience of existing is kind of weird and irrelevant. If you think the paradigm they've chosen is wrong, or bad, or whatever, then it's not for you. Beyond that, you really have no say, or business, judging.

We can discuss and explain to each other why we have chosen the cognitive paradigms that we have; to become more tolerant and understanding of each other's world view. And perhaps to improve or change our own. But I see little to be gained from trying to "defeat" someone else's view of existence using our own. And it's especially silly when we are trying to do it by holding someone else's world view to the standards set by our own. It's like judging the efficacy of apples by the criteria of the efficacy of bananas. Of course the apple will not measure up. Proving absolutely nothing.

 

[PureX]

What strikes me as odd is how trumpian this sounds. Your comment here sounds like something trump would say to we skeptics if we questioned his claims of wealth and ethics.

Trump is way too stupid to pose any such argument.

What amazes me is how rational and aligned to evidence you can be when the topic is politics, but you seem completely incapable when it is religious belief.

I'm not interested in religion. I'm interested in theism as a cognitive paradigm. And theism (or religion for that matter) is not politics. Theism is personal and subjective, while politics and commerce are interactive social functions. The former is ideological, while the latter is actual. Which is why I find it silly to try and apply "evidence based rationale" to theism just because it's applicable to politics and economics.

The book Emotional Intelligence actually examines this interesting phenomenon, and there have been studies done on how brains function in different ways depending on the subject and how the person arrived at the beliefs.

This isn't about our "beliefs". It's about the cognitive paradigms we choose to employ to determine our beliefs. Until we understand this, there is no advantage to be gained by debating anyone's determined "belief".

Studies show believers in religious (and even political) ideas will process these concepts in a way that bypasses the frontal lobes. Quit literally the brain biases it's own function by virtue of the habit of thought.

The way ANY brain functions is a "bias". It is a bias to assume that a brain should not bypass the frontal lobe. It's just blind ego that tells us that our way of thinking is the better way of thinking.

The brains actually learn how to process different ideas in different ways to help protect the more non-rational ideas from criticism. None of this is a conscious process, so the person doing it won't be aware. Conscious awareness is essentially along for the ride. You can write posts that reflect your thoughts but you won't be aware of how your actions are motivated.

Well, that clearly is not true, or humans would never have been able to develop intellectually. Consciousness reflects a kind of 'oversight' that can enable us to change our way of thinking when it is not gaining us the results we seek. I agree we are not cognizant of our thought processes most of the time, but we do have that ability, and we do use it, occasionally. Some more than others.

 

[HonestJoe]

Try me. Make a case with information suggesting God doesn't exist.

That isn't what I'm here to do but even if I was, the lack of a defined hypothesis still makes that impossible.

I was not a fervent or committed believer back when I hated God, I was a moderate believer.

I don't see any moderation in hating God.

I did explain why God cannot be encapsulated by human logic.

Well, I think calling it human logic is misleading; logic is logic. That most or all humans (currently) can't understand something doesn't mean it is outside the scope of logic and the fact something involves infinity doesn't mean it is outside the scope of logic. There is no reason for thereto be any kind of fundamental barrier that puts anything beyond logic. Lots of things can be difficult or even impossible to fully understand using logic in a given context or environment but that is not the same as it being beyond logic.

How can we predict what an infinite God would do using finite human logic?

That is applying logic though; "God is infinite therefore we can't predict his actions.". That is a statement of pure logic.

What reason do you have to think that God is incapable of having any desires?

As I explained, a desire is about something that may or may not happen in the future. If a being is omnipotent, the concepts of future and things that may or may not happen would be practically meaningless. That can't desire anything because everything that could be already and always has been from their point of view. It is a very difficult concept to get your head around, part of what you're saying is beyond logic, but that is the problem when you assert the existence of an omnipotent being.

Okay. Can you give me an example of a hypothesis that could test for a specifically defined God?

Only with a specifically defined god, which nobody has really done. I can make some up but I did that before and you just dismissed them because they weren't like your concept of religion (which is irreverent in the context of this question). So again;
"God physically created the Earth 6000 years ago"
"God carries the sun across the sky in his golden chariot"
"God will cure my illness if I pray to him"

All testable (though not necessarily easily or definitively) beliefs about hypothetical gods.

If they caught me committing a logical fallacy I would admit to that but such is not the case.

Other than trying to use logic to support the existence of something you've defined as being beyond logic?

If something cannot be observed or studied by scientists, how could it be within the scope of science?

Because the definition is not "able to be observed by scientists", it is "observable (full stop)". Science as a concept is not limited to humans. Everything we have ever studied and all the things we've yet to be able to study but will be able to in the future were always within the scope of science even before humans existed. If some other intelligent being had come along, they could have applied scientific method to those things instead.

Sure, after people die and go to heaven it will be clearly observable by those people.

And so they could use science to study heaven at that point. I know lots of people who would want to do exactly that if they found themselves in heaven after they died, myself included.

I do not believe that logic can be applied to the Essence of God since it is unknowable.

To put it bluntly, I think that is just a get out clause, a tool to be able to dismiss or ignore any difficult questions or contradictions that are raised about your beliefs. I do think that if you're unilaterally declaring any aspect of God as being beyond logic, you can't apply logic to any other aspect of God. Once you've established a limitation to logic, you can just spread that to cover anything you want.

Moreover, the Essence of God is not something that humans need to understand and it is far, far beyond our understanding. All that is necessary for humans to know about God are God’s attributes and God’s will for us in every age.

And hasn't that been ever so convenient for the religious leaders over the centuries? "We can't explain everything, so you'll just have to take our word for it... but keep bringing the offerings."

 

[Sheldon]

Sheldon said: ↑
@PureX said: So the bar is being set so high that it's virtually impossible to meet.

Sheldon said: For an omniscient omnipotent deity, that seems a rather idiotic assertion,

There is nothing idiotic about it. An omniscient omnipotent God could meet the bar,

Which rather makes my point.

but only if He chose to meet it.

Ok, but that still makes the assertion the bar is being set too high nonsensical.

Try to think about why.

Why what?

What is idiotic is atheists expecting God to hop to and meet the bar they set and provide proof of His existence.

What's idiotic is to assume someone who doesn't believe any deity exists has expectations of one, beyond the merely hypothetical. In this instance the claim was hypothetically idiotic. I cannot speculate as to what a deity might, or might not want, not least because I have seen no objective evidence for any deity, or that any deity is even possible.

If atheists can't look for their own objective evidence, then hardly seems like the fault of theists. Why would theists be responsible for providing evidence for atheists?

Well we have been over and over this, the larger claim carries the burden of proof, atheism is not a claim of course, though some atheists may also go so far as to also make a claim no deity exists. Since such a generic claim seems unfalsifiable I don't do this, but disbelieve claims by theists that a deity exists, and of course, as I would with any other claim, ask them to demonstrate sufficient objective evidence. Sufficient here is relative of course, as it must match the nature of claim, and objective is obviously because for several decades I have encountered claims for evidence that are merely subjective claims for anecdotal or personal experience.

Why does theism so obviously bother atheists would be a more salient question.

That seems more like an assumption than a question to me, Though is also seems incongruous to demand atheists seek objective evidence for a deity that theists fail to demonstrate, then decry them for seeking it. Of course you know that religions are all pervasive, and that their influence is not always innocuous, so of course it makes perfect sense that an atheist would not simply ignore religions, at least not all the time.

Atheists are forever ranting about theism, even though it doesn't remotely affect you.

I am pretty sure neither of those claims are true. Why does it bother you that atheists seeks to subject religious claims to critical scrutiny? This seems a reasonable response to any claim to me, especially since religious doctrines will very likely affect atheists in the here and now.

 

[Sheldon]

No, in my opinion it does not matter if a religious belief cannot be shown to be true to everyone,

When those believers then start to tell others how they should live in accordance with those beliefs it would matter of course, as happens all over the world. Also if those believers adopted behaviours or actions that were pernicious to others it would matter. While this is not always the case, one would be unwise to simply ignore superstitious beliefs, and leave them to do as they please. beliefs can and often have, led to directly and indirectly to actions, both good and bad, innocuous or helpful and pernicious.

I am also minded to quote the late Christopher Hitchens here:

“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”

I think that is a fact that we would be unwise to ever forget.

 

[Sheldon]

Children are innocent .. they are in a better position than adults to make such decisions.
They know little of adultery, homosexuality and money etc.

That's an odd list, why would you include homosexuality in there? Are you implying there is something wrong with being gay?

 

[Sheldon]

One doesn't need facts to believe that there is something responsible for existence.

Oh I think one does, or else what would the belief be based on?

 

[Sheldon]

Rubbish. A particular creed, maybe.
..but not the underlying basic principle that something that is greater than ourselves is responsible for us being here.

I was a child, I had no such "underlying basic principle that something that is greater than ourselves is responsible for us being here". Though I was taught as a child to believe this of course, before I had the ability to think critically about what adults taught me.